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Fortuna Mining Corp. (FSM)

Q3 2025 Earnings Call· Thu, Nov 6, 2025

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Fortuna Mining Corp. Q3 2025 Financial and Operational Results Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Carlos Baca, VP of Investor Relations at Fortuna Mining Corp. You may begin.

Carlos Baca

Analyst

Thank you, Paul. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Fortuna Mining's conference call to discuss our financial and operational results for the third quarter of 2025. Hosting today's call on behalf of Fortuna are Jorge Alberto Ganoza, President, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder; Luis Dario Ganoza, Chief Financial Officer; Cesar Velasco, Chief Operating Officer, Latin America; and David Whittle, Chief Operating Officer, West Africa. Today's earnings call presentation is available on our website at fortunamining.com. Statements made during this call are subject to the reader advisories included in yesterday's news release, the webcast presentation or management discussion and analysis and the risk factors outlined in our annual information form. All financial figures discussed today are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise stated. Technical information presented has been reviewed and approved by Eric Chapman, Fortuna's Senior Vice President of Technical Services and a qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. I will now turn the call over to Jorge Alberto Ganoza, President, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Fortuna Mining.

Jorge Durant

Analyst

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. The third quarter was a strong one for Fortuna, not only in terms of operational delivery, financial results and continued buildup of Fortuna's balance sheet, but also in the meaningful progress we have made in positioning the company for the next stage of growth. But let's start with safety. By the end of October, we achieved 318 days or 9.7 million work hours without a lost time injury, our longest streak yet. Our total recordable injury frequency rate improved to 0.86, down from 1.6 a year ago. These results demonstrate our collective commitment to ensuring everyone returns home safe and sound. Turning to the numbers. We realized an average gold price of $3,467 per ounce, up 5% from the second quarter and up 20% from the first quarter of the year. Attributable net income reached $123.6 million or $0.40 per share, driven by a $69 million impairment reversal at our Lindero mine. Adjusted net income was $0.17 per share, impacted by higher share-based compensation due to a rising share price and a $7.4 million foreign exchange loss in Argentina, which both together account to approximately $0.04 per share. Our strong free cash flow from operations was $73 million with net cash from operating activities before working capital changes at $114 million or $0.37 per share, surpassing analyst consensus of $0.36. During the quarter, we recorded $13.5 million in withholding taxes related to the repatriation of $118 million from Argentina and Côte d’Ivoire. We expect regular repatriations moving forward. Overall, our business benefits from higher realized gold prices, improving margins and strong cash generation. As a result, our liquidity position at the end of the quarter stands at a solid $588 million with a growing net cash position of $266 million. This…

David Whittle

Analyst

Thank you, Jorge. Séguéla achieved another impressive quarter, delivering excellent results in both production and safety. This positions Séguéla well to exceed upper production guidance for 2025. We have gold output now projected to surpass 150,000 ounces. Our dedication to safety and environmental excellence remains steadfast, and we are making steady progress toward our goal of zero harm across all our operations. I'm pleased to report that no injuries occurred at any of our West African locations during the quarter. At Séguéla, we produced 38,799 ounces of gold, maintaining consistency with prior quarters and surpassing the mine plan. Mining during the quarter totaled 272,000 tonnes of ore at an average grade of 3.66 grams per tonne gold, along with 4.43 million tonnes of waste, resulting in a strip ratio of 16.3:1. The processing plant treated 435,000 tonnes at an average grade of 3.01 grams per tonne gold, with throughput averaging 208 tonnes per hour for the quarter. Ore was primarily sourced from the Antenna, Ancien and Koula pits. During the quarter, we received permitting approvals for 5 satellite pits, including the Sunbird, Kingfisher and Badior open pits. Several major projects also advanced successfully over the third quarter. The 8.5 million TSF lift was completed, providing tailings storage at current throughputs until late 2029. The replacement of the transmission tower at the Sunbird pit, a $9 million project, progressed well, and we are now prepared to commence pre-mining operations for the Sunbird pit in Q4. The rock breaker and the primary crusher was commissioned and is operating effectively, further debottlenecking the processing circuit and the 6-megawatt solar plant project is expected to be complete in the first quarter of 2026, which will help to reduce power costs. Séguéla performance resulted in a cash cost of $698 per ounce and an all-in…

Jorge Durant

Analyst

Thank you, David. Cesar?

Cesar Velasco

Analyst

Thank you, Jorge, and good afternoon, everyone. I am pleased to report that both Lindero and Caylloma ongoing multiple safety initiatives are driving continuous improvement and reinforcing a culture of accountability and care across all of our operations, delivering excellent safety performance. At Lindero in Argentina, we had a strong quarter, achieving our highest gold production this year. Gold output reached 24,417 ounces, a 4% rise from 23,550 ounces in the second quarter, driven by a 5% increase in gold grade and effective inventory recovery from the leach pad. We placed 1.7 million tonnes of ore on the leach pad at an average head grade of 0.60 grams per tonne containing about 32,775 ounces of gold. With 1.5 million tonnes of ore mined and a favorable strip ratio of 1.9:1, we are well aligned with our mining plan. Processing performance was robust with continued optimization of the crushing circuit achieving an average throughput of 1,061 tonnes per hour, about 8% above the 2024 average, demonstrating progress in our operational efficiency initiatives. However, on September 27, we experienced an unexpected shutdown of the primary crusher due to mechanical issues involving high amperage and overheating of the pitman shaft, specifically traced to the premature wear of the primary wear parts such as the bushings and bearings. Replacement parts have been secured and corrective actions are underway to resolve the structural misalignment. We anticipate the crusher will be fully operational by mid-November. Meanwhile, we have implemented effective mitigation strategies such as using a portable jaw crusher and direct Run-of-Mine ore screening to ensure uninterrupted operations. Consequently, we do not foresee any impact on our annual production target. Regarding costs, the cash cost in Q3 was $1,117 per ounce of gold compared to $1,148 per ounce in Q2, marking a 3% improvement due to…

Jorge Durant

Analyst

Thank you. I'll now hand the call over to Luis, our CFO, who will review financial results.

Luis Durant

Analyst

Thank you. So we have reported net income attributable to Fortuna of $123.6 million or $0.40 per share. This result includes a $70 million noncash impairment reversal at the Lindero mine, which includes $17 million of low-grade stockpiles. After adjusting for noncash nonrecurring items, attributable net income was $51 million or $0.17 per share. This represents a strong 56% increase year-over-year and a 14% sequential increase over Q2. The growth was driven mainly by higher metal prices. The cash cost per ounce for the quarter was $942, broadly aligned with the prior quarter and slightly above Q3 of 2024 as a result of higher mine stripping ratios at Lindero and Séguéla after our mine plans. We have reported 2 nonoperational items impacting our results this quarter. The effect of our stock-based compensation of the increase in our share base during the period, representing a one-time increase to share-based expense of $6.3 million and a foreign exchange loss of $7.4 million. The foreign exchange loss was mostly attributable to our Lindero operations in Argentina as the peso experienced a sharp 14% devaluation in Q3. For the first 9 months of the year, our FX loss related to the Argentinian operations amounts to $10 million, of which over half is related to the accumulation of local currency cash balances. However, I want to emphasize that we implemented structures to preserve the value of these funds and the FX loss on local cash balances for the full year is fully offset in our income statement through the interest income, investment gains and derivative line items. We were able to restart repatriation in the month of July from Argentina, and under current conditions, we expect to maintain local cash balances at a minimum. In Q3, a total of $62 million were repatriated, net of…

Jorge Durant

Analyst

We would now like to open the call to questions. Paul, please go ahead.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And the first question today is coming from Mohamed Sidibe from National Bank.

Mohamed Sidibe

Analyst

Maybe just starting with your strong balance sheet, strong free cash flow that you're printing and the elevated gold and silver prices. How are you thinking about your capital allocation priorities. I know you have Diamba coming up. But specifically as it relates to capital return to shareholders as you're looking into next year.

Jorge Durant

Analyst

As you pointed out, we have a pipeline of near-term growth. So that is the first priority we have with respect to capital allocation. We expect we'll be making a construction decision on Diamba Sud next year in the first half of the year. We're advancing early works that are trying to derisk the time line and shorten the time line also for first gold at Diamba by advancing these early works. We are also scoping right now the potential to expand our Séguéla process infrastructure. As you recall, Séguéla was originally designed at 1.25 million tonnes per annum. We're currently running the plant at 1.75 million tonnes per annum, and we're currently doing scoping -- starting scoping work to expand it to the range of 2.2 million, 2.3 million tonnes per annum. Additional to that, as you have seen, we're expanding exploration work across the 2 regions, LatAm and West Africa. We just expanded into Guinea through a JV with DeSoto. We are expanding our exploration in Argentina. We're currently drilling in Mexico. We're currently drilling in Peru. So that is our first priority and where we believe we can add most value right now. Second, we have our share buyback program in place. We were quite active with the share buyback program at the beginning of the year, end of last year. We repurchased approximately $30 million worth of stock. The share buyback program remains in place, and today is our preferred way to return to -- capital to shareholders. And we have made a pause in the last 2 quarters with the share buyback program, but we could be active in the market again anytime.

Mohamed Sidibe

Analyst

Great. And then maybe if I could shift to operations. So Lindero, the unexpected shutdown and mindful that this has no impact on your annual production target, given the mitigation measures. But how should we think about this for cost into Q4? Should we -- could we see any potential impacts on that front? And any color would be appreciated there.

Jorge Durant

Analyst

Yes. I'll let Cesar address the question.

Cesar Velasco

Analyst

Sure. Well, in particular to cost, we have been able to compensate some of those cost in specifically with regards to the portable rental jaw crusher. So we're offsetting that cost with other noncritical initiatives that we had in Lindero. So we don't expect our cost to be significantly impacted in Q4. That should address.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] There were no other questions from the lines at this time. I will now hand the call back to Carlos Baca for closing remarks.

Carlos Baca

Analyst

Thank you, Paul. If there are no further questions, I'd like to thank everyone for joining us today. We appreciate your continued support and interest in Fortuna Mining. Have a great day.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.