On Thursday, Aya Gold & Silver (TSX:AYA) discussed first-quarter financial results during its earnings call. The full transcript is provided below.
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View the webcast at https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/x8mnaba5/
Summary
Aya Gold & Silver reported exceptional financial results for Q1 2026, achieving record revenue of $117 million, record cash flow of $17 million, and a net income of $49 million, despite losing five days of production due to extreme weather conditions.
The company maintained high production rates with nearly 1.5 million ounces of silver produced, and an increase in stockpiled resources, leveraging a strong mining rate of 4,600 tons per day.
Aya Gold & Silver continues to focus on strategic initiatives, including the Boumadin project, which is progressing with pyrite reclamation and planning for future feasibility studies, while maintaining strong cost controls and increasing their exploration budget to $60 million for 2026.
The company is confident in its future outlook, maintaining guidance for 2026 production between 6.2 to 6.8 million ounces of silver, and expects to improve margins further due to rising silver prices and stable operational costs.
Management highlighted the company’s strong balance sheet with $172 million in unrestricted cash, a robust exploration program aiming to drill 240,000 meters, and a strategic focus on expanding operations in Morocco, supported by a favorable mining jurisdiction.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Good morning everyone. I will now turn the call over to Elizabeth Hemowy, Aya Gold & Silver’s Director of Corporate and Financial Communications. Please go ahead.
Elizabeth Hemowy (Director of Corporate and Financial Communications)
Thank you Operator. And welcome to everyone who has joined IA’s first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Here with me today I have Benoit Alazal President and CEO Hugo Lambry, Tolsch Chief Financial Officer Elias Elias, Chief Legal and Sustainability Officer, Rafael Baudoin, Vice President of Operations and David Lalonde, Vice President of Exploration. We will be referring to a presentation on this conference call which is available via the webcast and is also posted on our website. As we will be making forward looking statements during the call. Please refer to the cautionary notes included in the presentation news release and MDA as well as the risk factors included in our annual information form. Technical information in this presentation has been reviewed and approved by Rafael Baudoin, Aya’s Vice President of Operations and David Lalonde, Aya’s Vice President of Exploration, both of whom are IAAS qualified Persons as defined under National Instruments 43101 Standards of disclosure for Minerals Projects. I would also like to remind everyone that our presentation will be followed by a Q and A session. With that I would now like to turn the call over to Benoit Alazal.
Benoit Alazal
Thank you Elizabeth. Good morning everyone. Thank you for assisting this Q1 2026 conference call. Let me summarize the quarter before we get through the presentation. I think we need to Summarize this as Q1 is an exceptional quarter for Aya. It’s an exceptional quarter knowing that Q1 is always the most difficult quarter for the company as we are at 2,200 meter above sea level in the mountains with lots of snow and rain and wind. So this year due to the fact that we lost five days of operation due to weather related situation, we still delivered an outstanding quarter. I had delivered record revenue, record cash flow, expanding margin, rising silver price and lower cash costs. So we have a very strong Q1 and when you compare it to Q4 of last year with Q1 of this year on a per day basis, the production per day is very similar, approaching 15,000 ounces. The reason the production is a little bit lower in Q1 is due to the fact that we lost an equivalent of about five days of production. But when you look at the highlights, it’s record revenue of $117 million, it’s record cash flow of $17 million, it’s a record net income after tax of $49 million. It’s a cash balance at the end of the Quarter of unrestricted cash of $172 million. It’s a production of almost 1.5 million ounces for the quarter with record mining rates, you know, really strong quarter. And as we have a record mining rate, we’ve also increased are stockpiled. So taking you to our presentation that we use, showing you some, you know, graphics. If we go to page four after the forward looking statement, you see exactly what I’ve just said. The record revenue in Q1 2026 at 117 million. Compare that to last year at 34 million. The net income of 49 million compared to last year of 7 million with an EPS of $33 fully diluted, $0.33 fully diluted and 34 on a non diluted basis. And when you look at Q1 of operating cash flow this year at 70 million compared to last year, 8 million. So very strong quarter. You see it on the right hand side we’re showing you the production profile as increase from Q1 2025 where we produced a million ounces of silver to Q1 of 2026 where we’re at 1,490,000 ounces. Of course a little bit lower than Q4 of last year. Because Q4 of last year had no weather related event. Whereas Q1 of this year had approximately five days of weather related events. Moving on to page five of the presentation. Very interesting. On the left hand side, the quarterly mining tonnage. You know, we’ve always been saying that the mining has to follow the plant. The plant is. The plant’s production profile has been 30 to 40% above nameplate capacity. But the mine also needs to follow the plant. And the mine is actually now exceeding the plant. So you see on the left hand side, last year we were running at 2,200 ton a day. In Q4 we were at 4,200 ton a day. And now by Q1 this quarter, we were running at 4,600 ton a day. So absolutely stellar performance from the mine, from the open pit and from the underground mine. The grade is also steady and improving. So we’re pleased with the outcome of the mining and the grade and the throughput. And then on the right hand side, you look at the plant. Well, in Q4 the plant was running at 3,800 ton a day. In Q1 the plant’s running as well. And if not sometimes higher. But as indicated because of the lost days. If some of you have followed the weather in Morocco, it was extremely rare. Like they had two times the historical average rainfall and snowfall in all of Morocco. I was there two weeks ago and the week before that there was snow in Marrakech, which is absolutely, you know, rare. So this is in one way it was a little bit difficult on the actual production, but we now have more than 15 months of inventory of water at site and the rivers are still running. So, you know, being a little difficult on the production was a great situation for water management and for us and for all the country. Now all the water reservoirs have been filled. Some of the reservoirs that had not seen water in many, many, many years are now full. So the water situation globally for the country was extremely good. Moving on to slide number six. A quick word on Boumadine. You know, at Boumadine we are reclaiming the pyrite. The operation is going extremely well. We produced 127,000 ounces of silver and, and 1,757 ounces of gold. A little bit lower than what we wanted it to be. Again, weather related because of course the bad weather of Zgounder was also weather related at Boumadine. And the other situation with Boumadine is because we are exporting the pyrite tonnage. The port in Morocco were shut down for one month because of weather, because of floods. So of course that’s why, you know, this silver equivalent sold. If when you look at page 6, you see the silver equivalent produced of 227,000 ounces and only 50,000 ounces sold. One reason exporting is, you know, we produce it, we ship it to port and then it stayed there because we could not ship it just because of very, very difficult weather. All of that is behind us. It’s probably now going to rain next time in November or December. It’s all behind us. But the reality was that even at Boumadine we were a little bit affected, especially on the shipment of the concentrate to Asia. But the Boumadine project is really an add on to it’s minimal capex. Very, very low cash cost. It’s positive cash flow. The grade reconciliation is actually better. We have the gold grade is a little bit better. The silver grade is better than what we had in our model. So globally it’s a very profitable project and which is at the same time an ESG project because we’re cleaning all of the historical waste that was left there for many, many years. So it’s still going on and it’s accelerating now in Q2, Q3 and Q4, we are accelerating the reclamation of the Boumadine pirate. Going to page seven of the presentation. This again Coming back to last quarter, this is the most important slide. The one on the left is the margin. Look at the margins from Q1 2025 to Q1 2026. You know, we were working with a $12 margin in Q1 last year and staying at $12 in Q2 of last year. And then margins started going up to $20 in Q3 and then you saw to about $40 in Q4. And now margins right now are like $63 in Q1 of 2026. And obviously you are following the silver price and we’re seeing that this is, you know, is very, very. It’s a very strong silver price at the moment and our costs are stable. We are not affected greatly by the war and the increase in fuel price. We are. Cyanide went up a little bit. We’re going to see that in Q2, but it’s marginal. The main reason is our electricity is from the grid and it’s solar and wind. So most companies are affected because they need to generate their own power at. And it will be the same at Boumadine. The power is solar and wind. So we do not expect cost to increase more than maybe $1 announced if they increase by that much. And the reason is really because of the source of energy. On the right hand side you see the growth of revenue and obviously, As I said, Q1 at US$117 million revenue with a net income after tax of 49 million. This is a very strong performance of revenue increasing. Of course it’s due to the silver as we understand what the production profile is. But that the silver price was extremely good in Q1, our highest selling unit or selling price in Q1 at one point we were able to sell close to $120 an ounce. So it’s showing. And now the average of 82 as we speak. Right now the silver price is higher than the average of Q1 2026. And the net income, well, net income after tax of 49 million with an EPS of $33. Taking us to page eight, a very strong balance sheet. We finished the quarter with $172 million US in the bank. And on top of that we have the restricted cash that we have for the eBRD loan of 16 million US. So when you look at this, it’s a very, very strong cash position, a strong balance sheet. Only one debt with EBRD which is now below $100 million and which we could pay, but it’s a very good and not so expensive loan with ebrd. So there’s no point in pushing the repayment of that debt. When you look at cash from operation at 70 million, our capital expenditure program is 4 million. The expiration and evaluation expiration mainly is 14 million. We had a very good quarter on expiration and I’ll talk about the drilling. So all in all, when you look at this with an $18 cash costs and all the capital expenditure behind us, so it’s a very, very profitable quarter.
Benoit Alazal
Moving to page nine, which is our guidance. So our guidance was presented to you at the beginning of 2026. We are maintaining our guidance though we are a little bit below where we wanted to be in our production guidance. We knew that that Q1 is always a little bit weaker than the rest of the year because of seasonality and we knew that. So that was part of our planning. And we’re very comfortable with our guidance of 6.2 to 6.8 million ounces. This Zgounder production between 5.2 and 5.8. The Boumadine at 1 million ounces of silver equivalent. We’re very comfortable with that. Now when you look at Zgounder cash costs at 2150, I understand that we were at 18 this quarter but you know, it’s a question of the strip ratio and we know that, you know, over time we’re going to be a little bit higher than this. So we’re comfortable to say that the guidance at 2150 is where it should be. The Boumadine cash cost at 10, 10 in Q4 it was 6. In Q1 of this year it’s more like 11.
Benoit Alazal
We’re very close. We are also going to ramp up on quantity and in …
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