Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Gold Fields Q1 2026 operating updates market conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. There will be an opportunity to ask questions later during this event. I will now hand the conference over to Chief Executive Officer, Mike Fraser. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much. Good morning, good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for joining us for the Q1 2026 operational results update. Joining me today in the room in Ghana are the following members of our leadership team, Alex Dall, our Chief Financial Officer, Francois Swanepoel, our Chief Operating Officer, Chris Gratias, our EVP Strategy and Corporate Development, and Jongisa Magagula, EVP Investor Relations and External Affairs. I'm gonna make a few introductory remarks before we move on to Q&A. I think firstly, just on safety, we absolutely remain steadfast in our ability that fatality and serious injury-free mining is achievable. I'm encouraged to report that our safety improvement program continues to gain momentum, and we had no fatalities or serious injuries recorded in the quarter.
We do know that this requires constant focus. We continue to execute our safety improvement plan, focusing on strengthening our leadership capability, risk and safety systems, and ongoing partnership and collaboration with our business partners. Just moving on to the operational delivery. Our production really was a solid start to 2026. We had 15% higher gold equivalent production compared to Q1 of 2025. That's 633,000 ounces, supported by strong contribution from Salares Norte, which produced 173 ounces of gold equivalent ounces in the quarter. That was largely due to improved recoveries on both gold, but particular silver, and also supported by the benefit of the higher silver price in the gold-silver ratio.
Production in the quarter was 7% lower than Q4 last year, but that was obviously a planned higher Q4 in 2025. We remain on track to meet full- year production guidance provided in February. We did have certain softer start at Gruyere, Agnew, and Tarkwa. These assets are all on track and have certainly shown improvement towards the back end of the quarter. Gruyere was really impacted by heavy rainfall and equipment and operator availability. Agnew, we had seismic events in the Kath ore body in the beginning of the quarter. At Tarkwa, we ended up processing a high proportion of lower grade stockpile due to unplanned downtime on our operating fleet, which impacts delivery of primary ore into the plant. We are seeing improvements in these operations. I'll now just hand over to Alex to take us through some of the financials for the quarter.
Thank you, Mike, and good day, everyone. Our costs were under pressure during the quarter with our all-in sustaining costs at $1,829 an ounce or up 13% year-on-year. Our all-in costs were at $2,046 per ounce or 10% higher year-on-year. This was mainly due to external pressures, primarily higher royalties linked to the gold price and stronger Australian dollar and rand, which is our producer currency. When converted to US dollars, that's the effect there. As well as inflation across key inputs. I think it is important to reiterate that we are on track to meet the cost guidance. However, we have seen some increases in some of our inputs since the Iran war commenced.
If we model the oil price at $100 a barrel, this we expect to be about $50 an ounce for the portfolio cost of goods. We are still confident that we have adequate mitigation plans in place to remain within our guidance range. We have included some sensitivities in our results today on diesel, key commodities, and freight costs, and we'll continue to monitor the macro environment closely. From a cash flow perspective, we did generate strong cash flows supported by the higher sales volumes and gold prices. We were able to reduce net debt to $1.3 billion at quarter end.
This is after paying a final dividend of $1.2 billion. We did and we allocated $100 million to our share buyback program. Execution under the buyback has been limited given the recent market volatility in our share price. We will continue to pursue opportunities for share repurchases with this. I'll hand back to Mike now to talk about.
Thanks very much, Alex. Just a quick update on our portfolio and some of the growth options that we put prosecuting. On Windfall, we're on track and remain on track for our base plan of first gold in H1 of 2029. We have in the quarter reached an in-principle agreement with Cree Nation relating to the impact benefit agreements, and we expect to be in a position to sign that agreement in the coming weeks.
We also held the public hearings at the end of April 2026 as a final step of the EIA process before the issuing of final reports and permitting. We remain confident that we are on track towards a final investment decision around mid-year, which we will provide an update on as part of the H1 2026 results. At this stage, we are comfortable that we remain on track in respect to Windfall. The second big corporate work that's underway is really around the Tarkwa lease extension.
As you'll recall, we submitted the application for the lease extension in November of 2025, and we've had a number of engagements with the government of Ghana in relation to the Tarkwa lease renewal that are due to expire in 2027, and these remain ongoing. We obviously really focused on the constructive engagement in this process and are focusing on trying to bring this to early resolution. Just another thing that I'll talk to is that we continue to look at the internal options to improve the quality of our portfolio. At our capital markets day, we outlined a number of discretionary investment opportunities with the potential to deliver value through volume growth, life extension and cost optimization. Some of the major projects included material handling infrastructure at St. Ives and Granny Smith.
The stripping activities at the Agua Amarga pit at Salares Norte, the investment in South of Wrench at South Deep and as well as additional renewable energy. In addition to this, we included further work to develop the greater Invincible complex at St. Ives and the Golden Highway project at Gruyere. During Q1 , we continued to progress all of these activities across the portfolio and will provide an update on material decisions of these projects as they progress. In addition, one of the other key levers of growth is around the evolution of our greenfield portfolio. At the end of Q1 2026, our greenfields portfolio comprised 21 active projects, and we have now prioritized these within our top-tier opportunities. We advanced multiple drill programs in Eastern Australia.
Whilst in South America, permitting is advanced across the Vieja Tati in Chile and the Moquegua projects in southern Peru, positioning in both for initial drilling in H2 of 2026. In Canada, regional drilling and generative work continues across the Windfall district with the Phoenix joint venture, with Bonterra advancing towards earning completion. We also increased our equity position in Founders Metals to circa 12.5%, representing a selective investment into a high-quality district scale opportunity in Suriname. Overall, the greenfields opportunities are really focused, disciplined, and allocating capital within our global portfolio, to focus on real, high-quality opportunities to grow our portfolio into the longer horizon for growth. I think just in conclusion, we feel that the quarter was largely as planned.
We did have a few variations at some of the operations, but at a portfolio level, we're certainly comfortable that we're well-placed to deliver on our market guidance for the full- year. Those assets that had slight variation are well on track to recover for the full- year. I think the other key theme is just the monitoring of the market volatility, particularly as a result of the war in Iran and what that could mean in respect to our cost guidance. Today, we did provide a bit of a sensitivity, particularly on the material consumables and fuel inputs.
We also have a number of measures underway to mitigate these cost pressures, including asset optimization and broader optimization issues across the portfolio. I think from that point of view, it leaves us comfortable that despite some of these headwinds, we remain on track for our cost guidance for the full- year. With that, I'll pause and can hand over to Q&A.
Thank you, sir. We will now begin the question- and- answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star and then one on your phone. You will hear a confirmation tone that you have joined the question queue. If you decide to withdraw the question, please press star and then two. Again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and then one now. The first question we have comes from René Hochreiter of Noah Capital. Please go ahead.
Hello, Mike and team. Pretty good Q1 , despite the lower grades. I've noticed that you have lower yields right across many, if not all, of your mines. Except for Tarkwa, of course. Are you actively dropping your pay limits because of the higher gold price, or am I misreading that?
Hi, René. Good chat. No, I don't think that's the case. It's probably there's not been any deliberate decisions to change cut-off grades. I do know at, certainly at both Tarkwa and Gruyere, we would have seen slightly lower grades because of higher stockpile feed and, probably, in some degree at St. Ives as well, where we've actually loaded some more low-grade stockpile. Francois, anything else?
I think primarily, additional stockpiles coming through, but also, I think the ratio of open pit to underground might be changing slightly, so therefore the higher volumes and so slightly lower grade.
Yeah. Probably the other one would be at Agnew. We did probably move into some different grades, Faces because of the impact of the seismic event at Cap. It's not a deliberate strategy, Rene, to change the cut-off grades.
Okay. Fine. Thanks. Sorry, just to clarify, oil price of $100 a barrel, is that an extra $50 an ounce cost?
Just on our guidance at $75 a barrel. If you run a sensitivity at $100, and we just use that as a benchmark of what that's done to other key commodity prices as well, such as cyanide, LNG, explosives, et cetera. That hits us about $50 an ounce higher cost.
Yeah. To read through, if we factored in $100 and we read it through to the other input commodities, we think that the rollout impact is probably another $50 an ounce.
Okay.
If it holds for the full- year.
Yeah. $25 a barrel equals $50 an ounce extra.
Roughly, yeah.
Okay. Good. No, thanks very much. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, team.
Thank you. The next question we have comes from Josh Wolfson of RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you very much. On the cost side, just continuing that conversation, I had two questions. One is just to clarify on the sensitivity that was provided, that was just discussed. Does that include the secondary impacts and then the other sort of regions, items that was disclosed on, that also had some increases? You know, more broadly on the Australia front, you know, can you comment on maybe what you're seeing in the market there and what the effects of that are expected to be on the business?
Yeah. Look, I can hand over to Alex to comment. I think on that first one, yes, that $50 would include secondary impacts. It is, it is through the input value chain. I think just on Australia, Mark, do you wanna talk about it? I mean, the key thing for us in Australia is definitely labor availability is starting to have a bit of an impact on our operations. Obviously, with the increased interest rates, you're probably gonna see some, you know, potential, again, pressure in the tight labor market for higher rates, higher wages. Anything else?
They do feel the impact of the oil price higher than the other jurisdictions.
Yeah.
Because of the freight distances, particularly.
Yeah.
We are seeing that, but I think labor and then obviously the flow through into contractor rates as well on the pressure.
Yeah. I mean, there's been some noise from suppliers about the impact, but it hasn't yet flowed through outside of the direct, market-linked commodities.
Sure. Okay. You know, good job on progressing the Windfall permitting. Just looking forward, and looking at the update in August, you know, what should we be thinking about for the upcoming, I guess, feasibility study refresh? How are you thinking about CapEx in light of some of these pressures kinda globally?
Yeah. Look, I think, certainly, Josh, what we will do is provide an update in August with our full- year results, because I think by then we would probably, that's the timing of when we would formally approve the project. We're doing the final review on the capital estimates now. You know, I think we'll be in a better position to talk to that in August. Probably don't wanna call out anything outside of that now. Again, I wouldn't say that we would see material differences to what we were talking about in November.
I mean, We will obviously assess key commodity inputs on the current pricing environment.
Yeah.
There might be some of that will come through.
Great. Those are all my questions. Thank you.
Thanks, Josh.
Thank you. The next question we have comes from Raj Ray of BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, Mike and team. Got three questions, if I may. First is on the Tarkwa lease extension. As I understand, you have a stability agreement at Tarkwa. Not that it mattered with respect to the increase in royalties, as part of the lease extension, will that stability agreement stay, or is that a different discussion? Secondly, on Tarkwa again, given the arbitration with the contractor, is there a risk of any impact on the productivity at Tarkwa?
The other question I had was more related to your project readiness and mobilization in Australia and then Windfall. When I was in Val d'Or a few weeks ago, what I was hearing was, like, the unemployment rate was, like, 2% or lower. You talked about the labor issues. Just want to get a sense of where you stand. As of the H2 of this year, there's a number of projects you're looking to execute. If you can give us some color on that. Thank you.
Thanks very much, Raj. Good questions. Just on the Tarkwa lease extension, I think a couple of things that are at play here is firstly, what we are dealing with respect to the Tarkwa lease extension is that there's not a very clear policy framework that the government has around what is the fiscal kind of template that they're looking to achieve in respect to this. They have made changes to the royalty rates, which are being published. They have offset that by a reduction in the Stability Levy, the general Stability Levy. Those are kind of, as you know, one component of the lease extension. There's a number of other things that are kind of floating around about what are the expectations on term of lease. You know, is there expectation of additional free carry?
I think the way that it's being presented to us is that the government are expecting us to enter into a broader negotiation about the sharing of value that is gonna be delivered out of the asset over time. Certainly, we're open to that conversation. Part of what we're trying to present is for them to balance, you know, cash out of these assets now versus creating an environment for longer term investment. Quite clearly, we've presented a case that Ghana, as it stands today, is probably on the outlier side on global competitiveness. You know, over 50% of our cash flows already goes to the government in terms of the benefits out of this project.
To maintain competitiveness, we've got to be quite sensible about what it looks like going forward. In respect to the stability agreements, I think their general preference is that the stability agreements as a standard should not be part of the landscape going forward. I think that's their preference. We believe that as part of the negotiation on the lease extension, there are certain elements of that we should consider including in the lease, at least, even if it's not in a formal standalone stability agreement. I think it's still kind of a little complex now, but it is gonna come down to a value and a financial conversation with the government. I think that's where it stands today.
I think the idea that we would have a standalone stability agreement in the long term possibly may not exist. Whether we have it for a period of time could be part of the negotiated outcome. I think in respect of ENP, look, I think what we are seeing is certainly ENP is still committed to the project and delivery and making sure they deliver productivity. They're clearly incentivized to move tons. And you know, they certainly feel the pain financially if they don't move the volumes. I think the bigger concern maybe is that ENP have now also been appointed as the operator of the Damang mine and certainly have interest in growing their business elsewhere.
The bigger concern is probably just a distraction from them rather than the dispute with us as being the reason that they're underperformed. You know, again, I think they've got the right capacity on site to deliver the outcomes, and our teams continue to work well with them. There's nothing that's stopping us from working together. I think just lastly on Windfall, you've probably picked up on one of the key concerns that we have in finalizing the capital estimates is, are we gonna see not just an availability issue on labor, but declining productivity levels?
What we are seeing in Canada is probably the experience levels of available artisans and project people is probably coming off, and that's impacting, potentially impacting productivity levels in the project over time. That's probably more of a concern. I think in the next six months, a large part of the project work is really around the camp construction, bulk earthworks, you know, a few of the ponds construction. I think the big kind of mechanical work really only starts post-winter into 2027, where we've mapped the general market projects, and we don't see that as a significant concern. I think the bigger impact from a labor point of view is gonna be productivity factors, I think is our bigger concern. Hopefully that answers that.
Yeah. That's great, Mike. Can I quickly ask a follow-up on the ENP situation? Like, if you were to, let's say, look for another contractor, how easy it is given that the government of Ghana has now mandated, like it's just gonna be 100% the Ghanaians ownership of the contractors?
Yeah. Look, I think it is a conversation that is still pending for us, and we have flagged this with the government and the Minerals Commission. The one thing that we do anticipate with our preferred plan going into Tarkwa is that there is a heavy lift on additional material movement. You know, we flagged that all in our capital markets day estimates in November, is that you will see a big lift in material movement in from 2028, 2029 city.
The question is, would it help us to actually start considering bringing in some alternative capacity so that we're unloading and creating single contractor risk on some of those volumes? That's a conversation that we'll also engage on. It's not a discussion for today. Certainly, over the next two years, we need to be prepared to how we're going to respond to those additional volumes. It's not an impossibility, but there is a sensitivity that we need to manage through. Yeah.
Okay. That's great. Thank you very much. That's it from me.
Thanks, Raj.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, just a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and then one now. The next question we have comes from Nkateko Mathonsi of Investec Bank. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, thank you for taking my question. I have a follow-up question on fuel-related questions that have been that you have spoken about. My question is related to how you are managing the possibility of fuel shortages, especially in other consumables, but especially in Australia where there is minimal refining capacity. How much stock levels do you keep in an eventuality where or in a scenario where there are fuel shortages?
The second question is related to Salares Norte and the good recoveries we've seen in Q1. How sustainable are these recoveries, or is there even a potential upside to the recoveries that we're seeing? The last question, I just want to know if you are able to share a bit more color on the contractor dispute in Ghana, especially related to Tarkwa, especially when we consider that the figures are not insignificant. Thank you. Those are my three questions.
Yeah. Thank you. Those are very good questions. I'm gonna break them up and ask Alex to talk to the fuel and stock levels, Francois to talk about the recoveries at Salares, and then I'll finish on the Tarkwa contractor disputes.
No. Perfect, thanks. On the fuel levels in, and in particular across the group, we monitor them on a every couple of days. We get reports as an Exco that comes through Mike Carter and myself, and we look at those fuel levels. I think we have had discussions with our key fuel providers in Australia, and we did actually put in a request that they would give some extra shipments, so we could up our levels where we had capacity and storage to do that, which was actually quite limited. They are not willing to do that because of some, just they wanna keep the market balanced.
They are committed to delivering on their schedules, and we have not seen any issues there. They confirm with us that they have sufficient in-country storage to keep Australia for quite a while. We are not quite concerned there, and we're on continuous discussions with our fuel suppliers in Australia. Across the rest of the group, we actually have reasonable fuel storage, and we don't have any concerns.
Thanks. On Salares Norte, we're quite pleased with the progress on the recovery. In terms of gold, what we currently have is entirely sustainable. We probably looking for another 2 percentage points between now and the end of Q3. There are a number of initiatives that we're currently working on. Silver, we probably at the moment 10% above what we estimated for our feasibility study. I think that's probably a good number. We fully see that to be sustainable. I'll just say that this is in support of us trending towards the upper end of market guidance for Salares Norte at the end of year. We're quite confident with our current projections.
Thanks, Francois. Look, I think just on the contractor disputes at Tarkwa, in fact, just so you understand, there's actually two areas of dispute, one in relation to Damang and one in relation to Tarkwa. The combined value of those two disputes amounts to around $740 million just the size of the claims. We have a contractual dispute resolution process, and we've been through those contractual dispute resolution processes. The last step in the process is to pass it through to arbitration. That's the contractual basis for it. We certainly do not believe there's any substantive basis around those claims.
Hence, we've suggested to the contractor that if they're not comfortable with the way that the dispute is being managed through the contract, that their next step is to take it to arbitration. We're quite comfortable that our position is well defendable and we don't believe that there's any substantive basis for that claim. You know, again, in the interest of managing the relationship to the question earlier, we're fully supportive of seeing this through the dispute process because we have to continue to work together. I, you know, I think this unfortunately is gonna take some time for resolution. I think we should expect that this could be on foot for up to two years, and we'll just have to manage around it.
To the question that Raj Ray raised earlier, we certainly don't see this having any impact on our, on their productivity and our relationship with them whilst it's underway. Again, to put this in context, this conversation around this dispute has certainly been alive and real with me and their principals since the day I started. It's not a new issue, certainly.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question we have comes from Bruce Williamson of Integral Asset Management. Please go ahead.
Good day, Mike and team. Thank you very much for the opportunity to chat. Mike, I know it's, I think you're still in the pre-feasibility stage with the south of the Wrench Fault project. You know, given 30-odd years of massive learning and experience, up dip, can you give us any hope of a significant or at least a useful increase in gold output, south of the Wrench Fault? Likewise, I mean, with that, could we look forward to very competitive costs? Then I would add the labor issue that you raised about with Windfall is similarly, how far are we down the line at South Deep to having a world-class trackless team?
Yeah. Thanks for those questions, Bruce. I'll ask Francois to add some color, and particularly to the third question. Look, I think the one thing that we know about South Deep is there is significant reserves. You know, the South of Wrench is an important part of our future horizon to add flexibility, which will allow us to add more ounces. The key constraint at South Deep is really the mining process. We've got enough in store capacity, from the time that we have rock on ground. Getting South of Wrench developed really gives us the opportunity to add production.
Within our plan, and our strategic plan of South Deep, certainly getting up to, you know, 380,000 ounces is part of the delivery of that is really getting South of Wrench developed. I think that as an intermediate horizon is, in our view, quite comfortably achievable. From a cost structure point of view, as we know, South Deep is a very high fixed cost asset. When we're able to add, you know, 20%-25% of production to our current levels, we should see that as being highly dilutive.
Whilst we see, you know, real cost inflation because of real cost increases in labor, this would be highly dilutive, and we would see certainly strategically a pathway back to $1,500 an ounce as being a strategic goal for the South Deep team. Then I think, you know, Francois can talk about the TMM capability and the underground productivity that we're looking to achieve. Part of that is not just about our current team, but it's how we adopt technology to accelerate productivity at the site. There's a lot of good work going on underway. Again, you can only do the kind of work that's required for long-term productivity and uplift when you have the kind of reserve life horizon that we have at South Deep.
That's why we continue to get excited about what South Deep can offer us. But we always say that South Deep is a big ship, and it's about incrementally improving. You know, I just shared with Vincent this morning when we were chatting, I said, "You know, it's a great quarter when we don't have a lot to say about South Deep because they just continue to deliver to their plan." That's really what we wanna do, is see incremental improvement out of South Deep. When we do that, we'll see that margin expansion and productivity improvement. Francois, you wanna talk to that? You were there on Friday, I believe. Yeah.
Yes. That's right. As Mike says, it's really an incremental journey. Certainly the discussions we've been having two years ago is how do we actually just have people to maintain and operate our machines? I was glad on Friday that that conversation is something of the past. I think we're investing a significant amount in training, through simulation, and upskilling the people in our teams. I think we are making significant progress in that. Obviously linked to that is the technology that Mike spoke to. For us also, what's very important is the actual mine design. Because if you create optimal conditions for your fleet to operate in, it's just so much easier to reach your overall equipment effectiveness targets.
We are doing a lot of work at South Deep around mine sequencing and just creating better conditions that we can deploy our equipment. That coupled with training, I think is starting to show positive improvements for us at South Deep specifically. At Windfall, obviously, we're looking at that full remote sort of capabilities and really pushing the technology for that area.
That's right.
Okay, guys. Yeah. Thank you very much. I'd actually look forward to a discussion about exactly how the sequencing works, et cetera, because, you know, I've been excited about this for a long time, and it would be fantastic to see some good progress. Thank you very much. Cheers. Bye.
Thanks, Bruce.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, just a final reminder. If you would like to ask a question today, please press star and then one now. The next question we have comes from Tanya Jakusconek of Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
Oh, great. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for taking my three questions. Mike, I just wanted to come back to Windfall. You had your public hearings. Was there anything out of the public hearings of concern in terms or any issues in terms of what the communities want, or are concerned about in terms of the permitting?
No. Tanya, nothing material came out of that that we believe would impact either the IBA or the EIA.
Okay. Can you just remind me, Mike, if we don't have this permit in place by September, October of this year, do we lose six months? Is that it because of the winter scheduling? I'm just trying to remember. I don't remember the sensitivity.
Yeah. The big challenge that we've got is that if we do not get the permit by July, I think we run into real challenges on getting the earthworks completed. Certainly it would impact our ability to do some of the civils works during winter. That potentially does push us back probably at least six months or so on our schedule. We don't think that's likely at this stage. We think the probability of remaining on our base case is certainly better than even odds. Much better than even odds, I should say.
Okay. that's good. Just to follow up on Josh's question on what are we expecting in August when you give us an update. Would it be fair to say that it's not just capital that you're reviewing, but with this labor, we're also reviewing operating costs and your reserves and resources from the drilling that you're doing? Would that be safe to assume?
Yes. I think, yeah. Yes, absolutely right. I think what we'd be looking at is a kind of, telling the whole story about Windfall as we see it today, i.e., the capital for the first, 10-year phase of the project. I think we probably also wanna start talking to how we see the long-term potential of, and putting that in the context of the long-term potential of Windfall. We'll also do a reserve declaration at the time of it. That will include our expected operating costs during the next 10 years, as well as the capital and schedule estimates.
Okay. It's a full sum, and I guess that would also be an update on the timing as well if there's any timing.
If there's any change.
Updated.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly. I think at this stage we feel that that would be a time where we say we've got a project underway .
Okay. That's my first technical question. The second one, I just wanted to understand, I know we asked on the conference call, your year-end, how the year shapes up. You did have a maintenance downtime at Tarkwa in Q1. As I think for the rest of the year, are there any mine sites that have downtime that I should be aware of from a quarterly standpoint? Should I be thinking that everything's been factored in and the rest, you know, the next three quarters are going to be relatively similar to put you at that 2.5 million ounce range for the year?
I think the for us, there's going to be slight ups and downs, but I don't think there's any material change in the profile. I think we might see, you know, Q1, we did have a few offsets from Salares, from Tarkwa, Gruyere and Agnew, which we should see a bit of a recovery into Q2. We might see Salares slightly down just because we've probably got a slightly different ore sequencing and a bit of downtime. We also have planned for obviously winter days, which probably see Q2 and Q3 slightly lower than Q1 and Q4, but they all kind of slightly plan activities.
When you look at it at a portfolio level, I think we probably see, you know, Q1 as being kind of at the low end of our average numbers for the quarter if all things go well. You know, I think if we deliver, you know, in that 630-650 range for each quarter in the full- year, we'd probably be quite happy that we've delivered well within our guidance.
Okay. Understood. The reason I ask that as well is because I wanted to come to your share buyback, your capital returns, particularly the share buyback. You mentioned that in that Q1, you did minimal share buyback because of the volatility in the market. I'm kind of just wondering how you see, how you look and how you implement the share buyback. Is it based 'cause t looks like-
Yeah.
The rest of the year operational, you know, forecast, because if you're in that 630 to 650, those mines are performing in line. Your capital is at, you know, you've got more capital if Windfall starts at the H2 of the year. I'm just trying to understand what are you monitoring? Like the gold price will be the gold price, you know, that none of us can control that.
Yeah.
Do you look at it from a, you know, an operational standpoint from your cash on your balance sheet and obviously your dividend payment you had to make, but how should I be thinking of it? Like, is it a gold price call where we've seen gold price fall, you know, $1,000 an ounce, yet you weren't active? I'm just trying to understand how I should think about your share buyback and what I should look for to see that you implement it or not?
Yeah. I'll probably ask Alex to give a little bit of color on this, but I'd say just the one thing, Tanya, is that the reason that we had a fairly low execution in that Q1 up till our reporting is that essentially we only approved this at the back end of February. We had a very short period, and that was at the time that we saw all this huge volatility. We were actually quite aggressive in how we set the guidelines on the buyback program to our banks. Because we were going into a closed period, it also limited our ability to be active on reflecting on how we execute it. We did do a very small portion of buybacks at a fairly, kind of, very low average price on our last two years. Alex, you wanna talk about how we think about it going forward?
Yes . Thanks, Mike and Tanya. I think exactly what Mike has said is we put out a bit of a mandate, then we went into a closed period, so we weren't able to be active. Now that the program has been announced and communicated to the market, we have more ability to be active. The way we look at it is we actually wanna outperform the VWAP over the period, and that's how we are gonna look at trying to deliver the buyback. I'm very confident that we will deliver the [inaudible] . Yeah.
It's not a I think the way that we're looking at this buyback, Tanya, and we've always said that this year is really the first time we've ever done it. What we wanna do is to put in a program that is actually consistent. If we do it in a very consistent way and we allow those that are executing this on our behalf to be active when there are dips below the average, then we should be able to provide the outcome that we're looking for, which is to outperform the average price.
Okay. Okay, it's not nothing that you would be matching cash flow to payments and stuff that I should be thinking about, you know, high cash payments.
No, not at all.
Okay.
Tanya.
Understood.
From a capital allocation perspective, that cash has been provided for.
It's been allocated, so that's the execution. It's not linked to operational cash flows.
Okay. Thank you for that.
Thank you. Sir, at this stage, there are no further questions in the question queue. Would you like to make any closing comments?
Yes. Firstly, thanks very much for the interest to all those that asked questions. They're all very relevant to what we're managing and dealing with. I do think that the Q1 for us, although we had a bit of variation, is absolutely we are delivering on our strategy to deliver safe, reliable, cost-effective operations. We have a lot of really good work underway. You know, I think that this year remains on track to deliver the outcomes that we planned for.
For us, that's that means a good year. I think from the two big corporate activities for us is really delivering windfall into execution timeously and also getting progress on the Tarkwa lease extension. Those would be two material portfolio issues for us. You know, apart from that, I think our team's working really well, very well aligned. For us, it was largely a, you know, boring quarter that we want. Thank you everyone for joining.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.