Okay. Thanks, Ross. I am thrilled to be here at the Mining Forum Europe today to tell you the Kingsgate story. Kingsgate is a company that's undergone a seismic shift in recent years. We've undergone a really strong transformation, and I'm keen to outline to you how the company plans to position itself so that we can continue to prove our operational performance, how we can continue to generate cash, but importantly, how we can deliver future growth opportunities and value creation opportunities as well. Let's get into it. Please take note of the forward-looking statements, because I will be making a few. Just before we start on the key metrics, just a couple of housekeeping notes. Where possible, the dollars and the number figures in the presentation are in U.S. dollars. Of course, the Australian financial year runs from July 1 to June 30.
Okay, Kingsgate today. If this is the first time you are seeing us or hearing about us, we are an ASX-listed gold producer. We have a capital structure at the moment of about $1 billion. Share price on Friday was trading around $5.22. We've got around 267 million shares on issue. I want you to remember that, because that's quite small on a peer comparison basis in Australia. That's one of the key planks of our value proposition, and I'll talk about that a little bit towards the end of the presentation. Got a strong cash position. We've got around $150 million in cash, bullion and doré. Very modest debt. We've got $10.6 million in a revolving credit facility. That's from the Nabari guys. Actually, I saw them here before. Look, a quick shout-out to them.
They were a friend to us at a time when we didn't have many, so we certainly appreciate that. That's our share register in the top center. What has been pleasing, actually, in the last five years, we've had a very large retail component, but we've noticed that as we've been coming back to life and doing a few things, we've got some really strong institutional support, particularly here out of Switzerland and Germany. A couple of our largest shareholders are here, so this is always a good conference for us to get to. Underneath that, you can see what we've done in the last 12 months, because if you don't pump your tires, who will? We were so delighted. We were up 260% for the year to date, so that's been fantastic.
How we've done that is through our two key assets, the Chatree Gold Mine and the highly prospective Nueva Esperanza project, which is in the Maricunga region of the Atacama part of Chile. I'll talk about those a little bit more, but I just want to do a quick rolling 12-month highlight reel before we get there. I'm so proud of this. Kingsgate was the best performing mining stock on the S&P All Ordinaries to December 2025. We're the second-best overall. We're up nearly 350% for the year. Of course, we were included in the ASX 300 index on the back of that as well, which was great. Of course, we achieved that through very strong cash build. We closed out this March quarter at the $150 million U.S. mark. Of course, we also did that by de-gearing.
In January this year, we reduced our overall debt position by around 70%. We paid down debt from $33 million down to $10.6 million. And again, that's a revolving credit facility, so we can knock that off any time. And we are very focused on shareholder management and shareholder returns as well. We did commence a share buyback program in May last year, which is important. And of course, flipping over to some of the operational highlights. We've been working very hard to improve our safety record. We're getting the frequency rate of injuries down. And of course, we've been doing a lot of work on some of the assets and opportunities around the Chatree Gold Mine. And you can see last year, we posted an inaugural resource on an exploration area that's very close to the mine itself.
I'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute as part of our organic program. A couple of intersections I want to call out there. We did get some really significant intersections up at Chatree. We've got 8 m at 20 g from about 35 m, so it's obviously very high grade near surface. I think we got also a 15 m intersection there at 5 g , literally from 1 m . It's so shallow, you can almost dig it with your hands. That's been fantastic. There's a little bullet point there at the bottom right as well. I just want to call this out because this will help the rest of the presentation make sense. I want you to think of Kingsgate in two distinct eras, 2001-2016, 2016 onwards.
What happened in 2016 is the Thai government didn't renew a key operating license that we needed. Pleased to say we were able to work through an international legal process with the Thai government, had that license and the mine restored back to Kingsgate in about 2023. Since then, we have been flat out putting the mine back together, and you'll see the evidence of that in the next few slides. That's important. Obviously, since then too, our relationship with the Thai government has been excellent. The regulators, you can see another dot point on the page there. We've won a number of awards since we've come back for our corporate governance and our sustainable mining practices. Having outlined that, let's have a quick look at Chatree itself. This is our flagship asset. Really proud of this.
It's located in central Thailand, about 280 km north of Bangkok. It actually straddles three provinces, but the two main ones are Phichit and Phetchabun. It is a large, low-grade epithermal gold deposit. We've got about 1.2 million ounces of gold in reserve. That is about a nine-year life of mine at a run rate of about 100,000 ounces a year, which is what Chatree is known for. Of course, up until 2016, we know it was good. It had a proven operating history. We got close to 2 million ounces of gold out of it, 10 million ounces of silver, which was great. Since we've been coming back to life, we put back together the two large processing plants that sit there. They're fairly standard flow sheet. They're Carbon- in- Leach.
Their combined nameplate capacity is 5 million tons, but I've been pleased to say we've been running it at 5.6 million, 5.8 million. We've even touched 6 million tons there at various periods as well, very happy about that. Of course, as part of coming back, we had to buy a whole lot of new yellow Caterpillar equipment. That's the best fun, isn't it, when you get a new mining fleet? We got 40 pieces. We actually added a new 6030 digger to the rotation in January to help us get on top a bit of waste movement. That's been really pleasing as well, certainly helped with the throughput. One of the key competitive advantages we have with the 700-strong workforce that we have there, we have some very, very highly skilled local Thai workforces.
In fact, there's only 2% expats, the rest are Thai, and I'll talk a little bit more about that as part of our ESG measures. Of course, to welcome us back, the Thai government gave us a big tax incentive. We got a $100 million tax holiday through their Board of Investment. We got other tax holidays on withholding tax and taxes on equipment and duty-free incentives as well. That's been quite valuable for us in terms of helping the bottom line. That's Thailand, that's Chatree. Just having a quick look at the Chatree production. For FY 2026, I guess the key point for us is that we are firmly on track to achieve guidance. Our guidance is 85,000-95,000 ounces of gold with an all-in sustaining cost range of about $1,550-$1,750. Now, it is quite modest.
Chatree is known to be over 100,000 ounce producing asset on an annual basis, and we'll get back to that. I want you to think that we've been putting it back together. In 2025, we started on low-grade stockpiles. We're slowly ramping up. We've been producing. We produced 75,000 ounces from that last year. We're well on track to get into the 85,000, 90,000, growing again towards the plus 100,000 ounces as we go. What's been really pleasing too is our cost curve. Obviously, with the startup, when you're coming back to life, you have some unexpected costs, one-off costs, you have some unusual capital costs. Pleased to say we've kept a strong focus on keeping those down, and you can see there that our average all-in sustaining cost pre-royalties is around $1,234 an ounce, which is well below our guidance range.
The reason we talk about it pre-royalty and post-royalty, one of the downsides of Thailand, I do have to say this, is that their gold royalty is a sliding gold royalty. If the gold price goes up, it goes up with it. To compare us a little bit more on a peer-for-peer or like-for-like basis, we obviously report it pre-royalty and post-royalty, so you can see that. Of course, even with the gold price where it is and our operating costs, we've been able to achieve some record basic margins, particularly last quarter, nearly $1,900 an ounce, which is fantastic. Of course, we've just posted our preliminary March quarter production results. We've had five quarters now of plus 20,000 ounce production, which is fantastic. We produced, as at the end of March, close to 66,000 ounces of gold and 545,000 ounces of silver.
I just want to pause quickly and just highlight the silver. One of the great things we have at Chatree is a large silver component as well. In fact, I found out recently we are the fourth largest silver producer on the ASX, just with the by-product credits that we get at Chatree. Of course, silver has had a stellar year as well. Appreciate, obviously, recent geopolitical events are knocking prices around a little bit. There's a few sawtooth charts around, including our share price chart. Silver's been fantastic. It's up three times where it was this time last year. That is a fantastic by-product credit for us. Really great problem for us to have. In fact, at the end of the full year, we're looking at producing something like 700,000-750,000 ounces of silver, which will be fantastic.
I want you to keep that in mind because our project in Chile is a silver focus project as well. That's Chatree. You can see that graph on the left. We're certainly trending in the right direction, looking to have a strong June quarter to finish, land well into the guidance range, and hit our targets. Okay. How are we going to support the growth ongoing? We have been in Thailand a very long time, and Chatree is located in a very, very prospective area. It's in the center of the Loei Fold Belt. You can see it there in the graphic. We are effectively the only gold mine in Thailand, and we've got more than 1,200 sq km of the Loei Fold Belt pegged down, and it's well known in the upper parts, particularly Laos.
It comes down through Laos, Thailand, curves into Cambodia for some very, very large copper porphyries and gold systems as well. We're there. There's nobody else with us, so we have first mover and only mover competitive advantage on that. Part of our field program this year is we're looking to go out the left-hand side of the Chatree Gold Mine itself into the Phichit province. As I mentioned earlier, we posted an inaugural resource on an area we call the South- East Complex. That's the little box on the right-hand side. If you can see the diagram where the yellow shading is, that's the Chatree mining complex itself. The little smaller box inside that is the South- East Complex. That's less than 2 km in some parts from our processing plant. You can see the economies, the efficiencies of scale to bring that in.
We posted 550,000 ounces of gold on that last year. I'd be surprised if we couldn't get that up over 1 million, 1.5 Million ounces, at probably a head grade of 1 g or better. We know it's good. We know there's some supergene-enriched halo at the surface, and we're very excited about that. That's one of our near-term organic growth pathways. Of course, concurrently, we're working at getting a mining lease over that area as well so we can bring that into our production profile sooner, certainly bump up our metrics and make a huge difference to our bottom line as well. We've got a lot to be happy about. There'll be a huge amount of work going on in this space as we go forward. Again, we've got first and only mover advantage in a very large area.
We've pegged all of these areas, really only limited by the amount of resources we can put into it. We've got a geological team that's 40 strong at the moment, and we're obviously working these areas as hard as we can, and you can expect to see some news flow on the left-hand side, the pit side, as we go ahead later this year as well. That's part of our organic growth program. Now, just quickly, obviously, I want to talk about social license to operate. We are in an obviously very interesting area and have an interesting history. Obviously, with no social license to operate, there is no mine. One of the things I'm most proud of, and Kingsgate has a very strong track record on this, because Chatree was founded in the early 1990s. We've had an ESG or a CSR program since then.
As I mentioned earlier, 98% of our workforce is Thai. More than 85% of that workforce come from villages within 10 km of the mine. We have 5,500 households within 10 km of the mine. Just last year alone, we went to 3,300 of them. I haven't told we've been to the whole 5,500. Quite a lot of work. We've participated in more than 100 village meetings. The reason we do that, one of the things, one, we want the community to know what's happening. Two, we need them to vote for us for licenses and permits. A little bit like a popular election, so we bring them with us. I'm pleased to say, in most cases, we get better than 90% votes for us. That's very important. Of course, we run a whole range of macro and microeconomic programs as well. We run free health checks.
We've recycled waste, nearly 700 tons. We've planted 17,000 trees across 12 community forests. We run a water filtration plant. We've done that for more than 20 years. We've also built hospitals and schools and a whole range of other agricultural projects to support the community. Very proud of that. We've had it for a very long time. Obviously, and very important to our long-term and long sort of relationship with the community, very important. This is just a quick photo tells 1,000 words. This is our people out engaging with governments of all levels, local, state, and federal. I just want to tell you a quick story on this. Recently, we had our key regulator, the Director General of the Mining Department.
He came to the mine twice in a month, and we had the Mining Minister there for the first time in 10 years, which is a huge win for us. It's a really great thing. He didn't just say, I want to be your regulator. He said, I want to work with you to make Thailand a global gold player. There's no reason we can't work with them and vice versa to do that. We're really encouraged by that. I know it seems like a little thing, but it's a really big thing for us, really important for our future. Okay, finishing in Thailand, jumping across the Pacific now. This is the other part of our future. This is Nueva Esperanza Silver Gold Project. Now, it is easily one of the largest underdeveloped silver projects in South America.
I think, in fact, probably globally, I think if you look at the size of the resource, it's probably in the world's top 10. In fact, Kinross had this in the late 1990s, and it was the largest silver mine in the world. I think those guys got something like 35 million ounces-40 million ounces out of it in about 30 months. We know it's got scale, we know it's got ability, and we like silver. We think that there's a strong structural shift underway in silver. I think we're experiencing the fifth year of a supply deficit for silver. We think that's going to continue. We think that's going to drive the price. We like that. We got it to pre-feasibility stage in 2016.
Obviously, we had our speed bump with Thailand, so we had to go a little bit slower, but we're now strongly focused on bringing that back to life and production as soon as we can. We know it's in elephant country. It's in really good company. It's between Solaris, Gold Fields, Gold Fields' Salares Norte, which is fantastic. Rio2's Fenix is across the road, and they're doing very well. Of course, it's to the north of Kinross' La Coipa as well, which is another really highly respected mine. We know it's good. It's got multiple deposits. It's got two open pits and one underground. As I said, we updated the resource on it last year, posted 61 million ounces of silver. In fact, it's got about 300,000 ounces of gold in it as well.
We were told actually, prior to us owning it was never actually assayed for gold. We'd be very surprised if we couldn't find some more significant gold intercepts there as well. That's why we like it. Big work stream going ahead on it now that we're looking to really advance it. Obviously, last year, there was quite a bit. We were undertaking topographic surveys, we were doing infrastructure repair works, things like that, geochemical rock chip work, sampling. We've hired new legal and environmental consultants. In fact, we've just appointed a geologist. We're updating our assumptions from the pre-feasibility study in 2016. One of the key things we're looking at, and we're about to undertake some metallurgical test work drilling.
Because if we can show that we can heap leach this project, then that significantly shortens both the time to production, if that's where we go, and it also significantly reduces our CapEx, which would be fantastic as well. You can expect to see some more news flow on that shortly. Also, we're really pleased to say that we've been doing some work on our long-standing water that we've had there as well, and that's looking very positive, and you can expect to see some market news from us on that in the near future as well. As the clock winds down, I want to leave you with our value propositions. You're going to see some great presentations here. You've probably already seen some. What you're thinking, well, what makes Kingsgate an interesting, a compelling story? Why should I buy that?
Why should I invest in that more than anything else? I think we've got a few things that can differentiate us out. Obviously, we're bringing the Chatree Gold Mine back to life. We haven't fully optimized it yet, but we're on the way. You can see that from our production uplift. We're showing you that we can do it. We've had five consecutive quarters of 20,000 ounces. That'll continue to grow. We've been managing to set new all-in sustaining cost records per quarter. We're generating significant amount of cash. The other thing is we've got two large hungry processing plants. We want to up the feed. We want to really put some throughput through those, pump some ounces out the other side. That's enabling us to build a really strong balance sheet as well. As I said, we've completely de-leveraged, except for a modest debt fund.
We also don't have any large capital items to spend. We've put our plants back together. We've bought new Caterpillar equipment. There's nothing on the horizon that should be a surprise for us. We're unhedged to the gold price. Again, appreciate a little bit sore tooth in the current times, but we think it'll snap back like a rubber band when that calms down. The point I made at the start about our capital structure, if you look at us compared to, say, another ASX producer, they've got three, four, maybe five times as many shares out there on issue as we do. We don't. If we give a distribution or we do a buyback, it means something. Pleased to say, just last Friday, if you're a shareholder of ours, you were part of a AUD 0.10 Australian dividend distribution, roughly $90 million .
That's really on the Board's mind, is to keep returning cash to shareholders, keep the capital structure tight. Of course, how are we going to do that? We've got a huge organic growth platform. As I said, we've got 1,200 sq km of exploration potential, really good exploration potential because we know, because we've been there for so long to support Chatree. We've got 10 years life of mine, pretty much as it is, if we don't do anything else. We've got the South-East Complex, who we know could be potentially nearly as big as Chatree itself once we get going. We've got the very exciting silver project in Chile. We think that's only going to go from strength to strength. On that note, this is our ticker code. It's been really fantastic to be able to outline our story to you today.
Thank you very much for listening. Thank you.
Thank you, Jamie. I think we've maybe got time for one question from the audience. We can pass the mic.
Yeah, thank you. Great presentation. By my calculations, Kingsgate may hit the ASX 200 in the June rebalance, which could stimulate close to $100 million of passive buying. Is that an analysis that you guys have done? Is that something you can comment on, Jamie?
Look, that is a great question, Nick, and thanks for asking us that. Look, we like to be modest. If that happens, yes, that's great. We have it in the back of our mind. We have actually had some people say that to us. I should say we are covered by Canaccord. It's on our thing there, and they have a price target of more than AUD 9 on us, which is another reason to buy us. If we do make it into the 200, yes, of course, it is something on our mind, but our focus at the moment is just to keep focusing on growth. Thank you.
Perfect. Thank you very much, Jamie.
Thank you.