Aya Gold & Silver Inc.

Good morning. I will now turn the call over to Elisabeth Amawi, Higher Gold and Silver's Director of Corporate and Financial Communications. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and welcome to everyone who has joined IA's third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Here with me today, I have Benoit Lassalle, President and CEO, Hugo Landry-Tolschak, Chief Financial Officer, Elias Elias, Chief Legal and Sustainability Officer, Raphael Beaudoin, Vice President of Operations, and David Lalonde, Vice President of Exploration. We will be referring to a presentation on this conference call, which is available via the webcast and is also posted on our website. As we will be making forward-looking statements during the call, please refer to the cautionary notes included in the presentation, news release and MD&A, as well as the risk factors included in our AIF. Technical information in this presentation has been reviewed and approved by Raphael Beaudoin, AYA's Vice President of Operations, and David Lalonde, AYA's Vice President of Exploration, both of whom are AYA's qualified persons as defined under National Instrument 43-101, Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects. I would also like to remind everyone that our presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Benoit Lassalle. Benoit?

Elizabeth, thank you very much. Hello, everybody, and welcome to our Q3 conference call. Q3 is a strong quarter. We're delivering across all key pillars of our strategy. On the production side, we have solid operational KPIs. We have produced for the quarter 1,347,000 ounces. The mill... Plant ramp up is near complete. And we have ongoing targeted improvement to the mine plan. So for the financial results, we have $54 million of revenue in Q3 only. And we have $22 million of cash flow from operation. So it is a very strong quarter. We finished the quarter with $129 million in cash that's not restricted and $16 million in restricted cash with EBRD. On the drilling program, on the exploration front, we had a very strong quarter. We'll review this. The drill programs are continuing both at Gunder and at Boumadine. And just after the end of our quarter, we've announced the BUMADZIN PEA results, which I will review with you as well. On the ESG front, we continue to progress in the strengthening of our positioning in-country. We're also advancing towards an ISO 14001 environmental certification. So 14,001 environmental certification is being done at the moment. Focusing on health and safety, we had another strong quarter on site at Scoundare. So the financial position is strong, the balance sheet is strong, and we have the money to develop Scoundare to what it is right now and to continue the drilling. But most important is we have the money to develop Boumadine. And that is extremely important as Bumadzin is becoming a world-class tier one asset. Going to slide on page number five, just a couple of KPIs for you to see that we are really, really progressing. So as you know, let's look at the plant to start. So the ore process. and the milling rate. So the ore process here, you recall the plant's been built for 2,700 ton a day. This is where we were at Q1 2025. Then we went up to 3,000 ton a day in Q2. By Q3, we were running at 3,300 ton a day. We've also indicated that at the end of September, we were at 3,600. And currently in November, we've been hitting 4,000 ton a day. We don't believe that the 4,000 ton a day will be sustained throughout the quarter. We're more towards 3,700, 3,008 ton per day. But understanding that from a design and a construction of 2,700 ton a day, This is a major success. And I recall again, we did this for $140 million less the money we've received from the EPC contractor for the damage that, you know, the fact that they were late delivering to us the plant. So technically we did this construction for about $133 million. So it's, it's quite spectacular in the mining space on mail recoveries. Well, the mill recoveries, you know, is always something very sensitive. In silver, mill recoveries often are more in the mid-70s. Well, we were in Q3 at 92.5%, and on mill availability or plant availability, Let's call it this way. We were at 96%. There was a little bit of preventive maintenance in the quarter because on the previous quarter in Q2, we were at 98% plant availability. So you see if the ramp up momentum is continuing, we are now at capacity. The ramp up has been very smooth and the execution is on track with a very strong plant that is processing way above the plant capacity. For the mine, the mine is also on slide number six. The mine is running smoothly. The underground mine at a steady state of 1.3 or 1,300 ton per day running at 159 gram per ton. So you recall the KPI that was giving us a little bit of headache was the grade and the dilution of the grade are getting better every quarter with the underground line. So that's where it started at the beginning of the year where we were having issues. This is now really coming through and the grade of the underground line is better and it's getting better every quarter. On the open PIP, we have been focusing on the Northeast stripping. We've done a lot of stripping and this is why on the slide When you look at the total tonnage done in the quarter, it looks like the total tonnage done is lower. It's true because that's ore, but actually we are much higher in total ore transported because we did focus on opening up the large pit. So we're currently running on a daily basis at moving 45,000 to 50,000 ton of not only ore, but also of sterile. And this is because we're preparing the large pit. So we have been doing extremely well at the underground mining. The throughput is increasing. The grade is getting much better. And now we're working on the open pit where we do still need to improve in the open pit mining selectivity and operational control. We know, and this is of the five KPIs, that was the last one, and now it's half of it that we still need to attend to it, but we are attending to the grade in the open pit. But the throughput of the underground and the throughput of the open pit is there. You know our objective is to be at 4,000 tons per day. at 1,500 ton coming from the underground. We're there today and 2,500 ton coming from the open pit. We're not there right now, but we'll be there for year end. So of the five KPIs that we've been managing for the ramp up, all the plant KPIs are done and are doing better than expected. The throughput of the mine is there and it's only still we are working on on the grade coming from the open pit. So it is a ramp-up process, and this is why going to page number seven, you look at on the left-hand side, if you look at the cost, the cost for the quarter is a little bit higher than what we wanted it to be. The cost, though it's lower than Q2, it's at $20. Our goal was to be more towards 18.5, and the reason for the cost, it's not the cost per ton. Our cost per ton is excellent. It's the cost per ounce, and the reason is the grade coming from the open pit. Also, in 2025, the price of cyanide really went up considerably, And right now we can see it coming down on a per ton basis. It's coming down almost like $3 per ton. Now we are seeing it. We are, you know, completing our purchasing for 2026 and the cost of cyanide is coming down lower than it was for 2025. But again, as we've been saying, quarter over quarter, look at the margin on that chart, look at the margin. In Q1, we were working with $13 margin, 31 less 18. In Q2, we were working with 12, $13 margin. In Q3, we're working with almost $20 or $19 margin. And in Q4, at the moment, as we speak, silver is at $50. We've been selling in Q4 silver between $48 and $51. So you're looking at your $28 margin for Q4. So yes, and the costs have to come down. And this is the objective that we have for Q4 and for 2026, but the margin is really strong and getting stronger. So when you look on the right-hand side of that slide on page seven, you see the growth in revenue, which is of course due to the increase in production. but also the increase in silver price. So the higher volume is about plus 20% and silver price is plus 18%. So for Q3, you have record revenue of $54 million and you have record net income of 12.4 million, which when we convert that on a per share basis, it is 9 cents per share. I would like to draw your attention, when you look at the cost, we have the stock option costs that are put into each quarter, which amounts to 2.4 cents per share. This is a program that was put into place in 2020 and that we've repeated in 2025, for the year 2025. It's the retention program of the senior management team Those options vest over time, and the cost of the option, if you look at the GNA section of the financial statement, it's $0.02.4, so on an adjusted earnings per share if you remove those which are continuing over time for quite a long period. If you look at the option package that I have or Mustafa El-Wafi has, we haven't touched on those options in the past five years, and we don't intend to touch them in the near future, but we do take the expense on a quarterly basis. So we're looking at $0.09 per share. after stock option plan or stock option cost, but before it's more 11.4 on a per share basis. The actual cash flow is also very, very strong. As we've indicated, we've generated cash flow from operation, and you have that on page eight, or I didn't say that earlier. On page eight, you have cash flow from operation of $22 million, and this Again, was working with a much smaller margin in Q3 than we have in Q4. You have the capex and the exploration program of 22. The EPC compensation is a tribute to how well we structured the construction contract and we were able to get a compensation of $8 million. less the legal fees associated with the court case or the negotiation of that in Spain. So we had legal fees of close to $1 million. So we did receive $8 million, but we've accounted for $7 million, and that $7 million goes against the CAPEX on our balance sheet. So it doesn't go against the cost. It goes against the CAPEX. We have a strong cash position of 129 US, obviously, million dollars. And we do have an undrawn credit facility with EBRD of 10 million. Talking about expiration, moving to slide number nine. Again, you see Morocco. Morocco, again, is more and more now seen as, you know, a top, top-tier jurisdiction in the world. It's because of the speed of permitting, because of the quality of the geology. As you know, there's three elements that count. It's geology, it's jurisdiction, and the people who run this. In this case, jurisdiction is fantastic, geology is fantastic. So, at Gounder, our budget for the year was $20,000 to $25,000. thousand meters of drilling we are at quarter end at 19 659 meters drill the cost of drilling in all in in morocco is 150 a meter always us so it's it's it's really a fraction of the price of drilling anywhere else around the world so we've been drilling at gunda we've been drilling at gunda at the mine and i've been putting out fantastic results We're drilling on what we call Gunder proximal, so very close to the mine, and Gunder regional as well, where we do have many, many targets. So you've seen over the quarter some very good results of, you know, 1,164 gram per ton over three meters, and we're continuing to have very, very good grade coming out of the drill program. the regional as well and at one point we'll have you know much more uh a longer presentation on the regional players going there but we're adding permits to the region we're doing a lot of work on the region and we're finding and we're you know a lot of very good structures that we are drilling and that we intend to drill in 2026 as well. So it's continuing to be a fantastic project with a very, very strong geological potential. The next one, the Boumadine, is our bigger asset because it's got a bigger resource, because we have a bigger footprint. We have a goal to drill 140,000 meters this year. By quarter end, we were at 109,000 meters drilled, and it's continuing. All drills are turning. We have shown you the PEA, which requires additional drilling, but the drilling this quarter confirmed continuity of the Boumadzin main zone, the Tizi zone, and we've been extending the zone continuously in the Imari-Rennes zone as well as now a striking of 1.2 kilometers. In the PEA, we only took into account the main permit, which is 32 square kilometers out of a district that we control of about 800 square kilometers. we took into account just these three zones, Goumadine, Tirsie, and Imaviren into the PEA. We had other very important hits on these three zones, but also on new satellite zones that we have discovered in the past few years, and one which is called Assirem, which is very, very interesting because it's a gold zone. It has also a little bit of copper. It's been drilled in very wide spacing on eight kilometers. We are seeing the mineralization on eight kilometers, but we have now extended the anomaly on more than 20 kilometers. So that's not in the PEA. This is a new zone, which is more gold and polymetallic, but also very interesting. And in the quarter, we've added two new mining licenses, which is quite spectacular. We have many, many mining licenses in this district because you understand that we control a district. It's not just a permit or two. It's a mining district where we are the only player in the district. We've increased our land package that's permitted to 339 square kilometers, but we also have a 600 square kilometer exploration license. So It's just showing us the footprint that we have at Boumadzine is really exceptional. So just quick on the outlook, we're confirming the outlook that you have on page 11. that is not changing. We know that the recovery will be a bit higher, that the grade will be a bit lower, but globally the production will be aligned with the guidance, most likely the lower part of the guidance, but our goal is to be within the guidance. Continuing with the presentation, going to the following page on the Boumadzine PEA. Just a quick summary. It's the most today important project, I believe, in the mining world because of the fact that it is permitted, that the financing is spoken for with our financial partner, EBRD, with the offtaker who are going to be buying the concentrate, and the fact that we have as well liquidity And we're bankable in country with banks in Morocco. So the funding is spoken for. It's not done because obviously you understand that the bankable feasibility is not completed. We're missing the drilling. And we are launching as of now a 360,000 meter drill campaign that is going to be executed over the next two years. But the project at our base base at $2,800 gold and $30 silver has an NPV on a post tax of 1.5. And as I said during the presentation, we're looking at both the post and the pre-tax because we have not yet done the tax structuring of this project. Something that we've discussed today, because as I'm talking to you, I am in Casablanca. We have had meetings on Boumadine and on the tax structuring and how we want to position this project if we have time, because the project needs two years of drilling and the feasibility study. So there is time, but it's super important that we have the proper track structure. The NPV to CAPEX, the CAPEX intensity is absolutely unique. It's between 3 to 1 to 5 to 1, and this is at the base case. The internal rate of returns between 47% and 69%, and the payback between two years and 1.3 years. So it's a very robust project. Why? It's because of the low initial capex. at $446 million, capex that we control extremely well because 50 million of it is pre-strip of the open pit, it's the water system, it's the electricity, all the things that we've just done at Gounder, which we're going to repeat at Boumadzine. And the beauty of it is it's low ASIC. The ASIC for the first five years is $928. The ASIC over demand life is 1,021, but all of that is, does not take into account the 140,000 meters of drilling of 2025 and the, all the additional drilling that we're going to be doing over the next two years. So, so why we're focusing on the first five years, because that's where we have kind of clear visibility after that it's, it's, it's, yes, it's what we have, but it's going to be a lot bigger than this. Like there's no doubt in our mind that this is going to be a lot bigger. So when you look at it as a silver company, because we are a silver company, this project is, as silver equivalent, is adding 37.5 million ounces per year of silver production on an equivalent basis. So moving to the next slide, why this is such a compelling story, because it's a district scale land package. If I, you know, we, we owned the red Lake district, we own the belt, we own all of the Cardinal trend. Like it's all part of the same company. It's got exceptional economics because it's low capital because. In Morocco, the cost of construction is about one third. the cost of construction of any other asset around the world. And it's very, very well built. So it's low capital intensity and very rapid payback. It's a low-risk project. It's based on a simple model. It's three concentrate, a lead, a zinc, and a pyrite concentrate. We have MOUs with three of them for all the concentrates. So we will then be selecting how we're going to go forward with this. Financing, I said it, it's spoken for. We just have not finalized it. We have many, many options. The proven track record in the region is because we just built Gunder. So whoever is doing the excavation at Gunder and the open pit mining will be bidding to do the open pit mining at Boumadine. It's five times the size. whoever is doing the underground development will be bidding for the underground development. So we're looking at a situation where the same suppliers are going to be coming in to work with us. We know them, they know us, we work very well together. And don't forget, all of that is possible because we build it, because the money is available in country, and because we do have a mining license in hand. We're not waiting for the government to approve an environmental license or a mining license. We have our mining license in hand and we can start. We cannot start now because we need to complete the drilling on a 50 by 50 meter spacing so that we can move our resource into the measured and inferred category in order to put them into the feasibility study. You know, we've covered the main point of the PEA, which we have on the next slide, the low capex, strong economics, revenue driven with gold, silver, lead and zinc. It's open pit and underground, but the first two years will be open pit. And based on the extension, because you will see over the coming months, there's going to be more drill results. showing additional structures that can be attacked either through open pit or underground mining. We keep drilling, and we have been putting out results, because don't forget, all the drilling of 2025 is not in the study. So to conclude, what are the catalysts for 2025? We're, of course, almost done. This is mid-November, but the drill programs which you have on slide 15, the drill programs are continuing. We will finish the year with almost 200,000 meters of drilling. We're heading into 2026 with most likely 250,000 meters, maybe 300,000 depending on the drill contractors and how fast we can do the drilling. We are moving into between 250 and 300,000 meters. We've delivered in 2025 as we wanted the PEA on Boumadzine, which is a starting PEA because it only takes the resource until the end of 2024. In our catalyst for 2025, we wanted to reach 3,000 tons per day processing. We're actually now touching 4,000 tons. ton-per-day processing, so we are really, really showing that the plant is well-built, very robust, and exceeding nameplate capacity. People were looking for an update on the Bumazin metallurgy, so that is checked. There's no metallurgy issue because we're going to be sending the concentrate to a smelter or to smelters, not one, but many. So the recoveries are in the high 90s. The payability is lower because we do share on the payability, but the recoveries are in the high 90s. And we also have shown you that we can also use a roaster if we want to reduce our cost of transport. Because if you look at the ASIC, at $1,000, there's $300 of transport and process and all that. We want to remove that and we do a roaster or a smelter in country and I say we won't do that ourselves, but with partners, we know that people are looking at this project and there is a source of sulfuric acid in country to the country that's probably the largest buyer in the world. of of sulfur for for the fertilizer well that source of of sulfur is something that's you know drawing a lot of attention right now because it's in country it's it's it's it's it's available to produce sulfuric acid it can produce power and it would also liberate the gold and silver so on the metallurgy boomadzin it's done it's we should never talked about that anymore it is done it's either going to go through a a smelter in Asia or in Europe, or it will go through a smelter in Morocco or a roaster in Morocco. That discussion is done. The last element that we're now working on, which I said last time after we're done the PEA and we will finish the updated Zgounder model, we're almost there. Again, something we were discussing today, we're almost there. and we will be updating the market about the new Gunder model, the new Gunder mine plan, and going forward. And again, as I said, Gunder has a lot of upside potential. The geology is there, and now it's a question of working and getting more drilling done and new structures to have a very long mine life. It has already a long mine life, but even a longer mine life. So that completes my presentation for Q3 2025. Operators, I would like to turn it over to you for the question period. Thank you.