Aura Minerals - Q3 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Third Quarter 2024 earnings call. This conference is being recorded, and the replay will be available at the company's website at aura-minerals.com/investidores/. The presentation will also be available for download. This call is also available in Portuguese. To access, you can press the globe icon on the lower right side of your Zoom screen, and then choose to enter the Portuguese Room. After that, select "Mute Original Audio". Para acessar nossa conferência em português, clique no ícone do globo ao lado inferior direito da sua tela Zoom e selecione a opção "Portuguese Room". Ao acessar a nova sala, certifique-se de mutar o áudio original. We would like to inform that all attendees will only be listening to the conference during the presentation, and then we will start the question-and-answer session when further instructions will be provided.

Before proceeding, we would like to clarify that any statements that may be made during this conference call regarding the company's business prospects, operational and financial projections, and goals are the beliefs and assumptions of Aura Executive Board and the current information available to the company. These statements may involve risks and uncertainties, as they relate to future events and therefore depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. Investors should be aware of events related to the macroeconomic scenario, the industry, and other factors that could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in their respective forward-looking statements. Present at this conference, we have Rodrigo Barbosa, President and CEO, and Kleber Cardoso, the CFO. Now, I'll turn the conference over to Rodrigo Barbosa. You may begin your conference.

Rodrigo Barbosa (President and CEO)

Thank you very much, and good morning for all. It's a pleasure to be here again to talk about Q3 results. And as we will go through the presentation, all of us, we are super proud to share with the market the strong results that are coming with higher production, lower cost, and higher gold prices. And as we will see throughout the presentation, for 2025, there's another project coming online that we will be able to continue to grow and deliver on stronger results along the next quarters. Just one second. Okay. So, as we already disclosed with the market a couple of weeks ago, during Q3, we produced 68.2 gold equivalent ounces when added to the other quarters on the last 12 months, record high production of 270,000 gold equivalent ounces in production on the yearly basis.

This is an unreported 10% increase on Q3 compared to Q3 2023, and as we've been disclosing with the market, we would see this increase along the year, first because we have fixed and increased production in Honduras that went through a challenging year last year, and on the top of that, also Almas coming online and also reaching full production after the transition of the contractor, so when you add the stronger production for Honduras and then also Almas with a stable production and in Aranzazu, despite some lower production in Apoena, we are reaching record high production. At the same time, we are very glad that we could manage, and as I was mentioning, we managing the cost is our focus. Almas has a lower cash cost compared to the average that we have, so Almas coming online also can contribute to a lower sustaining cash cost.

The combination of higher production, higher gold prices, and lower cost came to a record high EBITDA of $78 million. This is close to 40% above the previous quarter. Understanding that during Q3, the average gold prices was $2,500, while today is above $2,700. Of course, during Q4, there will be some impact on the cash generation due to the collars that Kleber is going to present, but on EBITDA, this is going to be stronger. Also there are some ounces that are not hedged that will benefit from stronger gold prices during Q4. During next year, we will also have some hedges, but that is less than 20% of the production. Also benefited from a higher gold price. Through this record high EBITDA of $78 million, that was translated to $65 million on free cash flow to firm.

Out of this $65 million, we invested $54 million. That means that we've been able to grow within our own cash flow from the operations. And despite investing in Borborema and other projects for growth, we've been able to also reduce the net debt to EBITDA, which gives us a very strong position to start production on Borborema next year already with a lower leverage that will contribute to a higher production and cash flows from operations. Borborema, as I was mentioning, is already above 54% construction completed on time, on budget to start the ramp-up during Q1 next year, and then commercial production second semester next year. Very much in line with our projections. And now entering the very fast speed that we will disburse in advance in the project so that we can start the ramp-up in Q1 next year.

Kleber is going to also mention to you on one hand we have a very strong and it's a very good sign that gold price has been appreciated significantly until the end of Q3, although it continued to appreciate. This strong cash flow comes from this gold price. But also there is some accounting non-cash adjustment that we need to do to mark-to-market the options that Kleber will also provide you more detail. So very strong Q3, and we should see Q4 continue to increase in terms of results. And then next year, Borborema online also adding more ounces and more EBITDA and more cash flows. That's important that strong results that we continue to move after Q3 closed. Assessing capital markets on the debt capital markets, we just announced BRL 1 billion that was initially forecast to be BRL 0.5 billion.

We increased due to the significant demand to BRL one billion. We also could reduce the cost. That shows how strong Aura has capillarity and can access a good source of capital when it's necessary. On the top of that, we also announced an acquisition that we entered in the process of acquisition of one project in Guatemala. That has a world-class deposit that will take a few years for us to be able to get approvals and licensing fully so that we can start investing. But we are very confident that we will be able to do so. And after closing, we will also dive in in the project to then disclose more information about our strategy with the project. Also recently, yesterday, we announced a change in dividend policy, which we now pay on a quarterly basis. We were paying biannually.

Now we're going to pay on a quarterly basis, reminding the investors that our policy is 20% of EBITDA minus recurring CapEx, not including the expansion CapEx. But as you can notice, during the last few years, we've been paying above the minimum, above the guidance that we give. And now we also declared more dividends yesterday, which provide our investors annualized yield of 9.3% return on dividends and share buyback. So that Aura, if you see the other years, we also provided a return to our shareholders in 2022 by 6%, same thing in 2023, and 2021, 13%, and now 9.3%. On the top of our growth. So we've been able to do what we disclosed to the market during our IPO in Brazil. We had a project to grow, to invest in greenfield projects while we pay dividends, including also M&As. Since then, we acquired Borborema.

We are now in the process of acquisition also of Bluestone and investing in Almas and now paying the dividends and maintaining and also reducing our Net Debt to EBITDA. That is a very strong signal that Aura has a very strong cash flow coming from the operations, although we will continue to increase along the next year with the development of Borborema, Matupá, and hopefully Cerro Blanco and Borborema. So next slide. As we always disclose, safety is the most important value that we have, and we monitor all the operations on the hourly basis and daily basis. That quarter, we had a zero Lost Time Incident. Now we are at Aranzazu 24 months, Minosa 23 months, and Almas 26 months without any Lost Time Incident. Apoena, we had, unfortunately, a minor Lost Time Incident during Q2.

But if it were not that, we also would be around 24 months in Apoena without lost time incident. We also have a third-party consultancy that monitor together. We have our own team, but also a consultant external party to monitor all the geotechnical structures. And they also always issue a report about the stability of the structures. And we finished the quarter with all the geotechnical structures under satisfactory conditions. So when we look at the production on the left chart, on the line above the bars, as I was mentioning, since last year, we would see a gradual increase in the last 12 months' production. And now we see that we had an increase in Q3 2023, Q4 2023, Q1, Q2, and Q3 2024. This is the fifth quarter in a row that we've been increasing the last 12 months' production.

And that comes from the challenge that had been addressed in Honduras and also now the production coming in full in Almas. When you move to the right side on the bars, we saw Aranzazu that had a minor decrease in gold equivalent ounces. That tells us because as we convert the production and the revenues in copper by gold equivalent, we divide it by the price of gold. Gold price has appreciated more than copper price. So that means that it's less gold equivalent ounces produced. Although in terms of amount of copper, it would have increased by 8%. Production of Aranzazu has been very stable and very much in line with our mine plan. Apoena, this is where we had a reduction in production, very much triggered by a delay in some access that we would have to mine in Nosde.

We had to shift to other areas that had a lower grade and also lower recovery. But we should be entering that area very soon, either next quarter or next year. But we also should see an increase in production Q4 compared to Q3 in Apoena, although not significant. In MINOSA, again, we continue to do improvements on the operations, either stocking or also on the recoveries. But also we had a favorable weather with less than average rain that allowed us to produce from 19,000 ounces to 21,000 during the quarter, which was very strong and also helped us to reduce the cost. Almas, as we were disclosing to the market Q2, we had a unique quarter. Once we had a transition in the contractor, we lost production mainly in April and May.

As we showed and disclosed with the market in June, we were already producing close to 5,000 ounces per month. We had realized and we understood that now we were on track to meet a strong production in Q3 and then also in Q4. Now we are delivering this 15,000 ounces during the quarter, which is on average 5,000, which is the capacity for Almas during this year. Very strong, not only with the production, but also now stabilizing the costs. That also helped us on Almas to bring the average slightly down. As I mentioned, in terms of cash cost, very important while the industry has been increasing in all-in sustaining cash cost due to very different factors, including inflation along the last four or five quarters.

Aura, we've been able to manage very closely on the hourly basis, on the daily basis, our cost. So we've been seeing on Q4 last year, Q1, Q2, Q3, a very stable trend with a slight decrease now during Q3. And we should continue to see this stability in terms of cash cost for Q4 during this year. Next slide. So in terms of the guidance, we maintain the guidance that we initially projected to the market. We are now at 201,000 ounces of production. When you project us to the end of Q4, we should be very much in line with the guidance between 244 and 292, perhaps in the middle or slightly above, with a constant price where when we projected this should be above the average of the guidance in terms of production, reflecting strong production that's coming from operation despite some weaker production in Apoena.

In terms of cash cost, we also could provide in the market on Q3 year to date the cash cost now at $1,022. It would have been below $1,000 if we had the prices that we projected. The influence here of the gold prices is when you convert copper to gold, it's less gold equivalent. So you divide the cost by less production so that increase a little bit at the cash cost. So that's why we provide the investors and the analysts the two references. But despite higher cash cost because of higher gold prices, which is good news, we've been able to manage and we are now very much in line at the lower level of the guidance we gave to the market. That also was reflected to all-in sustaining cash cost.

That is now at the $1,300, would be below $1,300 at the constant prices, which is very much with the bottom range of 2024 guidance. And we see no reason for that trend to change during Q4. In terms of CapEx, we now have $114 million until September. Projection or the guidance for the market is $188-$219 million, understanding that now Borborema just entered the phase of high expenses and high speed of construction. So we maintain the guidance to the market also for the year end in terms of CapEx. And Borborema very much in line with the schedule and also with the budget. Talking about Borborema, that's the picture on the left. Things are now coming together. As you see in the picture, we build the parts around the main plant. And then once those parts get ready, we assemble them.

Now we are just entering the phase of assembling all the parts into the main plant. This picture should evolve significantly along the next couple of weeks. Again, we always like to highlight the importance and the relevance of this project within our portfolio. This is a project that was initially projected with 812,000 ounces, although we have 2 million ounces of resources. We utilize only 812,000 ounces as a reserve because of restriction of one area that we would only access if our road would be moved. With this 812,000 ounces of reserves, this project at the gold price of $2,600 is already generating an NPV close to $540 million and also internal rate of return above 81%. Understanding that this project, after we can license to move the road, the reserves can more than double. Then we also access a significantly higher NPV.

This NPV was calculated without the impacts of the collars that we did for the first three years, even to understand how relevant it is or not so significant is the impact of the collars. If we were to deduct the price of the collars at the strike price during the first three years, which is 80% of the production that we did the hedges, it would deduct from the NPV around $30 million out of the $537 million. So that was guarantee the payback without harming the total value of the project on the long term. Kleber, now I turn the floor to you to present the results, and then we come back with questions and answers after that.

Kleber Cardoso (CFO)

Okay. Thanks, Rodrigo. Good morning, everyone. So on this page, as usual, we start with a summary of the main financial KPIs for this quarter, the last few quarters.

On this dotted line, we bring the accumulated number for the last 12 months, pretty much consistent with Rodrigo's explanation. This was a quarter of many record highs in terms of operational results. Our revenues reached $156 million in this quarter. Our net revenues now taking last 12 months is already at $547 million at the end of this quarter. When we looked at our Adjusted EBITDA, as Rodrigo showed, our EBITDA increased significantly in this quarter to $78 million coming from $56 million in the previous quarter. When we look at the dotted line, we see a trend also in the last five quarters of increasing our trailing last 12 months EBITDA with a big acceleration now in Q3 2024, reaching $228 million. If the gold prices stay where they are, we should see another acceleration in Q4 2024 as well.

When we look at net income, we reported a net loss of $12 million on this quarter. That is once again similar to what happened in the last few quarters related to the non-cash losses to date related to the gold hedges mark-to-market. We see that has happened when I have a one-page to explain more detail. This has happened since the fourth quarter of 2023. And if we exclude these impacts of the mark-to-market losses on this quarter, our net income, which is the adjusted net income that we have right at the bottom, would have been positive at $43 million, much more consistent with the operational results. And then on the bottom, the right side of the page, we see the progression of our cash and net debt. We see on this third quarter both the cash and net debt consistent with the previous quarter.

We ended the quarter with $196 million in cash, not including yet the proceeds from the debenture that we issued in October at our Almas, BRL 1 billion, about $175 million. In October, our cash position increased significantly from this 196. Our net debt remained stable at $144 million, which is very positive considering Q3 was the quarter that to date we invest the most in the CapEx for the Borborema project, and in the same direction, very positive, we see the reduction in our net debt over the last 12 months EBITDA ratio coming from 0.8 in the last quarter to 0.6 now. Now, understanding the main items between our Adjusted EBITDA and net income for the quarter, we see out of this $78 million EBITDA that we reported. Previous units reported very strong numbers. Minosa reported $27 million EBITDA.

Aranzazu $24 million and Almas $23 million, so they're performing very strong. Apoena, despite a weaker quarter, weaker production, also reported a $10 million EBITDA, then our ongoing depletion expenses of $17 million in EBITDA above what we saw in the last few quarters. That's mainly because of the increasing production, we're recognizing more depreciation in our results, and then one of the biggest items for the quarter was the financial expenses that we had, an expense of $63 million in the quarter. Most of that related again to the mark-to-market losses related to the gold derivatives, which were close to $57 million this quarter, higher than the previous quarters, which we had to go next stage in more of the trades, then income tax expenses at $10 million according to our expectation, bringing the quarter to a net loss of $12 million.

But then we bring back the mark-to-market impacts. We see that we would have ended the quarter with adjusted net income positive of $43 million. Then on this page, we bring an analysis to help us understand the accounting impacts of the mark-to-markets, especially the collar, but also the previous collars, and the relationship of these accounting losses with the increasing gold prices. Here on the right side of the page, we bring the closing gold prices at the end of each quarter. We see that fortunately, the gold price has been increasing consistently over the last four quarters, with the biggest increase being on this last quarter, Q3 2024, where gold prices increased by $330 per ounce. Then on the right side, we see there is a correlation between our mark-to-market liability and increasing liability with such increasing gold prices.

We see in quarters where the gold price is increasing more, the liability and therefore the mark-to-market loss increasing more, and in other quarters, increasing gold price increased less, and the provision also increased less, and the biggest increase in the mark-to-market liability and mark-to-market loss was also in this last quarter consistent with the biggest increase in gold prices, and then on this page, we try to shift from an accounting view more to, I would say, an economic view, what is expected to be the cash impacts in our future cash flows of our standing gold derivatives. Currently, we have about 290,000 ounces of standing gold collars with expiry dates ranging between now to 4/2024 and the year of 2028. We see in this quarter, we have about 40,500 ounces of gold collars expiring.

Then when we see from 2025 to 2028, most of the remaining gold collars are related to the Borborema hedging program. As a reminder, when we announced the construction of Borborema, we also announced that we were entering a hedging program to hedge 80% of the first three years of production of the Borborema project, through gold collars that receives what's most outstanding here. On the bottom of the page, we bring in what's the average strike price of these outstanding call options per periods. We see on average it's $2,500, which at current spot prices or if gold continues going up, these collars are in the money in favor of the banks against Aura.

But we also bring a reference what would be our future production, especially when Borborema comes online, to show that these outstanding derivatives are a small portion of our expected future production. We have a dotted line with the 353,000 ounces of gold equivalent. This is not a projection or a guidance. This is more we're calling a pro forma number, which is taking our last 12 months production and adding what is the average yearly production for Borborema, since most of these outstanding gold collars are related to Borborema. So we see depending on the year, between 20% and 25% of our production between 2025 and 2027 would be hedges, which means 20%-25% of our production and hedging flows would be capped at $2,400, which means then the majority of our production, 75%-80%, would be exposed to gold prices.

That's why continuing increasing gold prices should be a disproportionate positive impact on our future cash flows, as the important thing is that hedges is just a small portion of our future expected production. Now, shifting to a view on the changes in our cash and cash equivalents throughout the third quarter, we see we started the quarter with $192 million in cash and equivalents. Then on this left side of the page is what we call the adjusted free cash flow to firm, which is the free cash flow to firm generated by the four mines in production, not including investments and expansions.

We see that portion of the business generates a strong cash flow, $65 million in the quarter, was also record high in the history of the company, which was more than enough to pay for all the investment for growth in the quarter that was $54 million, of which about almost $40 million was related to the CapEx of the Borborema project, so very positive what we generated in the quarter, more than paid for the cash expenses mainly in the Borborema project construction in the quarter, and then here to the right side of the page, the financial items highlighting that we invested $6 million to do share buybacks, and here is the same analysis looking for the year, the first nine months, so similar conclusions, the cash flows generated by the mines in production were $113 million.

That was more than enough to pay itself for the investment for growth in the same period that was $95 million. And then to the right side, I would highlight the dividends and share repurchase. We're returning $35 million to shareholders in the first nine months, not including yet the dividends that we just announced yesterday and bringing the cash flow close to $200 million. And then we do our reaction for questions.

Operator (participant)

We are going to start the question and answer session for investors and analysts. If you wish to ask a question, please click on raise hand. If your question has already been answered, you can leave the queue by clicking on put hand down. Our first question comes from Guilherme Nippes with XP. You can open your microphone.

Guilherme Nippes (Analyst)

Hi, good morning, Rodrigo, Kleber, Natasha, and thanks for the opportunity. Congratulations on the great results.

I have two questions here on our side. My first one is if you could provide us with an update on how you plan to prioritize the projects currently in your pipeline, given that you have now the acquisition of Bluestone and also considering that you have the other projects like Matupá, Altamira, and Serra da Estrela. And my second question is on Almas, and considering that you have the contractor transition, can we see any potential upside from here in terms of production and cost for Q4? I know that the production increased almost 40% this quarter and cost declined by over 20%, but just to make sure that this is the normalized level for Almas as well, and if we could see any potential upside looking further. These are my two questions. Thank you.

Rodrigo Barbosa (President and CEO)

Sure. Thank you. Thank you, Guilherme.

In terms of the sequence of the project, it is for sure our main priority today to finish construction of Borborema on time on budget, while we are now aggregating and doing exploration investments in Matupá, particularly in Pezão, right, so that we can aggregate it to Matupá along next year. Our objective is to start construction hopefully to the end of next year. That depends on the results of exploration that we might have through Pezão and also Pé Quente. That is then what is scheduled. Bluestone yet is a transaction that needs to be closed in January, and after that, we will be able to provide more information.

Although the project is fully advanced in terms of exploration and also engineering, we understand that it might take time to get full support from central government and local authorities, including this socializing. So that might take a few years. Of course, if those conversations go faster than expected, then we could reshuffle and prioritize. But yet, Matupá is our main. We renew the option in Serra da Estrela, so we continue to do exploration. Of course, if we renew the options, that's because we saw a very interesting potential, which we are now at the dry season doing more drilling. We plan to disclose more information on the results along the next year.

We've been very optimistic that this can be very interesting for our, but that will take yet additional two or three years of explorations until we have a pre-feasibility study or the feasibility study. So we still have some time of drilling. In terms of Almas, as you could see, we had a big jump from transitioning last quarter Q2 to Q3. Although we are working in more improvements, expanding the plant and so on, that would be now more gradual. You should not expect to have a higher jump in Almas, but low and constant improvements now on the day-to-day that we are doing, but not a big step such as we had from Q2 to Q3.

Guilherme Nippes (Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Ricardo Monegaglia with Safra. You can open your microphone.

Ricardo Monegaglia (Analyst)

Hello everyone. Can you hear me well? All right. Sure.

First of all, congrats on the results. It was good to see the continuity of this growing trend, and as you said, you expect another sequential growth in Q4, but just to understand, during last quarter's conference call, you mentioned that the quarterly production could reach a level above 70,000 ounces. Your production in Q3 was close, and maybe Apoena was the key issue for not reaching that target, so if you could remind us, what are the main challenges for production in this operation? And maybe if you could let us know what could we expect for normalized quarterly or annual production level in this operation of Apoena, this would be interesting, and the other question, as everyone knows, gold price has been on an amazing run over the past year.

I just wanted to see what the outlook for gold prices is in your view? And do you think that a Trump or Harris administration would have an impact on that? Thank you for the opportunity.

Rodrigo Barbosa (President and CEO)

Thank you. Ricardo, just going back to the first question was about production levels on Q3, you mentioned 70,000. For the good news, the gold price has increased, but that also impacted the gold equivalent production. As I mentioned, if it were not that, we would have been above 70,000 production the quarter, and again, above 70,000 during Q4. But then gold price increases, so the gold equivalent translates to a lower volume. So for a very good reason, we did not reach the 70,000. And hopefully, gold price continues to increase and we have this challenge for Q4 during this year.

Apoena, we will not be providing yet the 2025 projections to the market. We should see an increased production during Q4 this year. Yet, it's a mine that even next year we'll have time to develop more, open more the mine. The exploration results have been very interesting, so we might have to invest more to open and have a very interesting years after we have all this preparation done. So Apoena, I would say that we will have a minor improvement during Q4, but we should not expect a major also change during the next quarter. Last question you mentioned was about gold prices. I think gold price has been surprising the market with constant increase independently from the elections. I think what the market says is that either Trump or Kamala, they are not focusing at yet.

They haven't disclosed much what they will do to control the fiscal deficit. So in that direction, I think either one will continue to not have a fiscal discipline, and that is favorable for gold prices as well.

Ricardo Monegaglia (Analyst)

All right. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Next question from Edgard Pinto with Itaú BBA. You can open your microphone.

Rodrigo Barbosa (President and CEO)

Edgar, I think you are on mute if you're talking.

Edgard Pinto (Analyst)

Can you hear me?

Rodrigo Barbosa (President and CEO)

Now, yes.

Edgard Pinto (Analyst)

Okay. Hi, Rodrigo. Hi, Kleber. Thank you for the questions. Congrats for the results. Another quarter with improvements in operating rates. So I have two questions. The first one is a follow-up on Ricardo's questions on the EPP. We know that you have a very complex operation there with several mines. So my points here are the first one. For how long do you expect to operate at Nosde?

Looking to the medium to long term, which are our plans there? You had those studies about that super pit. Do you even consider going underground there? How do you think about these operations in the medium to long term to have lower volatility to results? Then my second question, and also a very specific one, on San Andrés, we saw that production has improved significantly over the past few quarters, but with a very different profile from what you had before. Your grades remain relatively low compared to 2021 and 2022, and also your recovery rates remain well below what you had in those previous years. But your plant feed has increased significantly, so your production at the end remains very solid. So can you please explain what is behind these lower recovery rates, now close to 62%-65%?

And if this new profile for operations, let's call it this way, with higher plant feeds and lower grades and recovery rates, is what we need to expect going forward? Can you operate with these higher plant feeds? Do you have any bottlenecks regarding plant feed? Maybe not because you have a leaching operation there, but if you could give more color here, it would be great. Thank you.

Rodrigo Barbosa (President and CEO)

Thank you, Edgar. So first, in Apoena, yes, I think the mine is moving to have a bigger open pit. We don't feel it's going to be underground, but all the information that we've been receiving on exploration shows a path to a bigger open pit along the medium term.

I believe it's going to be volatile for the next quarters up to the end of 2025, and then after that, we start to open up all the mine, and then that will create more stability in terms of production. On Honduras, on the other hand, of course, the other operations in Almas are very stable, and with the gradual improvement in next year also comes online for Borborema, and Honduras, that change comes from the change in our ore body. As I mentioned, the nature is not equal everywhere, so it has some changes. We enter now in the lower grades. We should see this now stabilize at this level of grades. We don't see going back to higher grades as we saw four years ago, and when you have lower grades, also the recovery is lower, right? It goes a little bit together.

Although we feel that the team has been working significantly to increase recoveries, I think we can achieve above 65% with the improvements that we are doing. In terms of piling, there is a bottleneck. I think we are very much at the bottleneck right now. I think there's not much what we could do to improve production. On the other hand, there's always alternatives and initiatives for us to keep an eye on the cost and see if we can gain productivity and reduce the cost.

Edgard Pinto (Analyst)

Great. Great. Thank you. And if I may, just a follow-up on the first question as well. It has been only one week since the announcement of the deal with Bluestone. Have you had the chance to talk with the local government? What was the reaction there? Or is it still early to say here? It's early to say yet.

Rodrigo Barbosa (President and CEO)

We entered in the process of acquisition. We are not the owner of the asset, so we can and we should only contact the government after the closing so that we go through January.

Edgard Pinto (Analyst)

Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much, Rodrigo, Kleber.

Rodrigo Barbosa (President and CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

The question and answer session is over. We would like to hand the floor back to Mr. Rodrigo Barbosa for the company's final remarks.

Rodrigo Barbosa (President and CEO)

Well, so I would like to thank everybody. I think it was a very strong quarter, as we could show. I think as important as the strong results is to see what Aura has been able to achieve over the last years and project what is coming for the next year.

A quick reminder, investors: we did our dual listing in Brazil when we did a re-IPO of the company with a project to come from 200,000 ounces to 400,000 ounces, developing Almas and Matupá. Our strategy was also to unlock value through exploration and also through M&A while we would pay dividends with the market. Since then, we paid 13.5% dividend yield in 2021, 6% in 2022, 6% in 2023, and then in the last 12 months now, reaching 9% dividend yield. In the meanwhile, we also acquired Borborema. We built Almas. Now we are building Borborema. We acquired Serra da Estrela. We're doing exploration. We are increasing our resources and reserves as we are moving to higher production. Recently, we also entered in the process of acquisition of Bluestone.

So we've been able to decently deliver to the market the big picture, which is to grow, to unlock value through also execution of the greenfield project, Almas online, on time, on budget, and now at full production at the lower cash cost that we're projecting. Borborema, more than half of construction done. Coming the ramp-up on time on budget expected through the first quarter next year and commercial production along the next semester. We also recently announced Bluestone, which is a project that we will see when we would be able to build, but that's a world-class asset that would add significant ounces to our production with a lower cash cost as well. All of this while we are also doing exploration moving forward with Matupá. We are now acquired Pezão, option to Pezão and Pé Quente. Serra da Estrela also moving forward.

Hopefully, we can translate this exploration program into a PEA or pre-feasibility study in the next three to four years. So we are very much on track to reach the 450,000 ounces of gold equivalent within the project that we already have or even surpass this if we succeed with Bluestone and develop it in the next couple of years. So I would like to thank all for participating in this call. Very strong results, very strong quarter during Q3 with gold price at $2,500. Gold price today is at $2,700, above $2,700, and that we continue to push our results higher. Costs are under control, and next year, remembering and reminding that enter a major mine for us, which produces close to 85,000 ounces of production on a yearly basis with a lower cash cost compared to what we have today.

So we will be able to continue to increase production while we can also reduce the cost. And now with a very favorable gold price. So I think we've been very strong with delivering results, not only the results, but also the strategic project levels and then unlocking value to our shareholders. So thank you for participating.

Operator (participant)

Our conference is now closed. We thank you for your participation and wish you a nice day.