Barrick Mining Corp (B) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Welcome to Berwick's second quarter 2026 results presentation. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. As a reminder, this event is being recorded and a replay will be available on Berwick's website later today. I will now turn the call over to Emily Cheng, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning, everyone. We hope you've had an opportunity to review the press releases issued before the markets opened this morning. The presentation deck we'll review is also available to download on our website. Presenting our results today are Mark Hill, Barracks President and CEO, and Helen Kai, Senior EVP and CFO. Other members of Barracks management team will be available after our prepared remarks for Q&A. Before we begin, please note that there will be forward-looking statements. This slide includes a summary of the significant risks and factors that could affect Barrett's future performance and our ability to deliver on those forward statements. This material is also available on our website. With that, I'll turn it over to Mark.

Okay, thanks, Emily, and good morning, everyone. So for those who don't know Emily, she is our new Vice President of Investor Relations and joins us from US Steel. So before we share our full quarterly results, I want to begin with the agreement with New Newmont, we announced today. And actually, I want to go off script straight away to make the lawyers nervous here. So I want to clarify a few misconceptions here. So firstly, the total value of that package is approximately $4 billion. So obviously, it includes the proportion of 4-mile, but it also includes contribution of Newmont's properties, Mark and Fiberline, which I think it's around 6.4 million ounces as well. It is also the cost of resolving historical disputes and litigation between the joint venture partners. And it also reduces the friction costs of the planned IPO, which will unlock even greater value for the shareholders beyond the cash proceeds from the transaction. And as we've said, they will be largely returned to the shareholders. So moving on, we've reached this agreement after four months of negotiations so it now enables us to focus on delivering value through safely and consistently producing ounces and our interests now are completely aligned as joint venture partners which is critical and i did want to actually thank our counterparts at newmont natasha and her team and of course everyone on the barrack team for the enormous amount of effort and work that's gone in this over the last four minutes to reach this event now so before i get into the results there's also a couple of other things i would like to follow which i think are the key strengths that have come out of barrick over the last nine months so first our leadership team so over the last 10 months we've improved the operational performance across the entire business and that's the thing thanks to the strength of our operating insight to try to it's our gms and everyone right down through to the mining front so we've also strengthened our relationship with Newmont, as we just said, positioning us well to grow and develop NGM further, which is also critical. Second, with the IPO, we're building the only major American pure gold company with high quality, long life assets. This is exactly what investors, including some of the world's fastest growing source of capital, are looking for. And third, outside of North America, the rest of the world portfolio which has a significant growth profile also has a distinctive advantage and our ability to work with our Chinese partners including as you know our joint line ownership and co-investment and this enables us greater efficiency and supply chain strength which has helped us control our and partnerships that improve outcomes and reduce our risk. So with this context let me turn to our results for the quarter. As I said we've had our third quarter in a row with excellent operating and financial adult. We delivered on all four of our priorities for the year, the same priorities outlined at the start of the year. We continue to improve our safety performance. I'll get to that a bit later, but there's obviously still more work to be done there. We delivered our gold production above guidance and met our cost guidance. We advanced our growth projects, four-mile, the miner, and the PV expansion, which remain on time and on budget. Not often you hear that in the mining industry. We continue to review Recodec and commence the flow donor development on the 1st of July, as previously disclosed. And our delivering on production and meeting our cost guidance also allowed us to deliver strong financial results with cover, we'll discuss a bit later. And finally, we achieved major milestones in the preparation of the IPO of our North American Gold access, which is on track to be completed by the end of the year. So let me move to safety, which is still our number one priority. And our goal is that everyone obviously goes home safe and healthy every day. So we saw a reduction quarter on quarter in our frequency rate between that from 0.92 to 0.77 but disappointingly we still had six LTIs so there's still a lot of work to do it's completely unacceptable and we need to focus on our safety until we get to our target zero harm so all of our leaders all the way up to the executive committee including myself are spending more time in the field and at the mine site they're doing more critical control verification and fixing more risks on the spot on top of that we've also invested over $90 million this year in technology to improve safety. So this includes our automation of mining equipment, right down to vehicle dash cams, safety reporting software and AI analytics. And we're also working hard to enter out as many safety hazards as possible. So turning to our Q2 highlights, actually, before I start on the Q2 highlights, one other thing I'd like to clarify is our earnings with $0.82, adjusted earnings, $0.82 per share. is in line with the Bloomberg consensus. There's some media out there this morning that says it's not that we missed, but I'm not sure what the source of that is. Barrick produced 796,000 ounces of Gold in the quarter, which was 3% above guidance and 11% over Q1. The main drivers of that were we progressed the ramp up of Blue Luke and Cotter ahead of schedule. PV ramped up faster than expected after the maintenance shut down in Q1. And we mined record tonnes underground at Cortez and continued the ramp up at Goldrush. On the Copper side, we produced 56,000 tonnes. We managed costs well, and our Gold costs, as I said, were within God. Our earnings nearly doubled year over year, and we more than doubled quarterly shareholder return to $1.5 billion. And the strong performance for Q2 is obviously across all of our regions, though North America continued to anchor our world-class portfolio, NGM and PV both registered year-over-year revenue growth. Together they accounted for 53% of our total attributable adjusted EBITDA at a margin of 61%. Our other regions also delivered strong gold production with meaningful attributable EBITDA at margins of 59 per cent. Copper continued to perform well and delivered comparable margins to our gold business. So moving on to growth, as I said, our growth project advanced on federal during the quarter, so four mile we ramped up to ramped up the drilling to 20 active rigs and we plan to complete the PFS by the end of 2028. At Luana we make good progress on the mill expansion which will double the copper production, we expect the project's 2026 capex to come in at the lower end of guidance and the project remains on budget. We're on track to produce our first copper from the expansion by the end of Q1 in 2028. The PV expansion also advanced on schedule. We've made progress on permanent and construction across the tailings facility, fall roads and water treatment plant. We're also very pleased to report that we now have 90% of resettlement packages being accepted. We continue to review RECO DIC as previously disclosed and we've decided we won't start building the plant this year, so we've reduced our expected 2026 attributable capex, it was $600 to $700 million and is now $450 to $500 million. So the lower spend on the mine and RECO DIC has reduced group guidance for 2026 total of tributal capex to 3.8 to 4.3 billion so back to the ipo of our north american assets so as i said this entity will be a high quality pure gold play company which assets are located exclusively in low risk jurisdiction and what i'm pleased to share is the board has selected me to lead the new company as a ceo upon launch we've completed all operating and separation agreement between Barrett and the new company, and we remain on track to complete the IPO by the end of the year. And we expect the vast majority of net proceeds raised to be returned to shareholder. I know several people have asked me in the part. So I'll now turn it over to Helen Cai, our CFO, who will review our financial performance.

Thank you, Mark, and good morning, everyone. Q2 marked the third consecutive quarter of strong production, cost performance, and financial results. Net earnings were $1.2 billion, a 50% increase year-over-year. Adjusted net earnings was $1.36 billion, which equates to adjusted EPS of $0.82, in line with Bloomberg consensus. Attributable adjusted EBITDA of $2.5 billion was up 51% year-over-year with a 59% margin. On a cash flow basis, the second quarter is typically our lowest each year for free cash flow due to the timing of our annual tax and interest payment. This quarter, we also incurred a one-time $200 million payment related to Lulo Concerto. Combined, this led to a 33 percent decline in year-over-year attributable free cash flow excluding this attributable free cash flow for the quarter would have been over 60 percent higher year over year year to date attributable free cash flow has been 1.4 billion dollars more than double the same period last year turning to the operations gold production increased 11 percent for the over quarter and exceeded guidance. We continue to operate within our cost guidance, reflecting an acute focus on operational efficiencies to offset due price pressures. We closed Q2 with a healthy $1.2 billion of net cash on the balance sheet, giving us flexibility to continue investing in our highest return opportunities and returning capital to shareholders. Turning to our capital allocation framework, we have three priorities. First, managing the balance sheet with discipline. Second, investing in our assets to drive earnings-operative growth. And third, returning capital to shareholders. Our framework is designed to be sustainable through the cycle. On the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with meaningful access to liquidity, an undrawn $3 billion revolving credit facility, and no meaningful debt due until 2033. Turning to our portfolio, Luana and Formile are two clear examples where we are strategically deploying capital into organic opportunities that we believe will generate superior returns. More broadly, we intend to identify similar earnings or creative opportunities to strengthen our growth profile while remaining disciplined in how and when we deploy capital. This is not about growth for the sake of it. It is about creating value over time with a suit of assets that has extraordinary growth potential. And finally, we are executing against our capital returns policy. Our dividend policy provides for a quarterly base dividend of $0.175 per share, with an additional performance top-up at year-end to target a total payout of 50% of attributable free cash flow. We also completed $1.2 billion of share repurchases this quarter, of the $3 billion authorization that was announced last quarter. In the three quarters since new leadership began in October 2025, Barrick has returned $3 billion in dividends and buybacks to shareholders, more than double the prior corresponding period. We expect a careful execution of our capital allocation strategy to drive further shareholder returns. In summary, our capital allocation framework is disciplined, flexible, and designed to work throughout the cycle. It supports reinvestment in the business, advances growth, protects the balance sheet, and creates a clear pathway for returning excess cash to shareholders. With that, I will turn the call back over to Mark.

Okay, thank you, Helen. So, just on guidance, so our 2026 production and costs remain unchanged. So, for the third quarter, we expect Gold production to be higher than Q2, consistent with that plan, and we expect even higher production in the fourth quarter. Copper production should also increase in the second half of the year relative to the first half. So, to say it again, since October 2025, we have consistently delivered against our strategic priorities and set a new standard of operational perform and again I'd like to congratulate our GMs and our people on the site. We continue to focus on controlling costs, capital intensity and productivity and based on what we see today we remain confident in our ability to live on our full year commitment for 2023. So just a couple of things to conclude, so obviously again I'm going to finish with the most important thing which is safety and as I said even though we've seen significant improvements, everyone is still focused on making sure every employee goes home safe every day. We have improved our operational consistency, which is what I said, and we've delivered on our guidance again. And as I said before, we've delivered on all our projects that are on time and on budget, and I'll say again, I'm not sure how many times we do that in the morning. And we have advanced our North American ICO on general wealth.

So we're basically on track to execute all against all the four priorities that we set at the start of the year and so again i want to say and of course we've transformed this relationship with newmont which allows it to get full value and expand ngm so with that i'll hand it back to the moderator for qa you and i thank you thank you for the q a session we'll use the raise hand feature in zoom if you'd like to ask a question click on the raise hand button at the bottom of your screen once prompted please unmute yourself and go ahead we'll now pause for a moment to assemble the queue our first question comes

from josh wolfson with rbc your line is open please unmute and go ahead thank you very much operator uh thank you mark for those uh introductory comments uh and some of the numbers that were provided i'm wondering if you can uh maybe break down more of uh information behind the different uh values that would have been attributed to to the agreement components so i guess you know what would have been mike and fiberline uh within that 1.95 billion and then um perhaps what the uh adjustments would have been to the um you know the prior disputes thank you okay so the josh

Just to be clear, I'm not going to break it down. So on the prior disputes, I mean, I can't give a number on that. We would have had to go through a process to actually get to that number. So we just got to where we are. And then on the structural changes, I mean, now that we have this agreement done, we're actually going to go away and optimise this structure for the IPO. So as you can imagine, that's a bit of a working process. But the overall value that we had on the table when we ended this discussion was about $4 million to highlight. And just one other thing, Josh. The thing I want to highlight is since I started this job, NGM has a lot of opportunity. I mean, you know the assets well, and I'm sure you agree with that. There's been no increase in processing capacity there for years. I mean, we're dealing with 25-year-old infrastructure, And then we have something like four mile that comes in, which is a, you know, a world-class asset. And the answer is that we're just going to feed that through the current infrastructure and delay the other ounce, which anywhere else in the world, if you found that number of ounces, you would be wanting to bring that in early. So, you know, my discussions with Natasha and Newmont right from word go was how do we get this together so we can optimise NGM. And by optimise, I want to look at increasing processing capacity. I want to stop trucking all all over the state. And the only way I can do that is if we combine all these assets now and work together to see if we can justify a roaster or an autoclave and what we need to build in, what infrastructure we need at Cortez, you know, to process formal and gold rush, get our cost structure in place and increase our overall ounces. So where we've landed now, at least we're in a position in my view to add a lot of value very quickly without getting into these disputes about allocation of resources and obviously that just there'll be a lot of synergies as well because we're just going to use the same team we're going to find combine them all together all the same equipment and we can advance this a lot quicker and that was obviously my ultimate goal great thank you for that detail just a follow-up question you know with this resolution now completed um you know is the company considering a different structure in the ipo versus the 10 15 minority that was historically reviewed and could you go larger and you know if the

company went larger or under what circumstances would there would there be a shareholder vote now josh it'll still stay at 10 i don't see any of that just the way the company is structured I think it's just a matter of looking at the structures that we started looking at right at the beginning, pairing it to the current structure, because as Mark said, it's friction costs, but then you can also look at where it's domiciled, et cetera. So there's all these things that we need to go back and look at now that we have the agreement for a few months. And again, as Mark said, that's where the value comes as well. We have this flexibility and optionality.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, Josh.

Our next question comes from Tanya Yakushone. Your line is open. Please unmute and go ahead.

Good morning. Can you hear me?

I can hear you, Tanya. How are you?

How are you? Houston, we've made contact. This is awesome. Congratulations on your new role. Thanks very much. Just two questions, if I could. The first one is just coming back to Josh's question. Should we be thinking, Mark, that it was $4 billion of the Neumon math of plus dispute plus the $2 billion that is a top-up for a total of $6 billion? Is that how I should be thinking about the price paid?

No, Tanya, it's $4 billion total.

Oh, okay. All right, thank you for that. And should I be thinking about the cash that Newmont is paying for this? Is this going to be part of the cash coming into the IPO, or would this $2 billion be cash that is going to be potentially used for share buyback and or the top-up dividend at the end of 2022? Or 2026, sorry.

Okay, sorry. You're very hard here. But Tanya, I think if I got the question right, So the cash we get backward, but the majority of it will return to shareholders, correct.

Okay.

And then my final question, Mark, just for some of the processes for this IPO still. You mentioned that you've done your separation agreement. I think everything has been filed with the SEC, the technical report. What are we still waiting for? Is it just approval from the SEC, filing the three and a half year financial, completing the new board, maybe just the process of what we need to go for this to go live. Thank you.

Actually, Tanya, let me hand it over to George.

I would say we're actually very close, but like I said, now that we have this agreement with Newmont and their consent, one of the things we want to do is go back and look at you know previous structures and compare that to what we have today so we just want to go do that and make sure we do our diligence and understand the impact of that because we think there are big savings there so so that's where we are at the moment okay thank you thanks janet our next question comes from lawson window with vofa securities your line is open please submit and

go ahead.

Thank you very much, operator. And hi, Mark. Good morning to you and the team. Very nice operational. Congratulations on that. Just a couple of questions. So to follow up on four mile, I noted that the PFS is still on track for completion in 2028.

However, with it now vended into NGM, is there any scope to speed up development and potentially have the asset in production earlier than what the initial pea had indicated or around sort of early 2030s and and then um yeah so that's the first question okay so thanks listen look obviously my intention is to accelerate this as fast as possible and now that uh i sort of got through this process i think that that allows us to accelerate it for sure now we're still going to be limited by permitting timelines and things like that but where i think we can really advance it will is on the processing side as well right because i'm going to advance that and i've already talked to natasha about we're

going to advance that all in parallel that's while we're driving those declines and doing this drilling so it uh it may not come on earlier but hopefully when it comes on we'll be able to ramp it up a lot quicker and to a and to actually a higher production target that would be my my target okay very helpful thank you mark and then maybe i could jump to the ipo um so after the initial minority interest is spun out i mean at this point have you changed your thinking on what could come after so i think you had indicated previously that you just be an initial minority interest ipo and that that would be it is there any thought to eventually ipoing 100 of bna at this point?

No, so not at this point. I think, you know, we're still on track to do the 10% and just show the value and highlight the value of a dedicated management team. And just by the way, we have already pretty much split the management team and hopefully you've noticed the change in, you know, production and safety and things like that with just having that dedicated focus. So anyway, to answer your question, no, there's no updated.

We're going to go past 10 percent okay very helpful and then in terms of the process uh will there be a marketing process that will kick off in the relatively near future it will be but i don't know what the date is george you know again we just have to go back and look at that but also absolutely there will be a marketing process okay great thank you very much for taking the questions thanks wilson our Our next question comes from Anita Soni with CIBC.

Your line is open. Lisa, meet and go ahead.

Hi, good morning. And Mark, congratulations on your new role and on improving operations at MGM. My first question was with respect to the capital that you were talking about. I think you just talked about sort of declining infrastructure and I'm just wondering what the capital would look like for a new roaster or a facility of that sort and then what what can we also expect in terms of NGM capital going forward okay that's a good question Anita so on the roaster I want to re-optimize the whole the whole process flow I mean you've been there several times so you you've seen what it's like So the roaster, we've actually got Hatch looking at it permanently now.

I would have said it's $2.5 billion. I don't really know, but it would be around that number. But that will offset a lot of things, as you know, we'll be trucking stuff all over the countryside as well, and it would reduce some other infrastructure requirements. And then as far as other capital, and this will help me out, there's nothing else. What else is material that's coming up in NGEN?

So obviously our development of Formal is required at the market, and the conceptual PIA is in the range of $1.5 to $1.7 billion that we'll be spending over the next few years on Formal, and apart from that, that's really the items that we've got in our capital portfolio. We are planning this year to pull some capital forward for the expenditure that we have on replacing our truck feeds at Turquoise Ridge and actually a key project plus is also driving autonomous hauling that we have at Carlin and Ben's following the success for those projects but we still also expect to land our capital in line with what we died previously at least for North America so those are the key points.

Thanks Chris. Is that answer Anita?

Yeah that's a good answer. I think I also wanted to ask about the four mile PEA. I understand you are moving forward with a PFS with a different type of structure, I guess, in terms of what you're looking for infrastructure. But would this PEA, like, should that not have been filed 45 days after you announced the PEA? And I would venture to say that that's probably part of the reason why you're seeing your share price move, because we don't really have a barometer right now outside of a slide deck that'll give you like, you know, bare essentials in terms of how to model this. And so you're seeing wide degrees of variance in terms of what people are modeling for four mile. So would you be able to file the PEA that was put out last year? So at least we have something to go with while this PFS comes out?

Anita, it's a fair question. Do you reckon that's why our share price is down sevens.

Well I mean it's if you're if everyone's debating whether or not there's you know what the two billion is and it's and people are backing out something lower which is something that you said um on the call then it's because they're not certain of what the four mile value is.

Okay I haven't got a good answer to that.

I mean when we filed the when issued the PEA it was conceptual in nature you know still have to do it to a technical okay but later you're saying you haven't got enough information yeah i mean yeah it's uh there's a lot there were a lot of um things that are unknown in terms of mining methodology um unit costs right there was uh you know we didn't know about this npi right that was one major thing that was embedded in there but nobody knew about so um anyway i'll leave it there um i also just wanted to ask let me just um sure but we we will take that away right and see uh how we can do a better job and i understand what you're asking so i'll work something out and come back to you okay and i wanted to try one last time on the fiber line and mike um can you give us some round numbers in terms of what that would add to the equation i'm assuming and by the math i would assume that you're um so newmont is paying in for four mile but they're also exchanging their you guys are reciprocally paying for their 38.5 percent of four mile and mike and like so and so it's the net it's like i guess it's six point 61.5% that they're vending in of those specific assets to get to a collective $4 billion? Is that the right way to look at it?

Yeah, so the right way is, yes, we're paying for 61.5% of market fibre line and that other settlement amount, which we're certainly not going to get into. Look, Anita, we agree we're just going to go out with a number, and that was quite a bit. I apologize, but I can't give you that break down.

I guess with the IPO coming up, people are trying to understand what that significant component of 4Mile is. So any additional information would be helpful. I'll leave it there.

Thanks, Aneta. Appreciate it.

Our next question comes from Daniel Major with UBS. Your line is open. Please unmute and go ahead.

Hi, team, and thanks for the questions. Sorry, just a clarification on the $4 billion, just to be clear. Is that the combined transaction value of 61.5% of Bybeline and Mike and 38.5% of 4 Mile? Or is it just the 4 Mile component? Can you just, sorry, if that's already been stated.

Sorry, so when you net everything together, and anyone jump in here if I get this wrong. So to get to the 4B in number, it is the value of 4MOT, the 38%. Then you have to net off the value of 61.5% of Fiberline and mine. There is some money in there to settle some legacy disputes, for want of another word, right, as well. And then if you want to understand the full value, there's obviously some benefit to Barrick by getting that consent and reducing the friction costs on the IPO. I probably make it very complicated, Daniel.

No, no, that's okay, just being clear. Okay, that's fine. And then, I mean, you've alluded to some of this already, but if I look at the high-level parameters of the 2025 PEA, 600 to 750,000 ounces, 1.5 to 1.7 billion of capex and 650 to 700 all-in sustaining cost. You suggested there's 2.5 billion more capex maybe on downstream processing and maybe some upside to the production. Would it still be fair to assume that the all-in sustaining cost would be comparable to the $650,000 to $700,000?

MR DOLEYSON- I would say it's comparable and hopefully if we, depending where we locate that roaster, you could actually see if you want to say something.

MR DOLEYSON- There is one point that we would raise, and sorry, it's first of all, Alan speaking, the basic ratings that we put up as part of the conceptual PA were naturally based at the consensus gold prices at the time, which from memory was around $2,500, which was just in excess. So if you do apply today's long-term endless consensus prices of $3,600 an ounce, there's about a $100 sensitivity for every $1,000 if the gold price moves. So the right way would be to look at it is to say the range we put out previously plus $100 to take into account the fact that the gold price has moved by $1,000 cents.

Okay. Daniel, just to go back though, just to the engineering side of it, Obviously, the idea is that we increase the overall production capacity in Nevada or reduce trucking. So, yes, there will be more capital, but it will increase the production profile and lower the cost. That would be the target.

MR POWERFORD, Sorry, the line wasn't totally clear. So, yes, at $3,600, you had $100 to the $650 to $700. Was that what you alluded to, just to be clear? That's correct, yes. And that incorporates the tech NPI sensitivity in there? Correct. It includes all royalties including the tech. Okay. Okay, let's do it. And then, sorry, just final question on this. In terms of the, if we're looking at the valuation of the standalone project or relative to what's implied in the four billion and the various elements, is there any, or can you provide some more detail on whether Newmont benefited from any assumptions around their 38.5% share of the infrastructure in that calculation that was imputed in the value of today's transaction?

I'm not sure I understand that question, Daniel.

What do you... There is a net off against displacing other material from the process plants. How is that adjustment made?

Yes, that is taken into account by the two technical teams. By the way, the two technical teams, one from Newmont and one from Barrett, sat down with the models for all of the data and went right back and took all of that into account when we came up with the fee.

MR POWERFORD, Thank you. Maybe just one more, if I could. You've obviously, I guess, Mark, you're going to be leading the IPO vehicle. or can you give us any indication of how advanced you are in recruiting for senior management positions in the parent company?

MR POWERFORD, So we are advancing that discussion, right, for the next letter, Barrett, and we will be updating you, I would say, shortly is the right term. We will update the market shortly. It's an advanced process, Daniel.

Thanks so much for the questions. Thanks, Ben.

Our next question comes from Bennett Moore with JP Morgan. Your line is open. Please unmute and go ahead.

Hey, good morning, Mark and Helen. Congrats on the strong quarter. Thank you for taking my question. I want to pivot to a slightly different topic here. I'm wondering if you can discuss some more detailed ramp plans for Lulugan Guto, specifically in regard to the push into OpenPID or what sort of CapEx may be required to support this and to risk appetite to do so.

Okay, thanks, Bennett. I'm going to hand it like this.

So I think the best way to explain Earth on Kato at the moment is, as we've said, we've ramped it up quite successfully. So what it has become is it's become self-sustaining. And so therefore, any capital and growth at the moment that we are funding is self-sustained funding. And so our expected growth for next year would start coming from the Boboto pushbacks and the open pits on probably early or middle of the second quarter. So that's, I think, most I can say at the moment. We are still looking at optimizing those plans, but certainly we would be starting to move into the open pits in the first half of next year. Thanks, Seth.

All right, thanks for that context. And then maybe on the production cadence overall, I know you gave some commentary, Mark, on the back half for both gold and copper, but NGM and PV tracking towards the high end, LG tracking ahead. So what level of conservatism do you feel is kind of baked in at this stage?

Well, I don't think it's conservatism necessarily, but look, we're going to hit our guys, as I said. Just, I suppose, to put something else on the table, Well, we've had Balladero down for, I think it's two weeks now, but we had a weather event where we had to evacuate everyone. I'm sure you probably saw it on social media and things over Chile and, you know, it's between us. So that has hit us. And Polgar has been down for the opposite reason because Wiley Creek Dam dried up and we had to shut the whole plant down. So while I'm still confident we're hitting guidance, and you're right, NGM's in a good place and so is PV, we have had some other issues throughout the portfolio. And nothing, both of them are actually, you know, mother nature events. They're not actually operational problems. But so I still think, you know, the guidance is fine, but it's certainly not conservative.

Understood. And then real quick, just wondering how turnover trends at NGM during the quarter if you're still in the mid-teens range.

Who's got that number? It was 14%. Someone else brought this up. Does anyone know what the answer is? I'll have to get back to you on that, Bennett. it's a good question and it's something we are actually focused on is um you know making barrett and especially ngm the employer of choice right and it's not that long ago that everyone wanted the job with barrett and so uh we we are working on that and as i said the culture at ngm despite what i mean might have been in some articles has uh in my opinion turned around completely right and and you can tell that just by the performance that i said you know their production performance as safety performance, just when you go there, the attitude of the workforce is certainly better than it was. But I'll get you the actual number, if you can note that down. But we'll come back to you.

Best of luck. Thanks, Ben.

Our next question comes from Matthew Murphy with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please unmute and go ahead.

Matthew, I can't hear you if you're just talking.

Matthew, can you hear us?

Our next question comes from Bob Brackett with Dan Stein Research. Your line is open. Please unmute and go ahead.

Good morning. A broader question, and then maybe I'll follow up with the NGM. The broader question would be, if I think about the ex-North America business, is there anything you're contemplating in terms of portfolio management on that asset base? And is that going to be slowed down by the IPO process? Sorry, Bob, just explain that to me a bit more. What do you mean by that? So think of all of the assets you have. There is a lot of natural partners or natural owners of some of your assets that sit outside of North America. Does the North America IPO process sort of take all of your attention? And therefore, we shouldn't expect a lot of portfolio management for the non-North American businesses as we proceed, say, into the year end or early 27.

Look, actually, so Bob, the rest of the world portfolio is actually one of our biggest growth things. We talk about MGM a lot, but actually just at our recent board meeting, actually, we had a whole session on growth for the rest of the world. because of the potential you've seen what's going on at Lomana and even around Kabali and what we can do there. So the current plan is to actually grow the rest of the world and that's what the focus will be. And Seb, if you want to...

I think you've covered it, Mark. I think the most important thing on the rest of the world is that firstly, we are looking how we can best optimise that portfolio. and in terms of what Mark suggested around the partnerships that we're able to leverage. And also, we have a real embedded growth profile, especially brownfield growth around most of our operations. So, you have already embedded infrastructure and, of course, that's probably the lowest cost ounces you're going to add into your production profile. And then, And then, as you said, we've got the Moana expansion on the Cochrane side.

Bob, I'm not sure how familiar you are with those assets, but there is a lot of potential around those. Which we're trying to crystallise and put into a proper plan.

Very clear. A quick follow-up on the agreement with Newmont. Are there any contingent payments involved at all, say for hitting exploration upside or can we consider it pretty much done, independent of future exploration success? No, it's done. Okay, very clear. Thank you. Thanks.

Our next question comes from Stephen Green with TD Covent. Your line is open. Please unmute and go ahead.

Yeah, thanks, Mark, for taking my question.

I just wanted to follow up a little bit on uh on how you intend to uh optimize mgm and and potentially accelerate four mile uh i think lost and anita asked most of my questions but maybe you could just just talk a little bit about permitting requirements and and what will be required there okay um thanks so look on the uh permitting obviously we want to get the permit for the full and a decline driver first and after After that, when I look at this, which again is why it's critical that we've got this joint venture sorted out, I have to get, I have to understand what we can do as far as processing before I can even start the permitting. So I'm trying to accelerate that for that very reason. It's probably not a bad time to get permits in Nevada as well. So I can't give you a clear answer on the timing on the permits and that sort of thing. But now that we've got this agreement in place, we are going to sit down and completely optimise Nevada and that ore flow and I know Newmont is supportive also of what's the word, increasing processing capacity and Stephen we always get into the same discussion that we're going to have to fresh out which is Autoclay versus Roadster and where it should be positioned and I just haven't got a clear answer on that but that's what we'll be accelerating starting tomorrow.

Okay, thanks And just to follow up again on FiberLine and Mike, I believe you said there were roughly 6.4 million ounces in those properties. Is that correct with those inferred ounces?

Actually, anyone know what the breakdown of the 6.4 is? I was just going through the presentation before this. I'll get back to you on that, Stephen.

Okay, thanks. And where roughly are those properties and kind of how far advanced are they?

So FiberLine is close to the infrastructure of Turquoise Ridge. And I think that is a reasonable status. It's an open pit, so it would be a matter of a satellite deposit. And, Mike, at this stage, I haven't put a lot of value towards that, mainly FiberLine.

Okay, great. Thank you very much.

Thanks, David.

Our next question comes from Martin Pradya with Veritas Investment Research. Your line is open. Please unmute and go ahead.

Hi, thank you for taking my question. I wonder if you have given any thought about floating 10% of the ex-North America as well. Floating 10% of it. Floating 10% of, like, you basically now you're going to have like almost two companies, like the North America and everything else, right? The rest of the world. Could you down the line, low 10% of the non-North America, the same way you're doing now the IPO for the North Americans?

Okay. Now, Martin, I've got to be honest, we have not had that discussion. It's never come up, so it's certainly not on the table at the moment.

Okay. And the second question I have is, in other expenses, is that there was this $200 million for Lulong Nkoto because you are applying, if I understand correctly, the 2023 law retroactively. Was that part of the original agreement? And if it was, why it was not included in the previous quarter?

Let me add. Look, this is a bit of a fluid situation, as you can probably imagine.

But let me hand it over to Helen to explain that. hi thank you for the question uh the nature of the uh the spending is uh additional royalties penalties and associated interest based on the retrospective application of the 2023 mining code specifically for the year of 2024 and 2025. so previously we had already settled uh anything related to 2023 and earlier years. But this is particularly for the 2024 and 2025. In terms of the amount paid, we paid cash $200 million in April. And also we had a further payment demand of $48 million that was received in July. I hope that answers your question.

No, I'm just curious why it was not included in the previous quarters like it was part of the regional agreement it wouldn't have been provisioned or something yeah maybe you can add to that i think uh maybe to simplify the original um agreement only covered up to 2023 um we we continued applying our conventions through that period where we were negotiating and in dispute we still applied our original conventions and so this was effectively as per the agreement it only applied the retrospective application to 2023 and therefore we had to do a reconciliation with the government for 2024 and

2025 and this was that payment effectively okay that's very clear thank you thanks our last question comes from lawson winder from bfa securities your line is open please unmute and go ahead yeah thank you very much operator thank you for taking the follow-up i'll try to make this really quick um so so one you noted the revisions to the ngm joint venture agreement can you give

us a little bit more color on the extent to which this would give um new mod additional say in in various aspects of the operations and including the release of technical reports and whatnot whatever detail you're able to disclose I think would be very helpful well I think there's a couple I think firstly just as a general thing it's not actually in the joint venture agreement but the way we've approached this is completely different so anyone will have access to whatever information and the site and and we've already done that with Francois and now with David their technical lead so and then they come and give any feedback they can and any suggestions which you know is always helpful um as far as actual rights go the main one is around they do have a right to uh and joe correct me if i get the language wrong but when we appoint the general manager of ngm we have to get their consent to who that is which i don't have an issue with that at all too i think that's fair enough and then the other part was which we agree which i also think would be quite helpful now that we've got we've reset this relationship and actually we want to advances as quickly as possible, is that we'll likely embed in our executive team at NGM a Newmont employee, which I think will help. It'll go a long way just with the transfer of information and things like that, and they will feel more comfortable with what's going on. So at a high level, that's what we agreed. There was some other things around excluded property committees and other things like that, but really that's been taken care of for the fact we've bought four mile and five mile and those things into the joint venture. So it's probably less relevant.

Okay, that's very helpful. And if I could follow up on the question about the CEO search for Barrick mining parent, can you share with us if there's a preference between an internal or external candidate?

Well, my preference is always internal, but at this stage, we haven't got to that conclusion yet, who it is. So there's internal and external candidates. That's all I really can say. My preference is obviously internal. Okay, great. Thanks very much, Mark. Thanks a lot, Los.

I will now turn the call over to Emily Chang. Thank you.

I just have an emailed question that I'd like to read out. So given some feedback from shareholders, are you considering a spin-out of North America to existing shareholders rather than an IPO structure. So shares of Nevada and PV are distributed to current shareholders rather than diluting existing holders.

Okay. Who asked the question? Daniel. I know Daniel, like you said, a lot of people ask that question, so the short answer is... Anything else, Emily?

I'll turn it back to the moderator.

Thank you.

Thank you. That concludes our event for today. You may now disconnect.