Fortuna Releases 3rd Quarter Production Numbers Remains On Track For Yearly Guidance | Arcadia Economics

Well, hello there, my friends. Chris Marcus here with you for RKD Economics and today we have a quick video about Fortuna Mining as they did release their third quarter production numbers before the Open this morning and would just like to walk you through the highlights here where the main thing is that they are remaining on track for their guidance range of 457 to 497,000 of gold equivalents for the year 2024 and in the third quarter they had production of 110,820 ounces. This compares to 128.6 thousand in the third quarter of 23 and 116.57 thousand ounces in the second quarter of 2022.

Gold production came in at 91,251 ounces, roughly in line with those same quarters I just mentioned. Silver production, obviously down as they’re getting towards the end of the mining sequence at San Jose, although we will have an update on how things are coming along there in the end of this video, but they had silver production of 816,000 ounces. Zig and Lead came in at 12.8 million and 10 million pounds respectively and also the Linderra Leech Pad now 76 percent complete, which we will touch on again as we get into this one a little bit, but gold and silver production for the nine months came to a total of 273,645 ounces of gold, 2.9 million ounces of silver for a combined total of 339,933 ounces of gold equivalent and again the annual guidance range is 457 to 497,000 ounces, which Fortuna reiterated.

So let us take a look at the individual mines where here at Seguela, which as you can see is now their top producing mine at 34,998,000 gold ounces and as we can see here mine production they had 484,000 tons of ore at 2.48 grams per ton with an estimated 38,661 ounces of gold coming largely from the Antennepit but also Ancien and Kula and the movement of waste during the quarter was 2.9 million tons with a strip ratio of six to one. In terms of the processing, they produced just under two ounces under the 35,000 ounce mark at an average head grade of 2.69 grams per ton with the number of ounces being a six percent increase and the head grade being a 22 percent decrease, although that was in line with the planned mining sequence plant throughput, which Jorge Ganosa has talked about in a lot of those calls we’ve done, remains over nameplate capacity running at an average of 208 tons per hour, 35 percent higher than the nameplate design capacity of 154 tons per hour.

They have a note here on the power outages they had in the second quarter and that it did not affect the plant operations in the third quarter, which helped them to get an increase in the failure of a drive shaft of the main apron feeder in early July that required a repair, which reduced the throughput rates while that repair was done and subsequently they increased back up to 216 tons per hour by September and gold production for the first nine months at 102,537 ounces. In Yerumoko, 123,754 tons of ore were treated at an average head grade of 6.71 grams per ton.

That gave them 28,006 ounces of gold. That’s a 20 percent decrease in grade and an 11 percent decrease in production compared to the second quarter of this year and the gold grade was lower than predicted in the mine plan due to continuing development operations, providing lower grade ore and the milling of supplementary low grade stockpiles. And during the quarter they had 80,000 tons that were mined at 7.4 grams per ton from the 55 zone and 21,905 tons of ore averaging 9.02 grams from QV prime for the total of 102,645 tons at 7.75 grams per ton with gold production coming in at 86,630 ounces.

Terms of Lindero, 2.1 million tons of ore were mined, stripping ratio of one to one and a total of 1.6 million tons were placed on the leach pad at 0.66 grams per ton. The total gold production for the quarter was 24,345 ounces of gold and that was a 6 percent increase in production versus the previous quarter, mainly due to higher grade ore being placed on the leach pad. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this video, they’re now 76 percent complete on the leach pad expansion project, pyramid complete, all items on site, liner installation approximately 44 percent complete, and Fortuna is planning to start placing ore in the leach pad expansion in the latter part of this October and we’re now on the 10th, so beginning in just about a week or so and they expect practical completion by the end of the year.

And at Lindero, the gold production for the first nine months came in at 70,481 ounces over to San Jose where in the third quarter they produced 510,741 ounces of silver and 3,771 ounces of gold at head grades of 99 grams per ton and 0.74 grams per ton gold. Obviously this has declined throughout the year as the mine plan in the second half of 2024 is somewhat uncertain as they have been reaching the tail end of reserves. They did complete the exploration program at the Yesi vein and the company, this part down here, which is pretty relevant now assessing its economic potential along with the resources at the Victoria vein, and so right now they’re evaluating those options which include placing it on care and maintenance or triggering a progressive closure plan.

So certainly that will be something we’ll check in with Jorge about in our next call, although keep in mind that it’s already been largely priced in that there is a complete shutdown at Fortuna. So if they are able to extend that, I would consider that a bit of an unexpected positive to the market. And again, hopefully we will find out in the next couple of weeks and also Kayama where they had 305,446 ounces of silver at a head grade of 82 grams per ton and zinc and lead production of 12.8 million pounds and just under 10 million pounds of lead with head grades of 4.64 for the zinc and 3.62 percent for the lead.

And there you have Fortuna’s third quarter production numbers. I’m not sure just yet when our next call with management is scheduled, but largely in line and leaving them on track to meet guidance. So another strong quarter for Fortuna, especially while we have the elevated gold price certainly going to help and it will be fun to see how the earnings went in the third quarter. And as we wrap up here, just wanted to mention there was some news from the Burkina Faso government that came out. Also a story about impact of rain conditions at San Jose where there had been some information presented in the market that did not turn out to be completely accurate and Fortuna did offer a comment on that earlier this week.

And to find out a little bit more about that, just click on the video coming your way now. [tr:trw].

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