Aura Minerals Inc

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to second quarter 2024 earnings call. This conference is being recorded and the replay will be available at the company's website at auraminerals.com slash investidores slash. The presentation will also be available for download. This call is also available in Portuguese. To access, you can press the globe icon on the lower right side of your Zoom screen and then choose to enter the Portuguese room. After that, select Mute Original Audio. Para acessar nossa conferência em português, clique no ícone do globo ao lado inferior direito da sua tela zoom e selecione a opção Portuguese Room. Ao acessar a nova sala, certifique-se de mutar o áudio original. We would like to inform that all attendees will only be listening the conference during the presentation, and then we will start the question and answer 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's 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 their respective forward-looking statements. Present at this conference we have Rodrigo Barbosa, President and CEO, and Kleber Cardoso, the CFO. Now, I will turn the conference over to Rodrigo Barbosa. You may begin your conference.

Thank you all and good morning. Thank you for also being here with us. I am glad to be here to present again the second quarter of 2024. I will, as usual, present an overview about the operations and how we're progressing with our growth projects. And then Kleber will go more details on the results. The second quarter, again, we did a very strong quarter in terms of results and cash generation while we continue to advance in Port Varema. Although, as we were projecting during the demand sequencing, this Q2 is the weakest compared to the other quarters of the year. And we had a change in contractor enumers, which I will explain further in order to reduce costs. That has already completed, so we are now well positioned to have a very strong Q3 and also very strong Q4. We project to have a stronger second semester compared to the first semester, together with the lower cost and higher gold price, which give us a chance to continue to improve our results along the year and have a very strong year in 2024. So in terms of production, as we were projecting a weaker quarter compared to Q1 and also Q2 and Q3, Together with the changing contractor in Almas, we reached a production of 64.3 gold equivalent houses coming from 68 last quarter. And now we are projecting to be above 70,000 per quarter during the second semester. The 64.3 is already a 33% increase. When you compare to last year, we will see the results of the inflection in terms of production the last 12 months that happened last year, and then we continue to move upwards during this year, and then also next year when Borborema starts the production. In terms of EBITDA, although we had a lower production compared to Q1, higher gold prices allowed us to reach $56 million on EBITDA, and there's a strong EBITDA again. And I would highlight that if you add Q1 EBITDA and Q2 EBITDA, we are reaching close to $110 million on EBITDA during this first semester, which is weaker than projected in terms of production than second semester. This 110 with a gold price of $2,173, And now we are going to stronger production to Q2 while gold continues to be traded at closer to 2,400 or above 2,300 for the second semester, which will position us to have, again, very strong Q3, stronger than Q1, Q2, and also Q4 for the year. In terms of all in-sustaining cash costs, we had a slight increase of $41 compared to the first part of 2024. That comes mostly from lower grades that we reached in Apuena with the highest reparation and also the change in contractor in Almas. For the second, for the third quarter and fourth quarter, Almas is already, we already changed the contractor. We are already producing close to 45 to 5,000 ounces, 4,500 to 5,000 ounces of gold per month. While in Apuena, we will reach a higher rate. So we should see also or always sustaining cash costs, improving or decreasing in value for the next quarters. With that, Evida, Kleber, we're gonna also share with you, we had a non-recurring accounting events that affected our net income. That comes from good news, while gold price continues to increase we have to market to market our options. So that also is a non-recurring and accounting losses that goes to net income together with an exchange rate that changed reals coming from five to 5.5, 5.6 during the quarter. With the strong cashflow that come from the first semester, we also pay dividends close to $25 million dividends plus $4 million of share buybacks. So that also continue, we continue to give cash back to our shareholders while we are investing and growing. If you add the dividends we paid along the last 12 months that together with the share buyback is reaching 8.8% of yield to our shareholders, which is put us, continue to put us among the highest dividend yield in the world for the gold sector. During the quarter, We also acquired two important prospection projects, Pezon and Pequente, and we now have an option to do a drilling program that will compound together with the Matupá project so that we can add more resources and reserves into the Matupá and extend the life of mine. Although Matupá, we already have enough to do the payback and seek good returns, it's still 300,000 ounces of reserves and we expect with Pequete, Pezon, and then together with Bananal to significantly increase our resources and reserves in the project. And we'll do the drilling program during the second semester, and then we'll update the market accordingly as we have the results. We also published, or I would invite all the investors to take a look on our sustainability report that we have recently published. This is the second report that we published. and that we should continue to do so along the next years, giving up full transparency of the already 360 concept, where we also look in the impacts over the communities and the environment, and also within our employees and everything that we do. In terms of safety, as we always share with you, we broke our internal record last quarter in Q1, that one year in all the operations without any lost time incidents. Unfortunately, in Apuena, we had an incident, but we continue to do a very strong incident reports where we have 21 months in Arenza Azul, 20 months in Minas, and 24 months in Almas without any lost time incidents. And also the construction of Borborema, we don't have any lost time incidents. We continue to monitor on a monthly basis with independent consultant to check our structures, geotechnical structures, and all our structures are in compliance and comply with the current legislations. So on the left side on this chart, on the line on the left chart, This is the last 12-month production. As you can see, since Q2 last year, where we reached due to challenges in lower grade, challenges in Honduras in lower grades, in Apoena, we reached the lowest level, 228 gold equivalent ounces produced. Every quarter after that, on the last 12 months, we've been increasing, and that increase comes from the production challenges in Honduras has been already addressed, and we are producing a running rate, as we can see on the right side, 19,000 ounces per quarter. Then we also have higher grades. We had higher grades in the second semester and the first quarter of this year in Arruena, and almost started commercial production during Q3 last year. So on every quarter now, we are having a stronger production compared to last year. That put us on the last 12 months, an increase. So from 1,228,000 on Q2 2023, now at 266 on the last 12 month. And again, as we will have second semester stronger than the first semester of this year, we should continue to see improvement on the last 12 month production, Q3 and Q4. When it should be stabilized, but then I would also invite the shareholders to take a look on the board body of my project, which I will highlight on the next slide. that should start the ramp up by Q1 next year, and that we also continue to add ounces into our last 12 months. Our hours should continue to increase production while, as we will see, we are meeting the guidance in costs of in-sustaining cash costs. Actually, the second semester should be stronger, better than the first semester. And then next year, Borborema enters with a lower of in-sustaining cash costs compared to our average. So, auto will continue to grow, decrease costs, while gold prices continue to be strong. Again, we had a first semester realized close to $2,170 per ounce, and now gold price has been traded at close to $2,400 per ounce. So, that combination of more production, lower cost, and stronger gold price will continue. boost or continue to boost or EBITDA for Q3 and also Q4. On the right side of this slide, on the bars, as you can see, Aranza Azul are very stable compared to Q1. Apoena, where we reached lower grades, that was already projected during the mine sequencing, we're transitioning from Ernesto to Nasdaq, so that transition reduced our grades, increased the strip ratio, but we should be also now entering higher grades with more productivity in Apuena so that we will be able to meet the guidance. Minossa, again, very stable, continue to be strong. We fixed all the challenges from last year. And then it's been the third, fourth quarter that we have strong production between 18,000 to 20,000 ounces per quarter. And we should continue to see those kind of productions for Q3 and Q4. ALMAs were differently that we were projecting. We did not project the change in contractors. So that's where we had a lower production compared to our internal, but due to the change in contractor, ALMAs should be running between 4,500 to 5,000 gold production, ounces of production per month. We had in April, It was close to 2,200, May 3,500, and now June reaching 4,800, which is the running rate that we should expect for the upcoming month in ALMA, so that we are very confident that we'll be delivering into the guidance. So next slide. In terms of all-in-sustaining cash costs, as you can see, it's been very stable since Q4 last year, hovering around the $1,300 on all-in-sustaining cash costs. Last quarter, we had a last Q2, we had an increase that came from mostly lower grades in Napoena, which we don't expect to have that lower grades in Q3 and Q4, and also higher costs due to the transition in contractors in Almas. Just to give an idea, we We are now coming from running rate during the first quarter and a little bit on the second of 17 reals per ton on the contractor. Now we have reduced to 13.5 reals per ton with the tons moved with the contractor. So that's a significant more than 20% decrease and putting us in a very strong position to have a higher production with a lower cost so that we also boost our results during the second semester. As already mentioned, we are, during the first semester, the production reached 133 gold equivalent houses. This is very much within the middle of the guidance for the year. However, as I mentioned, second semester will be stronger than first semester, which put us on the direction to be on the stronger health in terms of production. And that the reflection of this will also happen in sustaining cash costs. WHERE WE ARE ALREADY CLOSE TO THE LOW OF THE GUIDANCE, WE SHOULD CONTINUE TO IMPROVE OUR WIN IN SUSTAINING CASH COSTS. WE SHOULD BE DURING THE SECOND SEMESTER AT THE LOW OF THE GUIDANCE IN TERMS OF OUR WIN AS A REFLECTION OF NO CHANGE OF CONTRACTOR IN ALMAS AND ALSO HIGHER GRADES IN APOENA. IN THE CAPEX, ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE SLIDE, AS YOU CAN SEE, WE ARE very much in line on the CAPEX for exploration and also maintenance and project expansion. We are on the first semester below the half of the guidance, but that's because most of the expenses and the investments and the cash disbursement for Borborema happens on the second semester, so we continue to maintain our guidance for the year. And actually, Borborema, as we will see in the next slide, is being very much in line in terms of schedule and budget. So as I was mentioning, Borborema, we are already 40% complete, which is very much within our schedule and within our budget. Again, highlighting the numbers of this project that is not being priced in our shares. This project, we did a feasibility study with 812,000 ounces of reserves and the gold price at close to 1,700, and that was giving us a NPV of $182 million. Only adjusting the gold prices to $2,300, this NPV is already at $440 million at the $2,300 gold price, and gold price has already been traded above the $2,300. But also, and more importantly also, we are considering this feasibility study, 812,000 ounces of reserves, and we already have closer to 2 million ounces of resources that mostly of this can also be converted into reserves as we have the permits to move close to five kilometers of one road that's already in progress. And then we expect within less than one year to have the permits. And then from that another one or two years in terms of our construction. So this project can have more than double the reserves with that permit. that will significantly boost our NPV and returns in this project. And Borborema, as we did with Almas, we are applying all the fast track going to production. It's easy to build, easy to operate. We are mounting the plant while we are, we did all the basements and we built a lot of the parts aside from the plant so that when mount, we are mounting all together in a fast track process during Q3 and Q4 and ramp up each schedule to have to start on the first quarter next year. So with that, I will pass to Kleber to go into the results and then I'll come back with the questions and answers and then to wrap up all the projects.

Thanks Rodrigo, good morning everyone. Okay, so this quarter, despite the fact that Rodrigo was mentioning that we saw a slight decrease in our production compared to the last quarter, and that being the lowest expected production for our quarter for the year, we saw an increase in both net revenues and EBITDA on this quarter compared to the last quarter. So in terms of net revenues, we reach $134 million now on Q2, bringing the last 12 months to exceed half a billion dollars at the end of Q2, which is a record high in the history of ORA. We have never reported last 12 months revenues above $500 million. Adjusted EBITDA, we're going the same direction. We see also an improvement compared to the last quarter, now achieving $56 million on this quarter, coming from 53%. If we compare it to the same period of last year, we more than doubled the EBITDA on this partner. And then now accumulated for the last six months, we have $180 million EBITDA accumulated, which already is significantly higher than the EBITDA that we reported last year, which was 134. So keeping our expectation to meet our production guidance, cash cost guidance, and considering current cycle of the prices, we should be continuously seeing the next quarters, both the quarterly EBITDA and also the accumulated last 12 months EBITDA increasing going forward. When we come to the net income, we were reporting a $26 million loss on this quarter that is entirely explained by either no cash or no recurring losses. Most of that, as Rodrigo anticipated, is cash. First, as a result of a continuing increase in gold prices, the gold prices increased by over $100 between the end of the first and second quarter. We generated no cash losses related to our global derivatives. It also affects the impact because of the Brazilian real depreciated 11% this quarter. Both factors are very positive, actually, from a business side. Of course, good prices, high good prices is positive because we export metals from Brazil. It's good if the way out evaluates. But then we see on these occasions these known cash losses in the net income. I'm going to go specifically slide more in detail about that. Then finally, in terms of cash and net debt, our net debt achieved $142 million at the end of the quarter. increasing from the previous quarter as expected, as we continue to invest to build the Borgo Rema project. And also in the quarter, we paid $29 million between dividends and share buybacks. With this net debt at the end of the quarter, our net debt over EBITDA achieved 0.8 times at the end of the quarter, so we're still very comfortable. in our cash position is still comfortable above $290 million at the end of the quarter. Okay, here now we bring the details for explaining the change in the cash position throughout the second quarter. So here on the far left side of the page, we see we started the quarter with $214 million. Then as a reminder on this left side here on the page is what we call what just a free cash flow to firm, which is the cash flow generated by the four mines in production, not including how much we're investing to grow the business in either expansion reserves or resource. We see was a first from the quarter, we generated $37 million in cash. If we exclude changes in working capital, which we had $8 million, no recurring temporary consumption, the cash flow would have been close to $45 million. So it was a strong quarter, again, as Rodrigo mentioned, and a quarter which book prices were close to $2,300 million. In the middle here of the chart is in the investment for growth. So we invest another $5 million in the quarter in exploration. And $17 million is mainly the Borborema construction. And then to the right side is what we call the financial items. The biggest one was the return of capital to just shareholders, dividends and share buybacks. And I'd like to highlight here also other two items. One is We see effects impacting cash and equivalents of $11 million. This is not a cash consumption. The reason we see this negative $11 million is because Borgorema holds most of its cash in Brazilian reais, in Brazil, because most of the capex expected to complete the project will be incurred in Brazilian reais. because the Brazilian real went from 5 to 555, so 11% depreciation in the quarter, when we converted that cash in reals to dollars, it seems to have less dollars. But again, we don't expect that to translate in a free cash flow loss because the capex is going to be incurred in reals. And the second item I'd like to show here is the derivatives and others. We have a $2 million cash loss here. which was how much in cash the net payment we paid to the banks to remove the credit support agreements, which are the agreements that allow the banks to call margins against power. So in the second quarter, we did an negotiation, and then we ended up paying a net amount of $2 million in cash, which we're going to see when we see the net income. There was a 13.4 impact in our P&L. but the net cash impact was just the $2 million this year. In the quarter, so in the semester now, it's the same analysis for the semester. We see the free cash flow to firm of $53 million. Investing $54 million of significant amounts to grow the operations, $34 million mainly the per-vorema, significant amounts also in exploration, $10 million in the first six months. In the financial items, the main items are the ones that I explained before. And then here on this page, we bring a bridge explaining the items between the adjusted EBITDA that we saw before and the net income. This quarter, we bring a little bit more details because of the items that impact and then come this quarter. So we see, as we saw before, EBITDA, we start with the $56 million adjusted EBITDA. When we look at that by business units, Aranza Azul was once again the strongest results with $23 million. Minoza came close, a very good quarter, $19 million in EBITDA in Minoza. Apoena, despite being the most difficult quarter in terms of lower production and higher cash costs, also 7.5% at this EBITDA. And Almas also, it's a positive highlight with $11 million EBITDA, despite being the quarter where we changed the contractor and had some impacts also in production and cash costs. Amortization and depletion at $15 million came according to our expectations. And then the ones when we detail a little bit more of the financial items. We were reporting $45 million in financial expenses as part of. Again, it's most of that didn't translate or we don't expect to translate in cash losses. Out of those 45, the main items are $12 million, the market-to-market accounting losses because of increasing gold prices for the Borborema Alva's gold derivatives, as we saw in the last two quarters. We see here the $11 million FX cash loss, which is related to the Borborema cash held in reais. And the 13.4, which was the fee that we agreed to pay to the bank to remove the ability for the banks to have margin calls against the company. We agreed to pay the banks about $13 million, but we had also, as part of the negotiation we did last year with the banks, we expect to receive $11 million as part of it. So the net amount that we paid in the end was just the $2 million that I presented before. The income tax expenses, a portion of that is similar. When there is a big depreciation of currency, especially the Brazilian reais, we have deferred tax liabilities. You create those provisions that were not expected to become tax payments in the future. That was $7 million in this quarter. Then these items explain the $26 million net income loss. And from this part, as I mentioned, we are starting communicating and reporting a new KPI, just in Eddington, in which we bring back the gain or losses with derivatives and gain or losses with effects. We believe going forward, it's going to be easier to communicate because of the volatility of gold and foreign exchange. Excluding those two items, our just the loss would have been only $3 million, of which if we excluded it one time, you know, so no cash loss related to the derivative thresholds of $13 million. And the deferred tax liabilities, actually, our net income would be positive $17 million, which is more close to what we see in terms of operational results, more consistent. And with this, we end the presentation and open to questions now. Thank you.

We are going to start the question and answer session for investors and analysts. If you wish to ask a question, please press the button, raise hand. If your question has already been answered, you can leave the queue by clicking on put hand down. Our first question comes from Ricardo Monegaglia with Safra. You can open your microphones.

Hello, everyone. Rodrigo, Kleber, Natasha. Solid results in the quarter, especially in Minoza and Aranza Azul. So my first question is, could we expect a maintenance of such strong operating rates in those operations, Minoza and Aranza Azul? Maybe third quarter, not necessarily third and fourth quarter. Would be interesting to understand. But on the other hand, it seems some specific conditions created some sort of perfect storm in Apoema and Almas during the quarter. And you mentioned during your presentation that you expect better figures for Q3. So could you give us more details on the drivers of this better operating performance? Maybe... a range for grades and strip ratio in Apoena and a new cash cost level in Almas as operating rates normalize with the new contractor. Thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you. Yeah, and I think for Aranza Azul and Minos, we should continue to have strong production, understanding that some volatility quarter to quarter, but producing 17, 18, 19,000 ounces per quarter in Honduras is something that is reasonable. And I think for Aranjo Azul, second semester seems much equal, much like the same of the first semester, with some minor deviation either for less or for more. Then Almas, as I mentioned, we lost some students. 3,335 ounces during the change of contractor. And now, so we should expect to have close to 4,500 ounces of production per month under a lower cost. So we're very comfortable reaching the levels of the guidance during the second semester. And actually we are already reaching this in June, right? ALMA, then APOENA, as you mentioned, we had, and it was projected to have a lower grades during the Q2 and higher strip duration. So we are comfortable that during Q3 and Q4, we should start having a higher grades and lower strip duration, which will put us achieving at least in the middle of the guidance that we gave to the market in APOENA. we're very comfortable with the projections, we're very comfortable with the guidance, and we're very comfortable to share with you that we will have the second semester stronger production overall compared to the first semester.

Thank you, Rodrigo.

Our next question comes from Edgar de Souza with Itaú BBA. You can open your microphone.

Hello, everyone. Hello, Rodrigo, Cléber, Nati. So, thanks for the question. Congrats for the consistency of the results, the stabilization of production in Minosa, the company on the track to deliver the guidance. This is something that enhanced the company transparency, also the company moving with the projects. So, my first question would be regarding gold prices. If you, Rodrigo, can comment a little bit on your expectations for gold prices. for the next few years and also for the long term, given these higher gold prices that we have been seeing. If you think that we should factor in above sterco levels for gold prices in the long term, this would be very helpful. And also, my second question would be regarding Matupa. We know that Matupa has a solid NPV, but you are also moving with M&As, some exploration developments in the region. So my question would be, when do you think we can expect the approval of Matupa by the board? And if you think that there is a chance that we could see another project may be coming from an M&A or any changes into Matupas projects before the start of the construction. And lastly, a very quick one, you had those issues with the contractor at Almas, what have you been doing to prevent this in Borborema? Have you already start the conversations for the contractor in Borborema, what we can expect in this front. Thank you.

Thank you, Edgar. Not quite sure to be very straight to the point. On gold prices, if we understand what drove gold prices up, I think then we can project if that should continue or not. So, when we looked at the last six months or last year, we had a unique situation where gold price increased while real interest rates also increased. That never happened in the past. And the reason for that comes from probably the consequences of the wars, particularly in Ukraine, where the world froze all the U.S. dollars that Russia had all over the world. So that triggered many other central banks to start diversifying from U.S. dollars and buying other real assets such as gold So that's why you also see central banks in China and other non-so-friendly countries to the United States diversifying. Also, another thing that pushed the gold price up is the record high level in terms of fiscal deficit, either in the United States and Europe. While they have the highest debt to GDP, they have the highest GDP fiscal deficit and the world doesn't see and continue to print money. And when you print money, that loses value. So not necessarily gold prices are only appreciated, but perhaps U.S. dollars and other fiat currencies are devaluated because of that. So if you understand that this is the reasons, then you start projecting. Do we think that the world will start cutting expenses and have a fiscal discipline, number one. I don't think, I don't see that conversation coming in, for example, in the new elections in the United States. Number two, do we see the world becoming more stable in terms of geopolitics? We don't see that, right? So we see that things escalated in the Middle East, so it's been very unstable. in the last, it's actually deteriorating in the last couple of weeks. And then there is another factor, that gold price increased while interest rates increased. That never happened. Normally, gold price increases when interest rates decrease. So if you put that on the top, that we are now projecting interest rates to decrease, you can also maybe project that the gold price might continue to increase. So I don't see today variables that would drop the prices in gold. Of course, there's always going to be volatility in the short term, but we believe, and many other reports and analysts believe, that gold should continue to appreciate. Then second question, you asked about Matupá. We are in the final process of getting the license to start construction. We did those acquisitions. We are drilling also in Bana now. Yes, we will analyze how they will compound together with the project, but yet we have no decision yet. Our decision is to start construction as soon as we get the finalizes. However, those conversations are going to happen in the upcoming weeks, and we will decide the right timing for us to start the construction of Matopal. In parallel, we continue to monitor and have variables initiatives on M&As. We cannot control when it is going to happen. There's no negotiation in place right now, but there are many projects that we're taking a careful look. Other firms are taking a careful look so that we can have a new M&A in the next one or two years. Then your final question was about the contractor in Almas. That happened because we hired one contractor that had a significant lower price when we did the bid process over a year ago to start in Almas. We knew that he didn't have a lot of experience, but we took the risk and we believed that we could work together with him in order to transfer know-how and then for them to be able to perform at the efficient level. Unfortunately, And that did not happen. He could not achieve the productivity that we expected. The trucks and the equipments were not capable of doing so. So we had to hire additional, which increased our price. And now we transferred to a new one. Then we asked Borborema. Yeah, there's a lot of lessons learned in Borborema, either on the construction of Almas and also in the operations that's been applied. And then we are actually now already did all the bid process in order to hire a contractor in Borborema. And we are putting in, we could combine at this time, a good price, a best price with a very strong company that has a very good know-how in terms of operation for Borborema.

Thank you. Thank you, Rodrigo.

Our next question comes from Guilherme Nippes with XP. You can open your microphone.

Thanks, Rodrigo and Kleber, for the opportunity and congratulations on the results. So, Guilherme Nippes from XP. I have two questions here on our site. So, my first question is for Apoena. Production and costs were affected by the higher strip ratio and lower grays. mostly given the transition from Ernesto to NOSG. So my question is, when do you expect production and costs to normalize in this operation? And my second question is, if you could give us any updates on the other projects, including Serra da Estrela, Altamira, and if you could also share your thoughts on potential new M&As. These are my questions. Thank you.

So in Apoena, we should see a stronger Q3 compared to Q2, and then even stronger in Q4. If you see, for coincidence, Apoena has been able to achieve a stronger Q3 and Q4 over the last three to four years. So we should see that improvement also during Q3 and Q4, understanding that we will not reach such a high upgrade that we reached in Ernesto last. a couple of years ago, but we will see improvement in Q3 and Q4, which give us a very comfortable position to be within the guidance. Although if you multiply the first half production by two, you'll see that we will not be reaching the low level of the guidance, but as Q3 and Q4 will be stronger, we will be within the guidance on our plan. So we're very comfortable that we'll reach either on the production, but also on the cost side, actually now with the further the evaluation of real, the cost side is improving in U.S. dollars. Then you asked about Serra da Estrela. We continue to do exploration program. We renewed the option that we had on this project because we had a very interesting and strong results on the first year of exploration. We are consolidating the information. There was a And that area has a very strong rainy season that you normally cannot do drilling, which is finished in May, June. And now we started again doing the drilling campaign. And we expect to be able to publish some reports by the end of this year or early next year. In terms of M&A, we continue to monitor the market. We like both either copper, gold in the Americas. That's our focus. Something that is close to production or in production or with the reserves significantly already discovered. And so we can work on the feasibility study, build the project and then operate. That's our main focus. While we will play opportunistically as we did in Altamira, which is an early stage. That's why we did a a minor participation that they will have a few years of exploration progress, which we are monitoring. And then once they consolidate better the understanding of resources and reserves, then we can have another discussion that if we should increase or not our participation in that project.

Very clear. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Paul Ranking with VSA Capital. How long will the negative performance on currency and gold hedging continue to impact the balance sheet? If, one, the gold price holds around current levels, or two, rises another $100 per ounce?

Okay, I'll let Kleber answer this. Just 30 seconds is... Hopefully, we will continue to have those kind of... not cash losses, because that means that gold price is increasing and most of our production are assessing those higher gold prices. Kleber, please.

Rodrigo stole my comment. Yeah, so effects, yeah, both impacts in terms of business is positive, you know, higher gold prices is good for the business. It affects the valuation as well, because we lose our cash costs, so If gold prices stay where they were at the end of Q2, we shouldn't see any additional market-to-market losses in the next quarters. So gold prices now is about $100 above where they were at the end of Q2. So if gold prices stay above and keep increasing, we should continue seeing these unknown cash losses, which, as Rodrigo said, is positive. Just as a reminder, about 25% of our production, 20 to 25, depending on the quarter, is hedged with a cap of 2400. So if the gold prices go above 2400, what means that is we're capped at 2400, one-fourth of our production. but the benefits of the upside for the remaining most of our production while we're still incurring accounting losses. So in general, we have hope is positive. When prices go down, we're going to see you again. We expect to continue seeing a loss. And to your question, if good prices stay where they were at the end of the quarter, that should have a zero impact in the next few quarters.

Thank you. Next question from Happy Nizami with National Bank Financial. Can you tell us more about the organizational changes, particularly the addition of corporate level technical roles?

Yes. Thank you, Robbie, for being here with us. As we continue to increase production and complexity, we In 2018, we had two operations, then 19, we restarted Aranza Azul, actually 18, restarted Azul, three operations. Now we built Almas, four operations, building Borborema, the fifth, and then we have Matupá, Serra da Estrela, and hopefully a few others. So that's becoming more and more important on corporate to have a very strong technical team in order to keep the stability of our operations. So that's why we are bringing Henrique, which is the general manager, the director of Aranza Azul, that has been stable for the last four years, into corporate so he can, together with Galbert and the team, help us on the technical side to maintain or even improve our stability of operations. And also think about the construction and new M&As that should be coming in, as I mentioned, in the upcoming years. So that's a part of the strategy of enhancing our technical abilities to have a very stable operations, understanding that we continue to have slim structure, a very thin corporate in order to be very productive and focusing on what is important while all the mines continue to have at their liberdade, they continue to have the freedom to make a decision under the culture of our 360 concept.

Thank you. The question and answer section is over. We would like to hand the floor back to Mr. Rodrigo Barbosa for the company's final remarks.

Thank you all. Again, just wrapping up. Strong quarter, although a weaker production compared to Q1. Very now, much in line to meet the guidance. Actually, we should be on the top range of the guidance, as I mentioned, on the first half of the guidance with the production on the second semester. Lower, we should lower also our organic sustaining cash costs during the second semester, while gold price continue to be strong. So that will significantly continue to boost or EBITDA cash flows and results for Q3 and Q4, and continue to build Borborema, which should start ramping up next year. So the production of Aura reached the bottom, as I mentioned, by Q2 last year, and now every quarter we are improving in terms of our last 12 months. We will see that on Q3, we will see that in Q4, and then we'll have next year, then we'll continue to see that improvement in terms of production, cash costs, and Gold price we don't control, but as I mentioned here with Edgar's question, we believe we will continue to be strong. If not stronger, so that will boost our results for the year, and we'll be very well positioned also to have a strong 2025. So I thank you all, and I will continue to update the market on exploration and in production as we move along the next quarter.

Our conference is now closed. We thank you for your participation and wish you a nice day.