Aura Minerals

Okay. Time is there. Morning, everyone. Thanks for having me here this morning and giving me the opportunity to present Aura Minerals, a growing gold and copper producer. So as I go through the presentation, I’m gonna talk a little bit about the past and the future of Aura. But basically what we have done and we intend to do in terms of creating shareholder value is deliver value by growing the company consistently, consistently paying significant dividends, doing both without stressing our balance sheets, keeping our net debt over EBITDA at very reasonable levels and improving our valuation multiples. So you see that has been our focus in the last five years and is what we expect in the years to come.

Just by way of introduction, we are focused on Latin America. So the entire management of the company is from the region. We are coming from three mines in production three years ago to six mines in production now. So we have four gold mines in production in Brazil, one gold mine in Honduras and one copper mine in Mexico. Our growth has been through either acquiring greenfield projects, building them on time and budget, putting them into production, or by acquiring assets that became non-core to larger gold producers and then turning them around and finding opportunities that maybe the larger companies didn’t focus on because it was not a priority.

So this year we expect to be producing 340,000 to 390,000 ounces of gold equivalents. Other than those six mines in production, we have two other projects that are gonna help us to increase the company and exceed the 600,000 ounces in the medium term. One gold project that is currently in production underground, mine in Guatemala, and another one called Matopá in Brazil that is ready to build. We built two mines in the last couple of years in Brazil, both on time and budget. Our same management construction team now is in Guatemala and then intends to go to the next projects in the future.

Look at our performance in the last couple of years. Since 2018, our production has increased more than 107% by delivering this strategy. You see there is a more detailed production profile from 2023 onwards. You see our production increase has been not substantial. We’re not doubling year after year, but it has been consistent by building, acquiring projects, building, putting them into production, going to the next. We’re delivering growth year after year. 2026 is gonna be a new increase in production.

In terms of all-in sustaining cash costs, we have been historically very competitive. 2025, we closed with all-in at fourteen fifty-eight. We’re in the first quartile of the ISK for the gold sector. This year we see an increase. That’s mainly because we made one acquisition. One of the new projects, it’s called MSGG, Mineração Serra Grande. It was part of the AngloGold Ashanti portfolio. We closed that acquisition in December. It’s a mine that is requiring a turnaround. This year it’s operating above $3,000, but we already expect to see it coming close to $2,000 already from 2027. Excluding that impact, we are still very competitive, at the $1,600 range in terms of all-in.

And then as a combination of increasing production, more favorable gold prices and costs under control, you see significantly improving revenues. Our EBITDA coming from $134 million in ’23 to over $800 million in the last twelve months. And we have had a good conversion of EBITDA into free cash flow, which has allowed us to invest in what I said at the very beginning: increase our company, pay dividends without stressing our balance sheets.

This is a snapshot look at the past as well, bringing numbers to this message. So in terms of investments, we invested almost $700 million in expansion through acquisitions and mainly building new projects, and also allocating extra capital in geology. We have been accelerating since 2022 how much we’re putting in geology and exploration to increase our reserves and resources, and our reserves at a faster pace than we’re depleting. We see that’s working. We are seeing increases in reserves and resources of the company also year after year despite the increase in production. So that’s also generating value.

And at the same time, paying dividends and making buybacks. The last four years and a half we have distributed more than $440 million in dividends and buybacks. And you can see our dividend yield has been consistently high, has ranged between 4% minimum, 9% at a minimum, but every year has been close to five, 6%. And then at the same time, we’re growing our production. We’re growing our reserves and resources. We’re paying dividends and doing buybacks and not stressing our balance sheets. Our net debt or EV/EBITDA remained pretty much under control over this period, never exceeding 0.7 times. Now at 0.2 times.

Now looking at some case studies on how we have been able to do this. So what’s the magic then to allocate capital, to grow, to pay dividends and not stress the balance sheet? This is pretty much our investment mindset. So first, every time that we’re gonna make new investments, we look for projects not necessarily big. Actually, if you look into both our projects and our mining operations, they are even considered small for our sector, producing 60,000 ounces, 75, 80, 90,000 ounces. But usually they deliver a very good return in internal rate of return and short payback.

So if you’re looking at Almas. Almas is a project that we built in Brazil in 2023. It was a very limited CapEx, only seven, $6 million. Now this project has an NPV of close to $1.2 billion. Even at the time when we announced this project, the expected internal rate of return was over 50%, so it was already expected to be very high returns. But at the time it was small, to produce 50,000 ounces per year. So what we do is we like to minimize the CapEx, optimize the returns, minimize the payback, and once it goes into production, then we invest the cash flows to look for the upsides. In Almas, for example, we started with 1.3 million tons capacity installed at the plant. Now this year we’re gonna finish with 3 million tons. And we built it in only sixteen months.

Borborema, similar story, was the second project we built in Brazil. You see it was CapEx below $200 million, NPV now close to $1.7 billion. When we announced construction, we had less than 800,000 ounces in proven and probable reserves. Now that number is almost 2 million ounces. So we’re investing to unlock value as well, very similar to Almas. And then when we take these two examples, it helps to understand why we can keep increasing and paying dividends and not stress the balance sheets, because the CapEx usually is limited, is small. The payback is very short. It allows us, when we’re going to the next investment, to already collect the payback.

And now we’re building our third project called Era Dourada in Guatemala. It’s bigger in terms of CapEx, but it’s gonna be a little bit bigger in terms of production, although not huge. $380 million CapEx for an NPV, considering gold prices of thirty-two hundred, of $1.3 billion. So also a very good return is expected for Era Dourada.

So then going forward, as I mentioned, we looked a little bit at what we did in the last five years, and then going forward, how we expect to keep delivering shareholder value. The same: increasing our production with the new projects that we have, keep increasing our reserves and resources. We have almost 600,000 hectares of mineral rights, pretty much underexplored. Geologically speaking, we know roughly 10% to 15%, so there is a long way to go. And also keep increasing the market multiples. We know that as companies grow, size matters in terms of multiples. Majors, larger companies, they have better multiples than mid-tiers or junior companies. So we keep growing. We have, inside our portfolio, projects that are gonna take us to produce at least 600,000 ounces. And we keep looking for acquisition opportunities to take us to be a one million producer in the medium term.

This is a plan that we announced last year, how to get to the 600,000. This was disclosed to the market around mid-2025. We were producing 267,000 by 2024. The first two steps are already delivered. We were building Borborema. Now we reached commercial production, finalized the ramp-up. It’s fully in production in 2026. MSNG, we hadn’t closed the acquisition. The acquisition has been closed. Era Dourada now is under construction. Then once that’s finalized, we have a gold project in Brazil called Matupa. It’s ready to build, but we don’t like to build two projects at the same time in parallel. So when we are in the advanced stage of Era Dourada, we can go to Matupa. And we have internal expansion opportunities in those assets that we’re showing, like Borborema, like Almas. We keep growing. So it’s pretty much in-house to get to the 600,000 in the next couple of years.

The next step on that staircase, like I said, is Era Dourada. We saw robust economics. It’s gonna add more than 110,000 ounces of production per year. It’s in construction. We have more than 350 people working at the site. Construction is expected to finalize by end of ’27, so it should come early 2028. And besides being an important milestone for us in our growth plan, we consider El Dorado is gonna become a case study and a benchmark in terms of ESG. First, 100% of the energy is gonna be clean energy. We have a geothermal project that’s gonna supply energy.

And also in terms of water, in 2025, we spent almost 1,000 hours talking to the communities and analyzing the environment. We saw that one big concern and one big issue was the quality of the water. So we approved a solution, and it’s part of our CapEx and OpEx in our feasibility study, in which by the end of the process, we’re gonna deliver clean, potable and drinkable water to the population. So it’s expected to be the first municipality in Guatemala with that level of clean water. So not only are we not gonna pollute the water, but we’re gonna clean the water to a level that they don’t have today. We’re very proud and expect it to become an ESG benchmark.

So then just in terms of conclusion: a growing company, good assets generating strong cash flows, with interesting projects and growth ahead of us. Paying dividends, with still a discounted opportunity to close our valuation gap. Our market cap is close to $7 billion. Our cash now, that was the end of Q2. We just raised $200 million to help fund our expansion plan. So we’re fully funded for our expansion. And our main shareholders: we have a controlling shareholder that has 47% of the company, and then other very well-known global names like Capital, BlackRock, Fidelity and other reputable investors. With this, end of the presentation, open to questions. Thank you.

Thanks, Gledson. Any questions from the audience? Oh, there’s a question over here. There’s a mic coming.

Comment on the situation in Guatemala regarding support for mining.

Situation in Guatemala, what?

Attitude towards mining in Guatemala.

Uh-huh. Yeah. So after we acquired a company called Blue Stone, as many know, there were some challenges in that project. One of the main challenges that we learned even during the due diligence was the mining method. There was a strong opposition to an open-pit mine. So after speaking a lot in country, we decided, okay, open pit, there will be strong opposition. Let’s switch to underground. That reduced a lot of resistance. Second thing, we tried to understand concerns, like water was one of them. So we tried: okay, what can we do that is not just following the regulation? How can we add value, and be perceived as adding something to the community?

And then after a lot of discussion, we decided, okay, it hurts our actual economics a little bit because our CapEx is going up and our OpEx is going up, but it has a lot of added value and value perceived as well. And a lot of conversation. Like I said, in 2025, we didn’t move anything. We spent one thousand hours talking to communities. As many of you know, it’s not a traditional mining country, so there was a lot of investment in education about what we do. Invitations, some accepted, some not, to visit some of our operations. Open invitation to go to our site there in Guatemala to any authority or anyone in the community. So I think a lot of dialogue and trying to address things that can be addressed. We know we’re not there to replace the governments and to do public service. That’s not our role. But if you can add some value and be perceived as adding some value, that helps a lot.

Thank you, Gledson. Just one very quick question from me. In terms of catalysts for the next six to twelve months, can you just remind us what those catalysts are for the company?

Yeah. So especially this semester, we’re finishing the turnaround of MSGU, which is the mine that we acquired in December. We have been pushing mainly in the development, the private development, which in our assessment was the main bottleneck. It’s going well. So by year-end, we expect to be in the position to deliver a strong 2027, as was our plan. Second, we are almost finalizing the expansion of the plant. We started with 2 million tons. We’re gonna finish the year with 3 million tons. A portion of that expansion has already been completed. So it’s going well.

And also in Burburema, based on the last feasibility study and reserves, we have about thirty-four years life of mine based on reserves, which obviously is very decent, with exploration potential. So we’re analyzing different scenarios for a potential expansion of Burburema, and we should announce something by year-end about what that expansion for Burburema is gonna be. And in the meantime, keep building El Dorado. So it’s step by step. It’s going well. So all the steps associated until next year.

Perfect. Thank you so much, Gledson.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you.