Denver Gold GroupIndependent since 1989

Mining Forum Europe 2026 · Company presentation

Orla Mining

Presented by Etienne Morin, Chief Capital Markets Officer

Wednesday, 15 April 2026, 11:30 CEST · Ballrooms 2 & 3

  • TickerTSX:OLA
  • Market cap$3.6B
  • 1-year return-1.25%
  • StageProducer
  • Primary metalGold
  • Primary countryMexico
  • 2025 production301 koz
  • Reserves3.728 Moz
  • M&I resources8.274 Moz
Portrait of Etienne Morin

Presenter

Etienne Morin

Chief Capital Markets Officer, Orla Mining

Mr. Morin is an accomplished finance professional with a 17-year career in the mining industry. He joined Orla Mining in 2018, having previously served at Goldcorp Inc. for 11 years in various finance and operations capacities.

During his tenure at Goldcorp, Mr. Morin held progressively more senior Corporate Development positions, playing a pivotal role in executing the company’s growth strategy. At Goldcorp, he also led the investor relations function having fostered strong connections with institutional investors and other market participants. Mr. Morin holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in geology from Colgate University and an MBA from the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa.

About Orla Mining

We are fueled by our commitment to advancing our portfolio of outstanding assets. Our approach towards growth and creating value has focused on finding, acquiring, constructing and operating high-quality mines. We currently have three material properties—two operating and one in development. And that’s only the beginning.

We have three material gold projects: (1) Camino Rojo, located in Zacatecas State, Mexico, (2) Musselwhite, located in Ontario, Canada and (3) South Railroad, located in Nevada, United States. We currently operate the high margin Camino Rojo Oxide Gold Mine, a gold and silver open-pit and heap leach operation. The property is 100% owned by Orla and covers over 139,000 hectares which contains a large oxide and sulphide mineral resource. Orla closed the acquisition of the Musselwhite Mine from Newmont in the first quarter of 2025. Musselwhite is an underground mine that has been in operation since 1997 and has produced nearly 6 million ounces of gold in its 28 year history. We are also developing the South Railroad Project, a feasibility-stage, open pit, heap leach gold project located on the Carlin trend in Nevada.

Transcript2900 words, automatically generated

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How are you doing? Yeah, nice to meet you. It's him. You got it right. Thank you. Next, next presentation is Orla Mining. I'm sure it's a name many of you or most of you will know. presenting is Etienne Moran, the CFO. Thank you, Etienne. Thank you, Tony, and good good afternoon. I guess it's still morning. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for being here. I think you're gonna hear a lot of similarities to the previous two speakers in, in my presentation today. It's the third company in a row that's benefited from acquiring an asset from, from Newmont, an asset that was probably starved with for for capital and little TLC. So, you know, and, and, and I'm referring to our Musclewhite acquisition, but we'll get to that in a minute. Skip over. jumping right into it, at ORA we follow a pretty simple, three-pronged, model for value creation. we execute on a proven strategy, which is focused on really developing low capital intensity and low complexity. Projects that have also larger scale opportunities and you'll see that in some of our assets in a minute. but when we started Ola, we wanted to really try to replicate the model that GLIS Gold had followed for some of you who remember GLAMIS, who operated in the, in the 90s and early 2000s, so that's, that's sort of the model we were trying to follow as well. We also want a portfolio of quality assets in proven camps with sizable land package where we can explore and extend mine lives and find new discoveries, and I'll talk about the assets in a minute. And finally we team up with industry leaders. Until late last year we had both Agnico Eagle and Newmont as key shareholders of Ola. They both own roughly 10%. And they both sold out in Q4 of last year, but both of both of Ignico and Newman. Provided tremendous technical and financial support during the 1st 8 years of our existence at ORA. So we're very grateful for that support. And we also have the industry veteran Pierre Lason as our one of our key shareholders. Still, Pierre is also one of the founders of ORA, and he continues to provide support for our team. for those less familiar with, with our portfolio, we have 3 key assets, including 2 producing mines. We have the Camino Rojo mine located in Zacatecas, Mexico, and the Musselwhite mine located in Northern Ontario in Canada. Camino Rojo is a low cost, open pit heat bleach mine. Which began commercial production in 2022 and has close to 5 million ounces in resource. The Musselwhite mine is our newest addition. Musselwhite was acquired from Newmont for 850 million in Q1 of last year. It's an underground mine that's been operating for over 28 years and has produced over 6 million ounces and counting. Our third asset is the South Railroad project that's located in the heart of the carting trend in Elko near Elko, Nevada. South Railroad is also an open pit heat bleach mine. It has a lot of similarities, similarities to our Camino Rojo project or mine, and we're currently awaiting a final record decision, to, which should occur later this year, in the summer, late summer, before we can begin construction activities. Earlier this year we released an updated feasibility study for South Railroad, which is now kind of our blueprint for the construction. Once built, South Railroad will add about 130,000 ounces of annual gold production to our portfolio. With the addition of Musselw last year and South Railroad in roughly 18 months, we are inching closer to about half a million ounces per year of gold production at incredible margins in the current gold price environment. So we also have other growth opportunities within the portfolio which allows us to continue to improve the business over time in the coming years as well. So in January we did release the results of the PEA on the Camino Row underground project is an extension of the current open pit oxide mine and will produce an average of 230,000 ounces per year when built. So we already have a team down in Mexico. We have infrastructure, and the project would extend the Camino Rojo mine for another 15 years. Focusing on value creation, this is showing our share price performance since O's inception. Our growth in value has been on the back of a strong execution, and the Musselwhite acquisition was also a very transformative acquisition for us, and the timing of the gold rally could not have been any better. We went from being a single asset company to almost tripling our production or annual production. And also diversifying our portfolio, and the market reacted very well to the acquisition. And talking about the gold rally, margins across the industry have increased significantly over the last two years, and although we've seen some general cost increased, those increases have been modest for the most part. As a result, we and many others in the space, I think have been generating significant cash flow during that time period. 2025 was a transformative year for us. We closed the Mussel White transaction at the end of February last year and spent most of the year integrating the asset into our portfolio. We produced just over 300,000 ounces last year, of which about 200,000 was attributable to mussel. All in sustaining costs came in around $1450 per ounce right in the middle of our guidance range of $1350 to $1550. So when comparing this to the average gold price of last year of 2025, which was just over $3400. It seems, it seems a long time ago that we were in a $3400 range, but that was roughly the average for 2025. That's about a $2000 margin per ounce, and that resulted in roughly $400 million in free cash flow in 2025 for Orla. 2026 is a catalyst rich, year for OA. first, as I mentioned earlier, we already delivered a ready to build, updated feasibility study for South Railroad. second, we delivered our initial, Camino Underground. PEA outlining really the future of Camino Rojo and also in Mexico we received our long awaited permits to expand the oxide open pit, and that adds another 5 years of of mine life to the asset. And also with that permit it allows us to start the construction of an underground decline to get in the heart of the phase 2 of the Camino Rojo mine, which is the underground project. and lastly, as we speak, we're in full procurement at South Railroad. we expect to begin construction in August of this year. And we've accomplished a lot with the procurement process. We're just trying to get ahead and not delay the timelines while we wait for the final permits, but we've accomplished a lot so far already this year. But now the focus will turn to the execution on the construction of the South Railroad in the second half of this year. For 2026, our guidance this year, its gold production between 3,400,000 and 360,000 ounces at all and sustaining cost between 1550 and 1750. When we look at the individual assets, Camino Rojo remains a very low cost operation. And Mussel White, we're starting to see the benefits of the capital investments that we did last year and again this year with production increasing year over year, but this year we continue to invest. We continue to recapitalize the mine that was starved. Capital when we acquired it and so we're pushing a lot of underground development and purchasing many new yellow trucks to improve the efficiency in the mine as well. At At $4500 gold, margins do continue to expand versus 20025, and we expect to generate $650 million in cash flow before reinvesting roughly $450 million of that into the business, half of that to build our next mine in Nevada. So in 2026 we're committing to that $450 million to advance our growth projects, and Mussel White will continue to replace the mobile fleet, the mobile underground fleet, and push as much development as we can to get ahead and create more flexibility for the mine. We're also committing $30 million in exploration. At Musselwhite alone to test the thesis that the deposit continues well beyond the known reserves at Camino Rojo, we're expanding the leash path this year, which is a big part of the 40 million that you see here on this slide. We also continue to drill the sulfides to expand and better define the current sulfide resource and ultimately convert those resources into reserves. Lastly, at South Railroad or South Carland you see here on the slide, we're starting construction in August. We're already spending and placing equipment orders ahead of time to ensure that we keep the development timelines as I mentioned. So the planned spending this year represents roughly half of the total capital of the project, which is around $400 million. With the successful year that we had in 2025, it's allowed us to focus on strengthening the balance sheet. so Muscle White was purchased without issuing a single share upfront. So at the closing of the transaction we had a significant amount of debt on the balance sheet, and throughout the year we took a very disciplined approach to repay close to $280 million in debt in the 1st 12 months post acquisition. We exited 2025 with just over $420 million in cash and $385 million in debt, making us net cash positive at the end of last year. Just briefly on the three assets, so Musselwhite performed better than expected through 2025, function of sustaining higher gold prices, allowing more flexibility with dope sequencing and also with the cut-off grades and seeing the benefit of some capital investments that we did earlier in the year, as I mentioned, I go back to additional underground development and turning over the mining fleet have created some benefit and increased throughput. We expect production this year to be in the range of 230,000 to 240,000 ounces, but the focus this year is really to continue to prove that thesis, that the mind trend really continues well beyond. The current known reserves between 2025 and 2026 we're spending over $50 million in exploration and Mussel White alone, and that's not a small amount for a company our size, but again it's really to prove that thesis that beyond the known reserves there's a lot. More and that deposit really continues. The mine has been operating, as I said earlier, for 28 years and currently extends over 6 kilometers in length. And over that 6 kilometer in length it's produced 6 million ounces during its life of mine. So we've now demonstrated that we can extend. That trend by 2 kilometers through the drilling that we've done over the last year. And so if you do a quick math, you can come up with a pretty good estimate of how many ounces we think we can add in the short term. Current reserves at Musselwhite is 1.5 million, roughly 6 years of mine life, but one of the stories that I like to tell about Musselw to really demonstrate the geological potential of that mine. When I was hired at Gold Corp back in 2006 as a young analyst, Gold Corp had just purchased the Canadian assets of Placer Dome, and Mussel White was part of that package. but Mussel White had 1.5 million ounces in reserves at the time in six years of my life. So now fast forward to today, 20 years later, almost to today, and a few more gray hair. Mussel White still has 1.5 million ounces in reserves in 6 years of my life, and I bet if I stand here in 10 years, Mussel White probably is going to have 1.5 million ounces in reserves in 16 years of my life. So that's the kind of upside and geological potential and that's why we were so excited about this asset when we acquired it. at South Carolina, as I mentioned earlier, South Rail Road is our next phase of growth. the feasibility defined a 10-year project with annual production of 130,000 ounces a year for the 1st 5 years, and an all and sustaining cost just below $1500 an ounce. We're currently in the final stretch of, project permitting, and we've already started, as I mentioned earlier, procurement with a focus on civil works and longer lead time equipment such as gen sets, shovels, and. Scoops in the mining fleet in general. So construction will span over 18 months and assuming that we are starting construction as planned in August, we'll have our first production in the first quarter of 2028. The estimated capital cost for the project is just under $400 million which will be funded through our cash on hand and future cash flow over the next couple of years. Really, the most exciting aspect of South Railroad is, is the district potential. The project is located right in the heart of the Carling trend in Nevada, one of the most prolific gold camp in the world. So we're spending roughly $15 million this year in exploration to continue to test the many targets that we've identified since taking over the project from Gold Standard Ventures in 2022. We've already identified additional mineralization around the two pits and we'll provide an updated resource estimate once the permits have been received. We don't want to upset any of the permitting by releasing new reserves and resources before we get the final permit. Many of the targets that you see here, I understand it's a bit small here, but many of the targets that you see have identified both oxide and sulfide mineralization. So we expect to be in a position to add many more ounces at this project over time. And then lastly at Camino Rojo, now that we've received the final permits for the expansion of the open pit, we'll be in a position to mine the full extent of that deposit over the next 5 years at a steady state of around 115,000 ounces per year. So Camino Rojo remains a very low cost, high margin operation. The next phase after the open pit is to get underground and continue mining the extension of that deposit. There's more than 4 million ounces of sulfide sitting right below the open pit, the oxide open pit, and as I mentioned earlier this year, we released our initial study on the underground project and that highlighted a project that can produce 230,000 ounces a year over about 50. M life. This is a 30% rate of return project at $3100 gold. At $5000 gold, it's over 60% internal rate of return. So it's a robust project and we will be starting a decline later this year to get underground, continue exploration, drilling, try to get tighter spacing and with the objective of converting resources into reserve ahead of a construction decision. So as we get underground, we'll continue testing the extension of Zone 22, which is what you see at the bottom left of that graph, and over time we'll incorporate the results of the drilling of Zone 22 into a pre-feasibility study that we're doing this year with the target completion around the middle of next year. And lastly, we get a lot of questions around capital allocation. Of course with the current gold price environment we're constantly reviewing that framework to ensure that we have a balanced approach and focused on four key priorities. One is to fund the expansion of resources and new discoveries through exploration. The second one is make sure we reinvest in the business, the construction of the South Railroad, make sure we continue fueling. Our growth and Musselwhite also has a lot of exciting projects that could take this mine to the next level. The third one is make sure we continue to delever, get to a comfortable leverage ratio, and I think we've done a good job of that over the last year and we'll continue to do that. And last but not least, we started in December of last year with the Any quick quest, thank you. Any quick questions from the floor, please? Time for one brief question. I'll, I'll ask them a question. you talked about capital allocation, obviously, big capex this year for $50 million plus exploration, still have about $380 million of debt, so I presume you'll leave that debt there. 2027, you'll be cash harvesting phase. would you then further, even further review your capital return policy because you'll have an embarrassment of riches in terms of cash flow and cash, I suspect. Yeah, yeah, I mean, we're gonna constantly reviewing that capital allocation framework. I mean, we're in conversation, we're getting a lot of questions about share buybacks. A lot of our peers have put it in place. We have the dividend now. But you know, the priority is to reinvest into the growth into the business. You know, once we get past the construction of the South Railroad, we're likely going to have the construction of the underground at Camino Rojo that's going to generate or use a lot of our cash. So we'll continue balancing, you know, the right amount of debt, but with reinvesting into into our projects as well. Great. Please join with me thanking Etienne for that presentation. Thank you.

Recorded at Mining Forum Europe 2026, Park Hyatt Zürich, Zürich. Prepared for information only; it is not investment advice or a recommendation. Statements are those of the presenting company as at the date of the presentation. Market figures in US dollars, not as at the date of the forum.