OceanaGold Stock

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the OceanaGold Corporation Q3 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded on Thursday, November 5, 2026. I would now like to turn the conference over to Valerie Burns.

Good morning, and welcome to OceanaGold's Third Quarter 2026 Operating and Financial Results Webcast and Conference Call. I'm Valerie Burns, Director of Investor Relations. Joining me today are Gerard Bond, President and Chief Executive Officer; Marius van Niekerk, Chief Financial Officer; and Bhuvanesh Malhotra, Chief Operating Officer.

The presentation that we will be referencing during the conference call is available through the webcast and on our website. As we will be making forward-looking statements during the call, please refer to the cautionary notes included in the MD&A and annual information form. All dollar amounts discussed in this conference call are in U.S. dollars. I will now turn the call over to Gerard for opening remarks.

Thank you, Valerie, and good morning, everyone. OceanaGold had a great third quarter. It was yet another solid quarter of safe and responsible gold production. We remain on track to meet full year production guidance. We generated strong free cash flow. We returned substantial amounts of capital to shareholders. We progressed our growth options. And after all this, we still added a lot of cash to the balance sheet. It was a strong beat against consensus estimates on adjusted earnings per share and free cash flow, being 2 outcomes that really matter. Our gold and copper production in the quarter at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,874 per ounce keeps us on track to deliver on our full year production and unit cost guidance with the fourth quarter expected to be the strongest quarter of the year.

After investing in our growth projects, we generated $155 million of free cash flow. This takes us to $541 million of free cash flow for the 9 months year-to-date, which is almost identical to the amount we generated in the whole of 2025. In line with our capital allocation framework, we continue to provide strong returns to shareholders with $79 million of buybacks and dividends in the quarter. And we strengthened our balance sheet with cash up 11% to $729 million at the end of September with 0 debt.

From a growth perspective, all of our organic growth projects had a great quarter. We made good progress at our flagship Waihi North project and at the Palomino underground mine development at Haile with both projects on track. We released some exceptional high-grade drill results at Wharekirauponga, which demonstrated what a spectacular ore body it is. We submitted our application for the Macraes Phase 4 project and released some exploration results from Macraes, which together underpin our view that Macraes has the potential to operate into the 2040s. And of course, we announced in the quarter the acquisition of Ausgold Limited, which we expect to complete by mid-December. This will add the Katanning Gold project to our existing growth profile with first ore expected in 2029. At the 3-quarter mark of the year, we have produced around 72% of the midpoint of our gold production guidance.

We expect the fourth quarter to be the strongest of the year, and we expect to deliver around the midpoint of our full year production guidance. The strong fourth quarter that we expect will be driven primarily by Haile, where mining has reached the high-grade lower benches of the Ledbetter open pit. We also expect higher gold and copper production from Didipio in the fourth quarter as underground mining rates continue to increase, and that has the effect of lifting the average grade of feed to the mill. Macraes is having a banner year with production expected to be near the high end of its guidance for the year and Waihi's fourth quarter production is expected to be consistent with its third quarter. On AISC, we said at the last quarterly call that we expected our all-in sustaining cost to progressively fall in the second half, which it did in the third quarter, being 13% lower than the June quarter. We expect the higher gold production in the fourth quarter to drive all-in sustaining costs even lower again, and we expect to finish the year towards the upper end of our 2026 guidance range. On capital, we expect to be approximately $45 million or 7% above our total capital investment guidance.

This is a result of deliberate decisions to use our strong operating cash flow to increase investment in growth and exploration from which we expect to generate considerable value. $35 million of this higher capital reflects accelerated investments in the Phase 4 project at Macraes, more investment in the mining fleet at Didipio and additional spend at the Waihi North project, where we accelerated some activities previously planned for 2027. And exceptional exploration success across all 4 sites also encouraged us to spend $10 million more than our initial exploration guidance amount.

Overall, we're very pleased with our performance in the first 9 months of the year and very pleased to be in exactly the right position to safely and responsibly deliver both a strong fourth quarter and our full year guidance. We have a very balanced approach to capital allocation. As you can see, year-to-date, we have evenly distributed our operating cash flow to sustaining the business, growing the business, returning capital to shareholders and adding cash to the balance sheet. Our investment in sustaining capital projects is all about ensuring we can safely and predictably produce the most gold we can in a time of good gold prices.

Our growth capital is mainly investment in the Waihi North project, the Palomino Underground at Haile and the Macraes Phase 4 project. We remain very focused on shareholder returns and have returned almost 50% of our year-to-date free cash flow through our expanded share buyback program and high dividend. And after all that, we still added $252 million of cash to the balance sheet in this 9-month period, a 53% increase in cash since the start of the year. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Marius, who will discuss our financial results in more detail.

Thank you, Gerard, and good morning, everyone. The third quarter delivered another strong set of financial results. We generated revenue in the quarter of $655 million, our second best quarterly revenue at an average realized gold price of around $4,250 an ounce. We place strong emphasis on our per share metrics, which significantly increased across the board. Comparing the Q3 results against the same period last year, all financial metrics improved.

Adjusted EBITDA was up 82%. Operating cash flow was up 43%. Adjusted earnings per share increased by 135% to $0.94, and we generated strong free cash flow of $155 million, resulting in a second best quarterly free cash flow per share of $0.69. Like others in the industry, we have experienced cost increases, and we continue to expect our full year all-in sustaining costs to be towards the upper end of our 2026 guidance range, as we stated with our Q2 results. This reflects inflationary impacts on labor costs and operating consumables, the impacts of higher diesel prices where we were unhedged, continued investment in maintenance and reliability improvements, lower silver byproduct credits due to a lower than forecast silver price and lower sales volumes than expected at Haile. However, we maintained a strong adjusted EBITDA margin in the quarter of 58%, demonstrating our ability to convert strong operational performance and disciplined cost management to the bottom line.

And after our continued investment in organic growth and shareholder returns that Gerard spoke about, we were still able to add $74 million in cash to the balance sheet. With no debt and our credit facility undrawn, we have total liquidity of almost $1 billion. These are solid financial results. And importantly, with an expected increase in production and unit costs expected to come down in the fourth quarter, we remain well positioned to generate significant free cash flow for the remainder of the year.

I will now pass the call over to Bhuvanesh to discuss our operating performance.

Thank you, Marius, and good morning, everyone. At Haile, we had a good quarter, producing around 55,000 ounces of gold at an all-in sustaining cost of just over $1,800 per ounce. Production was, however, lower than we originally expected in the quarter due to the implementation of a modified and derisked mine plan, which resulted in mining activities remaining focused on the lower grade upper benches of the Ledbetter open pit. Importantly, under the revised plan, by the end of September, mining had advanced to the lower benches, positioning Haile to access higher-grade ore and deliver a significant step-up in production in the fourth quarter. With the fourth quarter off to a great start with above 27,000 ounces already produced in October, Haile is on track for a very strong quarter 4.

In line with the expected increase in production, we anticipate all-in sustaining costs to decrease significantly in the fourth quarter. The Haile process plant continues to perform exceptionally well with mill optimization initiatives and the hard work of the team continuing to deliver great performance. At the Palomino underground, development of the decline continued to progress in the quarter and construction of the first ventilation shaft has commenced. Development remains on track to achieve first ore in early 2028.

Our drilling programs accelerated in the quarter, and we are now drilling the Pisces target from both surface and underground as well as continuing to focus on Horseshoe extensions and Ledbetter Lobe 3. We look forward to continuing to unlock exploration upside at this asset. With strong momentum in October, Haile is well positioned for a very strong quarter 4. Macraes is having an exceptional year, producing around 37,000 ounces of gold in the quarter and 130,000 ounces year-to-date, achieving 90% to the midpoint of its full year production guidance at the end of September. Production is expected to step down in the fourth quarter, in line with the plan with full year production expected to be near the top end of the guidance and all-in sustaining costs finishing the year within guidance.

At Coronation North, which is the primary ore source for 2027, waste stripping continued to progress during the quarter in preparation for ore access later in the fourth quarter. In the quarter, we also submitted the Macraes Phase 4 project permit application, which seeks to extend the mine life at Macraes from its current reserve life of 2032 to the late 2030s.

This is an important step in securing the long-term future of Macraes and includes permitting for open pit cutbacks, an extension to the Golden Point underground and an extension to the north of the current Innes Mills open pit referred to as SPIM. These expansion opportunities are expected to contribute meaningful production at Macraes up to the late 2030s. Beyond that, we released exploration results that support further mine life extension and see real opportunity to extend the mine life further into the 2040s through the continued exploration success in this highly mineralized area. The future of Macraes is very exciting, and we look forward to sharing further updates on the mine as we unlock more value. Waihi also had a strong quarter, producing just under 19,000 ounces of gold and remaining on track to deliver its full year production guidance. Quarterly all-in sustaining costs improved significantly from the second quarter as planned, and its full year all-in sustaining cost is expected to be in line with the guidance.

Waihi achieved a second consecutive quarter of record quarterly mill throughput since becoming an underground-only operation in 2016, a fantastic result for the team there. During the quarter, drilling accelerated at Wharekirauponga following the increase to 5 active drill rigs. We released some exceptional exploration results from Wharekirauponga in September, confirming the continuity and quality of the high-grade southern zone and representing outstanding conversion and growth potential. These drill results underpin an expected increase to mineral reserves for the year-end 2026 that will be presented in the updated Waihi District technical report in January 2027.

This technical report will include an updated mine plan for the Waihi District and will incorporate a potential process plant expansion to 1.2 million tonnes per annum, which will support the extension of mining at the Martha underground in conjunction with the commencement of mining from Wharekirauponga from 2032. This will add to our production growth profile and drive increased value for the Waihi District. While we're talking about the Waihi District, the development of our flagship Waihi North project continues to progress in line with plan. Since the commencement of the decline development in May, we have advanced just over 500 meters as we speak.

Construction of the first ventilation shaft is underway, and we expect to begin development of the twin tunnel towards Wharekirauponga in the first half of 2027. All surface construction, infrastructure, services and underground tunneling activities are progressing to plan with the project remaining on track for the first ore in 2032. We are excited to continue advancing this project as we get closer to the high-grade Wharekirauponga ore body, which we believe will be a flagship asset for many years to come. A reminder that we only received the permits for this project in December 2025. Since then, we have made tremendous progress and look forward to showcasing all of it during our upcoming analyst and investor tour to New Zealand in January. At Didipio, we produced nearly 23,000 ounces of gold and around 3,400 tonnes of copper in the third quarter, an improvement in gold and copper production from the prior quarter. With underground mining rates planned to continue increasing, we expect another step-up in production in the fourth quarter.

In line with the plan, all-in sustaining costs improved significantly compared to the prior quarter, and we expect both production and cost at Didipio to be within their guidance ranges. We also invested in and completed several water resilience projects in the first 9 months of the year ahead of the wet season, which was an important focus for the team. Exploration at Didipio continued in quarter 3. With 3 drills operating underground, we have made significant progress drilling in panels 3 and 4 and have an additional rig testing the extent of the Didipio mineralization at depth. At True Blue, an area of known mineralization, 800 meters northeast of Didipio, we completed the initial resource definition drill program and expect to share the results of all this drilling soon. I'll now turn the call back to Gerard.

Thank you, Bhuvanesh. I'd like to recap on some of the major catalysts ahead for OceanaGold. Next month, we will be sharing the results of our drill program at Didipio. Also in December, we expect to complete the acquisition of Ausgold, adding a high-quality development project in a premier mining jurisdiction to our portfolio. In January 2027, we will release an updated technical report on the Waihi District, incorporating the results of our drilling and value optimization work there over the past 2 years. We expect to have Macraes Phase 4 permitted by mid-2027, which will underpin an updated technical report in early 2028.

And we continue to progress the Palomino underground project at Haile, where first ore remains on track for 2028. Along the way, we expect to be regularly releasing the results from our expanded exploration drilling program, enabling low-risk mine life extension and real value creation for our shareholders. All of these make for exciting times here at OceanaGold, and we really look forward to executing on these opportunities. In summary, this was yet another solid quarter, one that beat consensus expectations on adjusted EPS and free cash flow in what we expect to be a strong year for OceanaGold.

We remain focused on safe and responsible mining, delivering guidance, generating free cash flow, allocating capital in line with our balanced capital allocation framework, growing through exploration and low-risk organic growth projects and providing strong returns to our shareholders. In closing, I want to recognize and thank the entire OceanaGold team, whose dedication, hard work and operating discipline contributed to yet another strong quarter. I'll now return the call to the operator and open up the line for any questions.

[Operator Instructions]

And we have our first question from Fahad Tariq with Jefferies.

At Haile, if I do the math right on the fourth quarter, it looks like the AISC would have to be around $900 an ounce. Can you maybe talk about if that sounds about right? And also just the redesign of the South wall, did that change the strip ratio or the ounces in the pit?

Thanks for the question. I'll take the first one, and I'll let Bhuvanesh answer the second. We actually don't guide to quarterly AISC, but I would say the following. You will appreciate that ounces make a big difference to the all-in sustaining cost, and we're through a lot of the sustaining CapEx in the period as well. So the combination of a high amount of ounces, and you can see that for us to get inside the guidance range for Haile, which we expect to, it's going to be like a record like quarter. And as Bhuvanesh said, we're well on the way there with a 27,400 ounces October. That has a very powerful effect on lowering the all-in sustaining cost. And so that will be the primary driver. On the strip ratio, Bhuvanesh, I'll hand that one over to you.

Ah, yes, there is a small amount of impact on the strip ratio, but very minimal is what I will probably say.

I think the good thing about this new revised mine plan is that it enables those additional ounces at the back end of the Ledbetter Phase 3 phase in the mine plan. So it all gets absorbed overall. So none of those ounces are lost. It just basically gets pushed a bit. And then actually, as I said, very little to minimal impact on strip ratio.

Okay. Great. And then if I switch gears to just capital return. Just any comments on the pace of buybacks? I mean the cash balance on the balance sheet is very high. If I'm doing the math right, even after the Ausgold cash consideration, assuming the maximum cash consideration, the cash balance would still be around $600 million. Maybe just talk about how you're thinking about capital deployment and the pace of buybacks.

Yes. Thanks, Fahad. We said at the start of the year, we had a target of $350 million of up to that in the year, which is double what we did last year, and we executed on that in full. When we set that target, we certainly didn't anticipate a $137 million or so going out for cash for Ausgold. So that is different to what we started with. We take a view and you could see with what happened last year, most of our buybacks did occur on a quarterly basis in the fourth quarter as and when we see the combination of good gold prices, operating performance and strong free cash flow generation.

So if the performance is there, you can expect us to continue to execute on that buyback program to some degree, so having regard to the Ausgold acquisition. It's ending the year with a lot of cash is not a target in and of itself, but it's a great position to be in, right? We have a number of growth projects coming -- well, in progress with both the Waihi North project and Palomino underground. And then next year or by the end of this year, we hope to have the Katanning Gold growth project in our portfolio. So having a lot of cash just gives us the confidence of being able to execute on them should gold prices temporarily or otherwise go to a low level. So we like holding cash. It gives us the ability to execute growth projects. But again, we -- as I said in my prepared remarks, very keen to focus on providing a balanced allocation of capital returns and putting shareholder returns at the front of the queue.

We have our next question from Harrison Reynolds with RBC Capital Markets.

Great. I wanted to ask on a follow-up on the buyback. How does your internal view of the valuation fit into the cadence of the buybacks? And are you structuring the buyback based on allocating capital as it's received as you kind of alluded to and maintaining cash balance? Or how much of it can be opportunistic looking at where shares are trading today and saying this is potentially great value to be allocating excess capital to buybacks?

Thanks, Harrison. Well, it's always great value to buy a share in OceanaGold. But no, the -- we don't try and play the market, right? We have this year and last year, probably deployed about a bit over half to 2/3 of the buyback program in the first half -- first 3 quarters of the year. And when that cash is certain to be in the bank or more certain than not to be in the bank, we go harder in the fourth quarter.

In the execution of it, we use a -- obviously, we have a look at our share price relative to our assessment of valuation to make sure that we're buying when we believe that it is a value-accretive deployment of shareholder capital, which it has been, and we have a great track record of buying back in that regard. And then in execution, we do look to be dynamic in its deployment.

By that, I mean, we look to see where we are underperforming relative to our peers.

And if that is the case and we have that value lens, meaning that the door is open, that's when we put the capital to work. So that makes sure that we're not being -- we're being opportunistic in a tactical sense, but we're not being opportunistic on trying to play the market sense.

Makes a lot of sense. I appreciate the detail there. And just as a second question, I mean, great to see the momentum as we're into the fourth quarter here, and I appreciate the detail on Haile. And just as you look across the assets between the current grades at Haile, Macraes reaching Coronation North and the progress at Didipio, how do you see the cadence of production shaking out in 2027, appreciating it's early days still, but just an approximation.

Harrison, you're trying to squeeze out an early indication of guidance. I'm not going to fall for that trap. I mean we'll put that out in February 2027. But with both Haile and Macraes, you do have open pits and they can go through campaigns. And I can think you can say that with Haile, that's probably a smoother campaign than Macraes. Macraes is a bit more undulating. But if I go across the other assets, we're down deeper and with greater access to more levels at Didipio with more trucks moving more material from underground. So we get good value there.

The underground mines at all sites are performing really, really well. And our milling performance, and I'll just call out Haile again, is spectacular, as is Macraes. I mean these sites -- and they're our 2 biggest engines, right? That's 60%, 70% of our gold production is coming out of sites that are setting milling rate records and with no loss of recovery. So it's a really pleasing symphony of good mine grade presentation plus good milling rates plus good recovery.

And hats off to the teams at all sites for achieving that. But no, so that's a long way of saying finishing a strong quarter is, we believe, setting ourselves up for a continuation of the same. Grade is king. It's how the grade presents, but we're doing good cutbacks to enable good access to grade in '27.

Got it. Yes, it sounds like good momentum into 2027, and I appreciate the detail even if it isn't early 2027 guidance. Congratulations again on the good quarter and ongoing progress.

Thanks, Harrison, appreciate it.

There are no further phone questions at this time. I will turn the call over to Valerie Burns for any web questions.

Thanks, operator. We had one question come in from the webcast. You've been putting out some great exploration results at Wharekirauponga. When can we expect to see the next exploration update there? And with the now 5 drill rigs operating, is that part of the additional $10 million you're expecting on exploration for this year?

Yes. Look, I mean, I'd just refer back to those earlier results that we put out, I think it was just before the Denver Gold Show or earlier than that. I mean they were spectacular. I mean what that did was confirm that, that southern end of mineralization of known mineralization was growing. We had some fabulous hits confirming continuity and its length and it's growing closer to the southern end -- at the southern end, which is from where we are approaching the ore body. So we will continue to drill. It is the primary and largest source of our exploration expenditures this year, $25-odd million. We are spending a little more there this year. It's not overwhelmingly the increase in $10 million.

A lot of that $10 million also went to Macraes as well, where we have had good results. As and when we get good drill results that tell a meaningful story, we release it. So I can't tell you when the next exploration results release for WKP is. But when we get -- obviously get enough of them to make the basis of release, we will do so. But I expect you'll have 1 to 2 in the coming 12 months or so, given the rate of drilling, which is the essence of the question. When you got more rigs on there, you're going to get more results and more basis for having to release one.

But I just point out that this amount of exploration we are spending this year is a record amount for the company, a big step-up from last year. That's across all sites, which is why we've been able to put out exploration results at Macraes for the first time in eons, and we're about to do one for Didipio alone. So I think shareholders will see that the money has been incredibly well spent. And the best gold to find is that near an existing operation, right? You've got the mill, you've got the infrastructure, you've got the people. It is the most accretive form of ounce addition that you can have, and that's why we're really pleased to be in this position and have the landholdings necessary to give these kind of returns to our shareholders.

Great. Thanks, Gerard. No further questions from the webcast. I'll turn it back to you for closing remarks.

Thank you, everyone. That does conclude the call. A replay will be available on our website later today. On behalf of the management team and everyone at OceanaGold, I appreciate you joining us and wish you a very pleasant rest of day. Bye for now.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. We thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the OceanaGold Corporation Webcast Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded on Monday August 17, 2026.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Brian Martin. Please go ahead.

Hello, and welcome to OceanaGold's conference call and webcast to discuss the exciting acquisition of Ausgold Limited. I'm Brian Martin, Senior Vice President of Business Development and Investor Relations. I'm joined today by Gerard Bond, President and Chief Executive Officer; Bhuvanesh Malhotra, Chief Operating Officer; and Keenan Jennings, Chief Exploration Officer.

The presentation we will be referencing is available through the webcast and on our website, and we will take questions following the presentation. As we will be making forward-looking statements during the call, please refer to the cautionary notes included in this presentation. All dollar amounts discussed are in U.S. dollars, unless otherwise stated.

I'll now turn the call over to Gerard for opening remarks.

Thank you, Brian. Good morning, everyone, and good evening to those joining us from Australia. Today, we announced some exciting news that OceanaGold has agreed to acquire Ausgold Limited, owner of the Katanning Gold project in Western Australia for $549 million. This transaction will add to our existing growth profile with the addition of a high-quality fifth asset to our portfolio in one of the world's premier mining jurisdictions.

In line with our growth strategy, we scan for opportunities at the right point of their life cycle for us to be able to add value and Katanning is exactly the kind of asset we have been looking for. It is a conventional relatively low capital open pit development project with the potential for more than 100,000 ounces of gold production annually over an initial 10-year mine life with first gold expected in 2029. It also comes with district scale exploration upside, providing a growth platform to continue to add value for many years to come.

Building, commissioning and operating mines are core OceanaGold capabilities. We believe that we can leverage the substantial expertise of our existing technical and projects team to realize Katanning's full potential. What's also important is that we are doing this transaction from a position of financial strength. We have a strong balance sheet with $655 million in cash. We are debt free, and we have a good equity valuation multiple. That financial strength puts us in a great position to complete the transaction, fund the development of Katanning, continue advancing all of our existing organic growth projects, including the Waihi North Project, and still invest significantly in exploration and still be able to return capital to shareholders.

Lastly, Katanning expected to be accretive for OceanaGold shareholders, providing attractive returns across a number of key per share metrics in line with our strategy of creating value. Katanning is a natural addition to OceanaGold's portfolio. This slide shows our assets with Katanning included a diversified portfolio of 5 assets all in top mining jurisdictions. We already have a substantial office in Brisbane with a team that has deep Australian technical project development, planning, permitting and exploration expertise, which is a real advantage as we will be leveraging to seek to a real advantage as we seek to leverage that to advanced Katanning. Both Bhuvanesh and Keenan, along with our existing technical team are based here in Brisbane. I'd also stress that Western Australia sits inside OceanaGold's existing operating day.

Turning to the next slide, the transaction summary. This is a lower-risk transaction for OceanaGold with a total transaction equity value of $549 million and Ausgold shareholders owning approximately 6% to 8% of OceanaGold post closing. OceanaGold is acquiring 100% of the issued and outstanding shares of Ausgold by way of a court-approved scheme of arrangement. Ausgold shareholders will receive shares in OceanaGold with an option to receive the transaction consideration in cash, subject to a cash cap of $137 million. The scheme is unanimously recommended by the Ausgold Board who, together with major Ausgold shareholder Dundee Corporation, own approximately 9.1% and intend to vote all shares held by them in favor of the scheme.

Finally, the scheme is subject to customary conditions, and we expect it to complete in December 2026. To further demonstrate our financial strength, this slide shows our current cash balance at the halfway point of the year, consensus free cash flow estimates over the remainder of this year and in the coming 3 years, and our current buyback commitments and current dividend levels. Together, this provides total projected cash holdings of approximately $2.1 billion at the end of 2029, which has provides us substantial capital to fund the potential cash component of the transaction and the Katanning capital expenditures whilst being able to continue to invest in growth and exploration projects across our business. and continue to return capital to shareholders.

I will now hand over to Bhuvanesh, who will provide a brief overview of the project.

Thank you, Gerard, and hello, everyone. As you have heard, Katanning is a well-advanced technically straightforward and relatively low capital open pit project in a Tier 1 region, which is what makes it so compelling. Katanning is located around 275 kilometers southeast of Perth in a region with well-established infrastructure, power and road access and a skilled workforce. A deep labor contractor and services market exists in Western Australia, which will support the construction and operation of the mine.

Work done by Ausgold to date indicates the potential for more than 100,000 ounces of gold produced annually over an initial 10-year mine life. The processing plant, which needs to be built is designed with a conventional carbon indeed circuit. Other site-based infrastructure required includes an accommodation village in the town of Katanning which is under construction now, offices, workshops, stores, water treatment and tailings.

Katanning project is very well advanced and OceanaGold has made real progress on 3 fronts: One, permitting, which is currently under public review following authorization by the Western Australian Environmental Protection Authority, a key step in the overall permitting process. Mining leases are already in place over the entire development footprint; two, predevelopment activities where early works agreement have been executed. Detailed engineering and long-lead procurement is advancing and the 250-room accommodation village is currently under construction; and three, significant drilling is underway through a multi-rig drill campaign, which is focused on infill drilling and resource conversion in areas planned for initial stages of mining.

OceanaGold aims to keep up the momentum across all 3 of these fronts while incorporating learnings from our due diligence process and our team's operating and development experience. This slide sets out the OceanaGold's indicative work plan for Katanning. The key to highlight here is that we are acquiring the project ahead of development, allowing us some time to optimize the project and derisk the operational ramp-up. We will provide a more fulsome project update following close of the transaction expected in December this year. OceanaGold will conduct further development activities throughout 2027 and look to publish an NI 43-101 technical report in 2028. We are targeting a final investment decision and construction to commence in 2028, ahead of the first gold in 2029.

Thank you, and I'll now pass the call over to Keenan.

Thank you, Bhuvanesh and hello, everyone. As mentioned by both Gerard and Bhuvanesh, what's attractive about Katanning is the asset's multifaceted growth potential. Success through exploration remains core to how we create value at OceanaGold, and our track record speaks for itself. Our teams have consistently delivered exceptional returns through exploration across our existing asset base, and we believe we can deliver tremendous value through the drill bit at Katanning as well.

Mineralization at Katanning appears over a 17-kilometer strike trend with significant potential to both convert and grow resources. Drilling in the central zone shown here is focused on areas planned for initial stages of mining. The 54,000 meter drill campaign is currently underway with near-term exploration focused on conversion and infill drilling, which will support mine planning and derisk the production profile. As shown, the deposits remain open down dip below the current pit shell, which points to further optionality and exploration upside. Recent drilling has returned good gold incepts beyond the current resource areas.

Finally, the acquisition of Ausgold brings with it significant greenfields potential via its large land holding of more than 3,000 square kilometers in a rather underexplored Greenstone Belt. The work Ausgold has done to date in identifying exploration targets signals exciting potential for future regional satellite deposits within 100-kilometer radius from the proposed plant. These are 3 regional trends shown here on the map running parallel to the known Katanning Shear.

The Stanley Shear is a 20-kilometer long structural corridor, approximately 30 kilometers from Katanning where initial drilling includes 8.5 meters at 33 grams per tonne gold. The Nanicup Zinger Belt, 40 kilometers from Katanning has shown gold mineralization over a 4-kilometer strike length. And finally, at Kraken Yandina some 90 kilometers from Katanning results have shown strong soil geochemistry anomalies and results from initial drilling are pending. These 3 areas of growth potential together make Katanning an incredibly exciting project from a prospectivity perspective.

Back to you, Gerard.

Thanks, Keenan. So as you've heard, Katanning is a fabulous fit for OceanaGold. It strengthens our growth pipeline in a Tier 1 jurisdiction where we can leverage our expertise to create significant value. We're excited to build on the great work done by the Ausgold team to date, and we're excited for what lies ahead. We look forward to sharing further updates as the transaction progresses providing a detailed update on our plans for Katanning closing and welcoming Ausgold employees and shareholders later in the year.

Operator, we can now open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Wayne Lam from TD Securities.

Guys, congratulations on the transaction. I was just wondering, as you've built up the balance sheet, were there other chunkier assets out there that you evaluated bringing in? Or did this size of transaction makes sense given the time line to production and ongoing advancements of WKP? I was just curious, maybe some color on the evaluation criteria if you're kind of looking at more of a tuck-in acquisition here versus the larger given the existing growth pipeline? And maybe just with the acquisition, do you expect a little bit of a slowdown here on the share repurchase program that's been executed over the past year?

Thanks, Wayne. Look, I mean, if I widen the lens on how we were approaching growth, which we've said for a long time now. We were looking at projects where we can add value in areas that we currently operate, U.S.A., New Zealand, Philippines or Australia or Canada. And so this was a development project, which, as you can see from how developers trade in the market sit at a discount, and we were able to acquire this at a [ PNAV ] in the order of 0.4, which is entirely consistent with developer discounts.

We're paying a market clearing premium to get it into the portfolio. And we think by getting something at this price, at this stage of its development, we are able to add the most amount of value to OceanaGold shareholders. When we buy something that's an operating asset, as you know only too well, it's very competitive, and you can find yourself having to pay top dollars. So at this stage of a project's life cycle, we think we can add the most value, whether that be through the drill bit, through the execution thereof the development project, which is why we were attracted to it.

In terms of what this means, I mean, it is -- as you said, it's relatively small for us to acquire given the financial strength that we have, but it's meaningful as well. I mean it's a 100,000-ounce-plus, producer, that's anywhere between 15% to 20% of our annual production in terms of what it represents to our total portfolio. And it comes online at a really nice time for us. 3 years earlier than what we're currently scheduled, the great kicker to our production profile that will come from the Waihi North Project. So it gives us growth earlier, gives us growth of a low capital cost, and to your -- the final part of your question, we think we can still maintain investing in our business in the sustaining capital. We can still develop all of our other growth options we can still pay dividends who can still return capital to shareholders via our buyback program.

Okay. Awesome. And maybe just wondering if you can walk us through the outstanding items on the path to permitting in the construction time line here?

Well, I mean, they're well advanced in the permitting. We've got all the mining leases are being granted. As Bhuvanesh said in his comments that the EPA process is well advanced. We're out in the public review period. And then the big ones that would remain. In terms of the construction contracts, again, as Bhuvanesh said, they're well advanced in procuring some long lead items, we've been through our due diligence process to get comfort with the good work that's been done by the Ausgold team, and we'll look to build on that in due course.

The -- I think if you look at their DFS, they had first production was in 2028 sometime and we're saying in 2029. So we're giving ourselves time to optimize at the margin and do more drilling. But yes, fundamentally, this thing is sufficiently well progressed for us to be confident in acquiring it.

Okay. Great. And then maybe just last one. I was just wondering if there's any read-through to the time line for the first gold that Katanning coincide with the decline in production at Macraes as outlined in the most recent tech report. Just wondering if you kind of saw the need to offset that decline or if those 2 things are completely independent?

Quite independent, Wayne. I mean, it's always nice to have an asset that's going to arrest the decline. But our view on Macraes is that there's plenty of life in Macraes yet. We just have to unlock it through the technical work that we're doing, the exploration work that we're doing and watch this space. We think, as we said before, we see a pathway to take the production of Macraes into the 2040s. And that's what we're very much focused on right now.

Okay. Great. Congratulations on the transaction, and best of luck in the months ahead.

Thank you, Wayne.

Your next question comes from Ovais Habib from Scotiabank.

Congrats on the transaction. A couple of questions from me. Actually, this is a question starting off with -- coming from a lot of investors this morning. And maybe a follow-up to Wayne's question as well.

I mean the question that comes up is, does the build and time line of Katanning delay the Waihi North build or time to [ force cooper ] in any way?

Sorry, if it's a bit fuzzy on the line, does this time line impact? Waihi North. Not in the slightest. I mean Waihi North is we're in execution mode of that project. We're 200 meters into the decline, the progress of the surface work, so I'll go back to what we said at our Q2 results. We -- that is progressing wonderfully, and it's well covered by our balance sheet. It's well covered by our free cash flow. Actually, we're funding it out of free cash flow.

So there is nothing mutually exclusive about doing -- or progressing with the Waihi North Project, Palomino underground, any of our exploration activity. As you would have seen over the last year as we saw in the first half of this year, we are able to invest in growth still return capital to shareholders in dividends and buybacks, and we're still adding cash to the balance sheet.

So no, there's nothing that's mutually exclusive here at all. This is genuinely in line with our strategy of scanning in the areas of focus that we had, an asset or an opportunity early enough that comes to us at a point that allows us to add value in terms of getting these commission and built and operated in a way that gives a good return to OceanaGold shareholders.

Okay. That's great. And then maybe a question for Bhuvanesh. You talked about looking at optimizing the project. Does that include any sort of scope changes in the meantime? Or is that dependent on the exploration program that's currently underway?

And second part to that question also is, how confident are you in the metallurgy side of this project as well? And how much work was done on that?

I'll just start with the [ metallurgy ] side first. Yes, so there's this enough metallurgy work done as our due diligence team had, technical team had looked at, and we're pretty confident with the flow sheet that's been presented. In terms of the optimization work, like I think there's always plenty of optimization opportunities that you could probably see through Ausgold has done a fantastic job so far as well, and we just want to basically build on that work. So no scope changes, but we want to basically build on already the work that's been done and maximize the return through the optimization process.

Next question comes from Harrison Reynolds from RBC Capital Markets.

Congratulations on the acquisition, and I appreciate the details so far. Sort of building on that last question. When you look at the drill program and the regional exploration, how do you think drilling success could inform any changes to the project design? Or is the drilling more looking at derisking and then mine life extensions to this project?

Harrison, good to hear from you. It's Keenan here. Drilling is -- we're doing drilling on a number of different fronts. The early-stage drilling. The stuff that Ausgold is currently doing is very much sort of derisking the earliest stages of the envisaged mine. But that's just part of the story. I think the bigger part of the story is that there's huge upside to be played out in the regional and district and regional areas. So there's strike length to the north and down dip.

So we're looking at expanding upon the existing resource as well as derisking the resource confidence. And then beyond that, this is a relatively underexplored domain of Greenstone. As Gerard has indicated, the exploration that we want to do is complementary to rather competitive with what we're already doing elsewhere in our pipeline. So I think this is a long-term play for us to gain confidence, improve the confidence in the existing resource, expand on that existing resource and then go further afield to look at satellite deposits to feed the eventual plant.

And then maybe just taking a step back, can the team talk to the thought process behind the funding of the acquisition and the determination of cash versus stock in the mix here?

Sure, Harrison. I mean, you know only too well that in gold price goes up and gold price goes down. And I look at the way our stocks have behaved in the last, say, month, it's been broadly correlated. And so by offering the opportunity for a 100% scrip deal, we're allowing Ausgold shareholders to be able to get more or less consideration in line with the gold price.

So they get a scrip that is likely to move with the gold price and eliminate that sense of regret as to whether they're taking a point of view on gold price at one point in time. It also allows them to continue to have ownership and exposure to the Katanning gold project through our ownership. It also allows them to get the benefit of the growth and the value that we see and many others see in OceanaGold shares.

The offer or the opportunity for up to 25% of that consideration to be paid in the form of cash is quite a common one in Australia. It's not -- and it just allows shareholders to take a portion of that in cash typically and not uncommonly, that's an option taken advantage by retail shareholders, and Ausgold has a retail shareholder base. If they don't wish to have, for example, or don't have the ability to have ownership on a TSX or NYSE-listed stock.

So it gives them that flexibility and it's about making sure our offer is attractive to all shareholders in a way that suits them. So they have a choice. So it will be a maximum of $137 million of the $549 million. We'll take the form of cash. It's an up to and if there's any appetite for cash above that. then they will be scaled back accordingly. So it just gives flexibility and it gives us the maximum attraction to Ausgold shareholders.

Your next question comes from Fahad Tariq from Jefferies.

Most of them have been answered. I just wanted to ask about the cost environment in Western Australia and as you were doing the due diligence, any thoughts on the tight labor market or just diesel costs and just the overall cost dynamic going forward in Western Australia?

Yes. Look, it's a deep market. So there are a lot of gold producers in the state. So we tend to have, as we all do a good line of sight as to the trajectory there. We've taken a view, having regard to the study work we've taken a view on the current market. We've made our own estimates as to how things will play out at in regard to inflationary pressures and the like.

And we factored that all into our modeling and still find that this has an attractive rate of return for OceanaGold shareholders. I mean, in some respects, it does have a locational advantage. It's not a lot of people are drawn from around this area to go work in other mining parts of Western Australian. We think we will be an attractive employer of choice for people that won't have to drive so far or won't have to fly to go find work in the industry.

So again, there's plenty of people in the mining industry in WA, but this is a very attractive jurisdiction for people to live in and we're confident of being able to attract them to OceanaGold for this.

Your next question comes from Jeremy Hoy from Cannacord Genuity.

Most of them have been answered, but I did have another one comes to mind.

M&A always very topical with you guys, given the strength of the balance sheet as well as valuation. With this deal now announced, does the narrative around M&A change at all? Or are you going to maintain what you described to Wayne earlier on in the call.

Yes. It's funny, Jeremy. I was reflecting that on the Q2 results call just recently, it was the first time in many quarters, we didn't get a question on M&A. And not long after as we pop up with an announcement on an M&A deal. So -- maybe you guys will ask more often.

But this doesn't change our strategy. I mean it certainly gives us something to put our energies into. Again, as Bhuvanesh said, this has been well advanced by the Ausgold team. They've done a great job, but we're very comfortable taking it forward from this point. apply our technical expertise, our balance sheet and financial capacity, none of which will be stretched. But -- and we will continue to look, but we've never had an imperative to do anything that we only -- we look at a lot, and we -- inside the guardrails that we've always spoken about.

And we will continue to look, but not with less imperative to do so. But we've shown ourselves to be very patient and we'll only execute where we are highly confident that we can add value to OceanaGold shareholders.

Great. Appreciate that color. I think it slots nicely into the pipeline and looking forward to seeing you advance the optimization and regional opportunities.

Thanks, Jeremy.

There are no further questions at this time. I'll turn the call back over to Gerard.

Well, thanks, everyone, for taking the time. It's a very exciting day for OceanaGold. I look forward to sharing with you progress on the transaction as it progresses and of course, sharing with you more of our thoughts as and when the deal completes. Thank you for taking the time today. Have a great rest of day.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the OceanaGold Corporation Q2 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded on Thursday, August 6, 2026.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Valerie Burns. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to OceanaGold's second quarter 2026 operating and financial results webcast and conference call. I'm Valerie Burns, Director of Investor Relations. Joining me today are Gerard Bond, President and Chief Executive Officer; Marius van Niekerk, Chief Financial Officer; and Bhuvanesh Malhotra, Chief Operating Officer.

The presentation that we will be referencing during the conference call is available through the webcast and on our website. As we will be making forward-looking statements during the call, please refer to the cautionary notes included in the MD&A and annual information form. All dollar amounts discussed in this conference call are in U.S. dollars.

I will now turn the call over to Gerard, for opening remarks.

Thank you, Val, and good morning, everyone. We had a really good second quarter. We safely and responsibly delivered 7% more gold than we did in the first quarter. We continue to generate strong free cash flow. We made great progress with our organic growth projects. We returned meaningful amounts of capital to shareholders, and we still added cash to the balance sheet. Our gold production of around 139,000 ounces and copper production of 2,700 tonnes was in line with plan, keeping us on-track to deliver on our full year guidance.

Our margins remain strong. Even with the pullback from the record high gold prices of the first quarter, the second quarter delivered a record quarterly adjusted EBITDA margin of 61%. After investing in our growth projects, which include the Waihi North Project and the Palomino Underground Mine, we generated $130 million of free cash flow, taking us to $385 million of free cash flow year-to-date.

In line with our capital allocation framework, we continue to actively provide capital returns to shareholders, returning $78 million through dividends and buybacks in the quarter. And we strengthened the balance sheet with cash up 6% to $655 million, and we remain debt-free. We made great progress at our flagship Waihi North Project, where the tunnel towards the high-grade Wharekirauponga orebody is well underway, and we have advanced numerous other aspects of this exciting project. Finally, we released more high-grade drill results from multiple targets at Haile. These demonstrate our ability to add value through exploration and highlight the significant upside potential that we have in our portfolio.

We are on-track to deliver on our 2026 guidance. At the halfway mark of the year, we're around halfway towards the midpoint of full year guidance for both gold production and capital spend, and we expect stronger copper production in the second half that will achieve our copper production guidance.

In terms of the shape of the rest of the year, we expect the company's third quarter gold production to be similar to the second quarter, and we expect fourth quarter gold production to be the highest of the year. This increase is driven by expected stronger production at Haile in the third quarter and then again in the fourth. This higher gold production in the second half, together with a lower rate of sustaining capital is expected to drive our all-in sustaining costs lower in the third quarter and again in the fourth.

Our all-in sustaining cost for the year is anticipated to near the upper end of our 2026 guidance range. This reflects labor cost inflation, more investment in maintenance and reliability improvements that have really high payback, the impacts of higher diesel prices -- where we are unhedged, and lower silver byproduct credits due to a lower silver price than we expected. Total capital expenditure is expected to be in line with guidance. In the coming half, we expect an increase in growth capital for the Waihi North Project and Palomino Underground and more waste stripping at Haile, partially offset by lower sustaining CapEx across the company. Overall, we are very pleased with our performance in the first half of 2026 and remain focused on safely and responsibly delivering on our full year guidance in the second half.

Our capital allocation framework allocates our operating cash flow in a very balanced way. And you can see how in the first half of this year, we're almost evenly distributing it to sustaining the business, growing the business, returning capital and adding cash to the balance sheet.

So by component, the $165 million of sustaining capital include investments in site infrastructure, improving the integrity of plant and equipment, mobile fleet improvements, as well as deferred stripping and capitalized mining. Our growth capital of $118 million was mainly investment in the Waihi North Project and the Palomino Underground at Haile. And the $25 million -- $25 million of exploration expenditures reflects that big step-up in drilling across the portfolio where we think we can add enormous value through exploration.

We remain very focused on shareholder returns and are pleased to have returned a total of $174 million of shareholders' money back to them in the first half of the year through our higher dividend and share buyback program. A reminder that we have an approved program of up to $350 million of buybacks for 2026, of which $134 million has been bought back to date. After all that, we were still able to add $178 million of cash to the balance sheet in the first half of the year, which is a 37% increase in cash from the year-end.

So in summary, our capital allocation framework is working as intended, funding the business, investing in growth, strengthening the balance sheet, and delivering attractive returns to shareholders.

I'll now turn the call over to Marius, to discuss our financial results in more detail.

Thank you, Gerard, and good morning, everyone. Q2 delivered another strong set of financial results. Notably, we achieved a record adjusted EBITDA margin of 61%, driven by the lower cost of sales and a lower additional government share at Didipio, also reflecting our ability to translate strong operational performance and disciplined cost management bottom line.

We place strong emphasis on our per share metrics, which pleasingly reflects step-ups across the board. On screen, we compare second quarter against the same period last year, and all financial metrics improved. EBITDA was up 84%. Operating cash flow was up 38% and earnings per share increased by 102% to $0.99, and we generated free cash flow of $130 million, resulting in a free cash flow per share of $0.58.

So after the investment in organic growth and shareholder returns that Gerard spoke about, and after higher annual tax and government cash payments made this quarter, we were able to still add $35 million in cash to the balance sheet. We generated revenue in the quarter of $647 million at an average realized gold price of just over $4,400 an ounce, reflecting the timing of our gold sales.

These are solid financial results and importantly, with increasing production and unit costs expected to come down, we remain well positioned to continue to generate significant free cash flow for the remainder of the year.

As it relates to Iran conflict, to-date, there has been no disruption to our operations related to fuel or the supply network. We hedge approximately 80% of our diesel requirements at both Haile and Macraes. With those hedges in place, should oil prices of around $100 per barrel prevail for the remainder of 2026, then we continue to estimate an AISC impact of around $25 per ounce. We've extended 80% diesel hedges across all our operations from Q1 2027.

I will now pass the call over to Bhuvanesh, to discuss our operating performance.

Thank you, Marius, and good morning, everyone. At Haile, we had a strong quarter, producing 60,000 ounces of gold, which was in line with our guidance, driven by increased access to open pit ore in Ledbetter 3 and high-grade ore from the Horseshoe Underground. We expect this trend to continue in the second half of the year with production to increase in the third quarter and then again in the fourth quarter and all-in sustaining cost is expected to decrease each quarter.

Our continued mill optimization initiatives and the hard work of the team resulted in the outstanding achievement in June of record monthly mill throughput, the highest since the mill was commissioned in 2017. Development of the decline towards Palomino Underground progressed in the quarter, remaining in line with the plan to achieve first ore in 2028. We continue to drill targets at Horseshoe, Ledbetter Underground, Pisces, and Clydesdale in the second half of the year. It is performing to plan and is well positioned to continue delivering for the remainder of the year.

Macraes had an exceptional first half of the year, producing 64% of the midpoint of its guidance already driven by higher grades mined and processed from the Innes Mills open pit. In line with plan, production is expected to step down in the second half of the year with full year production and costs still expected to be within the guidance. At Coronation North, waste stripping continued to progress during the quarter, in preparation for ore access later this year. We accelerated exploration programs across several areas at Macraes during the quarter with focus on resource conversion and expansion, and we are expecting to submit the Macraes Phase 4 fast-track application for our ongoing mine life extension plans in the third quarter of this year.

We are continuing to evaluate further extension opportunities that could potentially extend mine life into the 2040s, given the leverage of these assets to the gold price and the inherent optionality at the site. We look forward to sharing more about these developments later this year.

A real highlight in July, Macraes produced its 6 millionth ounce of gold, a tremendous milestone that demonstrates how innovation, resilience, and disciplined operational execution can drive real value creation and is a great credit to the team there past and present.

At Waihi, we maintained consistent production with just under 17,000 ounces of gold produced in the second quarter, remaining on-track to deliver its full year production guidance. All-in sustaining cost in the quarter was impacted by the processing of lower-grade stockpile material. With access to higher-grade underground stopes now available, we expect all-in sustaining cost to decrease in the second half of the year. Pleasingly, Waihi achieved a record quarterly mill throughput since becoming an underground-only operation in 2016, a great result for the team there.

I'd like to spend a moment on the Waihi North Project, where we reached a significant milestone this quarter with the opening of the portal and the commencement of decline development towards the Wharekirauponga Underground in May. Since then, the decline development has progressed in line with the plan, nearing 200 meters as we speak. Additionally, the service trench was completed in July, and the commissioning of the expanded water treatment plant is expected by the end of the third quarter.

The next key milestone for the project will be the addition of the second jumbo underground to begin the twin tunnels towards the Wharekirauponga orebody. We expect growth capital to continue to increase in the second half of the year as development activities across the project ramps up. On exploration at Wharekirauponga, drilling is set to accelerate in the second half of the year. We have now added 2 new drill rigs, bringing the total number of active drill rigs to 5. We look forward to increase drilling as it continues to grow and define this exciting orebody that will anchor what we believe will be a flagship asset for many years to come.

At Didipio, we produced over 21,000 ounces of gold and around 2,700 tonnes of copper in the second quarter, an improvement in gold production from the prior quarter despite some mill downtime. Underground mining rates improved and excitingly, during the quarter, the decline development resumed as well. With underground mining rates planned to continue ramping up, we expect production to increase in the second half of the year. All-in sustaining cost is expected to decrease as a result of a higher gold and copper production, and lower sustaining capital expenditures in the second half of the year.

Exploration at Didipio is accelerating. We now have 3 drills operating underground and have an additional rig testing the extent of the Didipio mineralization at depth. At True Blue, an area of known mineralization 800 meters northeast of Didipio, we continue to drill, targeting the addition of new mineral resources by year-end.

I'll now turn the call back to Gerard.

Thank you, Bhuvanesh. In summary, this was another strong quarter in what we expect to be another strong year for OceanaGold.

So to wrap it all up, we achieved record mill throughput rates at Haile and Waihi. Mine performance was very good at Didipio, where we're also back into decline development. Macraes delivered strongly and is creating attractive options for its future, whilst recently celebrating production of its 6 million ounce. Tremendous progress has been made at the Waihi North Project and driving towards the new Palomino Underground Mine. And we had some stellar exploration results at Haile.

We safely and responsibly delivered the plan, remaining on-track to meet guidance while generating record adjusted EBITDA margins and strong free cash flow. We also strengthened the balance sheet and returned meaningful capital to shareholders. And we had some excellent drill results. I'm excited about continuing to share some of these drill results over the year as we deploy our record investment in exploration.

In closing, I want to recognize the OceanaGold team. This quarter's strong results reflects their hard work and operating discipline, and I'd like to extend my thanks to everyone throughout OceanaGold for their efforts.

I'll now return the call to the operator and open up the line to take any questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Ovais Habib from Scotiabank.

Congrats on a good quarter. I've been bouncing between 2 conference calls, so I apologize if you've already touched on the questions I may ask.

Starting off with Haile. The accelerated stripping at the Snake pit that we're doing at the beginning of the year, and I think you may be continuing that right now as well. Can you please remind us why you pulled that stripping forward? And should this translate into any sort of lower stripping costs going into 2027?

Ovais, I don't think we pulled it forward so much. We just changed the sequence, but I'll hand that one over to Marius.

Yes, we had that winter storm in Q1. So we took the opportunity to review the mine sequence with a focus on staying productive and efficient for that long-term plan. So we -- in the first half, we did about 1.6 million tonnes of stripping, which we reported as growth given consideration to its growth potential and value, and we intend to strip another 2 million tonnes in the second half. So probably another $8 million of spend from a stripping perspective.

Got it. Sounds good. And then just staying at Haile, it looks like the Palomino decline is progressing well. Are you planning to set up drill stations along the way to test the area between Horseshoe Underground and Palomino? Is that in the plan? Any color on that would be appreciated.

Yes, absolutely. We are -- that's the intention, Ovais. We can get much better access, different angles, shorter drill lengths, increase in density into Pisces from there and also getting good angles back into the Horseshoe Underground. So that is absolutely the intention.

And has that been happening already? Or is that going to -- are you going to be setting up the drill stations in kind of the second half?

We've put some drill holes into Pisces from there. And again, as we get greater length or close to Palomino, we're going to have greater access points to get into Pisces from there as well. So we're underway.

Okay. And moving on to Waihi North and then similar kind of question there as well. I mean, the decline development seems to be progressing well. Is there a target you have in mind in terms of meters to reach by the end of the year? And also, have you started to kind of drill test any sort of areas between Waihi and Wharekirauponga?

Well, we certainly have a target to drill every month actually. So yes, we're definitely on plan as it stands at the moment. I mean, we're still heading down, and then we've got to get to the point where we start to twin decline. And it's about 200 meters into that, which we expect will be in at around this time next year that we are going past some known mineralization where we're certainly going to be having the rigs off to the side drilling, looking for gold.

So we're still heading down. But absolutely, along that 4.5 kilometers of twin decline, we're going to have numerous exploration cuts off to the left and right to -- looking for mineralization. But the first time we expect to be able to do that having regard to where we see or have known mineralization is around this time next year. So you have to hold your breath, Ovais.

Sounds good. And just maybe a question for Bhuvanesh then. In terms of the ground conditions experienced so far at -- of the portal and kind of the decline, that all kind of according to plan, looks all good on that end?

Yes, it has been actually a very pleasing results from that aspect. So far in 200 meters, we had, as we have anticipated, close to 80 meters of breccia that we compensated through just in the last few weeks as well, and it was exactly as per the plan as well. And remember, we -- last year, we had drilled 2 long horizontal holes of almost 600-plus meters and 800 meters plus holes as well. So that has given us excellent information and understanding of the geotech conditions. It's gone all to plan so far.

Your next question comes from Fahad Tariq from Jefferies.

I wanted to ask about Waihi costs in the second half of the year. There was a comment that AISC is expected to decline, but I think there was another comment in the MD&A and press release saying that production is expected to be flat or relatively consistent. So I just want to understand where the lower costs are coming from, whether it's a grade uplift or something else.

Thanks, Fahad. It definitely is a grade uplift, right? So we were more reliant on stockpiles in the quarter just gone. We're back into fresh ore. We made that comment in the MD&A that we're back into good ore. And so when you -- all other things being equal, when you have higher grade, your costs are a little lower.

Okay. Great. And then just taking a step back, the comment about labor cost inflation, can you just provide more detail on whether that's at a specific mine or region and just what you're seeing and where that's coming from? It sounds like it's not really diesel that's the big impact right now. Correct me if I'm wrong, it's more labor cost inflation. So just trying to understand where that's coming from.

Well, we covered all the drivers of it and diesel was a factor because we weren't hedged at all at Waihi or Didipio. And in the other sites, we were hedged 80%, which has been extraordinarily beneficial, but you still have an unhedged portion. So diesel cost was a factor, but labor inflation was the largest factor. And the #1 place where we experienced that the most is at Haile because we don't have any currency protection there.

And sometimes labor rate inflation, it's just -- it manifests itself in two forms. It's what it takes for -- to pay employees or attract new employees into the business, but also as and when you rely on contractors and particularly maintenance contractors, the rate of inflation in their costs, particularly if you rely more on them, and we did a lot more maintenance in the quarter, you tend to have a higher exposure to that marking to market of labor rates in the U.S.

Your next question comes from Don DeMarco from National Bank.

I heard earlier in the call that at Haile, the throughput hit a record in June. Just wondering if you expect that to continue into July and Q3 in general, maybe setting up for a record in Q3? Or are there some mitigating factors, maintenance and so on?

Thanks, Don. I'll let Bhuvanesh make his promises on that one, Bhuvanesh?

I think we will continue to see those rates probably improve. And this is all because of the spend that we have actually made in improving the asset reliability of that plant, and this has been a long 8, 9 months' worth of process we have undertaken as well. We do have some shuts coming up that will probably have to be factored as a part of the mill throughput, as you would imagine. But we are very confident of ensuring that these grades continue to basically be delivered through the second half of the year, too.

Your next question comes from Harrison Reynolds from RBC Capital Markets.

Good to see another solid quarter. One question on Haile. I noticed you approved the paste plant. I remember this being under study when we were on site a couple of months ago. Could you walk us through the benefit of this, cycle times, lower costs and what you saw as a result of this study?

Sure. So Harrison, there are 2 key aspects of the paste plant that helps us invest in that particular project as was approved by Board. The 2 -- the first aspect, obviously, is the cycle time of the stope sequencing as well. We do basically see some of that accelerate as we start to see the paste coming through as well, especially because the curing time is going to basically be 14 days. So that means that the stope cycle can be moved faster. And then the second bit, which is probably our primary driver moving forward of all of this basically is it helps us to really slow down the rate of the tailings dam rise that we need to do as well. So there's a huge impact to the cost and the cycle times that we would like to improve, especially in the open pit because those waste runs are quite extremely longer as well. And thirdly, I should say there's another factor to it, which is about ensuring that the tailings capacity can be elongated as much as we can as we continue to find Pisces and Clydesdale and all of those other things as well. Those can all be accommodated in the Stage 6 raise, which is what we would like to achieve.

There are no further questions. I'll turn the call back over to Gerard.

Thanks, operator. That concludes our webcast and conference call. A replay will be available on our website later today. On behalf of the management team and everyone at OceanaGold, I appreciate you joining us and wish you a very pleasant rest of the day. Bye for now.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Hello, and welcome to the Annual General and Special Meeting of Shareholders of OceanaGold Corporation. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to turn today's meeting over to Paul Benson, Chair of OceanaGold Corporation. Mr. Benson, the floor is yours.

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, all. My name is Paul Benson, and as Chair of the Board of OceanaGold Corporation, I'd like to welcome you to today's Annual General and Special Meeting of Shareholders. In accordance with the articles of the company, I will act as Chair of this meeting and appoint Ms. Elizabeth Thampy, Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Company Secretary, to act as a Secretary of the meeting. Later, she will take you through the voting process and formal business of the meeting. Please be advised that today's webcast is being recorded.

As it is now past 12:00 p.m. Canadian Eastern Time and a quorum is present, I declare the meeting open. To begin, I'll introduce my fellow directors on the call today, each of whom will be seeking reelection to the Board at today's meeting. Mr. Gerard Bond, President and CEO and Director of OceanaGold since April 2022; Mr. Ian Reid, who joined the company as a director in April 2018 and was the Chair of our Board between June 2019 and September 2021; Mr. Craig Nelsen, who joined the company as a director in February 2019 and is Chair of our Remuneration, People and Culture Committee; Ms. Sandra Dodds, who joined the company as a director in November of 2020 and is Chair of our Audit and Risk Committee; Mr. Alan Pangbourne, who joined the company in October 2022 and is the Chair of our Technical Committee; Ms. Linda Broughton, who joined the company as a director in April 2023; and Ms. Stefanie Loader, who joined the company as a director in February 2025 and is Chair of our Sustainability Committee.

Also on the call today is Mr. Marius van Niekerk, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; as well as [ Mr. Eric Tolbert ], representing our auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.

I'll now pass the floor to Ms. Thampy, who will take you through the voting process.

Thank you, Chair, and good afternoon, everyone. For governance purposes, particularly considering the various locations from which attendees are joining us and as provided for in the company's articles, I would like to advise that voting on all matters will be conducted by electronic ballot and registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders who have properly logged in with their control numbers or username will be able to vote.

When you are invited to vote, please click on the option to vote on the virtual meeting platform, and you can register your vote for each item of business. Importantly, if you are a registered shareholder and have already voted by submitting your proxy form in advance of the meeting, it is not necessary for you to vote again today. In addition, all attendees will be able to submit questions through the Q&A function on the virtual meeting platform.

When we arrive at the formal business of the meeting, the Chair will call for a poll to be open on all items. When voting is closed, the final voting selection entered into the virtual meeting platform will be recorded. These votes will be added to the proxy votes received prior to the meeting. Results will be tabulated and announced at the conclusion of the meeting with detailed results of the meeting filed on SEDAR+, EDGAR and by press release following the meeting.

I will now turn the meeting back to the Chair, Mr. Benson.

Thank you. Ms. Jenny Karim of Computershare Investor Services, the registrar and transfer agent of the company is present and will act as scrutineer of the meeting. Computershare has provided confirmation that the meeting materials were mailed to shareholders on May 8, 2026 and that proper notice of the meeting has been given.

The scrutineer's preliminary report indicates that over 184 million shares of the company being voted at this meeting, representing approximately 82% of the total outstanding shares as of the record date of the meeting. A quorum of shareholders as required under the company's articles is present at this meeting.

As such, I declare the meeting is regularly called, duly constituted and ready for the transaction of business. Unless there is an objection, I'll dispense with the reading of the notice of meeting.

We will now deal with the business of this meeting. All resolutions are approved by a simple majority of votes cast, either in person or by proxy. In order to ensure this meeting covers the required business in an efficient manner, I will move all motions that are identified in the Notice of Meeting and we'll dispense with the seconding of such motions. This procedure is merely a way to expedite the proceedings.

We will first consider the financial statements of the company for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025 and the accompanying auditor's report. Copies of the financial statement and the auditor's report have been made available to shareholders. This is an item for discussion and does not require a vote. Are there any questions?

If there's no discussion, I will now declare that OceanaGold's audited consolidated financial statements for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025 and the accompanying auditor's report have been received by the shareholders as submitted to this meeting.

We'll now open voting on all resolutions specified in the Management Information Circular. The virtual meeting platform will display your resolutions and your voting options. Voting will remain open during the discussion of the resolutions. I will provide you with notice that the polls are about to close.

I'll ask Ms. Thampy to take you through the relevant resolutions.

Thank you, Chair. The first item of business is the election of directors of the company. The following individuals have been nominated and are prepared to stand for reelection as directors. Paul Benson, Ian Reid, Craig Nelsen, Sandra Dodds, Alan Pangbourne, Linda Broughton, Stefanie Loader, and Gerard Bond. Are there any questions in relation to the resolution?

These 8 nominees are the only persons who have been nominated to stand for the election as directors of the company. Accordingly, no further nominations will be accepted and I declare the nominations closed. As the polls are open, I now direct that we proceed to take a vote by ballot. Please vote now.

[Voting]

We now move to the second item of business.

The next item is to appoint PricewaterhouseCoopers as the auditor of the company and to authorize the directors to fix the remuneration payable to the auditor as set out in the Management Information Circular.

Are there any questions in relation to this resolution? If not, please vote now.

[Voting]

We now move to the third item of business.

The next item of business is to consider a nonbinding advisory resolution on the company's approach to executive compensation as set out in the Management Information Circular.

Are there any questions in relation to this resolution? If not, please vote now.

[Voting]

We now move to the final item of business.

The last item is to approve the holding of the company's AGM in 2027 in a virtual-only format.

Are there any questions in relation to this resolution? If not, please vote now.

[Voting]

As there is no further discussion, I'll close the poll on the final resolutions in the next 30 seconds. I now declare the polls closed.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm pleased to announce that all resolutions have passed. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all shareholders for attending the meeting and for your continued support of the company. As there is no further formal business to be brought before the meeting at this time, I declare the meeting closed.

I will now invite Mr. Gerard Bond, President and CEO, to provide an update on the company.

Thank you, Paul, and hello to all shareholders listening in, thank you for joining us today. Although today's discussion focuses on 2025, I will also make forward-looking statements relating to our 2026 priorities. So please refer to these cautionary notes as well as the risk factors set out in our year-end 2025 annual information form.

As you know, 2025 was a superb year for OceanaGold with numerous achievements across the board. The company as a whole and each of our core assets delivered on or exceeded 2025 production guidance, reflecting disciplined execution and a strong focus on safe and responsible operating performance.

The company also delivered on its cost and capital expenditure guidance. Our strong operational performance, together with a favorable gold price environment at an average gold price for the year of around $3,500 per ounce led to record financial results and significant value creation for OceanaGold's shareholders. Notably, we set numerous financial records this year, including record annual EBITDA, record annual EBITDA margin, record annual adjusted net profit, record annual adjusted earnings per share, record annual operating cash flow and record annual free cash flow.

We progressed our organic growth opportunities in the year, including receiving all permits necessary for advancing the world-class Waihi North Project. We also continue to add value, life, and optionality through our exploration programs at all sites. We strengthened our balance sheet by increasing our cash balance substantially. We have no debt, no gold hedges, no prepays, no financing royalties. And at the end of 2025 and today, we have the strongest balance sheet in the company's 37-year history.

Importantly, and very pleasingly, we returned a record amount of capital to shareholders in 2025, over $200 million, in the form of dividends and share buybacks. In a year of strong execution and value creation, we allocated capital in a balanced way in 2025, reinvesting in the business, advancing growth and returning capital to shareholders as shown on the diagram on the left.

On the right-hand side, you can see how we expect that to look in 2026. In the sustaining capital works, the lower level of operating spend year-on-year is driven by us spending much less on open pit waste removal in 2026, following the completion of 2025's production stripping campaigns. On other elements of sustaining capital, we're actually spending more in 2026 on improving the integrity and availability of fixed plant and mobile equipment at our sites, which provides a strong payback at high gold price.

We are substantially increasing our investment in growth and exploration in 2026. This is primarily through the development of the world-class Waihi North Project, commencing the build of the Palomino underground mine at Haile and increasing our exploration spend by 50%. All this makes for a stronger and brighter future. And we are materially lifting returns to shareholders.

In 2026, we are tripling our quarterly dividend and doubling our share buybacks, resulting in up to $432 million of capital returns to shareholders. This is a 112% increase year-over-year. We expect to do all of this and still add a substantial amount of cash to the balance sheet at current gold prices, making OceanaGold even financially stronger in 2026 and giving us plenty of optionality for future growth.

In summary, 2025 was an outstanding year, where we safely and responsibly delivered record financial returns. Going forward, we will continue to focus on safe and responsible mining and delivering on our guidance commitments. Notably, in 2026, we expect to generate significant free cash flow and add to our already strong balance sheet. We expect to continue to advance our attractive growth projects and exploration programs all while delivering increased returns to shareholders with tripling of our dividend and doubling of our share buybacks.

I do want to acknowledge that our stellar 2025 results were only possible through the dedicated efforts of the many talented people who work at OceanaGold and a big call-out of thanks to them. That concludes my formal remarks, and I'd like to open up the meeting to any questions from shareholders.

As there are no questions, this concludes our presentation and I'll now turn the call back to the operator. Thank you for joining us today and for your continued support of OceanaGold.

This concludes the meeting. Thank you for your attendance. You may now disconnect.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the OceanaGold Corporation Q1 2026 Earnings Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded on Thursday, May 7, 2026.

And I would now like to turn the conference over to Rebecca Henare. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to OceanaGold's First Quarter 2026 Operating and Financial Results Webcast and Conference Call. I'm Rebecca Henare, Vice President of Investor Relations. We are joined today by Gerard Bond, President and Chief Executive Officer; Marius van Niekerk, Chief Financial Officer; and Bhuvanesh Malhotra, Chief Operating Officer.

The presentation that we will be referencing during the conference call is available through the webcast and on our website. As we will be making forward-looking statements during the call, please refer to the cautionary notes included in the MD&A and annual information form. All dollar amounts discussed in this conference call are in U.S. dollars.

I will now turn the call over to Gerard for opening remarks.

Thank you, Rebecca, and good morning, everyone. We started 2026 the way we intended to, safely, responsibly and to plan. The first quarter sets us up well to deliver on our 2026 guidance and underpins a year that we expect to be even stronger than the stellar year we had in 2025. In the first quarter, we produced just over 130,000 ounces of gold and 3,200 tonnes of copper. This, combined with a continued strong gold price environment, delivered record quarterly revenue and record operating cash flow, while generating $255 million of free cash flow in the quarter.

We also continued to actively return capital to shareholders, returning $97 million through dividends and buybacks in the quarter, which was just under 40% of free cash flow. This is in line with our expanded capital returns program for the 2026 year with target dividends and buybacks of up to $432 million planned for the year. Even after these capital returns and after continued investment in our growth and exploration projects, we strengthened the balance sheet significantly. We finished the quarter with cash up 30% at $620 million and with 0 debt, once again having the strongest balance sheet in OceanaGold's 36-year history.

During the quarter, we released updated technical reports for Haile, Macraes and Didipio, each of which extended mine life and improved the value of those assets. At Wharekirauponga, our drilling has confirmed both the continuity and extension of a newly defined southern high-grade zone, which is a very encouraging result for our flagship growth project. Pleasingly, we also made some incredible progress on the Waihi North project during the first quarter. And I'm excited to share that this month, we began portal development and have commenced tunneling underground towards this phenomenal ore body.

Lastly, we listed on the New York Stock Exchange on April 7, which was a big milestone for the company in joining the largest and deepest capital market in the world, which we expect will provide increased trading liquidity and greater access for investors to purchase our shares in the U.S. market.

Turning to guidance. The Q1 result shows we are on track to deliver our 2026 plan. Using the midpoint of guidance as a reference, we are nearly 1/4 of the way towards each of the gold production, copper production and capital guidance ranges that we outlined at the start of the year. As expected, AISC for the quarter sits above our annual guidance range, reflecting the timing of capital and waste stripping expenditures. As production increases with the second and fourth quarters expected to be the strongest for the year and with access to higher-grade ore from Ledbetter open pit at Haile beginning in quarter 2, unit costs are expected to step down progressively throughout the year.

The company continues to monitor potential cost pressures relating to the ongoing or now-paused Iran conflict, which Marius will speak to later on. So a quarter very much in line with the shape of the year that we set out in February, and we expect an even stronger second quarter result.

This slide shows how we allocated cash in the first quarter, and it's a very clear picture of our capital allocation priorities in action. One of the priorities we identified this year, and at these gold prices, was to increase investment in our operations, including improving the integrity and resilience of our mining and process plants. This quarter, we invested $85 million in sustaining capital, which covers these investments as well as deferred stripping and capitalized mining. We invested $45 million in growth capital during the quarter, advancing the Waihi North project and developing the Palomino underground at Haile. We also invested $11 million in exploration across the portfolio, progressing towards what will be a record exploration spend this year.

The first quarter had $97 million of direct shareholder returns. This included $77 million of share buybacks under our $350 million buyback program and $20 million of dividends, reflecting the tripled quarterly dividend the Board approved for 2026. And after all of that investment and all of that shareholder returns, we still added $143 million of cash to the balance sheet in the quarter, a 30% increase in our cash position from year-end. In line with our capital allocation framework, this quarter, we funded the business, accelerated the growth pipeline, made the balance sheet significantly stronger and returned meaningful capital to shareholders.

I'll now turn the call over to Marius, who will discuss our financial results in more detail.

Thank you, Gerard, and good morning, everyone. Q1 delivered a strong set of financial results on the back of a record average realized gold price. Strong operational delivery and disciplined cost management converted the gold price directly to the bottom line, resulting in a record earnings per share.

Comparing the first quarter against the same period last year, these are some of the highlights. Record EBITDA, which was up 116%. Operating cash flow was up 122% and free cash flow was up 271%, where we've generated $255 million for the quarter. These are very meaningful step-ups and with increasing production and unit costs expected to come down, we are well positioned to continue to generate significant free cash flow for the remainder of the year.

We continue to place a strong emphasis on our per share metrics. And as you can see here at the bottom, our strong financial results this quarter also translated into meaningful step-ups across the per share metrics compared to the same period last year with free cash flow per share up 290% and operating cash flow per share also setting a new record. Importantly, this financial result is being delivered alongside continued investments in growth, increased capital returns and a stronger balance sheet, all of which makes up the capital allocation framework Gerard spoke to earlier.

Given the Iran conflict, I wanted to take a moment to address our exposure to oil prices, which mainly relates to diesel. To date, the direct impacts on our operations have been limited and supply chains have continued to support normal business operations. However, we remain conscious that sustained higher diesel prices and supply chain factors have the potential to impact our operating and capital costs. We've done extensive work to map our consumables supply chain, and we'll continue to proactively identify and manage risks where we can. Higher diesel costs during the quarter were largely offset by our diesel hedging program. Diesel comprises about 6% of our consolidated AISC guidance for 2026, with the majority of that consumption at Haile and Macraes, our open pit operations.

At those 2 operations, we've hedged approximately 80% of our diesel requirements at the equivalent Brent price of $65 per barrel through to the end of 2026. As a result, we are substantially protected from diesel price volatility at our 2 largest diesel consuming assets. To put it all into context, with the diesel hedges in place at Haile and Macraes, should oil prices of $100 per barrel prevail for the remainder of 2026, we would expect the impact to be in the order of $25 per ounce higher than our assumptions used when setting guidance. That is based on what we know today.

I'll now pass it over to Bhuvanesh to discuss our operating performance.

Thank you, Marius, and hello, everyone. At Haile, we produced about 42,000 ounces of gold in the first quarter. The quarter went largely to plan despite significant winter weather events with production expected to step up materially through the remainder of the year. Ledbetter open pit and high-grade underground stopes will be the primary ore sources for the remainder of the year. This is expected to deliver the step-up in production we have guided from quarter 2, where we expect to produce around 60,000 ounces and further increasing in quarter 3 and quarter 4. The weather conditions experienced in the quarter also gave us the opportunity to accelerate waste stripping at Snake Pit by a couple of quarters, which derisks ore production for 2027. During quarter 1, this shows up in all-in sustaining costs as a result of lower stockpile build.

Development of the decline towards Palomino underground commenced in the quarter, in line with the plan to achieve first ore in 2028. Drilling at Horseshoe Underground also continued in the quarter, targeting the conversion and extension opportunities in the lower and western portions of the deposit with drilling at Ledbetter Underground focused on resource conversion targets. And at the end of March, we released the updated technical report for Haile that confirmed the transition of Ledbetter to an underground mine by 2029, supporting a sustainable production profile of above 200,000 ounces per year through to 2031.

Macraes had a strong start to the year, producing about 52,000 ounces of gold in the first quarter at all-in sustaining cost of $1,506 per ounce. Innes Mills continued to deliver in line with plan, providing access to high-grade open pit ore in the quarter. Waste stripping at Coronation North also began during the quarter in preparation for ore access in quarter 3. The first quarter was always meant to be the strongest of the year at Macraes due to good ore presentation in the Innes Mills open pit. Gold production is expected to step down in quarter 2, then further in the second half of the year with full year production expected to be in line with our guidance. An updated technical report for Macraes was released at the end of March and confirmed the mine life extension to 2032 at a conservative $2,200 gold price assumption.

Importantly, with a record exploration spend planned for this year, we are continuing to evaluate further extension opportunities at Macraes that could potentially extend the mine life into 2040s given the leverage of this asset to the current gold price environment and the inherent optionality at the site. Macraes continues to be a great example of how disciplined operational execution drives real value, particularly at today's gold prices.

At Waihi, we produced about 17,000 ounces of gold in the first quarter at all-in sustaining cost of $2,055 per ounce. Production was in line with plan despite 2 record-breaking rain events during the quarter, which is a real credit to the operating team and reflects the improved resilience of the operations. On exploration at Wharekirauponga, our drilling during the quarter confirmed the continuity and extension of the newly defined southern high-grade zone that sits outside the reserves. These are very encouraging results that support the growth potential we see in this ore body. We continue to focus on resource conversion drilling in the first half of the year and begin further step-out drilling during this new zone and other areas in the second half.

Capital expenditure for the quarter included $20 million invested in the Waihi North project. Construction continued on the service trench and the water treatment plant site with both projects expected to be substantially completed in quarter 2. Bulk earthworks and the preparation of the box cut at the Willows portal site progressed as planned during the quarter. The mining contractor was mobilized in quarter 1. And excitingly, this week, the portal was constructed and the development has commenced, beginning our underground tunneling journey towards the Wharekirauponga ore body.

At Didipio, we produced about 20,000 ounces of gold and 3,200 tonnes of copper in the first quarter. Excitingly, during the quarter, we resumed lateral development activities in the lower levels of the underground, which sets us to resume development of the decline this quarter. With improved access to the lower levels, exploration drilling from 1 drill rig was also be able to recommence in Panel 3 during the quarter with 2 more rigs planned to mobilize in quarter 2. Regional drilling also continued during the quarter at True Blue, an area of known mineralization 800 meters northeast of Didipio to evaluate the lateral extent of the mineralization. And as released during the quarter, the updated technical report for Didipio demonstrated stable production and a mine life extension to 2037, reinforcing the long-term value of this low-cost, high free cash flow asset.

I will now turn the call back to Gerard.

Thank you, Bhuvanesh. So in summary, the first quarter was a strong start to what we expect to be an outstanding year for OceanaGold. We are committed to safely and responsibly delivering on our 2026 guidance with an increase in gold production and a decrease in all-in sustaining costs as the year progresses. We expect to continue to generate strong free cash flow and maintain a healthy balance sheet with the current gold price environment providing meaningful upside to our cash generation potential.

It's great to be able to share today that we have already begun development of the tunnel towards the Wharekirauponga ore body, and we expect to continue to make significant progress on this exciting growth project during the course of the year. We've already demonstrated results of our exploration spend this year with outstanding results at Wharekirauponga, and we look forward to sharing more results from our programs across the portfolio in due course. Our focus remains on creating long-term sustainable value for our shareholders with 2026 positioned to deliver another year of strong shareholder returns through our increased dividends and share buybacks.

Lastly, I just want to recognize the tremendous efforts of the many great people who work at OceanaGold for the strong start to the year. Our first quarter results reflect their hard work, their operating discipline, and I want to thank everyone that works at OceanaGold for their efforts in delivering that.

I'll now turn the call over to the operator and open up the line to take any questions.

[Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from Ovais Habib with Scotiabank.

Congrats to you and your team on a solid free cash flow that was generated in Q1 and also the commencement of the underground decline at Wharekirauponga, amazing advancement on that front. So congrats on that.

A couple of questions for me. Just starting off. So in the MD&A and at the beginning of this call, you provided good detail on the diesel hedging program as well as the sensitivity of the diesel price on AISC. So thank you for that. Marius, are you seeing any sort of issues with getting reagents or explosives to the New Zealand and Philippines sites? And can you give us any sort of color on stockpiles currently at site as well?

So a couple of things there. So we've got a weekly process where we review our stock and our supplies. Right now, we're not seeing any other issues, especially in the explosives side. We are managing our diesel and the diesel supply side is also manageable right now. Also from a storage capacity perspective, we're managing that through our sites. So from our perspective right now, not any issues to be aware of.

Excellent. And then just moving on to Haile. You talked about -- due to weather, you accelerated waste stripping at the Snake pit. Is this going to have any sort of impact on the AISC guidance for Haile that you provided? I believe it's between $1,500 and $1,700 an ounce.

I'll take that, Marius. I mean, it's certainly -- we've had the effect of increasing our production stripping or our waste stripping, I should say, for Haile, but nothing that is outside the guidance range yet. If we deliver strongly on our production, we expect to remain inside the guidance range, but probably in the top half of it.

Okay. And just moving on to Macraes. You mentioned that there's a potential to extend mine life beyond 2040s. Are you seeing any potential on expanding existing pits, underground opportunities? Can you give us a little bit more color on this upside?

Do you want to take that one, Bhuvanesh?

Yes, sure. Macraes continues to basically being a star in this nice gold price environment as well. The pit extensions, there are all kinds of pit extensions, but primarily the Innes Mills pits, which can extend first 9, 10 and 11; the Coronation North, which is 6 and 7; the Golden Bar, and then we will do the Golden Point Underground extensions as well as a result of that. So it's a combination of all of those items that probably extends the mine life into 2040s.

And Bhuvanesh, when would you start providing additional color on that and kind of showcasing to the market that that's actually the case?

We're currently in the feasibility study as well. So we expect that to be finished sometime next year as well. And post that, we would probably have the technical report ready to show that to the market.

Your next question comes from Fahad Tariq with Jefferies.

Exploration is clearly a key focus this year. When should we expect the next set of exploration results, specifically at WKP?

Thanks, Fahad. Yes, you're right. I mean, we expect to put out regular results for each of the sites because we have increased the spend at each site. We only put out results for WKP in the last fortnight. So it will be a little while before you get the next lot. But of course, as and when we get great drill core that warrants it to come out, we do. And the next exploration update will likely be in respect of one of the other assets rather than WKP. But you should expect 1 to 2 more over the course of this year in relation to WKP given the density and the stellar results we get from it.

Okay. Great. And then maybe one for Marius. Just the cash on the balance sheet has grown so quickly. Just what is the minimum cash you'd like to maintain on the balance sheet? And I guess it's a good problem to have, but what is the use of the excess cash beyond the buyback target?

Thanks, Fahad. We actually don't have a minimum cash target right now. I think that capital allocation framework will guide us. We've been very consistent in it and very clear. And we have a sizable growth project that we're busy with. So we're comfortable that we can manage that growth in capital.

[indiscernible] supplement that too. I mean, if we put out a $350 million buyback program. Well, last year, we started the year with a $100 million share buyback program. And as we delivered strongly into and through the year, we upsized it to $175 million and executed that in full. So Marius is right. We don't have a minimum. But obviously, if we continue to build cash and absent any other use inside the business or outside the business, we're not just going to build cash continually. You could expect that if we face that scenario, the opportunity exists to increase dividends and/or buybacks.

Okay. Great. And then maybe just that last point that you mentioned on opportunities outside the business. On M&A, which maybe is not a priority right now or maybe it is, but just thoughts on the criteria that you would be looking at broadly?

Yes. Well, the #1 criteria is that we can generate value from the activity. I mean, we have a diversified portfolio presently, each of which has growth optionality, and we have growth options across the spectrum from early stage to mature. So we don't feel the imperative to have to do, but we do have a team that looks. So criteria number one, got to create value for our shareholders. Invariably, that's going to mean that there's some form of resource or exploration upside and/or the ability to operate the asset better and/or apply some kind of knowledge advantage that we have.

We said in the past that the areas that we're looking at geographically would be the 3 areas that we currently operate in, U.S.A., Philippines, New Zealand and Australia and Canada. So that's quite a large sandpit for us to look at. And I think as the cash balances got stronger, it's certainly given us a great opportunity to be able to be active at any stage of the development spectrum, early stage, mid-stage or operating assets. So we've got a lot of flexibility, a lot of opportunity inside of that geographic remit, but the #1 criteria is, are we confident that we're going to create value for OceanaGold shareholders.

Your next question comes from Bryce Adams with Desjardins Securities.

I wanted to ask on WKP and the potential time line there. Great to see that underground development has commenced. I assume not far in from the portal, can you comment how far the phase has advanced so far? And I mean, that's a bit of a micro question, but thinking longer term, if first ore is still 2032, are there opportunities to bring that forward? Or it's just a long slug to the ore body?

I wouldn't call it a long slug. It's an exciting journey towards this world-class ore body, Bryce. I think we're about 10 to 12 meters in, Bhuvanesh can be precise. And one of the opportunities that we have, and it's worth reminding that we did have as part of our permit, an allowable doubling of drill pads and doubling of drill rigs that we can apply to this drilling. So you can expect to see us have more exploration results come to market. As we journey from the portal, the 6-or-so Ks to the ore body, we have some targets along the way of known mineralization that we could potentially source.

And obviously, within the corridor of the mine permit, if we find gold along the way, and this is a super geologically rich district, the potential does exist for us to find gold along the way. But the main prize is to get to the known ore body as fast as we can excitingly, and this is why I started with the exploration results, I mean, the ore body has migrated closer or it hasn't actually migrated. Our understanding of the ore body has brought it 0.5 kilometer closer to the portal as a result of exploration spend. So over the course of the coming years, you can expect that we will update the mine plan to reflect the ore body understanding as we've advanced it. And because it is a linear journey, there is the potential to get there sooner as a result of that ore body being closer to the portal relative to the original expectation.

I was going to ask about underground drilling from WKP. Like obviously, you can't do it too close to the active face. I mean, what's the time line to using that underground development as an exploration platform? Could that be this year? Or is it more likely next year?

Most probably more likely next year. We've got to get down. And again, Bhuvanesh can supplement after I finish talking with the precise number. It takes -- we've got to get down about 200 or 300-odd meters to the start of the core twin decline to the ore body. And it's along that pathway. We're unconstrained to drill off to the sites provided we stay inside the mine permit, which is a sizable area. Bhuvanesh, when do we get down to the twin decline proper?

I think mid next year, we would probably be in a situation where we would be roughly 70, 80 meters in from the twin decline, which is where when we turn right towards the ore body. So mid next year, we would have some opportunities to probably put some drill cuddies there and then start exploring from those cuddies as well. There are some known mineralization areas around [indiscernible] areas, which are in and around those pieces. And remember, there is some olden mines in there as well, which have some known mineralization from that area can also be explored as well. So mid next year is what we are expecting, hopefully even earlier than that.

Okay. And thanks for the face advance, I think you said 10 to 12 meters. Is that something that you would plan on reporting on in the next quarter updates and on a go-forward basis?

I guess so. I mean, it's our #1 growth project. We like to -- we're pleasingly, as Bhuvanesh mentioned, we've mobilized quickly. We've done an enormous amount of work. And yes, it's one measure. Hopefully, Bryce, we can match that meters advance with some further drill results just again, I think they like the value of this ore body.

Your next question comes from Don DeMarco with National Bank.

So I guess some of the questions have already been asked, but looking at your capital return program, certainly, the theme this year is harvesting free cash flow and you had a couple of standout quarters in Q2, Q4 coming up. With your capital returns, are you looking to execute this opportunistically, balance it evenly throughout the year or maybe lean into some of the heavy free cash flow quarters?

Thanks, Don. I mean, if last year is any guide, it was roughly 40-60 split in terms of the buyback. We want to -- whilst we're confident of delivering on our guidance and so forth, the allocation should be of cash that is being generated. So as we get further through the year and as the results are proving to be stronger. That's when we probably amp it up. We give instructions to the broker to buy and just sit back and operate pursuant to that. Obviously, we're not buying in close periods and the like. So we're fairly systematic and even. And as you saw, we did $77 million in the first quarter alone, which is entirely in line with that cadence I spoke of.

Your next question comes from Cosmos Chiu with CIBC.

And maybe my first question is on your full year guidance. If I work out the math, you're running at about 23% for the full year in terms of sustaining CapEx, 34% in terms of deferred and capitalized stripping, 16% in terms of growth and then 19% in terms of exploration. So to sum it up, you're slightly less than a quarter -- less than 25% on growth CapEx and exploration, more than 25% on deferred. You kind of talked about that in your prepared remarks. But I guess to sum it up, is that to your expectations in terms of what you've kind of chewed through in Q1?

Thanks, Cosmos. I mean, again, as Bhuvanesh said, as a result of particularly cold weather, we pivoted the stripping into Snake Pit, which elevated it. The actual dollars out the door from our mining activity in cash terms was unchanged. It's just because at the top of Snake, you just got a higher strip ratio. So you take more of that to your AISC charge. But it's -- as I said, no higher level of cash than what it would have been had we done the stripping in Ledbetter.

So yes, by definition, it's a little more stripping than we intended, but it was a value decision and the right decision on a multiyear basis to deploy the equipment and people that we had to do the activity that we could given the weather conditions. But as we said, we expect the later quarters to be stronger with the profile that we said, the second and fourth in particular. And that just combined with the fact that we're otherwise well on track, we expect that number to -- the AISC to pull inside the guidance range.

Yes. And how about the growth CapEx, you're running at about 16% year-to-date or in Q1, that's sort of as expected?

Yes. In short, we will -- it's nearly always in growth capital, I mean, we mobilized heavily, for example, at WKP in the quarter. But obviously, now that we're into the decline, we can -- that will increase at a stronger linear clip on a quarterly basis. And we've got other works that we're doing as we hope to show with photographs and the like over the coming quarters. But no, we expect our growth capital to be in line with guidance by the end of the year.

Great. I ask these questions to kind of show you like I can do math. But talking about mathematics. If I were to take what you repurchased in shares in Q1, $77 million, it does not annualize to $350 million. Gerard, as you mentioned, that's in line with your kind of internal cadence. But was it due to blackouts in Q1? Was it due to your technical reports that were going to get reported in Q1. And so you have blackout periods. Was it due to pricing? Why was it less than a quarter's worth?

Yes. Look at -- all of the above. And as I said, 40-60 was the pattern and we want to have earned it before we spend it. It is our total returns, dividends and buybacks are 40% -- just under 40% of our free cash flow for the period. But as I said, as we deliver more, we expect to amp that up more. But you're right, we had some big news items, whether they be the exploration results, the tech reports. It's probably a shorter quarter in which to buy relative to other quarters for the year.

Yes. And maybe one last question. Congrats on getting listed on the NYSE. It's been a month now, I think exactly a month. Has that listing met your expectations in terms of what you've set out to accomplish?

Short answer, yes. We're early days into it, Cosmos. If I look at yesterday's numbers, we had 1 million shares traded on the various Canadian exchanges, and we had 100,000 shares traded on the NYSE. So what's that? A shade under 10% of the total. It has grown progressively. We did have one day early in the first week or so when it was 1/4 of all trading. We understand and we look at the journey that others have taken to get the volumes up. It's gradual. It's not immediate. But I am very pleased with the steady uptick in volumes of traded since we listed, very happy. It's only been a month.

Next week. I'm looking forward to the mine tour, and I assume that you'll be there.

Thank you, Cosmos. Appreciate it.

Your next question comes from Harrison Reynolds with RBC Capital Markets.

Congratulations on a solid quarter. I wanted to dig into the Haile outlook a little bit more. I believe you outlined a target of approximately 60,000 ounces of production in Q2. And wondering if you could provide some detail around that target, your sort of comfort on it and what that maybe a range around 60,000. Is that plus or minus 5%? Or what would you anticipate the range to be?

Well, around 60,000 is what we put in the MD&A, Harrison. And I'll let Bhuvanesh color in the drivers of it. I mean, I think it's -- there's no point in us being more specific than what we've articulated. Bhuvanesh, do you want to talk about what's driving that uptick in the quarter?

Sure. So Harrison, the ore sources, as I said, is from 2 places. We continue to basically mine in the Ledbetter 3. So that's the first ore source. And the second ore source, which is probably going to be the bigger driver in quarter 2 comes from the underground high-grade stopes as well, which is from one of our levels, which is the 850 level, which is what is going to be supplementing the grade that we would basically be seeing, which then translates into the ounces as well. So those are the 2 primary drivers that probably continue to lift the ounce profile that we see both in quarter 2 and then step up in quarter 3 and then it's pretty similar range in quarter 4 is what we will basically see as of quarter 2 as well. So that ends up the year with the guidance that we have provided.

Understood. Yes, I know it's a fairly specific target. And so just wanted to understand sort of the drivers a bit more. And also wondering, is this something that you're going to continue to provide? I think it's the last couple of quarters now you've provided kind of a 1 quarter ahead outlook at Haile.

Of course, sorry, go ahead, Gerard.

No. You go ahead, Bhuvanesh.

No. I think when we have really good sight of the ore sources, we always do that. And then providing a quarter ahead is probably we have been getting really good at it as well. So that is something that we always aspire for.

Yes, in addition to having the confidence, Harrison, Haile is our largest producer. It's 45% of guidance this year. It was lighter in the first quarter. We just wanted to give investors the confidence of -- for all the reasons that Bhuvanesh said that we had a basis for being able to say what it is going to be in the next quarter and give people the comfort that we have line of sight of the ore that's going to be delivered.

There are currently no more questions on the phone. I'd like to turn the call over to Rebecca Henare in case there are questions on the web.

No questions on the web. Thank you, operator.

Okay. I think that leaves it to me. So that concludes our webcast and conference call. A replay will be available on our website later today. On behalf of the management team and everyone at OceanaGold, thanks for joining us today, and we wish you a very pleasant rest of the day. Bye for now.

This concludes today's conference call. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the OceanaGold Corporation Q4 2025 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded on Thursday, February 19, 2026. I would now like to turn the conference over to Rebecca Henare, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to OceanaGold's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Operating and Financial Results Webcast and Conference Call. I'm Rebecca Henare, Vice President of Investor Relations. We are joined today by Gerard Bond, President and Chief Executive Officer; Marius Niekerk, Chief Financial Officer; Bhuvanesh Malhotra, Chief Operating Officer; and for the first time, Keenan Jennings, Chief Exploration Officer.

The presentation that we will be referencing during the conference call is available through the webcast and on our website.

As we will be making forward-looking statements during the call, please refer to the cautionary notes included in the MD&A and annual information form. All dollar amounts discussed in this conference call are in U.S. dollars.

I will now turn the call over to Gerard for opening remarks.

Thank you, Rebecca, and good morning, everyone. 2025 was a truly stellar year for OceanaGold with numerous achievements across the board. There's a lot on this slide because there's a lot to be celebrated.

Firstly, we safely and responsibly delivered on our guidance for each of production, all-in sustaining costs and capital. Our strong operational performance supported by a favorable gold price environment has led to record financial success and significant value creation for OceanaGold shareholders.

We set numerous financial records this year, including record annual EBITDA, EBITDA margins, net profit, earnings per share operating cash flow and free cash flow. The profitability metrics were also records even when adjusted for the after-tax impairment reversal at Haile, which is itself a great confirmation of the value that Haile now represents.

Importantly, these annual financial records in 2025 were achieved at an average realized gold price for the year of around $3,500 an ounce, which sits significantly below today's gold price. We also progressed our organic growth options in the year. We received all the permits necessary for the world-class Waihi North Project, and the early works spend advanced as planned.

We also continue to add value, life and optionality through exploration programs at all sites this year. We were able to invest in sustaining and growing our business and we strengthened the balance sheet by increasing our cash holdings substantially. We have no debt, no gold hedges, no prepays or financing royalties. And today, we have the strongest balance sheet in the company's 37-year history.

Very pleasingly, we returned a record amount of capital to shareholders in 2025, with our doubled quarterly dividend and our increased share buyback we returned just over $200 million in the 2025 year.

Operating our assets well, converting most of the price gains to the bottom line and being disciplined with capital resulted in our 2025 return on capital employed being a very attractive 18%, which is double that of 2024. In delivering our record $543 million of free cash flow we generated a free cash flow yield of 15% on our average 2025 market capitalization. I think that's a great number, a real net 15% free cash flow return for shareholders on the average market value of OceanaGold shares in a year when the market value of the company rose by 225%.

Again, these return on capital and return on equity metrics reflect our ability to translate the favorable gold price environment into strong bottom line performance, meaningful cash generation and effective capital deployment.

Looking ahead to 2026 guidance, we are expecting another year of strong operational delivery with guidance projecting higher production, lower all-in sustaining costs and increased investment in value-accretive capital projects. Using the midpoint of 2026 guidance, we expect to produce 12% more gold than we did in 2025 at a 7% lower all-in sustaining cost. The gold production growth is driven by a 35% increase at Haile, where the investment we made in open pit waste stripping in 2025 gives us good access to high-grade ore in 2026. This significant increase in gold production and an expected 25% decrease in its unit cost sets Haile up for another record year.

Macraes production is expected to be broadly consistent with 2025 with good access to open pit ore throughout the year. At Waihi, I'm very pleased with the improvement work done by the team in 2025, and we expect the improved mine performance to be sustained in 2026. At Didipio, we also anticipate around the same level of gold production with a slight improvement in all-in sustaining costs, largely due to higher copper byproduct credits.

Our growth in exploration capital is planned to increase substantially compared to 2025, up 2.5x to $340 million. This is great news for shareholders as it reflects us accelerating development of the recently permitted Waihi North Project, commencing development of Palomino underground at Haile, and meaningfully stepping up exploration activity across all sites, which Keenan will touch on in a moment.

Overall, we see 2026 as a year where we are expecting to generate a bucket load of cash in a year where gold prices are significantly higher than they were in 2025.

This graph shows how we deployed our operating cash flow in 2025 and how our guidance and capital return announcements are illustrating what could occur in 2026.

On the left-hand pie chart, you see that in 2025, we invested in the business advanced our growth and exploration projects, strengthened the balance sheet and returned over $200 million or just under 40% of free cash flow to shareholders.

On the right-hand side, you can see how we plan to allocate capital in 2026. In the sustaining capital wedge, you can see we are spending less overall year-on-year. This is a combination of two things. We're actually spending more in 2026 on improving the integrity and availability of fixed plant and mobile equipment, which provides a strong payback at high gold prices. However, this is offset by spending much less than open pit waste stripping this year following the completion of last year's campaigns.

We are substantially increasing the investment in growth and exploration. This is primarily the development of the world-class Waihi North project commencing the build of Palomino underground at Haile and increasing exploration spend by 50%. All this makes for a stronger future.

And we are materially lifting returns to shareholders. The OceanaGold Board has approved a tripling of the quarterly dividend and a doubling of the share buyback in 2026, resulting in up to $432 million of capital returns to shareholders. This is a 112% increase year-over-year. We can do all this and still add a lot of cash to the balance sheet, making OceanaGold even financially stronger and giving us plenty of optionality for future growth.

I'll now turn the call over to Marius, who will discuss our quarterly financial results in more detail.

Thank you, Gerard, and good morning, everyone. Looking at our Q4 results, we delivered on the strongest production quarter of the year, and it was especially pleasing to see increased production from all four of our sites. We continue to invest in our exciting organic growth pipeline this quarter, including the world-class Waihi North project, which remains a key focus for us.

Strong operating performance across the business in the quarter, and a record average realized gold price of just over $4,200 per ounce resulted in our best ever financial results with a record free cash flow generated.

During the fourth quarter, we adjusted for the after-tax impairment reversal of $133 million at Haile. This increased the value of Haile after considering the lift in long-term gold price assumptions as well as improved performance.

We are now in the strongest net cash position ever with 0 debt and cash of $477 million, up 42% from last quarter. This cash increase is after investing in our business and also after returning over $100 million of capital in both dividends and buybacks during the quarter.

In the fourth quarter, we delivered record-breaking results across all key financial metrics, reflecting strong operational execution, disciplined cost management and translating to higher gold price to the bottom line.

At a high level and comparing the fourth quarter versus the same period last year, we had several notable achievements. Adjusted EBITDA surged 49% with adjusted margins expanding to 57%.

As many of our peers have reported and with the strong price rise in our share price, we've incurred an increase in share-based compensation expense in Q4. A portion of this expense is accounted for in G&A and the rest in cost of sales. Further information on this is set out in our financial statements.

As a whole, our Q4 adjusted EPS includes roughly a $0.26 per share impact from share-based compensation. So with that in mind, adjusted net profit and earnings per share roughly doubled from the prior year while operating cash flow per share increased to $1.21.

Free cash flow hit a record $259 million, exceeding the total free cash flow generated in all of 2024, and that is in just 1 quarter.

When considering the full year picture, it very much tells the same story. These achievements underscore our strict cost and capital discipline and demonstrate our ability to capitalize on a strong gold price environment. And as a reminder, cash costs and EBITDA in 2025 included accounting allocations from capitalized sustaining into operating costs related to the waste stripping at both Haile and Macraes. This translates to around a $70 per ounce increase in cash costs in the year, but did not impact AISC or free cash flow nor did it change how we operate. And as a result, deferred stripping is well below guidance.

With an annual adjusted EBITDA of around $1 billion in 2025 and landmark per share performance, we remain focused and well positioned to increase returns to our shareholders through 2026.

I'll now pass it over to Bhuvanesh to discuss our operating performance.

Thank you, Marius, and hello, everyone. I would like to start by saying just how pleased I am with the outcome at all four of our sites this year. In quarter 4, all sites increased the number of gold ounces they produced every site met its production guidance, and most importantly, we delivered these results safely. Haile had an excellent year delivering on production and cost guidance. Gold production at Haile was 56,000 ounces in the fourth quarter, which was our planned highest production quarter of the year. There were three main contributors to the strength.

First, we very importantly reached ore in Ledbetter open pit which not only contributed to a strong fourth quarter, but also is the main driver of production growth in 2026. Second, Horseshoe underground also performed well in the quarter, throughout 2025, we focused on getting ahead on development, and I'm pleased that today, we are in a position where our decline advance is a full year ahead of mine sequence. And third, we completed some prudent upgrades to the crusher to remove bottlenecks and in doing so, sustainably increase the mill throughput during the quarter. This also contributed to a strong quarter 4.

In line with production achievement for the year, all-in sustaining costs was also in line with the guidance. An updated technical report is on schedule to be released at the end of March that will show how the next phase of [ flood ] data will be mined from underground. The change in mining method improves the margins and overall NPV of the mine. This technical report will show a mine plan at Haile that is expected to produce above 200,000 ounces of gold per year from 2026 through 2031 and providing the mine a more consistent production profile.

Macraes also had a strong year in 2025. A meeting both production and cost guidance with 56,000 ounces delivered in the fourth quarter. Similar to Haile, the major driver of production in the fourth quarter at Macraes was access to higher grade ore from the open pit. The investment in waste stripping at in mills through the first 3 quarters of 2025 allowed access to higher-grade ore in the fourth quarter. And will continue to contribute to the production profile in 2026.

Production strength during the quarter drove an improvement in unit cost with all-in sustaining cost of under $1,300 per ounce, down materially from quarter 3. What's really exciting at Macraes is the leverage the site has to the rising gold price. The updated technical report scheduled to be released at the end of March will show an attractive 5-year mine life extension to 2032 at a prudent $2,200 gold price.

Beyond the current reserve life, total mine life extension opportunities are being evaluated that could potentially extend mine life even further given the higher gold price environment and the inherent optionality at Macraes.

Moving on to Waihi, I'm very pleased to say that Waihi exceeded its production guidance and met its all-in sustaining cost guidance for the year. In the fourth quarter, Waihi delivered its strongest production quarter of the year, just under 22,000 ounces of gold, maintaining the progress achieved to the underground improvement plan initiated in 2024. This great turnaround at Waihi, in recent quarters is a testament to all the hard work done by the team there.

At our Waihi North project, I'm thrilled that we received final permits in the fourth quarter and expect to start the underground decline towards Wharekirauponga by mid this year. Early works such as detailed design, bulk earthwork and construction activities continued to advance in the fourth quarter and will continue throughout 2026. I look forward to keeping you updated on the progress this year.

Didipio met its production guidance for the year and produced approximately 24,000 ounces of gold and 3,200 tonnes of copper in the fourth quarter. Our investments in mine resilience such as underground pumping infrastructure paid off in the fourth quarter, the numerous extreme weather events did not disrupt production. On the back of this investment, all-in sustaining cost for the full year was around the top end of the guided range.

Underground activity in 2026 is focused on increasing development rates and improving stope availability. We will be releasing an updated technical report in the first half of the year that will detail the remaining work required to reach a sustained mining rate and provide an updated life of mine plan.

I will now turn the call over to Keenan to discuss exploration in more detail.

Thank you, Bhuvanesh. It's great to be with you all for my first quarterly updates to the market. Joining in the last quarter of 2025, I'm really fortunate to have inherited a high-caliber team an opportunity set here at OceanaGold. I look forward to contributing to the legacy of growth and adding even more value through the drill bit.

This is supported by the highest ever exploration budget in 2026 and increasing at all four sites and with a renewed focus on our greenfield activity. Our exploration strategy comprises three pillars as pathways to success. The first is conversion of existing resources to reserves. This underpins our production. Here, we have an ambitious program across all of our sites with the goal to replace ounces due to mining depletion.

The second pillar, brownfields exploration creates optionality for our business. We will assess opportunities along strike and down dip of our known resources to target additional mineralization that increases the life of our assets.

And our third pillar is strengthening greenfield exploration. In 2025, we signed earn-in agreements with Headwater Gold in Nevada and Carolina Rush in South Carolina to test targets that we think are scalable, complementary to our existing business and play to the expertise of our teams. This year, we're also committing to following up targets we fully control in New Zealand and in the Philippines and continue to hunt quality opportunities in the U.S., Canada and Australia. This uplift in our capacity and capability will deliver OceanaGold new discoveries and further diversify our portfolio.

I would like to talk specifically about Wharekirauponga, our flagship development program, where we are executing on both the conversion and brownfields exploration pillars of our strategy. With New Zealand government approval of our planned growth, we will double the number of rigs operating to continue to build our ore body knowledge and grow the resource. The first half of this year will focus on converting resources to reserves. We aim to complete more than 30 drill holes, targeting more than 300,000 ounces of reserves.

In the second half, we will pivot to follow up what appears to be a new higher-grade zone opening to the south. Here, we're adding a further eight holes to target growth of 150,000 ounces of inferred resources. This is a tremendous time at OceanaGold and a great opportunity for our exploration teams to further shine. I'm really looking forward to 2026 and beyond.

And with that, I'll turn the call back to Gerard.

Thank you, Keenan. In summary, the fourth quarter was an incredibly strong quarter to cap off a successful year where we met production and cost guidance and delivered record financial returns.

Going forward, we will continue to focus on safe and responsible mining and delivering on our guidance commitments. We expect to generate significant free cash flow and add to our strong balance sheet.

2025 was an outstanding year, and we expect 2026 to be even better. We will advance our attractive growth and exploration projects while delivering increased returns to shareholders with a tripling of the dividend and a doubling of our share buyback.

And we look forward to completing our listing on the New York Stock Exchange in April in support of our strategy of increasing value for shareholders. I do want to acknowledge that our stellar 2025 results were only possible through the dedicated efforts of the many tremendous people who work at OceanaGold and a big call out of thanks to them for that. It's a great time to be in the gold industry, and I'm incredibly excited about the year ahead for OceanaGold.

I'll now turn the call over to the operator and open up the line for any questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Ovais Habib with Scotiabank.

Congrats to you and your team. Solid quarter and 2026 guidance. And really great to see a significant increase in the share buyback. A couple of questions for me. Just starting off with Haile. It looks like -- and based on the reserve update, it looks like you're leaning towards going underground at led better. Assuming you do give the green light, what permits would be required to move from the open pit to underground. And then assuming you do move forward, with the underground option. When will we start seeing any sort of development commence there?

Thanks, Ovais. I'll hand the ball over to Bhuvanesh to answer that question.

Thanks, Ovais. The permit change required is a minor permit modification from moving from an open pit to an underground which was similar to the Palomino pieces that we have done before. In relation to the work, we commencing the front-end engineering work now as there will be some modifications to the plant that we need to make as a result of some ore characterization work that was completed and then the development is a good 2-year period. I will start the development sometimes next year. We'll have the first development over towards the back end of '29 and then into the full sustainable ore production from 2020 onwards.

Excellent. And just then moving to the Waihi North project, more towards the exploration side. Keenan, welcome to the team. Now that you have the permits in hand, looks like development is aggressively moving forward. But you talked a little bit about focusing on the [indiscernible] deposit just its own and towards the South, is there any plans of setting up some drill stations along the corridor between Waihi and the Waihi North Project as well.

Thank you for your kind words. We are working to a very specific schedule. We have some constraints in terms of the number of rigs that we are able to put into the area of interest. Our focus for the first half of the year is a resource to reserve conversion program. And yes, then we will be pursuing further south. The trajectory of the development tunnel remains an area of interest to us. and we will be planning additional exploration effort along that trajectory in due course.

And based on the drilling or the drilling that you're going to start commencing that, when do you start expecting some sort of results from that -- those areas?

We are already drilling. We have the three rigs that we had from last year. We'll be adding additional rigs through the course of the next couple of months. We expect initial results to be coming out midyear, and these will be furnishing a technical report update, which will be issued later in 2027.

Your next question comes from Fahad Tariq with Jefferies.

For the upcoming studies for just the different mines, can you just remind us what the gold price assumption you're considering?

Gold price assumption for our studies upcoming. I think we're using about $2,200 an ounce for each.

Okay. Okay. So that's consistent with the reserve pricing?

Yes. So that's consistent with our reserves and resources that we put out today. We're using $2,200. So they're still very conservative have in regard to current market prices.

Got it. That's clear. And then just thinking about maybe on the cost side of things, obviously, costs are getting better year-over-year, which is great. But can you just talk about any underlying cost inflation that you're seeing, any pressures, whether it's labor or consumables, probably not fuel, maybe that's a tailwind. But yes, maybe on the labor consumables side?

I'll hand it over to the CFO.

Look, we've been saying throughout the year, a big part of our cost base is labor. Cost labor cost inflation is real. So we're seeing in the region of single-digit increases from that perspective. But other than that, there's some variable changes from a consumables perspective. We did see a higher spend on maintenance, but that was just to improve reliability throughout the year. Other than that, there's really nothing else that we see.

Okay. Great. And then maybe just a last one. Just given how strong the free cash flow profile is thoughts on and how quickly the cash balance is growing, just thoughts on M&A would be great.

Yes. Thanks, Fahad. I mean it's -- I mean we put in that allocation slide, you can see that we're primarily investing back into the business into growth, giving cash back to shareholders, $432 million is the combination of the dividend and the buyback. That you're right. That will result in still if prices stay out or any near these levels still result in the cash build and that gives us the buyer power to consider a lot of things. in the inorganic space. But our strategy as it relates to M&A hasn't changed, either geographically or the type of thing that we're looking at. So it does remain an option, not a priority focus, but we do look.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Harrison Reynolds with RBC Capital Markets.

Good morning Ocean and Gold team, and congratulations on another great quarter and full year. I wanted to start off at Macraes, great to see the mine life extension formalized due to increased reserves. But wondering if you could talk a little bit about your expectations for the life of this asset going forward beyond that? And what sort of investments you're making now to have this run beyond 2032.

Yes. Great question, Harrison. I'll hand it over to Bhuvanesh in a minute for more color, but this is a fabulous area. It's been, as you know, running for -- coming up to a 36th year. And I think the -- what the study shows -- sorry, what the work that we've done shows is that particularly at an elevated gold price from reserve from what we had, which was $1,750 out of $2,200, we have considerable mine life extension. And if you were to play an even closer to spot price, you'd have more of those resources coming into reserves. And we're doing a lot of study work to unlock that. There's a lot of optionality around it. And perhaps, Bhuvanesh, that's where you can pick up and answer the question.

Thanks, Harrison. I think as Gerard alluded to as well, our first price probably is to extend the inner mill spits, that's where the pits extending from 10 to 11 comes into play. And at a $5,000 gold price, this offers an exceptional leverage and the optionality that we could probably undertake as well.

So that's our first price and that's what we're evaluating now. And then the northern corridor of the Macraes mine just past the Coronation North pits are the second price that we have basically been evaluating and that's where Keenan would basically be planning to drill as well. So those are the two primary areas where we think the immediate growth can basically come from in Macraes from 2032 onwards.

Great. That's good color. And then one more for me. Could you talk a little bit about the decision for the buyback number. It's great to see it increase, but wondering if you could talk about the assumptions that are baked into that, including any gold price assumptions. And by the middle of the year, that seems like would you consider upsizing it? Or would you look at other things like a variable dividend? Or how would you think about excess free cash if gold prices stay stronger?

Thanks, Harrison. Yes, that would be a favorable circa I mean we're approaching this year much as we did last year, increasing the dividend increasing -- well, last year, we established the buyback but actually really executed strongly against them.

To your point, we -- last year, we started with a $100 million target, and we upsized and executed $175 million. So subject to operating performance and prices, there is always that option. But we start this year with -- as you said, how do we size that, just by reference to balance. And if I look at the inferred percentage of what the buybacks and dividends represent as a projected allocation of our operating cash flow, if you would just use the midpoint of our guidance range and a reasonable price assumption you'd have about 40% payout ratio.

In that graph in our slide deck, we assume a $4,700 gold price for illustrative purposes. So you can see that, of course, if the gold price was to stay above that, then the opportunity for more cash build is higher, and therefore, the opportunity for an increase in buyback is possible. But as we did last year, we're setting out to execute or do what we say we're going to do. And if performance and price allows it to be upsized, great.

I will now turn the call to Rebecca for additional webcast questions.

Thank you, operator. The question reads, congratulations on your results. do you think your 2026 guidance for Didipio mine is conservative given the plan to increase mining rates through the year and the availability of lower areas of the mine after the dewatering was completed.

Yes. I mean I'll lead off with that and perhaps Butanes can answer as well. We set guidance to a level that we plan to deliver on. And there are a lot of variables in relation to any mine. We did have some rainfall at the end of last year. As Bhuvanesh has said in the call, it didn't impact operations, but it does alter our starting point for this year.

But yes, we have a plan over a number of years to increase the underground mining rate. There are a lot of variables in mining, and we set a guidance amount that we expect to be able to deliver on. I don't think I left you much to say there, Bhuvanesh Malhotra, so we might call that the answer to that question. Operator, are there any other questions?

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to Gerard Bond for closing remarks.

Well, thank you, everyone, for listening in, and thanks to everyone at OceanaGold for delivering these great results. On behalf of everyone at OceanaGold, we appreciate you joining us and wish you a very pleasant rest of the day. Bye for now.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the OceanaGold Corporation Q3 2025 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded on Thursday, November 6, 2025.

And I would now like to turn the conference over to Haley Myers. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to OceanaGold's third quarter 2025 operating and financial results webcast and conference call. I'm Haley Mayers, Vice President of Investor Relations. We are joined today by Gerard Bond, President and Chief Executive Officer; Marius van Niekerk, Chief Financial Officer; and Bhuvanesh Malhotra, Chief Operating Officer.

The presentation that we'll be referencing during the conference call is available through the webcast and our website. I would also like to remind everyone that our presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. As we will be making forward-looking statements during the call, please refer to the cautionary notes included in the presentation, news release and MD&A as well as the risk factors set out in our annual information form. All dollar amounts discussed in this conference call are in U.S. dollars.

I will now turn the call over to Gerard for opening remarks.

Thank you, Haley, and good morning, everyone. The third quarter was a solid one, in line with our expectations, where we safely and responsibly executed to plan. We are now in high-grade ore at both Haile and Macraes, which is why we expect the fourth quarter to be the strongest of the year. This also underpins our confidence in meeting full year guidance, lowering our unit costs and generating significant free cash flow in this fourth quarter. As a fully unhedged gold producer, we continue to benefit from today's favorable gold price environment. Most of the gain in average realized gold price was converted to the bottom line, and we delivered yet another strong quarter of free cash flow generation to the tune of $94 million.

We have a superb balance sheet with 0 debt and cash of $335 million, up 12% from the last quarter. This increase in cash is after investing in our business and after the $46 million of capital returned in both dividends and buybacks during the quarter, reflecting our disciplined capital allocation framework. Our balance sheet strength provides us the flexibility to continue investing in our organic growth pipeline, which remains a focus for us. I'm pleased to say that the early works construction activities at the Waihi North project are progressing well, and we remain on track for fast track permit approval of this project by year-end. We are very much focused on maximizing shareholder returns. And this third quarter was one in which we generated strong free cash flow ahead of market expectations, increased our cash balance and returned a record amount of cash in the quarter to shareholders via dividends and buybacks.

As of today, we have completed $100 million of share repurchases this calendar year at an average price of CAD 19.64 per share. I'm pleased to say that the OceanaGold Board has approved a substantial 75% increase in our share buyback program for this 2025 year, raising the total amount of planned buybacks up to $175 million.

Widening the lens, I want to highlight just how focused we are on generating and sustaining an attractive return on capital. Our rolling 12-month return on capital employed is 17% over the last 12 months. Over the same period, we delivered $422 million of free cash flow, which represents a free cash flow yield of approximately 15% on our average market capitalization over that same period. Both of these metrics demonstrate how we are executing well, how we are successfully converting the strong gold price into bottom line results that we're generating significant free cash flows and that we are deploying capital effectively.

Looking ahead, we are confident that the fourth quarter will be our strongest of the year from a production standpoint, and we remain on track to meet our 2025 full year guidance. Our consolidated gold production at the end of the third quarter represents 70% of the midpoint of our guidance range, in line with plan, while our year-to-date all-in sustaining cost is at the top of the guided range. The projected strong fourth quarter production is expected to drive our all-in sustaining costs back within our full year guidance range, which is exactly how we always expected this year would play out.

Total capital investment is expected to be in line with guidance. Sustaining capital and growth capital expenditures are anticipated to be higher in the fourth quarter, including further spending on early works associated with the Waihi North project. In summary, we are pleased with the strong operational and financial performance year-to-date. And looking forward, we remain confident that we are well positioned to achieve full year guidance, progress our growth options and continue to increase returns to shareholders.

I'll now turn the call over to Marius, who will discuss our financial results in detail.

Thank you, Gerard, and good morning, everyone. This quarter, our focused operational performance translated into a record quarterly revenue of $449 million, supported by a record average realized gold price of just under $3,500 per ounce, which is still well below where spot gold prices are trading today. I'm pleased to highlight a few other key metrics this quarter. Adjusted EBITDA reached $211 million and was up 18% compared to Q3 last year, resulting in a healthy margin of 47%. Adjusted net profit was $93 million and adjusted EPS was $0.40, representing increases of 40% and 48%, respectively.

Operating cash flow per share was $0.93, up 41% versus last year. We generated a strong free cash flow of $94 million in the quarter, bringing the year-to-date total to $283 million. The balance sheet is clean. We have 0 debt and our cash balance increased to $335 million. These results highlight our focus on maintaining cost and capital control and reinforcing our financial strength to continue delivering shareholder value. With our balance sheet in the strongest position ever, we have the flexibility to continue funding our exciting organic growth opportunities while also returning capital to our shareholders through our dividend and our upsized share buyback program.

In addition to maintaining our quarterly dividend this quarter, we bought back $39 million of shares at an average price equivalent to around CAD 24 per share. Having fulfilled our previously announced $100 million buyback program for 2025, the Board has now approved a 75% increase for the remainder of the year, raising the targeted share buyback to $175 million for 2025. Together with $24 million in share repurchases made last year and our doubled dividend in 2025, by year-end, we expect to have delivered over $225 million in capital to shareholders, and that's over the previous 18 months. This demonstrates our clear commitment to delivering capital returns to our shareholders while maintaining a strong balance sheet and funding our growth projects.

I'll now pass it over to Bhuvanesh to discuss our operating performance at each of our sites.

Thank you, Marius, and hello, everyone. Ore production at Haile was 30,000 ounces in the third quarter, which was our planned lowest production quarter of the year as we advanced phase stripping at Embeda Phase 3, which unlocked fresh ore towards the end of the period. We are confident that the fourth quarter will be a strong quarter comparable to the first quarter, driven by the high-grade ore from Ledbetter 3, positioning us to achieve our full-year guidance.

Third quarter all-in sustaining cost was above our guidance range as expected, reflecting the lower production volumes and capital investment on waste stripping and increased sustaining capital. We maintain our all-in sustaining cost outlook for the year as we expect unit costs to decrease significantly in the fourth quarter, in line with the expected improved production profile. During the quarter, we also released some exciting exploration results at Haile, highlighting the high-grade mineralization at several deposits across the property, notably at Ledbetter Phase 4, Horseshoe Underground and the early-stage Pieces and Clydesdale targets.

The exploration success enjoyed year-to-date continues to highlight attractive upside for low-risk organic opportunities. Work on Ledbetter Phase 4 trade-off study continues to progress well. We are on track to release an updated NI 43-101 technical report by the end of quarter 1, 2026 with the results of this work.

Now on to Didipio. During the quarter, Didipio delivered gold production of approximately 22,000 ounces and copper production of 3,100 tonnes, in line with our full year plan. In the quarter, we successfully completed the dewatering of the decline and expect to be at normal underground mining rates by the end of 2025, keeping us well on track to meet our full year guidance. We continue to pursue our underground optimization plans to support our growth. In the third quarter, we increased our investment in sustaining capital with planned spending on underground pumping infrastructure and ongoing lifts to the tailings storage facility. We expect this investment to continue into the fourth quarter.

With the investments in mine water resilience in the second half of 2025, we expect all-in sustaining costs to be around the top of the guided range for the full year. We remain excited about our exploration prospects with ongoing drilling at multiple targets. This quarter, we continue to explore our near-mine targets, Napartan and D'Fox. In the fourth quarter, drilling will resume at True Blue, an area of known mineralization approximately 800 meters away from the Didipio mine.

Additionally, resource conversion drilling from the underground is expected to resume shortly following the successful dewatering of the decline. We're making good progress and remain on track to reach our targeted underground mining rate of 2.5 million tonnes per annum by the end of 2026. We expect to release an updated technical report in the first half of 2026, outlining this plan to the market. We remain excited about Didipio's future growth opportunities.

Moving on to Macraes. This quarter, Macraes delivered improved gold production of 33,000 ounces as waste stripping at Innes Mills 8 began unlocking fresh ore towards the end of the period. Looking ahead, with access to fresh ore at Innes Mills 8, we are confident in the significant fourth quarter uplift in production, positioning us well to achieve our full year guidance for production and costs. We remain excited about our potential opportunities to unlock value at Macraes. We are continuing to evaluate many options available to extend the mine life given today's high gold price environment, leveraging the value of our industry-leading low mining unit costs. We expect to share more with the market in an updated technical report at the end of quarter 1, 2026.

Waihi delivered another strong production quarter of just under 19,000 ounces of gold, maintaining the progress achieved with the underground improvement plan initiated in 2024. This marks the fourth consecutive quarter of stronger performance at Waihi, which is testament to all the hard work done by the team there. This great turnaround at Waihi in recent quarters has positioned the site to deliver gold production around the high end of its guidance range for 2025.

Now on to our exciting Waihi North project. I'm pleased to say that our fast track application progressed through the commenting phase in the third quarter and is currently in the panel consideration phase, which includes of responding to requests for information. Our expectation remains that we will be permitted by year-end and will be able to start the underground decline towards Wharekirauponga in 2026. Early works activity continued to progress with the construction of the service trench, civil works and Velos bulk earth works all commencing this quarter. We are on track to spend our guided $45 million this year, helping the project to be ready to start in earnest when we receive that approval.

Turning to exploration at Wharekirauponga. Exploration focused on confirming the extent of mineralization of the southern end of the deposit, which remains open. As part of our fast track application, we are also seeking approval to increase the number of drill sites and double the number of allowable drill rigs, which will accelerate efforts to define this exciting deposit. Back at Waihi, exploration drilling is focused on resource definition and conversion and expansion of the Martha underground. With the improved underground performance and solid progress on permitting of the Waihi North project, we remain very excited about Waihi's future.

I will now turn the call back to Gerard.

Thank you, Bhuvanesh. In summary, this was another good quarter for OceanaGold and in line with our full-year plan. We expect the fourth quarter to be our strongest of the year, setting us up well to meet our full year guidance and generate substantial free cash flow at today's gold prices as a fully unhedged gold producer. Our balance sheet is in excellent shape. We returned a record amount of capital to shareholders through dividends and buybacks. Our 2025 buyback program has been substantially increased by 75% and the fast-track permitting approval of the Waihi North project is expected by year-end.

We're also targeting a listing on the New York Stock Exchange in April 2026, which we believe will provide enhanced trading liquidity and access to a wider range of potential investors, both of which should drive value for shareholders. All this is possible through the dedicated efforts of the many tremendous people who work at OceanaGold and a big call out of thanks to them for all their hard work.

I'll now turn the call over to the operator, who will open up the lines for any questions.

[Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from the line of Ovais Habib from Scotiabank.

Gerard, congrats to you and your team on a great quarter and really great to see Haile and Macraes in the higher grade ore. Also, really great to see the significant increase in the share buyback program. So that was really good to see and really depicts how confident you guys are on your free cash flow profile.

A couple of questions from me, Gerard. Number one, starting off with -- you've got a lot of studies coming up in 2026. There's the Haile tech report, Macraes tech report. You've got the Didipio underground PFS as well. In terms of the free cash flow and free cash flow profile that we see going into 2026, that seems to be very strong. So the question is, do you see any major CapEx projects going into 2026 based on these expected studies?

Firstly, thanks for the questions. Look, I mean, the cash flow requirements of those studies or the mine plans that will be reflected in those studies will be available in 2026 when we release them. But there's nothing -- unlike, say, the Waihi North project, there's nothing more than we're doing than updating the mine plans for latest reserves, latest reserve assumption and latest estimates of activity and the mine plan itself. There is nothing of a vastly different nature in capital that we're expecting to be associated with any of those 3 assets, Haile, Macraes or Didipio.

Fantastic. And just kind of moving on to Didipio then. Q3 looked fairly similar to kind of Q2, things have improved. Obviously, there were some underground water issues at the beginning of the year. Is that all now behind us? Any color on that would be great.

Well, I think Bhuvanesh covered it in the call, and I'll hand it over to Bhuvanesh again. But as he said, we have completed the dewatering of the decline. And by the end of this year, we expect to be at normal underground mining rates in full. Bhuvanesh, anything else to add on that?

No, I think you covered it well. Thanks, Gerard.

Okay. And then just moving on to Waihi. Waihi is expected to finish the year around the top end of its production guidance. And this is definitely a big improvement over the past couple of years. Are you now confident in this performance continuing to 2026?

Bhuvanesh do you want to take that?

Yes, sure. Thanks, Ovais. Yes, we are very confident about our production profile moving forward from Waihi. I think we now have a very great handle of the mining in out there as well. So yes, we feel very confident about our ability to capture and maintain that rate.

And your next question comes from the line of Harrison Reynolds from RBC Capital Markets.

Congratulations on delivering another strong quarter. It sounds like well set up heading into the end of the year. Wondering if you might be able to provide a bit more detail on these upcoming tech reports for Haile and Macraes. I know you touched on it a little bit in the last question, but sort of trying to understand what they might include. I think about the Macraes mine life extension. And I think that's underappreciated, but trying to maybe think about which phases are actually going to get included in this report. And over at Haile, some of this exploration has been interesting, but I'm wondering, are we going to get details around those targets at all? Or is it just going to be updating production schedules and costs?

Everyone wants a spoiler alert ahead of the -- you're going to rob all the excitement of February to keep talking. Look, I mean, Haile, we've been saying that for a while now we're studying how we're going to approach the mining of LedBetter 4. It was always in the last technical report shown to be an open pit mine. But as a result of the great drill results we had and the shape of the ore body as defined by that drilling, what the study will do is make a determination and reflect the decision on how we're going to mine that LedBetter 4 ore body. So that's probably the primary change. The -- we've had some tremendous drill results at Haile as foreshadowed, but I don't think much of that's going to alter the mine plans beyond what I've said in relation to Ledbetter 4.

At Macraes, its last reserve estimate was done for the whole company was at a reserve price of $1,750 an ounce. And we said that we are going to -- we're looking at having a higher reserve price for Macraes and all sites. And when we update that technical report at a higher reserve price, the amount of mineralization at Macraes is such that you can expect that a degree of mine life extension of some magnitude because it is an ore body that's sensitive to price. And so, at these higher gold prices, and we're always going to make sure that our reserve price isn't chasing too spot gold, we're going to make sure we have a very healthy margin on mining activities at all sites. But Macraes is sensitive to the gold price, and we expect that, that increase will allow us to mine more ore for longer at Macraes. And they are the primary reflections.

That's great detail. And maybe just one more for me. I think it's exciting to see that there's going to be more drills on the Waihi North project post permitting. But can you talk a little bit about what's going to be targeted from those drill rigs? Is that going to be more infill drilling? Or are you going to start to do step outs and define the size of this ore body?

Yes. Great question, Harrison. I mean, to put it in context, we're doubling the amount -- well, doubling the amount of drill pads that we can drill from. That will give us tremendous flexibility and choice as to how we approach the drilling as opposed to being limited to the drill pads that we have had for a many number of years. And as I said, doubling the amount of drill rigs. We'll always have a choice, and they're not mutually exclusive. We can do a bit of both. It is an exciting ore body. I think there is merit in doing some infill drilling and there's merit in doing step-outs.

And again, we're only to date focused on one of the veins. There's also the opportunity to focus on some of the other veins in the region. I think Wharekirauponga, the district has a long period of time to unveil what's possible there. And again, this next year is going to be a step change in drilling activity to help unveil all that.

And your next question comes from the line of Fahad Tariq from Jefferies.

At Waihi, it sounds like the underground improvement plan is going really well. You've seen higher throughput, higher grades, lower cost. Are there similar opportunities at other mines in the portfolio to bring costs down?

Short answer is yes, but I'll let Bhuvanesh color that in for you, Fahad. Thanks for the question. Bhuvanesh?

Thanks, Fahad, for the question. Yes, there are other opportunities across our portfolio to really factor the cost. Currently, we are undertaking all of those opportunities as well and probably Haile being a nice one to take that into account as well, specifically when you look at the trade-off study between the open pit and the underground. So that's a great example to factor that outcome.

Similarly, at Macraes, we can -- we're looking at all opportunities as a part of the mining studies that are in out there as well. And at Didipio, the way we basically have been mining at Didipio, specifically in relation to how our stope sequencing work, we are always looking at those opportunities as to how to get the cost of the all-in sustaining cost down.

And your next question comes from the line of Cosmos Chiu from CIBC.

Maybe my first question is on something interesting that you mentioned in your MD&A. As you mentioned in your MD&A, you'll be releasing your 2026 guidance with full year 2025 results, and it will reflect updated economic influences from current market and operating environment. So I guess my question is, Gerard, is that an indication that you'll be looking at sort of inflationary factors? Or are you looking at sort of changes from the higher gold prices and changing opportunities? You kind of answered that question in your answer to Harrison on the Macraes in terms of potentially bringing in more ore. But is that what we're talking about, inflation? Are we talking about opportunities from a higher gold price? What do you mean by that statement?

Yes. I mean it's everything costs, right? I mean we start with the physicals and then we have to have an overlay of what it's going to cost and what we're going to be investing in. And the mine plans will direct the activity and the activities can shift ever so slightly depending on what the mine plan takes us to and the experience of the year. And market costs, they can reflect anything, including inflation, exchange rates. I mean, we operate -- 50% of our business is outside of the U.S. And so, we update as to the New Zealand dollar and the peso, input costs and so forth. So it's a comprehensive normal update of what we expect the economics and physicals of the business are going to be.

So pretty much everything. But I guess to ask it more concisely, have you thought about what gold price assumption you might be using for your technical reports coming up that could drive how you run the business at least into 2026?

Short answer, and I think I alluded to it and we said it previously, we are going to increase the reserve price. The reserve price of $1,750 is too low. So it will go up. It doesn't change the activity set of any of our assets in 2026 at all. And the primary change that -- and it doesn't change much of the reserves of any site with the exception of Macraes because as I said on the call, it's the one that's most sensitive to price. And you can just see the difference between the reserves and the resources at Macraes and the resources at Macraes are booked at $1,950. So as we migrate from reserve to resource, you're going to see some level of those resources come into reserve, and that will extend life, but it won't alter the activity of 2026, all that much from what we expected otherwise.

Great. Maybe switching gears a little bit. Gerard, as we all know, Q3 was going to be the weakest quarter for the year for Oceana . And despite that, you still generated very good free cash flow, $94 million positive free cash flow. Can you remind us of any kind of seasonality in your free cash flow quarter-over-quarter? For example, I know that you need to pay for your FTAA each and every April. But is there anything else that we should be aware?

Not really, Cos. I mean I think the largest single lump is -- and I'll give Marius time to think and he can color in if I've missed something. But the largest single item of the lumpy spend is that additional government share that's paid in April of every year, and that's flagged in the full year results that we released in February. We -- through the course of this year, we did have some seasonality in the electricity price that we experienced in New Zealand, but it's kind of not all that significant. But -- and then the other seasonality, we can have weather events affecting shipping of copper concentrate out of Didipio, but that all washes out in the course of the year anyway. So nothing material. Marius, anything come to mind or Bhuvanesh?

The only 2 that come to mind is obviously your CapEx spend profile, cars, depending on where you are in that quarter. And then also from a shipment perspective, yes, you have -- you could have weather events impacting it or you could have some stockholding at either site per quarter at the back end of the period. So that would influence, for instance, Didipio this quarter had some sales that came from inventory in the prior quarter.

Great. And maybe one last question. Great to see share buybacks, you've reached your $100 million target, now increasing it to $175 million. But I guess my question is, as Marius mentioned, you repurchased shares at CAD 24. Oceana shares have done very well. Now CAD 31.85. So I guess my question is, is there some kind of upper limit in terms of when you might start considering or reevaluating the velocity in which you repurchase shares?

Yes. We do have -- we are mindful of value, Cos. We have our own view on value having regard to modeling and various assumptions, and we don't go above that limit.

Okay. And at this point in time, Gerard, can you share with us, are we going to expect share buybacks of $75 million in Q4? Or is that, again, based on what you're observing in terms of value in terms of the share price?

I can say that we will be commencing that buyback at today's share price. And what happens thereafter, Cos, is, again, subject to the parameters we put around it. But I think what we have shown is that when we said we were going to buy back shares at the start of the year of $100 million, we executed to that. And I think just generally, at a macro level, I think that gold equities, not all gold equities, but certainly OceanaGold equities still have a way to go to reflect fully or even part of the uplift in spot gold.

And your next question comes from the line of Don DeMarco from National Bank.

First off, to these technical reports, Gerard, what is the timing of both the Haile and the Craisech reports? Are they going to both be out before 2026 guidance is released?

No. They will come out in the end of the first quarter of 2026. But the essence of them will be reflected in the '26 guidance.

Okay. And of course, as has been discussed in some of the questions, with the Haile tech report, you're looking at -- you faced with the decision of how to approach LedBetter 4. This analysis is ongoing. We'll look to report for what your decision is. What are some of the variables that you're including in your analysis that might drive the decision grade, CapEx, differences in throughput between the different scenarios in the mine life? What are some of the factors that you're looking at and weighing both options?

Sure. Great question. Bhuvesh, do you want to take that one?

Yes, sure. Thanks, Don. So we've been looking at the value-based decision as well. So the decision basically is more about the NPV that we will generate and then the IRR that we'll get out of the decisions that we need to make as well. And as you know, probably in the case of the open pit, given the amount of waste that we need to strip to the ore, that probably is a huge amount of time that we spend in that space as well. So we're taking a value-based decision that probably generates the best outcome. This is what the trade-off studies will be taking into account.

Okay. Great. And great to hear that Q4 is going to expect to be the best of the year. And really, there's a clear path into 2026 as well. Would you expect that stretch to continue into '26? I mean, in a general sense, and of course, we'll look for details of the guidance, but it seems like a clear path carrying on the strength from Q4 into next year.

Yes. Whether the quarter volume is exactly the same, but the drivers of that uplift definitely carry through into '26. I mean this has all been about accessing grade at our 2 largest operations, Haile and Macraes this year represent 70% of our projected production. And next year, that combination grows even larger because of this access to the higher grade ore and Innes Mills 8 at Macraes and LedBetter 3 that we've been investing in this year. That's what I think is particularly exciting. We have been investing in the access of those large open pits this year, still generating tremendous free cash flow. And then next year, when you're feeding higher-grade ore that's what's the primary driver of the uplift in gold production in 2026.

And there are no further questions at this time. I will now hand the call back to Gerard Pan for any closing remarks.

That concludes our webcast and conference call today. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. A replay will be available on our website later in the day. On behalf of the management team and everyone at OceanaGold, I wish you a very pleasant rest of the day. Bye.

And this concludes today's call. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.