Mineros Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Mineros (TSX:MSA) reported third-quarter financial results on Thursday. The transcript from the company’s third-quarter earnings call has been provided below.

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Summary

Mineros recorded its best nine months in history with $838 million in revenue, a 55% increase, selling 187,000 gold-equivalent ounces.

The company maintains a strong balance sheet with $270 million in cash and gold-backed assets, and a net cash position of $72 million.

Mineros raised its gold production guidance for 2026 to 235,000-245,000 ounces and reported lower-than-expected all-in sustaining costs.

The HEMCO plant expansion is on track to reach 2,500 tons per day by year-end, with further plans to increase capacity to 3,200 tons per day.

The company is actively engaged in social and environmental initiatives, including projects under Colombia’s Work for Taxes program, and has been ranked as the top gold mining company in Colombia.

Mineros is focusing on growth through projects like Porvenir, La Pepa, and Tolima, with significant exploration activities underway.

Shareholder returns are a priority, with a $58 million special dividend proposed and an ongoing share buyback program.

Operational improvements have led to significant cost reductions and increased margins, particularly at the HEMCO plant due to improved silver recoveries.

Full Transcript

Juan Oando (Director of Investor Relations)

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Mineros’ conference call discussing the results for the third quarter and the first nine months of 2026. My name is Juan Oando and I am the Director of Investor Relations. Joining me today are Daniel Henao, our President and CEO, and Natalia Correa, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, please note that today’s remarks include forward-looking statements and non-IFRS measures. Actual results may differ. Please refer to our cautionary notes and to the definitions and reconciliations in our Q3 2026 MD&A available on our website and on SEDAR+. All figures are in US dollars unless otherwise noted. We will take your questions through the webcast portal after the presentation and a replay will be posted on our website.

With that, I’ll hand the call over to Daniel Henao, President and CEO of Mineros.

Daniel Henao (President and Chief Executive Officer)

Thank you, Juan, and good morning to all of you. I’ll start by saying that these have been the best nine months in the history of Mineros. Before anything else, I want to thank our people in Colombia and in Nicaragua, Chile, and Canada. These numbers come from their work every day, above and underground. At the beginning of the year we told the market we would increase production, keep costs under control, strengthen the balance sheet, and return more capital to our shareholders.

Nine months in, we are delivering on each of those commitments. We have five key drivers underpinning our results. First is performance. Revenue for the nine months was $838 million, 55% higher than last year. That comes from the sale of 187,000 gold-equivalent ounces. Second is the balance sheet. We have about $270 million in cash available, gold bullion, and gold-backed receivables and net cash of about $72 million. Third is growth. HEMCO is expanding to 2,500 tons per day by the end of the year. At Porvenir, which will be our first polymetallic mine, we expect to announce the construction decision in the first quarter of 2025.

At La Pepa, we expect to release our first NI 43-101 preliminary economic assessment in the first quarter of 2027. And in Tolima, we continue to advance social and engineering work to start visualizing what a project would look like in that part of the country. Fourth is shareholder returns. This year we have bought back about $25 million in shares, paid $22 million in dividends of the approximately $30 million authorized by shareholders in March 2026, and we have proposed a special dividend of about $58 million.

Finally, ESG and work for taxes. We have mobilized more than $141 million for our regions since 2018. We were ranked the number one gold mining company in Colombia’s Brújula Minera 2026 reputational ranking and our social sciences measurement placed both operations well above the approval level. With that introduction, I will turn the call over to Natalia to take us through the numbers.

Natalia Correa (Chief Financial Officer)

Thank you, Daniel, and good morning, everyone. I’ll start with the third quarter, and then we’ll look at the first nine months of 2026. In the third quarter, we sold about 64,500 gold-equivalent ounces. This is 15% more than in the same quarter last year. Our average realized gold price was $4,300 an ounce. Revenue was $279 million, up 42%. Adjusted EBITDA reached $140 million, which is up 55% with a margin of 50%. Net profit was $89 million, or $0.30 per share, 65% higher than a year ago. Net free cash flow was just over $101 million, up 62% compared with the third quarter of 2025.

For me, that is the number that best describes what this business is producing today. Real cash, quarter after quarter. Silver also made a good contribution. We produced 211,308 ounces of silver in the quarter, which is 111% more than last year, thanks to improvements to metallurgical recoveries achieved at the HEMCO plant. We closed September with net cash of $71.7 million. On this slide, you can see the first nine months of this year next to the same period of the previous three years. Gold production was just over 180,000 ounces, up 11%. Revenue was $838 million, up 55%. Adjusted EBITDA was just over $400 million, up 65%. That is the highest in our history. Net profit reached a record of over $220 million, or $0.76 per share, up 64%. Return on capital employed was 66%, compared with 47% a year ago. 2026 is the highest year in many of these metrics.

We are producing more. We are selling gold and silver at better prices, and we are keeping costs under control. That combination is what generates the cash that pays for our growth and allows us to return capital to you, our shareholders. Daniel, back to you.

Daniel Henao (President and Chief Executive Officer)

Thank you, Natalia. Our gold sales went from about 55,000 ounces in the third quarter of 2025 to over 61,000 ounces this quarter. That is an increase of 12% and demonstrates a steady upward trend quarter by quarter. But the part of this slide I want you to remember is the space between the two lines. This quarter we realized about $4,300 an ounce, and our all-in sustaining cost was just about $2,240 an ounce. That leaves us a margin of about $2,060 on every ounce we sell, 39% more than a year ago.

While the gold price helps, the gap is also the result of the cost discipline at both operations, which ensures our ability to generate cash sustainably in all gold-price environments. Protecting that margin is a big part of our job. Now let’s talk about guidance. Given how the year has gone, we have raised our production outlook for the second time in 2026. We now expect between 235,000 to 245,000 ounces of gold during the year. By the end of September, we had produced over 180,000 ounces of gold, around 75% of the midpoint. Both operations are performing well. Even with the plant expansion at HEMCO and the downtime that is required for the expansion, we feel comfortable with the new range of the guidance.

On costs, the message is simple: we are below guidance. Our all-in sustaining cost for the nine months was about $2,310 an ounce, below the lower end of our range. Cash cost was about $2,060 an ounce, also below the lower end of our guidance. So this is the key message: we are producing more gold than we planned and spending less per ounce than we planned. We want to finish the year that way. Focusing now on each of our operations, we’ll start in Colombia. At Nechí, we produced just over 67,000 ounces of gold in the first nine months. Gold recovery improved to 89% from 80% a year ago, which is the result of a lot of methodical work by the team on the dredges and in the plant. Our own dredges had an all-in sustaining cost of about $1,800 an ounce. Our contract mining partners added ounces with a margin of 16% for Mineros so far this year.

This quarter, Nechí also started selling gold in concentrate to third-party refineries, which gives us more flexibility on the commercial side and a higher payment for every ounce we sell. In Nicaragua, HEMCO produced over 113,000 ounces, 18% more than last year. The underground mines had an all-in sustaining cost of just over $1,600 an ounce, and the ore we buy from our Bonanza mining partners generated margin of about 43% so far this year. The HEMCO plant reached a sustained rate of 2,300 tons per day in September, up from the 1,750 tons per day where we started. This was not without its challenges. You will note that the plant throughput in the third quarter was similar to the third quarter in 2025, largely because we had 15 days of downtime while working on the expansion for the plant.

We expect to complete the expansion to 2,500 tons per day by the end of this year, just as planned. Natalia will now walk you through the balance sheet.

Natalia Correa (Chief Financial Officer)

Thank you, Daniel. We closed the quarter with a strong and liquid balance sheet, so let me tell you about it. At September 30, we held about $270 million in cash and gold-backed assets. That figure has three different components: about $54 million in cash, about $145 million in gold bullion that is available for sale, and just over $71 million in receivables from gold and silver sales. I want to be clear about one point. In total, we hold 50,533 ounces in our treasury, but 15,600 ounces out of them, worth about $65 million, are pledged under gold repurchase agreements that we use for working capital. Those ounces are not available for sale until the agreements are settled, so we have left them out of this figure and out of our net cash figure as well. We prefer to show you only what is available to us. In addition, our consolidated ore stockpiles and concentrate held approximately 24,000 ounces of gold valued at a cost of $52.5 million.

We built that inventory on purpose, concurrent with the HEMCO plant expansion. Loans and other borrowings were $128 million. All of this leaves us with net cash of $71.7 million, which we calculate as cash plus the gold bullion we hold, excluding bullion under repurchase agreements, less loans and other borrowings. Daniel, back to you.

Daniel Henao (President and Chief Executive Officer)

Thank you, Natalia. Turning to our growth and exploration assets, which is where I see the biggest opportunities for Mineros over the next few years, I’m going to start by discussing our exploration activities. Our program is focused on near-mine targets because those are the ounces that reach our plants the fastest and the best way to replace and grow our mineral resources. In the third quarter, we drilled close to 19,000 meters at HEMCO. Near-mine drilling at Panama and Pioneer was just over 10,000 meters.

The Bonanza block about 4,700 meters, and Porvenir about 4,000 meters. Our greenfield program in the Bonanza district and the infill campaigns at Leticia and Guillermina have been completed. At Nechí, we drilled about 5,000 meters in 165 holes. In Chile, the start of the La Pepa drilling campaign was deferred due to severe weather and heavy winter snow. We have 600 meters planned for 2026 and the campaign will continue through 2027. In Tolima, we continue to do surface exploration with mapping and rock and soil sampling across the mineralized corridor.

Turning to our growth pipeline, three projects at three different stages starting with Porvenir in Nicaragua, our most advanced project with major permits received and it will be our first polymetallic operation. It has 736,000 ounces gold equivalent. Over the life of mine, we expect an average annual production of about 74,000 ounces gold equivalent. Detailed engineering is underway. The forest management permits for the tailings facility and the processing plant are in progress.

We expect to announce a construction decision in the first quarter of 2027. La Pepa in Chile has a total mineral inventory of about 2 1/2 million ounces in the Maricunga gold belt. We secured the sectorial drilling permits in June and we are completing the studies for the environmental impact declaration to be submitted in early 2027. The next milestone is the release of our first 43-101 Preliminary Economic Assessment in the first quarter of 2027.

In Tolima in Colombia, the historical estimate reported by the previous owner is about 23 million ounces of gold indicated and 5 million ounces in the inferred category. We are starting to do pre-feasibility and engineering work, advancing our environmental studies and aligning the work with the authorities. Together these projects are foundational to our goal of reaching approximately 500 gold equivalent ounces of production by the end of 2023. That brings me to one of the key focuses which is shareholder returns. Over the last two years our share price has risen about 700%. In the same period GDXJ rose about 134% and gold about 60%. That performance has opened the door to a much wider group of investors. This year Mineros was added to MVIS Global Juniors Gold Miner Index which is the index behind the VanEck Junior Gold Miners ETF, the GDXJ, the Selected Junior Gold Miners Index behind the Sprott Junior Gold Miners ETF and to the Small Cap segment of the FTSE Global Equity Index Series in Colombia.

We were also included in Teva Colombia Equity Index which underlies TEVA iCol, the first locally managed Colombian equity ETF, launched by the Colombian Stock Exchange in September. We also remain part of the MSCI COLCAP and S&P Colombia Select Indexes. Being in these indexes matters a lot. Index funds and ETFs have to hold our shares, which brings steady demand, more liquidity and more visibility with institutional investors in both Canada and Colombia, and it broadens our shareholder base.

We’re also returning capital to shareholders from the ample cash we are generating. In July, we expanded our share buyback program to $175 million. So far this year we have repurchased about 5.5 million shares for approximately $25 million, and we still have about $150 million available under the program until March of 2029. In addition, we have paid $22 million in dividends so far this year of the approximately $30 million in annual dividends declared in March following the quarter close.

On October 23rd, we announced a proposed special dividend of $0.20 totaling about $58 million. This proposal will be presented to shareholders at a meeting to be held in November 24th and if approved, the dividend is expected to be paid in December 4th. This is a company that is growing and returning capital to its shareholders at the same time. I want to take a minute to talk about the driver that means the most to me personally, how we create value in the places where we work. Brújula Minera is the main reputation study of the mining sector in Colombia. It has been carried out for more than a decade by the consulting firm Arteaga Latam, together with the Colombian Mining Association and the Centro Nacional de Consultoría, and its ranking reflects the views of mining executives, government authorities, industrial workers and public opinion in both mining and non-mining municipalities.

The 2026 results were presented in September at the National Mining Congress and Mineros was ranked the number one gold mining company in Colombia for the second year in a row. Among sector executives we rose to third place, and among industry workers we moved from eighth to third. I see this as a recognition of our employees and the community partners and of the relationships we have built over so many years. This year we also measured our social license to operate in both countries. I want to explain why this matters to investors. This is not a satisfaction survey. It measures how acceptable our stakeholders consider the company and its operations and for a mining company that is a business continuity indicator. A strong social license lowers the risk of social conflicts, blockades, legal challenges and reputational damage, which can mean lost production, higher cost or even the loss of permits.

More than 670 stakeholders inside and outside the company took part of it. On a scale from 0 to 1, Nicaragua scored 0.88, the highest level on the scale, and Colombia scored 0.75 at the trust threshold. Both operations are well above the approval level, which is the point where a community supports the operation. They’re also well above the mining industry average in Colombia at 0.53 and in Latin America at 0.48. We see that as the result of many years of social investments, of a long-term relationship with our communities and local authorities.

And it is a real competitive advantage. Our job now is to keep it. Our social license is earned through actions and can be lost with a single event. Community expectations change and every commitment we make has to be kept over time. That is why we measure it every two years and turn the results into concrete action plans. For those less familiar with it, Work for Taxes, or Obras por Impuestos, is a Colombian government mechanism. It allows companies to pay part of their income tax by directly funding and executing public infrastructure projects in the country’s less developed regions. Instead of paying that amount to the national treasury, the projects are approved and supervised by the government, so the tax is paid and the investment stays in the communities where we work.

Since 2018, more than $141 million have been mobilized with private partners, about $66.5 million that came from Mineros. These projects reached more than 700,000 people in 52 municipalities. This year we’re participating in 10 projects worth about $56 million, with about $16 million provided by Mineros. The projects focus on water and sanitation, education, early childhood, rural roads and public health. The project you see in the photo is the new school in El Bagre, an investment of about $12 million.

Together with other Colombian companies coordinated by ProAntioquia, it will have classroom space for more than 1,080 students. But because the school day will be divided into morning and afternoon sessions, it will serve more than 2,000 students in the Bajo Cauca region, where we operate. As part of our community outreach, we intend to bring this same model to Tolima, investing in programs and projects that will directly benefit our local communities.

Before we go to our questions, let me sum up. Record revenue of $838 million for the first nine months, with adjusted EBITDA of over $400 million and net profit of over $222 million. Net cash of about $71 million and treasury backed by gold production. Guidance raised twice, costs below guidance, the HEMCO expansion on schedule. A construction decision at Porvenir expected in the first quarter of 2027, and La Pepa and Tolima moving forward. We bought back about $25 million in shares, paid out $22 million in dividends and are proposing to return an additional $58 million in the form of a special dividend.

Ranked as the number one gold mining company in Brújula Minera 2026 and strong social license in both countries. At the start of the year we said what we would do and we’re doing it. I want to thank our teams, our partners and our communities, and you, our shareholders, for your trust. Back to you, Juan.

Juan Oando (Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Daniel. That concludes our presentation and we will now take your questions. If we didn’t get yours today, please reach out to me or to the investor relations team using the contact details on the screen. All right, so just a reminder, please select the closed captioning on the top right of your webcast portal so you will see the closed captioning in Spanish. And we will now start with the questions about cost. We have a couple of questions from Michael Matheson and from Riley Wenton and they are asking about, as a percentage of revenue, cost of sales is down significantly, about 600 basis points year to date. What drove the big increase in margin and what is the new margin and is this margin sustainable?

Also Riley is asking about, can you talk to us about the key drivers for HEMCO’s strong cost performance? Okay, thank you very much for

Daniel Henao (President and Chief Executive Officer)

the questions and I think I agree, I wanted to start with those questions because, because I believe that’s actually the highlight of this quarter. It’s How we’ve been able to manage the cost of our operations. Our all-in sustaining cost. Just to reiterate that we finished the first nine months of the year at $2,310 per ounce. That’s below the lower end of our guidance. And that is the result of the operational improvements that we’ve been working at throughout the year. So the three main initia—just to remind everyone—is recoveries, volumes, removing the historical bottlenecks, and grade.

So in terms of recoveries, just to give you an example of the impact that we’re getting in our operations, our silver revenues went up 300% compared to the first nine months the year before. We have $37 million of revenues that help us reduce the cost, the all-in sustaining cost per ounce, because we treat silver as a byproduct. So those are very material impacts. The other part that I would like to highlight is that the focus has been on managing variables that we can manage.

The all-in sustaining cost of our industrial operations is $1,750 an ounce. So that’s actually very, very competitive compared to our peer group. And then the overall all-in sustaining cost is pushed up to $2,310, primarily because of gold price. As you would remember, in our Colombian operation and in our Nicaraguan operation, we process ore from our mining partners and we pay a percentage of the gold price, so that at the end of the day, at higher gold price environments, that drives the cost up.

But the margins remain very, very healthy on different operating environments. So the main variables that are driving the cost is the operational improvements that I described: recoveries, expanding the processing capacity. We are now stable at 2,300 tons per day. That was our commitment to the market. Beginning of the year, we started at 1,750 tons per day. We expect to finish this year at 2,500 tons per day. Now, that could very well remain one of the big constraints of our operation. I would like to highlight that we finished these first nine months still with about 22,000 ounces of gold in inventories, mostly in mineral format, all waiting to be processed.

And that’s why the expansion of the processing capacity, primarily at Hemco, is so important to us, because that could very well remain one of the biggest bottlenecks the operation the company has overall, even at 2,500 tons per day. And then last is multiple initiatives around improving grades by having better mine plans, by having better mining methods, improving the way we incentivize our Bonanza mining partners to deliver better qualities to be processed. All those initiatives are kicking in. Those are all deliberate efforts the teams have made to improve the production profile and have costs under control.

Juan Oando (Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Daniel. I’m just going to say a few words in Spanish for our Spanish listening audience. Por favor, activen para ver los subtítulos en español. Por favor, activar la opción en la parte superior derecha de sus pantallas. Thank you, Daniel. Now we will move to a set of questions from Alina Islam. And the first question is regarding dividends. The dividend is described as funded from cash on hand and operating cash flow. But cash at quarter end was $54 million.

Is the repo financing from October 16th and 29th effectively funding the dividend? And if not, what is?

Natalia Correa (Chief Financial Officer)

Thank you. Thank you, Alina, for your question, and let the answer that we are very comfortable with the cash engine that we have in our company. That means that we are planning to fund that dividend with our own cash flow, our own operating cash flow. So during our quarter three, our operations generated 116 million of operating cash flow. That means that on average we generated almost $40 million per month in this quarter. So we have, or we are in a very comfortable position to cover the $58 million payment of dividends that we are planning to approve on the next general assembly with our own cash flow operations.

Yeah, that will answer your question.

Juan Oando (Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Natalia. Now moving on to gold price and repos, the next question from Alina is: At what gold price do the repos require additional margin and what reference price are they struck against? Does the $22.6 million already posted in other assets cover the repos, or only the forward and the collateralized loan?

Natalia Correa (Chief Financial Officer)

Okay. During the third quarter of this year, we closed three different contracts, three different gold repurchase contracts, that add to 15,600 ounces of gold. We closed those contracts on an average gold price of 4,176. That means that with the last movements in the gold price, we have had some margin calls that we have fulfilled very comfortably. I also need to mention that we do sensitivity analysis on all these gold prices and we get prepared for those cash calls very well in advance.

So it’s not— we like to have actually extra margins so we can cover those shorter movements. The $22.6 million that you are seeing in other assets cover both the forwards and the repos. That’s what we show in that other assets note.

Juan Oando (Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Natalia. I’m going to move over to Daniel. I have the next question from Alina asking about our stockpiles. And the question says: The 22,369 ounces in stockpiles—when does it get processed and what does consolidated all-in sustaining cost look like when it runs through cost of sales?

Daniel Henao (President and Chief Executive Officer)

Thanks, Alina, for your question. That gives me the opportunity to tell you more about what’s coming. These 22,000 ounces of gold sitting in mineral format in our operations, it’s a deliberate effort. It’s a decision that we took earlier this year to ramp up our mining operations, ramp up the Bonanza mining partnerships, and build these inventories to support the expanded processing capacity. So as I mentioned earlier, our plan is to finish the year at 2,500 tons per day.

However, we are already seeing that processing capacity could very well remain the biggest bottleneck of our Nicaragua platform. So we are already working on a phase two expansion to take processing capacity beyond 2,500 tons per day, targeting something like 3,200 tons per day, and that way, be able to process all this mineral that we’re mining in our mines and processing through the Bonanza mining partnership. So that’s, you know, that’s a very exciting problem to have. We’re very happy to be able to accumulate this level of inventories. That speaks to the quality of the ore bodies that we’re mining, speaks to the quality of our asset. And now, basically, we’re working on solving the processing bottleneck. We’ve been doing so all along this year, doing it on time, on budget, and then working now on this phase two expansion that we expect to announce to the market with more details of what it would potentially require.

And that would be a further catalyst in the coming future.

Juan Oando (Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Daniel. Moving on to the bullion purchases, Alina is asking us: You spent $137 million on net bullion purchases in the quarter, but physical holdings rose about 8,300 ounces. What accounts for the difference?

Natalia Correa (Chief Financial Officer)

Thank you, Alina. So for noting the amount of ounces that we actually increased during the quarter, you have to refer to the precious metals note in our financial statements, which considers both the bullion that is out of these repo contracts, but also the ones—the 15,000 ounces—that we put into these repo contracts. That means that we actually grew from 29,000 ounces in the previous quarter to a total of 50.5 thousand ounces in this quarter. That’s a total increase of 21,000 ounces of gold. And apart from that, we also have to take into account that this cash figure, the 137 that you are making reference to, also considers some timing between when the metal is received and when it is paid for. So that would account for the rest of the difference. Also, of course, silver also adds to those figures.

Juan Oando (Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Natalia. Moving on—let’s talk a little bit about recoveries. And Alina’s final question is about the recoveries at Nechí. Recovery was 86% in the third quarter against 96% in the second quarter. What drove the sequential decline?

Daniel Henao (President and Chief Executive Officer)

Thanks, Alina. So the first thing I’d like to clarify, and that’s specified in the MD&A, is that those are recoveries that we calculate based on the resource model to what a normal recovery would look like in a normal processing plant. Remember, this is a unique mining operation, so that’s actually recoveries against the resource that was estimated versus what was actually mined. What I can tell you in addition to that is that we are actively working on adding more recovery units to the overall operation.

New scavengers just came in. We added double classification units as well. We’re starting to export concentrates as well. All efforts around improving the recoveries of our Colombian operation. And we’re seeing the benefits of those investments now. Also, I would like to mention that overall, the Colombian environment, the political environment, is, importantly, improving significantly in the country. So we’re working with our teams on new investments for growth of our Colombian Nechí operation. And those are things that hopefully we will start announcing to the market in the coming future.

Juan Oando (Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Daniel. We have a next question from Riley Wenton. Talk a little bit about Tolima. How are you thinking about development scenarios at Tolima? Will this be a smaller operation than the one previously evaluated by past owners?

Daniel Henao (President and Chief Executive Officer)

Thank you. Thanks for the question. So, yes. So, you know, where we’re at today in the Tolima asset is incorporating historical concerns in the development approach that we will take for that asset. We don’t want to push the same asset that didn’t work in the past. We were listening to the historical concerns, and one of those was certainly the volume. Just for context, the previous development approaches were more optimized around making an outstanding mining asset from an engineering point of view.

We are optimizing this asset more from a social and environmental point of view, listening to those historical concerns. So the short answer is that, very likely, yes, scale would be significantly smaller. We won’t be aiming for a million-ounces-per-year type mining operation. We would be aiming for something much smaller in scale with a much smaller environmental footprint and leveraging the social license, leveraging basically the brand that Mineros has built for over five decades as a Colombian mining operator.

So that’s a new approach. A lot of it is work in progress. It’s all very exciting, and we look forward to start doing the kind of infrastructure that we’ve done in other parts of the country, like the school that we talked about earlier—school that would cover 2,000 kids in the Bajo Cauca region. Doing those sort of projects in these other communities, we think, is going to be very valuable, not just for us, but especially for our local communities.

That’s the Mineros way. That’s the way we operate. And we expect to leverage that in the Tolima region of Colombia as well.

Juan Oando (Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Daniel. Moving on, we have a couple of questions from Michael Matheson. So the first one is regarding the shares outstanding. You’ve decreased shares outstanding significantly in 2026, more than 7% year to date. Is your strategy to continue using free cash flow to buy back shares?

Daniel Henao (President and Chief Executive Officer)

Thanks, Michael. Well, just to clarify, we bought back about less than 2% of our shares outstanding. So that’s just a small correction there on your statement. And what I would like to add as well is that we are overall prioritizing investments in our assets. That’s where we see the biggest returns. Investments like the plant expansion in Nicaragua, deploying $25 million, adding an extra 30 to 40,000 ounces of gold in production per year. Those are investments that are very hard to beat in terms of IRRs.

Then after that, we’ve been acquiring assets, but then we’re left with significant cash. The operations are performing very well. So shareholder returns, it’s always a big part of who we are. That’s the brand of Mineros. So doing buybacks, more dividends, we think make a lot of sense.

Juan Oando (Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Daniel. Moving on to the second question from Michael about silver production. So silver production has doubled year over year. Is silver production sustainable at this new level?

Daniel Henao (President and Chief Executive Officer)

That’s a great question. So just to clarify, we actually don’t have a silver resource. Our resources are gold-denominated for the Hemco operation. So we don’t actually have a resource on silver. With that being said, what I can say is that for many years, the company has been seeing significant silver flowing through the circuit. So as soon as we saw that, we decided to put a lot of effort into recovering that silver. So that silver has been going through the circuit for several years.

We’re now paying attention to it. In the first nine months, that initiative had returned $37 million compared to $9 million in the same period the year before. So, yes, 300% more silver revenues. So we cannot actually predict what’s going to continue coming in terms of silver. But what I can tell you is that we’ve been seeing silver coming through the circuit for a long time. So we’re preparing to capture whatever silver comes through the circuit.

For the whole Hemco platform, when you talk about Porvenir, we do have a resource for the silver component in the Porvenir development asset, as well as for copper and zinc. Just to remind the audience, that’s a polymetallic asset, so that we can count on in terms of the development, in terms of future revenues.

Juan Oando (Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Daniel. Now we’re moving on to a question from Raul Orora. Good morning. In your February and April 2026 releases, the board noted it was conducting a formal legal and fiscal evaluation of a potential corporate and that the April 30 precautionary meeting was tied to the statutory window for your 2025 audited financial statements. Now that we are approaching the end of 2026 and Mineros has been added to the GDXJ and the FTSE indexes, can you update shareholders on whether that cross-border tax and structural review is still active ahead of the 2026 year-end audit, or has the board concluded that maintaining the current Colombian domicile is optimal?

Daniel Henao (President and Chief Executive Officer)

Thank you, Raul. So look, we provided an update to our shareholders in the shareholder assembly that we previously conducted so far. Basically, it’s an active review. It’s a very complex process involving multiple jurisdictions, multiple tax treaties. So it’s a decision that we don’t want to take in a light manner. We’re putting the efforts into understanding the opportunities and the consequences of redomiciling. We don’t anticipate that happening in the near future, but it’s an active situation that we continue to review.

Juan Oando (Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Daniel. At this point we have no further questions, so I would like to hand over the floor again for some closing remarks.

Daniel Henao (President and Chief Executive Officer)

Thank you, Juan. And thank you all for joining us today. I would like to finish perhaps where I started, with our people. Every ounce we produce, every meter we drill and every dollar we return to our shareholders rests on the committed work of our teams in Colombia, Nicaragua, in Chile and Canada, above and underground. So to them and to our partners and communities, big, big thank you. At the start of the year we made commitments to the market and nine months in we have kept them all. And the same discipline will carry us through the Hemco expansion, the Porvenir construction decision, and the next steps in La Pepa and in Tolima. So thank you all for joining us today, for your time and your trust in the Mineros team. Thank you very much.

Juan Oando (Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Daniel. That concludes our remarks for today. Thanks to everyone who joined us, and if by any chance we didn’t get to any of your questions, please feel free to reach out to the investor relations team. You will find the email addresses on the screen. Thank you very much for your time.

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