Gold Fields FY2025 Earnings Call - $3bn FCF, record payouts, but Ghana royalty risk looms

Mike, Executive (likely CEO or Senior Executive), Gold Fields: Good afternoon, good morning, and good evening for those that have joined the presentation of our financial year 2025 results. And 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 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. Our all-in costs and all-in sustaining costs were within guidance, and were marginally higher than 2024. Most of the impact, it 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 on. In addition, during the year, we completed the acquisition of Gold Road Resources that was completed in Q3. 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, 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 to 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 ZAR 4.50 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 ZAR 31.85 per share, which, in our view, delivers an 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.

So 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 cash 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 the 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 every 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 safe 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 above 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.

Our costs, 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 is, 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 a 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.

So when you look at our net group cash flow, that is up nearly four times from 2025, 2024. Just going on to our ESG performance briefly, we’ve spoken about the impact of our 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 an Australian legacy program currently being scoped. In terms of decarbonization, we’ve delivered 15% absolute emission reduction against our 2026 baseline, and a 5% net increase against the 2026 baseline. We’ve also been able to achieve full conformance against the global GISTM on tailings management, and under water stewardship, we’ve had 74% water recycling against our target of 73%. We’ve also completed our midterm 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 the portfolio change line and hyper sail line operating environments.

Just calling out our production very briefly, we have a 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 tonnes 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 tonnes milled and an increase in the yield because of more fresh material going through the mill than stockpiles. South Deep, pleasingly, we’re up 16%, largely driven by improved mining grades, as well as improved stope turnover, which allowed us to get greater consistency and feed through the system.

Damang was down largely due to the fact we were mining, processing stockpiles through the year, and that was due to lower yield. And Tarkwa were down largely due to the fact that we had prioritized, stockpile. Over to Alex to give us a rundown on the cost changes year on year.

Alex, CFO or Financial Executive, Gold Fields: Thanks, Mike. We’ve seen a 3% year-over-year increase in all-in cost. 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. They’re accounting for Gruyere at 100% for the fourth quarter of the year, as well as higher mining costs, driven by both volumes. And the higher growth expenditure at Windfall is due to a full year of consolidated costs after the acquisition of Osisko Mining in Q4 2024. And then we see the significant impact of the higher gold volumes on decreasing our cost base. Thank you, Mike.

Mike, Executive (likely CEO or Senior Executive), Gold Fields: Thanks very much, Alex. So just moving on very briefly then to the some of the individual assets before I hand over to Alex for a more detailed financial overview. I think just starting with Gruyere, you know, we very-- We didn’t entirely deliver all of the answers that we would have liked to, but we made significant progress. We were able to deliver record material movements, so we were up 37% year-on-year on tonnes mined, largely due to a focused attention to accelerating the Stage Five waste strip, and that really translated into where we’re seeing the higher cost due to larger development ex-capital at the site. But the other thing that was pleasing is that our mill achieved record throughput rates at 9.6 million tonnes.

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 cost 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 increase in 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. And 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 the cost increase by only 3%. And this shows us the leverage at South Deep because of the fact that it is a highly fixed cost operation, and 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. And once we have rock on ground, we are able to get that through the system and deliver high yields through the plant. So 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 we’ve really been processing stockpiles with the associated lower 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 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, you know, really, that’s largely due to the copper gold price factor, and 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, CFO or Financial Executive, Gold Fields: 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 rand—3 dollars 32 per share. This has enabled us to declare a record base dividend for the full year of ZAR 25.50 per share, comprising the interim dividend of ZAR 7 per share and a final dividend payable in Q1 2026 of ZAR 18.50 per share.

In addition, we are also in a position to announce additional returns to shareholders of $353 million, comprising a special dividend of ZAR 4.50 per share, taking the total dividends for the year to ZAR 30 per share, and a share buyback program of $100 million, which will be executed over the next twelve 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 any investing activities of $4.5 billion. After capital of $1.4 billion, lease payments of $100 million, and uncertain rehab outflows, we have generated free cash flow of $3 billion, or approximately 5 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, 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, and 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 South Deep. 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 raise 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 $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% to 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 two years.

After both the special and the share buyback, this leaves ZAR 400 million under the program. This graph shows our dividend history over the last five years. In 2025, we are able to deliver record shareholder returns of ZAR 31.90 per share, a 220% increase from 2024. And this, we believe, equates to an industry-leading yield of 6.3%. Thanks, Mike, and back to you.

Mike, Executive (likely CEO or Senior Executive), Gold Fields: Thanks very much, Alex. And look, I think, just what 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. And what I can honestly say is that that does not limit our ability to continue to improve the quality of our portfolio. So now we move on to what we are doing and the three levers of growth that we consider around improving our portfolio. So I think, during the year, despite the significant cash generation and what we have returned to shareholders, we continued 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 Brownfield exploration program, and in a short while, a few slides will touch on the success we’ve had in reserve replacement at our assets. But we spent $129 million in our Brownfield program in 2025, which allowed us to deliver a 9% increase in reserves across the year. In addition, we have really revitalized our Greenfield exploration program. We have spent $101 million during 2025.

This is inclusive of a $35 million 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. And also what we did in quarter four, we integrated the Gold Fields exploration program 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 Norte is gonna 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 Chinchero 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 mine material sitting in front of the plant, so we’re certainly not mine-constrained or at risk in the mining in any way.

We’ll continue to advance the Chinchero 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 is, remains intact against our CMD disclosures of 525,000 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 weather, the winter season at the end of 2026. So 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 to start commencing the back end of 2028, with first gold due in 2029. So 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. You know, 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. So 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, of targets to build into our longer-term plan. So 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, the lower grade Gruyere deposit, as well as, investing in further drilling across the Yamarna package. Just, going on to reserve replacement, you know, this is ultimately how we measure the health of our-- 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. So 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 the 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 gonna 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 2.4-2.6 million ounces. Total capital is between $1.9-$2.1 billion, all-in sustaining costs between $1,800-$2,000, and all-in costs $2,275-$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 greenfield 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, Moderator/Investor Relations, Gold Fields: Thank you so much, Mike. We’ve got participants that are joining on the webcast as well as on the chorus call. So 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 Marotodi 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?" Okay, so those are the first two.

Mike, Executive (likely CEO or Senior Executive), Gold Fields: Great. Thank you very much for those questions. Look, I think just on the key issues, undoubtedly, and I’m sure, you know, many words are gonna be written about it. But, you know, across the industry, we are facing, you know, cost inflation. Not just the impacts of producers strengthening producer currencies, increasing royalty rates, but there is some, you know, 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 tried to present in here. So many of those, you know, costs are an outcome of the things that we do to improve the structure of our business, and we’re very focused on that, but that’s a very important focus.

I think the second one, you know, undoubtedly is with the changes that are going on in Ghana, is to really progress that, the Tarkwa lease renewal and the, the safe and reliable transition of the Damang mine. So those would be, I think, in the top of our mind, the 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-...

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. But 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. So 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 a, what we think is a highly prospective, you know, next horizon opportunity for us.

So, as you rightly identify, I think more value is gonna be created through the drill bit for the next generation than it is necessarily by buying assets. Although we’re always gonna have to be mindful of being able to be agile when those opportunities present themselves.

Jongisa, Moderator/Investor Relations, Gold Fields: Good. I’m gonna pause and hand over to the operator for the Chorus call to see if there’s any questions. I’m not hearing that there are any questions on the Chorus call, so we’ll just carry on. The next one, say, is from Luca Crassadonia, from VSME Report. He says, "Good afternoon. Could you please explain the rationale for a $100 million buyback on a market cap of $47 billion?" And-

Mike, Executive (likely CEO or Senior Executive), Gold Fields: Yeah, thanks for that, Luca. And I think, I’m gonna probably hand that question to Alex to take.

Alex, CFO or Financial Executive, Gold Fields: So thanks, Mike, and thanks, Luca, for that question. I, I think what we need to bear in mind is that we have competing shareholder priorities depending on their jurisdiction that they are in. We have North American shareholders who prefer buybacks and, and have been looking for them. So I think what we’ve done here with the buyback program is it, it is small relative to the total returns to shareholders. It, it approximates about 6% of the total shareholder returns. So we think it is just finding the right balance of, of mixing our, our returns between both dividends, special dividends and buybacks are top of priorities.

Mike, Executive (likely CEO or Senior Executive), Gold Fields: 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, Moderator/Investor Relations, Gold Fields: Okay. Just the second question, also on the webcast is: Do you plan on doing any joint ventures with Zijin Mining?

Mike, Executive (likely CEO or Senior Executive), Gold Fields: Yeah, look, I think, you know, firstly, I would wanna say that Zijin has been shown really remarkable growth, and we engage them in all of our industry bodies in the countries that we operate, and we see them as a very credible miner who’ve really developed their business very well. So 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. You know, 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, you know, it would be incumbent on us to be constructive about any potential working relationship.

Jongisa, Moderator/Investor Relations, Gold Fields: I’m gonna pause again and just see if there are any questions on the Chorus call, operator. So 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, Analyst, RMB Morgan Stanley: Hi. Good afternoon, Mike and team. Yeah, I’ve just got two questions, please. So I know we touched on it on our call this morning, so can we just go back to the current situation in Ghana? It’s my understanding that that royalty bill is now before the Parliament, so is it your base case that royalties will be lifted on Tarkwa in particular? And then in relation to the ongoing lease renewal negotiations you’re having with the government there, I know that 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?

And then just the final one, just, I mean, obviously, we’re, we’re looking at roughly about $2 billion of CapEx this year. I mean, I’ve been going through my model today, and 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? It looks to me like it’s gonna be north of $1 billion. Thank you.

Mike, Executive (likely CEO or Senior Executive), Gold Fields: Thank you, Chris. I’ll come back. Alex can take the CapEx question, but let me just start with the, with Ghana. You’re quite right, the royalty bill is in front of Parliament. Under that, the parliamentary procedure, unless it’s withdrawn, it, it will be passed into law within, you know, weeks. So you would expect it during the course of March, I expect to be announced as, as, 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.

But 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, you know, 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. And I think the way that we having the conversation with government, and it’s very early days, so, you know, there’s nothing 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 there’s... you know, makes very little sense for companies like ours to continue to invest." So I think the conversation is really to try and be quite broad and pragmatic, and I do think the government is aware of the fact that now that you’ve you know, pulled you know, 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.

And I also don’t think it’s off the table to think that there could be, you know, potentially some other movements. You know, the ministers are, 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 high royalties. So, there’s a degree of pragmatism, but I think as the bill stands today, we will see that new royalty rate coming through. But 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, CFO or Financial Executive, Gold Fields: Thanks. And thanks, Chris. To just go to your capital, you are right. There are gonna 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’re seeing 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 500,000 ounces there. And then at Agnew, we’re also seeing about $50 million as we invest in tailings, paste plant construction, as well as ventilation and cooling upgrades.

And then also at St Ives, about a AUD 50 million increase at the Invincible complex development and on the materials as we advance the materials handling system. So you’re right. If you also add the stronger Australian dollar, that moves your AUD 600 million close to the sort of billion mark.

Jongisa, Moderator/Investor Relations, Gold Fields: Just because there are quite a few questions still on the Qorus call, and I understand-

Alex, CFO or Financial Executive, Gold Fields: Thank you. Appreciate it.

Jongisa, Moderator/Investor Relations, Gold Fields: There was an issue with connectivity.

Operator: Thank you.

Jongisa, Moderator/Investor Relations, Gold Fields: I’m going to take another one on the-

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 Rene Hochreiter of Noah Capital. Please go ahead.

Rene Hochreiter, Analyst, Noah Capital: Hi, Mike and Alex. Nice results. Well done. Very nice, very nice. Great control—sorry, cost control, especially. Mike, you have a dividend policy, and I get that one, but would you consider having a special dividend policy? Like, it looks like at the moment, a special dividend is declared, depending on what your capital allocation is. But would you like, you know, have a more rigid policy going into the future sometime?

Mike, Executive (likely CEO or Senior Executive), Gold Fields: Look, Rene, thanks for that question, and I’ll ask Alex to contribute it, too, 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. You know, firstly, are we maintaining a good balance sheet? So are we maintaining an investment-grade balance sheet? Secondly, are we limiting the opportunities to reinvest in our business for the future generation? And thirdly, what does the total dividend look like in relationship to our peers? And that’s why we always talk about targeting upper quartile total returns to shareholders, total dividends to shareholders. So that special dividend, in my mind, will always be something that is a function of those other three elements.

And so being very precise about it, in terms of a formula, I don’t think really serves us well. And 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 are 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. So that’s how we thought about it, but I don’t know, Alex, have you got any other thoughts?

Alex, CFO or Financial Executive, Gold Fields: I think that, I think that’s right, Mike. And we also obviously benchmarked our base dividend policy, and we do believe that it is one of the top ones in the sector. And we were very strategic in how we thought about do we allocate it purely on free cash flow, free cash flow, but 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. So 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, Executive (likely CEO or Senior Executive), Gold Fields: ... Yep.

Rene Hochreiter, Analyst, Noah Capital: Okay, thanks for that. Just a couple other questions. Underground drilling results at Gruyere, is there any update on that?

Mike, Executive (likely CEO or Senior Executive), Gold Fields: No. Early, early days yet, Rene, so we’ll probably only be in a position to provide more detail, you know, maybe in 12 months. You know, we’ve got a pretty 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, pretty early days. We know what the grade is largely. It’s pretty, pretty consistent. But it’s really now sizing up the size of the ore body.

Rene Hochreiter, Analyst, Noah Capital: Okay, thanks. And just one more question, if I may. St Ives grades, mined grades, were down 29%, and the yield was up 3%, and Gruyere’s mined grades were down 18%, and the yield was down 6%. The yield was down, or quite, 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, Executive (likely CEO or Senior Executive), Gold Fields: 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 Swift Shore and Invincible Footwall South, which were two open pit operations, which come in at a slightly lower average grade than our underground material. So it’s really becomes a mix, and, 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 a slightly higher as it replaced, as it replaced stockpile material. And then I think on Gruyere, it was, it was-

Alex, CFO or Financial Executive, Gold Fields: It’s also a function of-

Mike, Executive (likely CEO or Senior Executive), Gold Fields: 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 the mill, because the mill was also stepping up in terms of its volume of process. They moved up nearly 1 million, 1 million tons year-on-year. So that’s kind of what you-

Rene Hochreiter, Analyst, Noah Capital: Like-

Mike, Executive (likely CEO or Senior Executive), Gold Fields: What you’re dealing with.

Rene Hochreiter, Analyst, Noah Capital: All right. Fine. That, that makes sense. Thanks. Thanks very much, Mike, and well done again.

Jongisa, Moderator/Investor Relations, Gold Fields: Thanks. I’m gonna come back into the webcast questions, and we’re gonna have to pick up pace ’cause 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 Solaris? I’m gonna 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 Rebeco.

He says: "Do you expect the proposed royalty increase in Ghana will lead to higher royalty payments, for us in the next five years?" And 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?" And that’s from Reinhart van der Walt from Bank of America. Shall we do those two, and then we-

Mike, Executive (likely CEO or Senior Executive), Gold Fields: Thank you. So just on Agua Amarga, I think we, we feel quite confident there’s nothing additional that we require. So we are now. It’s really is, the progress is largely, aligned to our, our Chinchilla capture and relocation program. So that’s the only thing, but it’s not, it’s not permit related. I think in Ghana, yes, if the royalty payments, 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%-12%. Even if you offset 2% of the, stability levy, it, you know, at, at worst, sorry, it, it’s likely at these kind of gold prices to still mean an additional 5%, royalty payment, if, if that’s what it gets applied under our new lease conditions.

So while in the next 12 months, it doesn’t impact us, it could impact us beyond 2027. And in terms of Reinhart, 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. So anything that would limit our horizon on our lease could potentially impact, impact that. But you know, we’re certainly confident that we’ll find the right path on the term of lease.

Jongisa, Moderator/Investor Relations, Gold Fields: If I can tag one on, Mike, from SBG, 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, Executive (likely CEO or Senior Executive), Gold Fields: Alex, do you wanna take that?

Alex, CFO or Financial Executive, Gold Fields: Yep. So at current spot prices, that would be $350 an ounce increase.

Mike, Executive (likely CEO or Senior Executive), Gold Fields: Yes.

Alex, CFO or Financial Executive, Gold Fields: $5,000 an ounce.

Jongisa, Moderator/Investor Relations, Gold Fields: 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, Analyst, SBG: 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, most importantly, the feasibility study. So, I guess the question is, what’s your confidence in the CapEx number, given the feasibility has yet to be done? And I’m assuming that your reserve gold price increase to $2,000 will have a large influence on the project and the reserves, et cetera. So I guess, should we be looking forward to a-- I would, I’d like to call it a Tier One asset for Windfall, but I don’t see it as a Tier One yet.

Not because of its jurisdiction, but because of its size and cost profile. But perhaps you can enlighten us. Thanks.

Mike, Executive (likely CEO or Senior Executive), Gold Fields: Adrian, maybe just a couple of things. So this investment in Windfall is what we look as almost the first phase of the development of this entire property. So the first phase of this was always designed to be, to fit in with provincial approvals, which was always gonna be the fastest process, fastest pathway to get this project started. That is gonna really deliver us that 300,000 ounces, you know, for the next 10 years and bank it in. But we’re already starting the next second phase of studies, which will help us to further optimize the asset. That’s about looking at potential additional material handlings, 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, but today we have a fairly tight footprint that is within the current approval that is being developed. And so just to be very clear, the feasibility study for this asset that supports the environmental approval was actually done 2-3 years ago. So the only thing that we’re really working on is optimizing our underground mining. So 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 gonna have a material impact on the reserves in the near term.

But 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. And then we’ve got the opportunities of all the nearby resource that we haven’t even, you know, started including in this. So we absolutely do believe that in the long term, it’s Tier One. 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. But the first approval is really this. In terms of the capital cost, you know, 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 in updating our cost estimates and the execution plan, and certainly that presented the best view of it. In terms of the IBA, you know, that’s largely gonna be translated into some form of, you know, royalty equivalent type participation, I suspect. But I do think that, you know, that’s not gonna necessarily hit our capital number. I think the biggest risk on capital is possibly likely to be, you know, any significant changes in exchange rates, US dollar, Canada, but also just in underlying contractor and project productivity. I mean, we’ve seen, and we’ve been engaging with some of the the peers who are delivering big projects in Canada, and the biggest concern is just, like, as years past, you know, productivity rates are dropping off.

So that’s, that’s probably one of our bigger concerns. But Chris is on the line. I don’t know if, Chris, you wanna add anything to that?

Chris, Unnamed Executive, Gold Fields: Yeah. No, Mike, I think you’ve covered it extremely well. Maybe I just—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. Well, obviously, our prioritizing increased spend at Windfall, and as we think about future pipeline management, and people always ask us: What’s next after Windfall? We kinda say we highly are excited about the next Windfall project will be found at Windfall.

Adrian Hammond, Analyst, SBG: Thanks, Chris.

Jongisa, Moderator/Investor Relations, Gold Fields: I’m just mindful of time. I’m gonna take two questions for a minute.

Adrian Hammond, Analyst, SBG: Thanks for the color there, Mike and Chris. It’s very useful. I mean, so a follow-up, if I may, for Alex, on inflation rates, which follows on, about the, 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 put some color, to, 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, when we’re looking at these companies on a cost basis, what, what is actually a real cost increase versus a real, a, an inflationary increase? It’s quite, it’s quite nuanced. Thanks.

Alex, CFO or Financial Executive, Gold Fields: Thanks, Adrian. We’re not quite seeing the inflation we saw during COVID, but I mean, 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 all, sort of all the labor and other construction projects in 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. But I think the real labor pressure we’re experiencing is in Australia, at our mining contractors in particular.

Thanks.

Jongisa, Moderator/Investor Relations, Gold Fields: Thanks for that, Adrian. I’m gonna take-

Alex, CFO or Financial Executive, Gold Fields: Thank you.

Jongisa, Moderator/Investor Relations, Gold Fields: Two questions from Josh Wolfson, and we are on time. So 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. And then, "Can you speak to high-level indications of quarterly expectations for 2026 production, thinking about sequencing and seasonality?

Mike, Executive (likely CEO or Senior Executive), Gold Fields: 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, 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’re 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 would be within 5% of the kind of variation by quarter. So I don’t think we’re gonna see huge variation across the year. And 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’re really working back into our system to deliver more predictable outcomes.

Jongisa, Moderator/Investor Relations, Gold Fields: Thanks, Mike. I’ll hand back to you for closing comments because we are over time.

Mike, Executive (likely CEO or Senior Executive), Gold Fields: Great. Yeah, thanks very much, John Geiss, and 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. So thanks all for listening, and look forward to engaging you in the coming weeks.