Great. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us this afternoon. I am just going to do a couple of minutes just to give a quick overview and a recap of the company, because things have changed quite considerably over the last 12 months. Then I am going to join Ralph on the couch to do a Q and A session with everyone. As I mentioned, the last 12 months has been a significant change for SSR. Last year at this time, we were still working busily on trying to get a restart at Çöpler. Since that time, we took the decision to be a bit more strategic and look at opportunities beyond the restart. We sold Türkiye in the first quarter of this year for $1.5 billion of cash.
We also divested our interest in Hod Maden, swapped it out for a royalty NSR, which really pivoted the business to be much more simple, much more straightforward. In some cases, for investors, a safer investment company with a focus predominantly on the Americas. 90% of our assets are now in the U.S.A. and Canada. Preceding that, we were 50/50. It has been a big shift in the business and in our strategy itself. That has obviously been well-received within the markets, as demonstrated by our share price over the last six to nine months. Preceding that, we are also on the uptick. Clearly, the strategy is working, and folks have really bought into our new strategy.
We still are the third-largest gold producer in the United States, backed by the asset just down the road here at Cripple Creek & Victor that we acquired from Newmont last year, and also our asset in Nevada called Marigold. The business has changed fundamentally. We are still focused on free cash flow generations. That has always been in our DNA and how we have run the business, and that has not changed. In the first half of this year, we produced $300 million of free cash flow. That is despite that being the weaker half for us. We executed against $400 million of share buybacks during the same period. With the Q 2 results in July, we reinstated our quarterly dividend program of $0.03 a share. The balance sheet is the strongest it has ever been.
We have nearly $1.8 billion in cash and growing with our free cash flow generation from the assets that we have. We are approaching about an 8% yield this year in capital returns to shareholders. We have always been very good capital allocators, which has really been built on this four-pillar strategy. The first one is maintaining balance sheet strength. Clearly, we have got that. Second is organic growth, and I will talk about some of those in a minute, of reinvesting in the business, getting a higher return for our shareholders by reinvesting those dollars in organic growth opportunities. Then returning capital to shareholders via a share buyback and/or a dividend. Since 2021, we have distributed nearly $1 billion of cash back to shareholders, and that is definitely peer leading amongst what we consider peers anyway. The business is still very large.
We have 7 million ounces of reserves, a very large resource base that we're working diligently on at the moment to identify opportunities for more organic growth at each one of the assets. More about that in a moment. I think the other thing that differentiates us is we have a fantastic track record of M&A that we've been able to add an enormous amount of value for our shareholders through the disciplined approach that we take to M&A. All in all, an entirely different picture to what it was 12 months ago. A real focus and energy around a safe, simple story primarily in the U.S. and complemented by our assets in both Canada and down in Argentina. The track record of value creation, just a quick snapshot.
We use this slide a lot, but I think it sort of tells a really simple picture about the value that we've been able to add over time through acquisitions external to the portfolio. Also within the portfolio, where we've identified numbers of organic growth opportunities that we've brought forward over time. Really, the key one here, I think, is on a consensus basis on our cash flow per share. You can see the enormous growth that we've had since September 24 by over 600% on that basis. That's a tremendous track record and something we're very proud of. If you look down to the bottom of this slide, again, another great example of the value add that we've been able to achieve with the acquisitions that we've had over many years now.
Up there on the right, just to reinforce the discipline that we've got around the capital allocation and the full lifecycle of capital allocation within the business itself. Again, since 2021, we have distributed nearly $1 billion back to our shareholders. We'll continue to do that the remainder of this year. We have a share buyback program in place, and we'll complete that by March next year. That will then expire, and we'll look at, again, refreshing our approach to capital allocation. If we feel that it is the right thing to do with our cash beyond the organic growth that we have, we'll reinstate the share buyback program. That's us in a snapshot. I'm going to join you on the couch, Ralph.
Thank you.
and we can ask questions.
Great. So this enviable position that we find ourselves in with the cash on the balance sheet and no debt, the question is, where do we go from here, right? Where are the priorities between dividends and buybacks? Maybe talk a little bit about some of the swing factors that can change where you prioritize. Is it share price? Is it opportunities? How does that play into your decision-making?
Yeah, look, I think for us, we've always been very open about the fact that we are acquisitive. We do spend a lot of time looking at opportunities outside the portfolio for adding to the producing assets that we currently have. That hasn't changed just because we have cash on the balance sheet. I think the other important consideration, because I've actually been asked a lot at this conference around the do we feel pressured, do we feel like we have to achieve some sort of external opportunity above and beyond what we're doing internally in the business? The answer to that is no. I think the approach that we take, and we've always taken, is very thoughtful through our diligence processes. There are a number of opportunities that get to a desktop study, never make it beyond desktop.
If they do get beyond that, we go through a diligence process. There's a number of those opportunities that never get past it. Even through negotiation, if the value proposition gets away from us, we walk away from the potential acquisition. Yes, we've got a terrific balance sheet. But I think we're very methodical in the way that we allocate the capital. The real key that I see within the business right now for us, most importantly, is really bringing to market the organic growth that we have with the business that we're really excited by. So that's really the key priority for us. The external stuff will take care of itself as time goes on, and we'll continue with our discipline around it.
Well, let's stay with that a little bit. In this market, in terms of the opportunity set on outside M&A opportunities, what's sort of the near ideal aspect in terms of what you look at for that target?
Look, we look at everything from greenfields through to producing assets. I think everyone wants a producing asset, and they want it at the right price. That's a pretty competitive environment. We all hunt for the same things, as long as it fits, well, obviously within the portfolio. There's obviously jurisdictional constraints that we put on ourselves. We want to build the business in the Americas with the new focus, so that's a self-constrained type of outcome to us. We look for cash flow-producing assets where we can or something that's cash generative. We want to maintain our cash generative position also in a business. So when we look at development opportunities that might be available out there, we're very cautious around what that might mean to us as a business.
Having worked in this industry a long time, going through a cycle of significant capital investment for new project development is tough work. It takes many years to come through it and then reap the rewards from it. Not everyone's patient enough for that type of scenario. Greenfields has been a priority for us. We did take a small stake in an exploration company in Nevada called Phenom Resources. That's really intriguing to us what those guys are doing. But we are looking everything through the lifecycle, whether it's greenfields all the way through to producing assets. So, it really depends. Does it fit strategically?
Okay.
That's why it's important to stay very disciplined.
Yeah. Let's bring things a little closer to home. We have a production profile for 2026 that's heavily weighted to Q4. Tell me about the level of confidence on meeting that target and how you're tracking so far.
Yeah, look, we put out and just with our DGF deck, and we're doing an analyst tour down to Cripple Creek here tomorrow, a slide that's included reiterating our guidance for 2026. We are back-end loaded. It seems that every year we do plans, it's back-end loaded. Part of that's just the nature of the assets that we're running, where it's a lot of stripping, mining ore, and then stacking towards the second half of the year. The real important points to make around Marigold in particular, because that's the one that's been a little bit behind, was ensuring that the catalyst towards the meeting production had been met, and that was really upgrading and increasing our solution flow rates. At Marigold, we've installed the new carbon columns as well as a new retention pond. So that's been commissioned as we speak.
I was out there a few weeks ago. That will bring us home as planned for 2026. As well as up at Seabee, the important thing was for us to reach level 41 at Seabee, which we have a high-grade pocket of ore. And I actually was down there and stood on it a few weeks ago. So we're on track for the meeting guidance. It'll be a big last quarter.
Yep.
We seem to have that every year.
Okay. And Rod, we have all-in sustaining costs trending towards that higher end. Just wondering, what were some of the drivers behind that? And was any of that an aspect of bringing some of these costs forward, or are there potential offsets that we could see?
Now, look, I think it's the same as every business right now. There's pretty much pressures across the board. We've got labor pressures. We have consumable pressures. Pretty much every item that we touch, there seems to be a cost increase on it. So that's partly it. Our cost base has an upward trajectory. We're trying to do things to offset that as best we can for efficiencies and effectiveness gains within the business. But it seems that we've had that for the last three years.
Yeah.
That inflationary environment is real, and we're certainly feeling it as well. And then obviously, with the higher gold prices, particularly at some of our assets like Marigold, we're paying higher royalty-
Yep
rates for those assets as well, which obviously adds to the pressures on the cost. So it's really more around those pressures than it is anything else.
Okay. You mentioned Marigold. We've got an updated technical report coming. We've already been guided to a relatively unchanged production profile in the near term. Let's call it zero to five years. Just wondering, what are some of the other aspects that that technical report is going to show us about reserve conversion, about dilution control, about some of that grade outlook? How are you thinking about that?
Yeah. It's the same for both Marigold and Cripple Creek. The objective in the work that we've been doing over the last three years is to identify multi-decade businesses, multi-decade production businesses. The first cut off the rank in this regards is Marigold. In the next, call it four to six weeks, we'll publish a new tech report, the tech report update for Marigold, which will be comprehensive. It will capture all the drilling we've done over the last, call it three years, where we've been successful on getting conversion from the drill bit of adding resources and reserves. We've looked at opportunities for optimizing the asset as well and extending the asset life. So targets like DG80 are converting. New Millennium's converting. We're going to bring Buffalo Valley online, and that'll be described within the tech report as well.
All in all, the outcome of that work is going to be a real step forward for Marigold. It will describe the first of what we think will be multi-decade production profiles for our two big assets. That's a real win for us from that perspective. The other thing that we are really focused on, you mentioned it and I'll just reinforce it. While the mine plans have comprehensively changed compared to what we previously had published, the next five years are predominantly the same in terms of the production profile. It will move around from year to year, depending on what we're doing. But we are also going to be taking the opportunity to modernize the operation at Marigold and changing the way we operate or has been operated previously, where I talked about it being back-end loaded every time we have our planning cycle done.
We get these back-end loaded plans. That's a lot of it's because we're only mining a single face at Marigold, strip, stack, and leach. We are going to be, with the new production profile being longer, investing in replacing the current fleet but also expanding the current fleet with an objective of opening up new ore bodies and new ore fronts after a few years of stripping, so we have multitudes of ore faces open at any one time. So it's going to be a little bit of a game changer for Marigold, not only to describe a multi-decade future, but also the way we're going to run the asset.
Yeah, it's a good overview of the long-term potential at Marigold. Let's ask the same question for Seabee. What do you see there long term?
Yeah, look, Seabee and Puna, I'll talk about them together because they're sort of the same sort of thing there. People see them as smaller assets, and I get often asked, are they core
to the business? The answer to that is yes. And partly because we're still defining the future for them. At Seabee, in particular, we're looking at the full extent of what Santoy Mine is and whether at depth it's still open and also in width. So that's an important piece of work that we've got to complete to extend the mine life there. As well as we'll be making an investment decision or not on Porky, which is a new target here in the next call it six to nine months. So, adding those two things to Seabee will extend its mine life. And again, Seabee's had a life of mine of 40 years for 40 years, so it's one of those assets that keeps on giving. We want to continue with that.
Down at Puna we added four years of mine life last year, and we see an opportunity for further life extension when we do the layback of the current pits we're in. Then we're doing the assessments on a new target called Cortaderas, the Pirquitas process plant, that we see having another potential to add more mine life to Puna. So they might be smaller in terms of longevity
Yeah
and scale, but they are also very profitable mines. Having, again, that basis where we could develop a production profile that is quite stable over a 10-year period will give us the platform to launch the business
Great.
Keep on launching the business.
Yeah. In the short time we have left, I would like to open it up to the floor if there are any questions. Rod, in closing, I just want to ask you to address when you think about your portfolio, what other assets do you think do not get enough attention that you think the market may be missing critical aspects in this story?
I would actually suggest the one down the road here is a little bit misunderstood.
Yeah.
Partly it's a little bit confusing. The objective actually of our analyst tour, the sell-side analyst tour tomorrow, is to simplify the message
Yeah
around Cripple Creek of what it could potentially be. Some of that was because of when we picked it up from Newmont, there were some self-constraints that we had to put on the reserve itself because it already had an expansion permit in train with the Colorado government. But the potential there is enormous. We've got nearly 7 million ounces of high-quality resources. Picking up assets off majors is a good thing because usually it's drilled out
Yeah
entirely. This thing's drilled out. We don't need more drilling. We don't need more technical assessments, more metallurgy or lithology. It's all there. It's really now around presenting a picture of how we convert that nearly 7 million ounces of resources into reserves in the future. That's the exciting part of the portfolio that's not really understood yet.
Indeed. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in thanking Rod for his presentation and our discussion.
Great. Thanks, mate. Appreciate it.
All right. Appreciate it.
Cheers, mate. Thanks, mate.