Transcript: Aura Minerals Q2 2026 Earnings Conference Call

Aura Minerals (NASDAQ: AUGO ) held its second-quarter earnings conference call on Thursday. Below is the complete transcript from the call. APIs provide real-time access to earnings call transcripts and financial data. Visit to learn more.

The full earnings call is available at Summary Aura Minerals reported Q2 2026 revenues of $236 million, impacted by lower gold prices and production, with EBITDA close to $200 million, marking 12 consecutive quarters of EBITDA growth. The company produced 158,000 ounces in H1 2026 and expects to produce between 182,000 and 232,000 ounces in H2, maintaining full-year guidance amid plans for stronger production due to mine sequencing and MSG ramp-up. Record net income of $218 million was achieved, supported by non-cash gains on gold derivatives, while recurring cash flows reached $80 million, with significant investments made in expansion and shareholder returns.

Strategic initiatives include ongoing projects like Borborema debottlenecking, MSG turnaround, and Hera Dorada construction, along with a new $60 million dividend and a $200 million share buyback program. Management is confident in achieving guidance for production and costs, focusing on sustainable growth through operational improvements and strategic M&A opportunities, with a positive long-term outlook for gold prices. Full Transcript OPERATOR Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Q2 2026 earnings call.

com. The presentation will also be available for download. This call is also available in Portuguese. To access, press the globe icon on the lower right side of your Zoom screen and choose the Portuguese room.

After that, select Mute Original Audio. We would like to inform that all attendees will only be listening to the conference during the presentation. Then we will start the questions-and-answers session, when further instructions will be provided. Before proceeding, we would like to clarify that any statements that may be made during this conference call regarding the company's business prospects, operational and financial projections and goals are the beliefs and assumptions of Aura Minerals' Executive Board and the current information available to the company.

These statements may involve risks and uncertainties as they relate to future events and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. Investors should be aware of events related to the macroeconomic scenario, the industry, and other factors that could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in the respective forward-looking statements. Present at this conference we have Rodrigo Barbosa, President and CEO; Joao Kleber Cardoso, CFO; and Glauber Luvizotto, COO. Now I will turn the conference over to Rodrigo Barbosa.

Rodrigo Barbosa, Chief Executive Officer Thank you very much, and welcome everybody. Thank you for attending this call again. I'll be happy to go through the major milestones of the company during the quarter, and as usual Kleber is going to go through the details of the results, and then we finally open to Q&A, where we also have here our COO, Glauber, who would also be happy to answer any more technical questions. Overall, the quarter we had weaker production than the first quarter.

Nevertheless, all the necessary works, all the necessary milestones in the background that we need to achieve in order for us to have a much stronger production in Q3 and then Q4 are being achieved, as we have done in the past with a weaker production in the first semester and a stronger production in the second semester. Actually this year, as we're going to go through mine by mine, we'll see that this balance between first and second semester can be even bigger than what happened in the past. Overall, we produced in the first half of the year 158,000 ounces.

And then, as I mentioned to you, we are strong enough to keep the guidance for the second semester, which means that we will produce a total of between 182,000 and 232,000 ounces during the second half, which means on average potentially one quarter below 100,000 ounces and the other quarter above 100,000 ounces. That means that we are very much on track to produce a very significant improvement during Q3 and Q4. That is a combination of mine sequencing and also the ramp-up of MSG. Revenues in the quarter reached $236 million.

Of course, lower gold price and also lower production mean lower revenues. When we look at the EBITDA, on the other hand, we reached close to $200 million. I would also highlight that for 12 consecutive quarters, Aura Minerals has been increasing EBITDA. In the last 12 months, we produced $800 million of EBITDA with the current gold price.

The average gold price in the last 12 months is exactly what it is right now, and with total ounces of 313,000 ounces. Imagine if we achieve the production that we are promising for this third and fourth quarter, that EBITDA can be significantly pushed up once we continue to have at least stable to higher gold prices, while significantly higher production in our mine. In terms of all-in sustaining cash costs, very much in line with what we planned. The first number that we see close to $2,000 per ounce seems high, but I would invite you, the investors and the analysts, to understand that this number has been pushed up because of the turnaround of MSG.

If you take out the turnaround of MSG, we would have been at $1,600 per gold equivalent ounce. Understanding that we have significantly higher production coming in for MSG, significantly higher production for Apoena and Borborema, we still have improvements in all-in sustaining cash costs coming during the second semester due to mine sequencing and also expansion that is happening in Almas and also in Borborema. In terms of recurring cash flows, we reached $80 million. When you exclude the losses of the gold hedges, which is going to happen this year and also next year, we would have made close to $120 million of recurring cash flows before the gold losses.

Out of this $120 million, we used $54 million for expansion CapEx and then an additional $68 million between share buybacks and dividends, which means that Aura Minerals continues to fund its own growth, and the dividends and the buybacks with our own cash flows from operations, despite, of course, that we leverage when we have expansion. Kleber can also go through a little bit more detail by the end of the presentation. In terms of net income, a record high net income of $218 million. That's the quarter that gold price has depreciated, unfortunately, but the positive impact is that we have a mark-to-market on the net income that was positive by $126 million.

72 per share that will be paid during the third quarter related to the second quarter. Together with this dividend, we also approved a share buyback program of $200 million. From now on, investors should see a split between a dividend and share buyback coming in the next quarters, where we will continue to remunerate our shareholders significantly now also through a share buyback program. In terms of project Dorada, mostly on time and on budget.

I have on the slide more details, and also the average daily traded volume is significantly higher, meaning that we have been achieving the objective when we listed on Nasdaq to push our daily trading volume significantly higher. Reminding that a year ago we were trading $1 million—$2 million per day in the first semester, and now we are close to $100 million per day on average during the last quarter. In terms of safety, as we mentioned last quarter, unfortunately we had one lost-time incident in Borborema in March this year. The person recovered fast and is already fully recovered and working at site.

Although there was a procedure not followed, we revised all the procedures. We revised and made due diligence in all the operations in order to make sure that we avoid any single lost-time incident. If you look at the last two years we had only one lost-time incident. Our objective is to have zero lost-time incidents.

That's why we are constantly monitoring our internal program to make sure that we have the highest safety standards in the industry and that everybody that works with us returns home safely. Also on the stability of the structures, again we have constant monitoring and external consultants that monitor our geotechnical structures—not only the tailings, then underground pits, pads—and all of that is at a satisfactory level. In terms of quarterly production, on the left side of this slide you see quarterly production, and on the line is the last 12 months production. As we can see, since Q2 2025, we've been gradually improving quarterly production and the last 12 months.

That's because of the ramp-up of Borborema that continues to increase our production. From now on, after the first quarter and the second quarter of weaker production in MSG, although we are planning much higher production for next year, we'll see a gradual improvement in MSG in Q3 and in Q4, on top of other mines also improving. So we will continue to see this last 12 months improving from the 313 and, of course, then reaching within our guidance from 340 to 390 by the end of this year. When we look on the right side, the production per quarter per mine, we see the first quarter MSG 9,000 ounces.

Second quarter, as I already mentioned to the market, would be weaker than the first one due to infrastructure investments and infrastructure activities that we had to implement in MSG. Part of that was planned, part was more challenging. When we started producing in MSG, we faced a more challenging situation in terms of infrastructure. When we diverted all the equipment, we had to make a choice between putting our attention and equipment to production or to the turnaround, to the underground development.

We always chose underground development. That's what will structurally change the mine in order for us to be able to produce close to 80,000 ounces per year and all-in sustaining cash costs nearing down close to $2,000 per ounce. All the background work in MSG has been done, and I will have here a slide also to mention that gives us strong confidence that we will not only improve in Q3 and Q4 but, by the end of the year, be prepared to, in 2027, be able to produce close to 80,000 ounces of gold, with the all-in sustaining cash cost nearing down close to $2,000—$2,200 per ounce. In terms of Borborema: first quarter 17,000 ounces; second quarter 14,000 ounces.

This is super planned; it's a mine sequencing/grades effect. As we come to Q3 and Q4 we will see a combination of both. Number one, in Q3 we see higher grades coming into the plant. And in Q4, on top of the higher grades, we are debottlenecking the plant.

Today the bottleneck is the filters, and we are implementing new filters that should be online by Q4—between Q3 and mostly Q4—so that we will also be able to increase production on top of higher grades. So we should see higher production at Borborema coming in the second semester. Almas: a slight improvement in production. 3 million tons; we already finished last year running at 2 million tons, and now we are upgrading to 3 million tons.

That will gradually improve capacity as we should finish the year close to 3 million tons per year, and that will also have an impact on the quarterly production. Minosa: we had a decrease from 17,000 to 14,000 ounces. We are in an area of the stacking pad that is more challenging. We had to pile higher than we did in the last few years.

That means the process of recovery takes more time, we have more money going to working capital, and perhaps we lose some recovery. As we piled all of these also during the second quarter, we should see Minosa with weaker production next quarter and then recovering more production in Q4 for the year, where we should be more towards the low end of the guidance for the year in Minosa.

Despite this lower production from 7,000 to 6,000 ounces, all the background activities, all the opening of the pit, all the investment on the pushback and also mine development are very much in line with the forecast, which will allow us to have confidence that we will reach higher grades during Q3 and Q4 that will support significantly higher production during the next semester. In Aranzazu, we are also doing the mine sequencing: in the first semester lower grade, and in the second semester we should reach higher grade, which will also provide us an ability to produce a stronger second half of the year.

So overall, as happened last year and this year, a combination of the MSG turnaround plus Borborema debottlenecking and higher grades, and also then Apoena with higher grades—a combination of these three mines gives us confidence that we will not only be within the guidance of the year, but not close to the lower end of the guidance. Next slide, in terms of all-in sustaining cash cost, as I mentioned to you, close to $2,000 per ounce.

When you exclude MSG, then we'd be close to $1,500, understanding that also during the second semester we're going to have higher grades in Borborema, higher grade in Apoena, higher production in MSG, and also higher production—not that high, but continuing to slightly improve—at Almas as we are now upgrading the plant. That gives us very good confidence that we also will meet the guidance for the year on the all-in sustaining cash cost. 00 reals per dollar. So that's 10% of losses in exchange rate, on top of higher oil prices and chemical prices.

We believe that the team is working in order to be able to deliver results within the guidance that we gave to the market. As I was mentioning, Dorada is moving very much in line with the plan. We have recently approved in the third quarter the full investments. We already spent $15 million.

Close to 60% of the groundwork has already been done, focusing a lot on hiring from local communities that don’t have expertise in mining. We are still training, but yet with 53% of the employees coming from Asunción de Mita and region, which is where we are located, and 93% from Guatemala. That shows our commitment with the project to provide opportunities for the local labor. We also approved on the project a significant improvement in the water treatment, actually now taking a lot of the water to potable level, and we are in agreement with the local authority so that this water, once in production, can be distributed to the local communities.

In that area, as happens also in many Central American countries, there's no treatment of water, no sewage treatment, and the water they have access to from the rivers is somehow contaminated, which means health problems, which is the major problem that they have, as we heard from them. Just to open, as transparency, at a Dorada house, this means that we have a place in the city where we give full transparency and a person that can answer any question that people might raise.

We are there to answer, to show the project, the impacts, and everything that is going to happen in the region so that people can have the confidence that this project will not have negative impact, but actually it will go beyond and have positive impact, once we are treating this water at potable level, and also with a geothermal project that we are now in final studies in order to have renewable energy supplying the energy of this project. As we progress in the construction, we should expect negative news here and there. We've done a significant amount of work communicating with the local communities.

We have majority approval from Cocodis—Cocodis are the persons elected by the local communities, recognized by law to represent them—and they are mostly in favor of this project and supporting us to move on. So we don't expect any hiccups in implementing this project up to commercial production, although of course some negative might happen. Next, for MSG. Very happy to share that we are super in line with what we projected in terms of our productivity underground when we acquired this project, and actually we are above what we expected in terms of resources and reserves.

Just a quick reminder: this project we acquired with 370,000 ounces of gold equivalent in proven and probable reserves; we are already at 753 in six months. 8 million ounces in measured and indicated. 4 million ounces in inferred; we are already above 2 million ounces of inferred. So this project, in the long term—despite doing exploration, which now we are going to do more of in order to significantly increase resources and reserves—most important is the underground mine development speed, because that's what's necessary in order to invert the mine sequencing from top-down to bottom-up.

We are 80% to 90% on average above what this mine was performing last year. So we are definitely able to improve underground development, and yet we still have room to continue to improve. That gives us a lot of confidence that by the end of the year we'll be able to completely invert the mining methodology in order to, in 2027, be able to produce close to 80,000 ounces and push down the all-in sustaining cash cost to close to $2,000 per ounce.