you, and our General Manager of Finance, Todd Giltay. Our Chief Operating Officer, Lyndon Hopkins, is on site at the moment in Burkina. The December 2025 quarter has delivered another strong period of gold production across both our Sanbrado and Kiaka gold operations in Burkina Faso, with just over 112,000 ounces of gold produced across the operations, delivering an operating run rate that bodes well for our gold production in calendar year 2026. Our total gold production for calendar year 2025 was a touch over 300,000 ounces of gold, with Kiaka stepping up in Q4. This was well within our production guidance for the year.
What's more, is that we completed this achievement with no significant health, safety, or social incidents, which is especially important to us and demonstrates our commitment to operating in a safe and responsible manner at all times. We sold 105,995 ounces of gold at an average price of $4,058 per ounce for the quarter, and we remain fully unhedged, therefore allowing WAF to take full advantage of the record gold prices we are currently seeing. With all our sustaining costs, sorry, with our all-in sustaining cost averaging $1,561 per ounce across the two operations, we've been able to deliver AUD 389 million Australian dollars of cash, sorry, cash flow in the quarter, and that's after making income tax payments of AUD 48 million Australian dollars.
Our cash balance at 31 December 2025 is AUD 584 million, plus we still held another AUD 177 million worth of unsold gold bullion, and that's just due to timing of shipments. Looking at our sites, the Kiaka ramp-up has been excellent since its second quarter start- up, and its performance in Q4 really demonstrated that. This is the first full quarter of operations for the site. It produced 62,287 ounces of gold for the quarter, surpassing production at Sanbrado for the first time. Kiaka's costs continue to improve as production has increased, which was what we expected, and it's pleasing to see this panning out. We expect costs to further reduce as our reliance on diesel generator power reduces over the coming quarters.
Kiaka produced just over 95,000 ounces of gold for the year after commencing operations in Q2 and having a shortened operational phase in Q3. Open pit mining continues to ramp up as more equipment is commissioned for use. At Sanbrado, our steady production continued, and we produced just under 50,000 ounces of gold for the quarter, bringing our total for the year to 205,228 ounces. Sanbrado performed well against production guidance, achieving the upper end of our 190,000 to 210,000 ounces production range. Open pit recommenced in the quarter under our new owner mining operating model. Open pit mill feed in Q4 was sourced from both the M5 North Pit and previously mined ore stockpiles.
Mined ounces for the quarter from M1 South Underground was 37,955 ounces, which was 16% below the previous quarter. This was due to a 14% drop in mined grade, as well as slightly lower ore tonnes mined. With that overview of our production, I'll hand over to Padraig to discuss our financial details for the quarter.
Thank you, Richard. WAF, as Richard mentioned, WAF has benefited tremendously from being unhedged and generated AUD 662 million of gold sales revenue in the quarter, an average realized price of $4,058 per ounce. For the full year 2025, WAF generated more than AUD 1.5 billion of revenue. As Richard mentioned already also, we generated AUD 389 million of operating cash flow in Q4 and ended the year with a very strong cash balance of AUD 584 million. Our capital investing activities in Q4 used AUD 113 million of cash, which included AUD 89 million for Kiaka and AUD 23 million for Toega. Financing activities used AUD 23 million of cash in Q4, with payments for loan interest, principal, and financing expenses offsetting cash received from the drawdown of equipment finance facilities.
I now hand back to Richard.
Thanks, Padraig. So on the exploration front this quarter, diamond drilling beneath the M5 open pit ore reserve has confirmed potential for us to extend open pit mining at Sanbrado. Gold mineralization was confirmed more than 300 meters below the current ore reserve, and mineralization remains open at depth. And this is really the first substantial drilling we've done at M5 North since about 2017. So, it's no surprise that, you know, we can see that this mineralization, being extended, and then we're considering our options there. But most likely, updated ore reserve would consider cutting back the northern part of the M5 open pit.
So some of the drilling results included 16 meters at 11.2 grams per tonne, as well as more typical broad intersections, such as 45 meters at 1.9 grams per tonne gold. Diamond drilling at M5 North will continue through 2026, and we look forward to further results from the program to help us better plan for the future mining at Sanbrado. But the future looks very good. Our last ore reserve estimate was completed at a much more conservative gold price of $1,400 an ounce. So recalculating today, we'd expect to use a higher gold price, and obviously deliver more ounces into reserve. We also have drilling underway at underground for Toega.
We continue to develop a satellite operation for Sanbrado, which we continued to develop as a satellite operation for Sanbrado. We're currently completing a 13,500-meter infill drilling program, which is infilling the underground resource, and we'll have more results over the coming quarters. Grade control drilling also commenced during the quarter, with 6,600 meters completed. This program is expected to be completed in early Q1 2026, with results to follow. In other developments at Toega, earthworks for the mine services area were completed, and the construction of mobile maintenance workshop, office and ancillary infrastructure has commenced. The haul road construction is well advanced and remains on schedule to enable ore delivery to the Sanbrado process plant in early Q3 2026.
Toega open pit mining operations will be owner-operated, like, by WAF, similar to Sanbrado. Mining equipment continued to arrive on site during the quarter, with commissioning activities underway. All mining equipment is expected to be fully operational by the end of this quarter. Pre-stripping of open pit mining of the open pit commenced during the quarter, with a total of 250,000 BCMs moved to date. Material movement is expected to ramp up to steady state production by the end of Q1 2026. Across other aspects of our business, we continued to invest heavily in social programs, including education, health, economic development, including providing scholarships to high school students from the area.
Upgrading our community health centers, and constructing a new primary school, and refurbishing an existing school near Kiaka, which will also be used for community events outside school hours. In relation to discussions with the Burkina Faso government regarding Kiaka, we continue to engage constructively with the government on these matters, but at this stage, there are no material updates on that matter. Overall, I'm really happy with our performance and progress throughout Q4, particularly with our ramp-up at Kiaka. We're looking forward to releasing our 2026 annual production guidance, and outlining our capital management strategy later in Q1, 2026. I'll now hand back to Nathan for the Q&A.
Thank you. Just a reminder, if you would like to ask a question directly to the company, please use the Raise Hand function within Zoom. We'll just give people ten seconds or so to ask a question. Okay, your first question comes from Mike Millikan at Euroz Hartleys. Please go ahead, Mike.
Good morning, guys. Great quarterly. Thanks, thanks for all the detail. Just a couple from me. Firstly, talking about the, you know, obviously very strong cash generation at the moment. Debt service, are you gonna accelerate some of those payments?
Yes. So that, that'll be a focus throughout this year, and get debt down to a manageable level. That's our first focus. And then, you know, we're having active discussions in the office now and amongst our board about, you know, capital management, which will, you know, take us past 2026.
Yeah, awesome. Whether that's, you know, buying back shares or paying dividends, you know, that's the discussion that we're having at the moment. Is that the plan? Certainly, yeah, a buyback probably, probably makes a lot of sense.
look, they both make sense. We just really need to gauge, you know, the market and really from... I'm a follower of Berkshire Hathaway, and, you know, they've always bought shares back, and they've never paid a dividend though. But it's either or, like, I think it's gonna be a good outcome for shareholders if we do either. But that's certainly our focus at the moment, is to pay down debt and then either buy back shares or pay a dividend.
Awesome. Just looking at, obviously, the royalty rates currently in country, obviously pretty high. Is there, is there any sort of changes expected there? I mean, just, it's obviously on a sliding scale, and obviously gold price is very high. Has some of your discussions also been centered around royalties?
No, not at this stage. I mean, the gold price has risen so quickly. You know, we were, I think we're now average sale price of about $3,500 in Q3, and we've sold at an average over $4,000 an ounce in just Q4. So already, you know, we're well over $5,000 an ounce as we speak now. So really, the action has been pretty recent and, you know, I'll be back in country in a few months' time and definitely raise that with the administration.
Yeah. Cool. And finally for me, just on Kiaka, grid power, how's it all been going? Has it been stable? What's your expectations for calendar year 2026 in regards to reliability, and what are you factoring in some of your forecasts? Thanks.
So that'll be kind of—I think we can explain more of that later in the quarter when we put our guidance out. We had two or three weeks of stability or stable grid in December, and that allowed us really to ramp up production. And, you know, we consistently hit 30-35,000 tons a day in production at Kiaka, which was really, really good. So clearly, you know, the last piece of the puzzle for Kiaka is stable power. We're also looking at installing a full HFO power station, which would allow us to have full production. So we'll have, you know, we'll have more information out on that in our annual guidance.
You know, we've also increased the diesel capacity on site, so there's another five gen sets arrived overnight on site, so they'll be plugged straight in. Yeah, that should give us about 30 megawatts of diesel on site. The last week has been pretty unstable with the grid, but you know, there has been work being done by SONABEL, which is the government's energy provider in country. So we should be back onto the grid in the coming days. And then we've also got some other equipment arriving on site, which will help stabilize the grid on our side. So look, it's early days with the grid. Long term, it's definitely the right option.
In the short term, you know, we've, we've made provisions for additional diesel power, and we're, we're making a plan to have full backup with HFO, which is much cheaper to run than diesel. So, that's kind of a summary at the moment, but, the... I think the takeaway is that, you know, with full power, Kiaka is, is, capable of producing or of processing, you know, more than 10 million tons per annum without any capital -- without any material infrastructure changes. So, does that answer your question, Mike?
Yeah, it did. Yeah. Thanks very much, Rich. No, it's really good. And congrats again on a very good quarter. I'll hand it on.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Richard Knights at Barrenjoey. Please go ahead, Richard. Just unmute yourself there, Richard, if that's all right.
Yep. Hi, Rich. Morning. Thanks for the call. Just wanted to see if I could get you to give us a little bit more detail on the discussions with the government regarding the Kiaka stake. Just, you know, anything relating to timeframes or whether or not, you know, you've made any progress on those discussions with potential co-investments in other projects. Just any more detail you can give on that. Thanks.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks, Richard. Look, there isn't a lot of detail to give, unfortunately. We responded late last year to SOPAMIB, and we provided them with, you know, a lot of information about Kiaka, you know, our construction costs and economic models. And again, the gold price has moved significantly since then. So, I mean, the discussions have been quite good and cordial. They're-- they've made it quite clear that they believe in, you know, paying market price for a additional share in Kiaka. And we did counter with a proposal saying that, you know, if you have a look at our current quarter, you know, I think we paid in direct taxes and royalties, $90 million in one quarter.
So, you know, clearly we're, you know, we're a very good partner to the government and probably, you know, in our view, that's the best model is that, you know, the government already gets a significant proportion of cash flow from mining operations in Burkina, which is getting close to 60% of cash flow at the current gold price. So, and with the, you know, obviously, the escalating royalty as well, so that's a significant proportion of cash flow now.
So really, there's not a lot of detail to add. You know, we're currently waiting on a response to our most recent correspondence and, you know, we'll update the market as soon as we've got something back. But, you know, we've given them an alternative proposal, which, you know, we show demonstrates much higher returns on investment, given that there are assets the government already owns that aren't generating any cash flow. So, you know, clearly, that would grow their, the government's share of revenue much more quickly than an incremental investment in Kiaka. But, you know, it's a discussion that we're having with them, and, you know, we're doing that in a transparent and polite way.
Yep. Yep. Okay. All right. Thanks.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time, so I'll now hand back to Richard for closing remarks.
Thanks, Nathan. Look, I guess closing remarks, we've got a number of activities underway at the moment, including our resource reserve update. You know, our new ten-year plan will be coming out in late March. The ten-year plan will include drilling from M5 North and M5 South, as well as extensions at M1 South underground. So I'd expect that to be, you know, a positive increase on the ten-year plan that we issued last year, which was very close to 10 years at 500,000 ounces per annum, which has been a target of mine for a long time. So, you know, obviously, we'll keep the market updated with our discussions with the government around the ownership of Kiaka, and also with the stability of the grid as it improves. Thanks very much for dialing in today, and we look forward to keeping the market updated over the coming weeks regarding our activities.