Now, Matt has more than 20 years progressive experience in the mining sector all around the world, and he was appointed this position as CEO in 2021. Prior to that, he was the COO at Galiano, and prior to joining Galiano, he was the GM at Kışladağ with Eldorado, as well as a number of other positions prior to that. It's a pleasure to have you with us.
Thanks, Don. Cheers. Okay, I think you can all hear me quite well. Yes? Okay, good. Thank you, Don, for that introduction. Thank you all for your interest in Galiano today. For the presentation today, I'm going to give you a quick summary of the company, but also, I think most importantly, I'm going to highlight three near-term catalysts that I think are going to drive value for our shareholders in the short term. Quickly here, obviously, forward-looking statements, they're contained on our website, so I'll direct you to the website if you're that way inclined. Starting off with the company itself, Galiano Gold owns and operates the Asanko Gold Mine, which is located in Ghana, West Africa. We're a single asset producer, and we own that asset at a 90% basis, with the government of Ghana holding a 10% free carried interest.
We are listed on the New York and Toronto Stock Exchanges, and we've recently been included in the GDXJ Index as well. With regards to our shareholders, we have a very strong institutional share ownership base. 71% of the stock is held in institutional hands with only 29% in the retail. There's an opportunity there for us certainly. Going back to the institutional holders, we've listed the top five here on the right-hand side, I believe. Yes, right-hand side. You can see some of those names are obviously very well understood and strong names in the mining space as well. From a market cap perspective, we currently sit at $650 million, and we have no debt and a strong balance sheet with $108 million of cash.
We also have an undrawn $75 million revolving credit facility that provides us with enough capital to be able to optimize our operations and also grow the business. From a production guidance perspective, we are looking at 140,000-160,000 ounces produced this year, and that is basically 25% increase from 2025 levels. We have seven deposits that make up a total reserve base of two million ounces at a grade of 1.29g per tonne. Regarding investment rationale, I think this is quite important. A few key highlights here. We are trading at a discount to our P/NAV, as most companies are. What we've chosen to do here is to highlight our enterprise value divided by our reserve ounce, compared to other companies that are currently operating and producing in Africa.
You can see here from this chart that we are trailing the pack, and so therefore, if you were to purchase Galiano shares at this point of time, you'd be getting a reserve ounce for relatively cheap compared to our peers. It's also important to highlight that in the context of the jurisdiction in which we operate in, if all these other companies obviously are operating in Africa, Ghana is a premier jurisdiction within that continent, the largest gold producer on the continent, and a strong, long history of large-scale mining as well. Jurisdictionally, comparatively based, you're getting a cheap ounce in a stable jurisdiction. With regards to size and scale, the asset is significantly sized. As I mentioned, 140,000-160,000-ounce production this year. We also have an organic production growth profile that is very unique to us and in the region.
We are ramping up to produce, on average, life-of-mine 200,000 ounces per year. That profile in itself results in the Asanko Gold Mine being one of the largest gold producers in West Africa that is currently not owned in a mid-tier or a senior gold producer's portfolio. It provides a very good platform for us to be able to grow the business and expand into jurisdictions that we're comfortable in. With regards to near-term cash flow, there is an inflection point that we see in early 2027. The reason behind that is we currently got 60,000 ounces hedged at $3,000 per ounce, and we also have a $30 million payment to Gold Fields, who were our ex-joint venture partner. That is due in December this year.
Once those hedges expire and we make that final payment, we're exposed to the current gold prices, and we see significant cash flow being generated in January next year. It's not too far away. With regards to expansion of the reserves and resources, we're very clear in terms of where that reserve growth will come from, both from an open-pit perspective and also recently we've declared a maiden underground resource that I'll speak a bit about later on in the presentation. We're looking to aggressively spend our cash to grow our reserves and extend our mine life. The last point on this slide is building momentum throughout 2025. I'll show you this on the next slide. It is really important to point this out.
Here, we've chosen three metrics that we want to highlight, gold production, cash flows from operations, as well as all-in sustaining cash costs. You can see here that quarter-on-quarter over the last 12 months, the asset has performed very well. From a gold production perspective, we've seen 80% growth quarter-on-quarter over the last 12 months, 115% growth in cash flow from operations, and a reduction of 19% in our all-in sustaining cash costs. I'm showing this slide in order to give you some comfort that the organic production growth that we are expecting is achievable, and it's proven by track record here over the last 12 months. I spoke earlier a little bit about our cash flow inflection point, and again, it's driven by those two reasons, the hedges coming off and the final payment for Gold Fields.
We are expecting in 2027 to generate between $200 million and $250 million of free cash flow. As you can see from this chart, that cash flow profile will continue to increase over the next five-year period. This is not the full life of mine. It is the first five years or the next five years of operations. You can see that production also in the yellow increases year-on-year over the next five-year period as well. With regards to reserve growth, again, I said we were very, very clear in terms of where that reserve growth will come from, and this is an example of this. This deposit here is called Esaase. It is one of the seven that make up our total reserve, two million ounces. At the moment, it hosts about 550,000 ounces.
That 550,000 ounces is contained in that green pit shell that you can see there. What we've done recently is we've rerun that pit shell and optimization at $2,500 gold. Right. $2,500 gold is still $2,000 below the current spot price of gold. What we can see is at $2,500 gold, that pit expands to that red pit shell there, so significantly larger. You can see that we've highlighted both the inferred and the indicated ounces within that volume. The indicated are shown in green and the inferred are shown in red. You can see, number one, that there's a lot of indicated within that pit shell as well, so we understand the geology quite well because there has been a large amount of drilling that has taken place here previously.
The red traces here are our 2026 exploration program, and we're expecting to complete that prior to the end of the year, such that we can declare an updated mineral reserve here at Esaase by Q1 next year. Currently, we can tell, and we know that there's about one million ounces, additional one million ounces of potential reserves within that volume there. That's what we're targeting in terms of expansion of reserves in the next 12-month period or even less than that. Again, I also spoke a little bit about underground. Underground potential provides a new path for resource growth within our tenements. This is one deposit called Nkran. It's currently being stripped, and we're investing heavily in the stripping of this deposit, I should say. It is our highest grade deposit, averaging about 1.67g per tonne.
Where we have areas of high drill density, which is generally just below our currently $1,700 reserve shell, we see that those areas of high density are able to generate economic underground minable stopes, which we're showing here in these blocks. We also know that some years ago, we drilled eight holes well below this zone, and all eight of those holes intercepted grades, or intercepted mineralization at grades and widths that would also support underground mining, as is shown here. What's needed here is additional drilling. The mineralized envelope is significantly larger than what we're showing here. We will be looking to expand our drilling program at Nkran in the coming years as well. The other underground target here that we're looking at is Abore. Again, this is slightly different to Nkran in the fact that it's larger in terms of strike length.
There is a 1.8 Km strike length at Abore. The mineralization currently is relatively shallow. It is only about 200 meters below surface. Throughout the course of 2025, we drilled just below that 90... Actually, that is a $1,700 reserve shell. Those pink magenta kind of dots there highlight the grades that we are seeing just below the open pit reserves. Right. Significantly higher than the average grade of the current reserve at Abore. What we will be doing here at Abore is we have already commenced permitting an underground adit that would allow us access to drill platforms closer to the areas of interest here and allow that drilling to occur at a cheaper meter rate than what we are seeing from surface. We expect that we will be able to break ground on that underground exploration adit by the end of this year, and again, expand the resource on the back of that drilling.
Just a comment on the greenfields exploration potential here. We own about 470 square km of land, and we know that the mineralization that we currently have identified exists on four shear zones. Right? We'll continue to explore heavily and invest heavily on discovery, greenfield discovery on our tenement. This year, we've allocated $17 million of drilling budget for that purpose, and we do feel that not only is there brownfields expansion potential on our tenements here, but also greenfields potential as well. Now this brings me to my last slide. Just in terms of summary, I mentioned I would highlight three things that we feel are near-term value drivers for our shareholders. Just in terms of summary for that, number one is our organic growth profile that we're looking to execute on.
Very unique in the space at the moment to be able to do that through grade alone without a significant amount of capital being required to realize those ounces. That's number one. Number two is obviously our cash flow inflection point that comes only seven months from now, January next year. That's important to note. Lastly, exploration upside and potential that we're already trying to highlight here and looking to convert upwards of a million ounces into reserve within less than 12 months. You have the underground expansion potential that also exists. That's going to take a little bit longer, but we're actively moving forward with that, and there's always the greenfields potential also that we're looking to execute on.
I think I've given you about six minutes here, so I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing for me, but over to you then, Don.
Okay. Well, we do have some time, so just poll the audience. Okay, we have a question right here. Go ahead. Tanya, go ahead.
Yeah. I just don't have a loud enough voice, but here we go. Matt, thank you.
Just, I have two questions for you. The first one is just on your expansion of your production. I saw that it's grade. Is it just grade, or do you have to do anything to the processing facility?
No, the processing facility stays as it is. It's currently, like the nameplate, is about 5.8 million tonnes per annum.
Yeah.
It's largely driven from grade. As I mentioned before, we've got like seven deposits that make up that 2 million ounces. Depending on schedule and where higher grade comes in, you're going to see those grades increase. The good thing about this right now is that we're in a low point of grade. Once we get to that 200,000 ounce production rate, all the other deposits produce at a grade that will be able to sustain that 200,000 ounce per annum run rate as well. At the moment, we're at the dip, we're at the low point.
Are those deposits close enough to the processing facilities that you offset the costs of transport to a degree?
Yeah, sure. I mean, obviously they're spread.
Yeah
Across. I mean, the furthest away from the processing facility is a deposit, the Esaase deposit that I've mentioned, the growth story.
That's about 28 Km away from the processing facility. We are actually mining there currently, and there's infrastructure available to be able to transport that, like there's a haul road already that we're hauling across to deliver that ore to the mill. That's all in place. There's no additional capital required to realize those ounces.
That additional volume should give you better costs, theoretically?
Absolutely. Yeah. That's right.
Just my second question was when I was looking at your underground potential.
Also, you mentioned you were looking at maybe adding another asset.
Yes.
How are you going to balance that internal growth versus external opportunities?
Yeah. I mean, we're very, very clear on that we don't believe that we're seeing full value or appropriate value for our current asset, and there's work to be done in order to realize that value. The good thing is that we're well-funded, and we have $108 million of cash to be able to invest in that process and that path. Certainly at a point in time where we feel we have reached an appropriate valuation, growth will be looked at more seriously. Obviously the cash that we have and are expected to generate in 2027 will allow for discussions between us and the Board about share buybacks, et cetera, that may help in that revaluation that we're expecting to see as well.
In terms of growth, I mean, where we're comfortable to grow, we feel that the best growth path for us is to move either laterally or up in terms of jurisdiction. Right? We are comfortable with certain regions in West Africa. As you know, Tanya, my background is Eldorado, and the team that we've built also has an Eldorado background and an Eldorado lens to growth. We don't view ourselves as currently being, in terms of a growth story, only an African-centric company. We're open to growth in other jurisdictions as well. We would be exploring that if the right opportunity came across.
Define other jurisdictions.
Obviously, South America, certain areas in South America we're comfortable in. Particularly Brazil. We actually, to be honest, we have a team on the ground in Brazil at the moment looking at opportunities that aren't that obvious. We've got a very good, strong connection there, and we have an ability to build a team in Brazil because of the Eldorado connection quite quickly. That's one jurisdiction that we're comfortable in. Obviously North America, that's also areas that we'd be looking at once we get our valuation to a point where we can actually move.
Okay, maybe time for one more question. Matt, as you mentioned, there's an imminent free cash flow inflection. Can you tell us about how that might change your capital allocation decisions? Will you deploy that free cash flow toward de-levering or dividends, share buybacks, potentially? If so, how would you kind of weight each of those?
Yep. Yeah, the first thing is we are expecting growth at the asset in terms of resource growth and reserve growth. There's going to be a small portion of that that's going to need to be reallocated into things like TSF expansions, tailings dam expansions, things like that. That's not a huge amount. From a capital allocation externally looking, as I mentioned, share buybacks are something that we're very actively discussing with our Board. That's something that we would probably consider into next year. With regards to dividends, we're still a relatively small company.
Yeah. I think I'd prioritize, at this point, growth through M&A ahead of dividends at this stage of our development. Okay. Certainly buybacks are going to help in us positioning ourselves from a valuation perspective to be more aggressive in growth and using our paper for growth. That's certainly on the table.
Okay.
Yep.
Thank you. Thank you, Matt. Thanks again for joining us. That's Matt Badylak, Galiano Gold.
Thank you. Cheers.
Cheers. Thank you.