Aya Gold and Silver's Updated Boumadine Study Doubles Its Value to US$3.5 Billion Before Reserves

Boumadine sits in the Errachidia province of eastern Morocco, about 70 kilometres southwest of the city of Errachidia and a long drive from anywhere a Canadian shareholder is likely to have been. On September 9, 2026, Aya Gold & Silver Inc. published an updated preliminary economic assessment for the deposit, and the study's headline value more than doubled.

That is the fact. The part worth slowing down for is that a study value can double for two quite different reasons, and this one did a bit of both. Some of the increase is the deposit: more drilling, more tonnes, a longer mine life. Some of it is the price the study assumes for the metal, which Aya does not set and neither does anyone else. Telling them apart is the whole exercise, and it starts with understanding what the headline number actually is.

Net present value, explained for someone who has never bought a share

A mine spends its money first and earns it back later. Boumadine, on the September 9 numbers, would cost US$463 million to build before it produced anything, then generate cash for 14 years. Those are two different kinds of dollars. A dollar spent in 2029 and a dollar earned in 2041 are not worth the same to anyone deciding today, because the 2029 dollar could have been doing something else for twelve years.

Net present value is the arithmetic that puts them on the same footing. You take every dollar the model says will come in and go out, and you shrink the later ones by a chosen annual rate before adding them up. Aya used 5 per cent, which the release states plainly. At that rate a dollar arriving in ten years counts as about 61 cents today. Add all the shrunken inflows, subtract all the shrunken outflows, and what is left is the net present value: US$3.5 billion after tax, in the release's words, "more than doubled from the Prior PEA."

Two companion numbers travel with it. The internal rate of return, reported at 93 per cent after tax, is the discount rate at which that sum would come out to exactly zero, and it is high here mainly because the modelled cash arrives so fast relative to the build cost. Payback of 0.7 years is the model saying the construction spend is recovered in about eight and a half months of production.

Now the important part, and it is the part a first-time reader will want to keep hold of. Every one of those numbers is downstream of an assumption about the price of gold and silver years from now. Change the assumed price and all three move together, without a single extra tonne being found. That is not a criticism of the study. It is what the study is.

How much of the doubling came from the deposit, and how much from the deck

The release discloses both studies' inputs, so the comparison is checkable rather than a matter of opinion.

Read down the last two rows first, because they are the ones that get skipped. Life-of-mine gold production in the new study is lower than in the old one, by 4 per cent on the release's own comparison. Silver production is 16 per cent higher. The mine got longer and wider, not richer in gold.

Meanwhile the assumed gold price rose 25 per cent and the assumed silver price rose 67 per cent. Aya also reports higher payability, at 83 per cent blended gold-equivalent against the prior study, meaning more of the metal in the concentrate is actually paid for by the smelter. Capital barely moved, up 3.8 per cent to US$463 million, which is the genuinely creditable line in the table: a longer mine at a similar build cost is a real improvement in the ratio the company highlights, an NPV to capital multiple of 7.6 times against 3.3 times before.

So the honest split is this. The deposit contributed a longer life, more silver, better payability and a flat capital number. The price deck contributed the rest, and the rest is a large share. A reader who takes US$3.5 billion as a statement about the rock, rather than a statement about the rock at US$3,500 gold, has misread the document.

One more figure that circulated this week deserves correcting. Retail discussion has been passing around a spot-price valuation of US$5.5 billion against US$3.9 billion previously. The first figure is in the release, at US$4,472 per ounce gold and US$66.85 per ounce silver as of September 3, 2026. The second could not be traced to any Aya document reviewed for this piece; the prior study's base case was US$1,475 million. The only 3.9 in the release is 3.9 million ounces of gold-equivalent life-of-mine production.

What the study carries, and what it is not allowed to carry

The strongest thing that can be said for the September 9 disclosure is that Aya says most of the limits itself, in the release, without being asked.

That inferred share is the single most important line in this piece. Under Canadian rules an inferred resource is explicitly too speculative geologically to have economics applied to it in a way that would let it be called a reserve, and the release repeats that language. A preliminary economic assessment is the one study permitted to model them anyway. Four fifths of Boumadine's ounces sit in that category today, and a 400,000-metre drill programme running to the end of 2027 is what is meant to move them.

The capital is not in the treasury, and the mine that funds it already runs

At June 30, 2026, in results released August 13, 2026, Aya reported cash and equivalents of US$182.8 million, restricted cash of US$16 million and working capital of US$144.8 million. Non-current financial liabilities were US$57.1 million, down from US$84.0 million a year earlier after the company repaid its European Bank for Reconstruction and Development facility in full and ahead of maturity during the quarter.

Set that against US$463 million of initial capital and the gap is obvious. What makes Aya different from most companies publishing a study of this size is Zgounder, its producing silver mine in the Taroudant province, which generated US$96.8 million of revenue and US$35.0 million of net income in the second quarter alone on 1,489,526 ounces of silver produced. Guidance for 2026, reaffirmed in the August results, is 5.2 to 5.8 million ounces of silver at a cash cost near US$21.50 per ounce.

An operating mine does not make the funding question disappear. It changes its character from whether the money can be found to what mix of cash flow, debt and equity finds it, and over what timetable. That is a better problem than the one most developers have.

The argument the boards are having, and the sentence that settles it

Retail discussion this week has centred on whether Boumadine is a gold project or a silver project, which sounds like semantics and is not. It decides which commodity cycle the asset is exposed to and which peer group it gets valued against.

The release answers it in one line: Aya calls Boumadine "a gold-led project" that "also holds the potential to double Aya's silver production." Both halves are the company's own words, and the production table supports them. Gold is the lead metal by revenue contribution over the life of mine; silver is the growth story relative to Aya's existing output, since Zgounder produced 4.83 million ounces in 2025 and Boumadine adds 81.2 million ounces over 14 years, an average near 5.8 million a year.

Where I come out on this

Constructively, and more constructively than I would read most doubled headline numbers.

The reason is not the US$3.5 billion. It is that the improvement is visible in lines the price deck cannot touch: mine life up three years, capital up less than 4 per cent, payability up, silver ounces up, and a treasury that repaid its development bank facility early rather than refinancing it. Those are operating and engineering outcomes, and they are the ones that survive a change in the gold price.

What I would not do is treat the study as a valuation. Boumadine has no reserve, no feasibility study, no permit-to-build and four fifths of its ounces in the weakest resource category. The company's own schedule puts the feasibility study and environmental and social impact assessment in the second half of 2027, with a two-year construction period after that. The distance between September 9 and a mine is measured in years and in capital that has not been raised.

What would move the reading, roughly in order

The complete NI 43-101 technical report is due within 45 days of the release, so by about October 24, 2026, on SEDAR+. It will contain the full assumption set, the recovery and dilution factors and the sensitivity tables, and it is the document that either supports the release or does not.

Conversion of inferred ounces to indicated in the 400,000-metre programme changes more than anything else, because it attacks the 79 per cent directly.

The 2027 feasibility study and the environmental and social impact assessment change the category of the project rather than its arithmetic.

How the US$463 million is funded, and in what proportion of equity, is the shareholder-level question the study does not address at all.

And a further move in the gold price changes the NPV without changing Boumadine by a single tonne, in whichever direction it goes.

On September 10, 2026, the day after the release, AYA closed at C$39.235 on the Toronto exchange, down C$2.04 or 4.9 per cent, per market data read after the close, within reach of a 52-week high of C$41.98. A preliminary economic assessment is a description of a mine that does not exist yet, written using prices nobody controls. The description of Boumadine improved on September 9, and it improved partly because the price line moved. Both halves of that sentence are in the release, and only one of them belongs to Aya.

Transparency note. This is an independent due-diligence analysis and editorial opinion piece produced by The Maple Markets editorial desk. It is not sponsored, promoted or commissioned, and no compensation of any kind has been received from Aya Gold & Silver Inc. (TSX: AYA) or any party acting on their behalf. The analysis is based on public disclosure available as of the publish date; every figure is attributed to its primary source. The Maple Markets and its authors may hold positions in securities mentioned; nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security, and readers should not treat it as investment advice. Past disclosure does not guarantee future results. Policies: Editorial Standards · Financial Disclaimer.