Thank you for standing by. My name is Jordan, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the Orezone Q3 2025 results webcast and conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. Thank you. I'd now like to turn the call over to Patrick Downey, President and CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and welcome to Orezone's Q3 2025 conference call and webcast. Today, I am joined by Peter Tam, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Just like to draw your attention to the forward-looking statements, and then we'll move straight into the conference details. Gold production for the quarter was 23,371 ounces. Always in Q3, it's stated to be lower production, and we'll walk through that later on. We are on track to meet our 2025 guidance of 115,000-130,000 ounces. Gold sales were 20,350 ounces for the quarter, at an average realized price of $3,375 an ounce, resulting in $68.9 million in revenue. This was somewhat affected by the late sale of about 4,000 ounces of gold into Q3 due to a weather event which caused a late shipment of that gold.
All in sustaining costs were $1,958 per ounce sold, and they were really impacted by external factors such as the royalties and FX, and also obviously the late sale of the ounces into Q4, and somewhat by the weather which we always see in Q2 and Q3. On our balance sheet, very, very strong financial position, cash and bullion at the end of the quarter of $104.2 million, on-drawn senior debt of $11.1 million, senior debt of $80.1 million, and we continue to add to the balance sheet with our strong Q4 production to date into a rising gold price and our diminishing CapEx in the quarter. Very importantly, our hard rock expansion is on schedule and slightly under budget, which is a great achievement, which I'll talk about later in the presentation, with the first gold expected in early December.
That is really a testament to the team once again delivering our project on time and on budget. Really a great outlook for Orezone. Stage one major CapEx is now essentially complete. Our gold production will increase approximately 45% with the startup of phase one hard rock into 2026. Q1 2026 should be a major free cash flow inflection point as we mine the higher grade hard rock from 2026 onwards. I will now hand over to Peter Tam, who will go through the production and cost data for Q3.
Great. Thank you, Patrick. Yeah, on production and unit cost summary, during the third quarter of 2025, mining was affected by the longer-than-average rainfall events, which slowed pit operations. 4.5 million tons were mined in the quarter as access to higher grade zones were delayed, which impacted feed grades to the mill. Higher mining rates have now resumed in the fourth quarter as the rainy season has now ended. The mill treated 1.52 million tons in the quarter as the plant continues to perform well and above nameplate. Operating hours were reduced by two and a half days for the annual ball mill reline in July, which should lead to greater tons processed in the fourth quarter. When comparing costs to the prior year, cash cost per ton was higher due to the strengthening local currency, which impacted costs across all departments.
Similar to the pattern in 2024, grid utilization improved to 88% this quarter, a significant improvement from 50% in the second quarter, helping to reduce processing costs. We are already seeing better gold production in Q4 with 13,296 ounces produced in the first 42 days, with a further uptick expected before the end of the year from the startup of the new hard rock plant and the processing of higher grade hard rock reserves. Next slide. For financial and operating highlights, Q3 was another profitable quarter with earnings from mine operations of $26.5 million and net earnings attributable to Orezone shareholders of $5.4 million. Earnings were impacted by the lower-than-planned gold production and from the delayed export and sale of a quarter-end gold shipment into early October.
Had the shipment sold in September, a higher average realized price and lower all in sustaining cost per ounce would have been achieved in Q3 from the sale of more ounces at a better gold price. Q4 metrics will benefit from the sale of these additional ounces. Overall, liquidity remains healthy at quarter-end with cash of $85.3 million, which is expected to increase from current levels by year-end from the sale of more ounces at better gold prices. With that, I'll hand it back to Patrick.
Thanks, Peter. Into our 2025 outlook, our all in sustaining cost guidance has been revised to reflect essentially external factors and the balance of all the balance of our guidance remains unchanged. Our revised all in sustaining costs go from $1,700-$1,800 from previously $1,400-$1,500. This really reflects the impact of higher government royalties as a result of the higher gold price and higher royalty rates. Our original guidance was based on $2,600 per ounce gold price at the beginning of the year. Our stronger XOF currency has been impacting costs as well to approximately $80-$90 per ounce over the year. We had some reduced power availability due to a fire in a substation with our grid supplier, which did affect costs somewhat in Q2. Our guidance for the year remains at 115-130, unchanged.
All in sustaining costs, as I said, what we expect up to the nine months was $1,709, and we expect it to be within $1,700-$1,800 for the remainder of the year. Sustaining CapEx, growth CapEx, et cetera, all remain unchanged, which again is a testament to the team and how we control costs. Really, over the past three years, despite inflationary pressure and exchange rate issues, et cetera, I want to really emphasize that our cost per ton has barely changed year on year. We really remain focused on our input cost into the production of our ounces. 2025 has really become a really significant transition year for us. Stage one hard rock is essentially complete. I'll show you some photographs of that. Commissioning has commenced, and we expect to feed ore into the crusher this week.
2026 production will be approximately between 170,000-185,000 ounces. I also want to emphasize that once you go into the hard rock mining, we will generally eliminate those production lumpiness that we see in Q2 and Q3 due to the wet season because we will be transitioning from a purely oxide mine to an oxide hard rock where you can work in the pit bottoms, et cetera. That will reduce that lumpiness that we see year on year. Stage two hard rock, which will bring us to 5.5 million tons per annum and a production rate of about 220,000-250,000 ounces. Detail engineering has commenced. Key long lead items have been ordered. We are adopting a measured capital investment strategy as we wait for the outcome of the WAF government negotiations on the Kiaka transaction.
Once complete, it will be one of West Africa's largest mines. It will be with a long, long life. Really a very, very significant cash flow producer in the years ahead. Stage one, a bit of a graphic on what it looks like. The oxide is to the right in gray. Again, on schedule, unlikely under budget. We have essentially completed all of our CapEx. We are really just into the final stages of commissioning. Again, a testament we built the oxide on time under budget. We built this one on time under budget. Again, a testament to the team that we have inside and how we look after our costs and look after our schedule, et cetera, going forward. One of the few companies out there capable of doing that.
Hard rock mining has commenced, and we have a significant amount of stockpile ready to go. I expect first ore into the crusher either today or tomorrow, which will be a big event for us. We will then start making our stockpiles for feed to the mill. First gold is expected in early December, and we expect to announce commercial production in early Q1 2026, which will put us at that run rate of 170,000-185,000 ounces per year. A few photographs here. That is the dump pocket with the large ROM pad. We will have a lot of stockpile there. We will have ore coming from various pits, so we will be able to blend and get the best feed to the plant. As I said, I expect the first dump into that dump pocket today or tomorrow. We will then start building up our ore stockpile.
From there, we will start feeding ore to the mill. Mill all liners are in. We've energized the mill. The key there will be commissioning the variable frequency drive, which really gives you the operational optimization around the mill throughput. That will happen this weekend. We will start feeding ore to the mill and straight into the leach circuit. The leach circuit is 24 hours, so we do expect first gold very, very soon after feeding ore into the leach and start loading carbon onto the gold under the carbon for stripping. We will continue to feed tailings into TSF cell one for the next year or two, but TSF cell two now, earthworks are essentially complete. That is designed for the life of mine phase I and phase II. We will line that in the coming months before the start of next year's rainy season.
We'll have a full platform for tailings for the life of mine. As you can see, the hard rock mining fleet is on site. We'll start hauling ore from P17. We've done the drill and blast for the drill and blast. We expect to start blasting next week. That will be the high-grade ore feed to the mill once we've got commissioning complete. Outlook 2025 has really been a great year for us. Completed stage one, done all of our major growth projects. Again, a lot of exploration this year, a lot more to come. We expect to put out a lot of exploration results at the end of this year. We've just completed a geological structural interpretation of the whole ore body, which will open up more exploration for us.
I think our team speaks for itself in terms of how we've delivered both on cost and on schedule and budget. Excellent near-term growth and cash flow, a very, very strong balance sheet. As I said, $88 million at the end of Q3. With Q4, with the strong production that we have to date, plus a strong gold price and diminishing CapEx going to the end of stage one, we expect to exit 2025 with a very, very strong balance sheet. We remain very undervalued to our peer group. Our PNAV in terms of consensus is 0.3 versus our peers of 0.7. Our EV to EBITDA, again, consensus for 2026 is 1.5 versus our peers of 4.4. We are well positioned for index inclusion. We do continue to look for growth opportunities as we have significant cash flow coming out of Bomboré in the coming years.
A very exciting year for us, strong year for us, and I expect it to be a very strong finish. Thank you. I'll pass it back to the operator.
At this time, I'd like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your question comes from the line of Jeremy Hoyt from Canaccord Genuity. Your line is live.
Hi, Patrick and Peter. Thanks for taking my question. First one for me, just wondering on the spending for stage two and this WAF, the ongoing WAF agreement or the ongoing WAF discussions. To me, it sounds as though spending on stage two might be suspended until they come out with a resolution. Is that the case?
No, it's not the case. We are spending and we are doing some critical items. What we really have done, Jeremy, is Jeremy has focused on areas that we know will add value to stage one very soon. Things like an oxygen plant, a thickener, et cetera. We are going ahead with that. We've still got the ball mill in order and we haven't canceled that at this time. We still have all that in place. We just slowed down the engineering a bit. We are doing work. We'll keep the contractor on site for some of that work going forward. We expect a resolution very soon and that will give us the mandate to make that decision, I would expect, very soon.
Okay, got it. So you're not really anticipating any major disruptions to the schedule there for stage two then?
Yeah, I think it will definitely affect schedule somewhat, but what that quantum is, I don't know. Our guys are pretty magical at doing things. If you really look at stage one, we started digging out the foundations for the concrete in November of last year. Here we are putting ore through the ore body in November of this year. Twelve months later, we're feeding ore to a mill. We're pretty good at it as how we do it, but I would expect if it continues that longer that it would have some effect on schedule, yes.
Yeah, okay. We'll watch for a resolution there. Are you able to share your level of optimism on discussions there or is that just out of your purview?
That's out of my purview at this point, really. It's really, I'm glad there are discussions. It seems to be going on, so it means there are discussions and that's positive, but we'll have to wait for the final resolution here when it happens.
Yeah, okay. Totally appreciate that, Paddy. Okay, looking forward then, we had discussed when we were on site a few months ago the structural work that you guys were doing and the hope that it might result in some new targets, particularly for some higher-grade chutes within the mineralized zone. Are you able to share any details on what you guys have seen from that, if there are any particularly promising targets that you guys are looking to drill out and we might see results from in the near future?
Yes and yes. Yes, we are and yes, you will see results in the near future.
Okay. All right. Excellent. That's really it for me, Toddy. Thank you. Appreciate it.
Thank you.
That concludes the question and answer session. I'd now turn back the call over to Patrick Downey, President and CEO, for closing remarks.
Thank you. We're happy to get Q3 completed and we're into Q4, another strong quarter looking like in Q4. We're really looking forward to 2026 as to when we get into a very, very strong free cash flow year and growth beyond that. It should be a very, very exciting future for Orezone. Thank you.
This concludes today's meeting. You may now disconnect.