Heliostar Metals Ltd.

Hello and thank you for standing by. My name is Regina and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Heliostar second quarter 2026 results conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Analysts are welcome to ask questions both through the webinar link as well as on the phone line. To ask a question through the webcast, simply type your question in the box on your screen. to ask a question on the telephone simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. I'd now like to turn the conference over to Stephen Soock, Vice President of Investor Relations and Development. Please go ahead.

Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us for our Q2 results conference call. On the line with us today are CEO Charles Funk, CFO Vitalina Lyssoun, and COO Gregg Bush, who is having minor technical issues but should be back with us briefly. Today we'll cover our financial and operating results for the three months ended June 30th, or Q2 as we'll refer to them. We will, of course, be making forward-looking statements. Please review our Safe Harbor statement at your leisure. And with that, I'll pass it over to Charles. Charles, please take it away.

Perfect. Thank you, Stephen. I'm very pleased to report another strong quarter for us as a company. I think it's a real, you know, the first half of this year has been about steadily progressing on our plan to make sure we can produce steady state cash flow from our existing assets with a view to Annapoola and our broader growth profile. We love to start with the slide that's basically the philosophy that we build our company with. We aim to be a 500,000 ounce a year gold producer at the end of this decade and we think every quarter that we put together such as Q2 helps us achieve a step closer to this goal. As we move forward to the quarter, you can see the breakdown here. We had record gold production of just under 15,000 ounces of gold, record silver production at just under 80,000 ounces of produced silver. That resulted in $31.1 million of mine operating earnings, net income of $8 million after our taxes, expirations and spends at Annapoola. I think one of the notable features of the quarter is the cash build continues it's a record cash number of 43 million dollars for us as a company and that includes after the 10 million dollars initial payment for the gold strike acquisition that happened in the quarter so we're able to continue to build our cash which we aim to put towards the Annapoola construction the result of the acquisition of Goldstrike did lead to the majority of the decrease in our working capital, still a very happy $46 million as we set up to continue progressing the build that we need for our cash profile this year and the advancement of Annapoola. If I move forward to our portfolio, we'll provide an update on the injection leaching and the success that that's driving in production at La Colorada. We're also about to restart the stripping of the Veda Madre pit, which will provide the bulk of our production next year at La Colorada. Provide an update on San Augustine, which NAMM mines reached steady state this quarter. We were ramping up in Q1 and you see a 49% production increase quarter over quarter as San Augustine hit steady state mining the corner reserve. We look forward to providing an update on Annapoola as we progress with our feasibility study and some key permits we plan to submit. And then we'll touch on the gold strike acquisition that closed in the quarter as well. So love seeing the step up this year. We produced about 30,000 ounces of gold last year, if you look at the cumulative 2025 quarters. Our guidance is 50 to 55,000 ounces this year and you see that step up quarter over quarter. The step up from Q1 to Q2 was principally led by seeing a full three months of production at St Augustine as opposed to the two months we saw in Q1. Our sales fairly closely tracked our production. Our year-to-date cash costs at $16.30 show that the mines are low-cost producers. And I think if you see some of the mid-tier ASIC numbers for Q2, you'll see that we've compared extremely well to those. Our corporate ASIC is just above our guided range at $21.55. Three, I think, drivers to that in total. The most significant was an option grant that's a one-off in the quarter that we do annually as a company. We expect that to normalise across the year. We had a slight increase in production costs at LaColorada as we did additional injection leaching preparation work that we will see the benefit of in the back half of the year. and we also got a slightly reduced silver credit change in timelines of silver payments meant that not all the silver credits attributable to the quarter will come into the quarter and that led to the net result that year to date is $21.55. Probably as Vitalina will touch on shortly, we expect to meet our production profile guidance for the year and in and around the top end of our cost guidance range. I touched on the drivers and I'll repeat the key drivers for the quarter was St Augustine up and running at steady state and continuing to achieve success from the injection leaching at the Colorado. I'll hand over to our CFO Vitalina Lyssoun to present the financial results in greater detail.

Thank you, Charles.

We had another very strong quarter. We generated $56.5 million in revenues, which led to $31.1 million in mine operating earnings and resulted in $8 million net income for the quarter, or $0.03 per share. As Charles mentioned, we currently have $43 million in cash, and that's after making $10 million payment for gold strike acquisition in the quarter. And we are at $45.9 million working capital. We continue not having any debt in the company, and we also have $22.4 million in VAT receivable, which we expect to recover in the next year, year and a half. Next, please. In terms of guidance, so our guidance remains unchanged from the beginning of this year, and we expect the production to come in right around our guidance, so we're fully on track with that, and we expect our costs to be in around the upper end of the guidance. Thank you.

Okay, so in La Colorada, the production for the quarter was the result of residual leaching. The last war was stacked in March of Q1. As Charles mentioned, there were a lot of expenditures during the quarter, setting up wells and doing the initial phase of the injection, which will contribute to the production of that value of the year. There were no reportable incidents in the quarter. Aside from what I mentioned on the Yeah, thank you, Gregg. I apologize to all the listeners, there's a bit of background noise for Gregg. It's a short change of plans Gregg's presenting at an airport in Mexico due to some travel changes.

Yeah, Gregg touched on the highlights at La Colorada, the program that we have of utilizing gold that's within the leach pad. We inject, we drill holes into that leach pad, we inject active solution into that leach pad, and we're recovering gold that wasn't previously and a number of others. We've been working steadily last year on an updated technical report on the back of the extensive drilling that we did. And we were able to get the permits that we needed to prioritise the Vader Madro pit ahead of the Creston pit. And what that means is that we've been able to internally fund or likely to take advantage of a project financing facility, meaning we haven't needed any external capital to bring Veda Madre first. So this month we expect to have our first blast as we commence the pre-strip of the Veda Madre pit. It has a reserve of 48,000 ounces at 0.7 grams per tonne gold, so notably higher grade gold than we've been processing to date. We expect to start producing from that in Q2 next year, and it will drive the bulk of 27 into 28 production profile from La Colorada. We had been working on what we call Veda Madre Plus, the plan to put in a bigger production profile from Veda Madre. We've had some success for that. We're targeting approximately an extra 20,000 ounces to come in and above the reserve at Veda Madre. You get a bit caught in reporting structures, so we'll find the appropriate way to report the ultimate reserve growth. But our target is to increase the current reserve at Fata Madre by about 20,000 ounces at Fata Madre Plus. So expect to see that stripping continue this year and set up our production profile next year and then we'd move on to the Creston pit after that. The turnaround of La Colorada, as I've talked about previously, from stockpiles to injection leaching to fund the pre-strip of Eta Madre to then expand into larger Creston pit is working very well for us as a company. As I move forward to exploration, the focus up until the middle of the year had been on all the drilling and geotechnical work required at Veda Madra. In the second half of the year, we start to step out and test some of the brownfields and even potentially greenfields targets beyond the main resource areas. and so that work will initially start with with drilling at Los Duendes and then moving out to soils targets Rancho Mel a number of other targets that we've been working up in the background including doing a detailed magnetic survey we see a lot of potential a lot of untested targets within very close proximity to our current resources and we look forward to testing them in the second half of the year and providing those results We see a lot of potential to expand the mine life at La Colorada should we have success stepping out in fairly untested terrain. Gregg, I'll hand back over to you for progress at St Augustine.

Thank you, Charles. At San Augustine, we had two reportable incidents during that border, both relatively minor. They were one of the last time incidents, but it was a relatively minor incident. Basically, the mining at San Augustine has kind of continued pretty much according to plan. There's been There's been more ore and less waste in the mine than our plant had, so we're moving slightly less tons. We're mining a little bit more ore. We've built about a million-ton stockpile of ore that will extend the mine line for St. Augustine. As far as the production is, because we're alternating back and forth between a lower lift and The production profile is kind of chunky. It's been very hard to predict, but we're pretty much tracking on the plan, although one month we'll fall way behind and the next month we'll catch it all back up again. So that's just a function of the way we're filling out the remaining space on the leach pad. Same on the cost side, the same impacts as we had at La Colorada, the higher profit sharing and higher bonuses, the mining costs were a bit lower. Other than that, everything was pretty much exactly on the plan. I guess with that, I'll turn it back over to Charles.

Thanks, Gregg. I think you touched on the key feature. When we started production in the corner reserve area, you can see it in the top right graphic. We're now down about three or four benches into that graphic now. We recognised that there was the risk that it wasn't as well drilled as we drill a lot of our reserves. We identified, though, that that risk was likely to the upside, that there was the potential to be more ounces. And so we chose to proceed and knowing that risk. expecting it to normalise in the lower benches and we've seen exactly that. We've produced more gold than the technical report and the reserves suggest in those upper benches. It does mean we're a little bit behind our profile. We've offset the lower grades in the shallower levels with more ounces stacked. We expect to move into higher grade material in the second half of the year. and it's also one of the reasons we're slightly behind for silver because there's less silver at the upper levels. Overall, it's a significant positive for us as a company over the life of the of the corner reserve mining area. We anticipate producing more ounces and making more cash flow than we've modelled in our tech report. And I think you'll ultimately see that as a longer mine life than currently forecast in 2027. Above and beyond the corner reserve, if we move forward a slide, please, we're also looking to grow the reserves and reserves even further. We've got a significant drill program underway that's focused on trying to find those extensions. We've reported in the first half of the year in an early Q2, significant results up to 200 metres beyond the edge of the pit. Right now, we're currently completing the infill drilling of those, looking to add those to a reserve, applying for a permit modification that would allow us to bring that into our production profile next year. If we have the success that we think we are on track for, we think we can materially increase the mine life from what we currently have. I think success would definitely be a full year of production in 2027 and potentially progress into 2028. All of this is significant cash flow above and beyond what we forecast and help us build towards that goal of bringing on Annapoola without equity dilution. So the team at St Augustine are drilling aggressively. We're looking to submit permit modification to expand the pit boundaries and to upgrade our resources and reserves that would support a longer mine life. And so far, we're very comfortable with the results that we're seeing at St Augustine. Stephen, I'll hand over for you for progress on Annapoola. We've been spending significantly and advancing the project significantly in the quarter.

Perfect. Thank you very much, Charles. So as Charles mentioned, our operations are on track to build the sort of cash that we've modeled to support the construction of Annapolo without any additional equity dilution, which is a rare thing to be able to say for a junior mining company. In Q2, our drilling program did continue apace with the focus of twofold, finishing the infill drilling to support the upgrading of inferred resources into measured and indicated that will be included in the upcoming feasibility study, which does remain on track to be delivered in Q2 of 2027. And then the second goal of continuing to chase mineralization at depth into the expansion zone where we reported some continued spectacular results showing that high-grade mineralization does continue well below the lowest reaches of what's in the PEA mine plan. Likely, the expansion zone results will not be included in the feasibility study, so we are able to demonstrate expansion beyond the economics that will be shown in that upcoming report. Beyond that, there's been a plethora of activity supporting the engineering, optimized mine design, metallurgical test work. We will keep investors apprised of that going forward with an update in the next little while. As many of you know as well, this project was previously permitted for an old open pit concept that we've since moved away from. We are submitting the underground permits in the next couple of weeks with the idea that we're now asking for about one-third of the surface disturbance that's been previously permitted and on track again to receive those permits signed back to us mid-next year and keep Annapolla on track for first gold before the end of 2028. This will add 100,000 ounces a year at a $1,000 per ounce all in sustaining cost to Heliostar's production profile and be a major step forward in becoming that 500,000 ounce a year producer before the end of the decade. If we move on to the next slide, this does give you a snapshot of what was shown in that expansion zone drilling. Some spectacular results, 100 meters of 5.3 grams a ton, 70 meters of which was below the deepest stope in the PEA mine design, and as well additional results that have come out since showing that that target is open in multiple directions. The drilling at Annapola has largely concluded in terms of the mineralization drilling and we're now moving on to drilling more of an engineering ilk to support all the advanced design and de-risking that goes into delivering the Annapola project on time and on budget and to support the feasibility study. Charles, I'll hand it back over to you to cover Gold Strike.

Yeah, so in the quarter we completed the acquisition of the Gold Strike project. It fits our mould really well for a number of reasons. It's a project that we think has a lot of potential building on a strong base. There's a 975,000 ounce M&I resource on the project at just under 0.5 grams per tonne gold. Most of that drilling is under 200 metres. It's a big Carlin-style footprint that hasn't got a lot of deeper drilling. So we think there's potential for it to be bigger than it is today. It fits our acquisition cost profile. We paid $10 million in the quarter and we have subsequent payments totalling $70 million over the next five years. We structured those to fit the company's cash flow profile. and lastly, and topically potentially, the antimony potential of the project is something that we're intending to commence drilling very shortly. We'll provide an update on that. We think it has the potential as a standalone antimony project, possible to be a credit for the gold project and definitely help the permitting pathway ahead of a project like Gold Strike in Utah. We think it's a high quality project that we've acquired on cheap terms that we intend to unlock as a company going forward. and we'll provide shareholders updates as we do that. And so as we move forward in what this year is in our viewers management and what it sets us up as a company, it sounds a little boring in some ways because we've been saying the same thing now for 12 months. We are maximising the cash flow that we can get out of our existing operations. We're looking to maximise the mine lives of those operations. And then we're using that free cash flow above and beyond what the mines are producing to put towards Annapoola with a view to building it with a project financing facility in cash such that we don't need external equity. We still, and I always say it, we reserve the right and should we see M&A targets that can grow our growth profile, but we're trying to work on a plan that internally does not need it to bring Annapoola online and it looks like we're well on track to do that. The first half of the year really focused on drill results from our projects. I think as we move to the second half of the year, it becomes a much more and the back end of the Lyssoun curve, particularly around Annapoola, but also operational updates as we do the pre-strip at Veda Madre at La Colorada. So I think that's a big step forward as it unlocks more production at La Colorada. And then if you look at companies that have really changed their share price, you know, the most proven way to do that is to bring on new production. and go through what's referred to as the back end of the Lyssoun curve and re-rate into production. And as we provide each quarter, as Stephen touched on, we're going to provide updates on our engineering permitting progress at Annapoola. That's going to start in the next few weeks, probably in early to mid-September. And we'll keep doing that each quarter as we advance the study and build Annapoola. and we think on the back of Annapoola coming online, we materially increase our production profile, we decrease our overall costs as a company and if you look at our peer groups, that suggests that we'd be a much more valuable company. I think before I hand over to Stephen to ask for questions, it's been another strong quarter from the team and we look forward to delivering the same in Q3 as we execute on our vision to be a much larger company.

Perfect.

Thank you very much, Charles. I'll hand it back to the operator to run through all of our attendees on how to submit questions, if there are any, and then I'll take over from there to quarterback those to the team.

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question through the webcast, simply type your question in the box on your screen. If you've dialed in and would like to ask a question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster.

Perfect. Thank you very much, operator. It looks like we have one question through the audio on the webinar platform. David Storms, I believe you should have access if you're able to ask your question. Happy to have you on.

Go ahead, Dave.

Looks like that didn't come through. Okay, I'm not sure what happened there. We do have a number of other questions submitted in the Q&A chat here. I'll run through these and get them addressed by the team. The first question was, do you expect the grade of the additional 20,000 ounces and resources expected to be added at Beta Madre to be above, below, or at a similar grade to the current reserve grade at around 0.7 at Beta Madre? Gregg, maybe I'll hand that over to you to address if you're still on the line.

Yeah, thanks, Stephen. Yeah, I think the growth would be, I think it might be slightly lower grade than Thank you very much.

Well, we stick at Lac Colorada. The question here is that Lac Colorada already sits at 68% of the midpoint of our 2026 production guidance. What are you looking for in terms of the drop off from residual leaching and how much of an impact does the injection leaching have on that production profile through the second half of 2026? Again, Gregg, I think I'll toss that back over to you to address.

Yeah, it's a hard question to answer. I mean, it's obviously a production that's going to drop off some in the back half of the year. But, you know, every heap behaves a little bit differently with this. And the opportunity at La Colorado is a little different than you might see in some heaps. It's a very well-drained, very well-behaved heap. The opportunity there is coarse gold and electrum that hasn't seen cyanide in a long time. We're having good results, but we're having to adjust our strategy a bit as we're learning more about the hydraulics and the heat. I'm very confident that we'll get guidance, but I'm not confident enough at this point to say that we're going to exceed our guidance.

Perfect. Thank you very much, Gregg. With that, one other kind of follow-up question here. Can you summarize the recoveries of the injection leaching? And I know you kind of touched on this, Gregg, that it is hard to quantify given the nature of the heap leach, but is there any sort of little bit of colour you can provide on that with the injection leaching specifically?

You know, it's very, I mean, just, you know, because of the, you know, when you put solution in the heap and, you know, it's going to come out and mix with other, you know, with other solution from other areas of pad, it's very difficult to assign the production to one activity or the other. I would, you know, I'd say that, you know, probably close to half of our production so far this year has been projects and a lot of that is, you know, We're just ramping the process up and getting sight on it. We'll see the production continue at around 1300-1400 ounces a month for the remainder of the year.

Great. Thank you very much. One last on production here from Dave, who wasn't able to get on the line. Can you discuss the cadence you expect for the back half of the year's production? And maybe I'll address this one. You know, you did see kind of the ramp up in Q1 from the restart of St. Augustine, as Charles mentioned, only two months of actual production hitting the books, and then Q2 basically at steady state. We do expect that steady state production to maintain. as Greg mentioned there is some month-to-month variability but I think quarter to quarter we expect to kind of maintain roughly kind of what we saw at Q2 from San Augustine and then at Lac Colorado as kind of discussed we do expect to see a bit of a a tail off in Q3 as kind of the end of that residual leaching from from the fresh ore stacked on the pad and Q1 kind of fully depletes but with injection leaching continuing at that cadence that Greg just mentioned so It's kind of a long answer to say basically more of the same of Q2 on track to kind of hit our 2026 full year production guidance. Shifting tracks to San Augustine, I've got a question here in terms of the specifics at San Augustine asking what sort of total processing throughput or average daily throughput did we see at San Augustine in Q2? Gregg, maybe I'll again toss that back to you to answer.

Yeah, I don't have the number on top of my head. I believe we put, you know, an average of about 17 or 17.5 per day of leach pad.

Okay, perfect. Yeah, that's great. Thank you. And like you said, that's a steady state and we expect that to persist. Got a question here on the expected decline extension at Annapola and the anticipated timelines for that. Charles, maybe I'll hand it over to you to address that.

Yeah, thanks, Stephen. And we talked about this in the last quarter update as well. So it was our intention to start the decline in the second half of this year. We still may do that. We got some advice to be slightly more cautious where, as we touched on, about to submit the permit to modify from the open pit to an underground only approach. And because the decline was a critical path on that, we didn't want to delay what we think is the critical path to gold production. So we're waiting to submit the permit and expect to do it in the very, very early days of September. Wait to get the initial feedback on that and then we'll make a decision on whether we continue with the decline this year or whether we maybe slow it down into next year. So just based on what we think is the shortest pathway to production at Annapoola, we'd love to get the decline down and we'll do that as soon as we think it's pragmatic to do it from a timeline perspective.

Thank you, Charles. Greg just clarified in the chat here the previous question, 18,100 tons per day or stacked at St. Augustine through Q2. We have a question here on exploration. Any plans to test the St. Augustine sulfide potential this year, as noted on your news flow page? Again, Charles, I'll toss it over to you.

Yeah, thank you. Yes, we've done, I think, three of the five initial holes planned for that. We know that there's a significant sulphide resource underneath or unquantified potential for a resource underneath the pit at St Augustine. At this stage, we haven't been able to get favourable metallurgical approach to unlock that. We think it's in the order of many million ounces of size potential. So what we're drilling for is the potential. Are there zones that are potentially higher grade that open up different production pathways? There's certainly deposits like this, including Penasquito and Camino Rojo that demonstrate that in the belt. So we've drilled three holes today. We're waiting for those assays back. And once we have them, we're happy to provide an update. We're sort of doing it in a mix. We've got some infill reserve drilling, oxide expansion drilling and sulphide drilling all going on at different phases at St Augustine. It's a true exploration shot and fingers crossed we could find some higher grade which would open up some pathways. To be clear, this would be a different sulphide only mine should it ever come into fruition above and beyond the oxide. But long answer to say, yes, we've done the drilling. Yes, we plan to provide an update once we have the results. And there's some true exploration shots to see what's possible at St Augustine in the longer term future.

Thank you, Charles. I've got a few questions here on M&A that you did touch on earlier in the presentation. Someone congratulating us on the gold strike acquisition and then asking under the right conditions, What else are we looking to actively pursue to work towards that 500,000 ounce per year goal by the end of 2030? And then kind of alongside this, asking what sort of capability we have financially to be able to address any additional acquisitions given the recent filing of the prospectus. So Charles, again, I'll toss it back to you to address that.

So philosophically where we stand on M&A is we're a growth company and we'd ultimately like to grow. We have a target that we think we can get to about two-thirds of the way through organically and would require M&A to achieve by the end of the decade. We're in a very fortunate position that our next two mines are within our portfolio and potentially in the next three mines within our portfolio. So we have what I believe to be the deepest growth pipeline of our peer group that we think will take us to about 400,000 ounces of annual production. I would love you know to find high quality you know producing mines producing 100 per 200 000 ounces for us to look for also everyone in the industry is looking for the same so they're very hard to find our view is We want to find assets that we think have potentially been overlooked or that are undervalued. I don't think it makes sense for us to acquire more development projects, given the pipeline that we had. So if we were to look for something, it would be a production asset. Again, that's the most competitive space there is right now. And I think they're either new producing assets that you could bring into the portfolio or potentially that have that 100,000 ounce plus scale or potentially anything with synergies around their operating centres. It always makes sense to potentially grow where you operate as well because of the synergies that come from that. So that's our philosophy. We probably look at one or two projects every six months. We haven't found anything that meets that profile at this stage. The base shelf and many more. LaColorada, San Augustine, San Antonio, Annapurla, and then we acquired Goldstrike. So we weren't able to update our base shelf until we had that. It does contain the levers that we would need to project finance Annapurla. So that's the reason for the filing of the base shelf back to just having all the options available as a company. We would look to grow ultimately as a company. We review projects. and if we can't find projects that meet our profile we're very happy to continue with our current plan.

Thanks Charles, I think that provides a good perspective on how we approach M&A opportunities and our ability to take them on going forward. Last question I see here that we'll put across is on the cost side. You mentioned you expect to be at the higher end of your ASIC cost guidance for the year. How much of this is driven by crude oil prices and could a moderation in the price of oil keep the company closer to the midpoint of guidance?

So I think we've definitely seen some higher costs due to diesel and cyanide, which I think are both largely attributable to world events, particularly in the Middle East. And moderation of those would be welcomed by all miners. I've long held the view that When gold price goes up, it's telling you that there is inflation. And so you should always expect costs to go up. And I think you're seeing that particularly this quarter across the industry. Our job as mining companies is to try and minimise that growth as much as possible. I think the idea that you would have no growth in your ASICs is unreasonable when you see the cost of everything in our lives going up. So yes, a moderation in those costs would have an impact. We also had a number of one-offs in the quarter, including option grant, which you see in the consolidated ASIC, and Gregg referred to the higher bonus sharing based on the 2025 performance of our Mexican assets. So we do expect our costs to moderate in the second half of the year, but note they'll be up and around the top end of our guidance range.

Thank you Charles. I believe that's all the questions I see on the line here. Thank you everyone for joining us today. Please feel free to reach out if there are any additional questions going forward. Operator I'll hand it back over to you to close out the call.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude our call for today. Thank you again for joining. You may now disconnect.