Alamos Gold Investor Day 2026 transcript
Scott Parsons (SVP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Alamos Gold): Good morning, and welcome, everybody, to Alamos Gold's 2026 Investor Day. My name is Scott Parsons. I'm the Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and Investor Relations, and I'm going to be providing a brief overview of the schedule this morning. There we go. We are gonna be making some forward-looking statements throughout this presentation, so please do review our cautionary notes. I'll start with a brief introduction to our presenters today. From our leadership team here in Toronto, we have John McCluskey, our President and CEO, Greg Fisher, Chief Financial Officer, Chris Bostwick, Senior VP of Technical Services, Luc Guimond, our Chief Operating Officer, John Fitzgerald, our SVP of Projects, Khalid Elhaj, our VP of Business Development and Investor Relations, and Scott R.G. Parsons, our Vice President of Exploration.
Scott Parsons (SVP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Alamos Gold): From the Island Gold District, we have Austin Hemphill, the general manager of the district, Nathan Bourgeault, technical services manager, and Tyler Poulin, geology superintendent. For those of you here in person, we do have some core on display from the Island Gold District. Some of the recent drill results we've put out over the past week and the past year, really high-grade intercepts from within the main structure, as well as that spectacular new hole we released earlier this week from the Cline-Pick target. That is an upside opportunity beyond the expansion study that we're gonna be outlining today, but fundamentally, it's that pace of exploration success, which is driving the larger expansion of the district. So please take the time to speak with Tyler and Scott.
Scott Parsons (SVP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Alamos Gold): They've been leading that pace of exploration success across the Island Gold District. They'll provide some insights into what we've found to date and why we see excellent potential for that growth to continue. I'll provide a brief overview of the agenda today. In a few minutes, I'm gonna turn it over to John to provide a more formal introduction. That's gonna be followed by Greg, who's gonna provide a more detailed review of our updated three-year guidance. Luc's gonna provide detail on the three-year outlook for each of our operating mines, as well as an update on the Lynn Lake project, which we included in our guidance release this morning. We are gonna stop, pause for a Q&A segment at that point.
Scott Parsons (SVP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Alamos Gold): We are covering a lot of material today, so I'd, we'd ask that you just pause your questions until the designated Q&A segments. For those of you on the webcast, you can submit your questions through the Q&A button. After that, we'll take a short break and then move on to a more detailed review of the expansion study, and that's gonna be led by Luke, Chris, Austin, and Greg will review the economics. Following that, Scott's gonna provide a more detailed review on our global exploration activities. We've had a number of releases out over the past couple of weeks, so he's gonna tie that all together in terms of the potential we see across our asset base.
Scott Parsons (SVP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Alamos Gold): Obviously, Island's been a big success story from an exploration standpoint, but there's a lot of success going across the rest of our portfolio. And with that, I'll turn it over to John to provide a more formal introduction.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): Thank you, Scott. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our Investor Day. You can see from the thick size of that deck on your table there, that there is an awful lot to cover today. I just want to give credit to Scott and Khalid and the IR team for pulling that together. It was a huge amount of work and, of course, the amount of information in there. We have a really amazing management team and, you know, from our technical side, financial side, and there's been a big effort to pull this presentation together. They've done an exceptional job. This work has been going on for more than a year.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): So, really, we started to contemplate what you're seeing in front of you now, not long after the acquisition of Richmont Mines and bringing in Magino. You know, when the deal was first done, the focus really was on all the synergies, because there was nearly $500 million in synergies that we were able to derive from that acquisition. But we really saw the opportunity and the optionality that that merger gave us. And effectively, with Magino coming in, along came all the permits that they'd obtained to go to 35,000 tons per day of production. They had permitted tailings capacity of 150 million tons. This gave the district amazing optionality, and now we weren't just talking about this low-grade, open-pit operation.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): Now, we were talking about the low-grade, open-pit operation, along with this very large, high-grade operation. The opportunity was to integrate the two and create something more and something better than each of the operations would have been on their own. That is the background to today's presentation. Most of you have seen these slides and know these slides. You know, we've been talking for some time about a pathway to 1 million ounces a year. Well, now we're gonna lay that pathway out in front of you, and we're gonna show you the details and all the backup work that goes into it. All the mine plans have been done. It's...
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): These are the new numbers that are gonna find their way into to all the research reports, and ultimately, I think, will really help drive value for the stock. In addition to the fact that we're growing our production, we're not doing it at the expense of costs. We're effectively, we'll be growing our production and reducing our costs.... We've got long life assets. I think that's another very important thing. We're not just ramping up production and rapidly depleting our resources, which I think all of you have seen in the past. And if anything, these resources are going to continue to grow with future exploration success. This is a bit of a scorecard here. You know, we've had a great track record of value creation for many years.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): You know, I look back a lot further than most of you in the room. When I started it, the company had a $1 million market cap. It was a pup. It was a little penny stock with an option to purchase our first project. That was it. So we've gone from under that, under $1 million, and here we are now, over $20 billion. Who would have thought? Gold was $264 an ounce at that point in time. It moves that much in a day right now, so it's very, very different times for sure. We are going to continue with this process of value creation, and we've done it in two ways. We've done it with M&A, and we've done it with the drill bit.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): A lot of focus always happens when an M&A transaction is done, and that tends to capture the market's imagination. The day-to-day work, the year after year work that we put in on the exploration front doesn't typically get as much as much market attention. But we've added 8 million ounces just in the last 6 years or so, at an average finding cost of roughly $31 an ounce, and that's an exceptional result. We're going to continue with that. You know, we have the biggest exploration budget we've ever had, and Scott will talk more to that later. Growing free cash flow, Greg will be focusing on this. At...
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): If you assume a $4,500 gold price, by 2028, when the expansion's done, we're looking forward to something like $1.3 billion in free cash flow. I mean, that's, that, that to me is the whole point. You know, people are asking, you know, "Well, you know, where are you going? What are you, what are you doing as a company?" This is probably the most common question that comes up in investor presentations. Well, here it is. You know, we're, we're gonna be generating phenomenal cash flow that's gonna allow us to fill those three buckets we always talk about. We always talk about returns to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. We always talk about strengthening our balance sheet so we can be opportunistic and ready for the next move.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): We talk about the investment and capital that it takes in order to make our company better. So, you know, we have a track record of shareholder returns. We've paid back $450 million in dividends and share buybacks. Our share price has been a phenomenal performer against any index that you can measure. You know, when you look at this sort of template that we have, we sort of set the bar when we acquired Mulatos. It was a $10 billion deal, and true to form, the market had considered that I'd overpaid for the asset at the time. Remember, gold was under $300. Well, look what it's done.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): It's generated nearly $1 billion in free cash flow, and it still has a valuation of $1.5 billion. It's just been a phenomenal asset. It's basically funded everything else that we did. We pivoted to Canada in the mid-tens, you know, 2015, and we effectively acquired assets that weren't exactly the big assets on the radar. I remember John Ing going on BNN and saying our acquisition of Young-Davidson was just, you know, we're just picking up a piece of garbage at the bottom of the market. That was more or less his attitude. Well, it's gone on to generate phenomenal returns for us, and it continues to grow.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): We've got a similar reserve today as when we acquired it, and I think it's gonna get better yet. Again, Scott will talk to some of the success we're having delineating high grade in the hanging wall and footwall. Similarly with Lynn Lake, you know, we picked that up at the very bottom of the market, January 2016. I think gold actually went under $1,100 an ounce for a few weeks there, and that's when we closed that transaction, and it was about a $25 million deal. Virtually the same quarter, the Coffee Project was acquired by Goldcorp for something like $550 million. Lynn Lake went that way, and the Coffee valuation went the other way.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): So it really is a mark of the vision that this management team has. You know, it's not something we did once, and we got very lucky and now we're capitalizing on that. It's something that we repeatedly do, and I think if you're gonna see us do M&A in the future, again, it's gonna be very focused on value creation. So, you know, without belaboring the point, this more or less just shows a bar chart of how effectively we've grown reserves over time. We're now sitting at just over 16 million ounces. Our grade has continued to climb. We've basically gone from being a low-grade heap leach operator in Mexico.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): Over time, we've gravitated to underground mining and higher grades, and of course, you've been watching the drill results come out over the last week or two as we've been publishing and updating, getting ready for the disclosure that we wanted to make at this, at this conference. Grades are continuing to climb, reserves are continuing to grow, and with a $97 million budget, I think we're gonna have continued success. This is just looking at it on a per share basis.... Often, you know, companies talk about growth and value creation in the aggregate, but on per share metrics, you can see we've effectively created value right across the board on all per share metrics.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): You know, the way we're gonna get to production is up to 1 million ounces of production is, you know, it's not pie in the sky. You know, we're permitted to get there. You know, there's some ancillary permits we need as we go through these expansions, but the main permits for throughput and environmental permits and tailings permits, the real tough ones, you know, we have those in hand. And you know, we're basically fully funded. We fund all the growth that we're talking about here through our own cash flow generation. What we're talking about is real development that we can control. It's not predicated on some acquisition or, you know, some other major milestone that we have to achieve.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): This is a relatively new slide because we often talk about the fact that we're a fast-growing company. Well, here's how we look relative to our peers in terms of growth, in terms of where we'll be with respect to costs. You know, our costs are fairly low now. They're gonna be going lower. They're gonna be at the very low end of the first quartile. Growth in reserves, you can see that we've got one of the longest life reserve profiles in the sector. And just the size of the reserve, it's really an amazing job that we've done in growing that over the last few years.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): And part of the reason why we did it, I remember when the focus of the market was just on cash flow, cash flow. All the market wanted to see was free cash flow, and we still allocated way more money than than any investor would have thought wise into exploration, because ultimately we knew that's the lifeblood of the, of the company, and it has really paid off well. And now, of course, look what's happened to the gold price, you know, as it's moved from $1,600, when I recall having a number of those conversations with investors, you know, today at $4,500, sitting on 16 million ounces of reserves, that's value. And we're gonna have a great set of presenters today. Everybody has... We did a big walk-through yesterday. I was pretty impressed.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): Some of you have already been looking at the numbers as with the published press release. I look forward to sitting with you and, and, and listening to what we're gonna do today. I'll come back later and just make some closing remarks, but at this point, I'm gonna turn it over to Greg Fisher, and he'll go over some of the financial metrics. Thank you.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): Thank you, John. So I will take us through the three-year guidance. We put that release out this morning. But before we get into the three-year guidance, just a quick recap of 2025. So we finished 2025, the fourth quarter, with 142,000 ounces of production. That was in line with what we produced in the third quarter, and that brought our full year production to 545,000 ounces. That was lower than what we expected. We've been pretty transparent about that.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): We had some challenges at the operations, and Luc is gonna touch on that as part of his presentation, really focusing on some of the kind of things we're doing in the short term and the long term to get that back on track. But despite those challenges, we did have a record financial year. I look at free cash flow always as a key metric, as the CFO, and we, despite the fact that we invested heavily in growing the business, we continued to invest in exploration, spent $75 million there. We're growing the business through our phase three expansion. We still generated $350 million in free cash flow, and that's an important metric for us as we wanna grow the business.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): We also want to ensure that we're continuing to generate that strong free cash flow. That led to a very strong cash position of over $600 million at the end of the year, and net cash of over $400 million. The other piece is we were very focused on capital allocation in the fourth quarter. As you know, we were going through an arbitration in Turkey. We were able to settle that and sell the asset, and we thought that was a very good outcome for $470 million. We received the first amount of the proceeds of $160 million upfront in October, and we immediately put that money to work by using the share buyback. We bought back over 1 million shares, $30 million worth.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): In addition, we paid down some of the debt. That's debt that we inherited as part of the Argonaut acquisition. So we paid that down to $200 million, and then in addition, we had legacy hedges as part of that acquisition. Those were hedges that were at an $1,800 gold price scenario that we're gonna set to to mature in 2026. We bought out the first 6 months of that, and we did that at a... When, when we saw that gold price dip down to about 4,040, 4,050, we went in and we stepped in and bought back 50,000 ounces of that. So that, that's looking pretty good at this, the current gold price of $5,000.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): So that, that's put us in a position to, to continue to generate strong free cash flow and have that balance sheet to execute on the growth that, that John spoke of. So looking at 2026, in more detail, production is expected to be between 570,000 and 650,000 ounces. So that's a 12% increase from what we did in 2025 of 545,000 ounces. It is lower than what we had expected for 2026 when we released our three-year guidance last year. Really, the drivers of that are lower grades at Young-Davidson, and Luke will touch on that as part of the sequencing that we're going through.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): And then more conservative ramp-up of the Island underground as we look to ramp up to 2,400 tons per day. But still generating over 600,000 ounces a year at an all-in sustaining cost of about $1,550 per ounce. That's in line with what we are producing or what we produced at in 2025, but higher than where we expected to be. And given the change there, we'll have a slide that will walk us through what are the key drivers of that all-in sustaining cost increase. 2026 is gonna be a heavy capital year for us. I mean, we are growing the business. We want to get to that million-ounce platform over the next number of years, so we're investing about $900 million in capital.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): It includes the you know, completing the phase three expansion, which has been ongoing for a number of years at Island Gold. It's embarking on this, Island Gold expansion to 20,000 tons per day, which we're gonna spend a lot of time talking about today. It's resuming construction at Lynn Lake, in the spring, and then finally, the PDA deposit and building that in Mexico. And then just looking at, a little bit more granular into 2026, it is a second half-weighted, production profile, and that makes sense. We're, we're ramping up underground mining rates at Island Gold from, call it, 1,400 tons per day in the first quarter to closer to an exit rate of 2,000 tons per day, as we look to support that ramp up to...
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): As we transition from ramp mining to bringing ore up the shaft. As a result, our production in the first half is gonna be about 290,000 ounces, and production in the second half of the midpoint is gonna be about 320,000 ounces, with our first quarter being the lowest production quarter of the year. From a cost perspective, as we see that ramp up of underground at Island Gold, that is our lowest cost production that we have across the company.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): That's gonna bring down our cost profile from about $1,675 per ounce in the first half of the year to $1,450 in the second half of the year, and we're gonna see a further decline into 2027 and 2028, which I'm gonna outline on a future slide. From a capital perspective, a little bit more capital in the first half of the year as we continue through the phase three expansion, but that's gonna wind down in the second half of the year as we bring that project to a completion. And what this means is higher production, lower costs, lower capital in the second half. We're gonna generate significantly more free cash flow in the second half of the year, and even more so as we move into 2027 and 2028.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): So we did want to spend a little bit of time kind of reconciling or showing how we've moved from our all-in sustaining cost guidance for 2026. We had previously said all-in sustaining cost guidance of about $1,200 per ounce for 2026. We're now at $1,550 per ounce. There's a couple of very obvious things. The first would be the gold price is quite a bit higher. That has a royalty impact on the business. The second would be inflation. We're very clear in our three-year guidance that the future years do not include the impact of inflation. In the mining industry, it's been pretty persistent. We've seen inflation of about 5% across the board.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): We operate in Canada, where there's competition for labor, and there's costs associated with that. So we're seeing about a $60 per ounce impact there. The other component is around labor and contractors. This isn't the inflationary piece. This is, we've recognized in order to hit ultimately 2,400 tons per day, but then to move beyond to 3,000 tons per day, we need to ramp up in terms of people, and we're getting ahead of that. We wanna make sure that we're very successful in this ramp-up, so we're hiring the headcount now. We're incurring the cost from an All-in Sustaining Cost perspective, but we're gonna see dividends down the road by doing that. And that's a little bit on the contractor side as well.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): So that's the other main piece with respect to the increase on our all-in sustaining costs. But ultimately, we're still a $1,550, you know, all-in sustaining cost for 2026, which is first quartile, but as we move into 2027 and 2028, we're gonna start to see that decline. From a capital perspective, pretty straightforward in what's driving our capital increase from our previous guidance. We had previously guided to about $650 million in capital for 2026. We're now closer to $900 million. The majority of that increase relates to the fact that we're moving forward with this high-return Island Gold District expansion to 20,000 tons per day. That would be mill construction, as well as accelerating development to reach those higher mining rates.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): As we're gonna point out throughout this presentation, this is a very high-return project that makes sense to, to move forward with every, every day of the week. So looking at the next two years beyond 2026, I think it's, it's pretty important and, and pretty, clear that we're increasing our production in a stairstep fashion, and we're decreasing our costs in a stairstep fashion. So gold production in 2027 is gonna increase to a range of between 650,000 and 730,000 ounces, and, and that's given the ramp-up of, mining rates at Island Gold as we bring the shaft online and we move to, 2,400 tons per day throughout 2027.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): We're gonna continue to ramp that up through 2028 as we move toward the higher throughput, ultimate throughput of 3,000 tons per day, and that's gonna bring our production in 2028 up to a range of between 755-835 thousand ounces. The benefit of bringing on all this, low cost, high grade production from the underground is it's gonna have a pretty significant impact on our costs. We'll see our costs moving from the $1,550 mark that we expect in 2026, down to about $1,375 in 2027, and then moving even further down to about $1,250 in 2028. That's also aided by the fact that we'll be bringing on PDA production in the second half of 2027, which is also lower cost.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): From a capital perspective, in 2027, it will look very much the same from a gross number as as our 2026 capital. We'll see the the Phase 3 expansion coming off, but we're also gonna be ramping up Lynn Lake to kind of peak construction periods in 2027 and 2028. So we'll be around that $850 million of capital in 2027. But as we move into 2028, we'll have the drop off of capital at PDA, the drop off of capital at this this further Island Gold expansion will be down around $650 million, and then an even more profound drop into 2029 as the Lynn Lake project comes to completion in the first half of 2029.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): So looking at the three-year guidance in tabular form, I mean, this speaks to the stairstep increases. We're basically going from a 600,000 ounce producer in 2026, to a 700,000 ounce producer in 2027, to an 800,000 ounce producer in 2028. And then by bringing on Lynn Lake in the first half of 2029, that adds about 200,000 ounces a year of production. So that's where we get to that 1 million ounces of annualized production before the end of this decade. And that's something that we can sustain for a long period of time, because if you look at the mine lives of each of our operations, they're all well over 10 years, so this is something that's sustainable well into the future.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): From a cost perspective, as we bring in that higher grade production, we're gonna decrease our costs. With Lynn Lake coming on, Lynn Lake has a cost profile below $1,250 an ounce. That will bring down our cost profile even further beyond $1,250 as we move into the 2030s. As I said, cash flow is quite important to the CFO, making sure that we're generating the cash flow that we need to drive this growth, and we're doing more than that. The growth that we're spending on is self-funded from the operations, but at the same time, it's pretty important to us, as I said, that we're generating that free cash flow. So if you look at 2025, $350 million in free cash flow.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): As we move into 2026 at a $4,500 gold price, we'll be generating close to $600 million in free cash flow, given the increase in production. The further increase in production into 2028 and decrease in cost and capital is gonna drive our free cash flow to north of $1.3 billion, and that's all after tax. And then in the long run, as we move to the 1 million ounce producer, we're gonna sustain free cash flow of closer to $2 billion after tax, and that's again something that we can sustain for a number of years moving forward. Just a last thought on capital allocation. John touched on this in terms of our strategy or our approach to capital allocation. It is a very simple approach.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): We take the Free Cash Flow that we generate, and we redistribute it into three kind of main buckets, and we try to do that evenly over a long period of time. The three buckets would be reinvesting in our high return growth projects, it would be strengthening our balance sheet, and it would be returning capital to our shareholders. Over the last couple of years and moving forward, we're very focused on that first bucket. As I said, we have four different development projects on the go, as well as investing heavily in exploration.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): We have a budget of $100 million, or close to $100 million in 2026, which Scott is gonna speak to, but this is capital that we think is driving the best returns for the business right now by growing to that 1 million ounces, and that's what we're gonna continue to focus on over the next couple of years. But it doesn't mean that we forget about the next two buckets. Strengthening the balance sheet is obviously important to put us in a strong position. We've done that all through the last couple of years, especially in Q4, as I talked about, through growing our cash position, retiring some of the debt, repurchasing some of those hedges that were at a lower gold price.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): That's improved our net cash position, and we have a lot of liquidity to be able to grow this business. And then, obviously, we wanna focus on returning capital to shareholders. As we see that cash flow grow, it's gonna really support the ability to increase our shareholder returns. This is something we've been focused on since inception, since we were a single asset producer back in 2010. That's when we put our dividend policy in. We've paid a dividend every year for the last 16 years, but last year alone, we returned $80 million to shareholders in the form of both share buybacks and that dividend.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): We think as we move forward, we'll be in a position to grow those shareholder returns through a sustainably higher dividend, as well as being more active on that share buyback. With that, I will pass it over to our COO, Luc Guimond, to walk through some of the assets in a bit more detail.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Thanks, Greg. So I'll provide a bit of an outlook, I guess, on Q4 results, as well as our outlook over the next couple of years, and some of the improvements we're actually looking to implement over the course of 2026 to deliver on our business plans. So we'll start with Island. Island Gold District, we produced 60,000 ounces of gold in Q4. We had some impact with regards to mining rates in the quarter. Weather conditions were actually quite extreme through the December period, late December, you know, affecting supply chain. Road closures, getting people into the site and out of the site, had some effect on the rates through the quarter.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): We also had a seismic event in October, so we really focused on a lot of rehabilitation through the November, December period to get the mine back on track, certainly where we're heading with regards to our growth profile moving forward, and we did achieve that through the November-December period. With regards to milling, we had an unscheduled liner change. We were actually looking to do that liner change in January. It ended up getting moved up into December with the Magino Mill, which affected our milling rates in the quarter. And as well, the road closure aspect of what happened in late December also had some impact. We're relying on CNG, compressed natural gas, for our generation there, for power for the Magino complex.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): So obviously, with the road closures that occurred, we were not able to actually get supply into the operation to keep the mill running. Moving forward, improvement initiatives for 2026, there's a couple of things that we've got on the go. Certainly, as I mentioned, we've completed the rehabilitation work with regards to the majority of the rehabilitation work required from that seismic event we had in October. We kind of focused on that through the November, December period. So moving forward into the new year, we're kind of back on track with regards to mining rates. We continue to look at restructuring the maintenance and mill management of the Magino site as well.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Greg kind of touched on that a bit with regards to the, you know, the expansion that we're gonna be doing, and then the amount of people that we're gonna need to be able to run the business there. We're looking to actually get ahead of that and start bringing more people in to be able to manage more effectively, certainly from a senior level oversight with regards to the maintenance and the mill complex. We're continuing to work with a third-party specialist. We've been doing that since the fall. They've been helping us working on operational improvements, as well as best practices on the maintenance front, so we continue with that group.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): As I mentioned on the Magino side, with regards to CNG, that'll be a significant game changer for us when we're able to get to grid power. We're expected to do that by the end of this year. So we're, you know, we're really looking forward to getting that online. It'll be much lower cost for us to be able to operate, as well as much more reliability with regards to operating the plant. And we're also looking to add a supplementary crusher feed to increase our capacity at the Magino Mill, and I'll touch on that a bit as well. As far as the Magino milling rates for the district, we averaged 8,600 tons per day through the quarter.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Excluding the weather issues that we had there in late December, we would have averaged over 9,000 tons a day. So we've continued to see an improvement quarter-over-quarter, certainly since we've acquired that mill complex. I touched on some of the restructuring we're doing with the mill management. We're actually expecting to see more consistent throughput through that plant, starting in Q2. We do have a liner change scheduled in May, both for the SAG mill and ball mill. But excluding that, we're looking to be running at 10,000 tons per day more consistently on a month-to-month basis.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): And as a function, obviously, of the ramp-up, that's gonna be occurring over at Island, we're continuing to run the Island mill complex, as well as the Magino complex, over the course of 2026 and 2027 until the expansion's completed. All of the additional ore that's not fed through the Island mill will also obviously get processed over at the Magino Mill to make sure that we get all of that high grade processed through the course of the business plan through the year. So a bit of a three-dimensional sketch here, looking at the existing mill complex. So you can see the primary crusher, secondary crusher. This is the secondary feed that I'm talking about. We're looking to add actually a hopper conveyor feed arrangement past the cone crusher.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): So this is additional crushed material that can get also inputted into the into the mill complex to make sure that we maintain that mill feed of running that complex at 10,000 tons per day. This is something that will get implemented in short order. We're looking to actually have this up and running by by mid-February. Looking at the three-year outlook for Island, it's really about, you know, declining costs, certainly, and growing production. If you, if you look at where we were in 2025, we did about 250,000 ounces of production.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): We're looking to increase that by about 100% come 2028, and this is really the ramp-up over the next couple of years as we continue to mine more underground high-grade ore from Island, and eventually hitting that 3,000 ton per day metric. We've got a long reserve life. It's gonna generate strong free cash flow. The cash flow generated over the course of 2025 paid for all of the expansion that we're currently undertaking at Island right now. It made in excess of $200 million over the course of 2025, and we expect to obviously continue to with that strong free cash flow and even higher over the long term, but certainly funding our expansion of what we're doing over the next couple of years.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Scott will touch on the exploration package, so I won't highlight too much on that, but there is some significant exploration upside within that district for other targets, which really supports that higher grade, the higher mill complex, the milling rates of 20,000 tons per day that we're talking about over the long term. Moving into Young-Davidson, we produced 41,000 ounces of gold for the quarter, also affected by weather conditions, late December. We had some shutdowns with the roads as well, which affected supply chain and labor being able to get into the site. We also had a temporary downtime with one of our ore pass systems. We currently run with three ore passes in the lower system.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): We're looking to actually bring a fourth one online, but we had to do some repairs to one of the passes, which affected some muck movement availability through the quarter as a result. And we also had a small paste plug failure in one of our stopes, which also affected availability of stopes being online in the quarter to be able to generate more ounces. Moving forward, a couple of key focuses for us. One is increasing our development rates with contractor support.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): So we're looking to step up a bit more on the development side of things, develop our footwalls a bit more on the east and west extremities of the ore body, so that we can have a bit more flexibility with regards to mining rates and be consistent on that 8,000 ton per day delivery moving forward. I mentioned the new ore pass that's gonna be coming online in Q1. And the other thing that we've been looking at is really critical spares across the organization, not just focused with Young-Davidson, but long lead items, making sure that we have those in our supply chain and have them as critical spares so that we can, you know, certainly keep the plants running and benefit from this high gold price environment that we're in.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Regarding the ore pass system that I touched on, so you can see in yellow here in the long section, general long section of Young-Davidson. The yellow lines that you see in here are the ore pass systems that are currently in place. The light blue is the fourth one that we're looking to bring online. So this is just normal function, normal course of business as we look to expand our mining horizons east and west, looking to centralize ore pass systems within those mining fronts as well, to improve the overall efficiency of getting ore down to the 925 grizzly station through our crushing plant and obviously hoisted.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): The one issue that we had with the pass system is, if you look at the, you know, the center ore pass systems with that V shape in it, the bottom east side of that V system actually had a headwall, some headwall damage that we had to correct and rehabilitate, which we will be completing early this quarter. Looking at the three-year outlook, pretty consistent production from Young-Davidson over the next three years, averaging about 165,000 ounces a year. Really grade driven. We kinda touched on this. It's, you know, it's really sequence driven with regards to the production. So the production profile based on that sequence, the grades are what we have in front of us.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): We do expect better grades as we move forward come 2029, 2030, but over the next 3 years, pretty consistent. Still got a long reserve life of over 14 years, so it will continue to generate strong free cash flow for us. We generated over $200 million in 2025, and significant exploration upside as well, that Scott will touch on, on his slide deck. Upside potential for Young-Davidson, a few things there. One is mill expansion. I mean, we're permitted to 12,000 tons per day, so we have an opportunity there to actually look at running at a higher throughput through that complex that's already permitted. We've been looking at potentially bringing it up to 10,000 tons per day. That's...
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): There's a modest expansion required of probably about $40-$50 million to be able to do that. It wouldn't necessarily be higher mining rates from Young-Davidson underground. It would be from supplemental feed sources within the region, likely open pit sources. One is Golden Arrow. It's about 90 km from Young-Davidson currently. It's an acquisition we made a few years ago, something simply that we could bring online and provide additional mill feed into the mill complex. We've got some other local, closer sources, the YD Open Pit, potentially. This is part of the original pit mining that we did back in, you know, 2014, 2015. There was a phase one, phase two that we mined. There's also a potential there for a phase three.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Otis Lake, which is another target that Scott will touch on with regards to some of the regional exploration targets. And we do... You know, just Young-Davidson alone, we do have some significant exploration upside, add depth, east and west, and Scott will also touch on that with regards to his slide deck. Just to touch on a little bit on the Young-Davidson, this is the, the potential high grade, hanging wall zone that we've been talking about for a while. It's sitting in the sediments. Really, what I wanna just depict here is that, you know, you can see that's a cross-section here you're looking at. So you can see the infrastructure as far as the Young-Davidson. So we're vertically accessed with our ramp system. We're vertically accessed with our shaft system.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): The proximity of this zone, based on what we know at this point, could be anywhere from 10 to 300 meters from our existing infrastructure laterally. So it's quite close, quite easy to be able to bring online. We just need to understand it better from a point of view of certainly strike length, vertical extent, and then look to bring it into a mine plan. Moving over to Mulatos, the Mulatos district itself. Mulatos had a good year. It generated about 142,000 ounces from the district, so we continued residual leaching from our historical Mulatos leach pad. That continued to perform quite well, as well as La Yaqui Grande. So we're really looking for a pretty stable outlook here over the next three years.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): You can see in 2027, production dips a bit, but that's when we bring PDA online. So mid-2027, we're looking to actually start production from PDA, and we'll continue with residual leaching over the course of 2027 with La Yaqui as well. We've got a 9-year mineral reserve life. I think the big, you know, the big caveat here, certainly moving forward with regards to Mulatos, is the fact that we're building a sulfide mill, and it's gonna open up another lot of opportunities for us with regards to exploration and other sources that Scott will touch on in his exploration section, to be able to bring other sulfide feeds into that mill complex for the long term, well beyond the 9-year reserve life that we currently have with PDA.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Looking at PDA, so this is a bar graph showing the production profile. You can see starting in 2027, ending in 2035. The first four years of production are gonna average about 127,000 ounces, all in sustaining costs of about $1,000 an ounce. It's very low capital intensity, about $165 million. Most of that will be spent in the course of 2026.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): But to the point I just raised with regards to the back end of this production profile, again, just looking at PDA, you can see the production profile drops off, but, you know, we're pretty confident with some of the other exploration targets that we have at Halcon and Cerro Pelon, that our sulfide deposits will be able to actually bring those into the mix and sustain a higher rate of production there for the longer term. Bit of a three-dimensional view of what we're looking to build with regards to PDA. So you can see it's fully permitted. First off, we did receive our permit in January. So that's positive, full speed ahead.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): As I mentioned, the capital investment is primarily in 2026, so we're looking to spend about $140 million this year, of the $165 million. So we did spend a little bit in 2025, and the remaining will be in 2027. Easy access, so it's coming out of the Mulatos pit, at one of the bench elevations. We'll be driving two portals into the underground, so you can see a picture of it on the left there. With regards to the deposits themselves, PDA 1 and PDA 2. So it'll be ramp access production, hauled out of the mine, and then trucked over to the, to the mill itself.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Mining method will be a mixture of primarily drift and fill, but there'll be some long hole opportunities as well within the mining methods that we'll utilize there. Crushing and processing. So it's three-stage crushing. The crushing plant is actually our existing crushing plant that we had at Cerro Pelon, so we've sent it out, had it refurbished, and then we'll reinstall it. And it'll be single-stage grinding, which will be one primary ball mill to handle the 2,000 ton per day processing rate that we're looking to design there. It'll be a float con that we generate. So we'll market the float con off-site. So on that basis, there's no cyanide usage at the plant itself and no tailings storage.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): It'll be a dry stack product that will actually store, based on the, on the milling process. Schedule, timeline to production. You can see 2025, 2026, and 2027. So Q2 2027 is when we expect to be fully commissioned and ramping up with regards to the production from PDA. The heavy lifting, really, over the course of 2026 will occur with regards to the mill complex processing plant. Well-advanced foundations, concrete work, you know, structural steel. It's obviously very simple builds in Mexico relative to certainly, building anything in Canada.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Nothing has to be enclosed, so it's quite cheap to build, and we've undertaken a number of these projects over the years, actually, with regards to, you know, certainly other pit operations that we've brought online and developed some crushing and stacking plants with regards to those projects. So we've got a good team in Mexico that are very accustomed to building these smaller scale capital projects and bringing them online and on schedule. As far as exploration upside, so in this drawing, it's a plan view of the district. Basically, you can see PDA, the Puerto del Aire, in the middle. I've touched on a couple of the other ones.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Scott will provide a bit more detail on that, but certainly, Cerro Pelon and Halcon are two targets where we've got some, you know, interesting intercepts already. And as I mentioned, they're sulfide deposits, so you know, we expect to be able to bring those online at some point and also feed into that PDA mill complex over the long term. So really, you know, what we've embarked on with regards to the sulfide plant really opens ourselves up from a bigger opportunity with regards to a lot of these targets in the region, and keeping us in the game in Mexico for a lot longer than just the nine-year reserve life that we have with PDA. Moving over to Lynn Lake, looking at projects.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): So this is a snowy day in, in March with the groundbreaking ceremony. It snows like that in July and August, too, in Lynn Lake, but. With regards to the highlights, so we've updated the economics on Lynn Lake. You can see the map there, which is outlined with our land package in orange, the orange border. So we've got about 80 km of strike length, and again, Scott will touch on this quite a bit more with regards to some of the exploration potential. But, you know, we've got a larger mineral reserve, that we've upgraded, and we've included Burnt Timber and Linkwood. So these are a couple of other targets that we had in the region.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): And we've also looked at actually expanding the mill complex from what we had previously communicated now to 9,000 tons per day. It makes sense longer term. You know, we've got a real district here, and we think, you know, obviously bringing it to 9,000 tons per day is a better avenue than what we had previously put out there. It's got a long reserve life of +25 years, and Scott will touch on the basis of us being there much longer than the 25-year reserve life that we currently have. First 10 years of production are gonna average about 186,000 ounces of gold, all-in sustaining cost of about $829 per ounce.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): The remaining initial capital, the remaining capital is about $871 million. The updated capital is about $937 million. That I'll touch on in a bit more detail. Key changes, really, to the 2023 feasibility study. 13% increase in the mill throughput. As I mentioned, we're gonna take it to 9,000 tons a day. We've incorporated a couple more of the satellite deposits. So these satellite deposits will be trucked to the MacLellan Mill complex. The mill will be located at the MacLellan mine itself, and these other satellite deposits will get trucked there within the region. We've also had impact, obviously, with construction-related inflation over the last three years, compared to the study that we put out in 2023. Permitting-wise, we're in pretty good shape.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): There are some amendments that we need to do there. There's a notice of change and notice of alteration, both federally and provincially, but normal course of business, really. And for the most part, you know, what we're building, the footprint has remained, you know, largely unchanged. So a three-dimensional view of the mill itself. So it's a larger mill building. So these are some of the key component changes to the 9,000-ton per day plant that we're building. It's a larger mill building. It's got a SAG ball mill arrangement. It always had a SAG ball mill arrangement, it's just a larger SAG mill, larger ball mill, larger thickener.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): We've also added some additional leach tanks as a result of more tons going through the plant, higher gold content, and more leach capacity required, and we've expanded the CIP and the ADR to be able to accommodate that higher gold content going in as well. So looking at a waterfall chart here with the capital, so you can see on the left, 2023 feasibility study had $632 million. If you look at the orange bar graph, it's $937 million based on the update with the changes that I've talked about.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): The key drivers there, as I mentioned, really are inflation over the last three years, the scope changes associated with the larger mill complex to bring it to 9,000 tons a day, and a longer construction timeline from what was originally estimated with the 2023 feasibility study. That's really what's brought the capital from $632 million to $937 million, based on the updated plans. With regards to the breakdown in expenditures over the next couple of years, we were a bit delayed in 2025. We were looking to get going, but obviously with some of the forest fires that occurred in the province of Manitoba, we were evacuated for a period of time for most of this summer construction season in 2025.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): So, we've had to kind of reset ourselves with regards to the timeline of the schedule and bringing it online. The heavy lifting will occur in 2027, where you'll see that we're looking to spend about $380 million-$410 million. About $290 million-$310 million in 2028, and looking to bring Lynn Lake online into production in 2029. So really, this spring of 2026 is when things will really start to get going with regards to the construction activities at Lynn Lake. Schedule-wise, so as I mentioned, 2026, 2027, 2028 is our construction period. Q2 of 2029 is when we would look to actually have our first gold, gold pour, commission the mill, and bring it online, and add in...
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Add that, sustaining gold production for the long term out of the district into our overall consolidated production profile. And that's about it from my section. I think we'll move into the Q&A.
Scott Parsons (SVP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Alamos Gold): Thanks, Luke. So we'll just ask the rest of the team to come up now and address any of your questions related to the three-year guidance. We will be getting into the expansion study into the afternoon, so if we can keep the focus on the guidance for now, we'll address questions with respect to the study into the latter part of the presentation. And reminder for those of you viewing through the webcast, you can submit questions through the Q&A button. And, Cosmos, if you could please just introduce yourself and mention who you work for, for the benefit of those online.
Cosmos Chiu (Research Analyst, CIBC): Great. Thanks, Scott. It's Cosmos Chiu here, research analyst at CIBC. So just one quick question. I noticed that in the three-year guidance, you increased, you know, compared to your previous guidance, 2026 costs by over $300 an ounce, lower in terms of, the, you know, quantum of increase, for 2027. I think you only increased it when compared to your previous guidance by $200 an ounce. I guess my question is, have you factored in, at least for 2026, some of the issues you had in 2025 rolling into at least the front part of 2026? That's it.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Yeah. Yes, we have, Cosmo. Certainly with our Canadian operations, looking at both Young-Davidson and Island Gold, certainly from a development perspective, what we're doing with regards to our enhanced, you know, dynamic ground support with regards to, you know, managing and mitigating, obviously, seismic activity within those operations. So yes, we have certainly looked at that and factored that into our business plans.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): Yeah, I mean, the other piece, Cosmos, would be that, an example being the Magino Mill. If you saw the tonnage that we've put through, it's more conservative. That impacts the production, but it has a direct impact on the costs side as well. And the more conservative ramp up at Island Gold underground, that has an impact on production, but it also has an impact on costs. So we have factored those things in by being a little bit more conservative on those in terms of the ramp up on each of them, and therefore, have been built into the cost structure.
Bryce Adams (Equity Research Analyst, Desjardins): Good morning, all. Bryce Adams from Desjardins. A quick question on capital allocation. You talked about strengthening the balance sheet and returns to shareholders. Just wondering if you have any targets on that, like strengthening the balance sheet, what does that mean? What position do you want to get the balance sheet in? And when you talk about returns to shareholders, do you have a percentage of residual cash flow that you would like to distribute?
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): So yeah, I mean, John, feel free to jump in as well. From a strengthening balance sheet perspective, I mean, the first thing I want to do is pay down our $200 million of debt. Like, that's something that we as a company over our history have typically had minimal to no debt. It's always created opportunities for us over the years, and that's the position we wanna get back to. So in terms of what we're looking to strengthen the balance sheet, it would be absolutely paying down that debt. On the dividend perspective, John, you feel free to jump in, we don't have set targets based on cash flow.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): At the end of the day, what we wanna do is look at what dividend we can set, and we can sustain that over a period of time. We don't want dividends jumping around. And from a share buyback perspective, we will never set targets to a share buyback. Our view is share buybacks are to be used opportunistically. If we see a dislocation in our share price, we're gonna step in, and we're gonna step in hard to use that. We're never gonna set a target because the mining industry in general and the gold price is so volatile, it doesn't make sense to set targets with respect to share buybacks. For us, it's step in when you need to. John?
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): I think we'd talked about this at one point. Yeah. That's pretty much the policy and for the very reason that we're in a cyclical business, and you get periods of time where, you know, the gold price is in really fine shape, and you're generating really strong cash flows. You get times where, you know, you're the focus is on maybe acquisition, and you're so you're allocating more money, you know, in a weaker market. We've, we have allocated a lot of effort into making acquisitions and then investing in those acquisitions through exploration and expansion. It's a priority for us, but, you know, the last time, you know, we had a really strong dividend yield was in those years from twenty ten through twenty thirteen.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): You know, we had close to a 2% dividend yield. You know, I more or less have a view in mind of the kind of dividend yield I'd like to sustain. It's higher than what it is now. The reason why it's relatively low right now, first of all, the gold price is running like a jackrabbit. It's really hard to, you know, keep up with that in terms of, you know, a dividend policy per se. But you can see that where we're really focused is on building the business and sustaining production levels at very low costs.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): And what that does is, you know, you can assume the gold price is gonna be volatile, but it's not going back to, you know, $1,200 or anything like that. It would be a massive shock if it did. So, you know, if you look forward and assume that you're gonna have higher gold prices in the future, the way we've seemed to have seen gold go, like, over time, it bases, and then it grows from that base. So cyclical, yes, but ever, ever-growing price. I think that, you know, the time is gonna be not that far off, when you can see the capital spend on this growth starts to come down, and you're gonna see our dividend yield rise.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): In the meantime, we can do what we did last year, which was spend almost as much on share buybacks as we did on dividends. And that we can do in a very opportunistic manner, rather than setting yourself at a point where, you know, you're gonna be spending pretty heavily on capital, and you've got this big dividend to sustain. You've got to decide at one point, you know, what kind of company are you? You know, well, you know, we're not Barrick, and we're not Agnico Eagle. We're a growth company. We're, say, what Agnico was 15 years ago, and we're in a very, very strong growth trajectory right now, probably the fastest in the industry.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): And we're not just growing in one aspect, we're growing, as we pointed out earlier, in those three key ways, right? We're growing production, we're growing reserves, and we're investing capital so that we can do this at low cost, low sustainable costs. That gives you the impetus to... That gives you the ability, if you will, to sustain a dividend for the long time, long term.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): Thanks for that. And if I can just ask, one more for Greg, but on the cost, waterfall chart into 2026, I think it was slide 17, one of the biggest categories there was other. What's, what's in the other, and if you were to break that down— Yeah, I mean, there's, there's lots of, little things that go into it. Example would be, G&A is a little bit higher 'cause as support going from a 500,000-ounce-a-year producer to a 1 million-ounce-a-year producer, you need to, to ramp up on the G&A side as well. That's, that's falling into it. And another example would be, we had not envisioned, producing anything from the old Mulatos pit previously. We're now gonna probably produce 10,000 ounces from that pit in, in our budget.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): That's higher cost. I mean, it's residual leaching. It's above $2,000 an ounce. That's gonna drive up your costs on a thing. So we probably could have had 15 different categories on there, but those are all kind of small things that are adding up to that $90 an ounce that we had in that other category. Thank you very much.
Sathish Kasinathan (VP, Bank of America): Yeah. Hi, this is Satish from Bank of America. I have a couple of questions on Island Gold. So currently, you're working with some of the third-party specialists, and you're implementing some of the modifications that they have suggested. Could you maybe give some color on what those modifications are? And have you factored it in into the guidance already, or do you expect that to be implemented, and that could have some upsides as to the costs going forward? That's my first question.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Yeah, I'll address that one. The, the, we're using an outfit that we've used actually in the past. It's the, the outfit's called Jamieson Consulting, so we've... We had them do some continuous improvement for us at Young-Davidson when we were transitioning with the ramp up after we had commissioned the lower mine expansion to just get it to that 8,000 tons per day. So it's an outfit that we're quite familiar with. I mean, what they bring to the table is operational experience of running processing plants, as well as the, you know, best practices around planning and scheduling of maintenance, maintaining critical spares, and understanding the, you know, the specifics of the entire process, and we're really focusing on the crushing and grinding circuits.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): It's not a full-scale, mill review with regards to operational best practices and maintenance best practices. So we engaged them in the fall, and they continue to be with us. This is something that we do on an ongoing basis. I mean, in this case, it's been a third-party review that we're doing it with, but, you know, as part of our normal business of running our operations, there's always continuous improvements to look at trying to, you know, reduce our overall cost profile. So, on that basis, it's something that we'll eventually continue to embark with ourselves as well.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): I think some of the things will also become clear this afternoon, the next phase of the presentation when we start talking about how we're gonna change the whole, the whole flow sheet, if you will, from the and address, particularly on the front end and the back end, things that were, you know, problematic, over the last 18 months, while we were running that mill.
Sathish Kasinathan (VP, Bank of America): Maybe on the, I mean, like, so you, you expect the Magino Mill to be connected to the grid by the end of 2026. Would you be able to, like, quantify what the cost savings could be once, once you're connected to the grid?
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): Yeah, I-
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): Yeah, it's between $4 and $5 a ton is the expected savings by connecting to the grid versus CNG for a year.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): The other big benefit there really is reliable power, like generation. As I mentioned, with regards to, you know, the events that we had this year in the December period with regards to road closures, compressed natural gas needs to get trucked into the facility to be able to keep the lights on, basically. In this case, once we've got grid power... You know, we didn't have interruptions of our other operations with regards to the storms that occurred in December, 'cause they're on grid power, so that'll be another big benefit for us.
Sathish Kasinathan (VP, Bank of America): Thank you.
John Goldsmith (Head of Canadian Equities, Montrusco Bolton): Hi, John Goldsmith, Montrusco Bolton. So just with regards to the guidance, I wonder if you could provide a little bit more color there, specifically for 2027 and 2028, in terms of what you're embedding in terms of the base labor and contractor inflation, the base local market inflation, your expectations for currencies, Canadian dollar and peso, and then lastly, just what your assumption is on gold prices, 'cause that'll obviously impact your royalties.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): Yeah, so the base case assumptions was a semi... basically a flat FX and gold price from where we are now, so $0.74, 18 peso, $2,400 gold. We make it clear in our disclosure that we do not include the impact of inflation in 2027 and 2028. We just don't know what it is. It could be 2%, it could be 5%. At this point, we just make it clear it's not included in that, in the 2027 and 2028 guidance. When we get to the next year, we'll embed that.
John Goldsmith (Head of Canadian Equities, Montrusco Bolton): Okay, so there's zero inflation embedded in 2027, 2028 from your base of 2026?
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): Correct. Everything is based on 2026 costs.
John Goldsmith (Head of Canadian Equities, Montrusco Bolton): Understood, and could you remind me, if you looked at your 2026 AISC, what % of that would be labor and contractors?
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): Of AISC, I mean, of our cost profile, it's about 50%. When you include capital, it's probably between 45% and 50%. Yeah.
John Goldsmith (Head of Canadian Equities, Montrusco Bolton): Thank you.
Scott Parsons (SVP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Alamos Gold): We have a few questions from the webinar. I'll start with the first. Young-Davidson is running below reserve grade of about 2.25 grams per ton. When do you expect to encounter higher grades?
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Yeah, as I mentioned, we're sequence-driven with regards to Young-Davidson. Over the next three-year outlook, certainly we're in that 2-2.15 gram per ton range. As we move through the mine plan over the next couple of years, starting in 2030, we should see, you know, more in line with reserve grades and higher at that point in time when we're in the sequence of the mining extraction.
Francesco Costanzo (Associate Director and Equity Research, Scotiabank): Hi there, this is Francesco from Scotiabank. I just want to start with a sort of high-level question, maybe for John. You had a slide earlier on that showed Alamos compared to peers in terms of assets in Canada, production in Canada, production growth, reserves, these sort of things. Can you just describe for us how you think that frames Alamos in terms of M&A, either as an acquirer or as a target? And then can you maybe just describe how you feel about the current environment for M&A, whether we're at, you know, top of cycle, mid-cycle, bottom cycle, just your thoughts there?
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): That's a bit like asking the cow how it's gonna taste on the plate, you know? You know, we're trying to create a really attractive company for investors, you know, our shareholders. But naturally, you know, that creates a very attractive target for acquirers, and there's not very many companies positioned as well as Alamos is positioned. You know, 90% of our valuation currently is Canadian. You can see it's growing. You know, we're putting all the investment pretty much in Canada. We're sustaining our production in Mexico, but we're growing our production in Canada. There's just not a lot of really high-quality assets that are for sale in Canada. You know, our assets have a good track record. They're permitted.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): They can, they can be scaled up. You know, we can scale up YD, we can scale up Island. Lynn Lake is gonna grow over time. Little doubt in my mind about that. So, you know, it's. You know, one of the things that I looked at, I was saying, "You know, what really is out there like Island?" And, you know, there really isn't anything. But what I I had to look back. You know, I've been around, a long time now. And the closest analogy I could find to Lynn Lake, and some of you might remember this, was the Golden Giant Mine at Hemlo. It was just on about 11 grams, and the largest reserve Golden Giant ever achieved was just over 5 million ounces.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): I think at the beginning of the 1990s, it was about 5.7 million ounces. That was its biggest reserve. It was a 3,000 tonne per day milling operation, generating around 400,000 ounces of gold a year. That was a massive story. That, you know, that was the highest grade mine and one of the real big stories. It was a Noranda operation. And Hemlo, in the aggregate, had about 15 million ounces, three mines, three different companies. It was a major story. Everybody... I remember I was sort of new into the industry back then. This is the mid-1980s, and all you ever heard about was, well, you heard about Carlin, and you heard about Hemlo. Those were the big, big stories.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): The biggest Canadian story, of course, was Hemlo. We're effectively onto something like that. I mean, you're gonna see our update on reserves and resources shortly here. You know, and if you look at what we've got now, just between the lower-grade open pit and the high grade, we're up over 8 million ounces now. You know, no, not one of those mines got there. Collectively, they became bigger, but if you take a look at the reserves and resources and everything, we're close to 11 million ounces now. This is a scale that it's world-class by any measure, and I think that you know, we realize we've got something really valuable here.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): We realize in order to turn it into what it should be, we've gotta, we've gotta effectively invest in it the way we're laying out today. And what it becomes is something that, you know, we, we only have a very few examples of in Canada. You know, gold mines that generate over 500,000 ounces of, of gold a year and can do that for a long, long time at a low cost. I don't think that 500,000 ounces is the, is the peak production for this mine. I think it's gonna continue—this is just another way station. It's gonna continue to grow, and it's being driven by that growth in reserves, and I think that'll become clearer as Scott goes through his portion of the presentation.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): So, you know, we're so focused on growing our assets, M&A isn't really top of mind for us right now. When it'll be top of mind again, none of you will be interested in M&A. You know? That's Alamos, right? 2015, 2016, 2017, we would've done probably another couple of transactions if the market didn't hate them so much. You know? The market doesn't like M&A at the bottom of the market. Here we are at $4,500 gold. There's gonna be M&A. We're gonna see more of it announced. We've just seen another deal announced in the last few days. But our sort of game plan is to, just as we laid it out, it's to invest in exploration and capital in order to grow the existing suite of assets.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): We can add so many ounces near permitted infrastructure. That makes sense. That's, that's the way to build value. We can, we can double our production through our existing assets. We've got to compare anything we might acquire to that pipeline, and I just don't think it compares.
Francesco Costanzo (Associate Director and Equity Research, Scotiabank): Thanks, and then... Sorry, I've just got a couple more questions from, from Ovais, if I could. So, for Luc, actually. In terms of 2026 guidance is second half weighted, I guess, largely driven by Phase 3+ expansion, plus maybe some operational challenges from 2025 lingering into, or the early part of 2026. Can you just describe if the rehabilitation work at Island Gold is complete, and, whether you've returned to mining, I think you mentioned in the Island main zone, and what your targeted mining rates are for, Q1?
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): Yeah. We're substantially complete, as I mentioned in the slide deck, with regards to the rehabilitation to move forward into 2026 with regards to the ramp-up. There is one area that still needs to be addressed, which is our Island Gold, the what we refer to as the I-IG zone. It was an escape way that we had mentioned that would still had to be re-established. That will actually be re-established in February, which will then open up that mining front again for us. But for the most part, yeah, the rehabilitation's substantially complete, and it'll not have any impact with regards to the ramp-up that we're looking to do over the course of 2026, 2027, and ultimately through 2028 as well.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): ... Sorry, just on mining rates, we're looking around 1,400 tons per day for Q1. Sorry, good question.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): Thank you. And then, with respect to that ramp up at IG, are there anything that are concerning, concerning you with respect to development and increasing mining rates? Or, or is there any, upside that you think you're keeping in your back pocket compared to the guidance numbers that were released?
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): No. I mean, we're obviously looking to ramp up. We're gonna be doing more development as we move forward relative to what we've done in the previous years, as we move into 2026 and 2027. We've got the equipment that, you know, that's required in order to be able to sustain those sort of rates that we're looking at moving forward. And obviously, it's, it's, it's the labor aspect as well that we're looking to bring on board to be able to, obviously to continue to achieve the, the ramp up as, as we move forward. So that's all built into our, our, our plan as we, as we look to deliver on 2026 and over the next couple of years with the ramp up to ultimately 3,000 tons per day.
Scott Parsons (SVP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Alamos Gold): Actually, John, or, Don, I'm gonna jump in with a couple of questions online, if, if you don't mind. How should we think about the cadence of first half guidance in 2026, Q1 versus Q2? And then looking out towards 20, uh, '27, what are the risks and opportunities at both Island Gold and Young-Davidson?
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): I'll answer the first part of that question. So the cadence in the first half is going to be a stronger second quarter than the first quarter. So our first quarter will be the lowest production quarter of the year. We'll ramp up into Q2, and then sustain that through Q3 and Q4. In terms of the second part of the question on Island and Young-Davidson, do you wanna handle that?
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Yeah, I mean, ultimately, yeah, our production will be stronger in the second half of the year at Island Gold because we're looking to ramp up the mining rates as we move through the course of 2026, so obviously that's gonna drive higher, higher production. And the grade profile also at Island continues to get stronger as we move through the business plan in 2026, which will also help the gold production. YD, on the YD front, I kind of touched on that on the slide deck. I mean, there's two drivers there certainly to getting back to sustaining the 8,000 tons per day relative to where we were in 2025 and where we were delivering prior to 2025. And there's two components.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): One is expanding the development there on the Footwall drives, east and west, to be able to give us more mining fronts, to be able to provide a bit more flexibility to deliver on the plan. And the other aspect is the pass system. As I mentioned, we had one pass that was decommissioned for a period of time late last year, with some of the repairs that we had to do. And as I mentioned, with regards to normal course of business, with regards to the production profile, as it continues to expand out east and west, with regards to the sequence, having those new pass that we're putting in as well as the existing passes more centralized to the production profile will ensure that we deliver on our key metrics for 2026.
Don DeMarco (Precious Metals Equity Research Analyst, National Bank): Hi, Don DeMarco, National Bank. John and team, congratulations on the guidance and the expansion study. So with the guidance, we see that, once again, you've reiterated the goalpost of achieving a million ounces by 2030. I mean, in past years it's almost a vision, but it's becoming clearer now, and with this guidance, you're kind of incrementally stepping toward that goalpost. Is... You know, John, you're talking about the exploration and growth and all, the trajectory you're on, what do you consider to be the ideal size? Is that a million-ounce threshold? "Okay, we've achieved that. We're done.
Don DeMarco (Precious Metals Equity Research Analyst, National Bank): Let's try to sustain this?" And so what do you think is that optimal size for a gold company in this environment, where it's hard to find new assets, hard to transact on M&A, for both the magnitude of production and the number of mines?
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): Yeah, it's a good question, and it's surprising how frequently that question comes up. Why not, you know, be a mining company with one mine? Well, perhaps if you were a private company and you had one mine, that's fine. But if you're a public company and your share price goes up and down, depending on how you did in any given quarter, one mine is risky. Something can go wrong, and then your quarter's blown. And, you know, we've seen... You know, we had 14 straight quarters without a blip in any of our operations, and suddenly last year we had sort of back-to-back one-offs that dogged us for three quarters.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): And that was a head-scratcher, how things go so well for so long, and then suddenly, you know, you're dealing with crazy weather issues, a seismic event, you know, we were hit by lightning. I mean, there was one thing after the other last year. And, you know, if you were ever gonna have a year where, you know, the gods were gonna throw everything at you, probably 2025 was it, because we still managed to have record cash flows and, you know, we still did very, very well from a financial perspective. That said, the beauty of having multiple operations is, if anything goes wrong at one of those operations, you've got others that can kind of carry the ball.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): If you have two mines, you've obviously cut your risks in half to that one. If you have three, you've now divided it into thirds, and so on, four, five. But at what point does it start getting unwieldy, you know? I look at it, I think, you know, with a management team of the size we're at, we can manage what we're doing quite well. You know, we have two mines effectively at Island Gold, but we treat it as effectively one concept, and we're gonna continue to integrate those operations. So from that perspective, we're operating currently at three sites. Lynn Lake will give us a fourth. I think this management team could comfortably add one more mine.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): I think we could operate five mines, especially if you kept them within the same time zone, and in a safe jurisdiction like Canada. It gets difficult if you, if you're operating in one mine in Australia, one in South Africa, you know, one in South America, and another one in Canada. You know, that's a different management proposition. I think you've increased your risk just because of the logistical, you know, challenges of trying to operate all over the globe like that. We're not trying to get big for the sake of getting big. I would rather have, you know, really high-quality operations, meaning, you know, low cost, long life, with low political risk. That's been our objective.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): There's a very short list of assets that fit our acquisition criterion. From that perspective, you don't see us do a lot of M&A. When the time is right and when the assets are available, we can be pretty aggressive. We did three acquisitions inside of three years, between 2015 and 2018, all of which now are underpinning the growth and valuation of the company. For everybody, it's going to be different. If you look at Agnico Eagle, probably the biggest gold company by market cap, I think they have something like 10, 11 operations, something like that. Anything can go wrong at two operations, and you've got eight others to carry the load.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): You know, so you can argue that, you know, from that perspective, the scale at which they operate, they've kind of de-risked things, about as far as you can... About as far as you can go. But, it... I think you just have to grow in stages, you know? It's hard to... We were a one-mine company up to 2015, and back in, you know, in, when we were getting started in the early 2000s, Agnico had already been around for 40 years. You know, we're still a new boy on the block. But we've come a long, long way in a very short period of time, and we've grown twice as big in half the time as Agnico did, if you wanna look at it that way.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): We have a great suite of assets. We're only gonna add to it if we can find quality, and it's gotta be at the right price as well. It's gotta be as good as what we're already developing. I think that's the way to answer that.
Scott Parsons (SVP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Alamos Gold): Thank you. We have another question online. You had previously targeting ramping up Magino milling rates to 10,000 tons per day in 2025. You're now expecting that into the second half of 2026. What's been the limiting factor? And Luke, maybe you can reiterate some of the upgrades that we're expecting to implement this year to get us to that 10,000-ton-per-day rate.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Yeah, I mean, we've seen certainly continuous improvement there with regards to the milling rates quarter-over-quarter. As I mentioned there, in Q4, we would've averaged 9,000 if it hadn't been for the weather issues that occurred in December. As we move into the new year, I mean, some of that weather effect from late December also had some effect as to the start of January with regards to the compressed natural gas availability to be able to deliver to site to get the mill up and running. We also had a liner change scheduled in Q1 as well, so throughput rates won't, will not be at 10,000 tons per day in the first quarter.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): But as we move forward into the second quarter, other than in May, as I mentioned, there was another liner change scheduled in May. We expect monthly to start hitting 10,000 tons per day. And part of the changes that we're looking to make there, as I mentioned, is that we're gonna add an auxiliary feed conveyor in there so that we can, you know, as we continue to work on the planned maintenance with regards to the crushing plant, as well as some unscheduled events that occur, we can continue to maintain feed into the grinding circuit. So, I mean, the bigger challenge for us has been more so around the crushers, and I think we've talked about this in previous communication.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): We did make some changes there with regards to changing out both the cone crusher and the jaw crusher to improve the overall availability. The crushers themselves have been working well. It's, you know, part of the bottleneck has been just, you know, the feed aspect of it with regards to the grizzly dump arrangement that we, we've made some modifications to as well, but it's not the longer term solution, and we will talk about that a little bit more in the expansion study, that, you know, we're looking to actually go to a larger gyratory crusher that will actually feed. Will provide the primary crushing for the, for feeding both, both cone crushers, which will ultimately feed both the new mill as well as the existing mill for the longer term.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): But I'll touch on that a bit more in the afternoon session.
John Goldsmith (Head of Canadian Equities, Montrusco Bolton): Yep. Sorry, Joe. John Goldsmith with Montrusco Bolton once again. So first question for Greg, and then follow up for John. Just with regards to the guidance, once again, corporate G&A, could you provide a little color on what that looks like for the next three years, and once again, if that is included in AISC? And, well, maybe I'll just start with that, and then I'll ask John after.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): Yeah, our corporate G&A is gonna be between $45-$50 million. And that's what we've incorporated over the next three years, because that's-
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): ... that's built upon, we expect to increase our G&A this year to support that ramp up longer term, so that's what we feel is the next three-year G&A.
John Goldsmith (Head of Canadian Equities, Montrusco Bolton): That is in AISC?
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): That, that, and that is included in AISC, yes, along with the baseline share-based compensation that gets included. So there's about $25 million of baseline share-based compensation that gets included in all sustaining costs each year as well.
John Goldsmith (Head of Canadian Equities, Montrusco Bolton): Perfect. Thank you. And then for John, you know, we're talking about the opportunistic share buybacks and the answer to Don before with regards to, you know, potentially a fifth project. It looks like, you know, at $4,500 gold and your guidance for the next couple of years, you'll be definitely throwing off over $1 billion in free cash. You know, you talked about opportunistically, you know, looking to buy back stock. Could you provide any type of kind of guideposts in terms of, you know, whether it's price to NAV or EV to 2P ounce? Like, what are you looking at opportunistic? And then just with regards to geography, I think, you know, one of the great strategies with Alamos obviously is being in lower risk jurisdictions.
John Goldsmith (Head of Canadian Equities, Montrusco Bolton): If you could also help us understand, you know, how does the U.S., B.C., or Yukon potentially fall in your ranking of geographies that you're currently not in? Thanks.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): So how to take that? That's a broad, broad question. With respect to political risk, you know, it really depends on where you are in those countries. You know, the US is... You know, we're not gonna build a mine in Hawaii or Rhode Island anytime soon. You know, US really, you're talking about, frankly, you're talking about Nevada and Alaska primarily. Outside of that, maybe, maybe Utah, Idaho. I mean, there's more jurisdictions that are kind of opening up, and I would say under this Trump administration, and this renewed focus on mining, it might be on, quote, unquote, "critical minerals," which might mean something to the US government and something else to the Canadian government.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): But the attitude towards mining is changing one way or the other, and that's mining broadly. You know, they're, they may be focused on copper and lithium or whatever, but ultimately, you know, miners are not working for lithium companies. I mean, there's very little lithium production in North America. They're working for gold companies, and that's why they're actually talking to the CEOs of the gold mining companies about how you grow that industry, because nobody knows better. That's the kind of mining that largely we're doing. I think that political risk in B.C. and the Yukon, you mentioned, it's higher than Ontario and Quebec. That's just a reality.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): I think Ontario and Quebec represent two of the best mining jurisdictions in the world, and there's a reason why we've focused so heavily on those provinces. I think Manitoba is playing catch-up right now. They've got. You know, it's an NDP government. It's very pro-development. Why? Well, they wanna grow their economy. They, the northern Manitoba needs investment. It needs jobs. Nobody knows better than Premier Kinew. He's extremely supportive of investment and development. He knows that that's gonna be better for all those people in northern Manitoba. So I kind of. You know, we're not in business where we are for any old reason. I mean, we're there because there was specifically encouragement from the government to be there.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): You know, we've got to consider Mexico. We've been, we've been operating in Mexico for a long, long time, but we haven't grown outside of Mulatos. We've done a lot of work within it, but there really hasn't been much opportunity to grow outside of it. And I don't think the Mexican government has fully come around to, you know, quote, unquote, "encouraging the mining industry to invest." And at some point, they, they will, I think, because I think they have to. There's just a... It's a very difficult thing, if you're Mexico and Canada right now, to go into these negotiations for CUSMA, and how, how is that gonna look? I, I don't think anybody really knows.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): But one thing we do know is Mexico is a mineral-rich country with a very long tradition of mining, as is Canada. And we do that probably. I think Canadians do mining better than virtually any other country in the world. I know Australia would put up their hand and say, "Uh, just a minute." But, you know, I, I think we, we're among the very best in the world, and this country has such vast, vast potential that, you've got to know, if you focus here, you know, you're going to, one of these days, you're gonna stick in a plum, your thumb and pull out a plum, and that's effectively what we did with Island Gold. We saw, you know, we saw long term, there was some fantastic potential there.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): It wasn't obvious to everybody necessarily when we acquired it, but look what it's developed into over time. Where is it going? I think it's one of those stories that just gets way better, way quicker than anybody ever imagined, including me. You know, I think there's amazing opportunities, and you know, I think for the time being, we're just gonna prioritize our business just the way you see it laid out in the presentation here. M&A... it's you know, I think we do it very, very well, but we also know there's there's a time when it works better. I think that you know, you're going to see lots of M&A activity just as you always do when gold prices run. It will be a relative value game.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): You know, lots of these transactions will be driven by... They'll be share transactions, and it kind of works. But at some point in time, the shares are worth money, and you're paying with shares, you're kind of paying with money. And it's very hard to justify, you know, these $ multi-billion-dollar acquisitions of really small assets that were worth, you know, hundreds of millions not that long ago, are now going for $ billions. And you need to have this long-term view that metal prices are gonna be where they are or quite a bit higher in order to make those work. And I'm not that comfortable in growing our asset base that way.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): I think in that market, we can do much better drilling and developing ounces that way, as opposed to acquiring.
Scott Parsons (SVP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Alamos Gold): Lauren?
Lauren McConnell (Precious Metals Analyst, Paradigm Capital): Yeah, Lauren McConnell, analyst at Paradigm Capital. I was just, you know, looking through your Lynn Lake numbers, and just kind of wondering, how did the 9,000 tons per day come as the throughput number now, especially when you look at the reserves at 25 years? Should we be thinking about an expansion, you know, a couple of years down the road, or what's sort of driving that as a throughput number from the near term?
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Yeah, when we looked at it, I mean, really, you know, relative to the timeline that we're trying to meet with regards to the construction schedule and from a whole permitting aspect, with regards to that whole process of going from 8,000 to 9,000 tons a day, there was very little effect to that. So it, it made the simplest aspect of us trying to actually deliver on that ramp up that we're looking to achieve, to bring that online by mid-2029. But that's not to say longer term... You know, there's always gonna be a longer-term vision there, to your point. It's got a 25-year reserve life. Scott will touch on that.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): There's a lot of other exploration targets there in that district, so it'll be, you know, it'll be something that we'll continue to look at over time to actually look at potentially even expanding it beyond the 9,000 tons per day.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): Yeah, I think a future expansion is in the... would make a lot of sense. If you look at the production profile, it's a very high grade from the Gordon Pit in the first 5 years, and then after that, the production comes down. That's where we would look to do the permitting, which is a bigger exercise. If you go to something bigger, that's where we'd look to do that. Ultimately, we wanna bring down that 25-year life for sure. It's just gonna be in stages.
Scott Parsons (SVP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Alamos Gold): Okay, well, I think we'll take one more question online before pausing for a short break. Are there any takeaways or read-throughs from the post-mortem analysis of the seismic event at Island Gold in October that inform future mine plan sequencing at both Island Gold and Young-Davidson, as you look to expand underground development to access some of the higher-grade areas of the deposit?
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Yeah, look, I mean, we've touched on this before. Seismicity is a normal course of business when we're operating these underground mines, so it's, it's not new. We always have some level of seismicity within our operations as we're, you know, running through the extraction sequence with our stope cycle and mining phase that we're undertaking. So we continue to develop and understand that. I mean, over time, if I look at the transition of where Young-Davidson started from a point of view, what the ground support standard was when it started, compared to where it is today, it's a continuous, you know, evolution really, of the ground control management plan for that operation, and it would be very similar for Island Gold as well.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): So we've continued to as we get deeper and higher mining rates, certainly with what's gonna be happening at Island Gold, we've changed the ground support standards to be able to adapt to that and manage it effectively. The other aspects that we've looked at in the Island case is just, you know, in relation to the infrastructure that we have in place. The permitted infrastructure that's gonna be there for the life of the mine. You know, I'm referring to the ramp systems, shops, other things that are being developed over the long term to be able to support the long-term mining rates that will be occurring there. You know, we look to enhance the ground support in those areas as well.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): We've looked to actually stand off a bit of the infrastructure from the ore body as well, to provide, you know, better management of the overall ground control management plan as well for the long term. So it's a, it's a continuous evolution as we continue to mine and lessons learned, certainly, and adapt and incorporate those into the mine plan as we move forward.
Scott Parsons (SVP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Alamos Gold): Thank you, Luke. We'll pause there for about ten minutes. We'll stay on track and restart the presentation at 10:15.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): ... 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and stand for the round. Yeah, I was gonna say that exact same thing. Say, this isn't what we know now, but this is gonna drive that higher. I agree.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Okay, welcome back. We're going to continue with the presentation. So if I can just get everybody to get back in the room. Good to go? Okay. Welcome back, everybody. We're gonna continue with the presentation. So I'm gonna look at... Moving forward, we're gonna get more so into the expansion aspect of the Island Gold District. So I'll start with a few slides to kick it off. First of all, overview, with regards to the expansion study that we've now released.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): If you look at our gold production over the first 10 years of this expansion study, we're gonna be generating about 534,000 ounces of gold, all-in sustaining costs of about $1,025 AISC over that 10-year period, which will be one of the lowest cost gold mines in certainly in Canada. Average annual mine-site cash flow at a $3,200 gold price of about $821 million, and after-tax NPV at $3,200 as well, would be about $8.2 billion. So specific changes, I guess, from the base case that we put out earlier to this expansion study. Underground rates, we're looking to take those from 2,400 tons a day to 3,000 tons a day.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Open pit operations will go from 10,000 tons per day to 17,000 tons per day. The Magino Mill expansion, in the base case, we had it at 12,400 tons per day. We're looking to basically twin the existing mill complex and bring it up to a full capacity of 20,000 tons per day. So the big driver there really has been the mineral reserve. There's been a lot of drilling going on over the last while. Certainly, that Scott will touch on with as part of his presentation. But in the base case, we had about 6.3 million ounces in reserves for that study.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): We've grown that by about 30% now, and we've brought it to eight point three million ounces, but which are now in the expansion study as of February of 2026. So significant upscale there in our reserve base. Looking at it in a bit more detail, you can see the Island Gold Mine, looking at the June numbers versus December, so year-end reserve numbers. We've gained about a million ounces on the reserve base, and on the Magino side, a similar level, about 900,000 ounces of gold has now reported into our reserve base, from where we were in June to the December 2025 statement. So overall, combined for the district, about 1.9 million ounces.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): So we've had a really successful reserve conversion over the last certainly year. And we've got... As Scott will touch on this, there's some tremendous ongoing exploration opportunities and success that we expect to drive growth even further in this district for the long term. And, you know, we're looking to spend a record amount of money, actually, on exploration in the district in 2026. So the life of the life of mine looking at the expansion study here, as I mentioned, 534,000 ounces on average, the first 10 years. You can see in gray, which would have been the base case in the bar graph with regards to the production profile versus the expansion study now in orange.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): So significant improvement overall, all-in sustaining costs, similar to the base case, running at about $1,025 per ounce, and the reserve life of 19 years. So similar life of mine, despite the higher production rates, and again, obviously, the growth in the reserve base helps that. But I think what I really want to point out here is that, you know, the back end of this production profile, when you start to look at, you know, 2037 beyond to 2044, as production starts to drop off, we would expect to actually fill that with other targets, and Scott will touch on that with regards to his presentation. We see...
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): You know, we certainly see this asset carrying well beyond the 19 years that we currently have in our reserve base, just based on the exploration targets and certainly the, the growth potential and the growth that we've seen at Island, since we acquired that, that operation in, in 2017. So just looking at the reserve resource growth, as I touched on, you know, we acquired the, the Island asset in 2017, so you can see the significant growth that's occurred basically from 2017 to where we are in, in 2025.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): If you look at the Phase III study that we put out in 2022, which would have been based on the mineral reserves at the end of 2021, you know, we've seen about a 284% growth in our reserve base over that period of time, and we certainly don't expect that to stop as we continue to drill. We expect to continue to convert, obviously, our resource base into reserves, but also find new resources that will eventually end up in our reserve inventory. Our conversion rate over that history has been greater than 90%, so it's been a very, very high conversion rate, and we would expect that to continue as well.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Certainly from a, you know, discovery point of view, it's costing us about $14 per ounce to discover those ounces. So, Scott and his team have done a fantastic job on that front. So this is one of the main areas of the growth that's occurred with regards to the reserve base. So this is the Island East that we referred to. You can see the grade there running at about 15 grams, about 1.6 million ounces. So this has been a big part of our growth with regards to the reserve inventory that we've taken from where we were in the base case to the expansion study. And some of the highest grades intercepts that Scott will also touch on as part of his presentation.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): So, you know, the one big benefit, certainly within this region, is where we've seen a, you know, significant amount of growth from an ounces and grade point of view is really well centralized to the production shaft that we're putting in place. And we'll be, as we, you know, we continue to expand on this because it's still open at depth, open to the east, and we expect this to continue to grow over the longer term as we continue to drill it. But from a production point of view, it'll be very efficient for us to be able to mine in this district, bring it into the mine plan, and use our hoisting infrastructure to be able to generate the ounces on an annualized basis.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): A bit of a chart here that kind of shows, you know, Canadian mines throughout the country. But, I mean, really, the story here that I'm trying to demonstrate, if you look at the Island Gold, December 2025, that's boxed out over on the right side of this slide. Really, what we're demonstrating here is that it's been there, Island's been there for a while and continues to be and continues to grow. But looking at it, you know, on the basis of being one of the highest reserves and one of the highest reserve grades for any underground gold mine in Canada.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): You know, we've been there for a few years, and we expect, obviously, with our continued exploration success, that we will certainly continue to demonstrate this, if not even continue to grow even higher over the long term. From a valuation point of view, it's a growing valuation. John's touched on this a little bit in some of the comments, but, you know, since we acquired it in 2017, we had a valuation of $551 million to where we are today with this expansion study that we've now released at a $3,200 gold price, you know, you're looking at $8.1 billion. Take that to a spot price, depending on what the spot price is today, because it's very volatile.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): But at a $4,500 gold price, it's got a valuation of $12.2 million. So it continues to grow. It's been a great story, certainly for the company. You know, with the exploration that we continue to develop within this region and, and look to explore, and looking to bring other sources of feed into this larger mill complex, that I'll touch on in a minute, will be a big benefit for the long term, with the opportunity to continue to grow that valuation for the Island District. Regarding GHG emissions, so the graph here kinda shows what the sector average is, at about 0.79. Currently, we sit at a 0.55, so we're about 30% below the industry average.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): With the expansion that we're undertaking here and looking to bring that online, there's a couple of key drivers there that are gonna lower our overall GHG emissions intensity actually down to about 0.24, so a further decrease of about 56%, and really driven by two things. One is the completion of the shaft. So you know, getting the production shaft online will eliminate the usage of the majority of the haul trucks that we have currently in our fleet. So we'll be reducing the overall truck fleet, which reduces our diesel footprint. And the other side of it certainly is grid power by the end of 2026.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): So getting off of that CNG, compressed natural gas, and going to grid power, starting at the end of 2026, will also have, obviously, a big benefit on the emissions intensity. So with that, I'll turn it over now to Chris Bostwick, our Senior Vice President of Technical Services, to walk us through a bit more detail on the expansion study.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): Thanks, Luke. Okay, I'm gonna reiterate a couple of things here that Luke's already covered. So what we're showing here is the base case life of mine that we presented to the public in June of 2025, compared to the expansion study on a bunch of key financial metrics. The first one you wanna look at is, as Luke mentioned, we'll be at 534,000 ounces a year from 2028. For the next ten years beyond 2028. If you look back to the base case, we would've been at 419,000 ounces a year. We'll be doing about 534,000 ounces a year at $1,025 AISC.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): Life of mine will have an average all-in cost to capital, and that's growth capital, sustaining capital, and operating expenses, of $1,155 an ounce. Looking at our decision price of $3,200 gold, that's a $2,000 pre-tax margin. Some just other key things that Luke talked about is the $8.2 billion NPV at $3,200 gold and the $12.2 billion NPV at $4,500 gold. Some of the key assumptions in the life of mine plan are obviously the reserves. We've had a significant reserve increase, 25% increase at Island Gold, and a 40% increase at Magino over what we presented midyear last year.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): Long-term throughput of 20,000 tons a day, and a long-term gold price of $3,200. Key changes, obviously, the increase in reserve, underground going from 2,400 to 3,000 tons a day. Nominal, ore mining rates at Magino, going from 14,000 to 17,000 tons a day. With that increased underground reserve, and we saw that 30% increase in the underground reserve, we're gonna require additional, underground development, about 40 kilometers of development over the previous plan. About 4 kilometers of that development. Of that 40 kilometers is attributable to, for geotechnical reasons, we are, as has been mentioned earlier, we're going to offset the, critical infrastructure a little bit further from the ore body. That's added a little bit to development.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): So we've increased outside of that development by about 27% for a 30% larger mineral reserve. Obviously, expanding the mill to 20,000 tons a day from current levels and 12,400 expected in the previous plan. To do all this, increased mining rates for both the open and the underground, we'll be adding equipment both underground and in the open pit. As well, we need additional tailings capacity over and above what we previously had, so we'll be adding 2 more lifts during the life of mine, and that's for a 45% increase in ore tonnage. Two additional things that we'll be doing that are new to this study is we plan on adding an airstrip at the mine site.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): This will cut down travel time for employees getting to the site and also increase our availability of our... The ability to get our employees to site in some of the bad weather that we experience at the Wawa Airport. We'll be adding a water treatment plant that's combined to process, treat water on the entire site. Much of the components of this expansion, planned expansion, are already de-risked. Key permits, federal permits are already in place. We're permitted to mill up to 35,000 tons a day and construct a tailings dam up to 150 million tons in capacity.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): Phase 3+ expansion, the first portion of the overall expansion, is obviously our completion of our Phase 3+ expansion, and it's well on track to be completed in Q4 of this year. Shaft sink is at 98% of planned depth, so we're right now, we're at the 1,350 shaft station, completing some off-site, off-shaft development there. And we've got about 30 meters more to sink in the actual shaft. We'll be completing that this quarter in 2026, and then we'll move on to equipping the shaft and converting over the headframe from sinking to production mode. We'll be completing the shaft infrastructure.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): The phase plan will be commissioned or completed in Q2 of this year and then commissioned in the fourth quarter as the shaft comes online. And then the existing mill expansion is well underway towards the completion of the 20,000-tonne-a-day mill. So you see actually here in this photo, we've got a number of the tanks already constructed. We've got the steel up for the mill. This is a few weeks old. We're progressing on the cladding on the mill, so we're well on the way there. From a risk perspective, we're out of the ground. That's a key area where some projects go over on time and budget is on earthworks.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): We're well out of the ground and we've got all the steel up. The shaft infrastructure and the paste plant that we're installing is sized, well-sized for 3,000 tons a day that are target mining rate at the end of the expansion. And the other thing we're doing and putting into de-risk the project is the 115 kV power line, which will be finished by the end of the year. And that'll give us more than enough power for the expansion and anything else that comes along after that. Permitting, we've got all the required permits in for the current operation. We're fully permitted for that. We've done a number of...
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): Both Magino and Island, done a number of ECAs or environmental compliance approvals over the years, as well as a number of closure plan amendments. And then at Magino, as I mentioned, we've got the federal permits in place for a bigger mill and a bigger tailings dam. So, to get the overall project permitted to our expansion plans, there's just a number of normal course permits required, a couple of ECAs and another closure plan amendment. We're well-versed at those. We've done numerous permitting procedures and applications in Ontario, both Young-Davidson and at Island Gold. With respect to the shaft infrastructure, we've already talked about the shaft sinking is 98% complete. All the electrical infrastructure is in place.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): Hoist house has been completed, warehouse completed, paste plant will be completed in Q2, and the admin building and dry complex will be completed this summer. Paste plant, just to touch on that, does have a capacity for 3,000 tonnes a day. One of the things that employing paste underground enables us to do is to increase our overall mining recovery underground. Over the life of the mine, we anticipate being able to get about 230,000 ounces more recovered than we would have without a paste plant. And the biggest thing is, another big thing is, it allows the faster stope cycling times, which will support our higher mining rates of 3,000 tonnes per day and obviously increases our geotechnical stability underground.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): Other thing to note with respect to tailings is about 65% of the tailings at Island underground will produce, will go back underground as paste fill. Shaft is designed for the future, so we've got overall at 1,379 meter depth, we've got a 5,500 tonne per day capacity of ore and waste. We only require a life of mine average of about 4,700 tonnes per day, ore and waste. That's not considering any co-disposal of waste within paste fill stopes. It's got the ability to... We have the ability to sink that shaft deeper, up to 2,000 meters. The hoisting plant can accommodate that.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): You know, at 2,000 meters, our overall hoisting weight will drop a little bit. We've got other options. You know, looking at this long section, we can see the deposits open both in depth and laterally. So if we were to find significant more ore in the future at depth and laterally, we'd look at our options for accessing that. It could be deepening the existing shaft, adding a winze to go deeper. From a power perspective, where our site currently needs about 30.5 megawatts, and that's being supplied through the CNG plant and existing grid power. Yeah. Going forward, we're gonna require with the, with the expansion, we're gonna require 55 megawatts of capacity. We have the existing grid power.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): We're putting the new line in. That'll be commissioned at the end of this year, and we'll get 47 MW off of that. And one thing to note is that line is capable, that new line is capable of supplying up to 85 MW, you know, for future considerations at Island Gold. As was mentioned earlier, when we put that new power line in, we'll be able to drop our processing costs by about $5 a ton, due to being on grid power, and we'll have the CNG plant at site as a backup. Tailings, as mentioned, we are permitted up to 150 million tons at a federal level.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): We'll only require, I think, about 115 or 117 million tons with this expansion. We're currently running the Island Mill, and we will be running the Island Mill in 2026 and 2027. We plan on starting to put the tailings from the Island Mill into the Magino tailings dam later this year and then shutting down and decommissioning the current Island tailings dam. Now, as mentioned earlier, we've added a couple of additional lifts to the Magino dam to cater for this increase in reserves. Just focusing on the phase three expansion and the capital committed to date, our estimate for completion is $835 million.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): If we look at what's been spent and committed, we're 91% of that is spent and committed, so there's not a lot of room there for increases or the overruns in capital. We've already spent most of it. With respect to the overall schedule, we've got shaft sinking completing in this quarter, equipping for the remainder of the year. Shaft will be operational in Q4 of this year, and the underground ore waste handling system will also be in place at that point in time. We've got a little bit more work to do on the crushing side of things. That'll go into Q2 of 2027, but we will be hoisting ore in Q1 through the waste side of the system.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): Phase 3, as, as mentioned, will be completed at the end of the year, paste plant, midyear, and then the actual Magino expansion to 20,000 tons a day will be completed in Q1 of 2028. We'll be ramping up through Q1 to full production for the remainder of 2028. With that, I'd like to hand it over to Austin Hemphill, our general manager at Island Gold District.
Austin Hemphill (General Manager of Island Gold District, Alamos Gold): Well, thank you for that, Chris. I appreciate it. I want to start off and cover a little bit on the mining processes we're gonna be using during this expansion phase. Since we put the base case out last year, the biggest change we've seen has been a growth in our reserve base, both at the Magino open pit as well as the Island Gold underground. As you can see in that long section, the brown area is a reserve pit, so this is what we're planning in part of our expansion study currently, with the purple and gray being our resource pit. So there is still some future growth potential there. Bring your attention to those gray areas you see as well. Those are the historic workings from the old Magino underground.
Austin Hemphill (General Manager of Island Gold District, Alamos Gold): As you can see, they're kind of centrally located, but a significant portion of the pit is below those existing areas. So the majority of the expansion from Magino is more of a incremental approach. We're going from a 14,000 ton per day production rate, what you saw in the previous study, up to 17,000, with the big difference being that our peak is now reaching about a 100,000 tons per day ex pit, where, with an average around 80,000. It's a little bit of an incremental increase, which is what you saw last time. But the big thing here is, it's just more, like I said, an incremental growth. We're adding more trucks, an additional shovel, and some more bench drills just to support our increase in production. Again, it's very much very similar to what we've seen previously.
Austin Hemphill (General Manager of Island Gold District, Alamos Gold): Well, then go on to the next slide here. Island Gold, this we wanted to cover a little bit. As we've known, we're going deeper. We knew we were gonna be increasing our production intensity. We were changing how we're approaching our stoping fronts. So historically, in the upper mines, those of you who toured there are probably familiar, we entered the ore body on a given horizon in the center. We developed our way out to the periphery, and then what we called, we retreated towards the center. Now, while that's very effective in the upper areas, in the lower mining intensities that historically Island Gold experienced, the problem is it does concentrate the stress towards the center of the ore body and your central axis.
Austin Hemphill (General Manager of Island Gold District, Alamos Gold): Over time, we've transitioned to a more, common approach, a bit more practical approach, where we actually are developing from the ends of the resource on a given horizon, then developing ourselves towards the middle and then retreating our way outward. What that gives us the benefit of actually shedding the stresses outward, so we keep them away from the production area. The vast majority of our production, 2026 onward, is under the new methodology, the new regime, where we're better able to handle the stresses. So this has already been an approach. It's, you know, it's well understood, it's very common throughout industry, and we'd already adopted these changes. And just as we continue to develop, we'll continue to explore these new options or exploit these new options. Again, this is part and parcel to our expansion of the 3,000 tons from the existing 2,400.
Austin Hemphill (General Manager of Island Gold District, Alamos Gold): Very similar to what we had in the 2,400 case, albeit just more of it. Just to kind of show you a bit of the long section here. As you can see, the shaft in the central point, and this is gonna be very common to what we talk forward here, and I just want to bring that as a point of reference. As Luke touched on, we have a lot of potential down to the east on the, kind of the right side of that drawing, and that's a big area we're gonna be focusing on, is right now we've only got the development around the shaft and the specific infrastructure, and we're gonna continue to develop ourselves outward.
Austin Hemphill (General Manager of Island Gold District, Alamos Gold): That's really the key to how we're increasing our production rate from the previous 2,400 tons a day to the 3,000, is to accelerate our development rate, provide ourselves access to the larger and expanded reserve base, and then once we complete that development rate, we now have more developed inventory. We can then start to produce from those areas. And again, much like we talked on the Magino, it's more of an incremental approach. We're adding additional fleet. What we're looking at here mainly is to handle the material. So you can see there's 4 scoops or LHDs, 3 bolters, again, to support the accelerated development rate, 1 additional haul truck for a period of time, 1 jumbo and 1 additional stope drill. So again, it's just an addition to our existing fleet to handle the additional tons.
Austin Hemphill (General Manager of Island Gold District, Alamos Gold): And the ramp-up we're looking at doing is basically by the end of 2028, we'll be at the 3,000 ton per day rate. As I'll cover on future slides, kind of show you and explain to you how we get there. Now, this is a bit of a complicated one. The talk to the drawing on the right, as you can see, the orange development, that's our existing development, with the gray being the plan development. As I mentioned, on the right-hand side, you can see the vertical shaft. You can see we have very little production development around that area right now.
Austin Hemphill (General Manager of Island Gold District, Alamos Gold): This has always been our plan, was to develop that area, but and part of our expansion case from the 2,400- to 3,000-ton-per-day rate, is to increase that development rate, as I mentioned before, to provide us access to the inventory there and then support the increased production. To put some numbers to it, when you saw the case last year, it was about 4.1 million ounces in underground reserves, requiring about 129 kilometers over the remaining life of the mine to the, or from 2026 onward, to provide access to it and support the production. Since then, we've increased that reserve by 25% to over 5 million ounces, and it's only requiring an additional 40 kilometers to provide ourselves access to that additional inventory.
Austin Hemphill (General Manager of Island Gold District, Alamos Gold): Of which, as I mentioned, we'll be spending about $166 million on increasing our development rate just to provide ourselves access to it earlier sooner, and only about $23 million in that slight increase in equipment fleet. As we talked on here, this is the kind of ramp-up schedule you see. We talked before there, we've taken a bit of a conservative approach in 2026, but then we go back into 2027, right back on target of 2,400 tons per day, as we continue to focus on the infrastructure, specifically around the ore and waste handling.
Austin Hemphill (General Manager of Island Gold District, Alamos Gold): As Chris touched on, at the end of this year, we'll have the shaft, which will allow us to start skipping ore, and then towards the middle of 2027, we'll complete the ore and waste handling, which gives us the next incremental increase to now hoist all of our material. And once we do that, as you can imagine, that then drops the intensity on our haulage fleet, allows ourselves to allocate that fleet deeper into the mine to focus more on the development side. And then that's what will be the cornerstone for us in 2028, we begin the ramp-up. And it's a very steep ramp up from the 2,400 tons per day to 3,000 tons per day, which we'll reach in the latter part of 2028, and we'll be able to maintain for the rest of the reserve life.
Austin Hemphill (General Manager of Island Gold District, Alamos Gold): As you can see, all the way up until 2040, where we basically reach the end of what we have in the reserve books. Again, this is assuming zero conversion of any of our inferred resources, which as was covered earlier, we've had quite the opposite history on. We've had a very high level of success in the conversion. We take a look at this. Also, as you can see, we have a very... We maintain our at least reserve average for the first 10 years of this, including this year, and we're able to maintain that all the way to the latter part of the year, and we're averaging about 10.6 grams per ton, ex-underground. Again, this is all based upon ourselves being able to basically hold ourselves a reserve average.
Austin Hemphill (General Manager of Island Gold District, Alamos Gold): Now, the big thing we take a look at as we go over to Magino, you can see it's a bit more of a gradual ramp-up. The big issue we have is we wanna make sure that we basically liberate the ore tons once we have the ability to process them. Once we get the expanded mill, you can see that we can satisfy the need, and we continue ourselves in a ramp up. And again, much like an incremental stage, you can see it's a gradual increase over time as we start to, the pit gets bigger, we start going deeper into the pit, haulage intensity picks up. We just start allocating the additional fleet to it on an as-needed basis to support our increase in production, which again, we're able to maintain all the way into the, basically into the reserve life.
Austin Hemphill (General Manager of Island Gold District, Alamos Gold): big important thing I want to bring your attention to is we hold that 100,000 tons a day ex-pit for a number of years, and again, it's all just basically based upon incremental fleet increases. The last little bit here on the Magino site, as you can see, we hold ourselves much around the reserve average. There's a little bit of bump around there, but we hold about that 0.87 grams per tonne. And just wanna remind everybody that this is a combined ore grade. As you remember, we bias ourselves, we process the highest grade first. So any of this stuff coming ex-pit, whether it be our high grade or mid-grade, we process that first, we stockpile the lower grade material.
Austin Hemphill (General Manager of Island Gold District, Alamos Gold): So you'll see some of the differences in change, and you'll see that's how the grades will vary a little bit over time. The important thing is, you can see we maintain ourselves a pretty steady state production rate. Also, a bit from the blending perspective, as you can see on the left-hand side, we're under much our existing scenario. We're running the two mills, both the Island Gold Mill as well as the Magino Mill. And as we complete the expansion case in 2028, you see we basically fill that mill, and we maintain that production rate until we've exhausted our inventories. Last bit here, take a look for the expansion, the cost profile. The big thing you look at is the 10-year in the middle of it, when we're kind of at peak production.
Austin Hemphill (General Manager of Island Gold District, Alamos Gold): We're producing about little over 500,000 ounces, and we're maintaining. All-in Sustaining Costs for the site are just over $1,000, $1,025. If you look at the 15-year average, while we're running basically both mines, again, it's 490,000 ounces, and it's about a $1,032 for an AISC. So again, it's a very attractive cost profile, and you can see it's a stable production profile as well. I want to touch on the milling side. It's just kind of a quick synopsis of how we're gonna go step by step through the expansion of the mill cases. Our current case right now, as we've touched on before, we're running both mills, both the historic Island Gold Mill, which right now is limited through permits to 1,265 tons per day.
Austin Hemphill (General Manager of Island Gold District, Alamos Gold): Again, that's an annual average, so we have some flexibility on that within specific periods, with the balance going to Magino. Right now, we are mining at a higher rate than what the Island Gold Mill can process. So the surplus we're doing, we're accumulating on Island, and we're transferring over to Magino and processing in batches, much like we did for a number of months last year. In 2027, the mine will the underground mine will ramp up to 2,400 tons per day. Again, we'll still continue to blend them both through the existing Island Gold Mill, as well as the, the surplus from Island going to Magino.
Austin Hemphill (General Manager of Island Gold District, Alamos Gold): Then finally, in 2028, the completion of the expanded mill, we start transitioning all ores to the single milling facility, and over time, we'll wrap up into 2029, we achieve our 20,000 ton per day processing rate, which will hold, as I mentioned before, for basically the balance of the reserve life. Okay. That's it for me, and I'll return it to Chris.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): Thanks, Austin. So I'm just gonna quickly go over operating costs for the expansion plan. What we're showing here is we have 2026 anticipated unit operating costs at Island. The base case from last year, what we were anticipating for operating costs, unit operating costs, and then the expansion. What we're seeing is that we expect costs to decrease substantially from what we're experiencing and expect in 2026. I've got a few slides we can go through each of the individual ones here in a moment. One of the other things that's immediately noticeable here is that our costs have increased slightly over what we were expressing last year in most of the areas except one.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): That's attributable to reflecting inflation and some of the other things that Luc and Greg talked about adding to personnel, critical spares, you know, all of that, that sets us up for success to go through the expansion. So the one area where we have... Did you see any decrease in our study over study in 2026 is the admin, and that's a result of us increasing tonnage, more tons over what are more or less fixed costs. So we see in a unit cost basis, those costs going down.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): If we look at, on, our underground mining costs, we see a significant or a very large drop, going from 2026 to 2027 in our underground mining costs, and that's all attributable to the shaft, and it's attributable for a number of different reasons. The shaft allows us to get more air underground, which allows us to operate more equipment, which in turn allows us to produce more. The shaft also allows us to get that extra material out of the mine. The shaft also greatly reduces our haulage requirements, which is our single biggest unit operating cost underground, is hauling, currently hauling from underground to surface. We'll be hoisting. So, we were running about 18 trucks now.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): We'll more than halve that with the shaft in place. Another very critical or key aspect of the shaft is travel time to the workforce. A bunch of you have been to Island and have experienced that, you know, 1-hour drive down the ramp to the bottom of the mine, while every month is getting even longer as we get deeper. So, you know, but it's... We're gonna be reducing probably 2 hours off the travel time of every single employee that goes underground. When we put the shaft in, they'll be at their work face in 15 minutes, which greatly enhances productivity and allows us to get to those, both the mining levels in production and the development levels that we're anticipating.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): On the open pit, we see another dramatic reduction in 2024 going to 2027. We're currently operating in kind of a hybrid mode with respect to maintenance in the Magino open pit. Due to a previous lack of a truck shop, we did not have a large maintenance crew there. We're relying on vendor maintenance from our various equipment vendors, which is substantially more expensive than doing owner maintenance. By the summer, we will have that truck shop in. We're already in the process of ramping up the hiring of our mechanics and electricians to work on the mobile fleet. So we'll see a reduction there.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): Over time, we see the mining costs in the open pit further reducing, and that's as we do the expansion or the ramp up in mining. It becomes economies of scale gets cheaper and cheaper as we increase our mining rate. Beyond 2033, we can see some slight increases there. As has been mentioned, we're gonna be. We've got about 40% more reserves at the Magino open pit, at the same strip ratios of 40% more waste. To place that waste, we've got to go further out away from the open pit, and our costs will slightly increase over time at that point.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): On the milling side, we see a substantial reduction through to 2028. That's due to a number of factors. The first factor is bringing the end of this year, bringing the 115 kV line on kV line online, which will reduce our processing costs by $5 a ton. At the end of 2027, we will shut down the high-cost Island Gold Mill, and be exclusively processing through the expanded Magino mill, further bringing costs down. We go out to 2039 or 2040-2041, is when we currently anticipate with the current reserve, Island closing based on current reserves.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): We will stop having to haul ore from the Island shaft over to the Magino, which incurs about $8 a ton transport cost for the Island ore over Magino. I'll hand it over to Luc now to talk about capital.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Thanks, Chris. Okay, so I'll just review a few of the slides with regards to the expansion study and the capital associated with that. So site layout, excuse me. What you're seeing there in yellow is the reserve pit for the Magino side, and over to the right is the Island Gold deposit, the reserve base projected to surface. So you can see close proximity of the two reserve bases. With regards to the expansion itself, we're basically twinning the mill complex. So the existing mill, as you can see, it's labeled in the orange boxes here, which references the primary crusher, secondary crusher, and the existing mill itself.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): The blue, blue boxes that are labeled in there are the new components that we're adding as part of the expansion. So the new circuit will have a capacity of 10,000 tons a day. We'll be looking to blend the high-grade underground ore coming across from, from Island, as well as about 7,000 tons once it's at full capacity from open pit operations to run the plant at 10,000 tons per day. And then, the existing mill will continue at 10,000 tons a day to process strictly the open pit ore. So just to provide a bit more detail here with regards to the progress to date, you can see the. On the left, the photo on the left, which is a photo from January 2026, so that's the new mill building.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Scott or, sorry, Chris touched on this. So you know, the earthworks are completed, foundation work's been completed, so a lot of that's been de-risked from a capital perspective, as we touched on. You can also see the new leach tanks in that left photo as well. There's 6 of them currently installed. There's a couple more to get that to the full capacity we're looking for. And the bottom photo on the bottom right is the truck shop. So that's something that we'll look to bring online mid this year, and we'll now be able to service more properly all of our fleet of equipment for open pit operations on-site with a truck shop to be able to maintain the fleet.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): So this is a flow sheet of the expansion itself. So it's two-stage crushing. We're gonna have a primary crushing will be gyratory followed by a cone crusher, two-stage grinding, so we'll have a SAG mill, ball mill, very similar to what the existing mill is currently. Followed by leach, CIP, elution, electrowinning, and gold ore. So some of the key changes to include, as I mentioned, the crusher. We're looking to add two fine ore bins. We currently have a tent arrangement on the existing bin. In this new complex, we're gonna actually add fine ore bins, two fine ore bins to provide mill feed into the mill.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): As I mentioned, 8 tanks, elution, and a larger gold refinery to handle the higher gold content coming into that mill complex with the high-grade ore coming from Island. With regards to the existing circuit, there are some benefits that will occur as a result of this expansion as well. You know, we've talked about that, some of the, you know, the questions in relation to, you know, consistently delivering the 10,000 tons per day through the existing plant. You know, we've got that modification that we're making with that secondary conveyor feed to make sure that we continue to keep that mill fed on a continuous basis when we have scheduled maintenance, both with the primary and secondary crusher. So that'll certainly be the fix in the short term.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): In the longer term, really what we're looking to do is the benefit of this gyratory crusher will actually be feeding from a primary crushing point of view, feeding both the existing mill as well as the new mill. So we would look to, and the photo on the right, you can see the truck dump for the open pit feed. So that's open pit feed coming out of the operation, dumping directly into that gyratory crusher, handling all of the crushing requirements. And then, from that point, there's a split on the on the conveyor system. If you look at the photo on the left, you can see a gray conveyor gallery as well as an orange conveyor gallery.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): So the orange conveyor gallery is going to the new cone crusher, which will then feed into the new mill. The gray conveyor gallery will be feeding into the existing conveyor structure, which will go into the cone crusher and then into the existing mill. And you can also see in that photo on the right, the underground feed coming from Island will have its separate tipping point. So it's not going through the gyratory crusher. It'll be just fed at that point because it's already sized and crushed underground from the underground operations over at the Island site. So when it arrives here, it's already had its primary crushing completed. It'll feed into a joint stream, co-mingling stream with the open pit ore, as well as the underground ore, to feed into the new mill.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): So we'll get the benefit of a better setup really than what we currently have right now with the existing setup for the primary crushing. So this will be a longer-term solution to be able to consistently deliver 10,000 tons a day out of both streams. The other aspect of it will be new ore bins. So in the photo on the left, you can see where it's labeled "new ore bins." Those are new ore bins that will be dedicated to the existing mill complex. So again, this is another area that we've seen, you know, with our operation practices that we've been running this complex over the last 18 months. Some deficiencies with regards to that feeder arrangement, with the tent arrangement, feeding into the grinding circuit, creating some issues with consistent feed.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Adding the bins will provide a more consistent delivery. From a maintenance perspective as well, it'll allow us actually to be able to take one bin online, work on the apron feeders when scheduled maintenance is required, or the other bin, vice versa, versus the current arrangement that we have with the tent facility, where they're in series, so you basically have to take them both down if you need to do some maintenance. So it'll give us more longer-term operational flexibility, as well to maintain the 10,000 tons per day through the existing plant for the long term. Schedule-wise, so we've touched on this a bit, but really, you know, we've...
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): You can see in the photos, that's the new mill complex itself, and as we've already mentioned, earthworks are done, foundation work's been done, so we've progressed it quite a bit, and de-risked it quite a bit from a point of view, being able to meet this schedule. So the big heavy lifting certainly is through the 2026-2027 period, with the intent of bringing the expanded 20,000 ton per day mill complex online in Q1 of 2028. So looking at the financials a bit on the capital. So this is looking at total capital. So this is in comparison to the base case, which would've been the June tech report versus what the expansion study shows now currently. Our total growth capital is about $704 million.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Adding the life of mine sustaining capital in there brings it to a total of about $3 billion for a total production base of about almost 8 million ounces. So what's really driving that increase in capital is the mineral reserve obviously is increased by 45%. You know, we're doubling the milling capacity with the expansion, obviously, with the second mill at Magino. Accelerated underground development that the teams touched on, as well as adding, you know, additional equipment fleet for both underground and mobile support for the open pit operations as well, and the aspect of ongoing inflation, obviously, from the base case numbers that would've been put out.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): But from a capital intensity point of view, you can see, you know, extremely low, at $393 per ounce, with the all-in sustaining cost of $1,155 per ounce. Looking at it on the basis of growth capital alone, so you've got the phase three up on the first line item there, so the expansion's pretty well in line, but about $162 million based on the expansion study. It's really around the Island Gold District expansion, which is, you know, primarily the mill, the accelerated development, and equipment required for both open pit and underground ramp up. So about 70% of that is related to the mill expansion, mobile equipment, and infrastructure.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): The other 30% is related to accelerated development to support the mining rates getting to 3,000 tons per day. On a capital intensity point of view, about $91 per ounce. And then looking at sustaining capital, relative to the base case, so it's gone from about $1.6 billion to $2.2 billion on the sustaining capital aspect. Driver there, obviously, is the mineral reserve, larger mineral reserve and underground development increasing by about 20%-25%. As I mentioned, we've added some equipment to the fleet, the tailings lifts that are required to support the larger reserve base, and we also touched on this airstrip for construction. That'll be part of this expansion study. And this is really to get us away from Lake Superior.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): You know, the lake effect has a lot of challenges for flights to be able to get in and out in the winter months, as well as the summer months. Getting away from Lake Superior, having an airstrip closer to the mine site will eliminate a lot of that, a lot of the challenges that we have for air service and provide more reliability for getting people in and out of the site on a continuous basis for the long term. If you add reclamation and capital leases in there, it brings the total to about $2.3 billion over the life of the project. And again, from a capital intensity point of view, pretty well-aligned with the base case at about $302 per ounce, so consistent with that base case life of mine.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): I think with that, I will turn it over to Mr. Fisher.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): Thank you, Luke. Just a couple slides to wrap up the economics around this expansion project that we've been speaking to. This slide's been shown on a couple different slides throughout the deck. Really, what we're trying to show here is the comparison of the base case to the expansion study, and you can see the economics are quite superior. I won't focus on the production and cost metrics, 'cause those have been discussed on a number of different occasions, but if you look at the NPV and the IRR, which is what we're focused on when we're making investment decisions, the NPV of this project is $8.2 billion at a pretty conservative gold price of $3,200 per ounce.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): At a gold price closer to where we are now, of $4,500 per ounce, it has an NPV of $12.2 billion. If you put that into perspective, stepping back in 2017, we acquired the Island Gold Mine from Richmont. In 2024, we acquired Magino from Argonaut. I said Richmond, previously Argonaut, and with the Magino acquisition, total acquisition cost was $1.4 billion. So we've put money into the ground every year to grow that resource. We've been expanding the asset, and all of that money that we've been spending on expanding the asset and growing the asset from a resource perspective, has all been paid for by the cash flows coming from the Island Gold District.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): We haven't put another dollar into the site from, you know, the corporate coffers perspective. So when you do the comparison of what we've spent to acquire this asset to where we are now, it's a growth of over $10 billion in value being generated, given the exploration success and the growth of this asset. And then from a return perspective, very attractive returns, IRR of 53% at $3,200 dollar gold, and an IRR of close to 70% at $4,500 dollar gold.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): The way we looked at IRR on this project was comparing the expansion study, where we have the 8 million ounces ramping up to 20,000 tons per day, comparing that to the scenario where it's status quo, where we have 8 million ounces of reserves, and we run that out using our existing infrastructure of a 10,000 ton per day mill, or 12,400 tons per day. So it's really looking at what's the benefit of bringing that revenue forward, from both the open pit and the underground, and you can see the returns are pretty significant.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): Looking at the cash flows at a $3,200 gold price environment, we are generating positive free cash flow over the next two years as we ramp up this asset and continue on this Island Gold District expansion to 20,000 tons per day. But then, when we hit that run rate in 2028, we see about $800 million in free cash flow every year for the next ten years, and cumulative free cash flow over that period of $12 billion. And then, when we look at the $4,500 scenario, again, a ramp-up in the cash flow in 2026 and 2027, but we hit that sustained rate of $1.3 billion in after-tax cash flow coming from this asset, and cumulative cash flow of $18 billion over the life of the asset.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): So, like any gold project, the biggest sensitivity is gonna be to the gold price. We have all the different scenarios listed here. I'm not gonna go through them. I think what's important to note is, this is a project that you would build in any gold price environment. It's attractive returns at a $2,800 gold price environment, and even more so at a $5,500 gold price scenario. I think... And with the payback being less than two years. I think the other thing that's important to note is, when we were analyzing this, we first looked at, does the expansion of the open pit, is that paid for by the open pit alone? So the- sorry, the expansion of the mill, is that paid for by the open pit alone? Because what...
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): We know that we could expand that underground to 3,000 tons per day, regardless of if we expanded the pit. We wanted to make sure that the pit expansion itself made sense to do, and it obviously did. And then you layer on the value of bringing forward revenues with expanding the underground rates, and you can see that the returns are quite significant. I think maybe the other point to show here is, at a $4,500 gold price scenario, we have a value of $12.2 billion, right? If you look at our market cap right now, we're about $16 billion.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): So more than 75% of our market cap right now is supported by the Island Gold District, and that's based on what we know now, and we know it's continuing to grow. So what are we trying to turn the Island Gold District into? I think it's pretty clear we're trying to make it one of the largest, lowest cost, and longest life assets in Canada. If you look from when we get to that steady run rate in 2028, we'll be producing 530,000 ounces a year. That makes it the third largest operation in Canada. From a cost perspective, it would, at just over $1,000 per ounce, it would be the third lowest cost asset in Canada.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): And then from a profitability metric, which is obviously important to us, it would be the second most profitable asset in Canada. And therefore, we're really putting this on par as a, you know, a top three asset in Canada, along with Detour and Malartic. And as we look to expand our Canadian production, with the completion of the Island Gold District expansion to 20,000 tons per day, that'll bring our production in Canada to 700,000 ounces a year. You layer on Lynn Lake, completed in the first half of 2029, and we're closer to 900,000 ounces a year. So it's close to 90% of our annualized production is in Canada, which is the jurisdiction that we wanna be in.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): So that firmly cements us as the second-largest gold producer in Canada, and quickly closing the ground on Agnico. I was hoping for some chuckles there, at least, but- I mean, in closing, before we get into the exploration, we're talking about the Island Gold District, the new Island Gold District. We had the base case that we put out in the midyear. We said that was the placeholder. We knew when we acquired Argonaut, that there was something bigger here. This is what we see now. We see that we can grow this asset to 530,000 ounces a year. It's an all-in sustaining cost, that's $1,000 an ounce and a big valuation. It's a Tier One asset by anyone's definition.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): But John made the point earlier, this is base, this is the way station. As we start to look at the exploration upside, that this district still has a very underexplored district, we're gonna see a lot more success as time comes, and I wouldn't be surprised if a number of years from now we're doing another expansion study, where we're talking about where this is growing from here. With that, I will pass it on to Scott to talk about some of that exciting exploration.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): Thank you, Greg. Just an overview of what I'll walk through today. I'll start with high-level exploration strategy. I'll touch on our 2026 budget, then I'll walk through an update by asset across the company, with a focus, obviously, on Island Gold and building off of what we just communicated, fed into that Island expansion study. Lots on this slide, but bottom line, what's our strategy for exploration at Alamos? We obviously wanna maintain and extend our mine life by replacing depletion. That's great to do. We obviously wanna grow our mineral inventory as well, to grow mineral reserves and resources, and we wanna do that with higher quality ounces. How do we do that?
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): We have a strong team of people leading this and executing this across our sites, all levels of the company and contributing to the success that we've had. One big differentiator for Alamos, and our assets in terms of our exploration strategy, if you look at whether it's Island Gold, you look at Young-Davidson, Mulatos, Lynn Lake, these are all amazing districts that have great deposits that have just been overlooked. They haven't seen the exploration that you've seen in Kirkland Lake, Val-d'Or, Timmins, Red Lake. So the exploration maturity of these districts are decades old, not centuries old, for in most cases, and that's the opportunity. So when we focus on mine exploration, we're expanding on amazing deposits that are well endowed, that just haven't seen the exploration investment go into them.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): We also look at expanding our land packages in the same geology, and just like those deposits haven't been explored, whether it's Island, Young-Davidson, Mulatos, Lynn Lake, these are districts now that we hold, that we can step out on in similar geology, have the same opportunities, and that's really what feeds our strategy, and that is a big differentiator. If you look at what the result of that's been, we've touched on this a few times, adding 8 million ounces of mineral resources over the last 7 years at $31 an ounce, that gives us operational flexibility in terms of organic growth projects.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): We've replaced over two times what we've depleted out of our inventory over that period, and that's now feeding into what we're planning for 2026, which is a record exploration budget of $97 million, and I'll cover off what that will focus on by asset. Notably, 240,000 meters of drilling. That's a big increase from 180,000 meters in 2025. Looking at the exploration budget by asset, and you'll see, probably see why we're spending so much at Island or planning to spend so much at Island in 2026. Again, a big increase from 2025. That's focused on now getting back to mineral resource expansion. That mineral resources that we intend on defining will feed into our future mineral reserves.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): 2025 was a big year of mineral resource to reserve conversion with delineation drilling. So now getting back to focusing on exploration while continuing to convert that remaining inferred and measured and indicated mineral base. At Young-Davidson, we're laser focused on defining high grade that we can feed into that underground infrastructure to be a real value add there. Mulatos transitioning to sulfide, where we've got a lot of exciting opportunities, which I'll touch on, and continuing to expand on new discoveries and also test other advanced targets. At Lynn Lake, we talked about the 9,000 ton a day mill.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): You know, what opportunities exist on that belt where we can see a potential to bring higher grade into that mine plan sooner, and that's what we're gonna be focusing on in 2026. Kékavik is a very exciting greenfields project in Quebec, and I'll give you a highlight on that, but another 8,000-meter drill program there this year, following up on discoveries from 2025. Here's an example of the results of the efforts of exploration. We've seen this slide before, but I think to point out here, you know, this is 6 million ounces of growth that we've seen here, including what we've mined over the course of the last 8 years since acquisition. You can see it's, you know, these are just kind of checkpoints in time, and we have our year-end reserves and resources.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): But really, this is a consistent, sustained exploration effort that's occurred since Alamos acquired this, and even starting before that with Richmont, where we're now sitting at, 6.7 million ounces of inventory. You can see 25 was a big focus on getting all of that large mineral resource inventory converted to reserves, to feed into the expansion study. We're successful at doing that. Now the focus goes back to, you know, let's build out that mineral resource base that'll be the future, mineral reserves that we can convert. Stepping through year by year, and I'll do this fairly quickly, but just to give you a sense of how the deposit's grown over time, this is what it looked like on a longitudinal when we acquired it in 2017, from Richmont, about 1.8 million ounces.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): They had just at the time, started doing some deeper drilling below the 500-600 meter level, hitting high grades. The deposit was changing. It was getting, higher and higher grade as they went, deeper. And then Alamos took it on and ramped up that, deep exploration effort, and you can see the results of that three years later. We're now sitting at, 3.1 million ounces and really building out that deposit at depth. Now we're at year... three years later, 2022, 5.1 million ounces. Continues to grow. We're now defining high-grade reserves in the mid-mine, where we had resources. Now, you can see that block, at 12.5 grams per tonne.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): Mid-year this year, you know, continuing to now focus on getting that resource converted to reserve, and you can see the change there, and still expanding on mineralization. And then the current reserve and resource, you can see very successful on converting that high-grade inferred resource into high-grade reserves, and this is where we sit now at 6.7 million ounces. I think the takeaway I want you to have today is, this is a starting point for us, and I think there's so much opportunity here for this to grow, and I'll walk through a few slides showing what our exploration focus will be going forward.... So there's a lot on this. This is a kind of 3D view, looking at Island, looking to the north.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): This is every single drill hole, 9,000 drill holes that cross the Island Gold mineralization plane, and there's 18,000 points on here that define the actual mineralization. Some drill holes hit two zones. But the point here is, look at the extent of the reserves and resources relative to the drilling. Really, I mean, the point to take away from this, this is defined by the extent of the drilling, and that's the exploration opportunity here, given that this has not seen the exploration efforts that other systems of this scale have seen over what could be a century. This has only been a couple of decades at Island Gold. So the extents of the ore body is currently defined by the extents of our drilling.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): It's open to the east, which I'll touch on, open to the west, and open at depth, which we're really excited about. In addition to that main Island zone, you know, as it was drilled over the years, you saw the growth in the deposit. We were hitting intersections in the hanging wall and footwall of the deposit, and at the time, not knowing what they were, and they're pretty widely spaced. We called them unknown zones. Well, those now are developing into hanging wall and footwall zones that now sit in our reserves and resources and feed into the mine plan that you see with the expansion study. So those are close to existing infrastructure. They don't require a lot of development to get to them, and they add more ounces per vertical meter to the deposit.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): So just adding value with defining those continuity within those zones and getting closer to them with underground platforms to be able to drill them off, to effectively put shapes around them and get confident with the geometry and extent. But I'll highlight, we have 2,000 more of those unknown zones from historic drilling sitting out there that are part of our exploration strategy. As we get platforms established underground, we'll start following up on those 2,000 composites and look to see if we can continue adding ounces in the hanging wall and footwall. This is stepping back pretty far from the last image I showed you, but I'm gonna touch on three opportunities. If you look at Island Gold and where we can find more of this high-grade mineralization within the structure, the obvious one is what I'm highlighting here.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): You can see the drill results at depth. So we have... the bottom of our current reserves and resources is 1,500 meters. Below that, we've done some deeper drilling in the past, and we intersected same style of mineralization. You can see the grades and widths there, but haven't followed up on them as we were focusing on the hanging wall and footwall zones and then conversion of resources to reserves. So now we're currently back on as part of our late 2025 budget and now going into 2026, following up on those high-grade intersections at depth to try to extend the deposit below 1,500 meters. The other opportunity to touch on is to the east.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): We did some deep step-out holes just to test to see what was there, 'cause it was a blank space on the canvas, and we hit the structure exactly where we predicted at about 1,700 meters vertical. You can see some of the grades there. That's a 500-meter step out, and that's a meaningful step out from the deposit. And then to the west, I'll touch on that opportunity, which is something that hasn't really been highlighted previously, because of the land tenure boundary that existed before, but now that that's removed between the Magino deposit and Island, we have, I think, a good opportunity to extend Island to the west. So getting your eye into this, this is a 3D oblique image, kind of looking off to the northeast.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): If you're removing topography and looking, you know, from the sky into the ground, you can see Island in the distance there, dipping to the south. You can see the Magino reserve pit within the Webb Lake Stock, which is the host rock of Magino, dipping to the north. And what the opportunity here that I'm going to walk you through is the extension of Island to the west, south of the Webb Lake Stock, and the fact that it has not been tested, and that's something we'll be working on. So now in cross-section, looking to the east, you can see a cross-section through the Magino reserve pit.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): You can see all the drilling that's been done in this area through the center of Magino, and you can see Island sitting off in the distance, and you see the strike and dip of Island outlined by that red line. So if you actually project that onto this section, this is where you'd expect to see that Island main structure to the west of Island Gold deposit, and it sits south of the Webb Lake Stock, dipping to the south. You can see none of the drilling ever tested that area. It was always focused on defining the Webb Lake Stock mineralization, not testing to the south of it. So this is now an opportunity where we have the ground to the south, and we'll be able to set up and test for the potential for Island to extend to the west.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): I think Luke showed this area earlier, and I'll, I'll kind of reiterate why we're excited about it. That area in the red box, 1.6 million ounces at 15 grams per tonne. You can see that it's open below that. It's really defined by the extent of where we focused our drilling. Some of those deeper exploration holes hitting some pretty amazing grades that look very similar to what we were seeing above. So we're excited to start drilling in this area and work on expanding mineral resources below that 1,500-meter mark. The other point I'll make from this slide is those two intersections off to the right of the image, 9 grams over 2.7 meters and 4 over 5, they're 50 meters apart.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): Those were 2, 2 kilometers downhole, 1,700 meters vertical. We hit the projected interpretation of that Island structure, 500 meters to the east, and there's absolutely no drilling. You can see beyond the extent of what I'm showing here. So the opportunity for additional ore shoots to the east is something that we're very focused on exploring for as well. Stepping away from Island and those opportunities that exist that we're focusing on for mine exploration is, you know, what else exists nearby that could be potential sources of ore for the expanded mill complex? And one of the opportunities we see is a potential bulk mining underground opportunity. It's called the North Shear. So it's this is north of Island, east of the Magino reserve pit.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): This was actually discovered before Island Gold was in the nineties, and there was quite a bit of drilling on it, but the ore shoots weren't quite as continuous as what they eventually ended up discovering at Island to the south. So it really hasn't been looked at for a couple of decades until we went back in in 2024 and did some drilling. So we're gonna continue advancing this and looking at it as... Is there a potential here for a 3-4 g/t underground ore body that we can mine for additional mill feed to that 20,000-ton-a-day mill that would offset potential open pit ore?
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): We'll move this forward over the next little while and see if we can define some areas of good grade continuity that can define a 3-4 gram-per-ton underground reserve. Now looking, kind of stepping a bit further away, but not too far away from Island and that mill complex, Cline and Edwards, and you saw some results come out on this a couple of days ago, and this is 9 kilometers by road, about 7 kilometers away from Island Gold. Two past producing mines. This was held by a variety of different ownerships, you know, basically from the 1920s through to present day.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): We consolidated this ground as part of our strategy that I was referring to, where we picked it up a large land package in 2020, and then these came with it. So now we've removed land tenure boundaries. We can look at this as a gold system, and having a lot of success here, we're quite excited about it. Zooming in, there are two historic past producers. The Cline Mine, operating in the 1930s, produced 64,000 ounces, and I'll show you why that's important in a second, to just under 7 grams. And then Edwards, initially in the 1930s and then as recently as the 1990s, producing 140,000 ounces at 11 grams.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): So both high-grade mines, both very, limited by their fractured, land tenure boundaries in terms of exploration, and now we've removed all of that. We can explore this as one system, and that's, that's exciting. This is a long section through Cline-Pick. This is an area that, we started revisiting in 2023 and looking at the opportunity that existed around all those high-grade zones that hadn't been mined to the west of the Cline Mine, which you can see there in the gray outline. What are the controls on mineralization? What can we do to test them and step out on them? And we started drilling, and you can see, you know, other than having a lot of labels on here, the labels are good things 'cause every highlight is labeled.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): But, there's a lot of high grade here, and we're working now on defining the controls, and some of that is starting to pay off. We had ideas in mind, testing a big gap in about 400 meters depth, and we drilled a hole testing an idea, and sure enough, we got 180 grams over 3.5 meters in a vein, which actually, the core is out of the door here if you wanna take a look at it after. Then below that, this is wide open. It hasn't been tested below 500 meters. So understanding the controls near surface, we'll work towards an initial resource estimate here, and then we'll start stepping out and testing controls along strike and at depth to try to expand the system.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): So this is really exciting as a potential opportunity for additional mill feed for that Magino Mill. The last point I'll leave you with here is if you look at that gray area that's outlined, those are the underground stopes that were mined at the Cline Mine. So those gray areas on this longitudinal represent the footprint of 63,000 ounces. So you can put a lot of those 63,000-ounce footprints on this longitudinal, and that's what we're excited about. This is a picture of the core that's outside. It's impressive grades consistent throughout the vein. You can see 219 grams, 310, all the way through. So it's I encourage you to go take a look after the presentation.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): Now, stepping way back, and this is the last few slides on Island, but let's look at a 9-kilometer-long section connecting Cline/Edwards to the east with Island and Magino, and just looking at the extent of all the drilling that's ever occurred along this section. You can see the 450-meter mark that I put in place here gives an idea of the depth. So, you know, Island Gold was a completely different deposit from 400 meters to surface, and everything changed below 500 meters from what we know of it now. When you look over at Cline/Edwards, it's only been drilled to 450 meters, and there's, sorry, 500 meters, and no drilling below that.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): So the opportunity is, you know, if we can understand the controls of Cline and Edwards and then start testing deeper, these systems are typically vertically extensive. What is the opportunity there? We don't know, but we're certainly excited about it. The other thing that it highlights, I think if you look at Island Gold, it's got every drill hole that's ever been drilled on it. You can see how much space there is at depth, you know, even to get down to some, say, three kilometers, if you were to double the extent of that, that's another eight million ounces, essentially within that Island Gold footprint. If you were to take the same footprint of an ore body, same grades, and be able to extend it down to three kilometers, it's another eight million ounces, plus the opportunity to the east and west along strike.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): I mean, you can see the extent of the drilling, not a lot of it, so we're excited about that as well. With the 3-kilometer number in mind that I mentioned, I mean, this isn't a number I'm throwing out there. You look across Ontario and Quebec, you know, we have Campbell Red Lake operating well below 3 kilometers. LaRonde's another one. I think they have resources now down on almost 4 kilometers, mining down to just over 3. So these deposits are vertically extensive on the down plunge orientation. Island's the same thing, very strong down plunge control on mineralization, so we're excited about the potential down plunge, and we're excited about the potential along strike to find additional ore shoots.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): This is a view of our consolidation of the belt, you know, initially with Richmont having a 10,000-hectare property, and then over time, acquiring a number of players in the belt to be able to now hold 60,000 hectares of very prospective geology. We're applying a systematic district-scale targeting approach to understanding, you know, what controls Magino, understanding what controls Island, Cline/Edwards, and then taking that out and looking to see if we can define other opportunities within that 60,000-hectare land package that looks similar to those or other styles of mineralization. Really excited about the long-term opportunity there. Our 2026 budget just gives you a sense of where we're drilling from underground.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): This is really leveraging our underground infrastructure, tugging on the extents of the deposit from where we have underground drill platforms. So opportunities to the east, to the west, we're excited about that Island West Zone up plunge towards Magino, filling in around the down plunge extension of Island West, where you see 18,000 meters. That's a really big focus. There's a lot of opportunity there that we see. And then even closer to surface, where we see the 3,000-meter boxes, that was explored 10 years ago and never really looked back on, and as the deposit continued to depth. So we see opportunities in there for potential resources that could come into reserves. And then our surface program, big program, 48,000 meters.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): Very focused at depth, as I was showing you, with almost 40,000 meters drilling at depth. And then also, I spoke about to the west and then testing that Island Gold structure to the south of Magino. So starting closer to surface and obviously working our way down. So good opportunity for ramp access or in the future from those near surface targets as we hoist our 3,000 tons a day up the shaft. You know, also focusing on defining potential ramp access reserves that we could perhaps supplement into the production profile up the ramp. Jumping to Mulatos, this is a very exciting stage in Mulatos' history from an exploration and operations perspective.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): This is operated as an oxide heap leach operation for the last 20 years. We're now transitioning to sulfide with the construction of the PDA underground project and the 2,000 ton a day sulfide mill. Our exploration team has, with a very strong understanding of the geology of this region, has gone out and looked at the other opportunities that could exist, and those are sulfide opportunities. So there's historic sulfide intersections across the district that previous explorers and Alamos have intersected, but with a focus at the time on oxide, they're kind of just put on the back burner until this point in time. We're now going in with our reinterpreted geology, pulling them off the shelf and having a lot of success.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): PDA, this is some of the highlights from 2025. Really, 2025 focused on drilling and filling in areas in the wireframe where we felt we could extend mineralization, and that was very successful. At PDA, we're now sitting at 1 million ounces, and that's the basis of our PDA underground development project. There's great opportunity here for further sulfide mineralization. You can see from basically off from PDA to PDA extension, that's a couple of kilometers of strike where we know from the limited drilling that's been done, there's sulfide that exists. So that's future exploration potential, which we'll be able to more effectively target from underground once we have the underground drill platforms in place instead of drilling from surface.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): Cerro Pelon, this was a oxide, a small oxide mine that we had operated from 2019 to 2021, revisited old sulfide intersections below that pit, and sure enough, we're having a lot of success there. Came up with a 100,000 ounce resource last year. We've been stepping out from that this year, and you can see the results of that. I mean, some pretty good grades, pretty good widths. And I will note as well that as you step away from Cerro Pelon, 2 km to the north, we're drilling the same level of stratigraphy and hitting sulfide mineralization there as well. So I think it highlights the potential of the district, but also the potential of the Cerro Pelon area in terms of that system.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): That little bit of oxide that was mined may have been the tip of an iceberg of a larger epithermal system. The cross-section just giving a sense of what the geometry of the zones look like at Cerro Pelon. This is an exciting new discovery at Mulatos that we made in 2025. The team reinterpreted the geology in this area. Halcon was an area that had been explored for at least three decades. This area, in particular, hadn't seen any historic exploration. But going back in here and drilling below unmineralized rock, we intersected very high grades, and you can see the grades there. So the wide moderate-grade sulfide-hosted gold mineralization with high grades within it. So this is early days, but exciting. This has got a good footprint.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): It's 500 meters in strike, open in all directions, and something we'll aggressively move forward in 2025... 2026, sorry. Jumping to Young-Davidson, you can see on here, the red is the mineralization wireframe. That's 95% of the reserves and resources in the syenite. It's open at depth, and we are confident we can continue expanding at depth, but we have a 13-year mine life. So our focus is improving what we can bring into that underground infrastructure in terms of grade. And there's good opportunity here that we're already recognizing for potential higher grade ore to come into the underground, and that's in the hanging wall. So in 2024, we discovered a zone sitting to the south of the conglomerate, or south of the syenite in conglomerate.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): So a brand-new style of mineralization for Young-Davidson. In 2025, we pushed a hanging wall drift out to be able to better drill it, and I have a slide showing the results of that. As you step to the east, cross-section B, I'll show the south cyanide. This sits 300 meters south of the Northgate shaft in an area way off in the hanging wall that just hadn't been drilled. So we were doing some true exploration holes out there earlier this year from the mid and lower mine, and sure enough, hit another cyanide, some pretty good grades. Still early days there, but we're actively drilling and trying to understand what the opportunity could be there. But both of these are close to existing infrastructure. This is a cross-section through that conglomerate zone.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): You can see the 920 hanging wall drift. It's a 450-meter drift we pushed out to the south, the drill holes to drill back, and confirmatory of what we were drilling from the footwall. Working now on an interpretation to define the geometry continuity, but it's open up and down dip, and it plunges off. It's the high grade's associated with a folding conglomerate that plunges off to the west, and that's what we'll be focusing on as we step down lower in the mine. And then this is the South Cline target I touched on off to the east, and again, you can see the drilling we did here in the dark lines in 2025. Again, pretty good grades, and off to the south, you know, not much drilling beyond the extent of that.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): We'll continue following this zone up and down dip, but also trying to understand what's controlling some of those really high grades you see there that are open along strike and up and down plunge. We talked about the opportunity for additional mill feed at Young-Davidson. We talked about Golden Arrow, which is about 90 km away. We see good potential for open pit sources of ore nearby Young-Davidson, and that's something we've been working on and are currently drilling on right now. Otis Northeast, you can see where Young-Davidson is in the image. You can drive easily to Otis Northeast. It's about 3 km away. This was discovered in 1998, drilled to 2003.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): Then the focus shifted to Young-Davidson, and nobody ever went back to Otis Northeast until recently. And certainly, good open pit grades there that have potential for additional sources of ore for that mill, and that's what we're focused on. You can see the grades. We've drilled it from surface down to 120 meters, open at depth and open along strike, and right now we're working on filling in between that historic drilling to define an initial resource that we can start looking at from a potential open-pit reserve perspective. Lynn Lake, this is, again, a district-scale opportunity that's been consolidated. The two main deposits that we're building right now are Gordon and MacLellan in the north belt. 2.3 million ounces of reserves.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): They're 50 kilometers apart along a major crustal structure. I guarantee you that's not the only 2.3 million ounces that exist in that northern belt, and that's the exploration upside regionally. To the south, it's another major structure, the Johnson Shear Zone. Currently, we have 1 million ounces of reserves there between two satellite deposits, Burnt Timber and Linkwood, and we see good opportunities to continue expanding that as well. But at Lynn Lake, as we talked about, we have a long mine life, 25-year mine life and 9,000 tons a day. It's what are the opportunities that we can bring higher grade into that mine plan sooner, and what... So that's what we're focused on in 2026, and those opportunities exist below the Gordon Pit and below the MacLellan Pit.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): Touching on the drilling we did in 2025 at Burnt Timber and Linkwood, stepping out on the reserve pits that were defined in 2024, we were successful to the west. We were successful below the pits and highlights the potential opportunity, I think, in the area. Also, interestingly, the East Foster target to the south, we don't know what exactly the extents of that is yet, but again, getting some pretty good grades there, south of the Johnson Shear Zone, that we're in an area that hadn't really been explored. I think this is one of the more exciting opportunities for high grade at Lynn Lake that can come into a mine plan sooner. This is the Gordon deposit. So this is an iron formation-hosted deposit. You can see the depth scale there.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): The black outline is our reserve pit, and then the two darker areas are two historic pits that were mined there. So between our reserves and what was mined historically within the first 200 meters, there's 900,000 ounces in that iron formation. And you can see that iron formation is open at depth. Some of the deeper drilling was intersecting iron formation-hosted gold at depth, and that's what we're focused on now, is stepping out on that historic drilling and seeing if we can start defining opportunities for underground mining below that Gordon Pit. And why that is relevant is because the Gordon Pit is mined out in the first 5 years of the Lynn Lake life of mine, right, currently.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): And if we can supplement that with high-grade underground mill feed, even 1,000 tons a day, that could have a big impact to the overall project. The same opportunity exists in MacLellan. MacLellan was operated as an underground mine historically. Those grades and widths speak for themselves that I'm highlighting below the reserve pit. And again, this is open for exploration at depth, but however, we're working right now on infilling between these historic drill intersections to come up with an initial resource below the MacLellan Pit, and this could come in after the MacLellan Pit's mined out by year 10 of the project. And I'll end on Qiqavik, which is an exciting long-term greenfield project.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): You talk about, you know, areas in Canada that are underexplored but have phenomenal geologic potential. This is one of them. It's a greenstone belt. Nobody ever looked for gold here until 2018, when, Orford Mining was up doing prospecting and finding a tremendous amount of boulders at surface with gold in them, and, it was a good indication that the source was somewhere proximal. We acquired this project in, 2024, got our geologists and team up there in that field season. Didn't do any drilling, but just focused on figuring out where the targets were, where we wanted to drill in 2025, which led into the 2025 program. I'll highlight the scale here, 50 kilometers.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): It's in Nunavik in northern Quebec, so it's just west of the Raglan mine, so it's remote, remote, but certainly think there's potential here for a significant discovery. Out of those five target areas that I had highlighted, we hit gold at all of them on that map, which again speaks to the fact that to go into a greenfields project, you know, building off the field work that's happened, to come up with results like that across the various target areas, I think speaks to the endowment of the belt. But what I'd really like to see here is, you know, off of a first program in the southern part of this target area, 55 grams over 2.5 meters in a quartz vein in a shear zone.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): So it's got the grades, and it's got the gram meters you want to see. What that means, we're going to go back next year and start stepping out on it. We're going to follow up on some of our other intersections that we had in 2025 and start testing targets elsewhere on the property that are in the pipeline that are high priority. And the last slide, this is an example of what those boulders look like. And this boulder in particular, you can see the size of it relative to that hammer. It had an unbelievable amount of visible gold in it, and it was very similar to hundreds of other boulders that exist in this 700-meter-long, 50-meter-wide boulder dispersal train that has a lot of visible gold that lead back to a major crustal structure that's under a river valley.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): We did some drilling there, and hit similar-looking quartz veins with arsenopyrite and visible gold. They were narrower. You can see some of the grades, 11 grams over 1.2 meters, but not the scale of that boulder. But what that tells me is the similar characteristics of what we intersected in that drill hole to those boulders is that there's a—we were in the system, but we weren't in the highest grade part of the system. There's a significant source there to have boulders of that size over that dispersal distance. So we're going to go back there next year and continue testing that deformation corridor and hopefully find the high-grade sources of those large boulders. And to end, you can see, you know, what this is showing is over time, you know, we've increased our exploration spend.
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): Every year, that was based on the success of the previous year and building off of all those results. And as we've done that, you know, we've not only replaced our reserves, we've grown our reserves, and we've grown them 65%, and we've grown the quality. The grade's gone up as well. And then the focus for us is continuing to replenish our mineral reserve inventory, resource inventory as we convert those resources to reserves. And I think the $97 million budget for 2026 is going to be an exciting year to continue on that trajectory. Thank you. And with that, I'll hand it over to John for some closing remarks.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): Thanks. Well, you've certainly had no shortage of slides to take in. I know there's, like, 130-odd slides in that deck, and I appreciate everyone's time and attention this morning. With respect to the way we define our company, I think we've provided sort of ample evidence this morning that we certainly have the bit between our teeth when it comes to continuing to build this company. We're putting the dollars where they count. We're putting them into exploration. We're putting them into development. And that's going to underpin this definition of a company with a leading growth profile. It's not a question of just sustaining what we've created so far. It's a proposition for growing what we have, what we've established. I think we've got a fantastic team.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): It's, I think the quality of the information that we have provided today more or less speaks for itself. I think we have some exciting years ahead, and I'm just as excited about what I'm doing here at Alamos today as I was 20-odd years ago when I was trying to get the company off the ground. I would say that we've never had a better opportunity, in terms of, you know, the way we're growing this company. It's... We've largely de-risked the story that we've presented today. And, from the point of view of permitting, from the point of view of the infrastructure we've already established, we're growing on what we already know.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): Much of the exciting exploration potential, for example, that exploration story, I think, is so key to what we're doing and who we are. And the way it will continue to underpin our growth, I think is just a really exciting part of what we do and who we are. So, you know, look, we're growing. We're growing production. We're declining costs. That's going to grow our ability to generate free cash flow, and that's what it's all about. And, you know, I know investors are looking forward to, you know, returns on capital. We're gonna definitely get there, but right now, the way we're going to grow our value, which essentially will underpin a stronger stock price, I think that's equally important.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): I mean, a lot of investors that own Alamos stock own us for the growth. I think we're one of those few stories that answer that side of investor focus. But you can also own it with looking to the point where the capital spend starts to come down, and the free cash flow generation continues to climb, and then you're absolutely going to see an increase in dividends and share buybacks off the back of it. So, I'll just wind up there. I think we're going to have another Q&A to address this next portion. So I'll turn it over to Scott Parsons to take charge of that. Thank you very much.
Scott Parsons (SVP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Alamos Gold): ... So you wanna, you stay up there. Thank you, John. We'll invite the rest of the management team up onto the stage and open the floor up to Q&A. And for those of you online, please submit any questions you have through the Q&A function.
Bryce Adams (Equity Research Analyst, Desjardins): Hello again, and, thanks again. The 2 million ounces that you added in the last six months at Island District, can you separate that out? How much of it is from exploration drilling versus economies of scale and maybe gold price assumptions? And if it was more resource conversion, can you talk to, like, the drill cutoff dates?
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): The drill, sorry?
Bryce Adams (Equity Research Analyst, Desjardins): The drilling cutoff dates for the June 1 versus the December 1.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): Yep. Okay, I'll address that. So, with respect to Magino, we added about 0.9 million ounces to reserves. About 200,000 of that is attributable to the gold price. So you may be aware we've gone from a reserve gold price of $1,600 last year to $1,800 this year. So about 200,000 of that 0.9 is from gold price, the remainder is from the drilling program, the conversion of inferred to M&I. And just probably a very minor amount that's attributable to the expansion itself or the economies of scale, the expansion in itself. You probably saw from the unit operating costs. There wasn't a tremendous difference in unit operating costs, so it's mostly gold price and drilling.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): Over at Island, there was no real impact from the gold price. The nature of the ore body there is just pretty hard contacts between, relatively hard contacts between ore and waste, so a reduction in the cutoff grade doesn't get you much more. That was all basically drilling, drilling out the inferred that we had, and then also the conversion of a significant portion of M&I into proven and probable as a result of, you know, putting a development plan around it.
Bryce Adams (Equity Research Analyst, Desjardins): Got it.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): The thing I'll add is, if you look at our 2022 study, a considerable amount of what underpinned that, our assumptions was actually inferred resources, which you had to use. I mean, we've got a high-grade underground mine, and trying to define reserves there is time-consuming, and it's expensive. And our resource-to-reserve conversion rate was so high over such a long period of time, we had a high degree of confidence in doing that. But the OSC looked at that and said, "No, we don't allow that. No exceptions.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): We don't care how solid your resource-to-reserve conversion rate is. You can only use reserves in your economic assumptions." So we had to allocate a big portion of our 2025 exploration budget to converting resource to reserve at Island Underground. And we were very successful. But that's the reason why we hit that part of the drill program so hard.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): Yeah, with respect to drill cutoff dates, so the prior reserve that we had in June of last year, the drill cutoff date for that, the majority of it was actually the previous October. And then this year's reserve update, the reserve the drill cutoff date would have been October as well.
Bryce Adams (Equity Research Analyst, Desjardins): Okay, thank you. Lots of successful drilling. Second question, if I can, is maybe a hypothetical one. Just imagining all of the growth that's happened at Island Underground, hypothetically, if the Argonaut deal was never done and, you know, they were separate, but Island had undergone the same growth trajectory that, that it has done, where do you think that the all-in sustaining costs for a standalone underground operation would be today if that was the scenario?
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): Yeah, I mean, we. When we model out what the costs are, we have a pretty good understanding of what the open pit costs us versus the underground. So I mean, on a blended basis, it's $1,025 per ounce. The open pit ounces probably costs us about $1,700, between $1,650-$1,700 all-in sustaining cost like mine. So the underground is somewhere in and around $750 AISC.
Bryce Adams (Equity Research Analyst, Desjardins): Thank you. Pretty special asset.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): Yeah. Absolutely.
Steve Green (Senior Analyst, TD Securities): Hi, Steve Green, TD Securities. As you're building out the second line, is there any impact on the Magino mill? And when you're completing it, is there any kind of downtime to tie it in?
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): No, there, I mean, they're pretty well independent, Steve. I mean, the construction we're doing right now with the main built mill complex is all separate from what we're doing. So the only tie-in that'll really happen at the end would be the gyratory crusher, when we need to, you know, do the final tie-ins for the conveyor systems to be able to have one stream going into the existing mill and the new blended stream with the Island Underground, or with the open pit feed feeding into the new mill. But that's very short order. Like, the gyratory crusher installation, everything can happen independent of that. It'll be just the final tie-ins with the conveyor, so it's from a point of view of interruption, it's pretty minimal.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): It'd be days as opposed to weeks or months.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): Yeah, exactly. Very short.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Yeah.
Steve Green (Senior Analyst, TD Securities): That's in 2028?
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Correct.
Steve Green (Senior Analyst, TD Securities): Yep.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Correct.
Steve Green (Senior Analyst, TD Securities): Great. Thank you.
Don DeMarco (Precious Metals Equity Research Analyst, National Bank): ... I got a question, Don DeMarco, National Bank. My question has to do with the unit costs. They're summarized on page 86. On this slide, it shows some of the reasons why the costs are declining relative to 2026. I'm sure it's not an exhaustive list, but it talks about connecting to grid power, the expansion up to 20,000 tons per year, and so on. But I'm looking at the open pit mining unit costs. In 2026, they were CAD 6.81 per ton, but then over the life of the mining expansion study, they're CAD 4.85. Can you explain why... What was it that led to the reduction in the open pit mining costs?
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Yeah, I-
Don DeMarco (Precious Metals Equity Research Analyst, National Bank): I see a similar reduction in underground mining, too. Maybe comment on both of those things-
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): Sure. I will-
Don DeMarco (Precious Metals Equity Research Analyst, National Bank): your confidence in those.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): Yeah, do the open pit, open pit first, where, in 2026, we're, yeah, somewhere over $6 a ton, would be going to the life of mine, to the high $4 a ton. The big thing in, at the open pit in 2026 is, as I mentioned earlier, we're operating under a hybrid maintenance scheme right now with vendor maintenance, doing a significant amount of the maintenance on our mobile fleet of equipment in the open pit, which is much more expensive than having an owner team doing it. The reason why we had to go down that route is we didn't have a truck shop, as a center for our mine maintenance team, so we will have that in place midyear.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): We're ramping up on mechanics and electricians through the year to be able to fully take on by the end of 2026, to be able to fully take on that function. That's one of the biggest things there. And then, as well as the economies of scale, of increasing, you know, from a nominal of 60,000 tons a day up to, you know, upwards of 100,000 tons a day contributes to that reduction in open pit mining costs. And over at the underground, it's all to do with the shaft going where we are now to where we'll be at the end of this year and going further on.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): It's increasing the tons per day, it's increasing the time at the face and the productivity of the employees, the amount of equipment we can run, and reducing the amount of haulage that we're doing to surface, which is a very significant cost currently. And going forward, we'll see further economies of scale going to 3,000 tons a day. There's other reductions in there later in... actually, increases later in the life as we get a bit deeper. We're capitalizing less of our development, so we get more operating development hitting the mining costs per ton.
Don DeMarco (Precious Metals Equity Research Analyst, National Bank): Okay, that, that's really helpful. Specifically on the open pit mining unit cost, what assumptions did you use for the cost of fuel?
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): I think we're using $1 a gallon.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): A liter.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): A liter. Sorry, $1 a liter.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Back in the good old days.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): Yeah.
Don DeMarco (Precious Metals Equity Research Analyst, National Bank): Okay, thank you.
Francesco Costanzo (Associate Director and Equity Research, Scotiabank): Hi, Francesco Costanzo from Scotiabank. I just have a question on the expansion CapEx. So I think for the mill expansion mill expansion itself, you're budgeting $199 million. And I think under Argonaut ownership, I mean, the Magino project, I think, was a bit notorious for CapEx bloats and overruns, you know, ultimately ending up somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 billion to build the whole thing. What's your level of confidence that you can, you know, build effectively the same plant for $199 million? I appreciate that, you know, there's minimal incremental equipment, no pre-strip, you know, you're not duplicating the secondary crushers and conveyance system, earthworks are done. But regardless-
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): Yep
Francesco Costanzo (Associate Director and Equity Research, Scotiabank): ... can you just describe your level of confidence in achieving that CapEx target of $199?
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Yeah, I'd say very high, to be honest with you. I mean, we've... As we kinda described there, we've completed a lot of the, you know, the main areas that have potential cost overruns when you look at those capital projects with regards to earthworks and foundation work, and you can see from the photos, the majority of that has been completed, certainly with the main mill building complex that's been already founded as far as the foundation work, and we're actually erecting the steel now as we speak. It's just a question of starting to service the inside of the building with the equipment. The leach tanks also follow that as well. We've got all of the foundation work done for the eventual eight tanks.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): We had six currently with the photo that we showed with regards to what's been erected at this point. But you know, we've got a real good detail on the vendor list, equipment pricing, and everything else that goes into that estimate that we've put forward, because this is something that we've been working on for quite a while. I mean, yeah, you gotta step back for a minute and remember that we were actually doing an Island Gold mill expansion prior to the Argonaut acquisition, right? So we were already dealing with vendors, understanding pricing, and everything else that was gonna be required for the input of a mill.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): This is a larger complex that we're looking to build now from what we were doing, but we were well embarked with regards to pricing for equipment and components, both on the, you know, mechanical, electrical, fixed plant equipment, as well as, the, you know, the construction, labor and, units of work with regards to having to do, that build. Yeah, I just... It's an important distinction that that's $200 million going forward, starting January 1st. What Luke has just been talking to is, we've been working on this mill expansion for, throughout 2025, so all the engineering's been done, or a majority of the engineering's been done. The, the mill building, the structural steel's up. So we've spent money during 2025, so you can't look at the whole expansion as $200 million.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): We've incurred some capital in 2025 as well.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): Just, the other point on the Argonaut experience was that the bulk of their overruns were actually in dirt work.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Yes.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): It was the tailings dam and the water storage dams that are on site that they were required to put in as a result of the EIA. That was where the bulk of their overspend came. They had actually had a fixed price contract on their mill.... that wasn't where the overage was.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): Great, thank you. I have one more follow-up here. Specifically on the open pit equipment, adding trucks and a shovel. Is that gonna be identical equipment to what's already at site, or is it gonna be a little bit larger?
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): That's a good question. What we priced in there and the units that we put in there are identical equipment to what we're running now. We've got a number of years, I think there's probably three or almost four years before we need to actually start buying that equipment. We'll do some studies in the meantime, to determine if it's appropriate to upsize that equipment when we actually buy it.
Brian Quast (Precious Metals Analyst, BMO Capital Markets): Just one from me, Brian Quast, BMO Capital Markets, maybe building a bit off of Bryce's questions there. You've set your underground tonnage at 3,000 tons a day. What are some of those key constraints? Obviously, that drives a lot of the production profile and economics is, you know, more tons from underground seems to be better, and there seems to be plenty of exploration upside to extend that underground. What were key constraints to get to the 3,000 tons a day?
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Well, the key, key constraints there would be, was, one, is the development. You know, we've got to accelerate our development, meters per day than where we have been. You know, we built that into our, into our, into our, into our expansion study to be able to obviously procure the equipment, have the equipment to be able to deliver on that, as well as, as the labor. The other big aspect of it is, is the production shaft. You know, getting that production shaft online at the end of the year is gonna be really the game changer.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): The efficiency of being able to move ore and waste to the infrastructure, to be able to get it out of the mine in order to be able to support the development rates, as well as the production rates, are gonna be the two. That's gonna be the real key to us. So, it'll simplify the aspect of what we do from a material handling point of view today, immensely, with the amount of trucks and everything having to be trucked to surface as opposed to moving it through the shaft. So there'll be a significant productivity improvement just on the basis of the upgrade of the infrastructure that we'll have in place.
Brian Quast (Precious Metals Analyst, BMO Capital Markets): So if we were to think of this as a snapshot in time, we would probably have to think about either another shaft or some other egress method, to raise that tonnage above where it is today.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Yeah, longer term, I mean, the infrastructure that we've put in place now, with the hoisting plant that we'll have on surface, will be able to take us to a depth of 2 kilometers, certainly. But longer term, bigger vision, certainly, you're potentially, yes, looking at a second shaft, Brian, or a winze, depending on, you know, how the exploration process plays out over the longer term.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): You know, one of the aspects of the exploration will be to define reserves up plunge to the west. That wouldn't go to the shaft, that would be, that would be or that would come up through the ramp system. That could be incremental to the 3,000 tons per day.
Brian Quast (Precious Metals Analyst, BMO Capital Markets): Thanks.
Scott Parsons (SVP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Alamos Gold): We have a couple questions online. Just back to the Magino open pit, lower strip ratio through 2030 to 2020 or 2035. Did the expansion plan allow you to rework the open pit schedule, and what were the considerations that went into that?
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): Well, the expansion plan includes an extra pushback into that, so we had to redo the schedule to cater for that and the additional reserves. Yeah, I mean, we used the same kind of philosophy in developing the mine plan for the expansion as in the previous case. You know, our pushback widths and our productivity assumptions and our pushback vertical advance per month, all those same kind of things were used, albeit with, you know, additional units added to the fleet to achieve the tonnage. In the previous plan, we were developing a very substantial low-grade stockpile.
Chris Bostwick (SVP of Technical Services, Alamos Gold): In the new plan for the expansion, the size of that stockpile is a little bit smaller, obviously, because we're putting more through the mill. Yeah.
Scott Parsons (SVP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Alamos Gold): All right, we have additional questions online. Greg, this could be one for you. Can you provide a bit of history on the hedges inherited from Argonaut Gold, the size of the hedges, how much we've retired to date, and how much is remaining, and any plans for the remaining 100,000 ounces?
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): Yeah. So when we completed the deal in July 2024, the hedge book at that point, like the day prior to close, was 330,000 ounces of hedges, all at about that $1,821 mark. When we closed the deal, the first day, we basically took out a prepayment to pay off the hedges. So we bought out the first 150,000 ounces of hedges, which were the six months of 2024 and the 12 months of 2025. As we moved through this year, knowing that the hedges were still in place for 2026, as I said, we bought out the hedges for the first six months of 2026.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): So we haven't delivered 1 ounce into that hedge book yet. And there's another 100,000 ounces to go. So big picture, there was 330,000 ounces. We retired 230,000 ounces of those without delivering into an ounce of that hedge book. We have a 100,000 ounces to go, which is 50,000 ounces in the second half of 2026 and 50,000 ounces in the first half of 2027. Just as we did with the hedges that we took out in December, we'll look to be opportunistic when it becomes available.
Scott Parsons (SVP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations, Alamos Gold): ... Thank you, and sticking with you, Greg, one more question. With all the talk of tariffs, do we foresee any challenges in terms of operating our business?
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): No, I, we don't. I mean, there's been talk about tariffs for quite a while now since the presidential change, and we haven't seen that significant impact on our business. It's changed, and Luke can touch on this, and potentially John Fitzgerald at the back, it's changed some of the approaches that we have to sourcing some of the materials for our construction projects, but it hasn't changed the cost structure.
Luc Guimond (COO, Alamos Gold): Yeah, and just add to that, maybe just on the equipment side of things with, if you look at Lynn Lake, for example, with the fleet of equipment that we're looking to procure for that operation, I mean, you know, that's with the supplier that we're dealing with, tariffs are not something that's part of that agreement or an issue with regards to sourcing the fleet of equipment that we're looking to operate Lynn Lake with, and similar equipment suppliers that we use with our other operations underground as well.
Sathish Kasinathan (VP, Bank of America): Maybe one question on the revised CapEx for Lynn Lake that you have shown on slide 45. So you have seen 120 million increase in CapEx just from inflation over the last 3 years. Given that you have 3 more years of construction, how should we look at the potential for increase in CapEx, given that you have $871 million of spending left?
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): Yeah, no, it's a fair point. This is a point in time, there is risk of further inflation. The one thing I'll say is that we have upped our, or increased our contingency, to potentially capture some of that, but there is inflationary risk moving forward on this capital.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): You know, the reason why we leave it that way is everybody will have a different assumption as to what that will be, and you can build that into your own models.
Sathish Kasinathan (VP, Bank of America): Maybe one bigger picture question. So, so you're obviously you've you're having tremendous success in terms of exploration results near, in the near-mine targets, that is, Cline-Pick and Edwards at Island Gold. Like, how do you look, I mean, like, bigger picture, how do you look at those targets? I mean, like, eventually, do you see it just to supplement ore for the Magino mill, or do you see it developing like a potential for an expansion at Island Gold down the line?
Scott R.G. Parsons (VP of Exploration, Alamos Gold): It's in terms of the targets, I mean, we're still fairly early days in Cline and Edwards having put together the land package, understanding what's controlling the high grade there, 'cause there is quite a bit of high grade, and we need to understand what's controlling it. We'll need to define the, I think, the extents of the system and what that initial mineral resource will be, what the opportunity could be if we continue stepping out, to understand what impact it could have overall for the district, for us.
Greg Fisher (CFO, Alamos Gold): At the point that we define, you know, higher grade sources, which Scott and his team are focused on, we'll run the economics at that point. Does it make sense to displace lower grade Magino material, or does it make sense to expand the mill further? When we understand what's out there from a regional perspective, we'll run the numbers at that point. Every decision we're gonna make is always gonna be the best economic decision.
John McCluskey (President and CEO, Alamos Gold): Yeah, it's nice to have... We have complete flexibility on that, and, you know, I see great opportunity out there. We presented it as exploration upside. In terms of, you know, immediately what might impact that, displacement of Magino ore, it's conversion of another 1.5-2 million ounces of near mine resources. You know, we're having nearly a, it's over a 90% conversion rate. It's inevitable that they're going to come in. The ore body, it is going to grow. There's absolutely no doubt about that. And ultimately, it's likely that, as it grows to the west, as I mentioned earlier, it's likely we're going to be bringing some of that high-grade material up through the ramp system, and that inevitably will displace some of the lower grade material coming out of the pit.
Sathish Kasinathan (VP, Bank of America): Thank you.
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