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Transcript Summary

Galiano Gold reported a solid Q1 2026, producing 34,747 ounces of gold and maintaining its full-year guidance of 140,000 to 160,000 ounces. The company achieved record revenues of $166 million, though profitability remains impacted by legacy hedges and Ghana's newly implemented sliding scale royalty regime, which has raised AISC guidance to $2,300–$2,600 per ounce. Despite these headwinds, Galiano maintains a robust liquidity position of $190 million and is aggressively investing in exploration, increasing its 2026 budget to $25 million. Key growth drivers include the expansion of the Esaase open pit reserve and the development of a maiden underground resource at Abore. Management highlighted that 2027 will be a financial inflection point as hedges expire and high-grade ore access improves. During the Q&A, the company confirmed that equipment for the Nkran Cut 3 stripping project is arriving as scheduled and that current diesel price inflation has been factored into revised cost estimates. Leadership emphasized that Galiano currently trades at a discount compared to African peers, offering significant upside as it extends its mine life and transitions toward a more gold-price-leveraged production profile.

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Galiano Gold Inc: Consolidation accounting masks hedging bloodbath and legal under-provisioning

Full Earnings Call Transcript — Q1 • 2026-05-14

Operator: Hello, and welcome to the Galiano Gold First Quarter Results Call. [Operator Instructions] I'll now turn the conference over to Matt Badylak, Galiano's CEO.
Matt Badylak: Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you taking time to join us on this call today to review Galiano Gold's first quarter 2026 results we released yesterday after market close. We will be making forward-looking statements and referring to non-IFRS measures during the call. Please refer to the cautionary notes and risk disclosures in our most recent MD&A as well as this slide of the webcast presentation. Yesterday's release details our first quarter 2026 financial and operating results. They should be read in conjunction with our first quarter financial statements and MD&A available on our website and filed on SEDAR+ and EDGAR. Also, please bear in mind that all dollar amounts mentioned in the conference call are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. With me on the call today, I have Michael Cardinaels, our Chief Operating Officer; Matt Freeman, our Chief Financial Officer; and Chris Pettman, our Vice President, Exploration. For this presentation, I will initially provide a brief overview of the quarter, Michael will discuss operations, Matt will discuss financials, and then Chris will highlight the exciting growth potential at Esaase and our ongoing exploration success at Abore. I'll then provide some closing remarks and open the call for Q&A. Turning to Slide 5. Here, we can see the team delivered another solid operational quarter in line with our expectations for the period. Let me walk you through some of the key highlights. Safety continues to be our top priority, and I am pleased to report that we recorded no lost time injuries in Q1, extending our LTI-free period to more than 12 months. This milestone reflects the team's ongoing focus and commitment to maintaining a strong safety culture across the operation. Turning to production. The Asanko Gold Mine reached an important milestone during the quarter, marking its 10th year of continuous operations. Over that period, the mine has produced more than 1.9 million ounces of gold or just over 190,000 ounces per year on average. In Q1, we produced 34,500 ounces of gold, slightly above the midpoint of our first half forecast. Our full year production guidance remains unchanged at between 140,000 and 160,000 ounces. During the quarter, we executed a 4-year extension to our mining contract, Rabotec, who have been actively mining at Esaase and at Abore since 2024. This strengthens an existing relationship with a highly qualified domestic service provider and highlights our commitment to local content requirements in Ghana. Our balance sheet remains strong, and we ended the quarter with $115 million in cash despite increased stripping activities at Nkran and an impact of higher royalties. Including the $75 million revolving credit facility added in Q4, total liquidity now stands at approximately $190 million, positioning the company well moving forward. Exploration activities also progressed well during the quarter with the team advancing work streams focused on expanding mineral reserves at Esaase and growing underground mineral resources at Abore. With that, I'll now pass it over to Mick to discuss production in more detail.
Michael Cardinaels: Thank you, Matt, and good morning, everyone. Starting with safety, our improvement from last quarter continued into 2026. We recorded no lost time injuries and no recordable injuries, and I'm pleased to report that at the end of March, we reached 12 months lost time injury free. That milestone brought our lost time injury frequency rate down to 0 and our total recordable injury frequency rate to 0.11 per million hours worked. Turning to mining. Esaase ramped up production in Q1 as planned. And together with Abore, we increased total tonnes mined by 9%. Mill feed in 2026 is planned from these 2 pits, Abore and Esaase and ore tonnes mined increased 6% compared to the previous quarter. As the year progresses, strip ratios, especially at Abore are forecast to decrease. That gives us access to more ore and allows us to preferentially feed high-grade material to the mill, supporting higher gold production in the second half of 2026. At Nkran, Cut 3 stripping continued. Volumes mined increased modestly by 8% in the quarter, and we expect material movement to build through the year as additional equipment is mobilized to site. Now if we move to the next slide, I'll walk you through our processing performance for the quarter. Overall, the year has started well. In Q1, we completed a substantial planned maintenance program, including relines for both mills and replacement of the primary crusher pitman. As a result, tonnes treated were lower, but as expected. Importantly, with the circuit optimizations we've implemented, throughput is now performing in line with expectations. Grades and recovery met plan or were better during the quarter. That translated into gold production of 34,747 ounces and sales of just over 34,000 ounces. We are well positioned to achieve the upper end of our previously communicated production range of 60,000 to 70,000 ounces for the first half of the year, and we remain on track to meet our full year guidance. So in summary, both mining and processing areas are performing as expected, and we're tracking well against our 2026 guidance. I will now hand over to Matt Freeman to discuss the Q1 financial results.
Matthew Freeman: Thanks, Michael. Good morning, everyone. As Michael outlined, we're pleased with the first quarter delivered in line with our plan. The continued strong gold price environment enabled us to generate record revenues of $166 million and cash flows from operations of $47 million. Our headline earnings numbers continue to be impacted by the losses on the hedges, but we now have only about 45,000 ounces left to settle. And as production ramps up, these ounces will present a lower percentage of production, allowing us to more fully participate in gold prices going forward. Adjusting for the unrealized losses on hedges to be settled in the future, we recognized adjusted net income of $0.11 per share. From a treasury perspective, the balance sheet remains very healthy with approximately $115 million in cash and the $75 million credit facility remains undrawn. This Slide 9 illustrates our operating costs remain consistent period-on-period and have generally been well controlled by the site. As Matt mentioned, we're pleased to sign the extension to our mining contract with Rabotec in April, which provides some cost certainty over the next 4 years, while we're being able to ensure strict compliance with local content requirements in the country. We have seen some inflation in recent months following the situation in the Middle East, notably on diesel. From the general assumption that this will be short term in nature, we're not expecting material impact on the overall cost structure of the mine in 2026. Thus far, we've also not experienced any supply issues for consumables needed to operate the mine. CapEx remains focused on critical projects such as the tailings dam raise. We're also starting to invest in some of the village relocations that are required. So we expect growth capital to increase through the year in line with guidance. With respect to our AISC guidance, we are in line with where we expected to be. Back in February, we guided AISC for 2026 as being between $2,000 and $2,300 per ounce, but noted that should the Ghanian government implement the new royalty regime, it could add an additional $375 to the cost structure. As I think everyone is aware, the new sliding scale royalty regime was enacted in March. Where we sit currently with prices, the royalty rate is 12%. We were pleased, however, that the government did provide a margin offset by reducing the growth in sustainability levy from 3% to 1%. Now we have certainty over the legislation, we have clarified the expectations, reiterating guidance to between $2,300 and $2,600 per ounce, fundamentally no change to what we previously outlined. The chart on Slide 10 clearly demonstrates the increasing royalty burden we have seen over the past 5 quarters as a result of the significant increase in gold prices. And then in Q1 '26 where we started to recognize the impact of the new regime. But it also demonstrates that the unit costs we can control have been consistently maintained and very much levered to production such that as production improves over the next several quarters, we expect this to reduce. We're pleased that our cash balance has grown to $115 million with AISC margin growing to $1,760 per ounce. As we look forward, the end of this year marks a real inflection point in cash generation. 2027 and beyond should see another ramp-up in production and will be part of the current hedge program, and therefore, fully exposed to the price of gold. The company expects to generate significant cash flows to shareholders from this point going forward. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Chris to run through the excellent exploration results we saw in Q1.
Chris Pettman: Thanks, Matt. The year got off to a fast start for us in exploration. We started the 2026 Abore step-out and infill drilling program in the first week of January in order to maintain resource expansion momentum on the back of a very successful 2025 campaign and the release of the maiden underground resource at the end of January. Drilling has progressed well with 11,570 of a planned 30,000 meters completed in the quarter with another 3,000 meters completed in April as discussed in the company's press release issued earlier this week. Some of the headline results are shown here at the bottom of Slide 12, and I'll discuss these further in a few minutes. The Esaase resource conversion drilling program was brought forward in the exploration schedule and was kicked off in the first week of February. This program is a critical pillar in the Galiano organic growth strategy. And on the back of initial positive results from the first 2,500 meters drilled in Q1, we have significantly increased the program to its full scope and budget in order to aggressively grow the open pit reserve base ahead of the 2027 MRMR update. With the support of senior leadership and the Board of Directors, the 2026 exploration budget has been increased from $17 million to $25 million. Esaase is the AGM's largest deposit with over 1.7 million ounces of inferred and indicated resource and a reserve of 532,000 ounces, and through an aggressive campaign to maximize near-term reserve growth will underpin Galiano's strategic organic growth plan for the AGM. Because of the amount and density of historic drilling below the current reserve shell, Esaase is uniquely positioned to quickly leverage elevated gold prices and deliver significant near-term value to the company. Multiple pit optimization studies have been completed using this data across a range of gold prices. These have demonstrated that the deposit is highly sensitive to higher gold prices and that the reserve can grow substantially while maintaining strip ratios in line with the current reserve pit. As shown here on Slide 13, a long section through Esaase shows the potential impact that successful conversion of inferred resources can have on the reserve shell at gold prices up to $3,000. The amount of historic drilling also means that we expect to see very high conversion rates from this program as a large portion of the inferred resource is spatially bound by indicated material. I'll show an example of this in a moment. As I mentioned on the last slide, drilling is underway at Esaase at the beginning of February with 2,500 meters of the first phase of the program completed in Q1. On the back of positive results from this initial drilling, the program has now been expanded to its full scope of 33,400 meters. Production has accelerated at site, and we now have 5 drill rigs active at Esaase. On this Slide 14, we're showing an example of a cross-sectional view of a conversion drilling target zone in the central portion of Esaase main pit, where inferred resources shown in red are spatially bound above and below by indicated resources shown in green. In areas such as this, we have high confidence in the model and our ability to convert a high percentage of these inferred ounces to indicated with a small amount of new drilling. This section also shows the impact converting these ounces can have in terms of the scope of potential pit expansions at higher gold prices. Increasing the open pit reserve at Esaase will not only provide near-term value by unlocking quality ounces and tonnage that are currently undervalued, but is also a critical first pillar that will underpin Galiano's long-term vision for a transformational life of mine plan that includes a future transition to underground mining. An expanded Esaase has the potential to be large enough to supply quality open pit tonnes to co-feed with higher-grade underground material from Abore and/or Nkran well beyond the current life of mine. To that end, while we are growing the Esaase open pit reserve, we are aggressively working to expand the underground resource at Abore, which I'll discuss in the next couple of slides. At Abore, we continue to be excited about the results we are seeing as we have now completed approximately half of the planned 30,000 meters of drilling for 2026. The maiden underground resource released by the company in Q1 provides a baseline from which we are now focused on growing the underground opportunity at Abore. Q1 drilling was focused on infilling areas adjacent to but outside the current mineral resource, while also continuing to step out at depth to expand the known extent of the Abore mineralizing system. The image here on Slide 15 outlines the primary areas of drilling so far this year and where results to date are likely to drive resource growth. Current step-out drilling has intersected mineralization up to 180 meters below the existing underground mineral resource, while infill drilling has significantly improved continuity across key mineralized zones that also sit outside the resource. Drilling below the main and south pit areas continues to confirm robust extensions of mineralization, both down plunge and along strike of existing ore zones and a new high-grade zone has been identified under the northern end of Abore main pit, which is open along strike and at depth, representing a compelling new target area for follow-up drilling throughout 2026. A more detailed discussion of these results are available in the company's press release issued on Monday of this week. Continued drilling success at Abore provides increasing confidence in the ability of the underground resource to become a key pillar of an expanded life of mine in conjunction with reserve growth at Esaase. In order to most efficiently delineate an eventual underground mineral reserve and test deeper targets, the company is progressing the early stages of permitting and underground exploration at Abore. Permit applications have now been submitted to the relevant regulatory bodies in Ghana and dependent on both external and internal approvals, our goal is to begin construction of the Portland Drive in 2027. And with that, I'll hand it back to Matt.
Matt Badylak: Thanks, Chris. In closing, I'd like to highlight the position of strength the company is operating from today and the deliberate steps we are taking in 2026 to drive additional shareholder value. Firstly, I'm pleased with another solid operational quarter and encouraged by the momentum we are building, keeping us on track to meet our full year guidance. As production levels continue to improve, hedges roll off and the deferred payment is settled in December, we expect a meaningful cash flow inflection beginning in January 2027. Secondly, as Chris outlined, the reserve expansion potential at Esaase is meaningful. The company has committed the required capital to execute the drilling program, positioning us to deliver a reserve update in early 2027. We believe these results have the potential to extend mine life well beyond the current 8 years. Lastly, drilling at Abore continues to return encouraging results and support resource growth. In parallel, we are advancing permitting efforts for an underground adit to test mineralization continuity at depth, which represents additional upside. With these near-term catalysts in mind, a brief comment on valuation. As shown in this image, when comparing our African peers on an enterprise value versus mineral reserve ounce basis, Galiano trades at a discount despite operating in one of Africa's premier mining jurisdictions. When we layer in the reserve growth potential discussed today, this valuation disconnect becomes even more compelling. Benefiting from being highly leveraged to gold price, a visible near-term cash flow inflection point and a clear line of sight to expanding mine life, Galiano is well positioned to deliver meaningful shareholder value in the near term. With that, I'll hand it back to the operator and open the call up for any questions. Thanks.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Heiko Ihle of H.C. Wainwright.
Heiko Ihle: I assume you guys can hear me all right. I'm traveling. So there's a little bit of background noise, my apologies.
Matt Badylak: Yes, we can hear you, Heiko. No problem. Go ahead.
Heiko Ihle: Excellent. Cut 3 at Nkran, I mean, obviously, almost 5 million tonnes of waste, big, big operation. You mentioned that there is additional mining equipment that's coming. I mean we're halfway through Q2 tomorrow. What kind of equipment has already shown up? What else is coming? And will you just maybe give a bit of an overview on what you see with efficiency gains at site given that this thing is getting bigger and bigger?
Michael Cardinaels: Heiko, it's Michael here. Thanks for the question. Of course, -- we had a third fleet arrived in April, which was obviously after the end of Q1. So additional PC2000 and 6 777s have been delivered to site. We still expect 2 additional fleets sometime this year. So we're expecting significant ramp-up. We'll see ramp-up, obviously, from the third fleet that arrived in April in Q2 and then Q3 and Q4, we'll see subsequent increase in production along with -- along the lines of our expectations for the budget.
Heiko Ihle: That's helpful. Again, as I mentioned, we're going to be halfway through Q2 tomorrow. And building on that last question a little bit, anything at site that should surprise us, or even better phrase, anything that has surprised you in the last 45 days that may or may not be incorporated in our models quite yet?
Matt Badylak: No, Heiko. I mean, obviously, production certainly over the last few quarters has delivered to expectations. And as Mick just pointed out, the strip at Nkran, which is critical for us to deliver high-grade ore in late 2028 is going to ramp up during the quarter as well. I mean, obviously, I spoke a little bit about the royalties, and that was kind of forecast to potentially occur in our previous disclosures as well throughout the quarter, and we've kind of updated the market on that one. Maybe there's -- obviously, the diesel price situation at the moment is something that's affecting everyone globally. We're pleased that supply in Ghana at this point in time hasn't been negatively impacted on that front. With regards to costs, I mean, we're probably paying upwards of about $1.90 at the moment in terms of diesel costs at the moment. But again, hoping that in due course, that will come down. And the costs that we are currently paying have been reflected in our cash cost guidance update as well. So there shouldn't be any surprises from the diesel front with respect to costs.
Heiko Ihle: Got it. And then just one quick clarification on the press release, you said there was 4 rigs operational at the end of Q1 '26. Did I hear you guys correctly that you guys have 5 rigs operational right now, so one was added between the end of the quarter and today?
Chris Pettman: Yes. Heiko, it's Chris. Yes, that's right. So when -- at the end of Q1, we had 4 rigs at Esaase and we actually had 3 operating at Abore, and we've since moved one of those rigs from Abore to Esaase. So we have 5 running at Esaase and 2 at Abore.
Operator: There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference back over to Matt Badylak for closing remarks.
Matt Badylak: Thanks again to everyone who dialed in today and your continued interest at Galiano, and we look forward to updating you on our progress in subsequent quarters. Thank you.
Operator: This concludes your conference call. You may now disconnect.