Alamos Gold Inc. Class A Common Shares Jefferies Global Industrials Conference 2026

Right. Well, we have been mining at Young-Davidson for quite a number of years. We took it over in late 2015 and ramped up production from roughly 4,000 tons a day to 8,000 tons a day between 2016 and 2020, and operated very consistently, very profitably through 2025 into 2026. But as the years go by, we are getting deeper and deeper in the mine and stress levels go up. When we talk about seismicity in mining, essentially every time we blast to open up a stope, that is the seismicity. It is not Mother Nature, and it is not the San Andreas Fault or something like that. It is the shake that is caused by blasting. We operate very large stopes in that mine, and so that is just a natural part of the mining process. We were getting into levels, though, where as you go deeper, the mine experiences more stresses.

We were dealing with that. We more or less had mining going on as we were also reinforcing the development work that we had been doing in the years prior. Effectively, we are just very unfortunate as that development work was continuing, it just did not keep pace with the rate that we were mining. The blasting that we are doing did cause some damage to the tunnel workings that we have to access the mine faces. What we had been doing and what we continue to do is to just increase ground support, and that means, if you have never been in an underground mine before, you are walking through these fairly large tunnels. They are well lit, or they are well ventilated.

The rock itself is basically encased in a very thick wire mesh, and that wire mesh is bolted with what is called a MacLean Bolter, and it pushes bolts into the rock. Depending on the levels of stress you are dealing with, it could be anywhere from 6 feet to 10 feet. We are basically, as a consequence of being deeper in the mine, we are putting in more heavy ground support, so thicker mesh, deeper bolts. This is the kind of thing that is going on. We have been working on that actually prior to the event. That continues. The cleanup of that area continues. Fortunately, we did not sterilize a single ounce of reserve. We can clean this up and get back in and work in this area again. But for the time being, we are not mining out of the 9410 level.

The other levels are still supplying about 5,000 tons a day of production, and the last quarter that generated CAD 72 million in free cash flow. I think the market reaction was a bit overdone because effectively it wiped out the entire valuation for the mine itself, and the mine is still operating very profitably and still operating at 5,000 tons a day. We are working towards getting back to ramping up operations to between 7,000 and 8,000 tons a day into next year. It will be a ramp. The big change is we are developing a new mine plan that helps us deal with the additional stresses of being at the depths that we are operating at. Effectively, the new plan pushes the forces and stresses to the outer part of the mine.

Up till now, we have been pushing those stresses onto an internal zone in the mine that is not mineralized, and we use as more, they call it a crown pillar. That was a very good approach for the last decade. But now as we are getting to these depths, we are realizing that that is probably not viable. We would be okay, but from time to time, we would probably have an event we would have to clean up, and we would rather not do that. We want to operate the mine in a manner that it can just consistently deliver at whatever the rate it is we are set. All of that is underway and that ramp-up will be taking place throughout 2027.

I do not know what that rate will be. I think 8,000 tons a day is the upper limit. It always has been because that is the rate of the mill. 8,000 tons a day is your goal. You want to make sure you are filling the mill. Mind you, we have other ways that we can do that. But I do not believe we will be any less than 7,000 tons a day, and we will not be any more than eight. We are talking about two-gram material, so the materiality between that extra 1,000 tons a day is not too significant, but the number will likely fall somewhere between 7,000 and 8,000 tons a day. I am not too worried about what that number is. What I am worried about is the long-term mining operation. We have got 14 years of reserves there that we know about, and it will continue to grow.

We have drilling down below the 1,500-meter level, and this cyanide unit just keeps on going and going and going. I think 25 years from now, there is still going to be mining there. So we have to set things up with that long-term perspective in mind, and that is in effect what we are doing. The game plan is to mine out your whole reserve, not to necessarily mine it out in a fixed period of time.

Well, you are right. It is all about the shaft, and we did reach shaft bottom at the end of the first quarter. We have been now putting in all the shaft infrastructure, all the structural steel, everything required to effectively operate that shaft. We are slightly ahead of schedule, which no CEO should ever say, but we are indeed ahead of schedule right now. I am quite pleased at the way that is going. The heavy lifting has been done. This project has largely been de-risked. What remains is, as I said, putting in the structural steel, putting in the development that we are going to need to support higher mining rates. We are working on that right now. The lower shaft infrastructure, where the crusher and so forth will go into all that work, is also taking place.

There is still a fair amount of work to be done between now and Q1, but we are on track to get there. It will allow us to operate at 2,400 tons a day, where we are well beyond where we were at the end of the last quarter. We are very much on schedule to reach 2,000 tons a day without the shaft. When we look at the physicals, I sort of like the way things are unfolding right now. We have another, what I consider a big plus with the power line upgrade being completed also in Q1, we will be shifting to a much larger and more consistent power source that will effectively run that big shaft. That is a grid-driven shaft, which you want.