Equinox Gold’s $1.1B Debt Paydown & Record Production 

Welcome to FinTech TV.

I'm Remmy Blair.

Gold remains in the spotlight, with investors looking for companies that can turn high prices into real profit and also returns for shareholders.

In 2025, Equinox Gold saw a massive transition year.

They completed a major merger with Calibre, transforming the company into a top tier North American-focused gold producer anchored by two brand new long-life mines in Canada, and just released preliminary results for the 4th quarter and full year of.

2025 shows a dramatic turnaround, and they paid down a staggering $1.1 billion in debt since the second quarter.

They just announced their first ever quarterly cash dividend for shareholders alongside a share buyback program.

Well, joining me live at the New York Stock Exchange is Ryan King, executive VP of capital markets at Equinox Gold Whore.

Thank you so much for joining me today.

Oh, thank you for, thank you for the time.

Well, first and foremost, tell us about Equinox Gold and also the merger with Calibre.

Yeah, so Economic Gold is a diversified gold producer, um, and the merger with Caliber was very interesting.

It brought together two high quality teams, uh, and we were just talking off air about Ross Beatty, the founder of Equinox Gold.

Uh, he's been involved in, in many, uh, very significant finds in terms of Pan America Silver and other companies, so.

So Ross started this company a few years ago, and uh by, by this, by bringing these two teams together, we were able to strengthen the management team, but also more importantly, we were able to bring together two high quality Canadian gold assets that we're just ramping up.

So we're in the process of of a significant transformation there with upwards of 500,000 ounces of annual gold production coming out of Canada, and that's what investors look for tier one jurisdictional assets, and we're turning up two tier one jurisdictional assets, so it's an exciting time.

Yes, and as 2026 gets underway, we know that all eyes have been on the precious metals, in particular gold and silver prices, and you just mentioned management, and that is so key when we're talking about organizational management.

So give us an idea of what actually resulted in the stellar results you saw last year.

Well, we, you know, the deal closed in June, and so we, we reset the market's expectation in terms of guidance for the year.

Um, in, uh, in July of last year, a few management changes happened, so the, uh, the CEO, the CEO change happened and where, um, the Caliber Mining CEO Darren Hall became CEO of the new Eeququinox goal.

And the new equinox is really about operational focus now with these turn up of these big key large open pit mines, and Darren brings a tremendous amount of experience.

He was at Newmont for over 30 years, and his role there was optimizing assets, big open pit mines, and now with this transition, less about mergers and acquisitions and more about focus on operational execution.

And uh so that was a pivotal moment, I think, for shareholders of both companies and shareholders looking at the new company going forward.

But what happened last year was we have an asset called the Valentine Gold Mine.

It's located in the central region of Newfoundland, and that asset, uh, we completed construction in about August.

We had first gold in September, and then we turned that into commercial production by November.

So it was a pretty significant inflection point for for anyone going from investing to harvesting cash flow, uh, and that asset is currently ramping up this year.

And also importantly, we saw some pretty significant changes with what we call the Greenstone mine.

This is a very large open pit mine in northern Ontario, and because of some, some of the work that Darren and his technical team were able to do, we were able to ramp up production quite significantly in the second half of last year.

In fact, Q4, we had a record quarter out of Greenstone.

We produced over 72,000 ounces of gold.

So we're very excited about the year ahead of us now, between those two assets, 150,000 to 200,000 ounces at Valentine, this year is our guidance, and then 250,000 to 300,000 ounces at Greenstone.

So, uh, we believe there's a tremendous opportunity here, and then we look at the business and it's, and it's less about those ramp ups and more about just being boring, which is kind of interesting, boring, delivering into expectations.

So, uh, a lot, that's what a lot led to a lot of that, that transformation last year, but there's also a lot of excitement going into 2026.

And speaking of that and opportunity alongside being boring, I understand that you have eliminated over a billion dollars in debt, and that is significant.

So tell us what we can expect heading into 2026.

Sure, uh, Yeah, we were about 1.6 billion net debt uh when we closed the deal with Caliber.

Um, now today, as you just mentioned, we, we, we've got about net, we're probably today, probably net cash neutral, which is pretty phenomenal to say, you know, we, we've divested of some assets, which helped us pay down debt.

Um, the operating cash flow from the end of last year helped us pay down more debt.

So now today we've got about a little under $500 million of a revolving credit facility that's been drawn, but we also have about $500 million of cash.

So when we look ahead to 2026, in total, we're guiding the market $700,000 to 800,000 ounces of gold production with, as we've just talked about, gold trading over $5000 an ounce with the company's all in sustaining costs.

I think our guidance is 1,775 to 1,875, so a tremendous margin.

So with that, we're able to pay down even more debt, and we would anticipate that by the end of Q3, maybe Q4, we should be debt free and have about an $850 million revolving credit facility available to us because the company does have very interesting growth.

Uh, in front of us.

Well, Ryan, I appreciate your time.

Thank you so much for joining us here at the New York Stock Exchange and thank you so much for sharing the origin of the company.

Excellent to be here.

Thank you for your time.