What the Majors Said During the Mining Forum Americas Super Session

Tuesday morning saw all the biggest producers and royalty companies speak back-to-back at the 2025 Mining Forum Americas in Colorado Springs

Franco-Nevada Corporation (TSX: FNV)

CEO Paul Brink opened the session by pointing out that the gold price had appreciated at 9% per annum against the US dollar.

“Take today’s gold price – 9% per annum. The gold price target you’re looking at in five years’ time is US$5700,” he said.

“I like that number – I’m 57, it’s easy to remember!”

Franco recently acquired a 1% net smelter return royalty on AngloGold Ashanti’s Arthur gold project

“Our geologists are tremendously excited about this. They think this is the next camp in Nevada,” Brink said.

Franco is open to further acquisitions, but Brink said the company was just as happy to return cash to shareholders.

“We’re not interested in growing for the sake of growing,” he said.

“Our mantra is to grow profitably.”

The company sold 463,000 gold equivalent ounces in 2024, while guidance for 2029 is 490,000-550,000 GEOs, not including contributions from Cote or factoring in a potential restart of Cobre Panama.

Brink joked that if Cobre Panama was restarted, the management team would be “drinking champagne for a month”.

Brink said non-producing assets not yet in the company’s guidance represented US$25 billion of potential value.

“Can we sustain the growth of Franco? There’s plenty of gas in the tank to get us there,” he said.

Wheaton Precious Metals (TSX: WPM)

Wheaton CEO Randy Smallwood spoke about the company’s latest deal, a US$300-400 million stream over the Hemlo mine, which Carcetti Capital Corp is acquiring from Barrick for up to US$1.09 billion.

Smallwood described Hemlo as a “top notch asset” with a lot of potential.

“We’re just excited about where this thing can go,” he said.

Smallwood said the company was happy to be involved at the early stage of the deal.

“We don’t see enough of that in the streaming space,” he said.

“I think, as investors, having a streamer come in and support the M&A side should help give confidence in terms of having a second set of critical eyes that have looked at that project and determined that it’s a viable project going forward.”

Smallwood spoke of the company’s growth, which will see it reach 800,000 GEOs by 2027, though he suggested that outlook could be a “little bit conservative”.

“We’re on a mission to 1 million gold equivalent ounces and it’s coming,” he said.

“Our current production profile has us reaching 1 million gold equivalent ounces by 2031.

“I’m confident we get there before then.”

Barrick Mining Corporation (NYSE: B)

Barrick CEO Mark Bristow opened his presentation by welcoming the increase in buy-side investors at the conference, particularly generalist investors.

“We need you in this industry,” he said.

Bristow said Barrick’s strategy was paying off.

“In times like these, there’s always temptation for short-term gratification,” he said.

“Momentum is clear as we move forward.”

A focus of Bristow’s presentation was the Fourmile project in Nevada.

“Quite simply, the greatest gold discovery of this century,” he said.

“It’s emerging as a truly generational project.”

Fourmile has a measured and indicated resource of 3.6 million tonnes at 11.8 grams per tonne gold for 1.4Moz of gold and an inferred resource of 14Mt at 14.1g/t gold for 6.4Moz, as well as exploration upside of 32-34Mt at 15-16g/t gold.

“Results are pointing to a doubling of ounces by the end of this year,” Bristow said.

This is the kind of discovery that redefines a company

The company today released an updated preliminary economic assessment for the project, confirming the potential for a gold mine that would sit among the top 10 in the world.

Capital costs are forecast to be US$1.5-1.7 billion for a 25-year mine producing 600,000-750,000oz of gold per annum at all-in sustaining costs of US$650-750 an ounce.

The study was completed at a gold price of US$2500/oz.

“Think about what that means for the upside,” Bristow said.

Barrick’s growth projects, which include Reko Diq in Pakistan and the Lumwana super pit expansion, are expected to deliver a 30% increase in GEOs by 2029.

“It’s what makes Barrick a peerless investment in gold and copper,” Bristow said.

Since the Q2 results, Barrick has outperformed its peers and the gold price, up 31%.

“This is just the beginning,” Bristow said.

Barrick CEO Mark Bristow

Agnico Eagle Mines (TSX: AEM)

Agnico CEO Ammar Al-Joundi had four key messages he wanted to leave with the audience at the Mining Forum Americas.

“The first message is the business is going very, very well,” he said.

“To put things into perspective, in the last year to date, gold is up almost US$1100/oz. Our costs are up US$10/oz.

“Two, and probably the most exciting – our projects are going well.”

The company’s five major growth projects will add 1.3-1.5Moz of gold production from 2030.

“Three, exploration going exceptionally well,” Al-Joundi said, adding that the company had 121 drill rigs turning.

“Four, in this environment – and this is important – we are going to stay focused.

“We’re not going to do anything crazy.

“We get asked the question and I want to be clear. We are not considering a bid on Teck.”

As Canada’s largest miner, Al-Joundi said Agnico was encouraged by the newly elected government.

“Frankly, we had difficulty getting the attention of anybody in the previous PMO office,” he said.

“I will tell you that the weekend after the election, I got text messages from very senior federal ministers directly. I mean, I never met the people. I don't know how they got my phone number, but they reached out right away, so that that just shows you, I think there’s a bit of a sea change in attitude.

“It is going to take time. It's not that easy to do things instantly, but certainly, we're very encouraged by what we're hearing and seeing with the new government.”

Newmont Corporation (NYSE: NEM)

Newmont president and chief operating officer Natascha Viljoen spoke of making the most of the current record gold price environment.

“I think important for us to remain disciplined and to work on expanding our margins and not to get too excited about the high gold price,” she said.

Last month, Bloomberg reported that Newmont could cut thousands of jobs as it looked to lower costs.

Viljoen said the ongoing integration of the Newcrest assets gave the company the chance to review the company’s organisational structure.

“As we brought these two companies together and integrated the assets, it was a real opportunity for us to stand back and also look at the work that is required to deliver on productivity,” she said.

“We have reshaped the organisational structure to be fit for purpose, for the operational assets that we have today.

“This work is well underway, and we are currently positioned to complete this work before the end of the year, and we'll be able to integrate that into our business plan for 2026 and we'll be able to talk to the market in more detail about it at the beginning of next year.”

On Monday, Newmont announced the sale of its Coffee gold development project in Canada to Fuerte Metals Corporation for up to US$150 million, completing its divestment program.

The company’s go-forward portfolio comprises 11 managed tier one assets.

“We have stabilised the business and our focus now is on optimisation,” Viljoen said.

Zijin Mining (SH: 601899)

Zijin deputy president Shaoyang Shen’s presentation had a heavy focus on environmental, social and governance (ESG).

He said Zijin had deployed 600 electric trucks to 12 mines in five countries.

“There's no indication the costs are higher than traditional internal combustion engine vehicles,” he said.

Zijin started out as the owner of a single gold mine and has grown to be one of the world’s largest diversified miners.

“Even though we’ve become more diversified, gold is still a key cornerstone for the company,” Shen said.

The company is proceeding with the spin-out of Zijin Gold International, via an initial public offering in Hong Kong.

The subsidiary will own eight producing gold mines outside of China, producing 1.5-1.8Moz per year.

Reuters reported last week that the unit was seeking a valuation of up to US$40 billion.

“The IPO, which will be complete in the coming weeks, will be one of the largest fundraising events for the mining industry in recent years, and one of the largest IPO worldwide in general this year,” Shen said.

Shen finished his presentation by calling for a strengthening of international cooperation.

“Particularly in light of recent signs of anti-globalisation and segmentation of global supply chains,” he said.

“As most of us in the industry would agree, international cooperation has been a key driver for the growth and the health of the mining industry in the past.”

AngloGold Ashanti (NYSE: AU)

AngloGold CEO Alberton Calderon spoke about reshaping the company’s portfolio to focus on tier one assets.

Around 75% of the company’s production comes from tier one assets.

“I would prefer any day, two assets of 500,000oz in the first quartile than an asset of a million in the third quartile, and I'll tell you why, the benefits of being in first quartile is that they are very good in good times, but they're very resilient in bad times,” Calderon said.

“So where we are heading in the next three or five years is to have about 85% of our company in tier one assets, both in production and in reserves.”

The company’s major growth project, the Arthur gold project in Nevada, would be the “cornerstone of AngloGold in the 2030s”.

“I think a third of the value of AngloGold will be in this district,” he said.

A prefeasibility study on the Merlin deposit at Arthur will be released in February next year.

“Anything we’ve said falls short of what we see right now,” Calderon said.

Calderon said the worst-kept secret in mining was that the company was trying to sell its tier one Tropicana gold mine in Australia.

“We did have conversations. It's a very good asset for still two or three years, but then it'll be probably better in other hands,” he said.

“So at some point, strategically, we will sell Tropicana, but we don't know when, because the next three years are still very good.”

Calderon said the company would ideally look to replace Tropicana with another tier one asset in the developed world.

“Australia is a good place, but probably a very expensive place.”

AngloGold Ashanti CEO Alberto Calderon

Kinross Gold Corp (TSX: K)

Kinross CEO Paul Rollinson said the company was in strong shape but still represented “compelling value”.

“Why do you want to own Kinross? I think the main reason is we've been delivering both operationally and financially, and we offer excellent leverage to the gold price, and that's going to continue,” he said.

“Our rigorous cost discipline has resulted in excellent margin expansion. In fact, our margin expansion has outpaced the gold price, so that demonstrates how we've been able to hold the line on costs.”

Rollinson said the gold price didn’t change Kinross’ strategy.

“Our mills are full, and we're focused on grade and cashflow, and we think with that, if we can hold the line on costs, focus on grade, we're going to get margin expansion, and that's certainly what we've been delivering, and we will continue to do that.”

The company is on track to return US$650 million to shareholders this year via dividends and the buy-back.

Kinross is progressing its two greenfields growth projects, Great Bear in Canada and Lobo-Marte in Chile.

“[Great Bear] is going to be an outstanding mine – 500,000oz a year at an US$800 AISC,” Rollinson said.

“It's going to be a cash engine. At today's gold prices, we'd expect a billion year of free cashflow when Great Bear is up and running.”

Gold Fields (JSE: GFI)

Gold Fields is close to completing the acquisition of Gold Road Resources to consolidate its ownership of the Gruyere gold mine in Western Australia.

CEO Mike Fraser said from next year, around half of group production would come from WA.

“We’re quite excited about that addition, because whilst we operate this asset, it gives us access to a very large land package, which gives us the opportunity to extend the life and delay the underground which is ultimately what will happen at Gruyere,” he said.

With the eventual addition of the Windfall asset in Canada, about 80% of Gold Fields’ production will come from OECD countries.

More details on the plan for the development of Windfall will be announced at Gold Fields’ capital markets day in November.

Fraser said Gold Fields had best-in-class headline growth over the next two years.

“Our focus is not about headline growth,” he said.

“We don't have to be the biggest, but we really want to be the highest quality gold producer, and that means focusing on per-share metrics.”

Fraser said the senior producers had a role to play in supporting juniors to carry out greenfields exploration.

“We've really focused very heavily on reinvigorating our program to build out this early stage portfolio of assets, and again, these are 10-year assets, but if we don't do the work today, they're not going to be available to us in the future,” he said.

Northern Star Resources (ASX: NST)

Northern Star is the largest ASX-listed gold company and unlike many of its senior peers, it is a gold-only producer.

Northern Star managing director Stuart Tonkin said the company had been focused on improving its return on capital employed since the 2020 merger with Saracen Mineral Holdings.

ROCE improved to 11.4% in the 2025 financial year with a target of 20% in the medium term.

Northern Star is embarking on one of the largest capital projects in the Australian mining sector, the A$1.5 billion expansion of the KCGM mill to 27Mt per annum.

“We're nine months away from turning that on,” Tonkin said.

“This asset is going to go from 450,000oz to 900,000oz by FY29.

“It will be top five global gold mine and with a huge runway, so I think people really need to look harder at this asset. It's half our business today.”

The mill expansion will allow Northern Star to start to process KCGM’s large, low-grade stockpile which contains around 3Moz of gold.

“There’s A$12-13 billion of cashflow just sitting in that stockpile and we're going to start milling you know that in nine months’ time,” Tonkin said.

Earlier this year, Northern Star completed the A$6 billion acquisition of De Grey Mining, giving it ownership of the 13Moz Hemi project.

“When we looked at that as a fourth key production centre complementing our other assets, it just ticked every single box,” Tonkin said.

“It's going to be big. Be patient. It's going to take three years to build, and we're in the approvals phase right now.

“We're expecting to be probably through approvals in the coming six months, then we'll re-look at the pricing on this and take that to our board for a final investment decision.”

Lundin Gold (TSX: LUG)

Last week, it was announced that Lundin boss Ron Hochstein would step down in November and would be replaced by former Filo Corp CEO Jamie Beck.

“This is a bit bittersweet as this will be my last time talking about Lundin Gold at conferences like this,” he said.

Hochstein was on the verge of tears when he spoke about his time at Lundin.

Lundin, the only single-asset operator of the seniors, owns the circa 500,000ozpa Fruta del Norte mine in Ecuador.

Fruta del Norte is one of the world’s lowest cost gold mines, with AISC of less than US$1000/oz.

Fruta del Norte generated more than US$400 million of free cashflow in the first half of 2025.

Hochstein said the company’s strong cash generation allowed it to return money to shareholders.

“As many of you know, that has been one of the criticisms of this sector, in particular during the last time gold prices ran, was capital allocation,” he said.

“We listened, and we started early on, as we started cleaning up that balance sheet, started taking that capital that we were paying to the banks and others and returning capital to shareholders.”

Hochstein said the future for Lundin was exploration.

“This is a land package that was put together by Lundin almost 20 years ago. They found Fruta del Norte very early on,” he said.

“There's been very, very little work done on probably one of the most prospective land packages in the world today.”

The company is drilling at least 108,000m this year.