Fortitude Gold Corp 2025 Q3 Earnings Call - Gaining Permit Momentum and Bringing Mining In-House Amidst Regulatory Shifts

Conference Operator: Welcome to the Fortitude Gold 2025 third-quarter conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Jason Reid, CEO of Fortitude Gold. You may begin.

Jason Reid, CEO, Fortitude Gold Corp: Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining Fortitude Gold Corp’s 2025 third-quarter conference call. Following my brief comments and associated presentation, for those who joined online, I have a brief question-and-answer period. Joining me on the call today for the Q&A portion will be Ms. Janet Turner, our Chief Financial Officer. Let me remind everyone that certain statements made on this call are not historical facts and are forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, as described in our annual report on Form 10-K and other SEC filings, which could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by our comments.

Forward-looking statements in this earnings release that we issued yesterday, along with the comments on this call, are made only as of today, November 5th, 2025, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update any of these forward-looking statements as actual events unfold. You can find a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures referred to in our remarks in our Form 10-K filed with the SEC for the year ended December 31st, 2024. Second—excuse me—third-quarter financial results and highlights include $4.7 million net sales, $0.2 million net income for $0.01 per share, $11.7 million cash balance at September 30th, 2025, 1,384 gold ounces produced, $28.5 million working capital at September 30th, 2025, $2.5 million mine gross profits, $1.6 million exploration expenditures, $1,244 total cash costs after byproduct credits per ounce sold, $1,956 per ounce total all-in sustaining costs, $0.7 million dividends paid.

619 ounces of gold rounds or bullion at September 30, 2025. At our Isabella Pearl project, we continue to move waste from the Pearl pit layback to begin to access the top of the mineralized gold zone trending southeast deep from the bottom of the pit. Dual leach of our heap leach pad and the mineralization in the Pearl pit, both areas are expected to provide the bridge, including our County Line project, into production. We are pleased and excited to now have all our County Line permits. We thank the pro-business and pro-mining Trump administration that is working through the permit backlog. After the brutal four years in the Biden desert, we finally have all the necessary permits, and the bonding is in place for our County Line project. We have begun drilling the water well and are planning for other infrastructure projects in the near term.

We hit water and are pump testing and developing the well now. It’s looking promising that we have enough or adequate water for the project. We are looking at the possibility of taking a few pieces of equipment over soon and mining some gold in the historic pit as initial mining before the larger pit layback and waste removal. It’s a nice optionality to have, and we see—we will see if we ultimately use it. We look to take advantage of this permit momentum and are pushing permits for Scarlet South. The government shutdown hasn’t helped, but we feel we are closing in on a permit to mine that mineralization. In an ideal world, that permit would drop in soon, and we would take advantage of the mining equipment at Pearl and cycle the equipment back and forth between Scarlet and Pearl.

If the Scarlet South permit takes too long, we would then place, or then plan to move our focus to County Line. The possibility of mining Scarlet before County Line is attractive for numerous reasons, including efficiencies and an extra runway to bring County Line online. We are pleased to announce we have brought our mining in-house and have leased a brand-new fleet of Komatsu equipment. We would like to thank our previous mine contractors for their work. With the near-term movement of equipment to various mines, it made more sense to bring the mining in-house. We received our power grid permit and await NV Energy to begin the power line installation. We have been on site, and we are optimistic they will begin construction soon. We look forward to the energy cost savings by connecting to the power grid.

We now have our heap leach expansion permit and look to acquire mine permits for North Scarlet and Golden Mile, as well as an exploration EA for East Camp Douglas. We target permitting as many projects as possible under the Trump administration so that we have numerous mines to build and operate for many years in the future. This would allow us to weather another four years in a Biden-equivalent desert if the next election cycle goes against the mining and business. With gold having reached record highs recently, I believe this pullback in the gold price is healthy, as no market should go straight up. It’s been my experience that pullbacks to fill in the market are important for the next leg higher. While we are not at $4,300 gold highs today, but rather closer to $4,000.

That is still a wonderful price to be selling gold at. Mainstream media is quick to tell you that the gold bull is over, and they may be right. Where was the mainstream media in giving us the heads-up that the big bull move was coming in the first place? More signs point to a higher gold price after this pullback concludes. We continue to defensively position the company to overcome the challenges created by the Biden administration while targeting to offensively position the company to permit and build our next mines under the Trump administration. I would like to thank everyone for their time today on this conference call. Operator, if you could open up the lines if there are any Q&A.

Conference Operator: Certainly. At this time, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Once again, that is star one to ask a question. One moment, please, while we poll for questions.

Jason Reid, CEO, Fortitude Gold Corp: Operator, while we wait for questions, if there are any live, I have quite a few written ones, so let’s get to some of those first. The first one being from Ray Leeb. Question: Now that permits are in hand for County Line, is there a production projection for the rest of 2025 or 2026? Answer to that is no, not yet. The second part of your question is, "AISC expected to remain around $1,956 per ounce?" Answer to your question is no. That was a little high due to some CapEx. The third part of your question: There was a large equipment purchase lease of $17 million on the cash flow. What is that? You heard me just mention that. We decided to bring mining in-house. We’ve thought of this for a long time. It made sense to do it now just because we’re getting some permits.

We expect to be at several locations, and it just made all the sense in the world to do that. Plus, we’re in control of our own destiny, and we really like that. Another question. Let’s see. This again is from Ray Leeb. Is there any progress on permitting for exploring Scarlet North? Are there any other outstanding drill results awaiting assay? I don’t believe there are any outstanding results, but we are actively working to permit exploring and ultimately, hopefully, producing Scarlet North. We have hit some pockets of mineralization up there, but as you guys recall, we were only given one NOI by the past administration, and we ended a drill program. We want to follow that up and define more, but we’re actively working toward ultimately permitting Scarlet North.

The more near term, as I mentioned on the conference call, would be Scarlet South. It makes all the sense in the world with all the equipment and Pearl Deep. If we can get that permit, hopefully before year end or early next year, we can cycle equipment back and forth. That’ll be really good. If we can get that done and mine gold that’s at Scarlet South. Next question from William Shawnshek. Sorry if I mispronounced your last name. How much money would the company save by paying dividends quarterly? William, we wouldn’t save a whole lot. That’d be nominal. I don’t have the exact number, but we have the dividend kind of on autopilot to pay monthly, and it’s really not a big deal. If anything, it’s just a little more administrative. So it would be nominal, any savings. Next question is from Richard Erickson.

Has deep pit layback ore been collected and added to the leach pad yet? If not, how soon will this be done? We are at the top of it. We are making an access to get to the final couple of benches. Yeah, then the probe will be done. It is exciting that up until this point this year, we have been removing waste for the bulk of it, and now we are excited to get into the ore. We are just about there, Richard. The next one, again from Richard Erickson. How many tons of ore contained in the deep pit layback, and at what average grade? I have had this question before, and we are not going to give our estimates. In large part, they were not ever in a resource. To remind everybody, we never expected to mine this.

We needed to mine it to create the bridge when we could not get any permits under Biden. And the gold price allowed us to go deeper and remove all this waste. So while we know there is gold there, it is not in a formal resource. We have some internal numbers, but ultimately, it was not going to matter until we actually mine it. That is the ultimate sample. I do not have public numbers for you on that. Next question from Scott McCloud. In a perfect world, if Scarlet came online, how many ounces do you think we will be producing a month? I am not going to speak to monthly yet as everybody of production. Or even annual for that matter. As everybody knows, the Biden administration knocked us off our horse. We are trying to climb back on now that the Trump administration is back in.

As our corporate presentation stated for four years now, that we don’t have an outlook is to be determined. As a function of getting these permits. Let us get our feet under us. Let us get this mine up and running, then we’ll come out with some forecasts. Until then, yeah, we just chop that up to being knocked off our horse by a time mining administration. Craig Hooper. Good morning, Jason. Can you provide some details on how you manage the throughput of the expected recoverable ounces on the pad in 2025 and going forward into 2026? What determines the ounces coming off the pad each quarter? Time under leach, or is it based on pad capacity? All good questions. Pad is almost like a living entity of its own. You have multiple levels.

You have the—let’s just call them a checkerboard of cells that you’re putting each cell under leach under various times. It’s good to pull them off of leach and then put them back on. It is very complicated. We manage it as a function of just operations. General Manager has a handle on what we think we need to put under leach, at what time, and put back on the leach. Now pads are very complicated. The long and short of it is we’re still pulling residual leach, which is good. I hope that gets the most of your question. Another question by Harry Van Den Boe. Apologies if I mispronounced that. What do you expect to produce at Isabella Pearl in the coming quarters? Again, I’m not going to speak to any production estimates as a function of we just got our permit for County Line.

We’re working on Scarlet. Let us get our feet under us, and then we’ll come out with projections. Operator, are there any live questions that we should get to?

Conference Operator: You do have a question coming from John Baer with Ascend Wealth Advisors.

John Baer, Analyst, Ascend Wealth Advisors: Thank you. Good morning, Jason.

Jason Reid, CEO, Fortitude Gold Corp: Good morning, John. How are you?

John Baer, Analyst, Ascend Wealth Advisors: Good. Good, good. Glad to see things starting to fall into place here. I’ve got a couple of questions. Number one. When might you or will you make any kind of a press release as to once you decide and determine when you think County Line might be up and running? Do you anticipate putting out any kind of news release as to construction beginning and so forth?

Jason Reid, CEO, Fortitude Gold Corp: Yeah, that’s a high likelihood. As the comments—and I’ll just reiterate them here—but as the comments in the call. We had hoped that we were going to get Scarlet South permit. In an ideal world, that really helps the mining. Let me explain a little bit why that is. As we go deeper in the Pearl, the space available is very limited. When you’re trying to do your blast hall cycles, you have a lot of downtime of equipment up top. It’d be great if you can bounce back and forth and do each of those cycles from equally at Scarlet South and the Pearl. That’s what would be ideal. We thought we were on the cusp of getting that, and then the government shut down. Man, you talk about weathering four years of Biden, and then the government shuts down.

Hopefully, they get back up and running, and hopefully, we get that permit. If that does not happen in time, when we are done with the Pearl, then we are going to go over to County Line with full force. As I mentioned, we already started drilling the well. We are doing some road infrastructure, etc., and preparing for that. Because that is in flux, let us get a little clarity and then likely PR that we are, "officially," starting County Line.

John Baer, Analyst, Ascend Wealth Advisors: Okay. So real activity on County Line doesn’t get started until these other two fall into place. Is that the best way to put that?

Jason Reid, CEO, Fortitude Gold Corp: Yeah. It could start right at the end of Pearl, though, if Scarlet South does not fall into place. We try to bake in a lot of optionality. You guys have always heard me say we have plan A, but plan A rarely works. You got to have B, C, D, and E. We have all this optionality. Plan A is Scarlet South. That would be wonderful, just as an efficiency, moving equipment back and forth because it is only about 500 meters away. I would have loved to have had that answer if the shutdown would not have happened. I might have had that answer. At this point, with the shutdown, let us wait till that stops. Let us see when we get the permit. If it does not come in at Scarlet South soon enough, we will just move everything over to County Line and hit that hard.

Yeah, you should expect some sort of press release in that regard.

John Baer, Analyst, Ascend Wealth Advisors: Okay. Very good. Second question. How long are the lease, the equipment obligation? Is that an actual outright purchase or a lease purchase? And how long is that? What’s the duration of all that?

Jason Reid, CEO, Fortitude Gold Corp: Yeah, it’s a lease, and they’re all short-term. The reason being is, kind of like what we do with a lot of our light rolling stock or trucks, smaller trucks like Ford F-250s, etc. We lease them short-term, and then the owner, which in this case is Komatsu, doesn’t want it to go up certain hours, over certain hours, and then they come and get it and switch it out. We’re doing a similar thing with this heavy equipment. It’s all short-term lease. The way we view this is that the mining contractors were doing the same thing, but then obviously, they upcharge us because they’re doing it. The delta that they were making working for us, now that it’s under our umbrella, we hope to keep. It makes a lot of sense to do this. If everything works.

Even half as what we planned, we should see some benefit, both in directing our own future, not having to babysit as much, etc., but more importantly, holding on to some of that delta that they were making off of us. It just makes all the sense in the world. Also, we’re going to be moving equipment a lot of places. It’s not uncommon when you do that with groups that own equipment that they get you for mob and de-mob charges and use that as a means to renegotiate. We’re not going to have to address any of that because we brought it all in-house. Basically hired the same team of people because they’re local, and now they work for us. I mean, it’s something we always envisioned doing. It’s just a lot to do early on, but now it just makes all the sense.

We have. If we get Scarlet South, we’re going to have multiple mines. We’re going to have multiple locations. Makes a lot of sense to do.

John Baer, Analyst, Ascend Wealth Advisors: Yeah. No, I agree. Yeah, that sounds interesting. Last question. Do you have any active drilling going on, exploratory type? There was some modest expense in this most recent quarter. If you do, where are you doing it at?

Jason Reid, CEO, Fortitude Gold Corp: No, anything you see under expense line item is not drilling for the most part. Yeah, we’re not doing any.

John Baer, Analyst, Ascend Wealth Advisors: I thought there was like $1.7 million exploration. Maybe I misread that.

Jason Reid, CEO, Fortitude Gold Corp: No, no. You didn’t misread it. A lot of exploration costs aren’t just drilling. Just when you see an exploration cost, it doesn’t mean just drilling. We have an exploration team. They’re out doing a lot of mapping. They’re doing other studies. They’re doing other things. We don’t have an extensive exploration program by any means. We just don’t. In large part, I mean, we’ve been knocked off our horse. We’ve cut back on things trying to weather and get these other mines up and running. No, we have not flipped the switch to go back to exploration drilling yet.

John Baer, Analyst, Ascend Wealth Advisors: Okay. So no drills?

Jason Reid, CEO, Fortitude Gold Corp: We didn’t even carry away.

John Baer, Analyst, Ascend Wealth Advisors: Yeah. No active drilling going on. No active drilling. Do you have any assays that are out there that you’re waiting on results for?

Jason Reid, CEO, Fortitude Gold Corp: We had that two tranche of assays that were stuck in a lab for a long time and came back from long drilling quite a while ago. I do not believe we have any more. What was wonderful about those assays, and they all had to do with County Line for anybody listening that did not see that. County Line has two pits, and that drilling told us that there is expansion potential not only in the pits, but south of the east pit for sure. This is an area that has not been mined before. Also very exciting over there, one of our best targets, LRVP of exploration tells us, is this hill or knoll that is north of the County Line big pit that has never been drilled. Structurally, that is the biggest target.

Between those drill assays that point to additional gold ounces, and it is one of the reasons why we mentioned and have mentioned, and I will mention again that we are looking to possibly update that resource because we think we added ounces over there. They are working on that right now. They are working on the County Line one. County Line has a lot of upside as well, which is great. No, we have not gone back to any exploration in a material way for new areas.

John Baer, Analyst, Ascend Wealth Advisors: Okay. Very good. Appreciate answering the questions. Good luck. Keep going.

Jason Reid, CEO, Fortitude Gold Corp: Hey, thanks. Good to talk to you, John.

John Baer, Analyst, Ascend Wealth Advisors: Yeah.

Jason Reid, CEO, Fortitude Gold Corp: Operator, if there’s another call, we’ll take it live. Otherwise, there’s a couple more write-in questions.

Conference Operator: There are no questions in queue. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one.

Jason Reid, CEO, Fortitude Gold Corp: Okay. Harry Van Den Boe has another question. Can we expect to see the dividend back at 4 cents per month or possibly much higher as the gold price is now much higher compared to a year ago? Great question. We’d love to go back to that. That’s not going to happen in the near future in any form or fashion. Again, I think if you haven’t heard it, you’re going to hear from me again. We’re trying to get back on the horse, having been knocked off by the Biden administration. Let us get that done before we do that. I mean, right now, we’re tightening our belt. You heard me talk about not exploring. We’re not doing all these other things. We’re still paying a nominal dividend.

One could argue, should you even be paying a dividend right now when you’re trying to keep your belt as tight as possible? We’re trying to walk that fine line. Yeah, in an ideal world, we love to go back to the dividends of old. Right now, we need to take our capital and focus on getting back on the horse fully. That’s what we’re going to do. No, don’t expect dividend increases in the near future. We don’t tie it to the gold price. It’s not a function of the gold price. It depends on what you’re doing. We’re about to build mines. That takes some money, even though the mines we’re going to build are inexpensive, in as much as the hub and spoke that we’re trying to do where we don’t build everything at each facility.

We’re trying to just direct ship ore and such. It’ll be some of the cheapest CapEx for a mine in the industry, but it’s still CapEx. So we got to keep our belt tightened. Hopefully, that gets to your question. Ray Leeb came back with another question. Is there any progress getting electrical power to the site? Not a lot, Ray. They have come out. There was a little bit of issue on their end with a couple of groups talking to each other on their end, not us. We think they have that sorted, and we are just itching to hear a construction start date. I think that’s the best update I can give you. I would have liked to have had the line done by now.

As you guys will fully know that have been following us, we’ve been trying to get this power line for over five years. We got nowhere during the Biden administration. Trump gets in, and all of a sudden, this just popped out of the blue. We kind of, I don’t want to say given up, but we just quit pushing on him because we were getting nowhere. All of a sudden, we get, boom, Trump’s in, and boom, this drops in. I credit his administration with that and his Department of Energy with pushing projects. We’re part of that, I think. At least it’s moving. It takes a while when you’ve gone from a standstill to a walk or a run. That’s, I think, what’s happening with the power line. At least it’s moving.

That’s good news because we will save on energy costs when we get hooked to the power grid, which will be wonderful. It also might free up at least one of our diesel generators to take to our satellite deposits, if you will. A lot of good things could come of that. Okay, probably the last question we’ll do today because it’s running a little long. Let’s make this our last question from Tom Sturrik. Does the leach pad at Isabella Pearl have enough capacity for expected increases in mining activity? Great question, Tom. It does for the foreseeable future, and a very large percentage of County Line will be able to be put on that, as well as all of Scarlet South. When you combine them both, we’re getting toward the max, so we will be expanding the heap pad.

At some point in the future. We’re actively gearing up for that. Yeah, but we’re not in a race right now. We’re not going to be out of space. We fully expect to have the expansion complete before we need it, I guess, is probably the cleanest way to answer that. Okay. That went much longer than I thought. Let’s go ahead and conclude. If you were either in the queue on the live or I didn’t get to your question, please call back. Probably just call Craig. He’s available. I am traveling right now, so less available. If you can get me on my cell, great. Call us if you have any questions at any time. Apologies if we didn’t get to your question, but we’re always available. Very good.

With that, I’d like to conclude the call, and we’ll talk to you guys next quarter. Thank you.

Conference Operator: This concludes today’s conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your time.