Hello, everyone, and welcome to Endomines' first quarter results webcast. My name is Anni Turpeinen. I'm the Chief Communications Officer here at Endomines, and with me today we have our CEO, Kari Vyhtinen, and our CFO, Minna Karttunen. Our agenda today is that first Kari will start by sharing the exciting results for the first quarter. He will also give you an update on our exploration work. After Kari's part, Minna will continue with giving you a deeper look into the financials. After Minna's part, Kari will come back to the stage with giving you the update on our strategy and our future plans. As always, we will have questions and answer session right after the presentations. Please feel free to send your questions via chat during the presentations, and please remember to type your questions in English.
I think we can start now. Let's enjoy the great results.
Thank you, Anni. Q1 2026, it was a fantastic quarter for Endomines. Not only did we achieve record financial result, we also achieved several significant strategic milestones that I will describe later. If you look at the financial highlights of Q1, our revenue growth was really remarkable, 77% revenue increase to EUR 18.5 million. The group EBITDA grew by 139% to EUR 8.8 million. The EBIT almost tripled to EUR 7.3 million. The net result was EUR 7.1 million. It grew by 390%. It was almost in the same level as the whole net result last year. The EPS was EUR 0.6 per share. We had a very strong operational cashflow, EUR 8.7 million. The balance sheet got stronger and our net gearing dropped to 6.8%. Really remarkable record result for Endomines.
I'm very pleased about the result. We also achieved several significant strategic milestones. In January we launched the strategic project status application to European Union, and this is related to the tungsten production in Southern Gold Line, what we are permitting at the moment. Also in the Southern Gold Line, we launched the environmental impact assessment program to authorities in February, and this includes to increase the gold production to 70,000-100,000 ounces and take the tungsten and molybdenum into production around 2030. We completed the divestment of three of our assets in the USA. We divested Friday, Deadwood, and Buffalo Gulch, and that was also completed in February. We signed also letter of intent regarding the tungsten cooperation.
Here the purpose is that we work together to ensure that the tungsten product that we will produce is something that is suitable for the market, I think both parties aim to have a offtake agreement, but this is non-binding letter of intent. It's still early days, but very significant milestone. What I'm really pleased about, we also got this Most Inspiring Workplaces in Finland Award after we did the employee satisfaction survey. Very happy that our people like to work with Endomines, and that's something that we really need to achieve our ambitious goals. We also did lot of successful recruitments, and I'm extremely pleased that we have a now team that can take the next growth leap forward.
I really want to thank the whole Endomines team for the excellent result and excellent work that was done during the Q1 2026. Thank you. If you go back to the basics, Endomines is a gold production company and gold exploration company, and we operate in the Karelian Gold Line in Eastern Finland. It's a Archean greenstone belt, very similar greenstone belt than the world's biggest gold production areas, for example Kalgoorlie in Australia, Abitibi in Canada, and so on. If you have been looking at the news, there was also a big transaction in Lapland, and that's also on a greenstone belt where Agnico Eagle acquired assets of 3 companies on a greenstone belt. These are very prospective places for gold production and also gold exploration.
The Karelian Gold Line, it's a 40-kilometer-long belt. Our production facilities, they are in a place called Pampalo. There we have an underground mine, open pit mine, and processing plant. We produce a gold concentrate that we sell to Boliden in Finland. The exploration, it focuses on the Southern Gold Line and Northern Gold Line, and the Southern Gold Line we are permitting to be in production around 2030. That will raise our production to 70,000 to 100,000 ounces, which is approximately 5 times more than in 2025. At the same time we aim to start tungsten and molybdenum production. Part of our strategy is to increase production volumes each year, and we have done it successfully since we changed the strategy in 2022. We have almost doubled.
Like if you look at the annual figures first, we have almost doubled the production from 2022 to 2025. If you look at the quarterly production this year, Q1 was a record production. The production increased by almost 10% compared to 2025 and over 30% compared to previous quarter. What is important here is actually to look at the quarterly figures and we acquired the business activities of our underground subcontractor in September last year, and that affected our production during Q3 and Q4. We can see clearly that there was a lower level of production during Q3 and Q4. Now in Q1, it really shows that this was the right move and we can actually increase the production levels, and our production has been a lot more steady than ever before.
We are very pleased about the progress in the production side. On the gold market, the tensions involving Iran has affected the gold market. One of the key factors here is that the forecast for interest rate cuts, that has been delayed, and there is a lot of forecasting that the interest rates might rise. There has been some profit-taking also from gold to other investments as there is more risks in the market. How we see the gold market is that the basic fundamentals, they support gold price. There is a lot of geopolitical uncertainty. There is a lot of central bank buying. China has been buying gold. Poland has been buying gold, for example.
The BRICS nations especially, they want to decrease the dependency on the US dollar. There is a lot of global debt. A lot of the countries are struggling with high levels of debt. Finland, for example, is one of the examples here. There is a lot of uncertainty in the U.S.A. and with the Trump administration, it's very difficult to predict what is the future. Therefore we see that there are strong fundamentals in place that support gold. Our forecast is that next 3, 4 months, the gold will trade at current levels. However, we expect that we can see gold moving towards the $5,000 level later this year. The Q1 average price was $4,879, very strong record price for gold.
Currently, the gold is trading at EUR 4,700, so quite close to the average price of Q1. We had a record production. There was a record gold price, so that resulted in a record revenue growth of 77%. Here is also the annual graph, so it shows that we have steadily increased the revenue and then this quarterly revenue. Like, as we had some production difficulties during H2 last year, there is a very significant jump on the quarterly revenue now in Q1, so very significant change. That also, can be seen directly also on the EBITDA.
We have increased the EBITDA steadily on an annual basis, now due to the difficulties we had last year on the production side or the lower volumes, now there is a huge jump to the current EUR 8.8 million and 48%, close to a 48% of the revenue level. Excellent financial results, Minna will share more details on the results. Sustainability program. Sustainability is the most important item for us. On the environmental side, the most important item is the water, we are doing a lot of actions to ensure that the water that is released from the mine site is as clean or cleaner as the water in the nature. This is what we have as a target when we design the expansions and when we take new production areas into production.
On the climate side, we want to have a fossil-free gold production by 2035. That's the key target. Biodiversity, ongoing restorations of sites. We do the restoration when some part of the mine is ended so that there is no big backlog after the mining is ended in some part. Very important. Take care of the nature values in general. The personal safe and pleasant place to work is the key message. We had a quarter without any lost time accidents. Very pleased about that. We got this reward, Most Inspiring Workplaces in Finland, which I'm also very pleased about. Things are going to the right direction.
Community. We keep a lot of community sessions, talk with the local people, talk with the town so that we share our plans and take the feedback, which we can then incorporate into our future plans. For example, last week we had 2 information sessions near the mine site. The good governance so that we have ethical practices, and then everybody knows what or those ethical practices are so that we always do things in a right way. Very important. We want to be proud of the work that we do. Exploration, very exciting. Just a little bit background here. We have a multi-stage approach, which means that we have activities on different phases. Usually when we go to the new area, we start with geophysics.
We use drones, for example, and measure magnetic or electromagnetic anomalies, and that gives us information that maybe here is something that should be more investigated. We have people who go to the field and just take soil samples, and here you can get indications that in this area there is a little bit more gold, and we should continue doing more detailed investigations. Outcrop mapping. In Finland there is approximately 3%, there are outcrops. We go to the outcrops and take samples, and then analyze if there is any gold in the outcrops. For example, the Ukkolanvaara deposit was discovered from an outcrop. It's, even it sounds very simple, it's effective method.
When we know from these 3 early stage activities, when we know that this area is potential, then we take the base of till machine, and this goes through the soil, it goes to the top of the bedrock, takes a sample, and if there is gold, then there is gold somewhere in the bedrock. We take the drilling machine, analyze the drill core, and then make the resource estimate. The resource estimate always comes from the drilling and then the resource explains that how much gold we know that there is in the ground that can be mined at later stage. In our pipeline, we have several stages like there are a lot of potential places in the Southern Gold Line and Northern Gold Line and also near Pampalo.
If you look at the pipeline, the most closest one to production is the Southern Gold Line. That is in the permitting phase and we are doing a lot of drilling and plan to take it to production around 2030. The Northern Gold Line will follow 2 to 3 years later. After that we have some other active places that we are doing early stage exploration that we can take into production at later stage. This gives the growth pipeline towards the future. It has been very successful. We started the exploration in 2023 and now we updated the resource this March.
We gave the resource based on last year's activities and we got to the level of approximately 620,000 ounces, which is 3 times more than what it was when we started in 2023. What makes the year, this year very exciting is the fact that We are planning to drill, and we are drilling 50,000 meters this year, which is almost as much as the last 3 years together. It's a very significant volume. If I think about back, what kind of results we have received during the last 3 years, it's really exciting times and cannot wait to get these results from this year's drilling because there is currently 3 machines drilling and a lot of activities.
The key targets for what we had last year and what we have this year are Ukko on the Southern Gold Line and Kartitsa on the Northern Gold Line. Kartitsa will have less attention as we need more information on the permitting side in the south. In the south we will also go to Kuittila and Kuittila-Korvilansuo area. There one of the key targets is actually the tungsten. This is like the first time in the company's history that we will go after really tungsten in our drilling planning and those results will be done during this late spring, early summer.
Like when we look what has happened during the Q1, we published in the Northern Gold Line Kartitsa the first resource estimate that was 124,000 ounces. That was done in March. Now after the Q1 in April, we published actually drilling results which are more south from the resource area. These were actually really good drilling results, which clearly show that the Kartitsa mineralization continues south from the resource area. These results we will use to update the next resource late this year or early next year. Kartitsa is very promising. We have identified that it's approximately 1.5 kilometers long.
However, it's open to north and south and also at depth. There are a lot of potential for large scale deposit. If you look at the area on a larger scale even, there are other similar potential areas near this one. Kartitsa will remain as a focus area for Endomines. Then Ukko, this is a banded iron formation type of deposit, the first one in Finland, which means that the gold is associated with iron. A lot of big gold deposits in the world, they are similar BIF type of deposits. What makes it unique is that the iron you can actually see in the magnetic and electromagnetic maps as here in the picture, and the iron formation in this area is really huge. It's up approximately 7 km long and very wide.
When we discovered the Ukko 1 approximately 1 year ago, it was in the northern tip, and this is an area that we have continued to drill. Then we have done some selected drilling in the other parts of Ukko. We plan to publish this in mid-May, so it's very, very, very close. We actually have 1 result that we are still waiting, and then we will publish the next Ukko results hopefully in a few days. Now I will give the floor to Minna.
All right. Thank you, Kari. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Minna Karttunen. I'm CFO with Endomines since beginning of February this year. It's of course a big pleasure to be able to publish a result like this, like we have now in the first quarter. It's also our first quarterly report. Like in the past, the company has published results only twice a year, half-year results and full-year results, now we are moving to quarterly reporting from now on. Let's have a closer look at the numbers. Like said many times already, it was a record-breaking year-on-year revenue growth, 77% for the first quarter, that was of course due to two factors. It was the increase in production. Gold production in the first quarter was 4,955 ounces.
That is nearly 10% up from a previous year and over 30% up quarter-on-quarter from Q4 2025. Average gold price during this time was EUR 4,879, and it's an amazing 70% higher than in year before, and 42.4% higher than last year on an average for the full year. Profitability-wise, our EBITDA was EUR 8.8 million, and in euro terms, that's actually over 50% of our previous full year's total EBITDA. Our EBITDA margin was 47.5%, and Pampalo production segment actually did even better, so the EBITDA for that segment was EUR 11.6 million with a margin of 62.9%.
Then, by the way, I will mention here for our analysts especially, because we are starting the quarterly reporting now, you do not have the comparison numbers, but I've tried to add these previous years' quarterly numbers now in this presentation for this in these graphs for your use, so I hope that will be of help going forward. Some of the key numbers, you will have the 2025 quarterly numbers here in the presentation. Looking at the operating expenses side, so what yields the EBITDA for us, we had a change in ore inventory that improved our EBITDA by EUR 1.4 million. EUR 6.4 million was spent on materials, goods, and services. That's an increase about 30% compared to previous year, same time.
Employee expenses increased, mainly due to increase in number of employees, so the total spend on people was EUR 2 million, and that entails an increase of 31 persons year-over-year, so quite significant increase there. Other operating expenses were EUR 2.8 million. Unfortunately, these were inflated by approximately EUR 1.1 million of non-recurring costs, of which EUR 0.9 million were fees and other entries related to closing of the sale of these three gold deposits in the USA. There were other non-recurring items of around EUR 200,000, and these occurred at the parent company.
Also to note, it is good to know that the Mined Minerals Tax will increase for this year quite significantly from previous year, and now we have recorded EUR 0.5 million, so EUR 500,000 for the first quarter, whereas last year in the same time it was less than EUR 100,000. This Mined Minerals Tax is actually recorded in the other operating expenses, so it is affecting our EBITDA. Talking about the operating expenses, we can get to cash cost. There is good to mention here that for the current year, we have changed a little bit of the calculation method since last year, so we have removed the changes of inventory in these numbers. We did this has not been an issue before because we haven't really had inventories.
Now we have accumulated some, and we wanted to provide a number that actually not fluctuating with the changes in inventory. There is a small change in the calculation for this year. For Q1, cash cost was EUR 1,481 per ounce, and that's an increase of about 20% versus previous year at the same time. Only an increase of about 3% versus last year's average for the full year. The increase in cash cost now was particularly affected by a lower gold rate of the ore, especially in the underground mine, and then the higher price of electricity. These two items together accounted for 93% of the increase in the cash cost. It mostly covered by these two items.
I wanted to also mention the electricity price here, which is nearly 90% higher this year than it was a year before. There you can see the prices we pay in Pampalo for the electricity, or did pay for Q1. Net result, EUR 7.1 million, like Kari already mentioned. It's nearly at the same level as we did for the full year last year alone. The margin was 38.8%. We had net financial expenses of around EUR 300,000. Expenses were reduced by a foreign exchange rate gains of about EUR 200,000. Our interest expenses for the quarter were about half a million EUR. As mentioned, the group earnings per share, the basic number increased to EUR 0.60 per share compared to EUR 0.10 the year before. Also happy to share the balance sheet on cash flow items.
I don't know, for some funny reason it's always been important for me this total of the balance sheet. Now when we've passed the 100 million threshold it's somehow significant for me. The total assets and the total balance sheet was EUR 100.2 million. Our cash position was good. We had cash, EUR 9.4 million compared to EUR 3.9 million at the year end. Total interest bearing debt, there was no big change there. It was EUR 13.8 million, of which long term was EUR 10.4 million, short term EUR 3.5 million. Net debt was only EUR 4.4 million, and this is of course thanks to the high cash number. Also because of that net gearing decrease to 6.8% versus 17.4% at the year end, and our equity ratio was 64.9%.
Cash flow also improved, net cash flow from operations were EUR 8.7 million. Investing cash flow was EUR 3 million, but there is good to note that that includes the first installment of positive EUR 1.9 million for the sold deposits in Idaho, the cash we received. Net cash flow from financing was about EUR 100,000. The investment cash flow, that was mainly associated with Pampalo Mine and then the Ukkolanvaara exploration drilling. Thank you.
Thank you, Minna.
Back to Kari.
Excellent result. We go to our strategy. We have five key points in our strategy. The Pampalo production is the center for our production and activities, and we aim to increase the production volumes each year. The cash flow that we make from the production we invest into exploration activities, and that drives the long-term growth. Critical minerals, they're part of our strategy. We see that tungsten and also molybdenum, they are going to be important part of the operations when we go few years into the future. Financial stability, we want to separate us from junior mining companies that continuously raise money for the activities. We want to have the money from the cash flows, and then also have a financial packages that support the growth. Sustainability, that's the backbone of the business.
Our long-term targets is to increase the gold resource to 1.5 to 2 million ounces by end of 2030. We are currently at 620,000, so it's approximately 3 times. Take the annual gold production to 70,000 to 100,000 ounces around 2030, and that if we compare to last year's full year figures, then it's approximately 5 times. At the same time, when the gold production level is increased, we will also take tungsten and molybdenum into production, have a fossil-free gold production by 2035. How do we go there? How do we get there is through these exploration activities that we increase the resources continuously, and we have now done it 3 years.
If you look at the data from the past 3 years, we have identified that when we drill approximately 10,000 meters, we get approximately 100,000 ounces of resource growth. For example, in Kartitsa in the Northern Gold Line, we drilled 11,000 meters and we got 124,000 ounces resource. Like, that was the first resource that we defined. We have used this data to estimate that if we want to get from 620,000 to 1.5 million to 2 million, we need to drill approximately 120,000 meters exploration drilling. This year we are doing the largest campaign in the company history, we are drilling 50,000 meters of pure exploration, there will be approximately 20,000 meters of additional drilling which is related to the production sites, Pampalo underground and also Hosko underground.
After this year, we will define the drilling volumes for 2027 to 2029. That's the plan to get to the 1.5 million-2 million ounces level. When once we have the higher resource, we can take the big jump to 70,000-100,000 ounces production level. Before that, we will increase the production in Pampalo each year. Like this year, the guidance is to increase by 10%-20%. The plant has capacity of approximately 25,000 ounces. Maybe with some minor bottlenecking we can get closer to 30, but 25,000 is something that we are very comfortable of.
We plan to increase it each year by increasing the production from the mines, and then when the Southern Gold Line comes to production, there will be the big step change to closer to 100,000 ounces. However, this is not the end story. Like, Our plan is to then, after that, take the next area into production and the next area, and we see that the following steps will come faster. As we started from zero and the permitting takes a long time, but now we can actually start the next steps, next phases when the Southern Gold Line permitting is still ongoing. Then we can have a continuous flow of operations coming to line in the future years. We are planning a next-generation production site.
Just to give a little bit more details on the plans that we have around 2030, we are permitting and designing a gold production facility which has 2 phases. We are permitting both phases now. The phase 1 is that we take the production to 85,000-90,000, which includes 25,000 from Pampalo, then 60,000-65,000 from Southern Gold Line, the total would be 85,000-90,000. Then we also we are designing the phase 2, which will double the Southern Gold Line production, then the total production would be closer to 150,000 ounces. Then the phase 1 will include also the tungsten and molybdenum production. In the tungsten, we are estimating 1,000 tons per year, in molybdenum, 600 tons per year. It's a very exciting project.
It has been going well, and we're very happy, very pleased about the progress that we have achieved. If you look at the time schedule, we launched the environmental impact assessment program for the project in February, we will continue the permitting. Now it goes to the re-report phase, permit phase, then we estimate to get the permit late 2028, then go as quickly as we can, go to the building and commissioning phase and start the gold production. The permitting includes both phase 1 and phase 2, it includes all those 4 deposits. There is Kuittila, Korvilansuo, Nuorisuo, Ukkolanvaara. Those are all included into the permitting.
We are also applying the critical project status from European Union, which can positively affect the permitting schedule, and that's for the tungsten, but there is also gold associated in the application. If you look at the tungsten and molybdenum, when we made the strategic decision to focus on tungsten and molybdenum, nobody could predict what happens to the tungsten price. It has in the last 2.5 years, it has almost tenfolded. The price is really high, this is due to the fact that tungsten is used in the defense industry, in the drilling industry, for example, and so on, there is very high demand. Currently in the European Union, there is a shortage of tungsten. Over 80% of the global supply, it comes from China.
It's a very good time to look tungsten production, and we are very pleased that we actually did include it in the strategy in the last update. We estimate that Kuittila can provide approximately 0.5%-1.5% of the global supply. There are a lot of indications in the base of till samples that there is wide areas with tungsten. This spring and summer, this is the first time that we will actually go and drill purely tungsten.
We are going to the, to the areas that we know that there isn't going to be so much gold, but there will be tungsten, that's very exciting to see what those results will be like. As mentioned, we applied for the strategic project status from European Union in January. We see that this offers, the tungsten offers a great opportunity for industrial partnerships, financing, and so on. We can have a partnership that actually finances the production facilities, and then gets the offtake, and we get a portion of the offtake. We see that there are a lot of opportunities with tungsten and really look forward to going forward.
We also signed the non-binding letter of intent with the Austrian company to, for the tungsten cooperation so that we can design the facilities in a way that meets the market requirements and that's something that we are going to really put high emphasizes on. 2026, after Q1. After record quarter, we are well positioned for growth. We have our guidance is that the production will grow 10%-20% this year. The Q1 production was a record production, we are well on track to achieve our guidance. We also had a very, like mentioned, we had EUR 8.7 million operational cash flow, we can invest into exploration. We have the highest and largest exploration campaign in the company's history, we are drilling 50,000 meters and looking forward to the results.
We have a new streamlined structure in the U.S.A. Three of the assets were sold, and those assets, actually they had the highest operating costs. Now we have a streamlined structure, but we also have more time to focus on Finland, that's very important. The global trends, they support gold market. All the basic fundamentals, they support that the gold price levels will stay on a high level. We believe that that's going to be the future. The Southern Gold Line development project, it's moving to the next phase. We launched the environmental impact assessment program. Now it's going to the next phases in permitting and the design is currently going really well.
Lastly but not least is the fact that we have organization which is ready for the next growth leap. Like, when you are in a growth company that grows as much as we do, it's all about the people. Like if you manage to recruit good people, then you can achieve great things and I'm extremely pleased of the organization that we have today. We are ready for the next phase in Endomines' golden journey. Thank you.
Thank you, Kari and Minna, for the presentations and the great results. It's now time to move on to the Q&A session. We have had, again, a big bunch of questions here in the chat. Thank you, every one of them. Let's start right away. The first question is concerning our plans with tungsten. What kind of plans do you have to start the tungsten production in Ilomantsi, and what's the role of Wolfram Bergbau und Hütten?
Yes. Our plan is that when you look at the Southern Gold Line, there is, for example, the Kuittila gold deposit, the tungsten is not often associated with the gold. It's on the side rock, when you mine the gold, you actually have to mine the area where the tungsten is also present. There are these lot of indications that it's on a wider area. Our plan is that when we increase the production level to 70,000 to 100,000 ounces, we will build a separate factory for tungsten, we will take a most likely a partner.
Our goal would be that the partner will finance the investment and then they would get the offtake and, of course, we would still financially benefit from selling the offtake. It would be just this kind of close cooperation where part of the profits when the plant is running goes to the partner that they can invest on the tungsten production facilities. This letter of intent that we signed, that was done because we really feel that the products should stay in Europe, and it's Austrian company, part of the Sandvik group, so we signed a letter of intent so that we can work together to ensure that the product that we sell is a good quality.
They have a lot of experience on tungsten production, so they can help us with what kind of equipment we need and how we should design the tungsten production factory. The purpose is to work closely on the design phase, then hopefully move to the phase that we are partners on the when the production starts.
Okay, let's stay with this topic. When is Endomines expecting answer to the strategic project application, and is it expected to be accepted?
That's a good question. Like, there is no clear timeline. We are expecting that we get the answer later this year. For us, the answer will not change the project decision. Like, we are planning to go ahead even if we don't get the status. However, we see that if we get the status, it's beneficial on a permitting side and also to bring to increase the importance for the project and on a European scale. Yeah, it's difficult to evaluate if we get it or not.
I think we have a very good chance to get it and now in Europe, in general, I think there the countries have really woken up that we need local products and we cannot trust to get the minerals from China or other countries.
We have a question about silver and Montana. This is going to be a long one. Sotkamo Silver achieved a strong EBITDA margin of 52% in the first quarter with a silver grade of 70 grams per ton. At your Montana projects, silver grades of over 400 grams per ton have been reported alongside gold. What kind of vision do you have for these projects, for your projects in Idaho?
Yeah, that's a good question. Our plan is to most likely perform little bit exploration in Montana later this year. There is no clear decision as yet, but we are evaluating the option that we do small-scale exploration. We would like to understand the deposits a little bit more. The silver is associated with U.S. Grant. Like, there is high gold grades and very high silver grades in U.S. Grant. There is also a processing plant. It's not in the best condition, so it would need investments before we take it to production.
There is also the Kearsarge, which is, it's all potential gold deposits, so we haven't decided how we if we do exploration, how do we divide the how much we go after the US Grant gold and silver, or do we look at the Kearsarge? Kearsarge is as a gold project is it's a higher volume than US Grant. However, US Grant now has this very high silver content, so the evaluation is still ongoing. We don't have a clear roadmap as yet.
Let's stay in the USA. Did the sale of those, three deposits in the U.S., affect to the first quarter, report's key numbers?
It did. Like there was as Minna mentioned, there was the EUR 0.9 million one off cost that affected our net result negatively. On the cash flow side, there was the EUR 1.9 million payment that we.
Received
received.
Okay. Let's move on to the future production plans. In 2030, gold production is expected to be 70,000-100,000 ounces per year, but how about until that? Can production proceed 20,000 ounces a year level, or is it maximum capacity before investments?
At Pampalo, we estimate that the maximum capacity currently is approximately 25,000 ounces. Maybe with some de-bottlenecking, we could go closer to 30. We are still running the processing plant. We run the processing plant 8 days, and then we have a 2-day shutdown. Continuously it's like that, there is still just 20% capacity to just to when you take all the days into production. That's something that we are looking hopefully later this year. The bottleneck has been the mine production, and that's why we bought the activities of the underground subcontractor so that we can invest into the underground mine more easily and ensure that the team is big enough to increase the production levels.
The capacity is, like, 25,000 without any activities, and then maybe with de- bottlenecking, you can get closer to 30,000 ounces to per annum.
Okay. Now we have a question about Power Mining. How is the change from using the mining contractor to in-house operations working out?
It's working out really well, actually. Like, that's, that's the big change. We had a good cooperation with Power Mining. I have no bad things to say about Power Mining. However, the companies have different strategies. Like, the mining was just a big, small part of Power Mining's operations, and for us it's the only thing that we do, and we want to grow the mining, and the Power Mining was looking at the infra projects, for example, in other countries and also in Finland.
When we took over the production, we had difficulties in get it running properly, but then we identified, for example, some of the key equipment that needed fixing, and we actually we bought some machines to ensure that we can increase the production. We hired more people and it has gone really well. I'm really happy we changed. We also changed the organization a little bit, and now it's working really well. We got excellent people who are now running the mine, and I'm extremely pleased about the progress.
What about Hosko? What was Hosko's contribution to gold production?
That's a good question. I have to say I don't remember it exactly. I think it's somewhere between 15%-20%. That would be my guess. Because the Hosko has been now going really well. Like, we had last year some difficulties in getting to the stope area, like when we were doing the decline phase. Then it took a little bit longer what we estimated, but now it has been running really well, and this year looks really good. It's somewhere there, like 15%-20%.
Next we have a question about dividends. Is it possible to pay even a symbolic dividend this year?
Everything is always possible, that's something that will be decided later. Of course we have a fantastic result, let's see what the future brings. Let's see. There everything is possible, our focus is not the high dividends. It's to grow the company as quickly as we can, and that has been very successful.
Okay. Lastly, we have a question about sustainability. Any progress in moving away from fossil fuels?
Yes, there is. Like we will this year our goal is to report the actual KPIs every six months. In the Q1 and Q3 reports we will have a just a small section on sustainability, quite general. In H1 and then the full year result we will have published the full KPIs, and this year there will be a significant change in this CO2 emissions per ounce of gold produced. We have a lot of activities ongoing on that field.
Okay. That was the last one. Thanks for the excellent questions, and thanks for joining us today. I want to remind you that the presentation and the recording can be found on our website later today. Thanks again, have a nice day.
Thank you.
Thank you.