Mike Fraser
Good afternoon, good morning, and good evening for those that have joined the presentation of our financial year 2025 results. On behalf of the team at Gold Fields, I'm really pleased to deliver a very, very strong set of results for the group.
Going into the presentation, I have with me Alex. We will run through a short presentation that'll be shared between myself and Alex, and then we will spend some time at the back end addressing questions.
I would like to first draw your attention to the disclaimer on the forward-looking statements. Just going into some of the highlights, I think first and foremost, as I said, we are very proud to deliver a strong operating and financial performance for 2025.
I think firstly and most pleasingly, we delivered a safe delivery during the year, and it's quite clear that our safety improvement plan is starting to deliver positive outcomes for the group. In terms of production, attributable production was up 18% year-on-year.
Our all-in costs and all-in sustaining costs were within guidance and were marginally higher than 2024. Most of the impact was due to higher sustaining capital, but also due to royalties and stronger producing currencies.
If we look at the work that we've done in addition during the year, we completed the acquisition of Gold Road Resources. That was completed in quarter three.
That allowed us to consolidate 100% of Gruyere and the surrounding tenements, and I will touch on the outlook for Gruyere in a short while. We also continued the progressing of Windfall towards FID.
We worked on updating the execution plan as well as advancing conversations with our host community on advancing the impact and benefit agreement as well as progressing the final environmental approvals. In addition, in terms of our portfolio and as communicated at our Capital Markets Day in November, we've identified a number of asset optimization opportunities across our assets, and we have started embedding those into our plans for 2026.
Also to finally talk to the fact that we have significantly increased returns to shareholders, and that has been communicated in our results today. This follows our decision to revamp our capital allocation policy in November, which we communicated as part of Capital Markets Day, where we now are delivering 35% of free cash flow before discretionary investments.
In addition, we announced a special dividend of R4.50 per share as well as a share buyback of $100 million to be delivered during the course of the next 12 months. That delivers a total shareholder return of R31.85 per share, which in our view delivers upper quartile yield of over 6%.
We also have decided to allocate an additional $250 million to our top-up program over the next 2 years, which increases that total program to around $750 million, of which $353 million is delivered now in this result. Overall, I think the key message is that we've had a safe, reliable operating delivery during 2025, and that has delivered strong cash flow generation, which has allowed us to continue to reinvest in our business and return additional cash to our shareholders.
Just again to remind everyone of our portfolio, Gold Fields today is a global gold miner with assets in high-quality jurisdictions. We have nine mines and one project across six countries, and these are all in attractive mining jurisdictions.
We have delivered adjusted free cash flow of just under $3 billion during 2025, with around 44% of our production from Australia and key growth in Chile and Canada through Salares Norte and our Windfall project. If we move on to operational performance for 2025, again just most importantly, we're proud of the fact that we've been able to get everyone home safe and well at the end of every day.
We have had however seven serious injuries across the year, which again just galvanizes us to focus even more on delivering safer outcomes across our business. Pleasingly, we have also completed all 23 of the Elizabeth Broderick and Company recommendations.
These have now been implemented, and now we are working on continuous improvement of our culture. As I mentioned, attributable production at 2.44 million ounces at 18% improvement year-on-year, and that meant that we were able to deliver within our original production and cost guidance that we set at the beginning of 2025.
All-in costs were up 3% and all-in sustaining costs up 1%, largely due to increases in royalty paid as well as strengthening producer currencies, offset by dilution of higher ounces produced as well as higher quality ounces coming out of Salares Norte. I think the highlight again we call out is despite the challenges we had in 2024, the safe ramp-up at Salares Norte meant that we were able to deliver well above the market guidance during 2025.
That enabled us to deliver 175% increase in cash flow from operations. As Alex will show a little later, some of that is just allocation differences from Salares Norte between operational cash flow and group cash flow.
When you look at our net group cash flow, that is up nearly four times from 2025 as 2024. Just going on to our ESG performance briefly, we've spoken about the positive impact of our safety improvement plan that we're implementing.
We also had zero serious environmental incidents, and that's been consistent for the last 7 years. We have also made good progress on our gender diversity, with now 27% of our employees being women, with 28% in leadership, and of that 20% of our women are in core operating roles.
Due to the strong cash generation, we were able to share significantly to our stakeholders, and $1.44 billion of the total $5.7 billion that has been created was delivered to host communities. We have also delivered significant work in building out our group legacy programs in Peru, Ghana, Chile, and in South Africa, with Australian legacy program currently being scoped.
In terms of decarbonization, we've delivered 15% absolute emission reduction against our '26 baseline and a 5% net increase against the '26 baseline. We've also been able to achieve full conformance against the global GISTM on tailings management.
Under water stewardship, we've had 74% water recycling against our target of 73%. We've also completed our mid-term review of our 2030 targets.
I think two key changes that we are considering is changing our decarbonization target to an intensity reduction target, which will allow us to more actively move in line with portfolio changes on high-percentage operating environments. Just calling out our production very briefly, we have couple of things to call out.
Gruyere, you see an increase of 42,000 ounces, mainly due to the inclusion of 100% in quarter four as well as an increase in tons milled. Granny Smith was down, in line with our business plan, but what we are seeing is increasing grades as we're mining deeper.
St Ives, we saw the benefit of higher tons milled and an increase in the yield because of more fresh material going through the mill than stockpiles. South Deep pleasingly were up 16%, largely driven by improved mining grades as well as improved stope turnover, which allowed us to get greater consistency in feed through the system.
Damang was down largely due to the fact we were processing stockpiles through the year, and that was due to lower yield. Tarkwa down largely due to the fact that we had prioritized stockpiles.
Hand over to Alex to give us a rundown on the cost changes year-on-year.
Alex Dall
Thanks, Mike. We've seen a 3% year-on-year increase in all-in costs.
This is higher volumes offsetting inflation as well as investing in our future at Windfall. The higher operating costs are driven by the inclusion of Salares Norte as it reached commercial levels of production, the accounting for Gruyere at 100% for the fourth quarter of the year, as well as higher mining costs driven by both volumes.
The higher growth expenditure at Windfall is due to a full year of consolidated costs after the acquisition of Osisko Mining in Q4 2024. Then we see the significant impact of the higher gold volumes on decreasing our cost base.
Thank you, Mike.
Mike Fraser
Thanks very much, Alex. Just moving on very briefly then to some of the individual assets before I hand over to Alex for a more detailed financial overview.
I think just starting with Gruyere, we didn't entirely deliver all of the ounces that we would have liked to, but we made significant progress. We were able to deliver record material movements, we were up 37% year-on-year on tons mined, largely due to a focused attention to accelerating the Stage 5 waste strip.
That really translated into where we're seeing the higher costs due to larger development capital at the site. The other thing that was pleasing is that our mill achieved record throughput rates at 9.6 million tons.
That was a significant achievement in getting the mill running to close to its potential. Moving on to Granny Smith, again Granny Smith continues to be an important asset in our portfolio and delivers consistent results.
The reduction in production was in line with our plan as we prioritized development, and in particular, significant effort going into catching up on some of the infrastructure spend, particularly ventilation and energy reticulation. We were able to really see those higher grades coming through the mill.
All-in costs was up 14%, but that was largely due to the higher capital spend, in particular as we bore the brunt of the capital spend on the renewable energy microgrid during the year. On an all-in sustaining cost basis, they were down 5% year-on-year.
Moving on to Agnew, Agnew saw a 7% increase in attributable production, and that was largely due to an improvement in mine grades and processed grades, but we did see a 21% increase in capital spend, which translated into a 14% increase in costs. That again was largely due to the development of the Barren Lands underground mine and related brownfield exploration.
South Deep, we've touched on this, production up nearly 16%, which had the effect of diluting a cost increase by only 3%. This shows us the leverage at South Deep because of the fact that it's a highly fixed cost operation.
That translated into a significant growth in free cash flow, which is really pleasing to see. The improvement at South Deep was really driven by improving stope turnaround, and that really is the key focus for us to improve rock on ground.
Once we have rock on ground, we're able to get that through the system and deliver higher yields through the plant. From our point of view, South Deep has really had a good 2025 and is positioned itself for a good start into 2026.
Damang, we had production down 28%. That's largely due to the fact that we stopped mining in the beginning of 2025 and really been processing stockpiles with the associated yield.
Moving on to Tarkwa, Tarkwa had a 12% reduction in production ounces against 2024. That was largely again due to the fact that we had prioritized a lot of waste stripping activities during the year and prioritized waste movement over ore mining.
That meant that our grades were down over the year as we used mining activities, as well as the fact that we had lower production ounces during the year. Despite that, we saw free cash flow up over 100%, largely due to the benefits of the tailwind of gold prices.
Salares Norte, without adding a lot more to that, really that's largely due to the copper-gold price factor. On a specific commodity basis, we saw copper and gold being delivered above our plan, largely due to better than expected grade yields.
All-in costs were slightly higher on an all-in equivalent basis due to some of that lower production.
Alex Dall
On the back of the higher production as unpacked earlier by Mike and an average gold price for the period of about $3,500 per ounce, headline earnings are up 170% year-on-year to $2.6 billion. Adjusted free cash flow is just shy of $3 billion for the year, or up 391% year-on-year and at $3.32 per share.
This has enabled us to declare a record base dividend for the full year of R25.50 per share, comprising the interim dividend of R7 per share and a final dividend payable in quarter one 2026 of R18.50 per share. In addition, we are also in a position to announce additional returns to shareholders of $353 million, comprising a special dividend of R4.50 per share, taking the total dividends for the year to R30 per share, and a share buyback program of $100 million, which will be executed over the next 12 months.
I'm also pleased that our balance sheet is in a strong position after funding both the Osisko and Gold Road transactions, and we are sitting in a net debt to EBITDA ratio of 0.26 times. This slide unpacks our cash generated over the period.
The operations before tax generated cash of $5.5 billion. After tax and royalties, as well as interest and certain working capital adjustments, we generated cash flows from operations before investing activities of $4.5 billion.
After capital of $1.4 billion, lease payments of $100 million, and certain rehab outflows, we generated free cash flow of $3 billion, or approximately five times the free cash flow of $600 million in 2024. This slide is the capital allocation framework that we communicated with the market as part of our Capital Markets Day in November 2025, which is all about ensuring we continue to invest in our assets to ensure safe, reliable, and cost-effective operations, maintain our investment-grade credit rating, and pay a sector-leading base dividend.
After this, it is all about getting that competitive tension right in allocating our free cash flow generated between investing in our future, building balance sheet flexibility, and delivering industry-leading returns to shareholders. Unpacking the allocation of our cash that we generated in 2025, our free cash flow before capital and dividends generated is $4.4 billion.
This enabled us to deliver on our capital allocation priorities in a disciplined manner, ensuring that we got the tension right between the three core pillars. We reinvested in the business through spending over $1 billion on sustaining capital.
We also delivered on our growth objectives by spending growth capital and exploration expenditure of $665 million. This was to bring Salares Norte to commercial levels of production, advance the Windfall project, and to increase life and lower costs at our existing operations, in particular at St Ives.
We delivered strong shareholder returns through $1.4 billion through our base dividend, which is aligned to our revised policy, and additional returns of up to $353 million. After this, we had $944 million of cash, which was used to delever and build balance sheet flexibility on the back of the debt raised to fund both the Osisko and the Gold Road transactions.
We ended the year with net debt of $1.4 billion, which includes leases of around $500 million. As communicated at the CMD, through the change to our base dividend policy, we are declaring a full-year dividend of $1.4 billion, special dividends of US$253 million, and a buyback of $100 million.
This enables us to deliver total shareholder returns of $1.7 billion over the period, which is 44% of free cash flow before growth and 54% of total free cash flow. This is in excess of half of all our cash being returned to shareholders.
On the back of the stronger gold price, we are also in a position to top up our program that we announced at the CMD from $500 million to $750 million over the next 2 years. After both the special and the share buyback, this leaves $400 million under the program.
This graph shows our dividend history over the last 5 years. In 2025, we are able to deliver record shareholder returns of R31.90 per share, a 220% increase from 2024.
This we believe equates to industry-leading yield of 6.3%. Thanks, Mike.
Back to you.
Mike Fraser
Thanks very much, Alex. Look, I think just the work that was done on revisiting our capital allocation framework has certainly given us a lot of clarity on how we position the business going forward.
What I can honestly say is that that does not limit our ability to continue to improve the quality of our portfolio. Now we move on to what we are doing and the three levers of growth that we consider around improving our portfolio.
I think during the year, despite the significant cash generation and what we have returned to shareholders, we continue to make disciplined investments across the three growth levers during 2025. In terms of our bolt-on M&A, we did complete the Gold Road acquisition, which allowed us to consolidate 100% of Gruyere and the surrounding land package.
We also significantly advanced our Windfall project in preparation for FID, which we are still planning for mid-2026. In addition, we have been hugely successful in extending life at our assets through our brownfields exploration program, and in a few slides, I'll touch on the success we've had in reserve replacement at our assets.
We spent $129 million US dollars in our brownfields program in '25, which allowed us to deliver a 9% increase in reserves across the year. In addition, we have really revitalized our greenfields exploration program.
We have spent $101 million during 2025. This is inclusive of a $35 million US dollar equity investment in Founders Metals to gain a significant exposure to Antino gold project in Suriname.
In addition, we spent $21 million on our broader land package at Windfall, which is beyond the brownfield spend. Also what we did in quarter four, we integrated the Gold Fields exploration portfolio, which gave us a significant additional exposure for our Gruyere mine.
I think one of the other things to call out is again not over speaking it up, but Salares is going to continue to be an important part of our value accretion over the coming years. We were able to have uninterrupted operations during 2025 despite the same weather conditions that we experienced in 2024, which again spoke to the effectiveness of the work that we did to prepare it for winter.
We achieved commercial level of production in quarter three, with steady-state production achieved during quarter four. We were also able to continue to progress the chinchilla capture and relocation program to de-risk the development of the Agua Amarga extension.
In 2026, our focus is to continue to maintain the steady-state throughput and stability through the plant. We still have around 2 years of mined material sitting in front of the plant, we certainly not mine-constrained or at risk in the mining in any way.
We'll continue to advance the chinchilla capture and relocation program and starting to prepare the second half of the year the Agua Amarga pioneering and pre-strip activities. We will also continue to undertake near-mine exploration to identify potential additional ore bodies and ore sources for the mill.
Our 2026 guidance remains intact against our CMD disclosures of 525 to 550,000 ounces of gold equivalent, with an all-in sustaining cost of between $450 and $600 per ounce. The next big growth lever for us is really progressing Windfall to final investment decision.
Our key deliverables really for 2026 is finalizing the execution plan, getting the main environmental completed and awarded during the end of H1, continuing the secondary permitting approvals, which we also require by the end of June, getting the impact benefit agreement signed, and really ensuring that these are all in place to take the most advantage of the weather windows ahead of the next winter season at the end of 2026. Our plan at this stage is to really advance those key deliverables during the first half of this year.
That will ensure that we have all of the site cleared and core infrastructure in place for the start of 2027, which allows us to start plant construction during the first half of 2027, with commissioning commencing the back end of 2028, with first gold during 2029. The critical path for us over the next few months is really around the key permitting and approvals, and we are confident that we remain on track at this point in time, but we'll provide a good update at the Q1 operating update in early May.
Just moving on to the Gold Road acquisition very briefly, again we think that this was a very well-executed transaction. We got the timing right.
This was always something we wanted to do, and we feel very pleased with the outcome of what this has delivered. For a net $1.4 billion, we were able to consolidate 100% of this asset, and that allows us to really deliver on the full potential of this asset and optimize the full life of mine.
It also allows us to bring in 100% of Golden Highway and that entire Yamarna land package, which we have already identified a number of targets to build into our longer-term plan. The key focus for us in 2026 is advancing the studies to optimize the deposit, obviously looking at ways of accelerating access to some of those high-grade material to supplement the lower-grade Gruyere deposit, as well as investing in further drilling across the Yamarna package.
Just going on to reserve replacement, this is ultimately how we measure the life of our portfolio. Pleasingly, we were able to deliver additional 4 million ounces in reserves over the year, which gave us a 9% improvement in our overall reserve position.
With a 2.5 million ounce reserve depletion, we saw an increase on the Gruyere addition from the other 50%. Granny Smith, we've included the Z150 discovery.
We've also added additional ounces for Santa Ana and Invincible at St Ives. Agnew replaced depletion, and this is a nature of that ore body where they just continue to replace depletion on an incremental basis.
Tarkwa, we were able to convert resources to reserves through that additional price assumption adjustment as well as removing some of the key operational constraints. This is going to be a key focus for us to continue to replace reserves.
Just moving on then to the outlook and conclusion, for 2026, our guidance really is completely in line with our guidance that we provided Capital Markets Day for 2026, with production targeted between 2.4 and 2.6 million ounces, total capital is between 1.9 and 2.1, all-in sustaining cost between 1.8 and 2,000, and all-in cost 2,075 to 2,300. We've included the Capital Markets guidance next to those numbers, and the only deltas that we've adjusted for in 2026 guidance is really foreign exchange and royalties, and that we've just run through on the cost numbers.
I think for our focus this year is really about continuing to improve safety performance, ensuring the predictable delivery of our plan, and continue to improve the portfolio quality by advancing our greenfields program and advancing Windfall to FID. Key priorities we've set out for each of our assets are really in line with the Capital Markets Day plan for each of our assets.
We have a number of studies and activities and capital investment going into each of these assets to improve the quality of these individual assets, and also clearly progressing two key permitting and lease renewal processes: firstly, the Tarkwa lease renewal, and secondly, the permitting around Windfall. We have a very clear plan, and we are progressing against our strategic plan that we set out in our Capital Markets Day in November.
With that, we've come to the end of the presentation. Thank you for listening, and now we hand over to Jongisa to facilitate the questions.
Jongisa Magagula
Thank you so much, Mike. We've got participants that are joining on the webcast as well as on the Chorus Call.
To keep it balanced, I'll take two questions from the webcast and then switch over to the voice-only Chorus Call questions. The first one comes from Deleke Edeleke from Marotori Capital Markets.
He says, congratulations on your stellar set of results. The first question: What is the most troublesome KPI on your radar at the moment, and how are you anticipating moving the needle on it?
His second one says: Could you outline the current exploration roadmap and clarify if excess liquidity is being prioritized to these operations? Those are the first two.
Mike Fraser
Right. Thank you very much for those questions.
Look, I think just on the key issues undoubtedly, and I'm sure many words are going to be written about it, but across the industry, we are facing cost inflation. Not just the impacts of strengthening producer currencies, increase in royalty rates, but there is some pressure on costs.
Pleasingly, we have a number of opportunities to really arrest that, and that was really what we were trying to unpack at our Capital Markets Day and what we try to present in here. Many of those costs are an outcome of the things that we do to improve the structure of our business, and we're very focused on that.
That's a very important focus. I think the second one undoubtedly is with the changes that are going on in Ghana, is to really progress that Tarkwa lease renewal and the safe and reliable transition of the Damang mine.
Those would be, I think, in the top of our mind of things that are really important for us to progress. I think in terms of exploration, I absolutely think, if you think about the levers of growth and the opportunities in front of us, M&A is always really expensive, but you have to be opportunistic to really grab things that present themselves to improve the quality for future generations.
Obviously our brownfield exploration continues to be the lowest cost per ounce replaced of discovery, and we'll continue to prioritize our brownfields program, in particular at Windfall, where we have a very, very significant land package that we're trying to identify the next Windfall opportunity. Then in terms of our greenfields program, really ramping that up because we've seen what success looks like.
Salares Norte was a product of our greenfields exploration strategy, and you can just see the multiplier of that. We are very much focused on finding ways of really building our longer-term pipeline through our greenfields program, and you've seen that through the investment in the Antino project through Founders Metals, where we've been able to put our foot on what we think is a highly prospective next-horizon opportunity for us.
As you rightly identify, I think more value is going to be created through the drill bit for the next generation than it is necessarily by buying assets, although we're always going to have to be mindful of being able to be agile when those opportunities present themselves.
Jongisa Magagula
Good. I'm going to pause and hand over to the operator on the Chorus Call to see if there's any questions.
I'm not hearing that there are any questions on the Chorus Call, we'll just carry on. The next one is from Luca Crassadonia from VSME Report.
He says: Good afternoon. Could you please explain the rationale for $100 million buyback on a market cap of $47 billion?
Mike Fraser
Thanks for that, Luca. I think I'm going to probably hand that question to Alex to take.
Alex Dall
Thanks, Mike, and thanks, Luca, for that question. I think what we need to bear in mind is that we have competing shareholder priorities depending on the jurisdiction that they are in.
We have North American shareholders who prefer buybacks and have been looking for them. I think what we've done here with the buyback program is that it is small relative to the total returns to shareholders.
It approximates about 6% of the total shareholder returns. We think it is just finding the right balance of mixing our returns between both dividends, a special dividend, and buybacks of top-up returns.
Thanks,
Mike Fraser
Alex. I would just say that the views among shareholders about buybacks are quite polarized at times.
This would be the first time that we've really been in the market buying back shares, and it really is an opportunity for us to just see how it goes with a very low-risk entry.
Jongisa Magagula
Okay. Just the second question, also on the webcast, is: Do you plan on doing any joint ventures with Zijin Mining?
Mike Fraser
Look, I think, firstly I'd want to say that Zijin has been shown really remarkable growth, and we engage them in all of our industry bodies in the countries and we operate, and we see them as a very credible miner who've really developed their business very, very well. We have a very productive relationship with them, and certainly we are not closed to working with any of our peer groups around the world.
Our point is always clear. We're here to exist to create value, as long as we can find partners who share our values and are willing to work in line with our standards and what our expectations are of ourselves and the priorities for our shareholders.
Then frankly, it would be incumbent on us to be constructive about any potential working relationship.
Jongisa Magagula
I'm going to pause again and just see if there are any questions on the Chorus Call. Operator, I'm hearing that there are.
Please go ahead.
Operator
We have a few questions. The first question we have comes from Chris Nicholson of RMB Morgan Stanley.
Please go ahead.
Chris Nicholson
Hi, good afternoon, Mike and team. I've just got two questions, please.
I know we touched on it on our call this morning, can we just go back to the current situation in Ghana? Is my understanding that royalty bill is now before the Parliament.
Is it your base case that royalties will be lifted on Tarkwa in particular? Then in relation to the ongoing lease renewal negotiations you're having with the government there, I know there's a couple of things at stake.
Could you talk to the fact whether the 10% government ownership is one of the issues that are at stake in relation to that lease renewal? Then just the final one, obviously we're looking at roughly about $2 billion of CapEx this year.
I've been going through my model today, and the one region I'm specifically interested in is in the Australian region. It looks like you spent somewhere close to about $600 million in 2025.
Could you give us what the CapEx number would be for 2026 in the Australian region? Looks to me like it's going to be north of $1 billion.
Thank you.
Mike Fraser
Thank you, Chris. I'll come back.
Alex can take the CapEx question, but let me just start with Ghana. You're quite right, the royalty bill is in front of Parliament.
Under the parliamentary procedure, unless it's withdrawn, it will be passed into law within weeks, you would expect it during the course of March, I expect to be announced as law. Under our current lease agreement at Tarkwa, though, we won't be immediately impacted because our lease agreement does include some stability provisions, which means that it won't apply to us, at least until the end of our lease, which expires in April of 2027, which as we know is not that far away, but it does provide some protection during the course of 2026.
I think the issue around the royalty rates and will it apply going forward, I think is something that is still not yet entirely clear, because as you rightly call out, there's also a debate about, well, is the 10% ownership appropriate, and it's not just for Tarkwa. There's many other assets don't have any local participation or any state ownership in the asset.
I think the way that we having the conversation with government, and it's very early days, nothing is hard on the table from proposals either from our side or their side, just to be clear. We're really talking about the process at the moment.
It's really about how we share value here. Today there's already a significant sharing of value with the government of Ghana.
The conversation we're having is to say, look, you can pull many levers here, but just bear in mind that you can't pull all the levers, because otherwise you end up in a world where makes very little sense for companies like ours to continue to invest. I think the conversation is really to try and be quite broad and pragmatic.
I do think the government is aware of the fact that now that you've shot one of the arrows on terms of royalties, that you've got to be quite pragmatic about how you think about the rest of the package. I also don't think it's off the table to think that there could be potentially some other movements.
The ministers and the Minister of Finance have already been talking about reducing the stability levy from the current 3% to 1%, for example, to mitigate some of those impacts of the higher royalties. There's a degree of pragmatism, but I think as the bill stands today, we will see that new royalty rate coming through.
We certainly think that the door is now not closed to continue to talk about what a fair sharing of value looks like going forward. Alex?
Alex Dall
Thanks, Chris. To just go to your capital, you are right.
There are going to be significant increases in Australia. The first one is at Gruyere, an increase of about $150 million.
That is just purely due to consolidating at 100% versus 50%. Then at Granny Smith, we see close to $100 million increase, and that's as we invest in ventilation, cooling, and power upgrades to access the Zone 150 ore body that you saw Mike talk about the reserve the additional reserve of 0.5 million ounces there.
Then at Agnew, we're also seeing about a $50 million as we invest in tailings, paste plant construction, as well as ventilation and cooling upgrades. Then also at St Ives about a $50 million increase at the Invincible complex development and on on the materials as we advance the materials handling system.
You you're right. If you also add the stronger Australian dollar, that moves your $600 million close to the sort of billion billion mark.
Thanks, all. Appreciate it.
Jongisa Magagula
Just because there are quite a few questions still on the Chorus Call and I understand there was an issue with connectivity, I'm going to take another one on the Thank you.
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, just a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and then one now. The next question we have comes from René Hochreiter of Noah Capital.
Please go ahead.
René Hochreiter
Hi, Mike and Alex. Nice results.
Done. Very nice cost control especially.
Mike, you have a dividend policy, and I get that one, but would you consider having a special dividend policy, it looks like at the moment the special dividend is declared depending on what your capital allocation is, but would you have a more rigid policy going into the future sometime?
Mike Fraser
Look, René, thanks for that question, and I'll ask Alex to contribute to it as well. I think from our point of view, we look at whatever we provide in top-ups is really a function of probably three things.
Firstly, are we maintaining a good balance sheet? Are we maintaining an investment-grade balance sheet?
Secondly, are we limiting the opportunities to reinvest in our business for the future generation? Thirdly, what does the total dividend look like in relation to our peers?
That's why we always talk about targeting upper-quartile total dividends to shareholders. That special dividend in my mind will always be something that is a function of those other three elements.
Being very precise about it in terms of a formula, I don't think really serves us well. That's why in the way that we've described capital allocation, it really is about sharing the cash flow that we generate between those three elements of: maintaining a strong balance sheet and keeping a strong balance sheet to give us flexibility for the future; making sure that we're in the upper quartile of total dividends payable to shareholders; and then thirdly, making sure that we've got cash to reinvest in the future.
That's how we've thought about it. I know, Alex, if you got any other thoughts.
Alex Dall
I think that's right, Mike. We also obviously benchmarked our base dividend policy, and we do believe that it is one of the top ones in the sector.
We were very strategic in how we thought about: Do we allocate it purely on free cash flow? We actually decided to go with free cash flow before growth investments, that we don't penalize shareholders' returns on us investing in the future.
We honestly believe giving back a third of all free cash flow before growth investments will deliver strong returns to shareholders at sort of consensus gold prices. If we see gold prices above those consensus prices, I think there will be room to deliver special dividends.
Mike Fraser
Yeah.
René Hochreiter
Okay. Thanks for that.
Just a couple of other questions. Underground drilling results at Gruyere, is there any update on that?
Mike Fraser
No, early days yet, René, we'll probably only be in a position to provide more detail, maybe in 12 months. We've got a good program during the course of this year.
We know that the ore body's there. It's really just trying to size it up, and in parallel, we'll be doing the trade-offs of the additional cutback versus moving into the underground.
The underground will happen at some point, but pretty early days. We know what the grade is largely.
It's pretty consistent, but it's really now sizing up the size of the ore body.
René Hochreiter
Okay. Thanks.
Just one more question, if I may. St Ives mined grades were down 29%, and the yield was up 3%.
Gruyere's mined grades were down 18%, and the yield was down 6%. The yield was down or quite a lot different from what the mined grades were.
Can you sort of explain that a little bit? I'm a mining engineer, but I still don't understand that.
Mike Fraser
I think what always happens is that it's a function of how much of the stockpile material that we're processing. At St Ives, we also had an impact where we were actually processing the Swiftsure and Invincible Footwall South, which were two open pit operations which come at a slightly lower average grade than our underground material.
It's really becomes a mix, and that really meant that our mining grades were slightly lower year-on-year, but we had more mined material going through the plant, and therefore, you saw yields being slightly higher as it replaced stockpile material. Then I think on Gruyere, it was
Alex Dall
Also a function of
Mike Fraser
It's also a function of higher stockpile processing, because even though we moved massively more material in the year, we weren't able to get all of that through through the mill, because the mill was also stepping up in terms of its volume of process. They moved up nearly a million a million tons year-on-year.
That's kind of what you what you're dealing with.
René Hochreiter
All right. Fine.
That makes sense. Thanks very much, Mike, and well done again.
Jongisa Magagula
Thanks. I'm going to come back into the webcast questions, and we're going to have to pick up pace because I'm just mindful of the time.
The next one is: Can you discuss any outstanding permits that might be needed for Agua Amarga? The incoming Chilean administration has hinted at easing some regulatory burdens.
Do you see any potential that such executive actions could ease issues at Salares? I'm going to cluster a few of the Ghana-related questions, just so that we can speak to it in one go.
The next one is from Cornelius from Robeco. He says: Do you expect the proposed royalty increase in Ghana will lead to higher royalty payments for us in the next 5 years?
Then the other one that is related to Ghana is: For Tarkwa, how are you treating the lease renegotiation for your reserve calculation? What outcome on the lease renewal do you assume in the reserve calculation?
That's from Raynaudt van der Walt from Bank of America. Shall we do those two and then?
Mike Fraser
Thank you. Just on Agua Amarga, I think we feel quite confident there's nothing additional that we require.
The progress is largely aligned to our chinchilla capture and relocation program. That's the only thing, but it's not permit-related.
I think in Ghana, yes, if the royalty regime would apply to us, currently we pay what the industry pays, which is around 5% royalty, under the new sliding scale, that's 6% to 12%. Even if you offset 2% of the stability levy, it's likely at these kind of gold prices to still mean an additional 5% royalty payment if that's what it gets applied under our new lease conditions.
Whilst in the next 12 months it doesn't impact us, it could impact us beyond 2027. In terms of Raynaudt, the question that you've asked on reserves, we have applied the full life-of-mine reserves into our declaration, and that's what the application is for.
Anything that would limit our horizon on our lease could potentially impact that, but we're certainly confident that we'll find the right path on the term of lease.
Jongisa Magagula
If I can tag one on, Mike, from Shuaib, which is along the same lines: Could you quantify the increase once it starts affecting Tarkwa, the impact to unit costs of the increased royalty?
Mike Fraser
Alex, do you want to take that?
Alex Dall
Yep. At current spot prices, that would be $350 an ounce increase.
Mike Fraser
7%
Alex Dall
$5,000 an ounce.
Jongisa Magagula
Great. I'm going to go back to the Chorus Call to take an additional question or two.
Operator
Thank you. The next question we have comes from Adrian Hammond of SBG.
Please go ahead.
Adrian Hammond
Thanks, operator. How's it, Mike?
Just to follow up a bit on Windfall, the project as it stands, you've given us a CapEx number at Capital Markets Day, although there is still due an EIA and IBA as well, and obviously the most importantly, the feasibility study. I guess the question is, what's your confidence in the CapEx number given the feasibility has yet to be done?
I'm assuming that your reserve gold price increase at 2,000 will have a large influence on the project and the reserves, etc. I would like to call it a Tier 1 asset for Windfall, but I don't see it as a Tier 1 yet, not because of its jurisdiction, but because of its size and cost profile, but perhaps you can enlighten us.
Thanks.
Mike Fraser
Adrian, maybe just a couple of things. This investment in Windfall is almost the first phase of the development of this entire property.
The first phase of this was always designed to fit in with provincial approvals, which was always going to be the fastest process, fastest pathway to get this project started. That is going to really deliver us that 300,000 ounces for the next 10 years and banks it in.
We're already starting the second phase of studies, which will help us to further optimize the asset. That's about looking at potential additional materials handling, potentially a shaft for the long term.
We know this is a 20-year-plus asset. In addition, we're looking at ways of improving the yield of that asset.
Today we have a fairly tight footprint that is within the current approval that is being developed. Just to be very clear, the feasibility study for this asset that supports the environmental approval was actually done 2 to 3 years ago.
The only thing that we really working on is optimizing our underground mining. Even with a change in reserve price assumptions, because of the nature of our footprint in this first phase of the project delivery, it's not going to have a material impact on the reserves in the near term.
The bigger opportunity really is to go into that second phase of permitting, which hopefully will allow us to widen the footprint and create a further opportunities to mine this ore body. Then we've got the opportunities of all the nearby resource that we haven't even started including in this.
We absolutely do believe it in the long term, it's Tier 1. Yes, you may look at it today and it might be too small, but the potential of this asset is and the footprint is really huge, and it's up to us to now migrate to that.
The first approval is really this. In terms of the capital cost, we felt that when we got to November, we put a lot of work into understanding the underground mining.
We put a lot of work into updating our cost estimates and the execution plan, and certainly that presented the best view of it. In terms of the IBA, that's largely going to be translated into some form of royalty-equivalent type participation, I suspect, but I do think that that's not going to necessarily hit our capital number.
I think the biggest risk on capital is possibly likely to be any significant changes in exchange rates, US dollar, Canada, but also just in underlying contractor and project productivity. We've seen and we've been engaging with some of the peers who are delivering big projects in Canada, and the biggest concern is just as years pass, productivity rates are dropping off.
That's probably one of our bigger concerns. Chris is on the line.
I don't know if Chris, you want to add anything to that.
Chris Gratias
No, Mike, I think you've covered it extremely well. The one point I would add is to the prospectivity that we see.
This gets to a related question before about additional investments in exploration. Obviously, are prioritizing increased spend at Windfall.
As we think about future pipeline management, and people always ask us, what's next after Windfall? We kind of say we highly are excited about the next Windfall project will be found at Windfall.
Adrian Hammond
Thanks, Chris.
Jongisa Magagula
I'm just mindful of time. I'm going to take two questions from
Adrian Hammond
Thanks for the color there, Mike and Chris. It's very useful.
Then a follow-up, if I may, for Alex on inflation rates, which follows on about the CapEx. We've seen some incredible increases with some of your peers as well, and it sort of reminds me of the prior cycle where competition for labor had become a thing.
Are you able to pits of color to us on what the labor landscape is like for you out there right now given where record prices are at, just so that we can get a sense of when we're looking at these companies on a cost basis, what is actually a real cost increase versus an inflationary increase? It's quite nuanced.
Thanks.
Alex Dall
Thanks, Adrian. We're not seeing the inflation we saw during COVID, but we are probably seeing CPI plus a couple of percentage point inflation across the board.
We are continuing to see labor pressure in Australia. I think luckily with the Windfall construction, we've actually modeled sort of all the labor and other construction projects that are going on in Quebec, and we think we actually fall in quite a good window from labor availability from some projects ramping off before others ramp up in that construction phase.
I think the real labor pressure we experiencing is Australia at our mining contractors in particular.
Adrian Hammond
Thanks.
Jongisa Magagula
Thanks for that, Adrian. I'm going to take two questions from Josh Wolfson, and we are on time, I do note that there's still quite a few from the webcast.
We'll take note of them and then reach out to answer them directly. The first one from Josh says: Can you provide more details on turnover at Gruyere?
How would the operating trends there differ from GFI's other operations in Australia? I'm assuming he's talking labor turnover.
Then, can you speak to high-level indications of quarterly expectations for 2026? Production, thinking about sequencing and seasonality.
Thank you.
Mike Fraser
Yeah. Thanks very much, Josh.
Good to chat. Look, I think Gruyere absolutely has been a challenge with our contractor.
They've seen in the fourth quarter turnover rates of up to nearly 50% amongst their workforce. That's been a combination of certainly some of the iron ore producers really being quite aggressive in hiring, but it also demonstrated that when we looked at it, that probably our contractor wasn't really being market-competitive, and so we have rectified that and tried to address that trend, and we certainly hopeful with that intervention we'll start seeing a recovery on that number.
In terms of seasonality, I think we should see, given the portfolio effect, while some of the assets have a little bit of a second-half weighting, that probably we would be within 5% of the kind of variation by quarter. I don't think we're going to see huge variation across the year.
One of the things we're working really hard to do is to eliminate that hockey stick effect that we've had in years gone by, where we've had a lot of production weighted to the second half, which is really a function of the fact that we weren't having high degrees of mine plan compliance, which we really working back into our system to deliver more predictable outcomes.
Jongisa Magagula
Thanks, Mike. I'll hand back to you for closing comments because we are over time.
Mike Fraser
Yeah. Thanks very much, Jongisa.
Thanks so much for all the great questions that have come up. Thank you very much for the interest in Gold Fields.
I think we've made very good progress on our strategy last year, and we'll continue to deliver more of the same. That's our objective this year.
Thanks all for listening, and look forward to engaging in the coming weeks.
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