US$3.5 Billion After Tax: Aya Gold & Silver Files Its Updated Boumadine Study

The document behind a US$3.5 billion headline is now on SEDAR+. Aya Gold & Silver filed the new technical report for its updated Boumadine preliminary economic assessment on October 20, 2026, and announced the filing the next morning, six weeks after it released the study's results on September 9. The report carries an effective date of September 9, 2026, and the names of nine independent qualified persons from six consulting firms, plus two from the company's own staff, and it supersedes the study filed in December 2025.

Aya is a Canadian precious-metals producer with one operating mine, Zgounder, in Morocco's Anti-Atlas, and Zgounder produced a record 1.50 million ounces of silver in the third quarter of 2026. Boumadine is the company's second project in the same country: a silver, gold, zinc and lead deposit under 14 drill rigs as of September 22, 2026, with a small reclaim operation already selling a historical pyrite stockpile, and a feasibility study in progress.

The study describes what Boumadine could become; the October 14 release reports what Zgounder and the Boumadine stockpile produced in the quarter. Both are in the company's own documents.

A 14-year flotation mine, three years longer than the 2025 plan

The report describes a mine that would process 41.2 million tonnes of mineralised material over 14 years, three years longer and a third more material than the 2025 study, through a conventional flotation plant. Flotation grinds rock to a slurry and uses reagents and air bubbles to lift the valuable minerals away from the waste. Boumadine's plant would produce three concentrates, zinc, lead and pyrite, and the gold and silver would travel to a smelter inside them.

Canadian securities rules let a company publish a preliminary economic assessment as the earliest economic study on a deposit. It may draw on inferred resources, the least certain category, and the release states the limit in the company's own words: the 2026 PEA "is preliminary in nature and includes inferred mineral resources that are considered too speculative geologically to have the economic considerations applied to them that would enable them to be categorized as mineral reserves, and, as such, there is no certainty that the 2026 PEA results will be realized."

Output is stated in gold-equivalent ounces, with the silver and the base metals converted to gold at the study's prices. The plan averages 348,000 gold-equivalent ounces a year over its first five years and 271,000 over the full 14, with about 16 per cent more silver across the mine life than the 2025 study carried.

Cash costs are US$998 per gold-equivalent ounce in the first five years of the 2026 plan, and all-in sustaining costs, the industry's measure once sustaining capital is included, are US$1,105; across the mine life the two figures are US$1,169 and US$1,300.

Initial capital is US$463 million, which the release calls broadly in line with the 2025 study, and the base case returns it in 0.7 years. The ratio of after-tax value to initial capital, the release's capital efficiency ratio, rises to 7.6 times from 3.3.

Four metal prices and two payabilities carry the US$3.5 billion

Net present value is the sum of a project's future after-tax cash flows discounted back to today, here at 5 per cent a year, and the internal rate of return is the discount rate at which that sum would be zero. At the base-case prices in the table below, Boumadine's after-tax net present value is US$3,537 million and its internal rate of return 93 per cent. The company rounds the first figure to US$3.5 billion and says it is more than double the 2025 study's.

The release names three changes: higher commodity price assumptions, stronger metal payability and the mine life extended from 11 to 14 years. On price, the release does not restate the 2025 deck. Payability is the share of the metal in a concentrate that a smelter pays for.

Gold payability rose 12 percentage points to 82 per cent and silver payability 8 points to 85 per cent against the 2025 study, so more of the same ounces become revenue.

The release publishes four other price cases alongside the base case. Zinc and lead move with each row in the company's table; the table below shows gold and silver, the two metals that carry most of the value.

Break-even is the price deck at which the after-tax value reaches zero. In the release it is US$1,704 gold and US$24.34 silver, with zinc at US$0.90 a pound and lead at US$0.60.

The filed report's own sensitivity table (Table 22-6, page 315) carries the same break-even, downside, base and spot rows; its upside row differs from the release's: US$6,764 million and a 147 per cent IRR, with zinc at US$1.71 and lead at US$1.13 a pound, against the release's US$6,738 million and 146 per cent at US$1.77 and US$0.90.

The report's Table 22-11 (page 317) gives the split between the two metals, as after-tax NPV at 5 per cent with one price held and the other moved:

The table's ranges stop at US$4,250 gold and US$62 silver.

Indicated ounces rose 34 per cent in the February 2026 estimate

Mineral resources are reported in categories of confidence. Indicated resources have been drilled closely enough to support a mine plan; inferred resources are estimated from wider-spaced holes and cannot be converted into reserves until more drilling confirms them. The estimate underneath the 2026 PEA has an effective date of February 28, 2026, and Guy Dishaw of SRK Consulting as its qualified person. It holds 8.6 million tonnes of indicated resources at 4.02 grams per tonne gold-equivalent, containing 1.1 million ounces, a 34 per cent increase on the 2025 estimate.

The inferred category is larger: 45.4 million tonnes at 2.92 grams per tonne, containing 4.3 million ounces. Divided by the total tonnage, inferred material is 84 per cent of the resource.

The estimate was prepared at US$2,800 gold and US$30 silver; the economic study's base case uses US$3,500 and US$50.

A feasibility study can count only measured and indicated resources toward reserves, and the 360,000-metre infill program the company is running through 2027 exists to move Boumadine's tonnage from one category to the other.

Zgounder is the operating business underneath the study

The October 14 release reports the quarter's production. Aya reported record third-quarter production of 2,034,628 silver-equivalent ounces, up 51 per cent from a year earlier and 21 per cent from the second quarter.

Zgounder produced 1,497,749 ounces of silver, also a record, from 376,863 tonnes milled at 146 grams per tonne with 92.0 per cent recovery.

The mill ran at 4,096 tonnes a day, a record for the plant, with 99.4 per cent availability, and the quarter's silver figure excludes 138,100 ounces held as unsmelted silver cement at the period end.

The quarter's total includes 536,879 silver-equivalent ounces from Boumadine, where Aya has been reclaiming and selling a historical pyrite stockpile since November 2025. Pyrite is the iron sulphide the old mine set aside, and the stockpile carries enough silver and gold that the company sells it. Aya expects that operation to last about 20 to 24 months from November 19, 2025, and the release describes the wider Boumadine project as at the exploration and evaluation stage rather than in commercial production. Maple set out on October 14, 2026 how much of that record quarter came from the stockpile, about a quarter of it.

The most recent financial statements the company has published cover the second quarter, and they show a producer paying its way: revenue of US$96.8 million, up 151 per cent from a year earlier, net income of US$35.0 million, and cash of US$182.8 million at June 30, 2026, per the August 13, 2026 results release, which also reports the company's European Bank for Reconstruction and Development loan fully repaid.

The report's mine plan has open-pit mining starting in 2029 and underground development in 2031 (technical report, section 1.7); a preliminary economic assessment does not include a financing plan, which is normally set out at the feasibility stage.

Chief executive Benoit La Salle said in the October 14 release that, with Zgounder operating consistently, the company is "firmly on track" to meet its 2026 production guidance. The release restates no guidance figures; the outlook published on March 31, 2026 stands, per the August 13 release.

Fourteen rigs at Boumadine and a feasibility study expected next year

The drilling that would move tonnage between categories is the company's largest program. On September 22, 2026, Aya reported 145,719 metres drilled at Boumadine so far in the year, 38.6 per cent of a 360,000-metre infill program planned through 2027, with 14 rigs turning.

The best new intercept in that release was 15.2 metres of core at 593 grams per tonne silver-equivalent in hole BOU-DD26-883.

The company said the 5.4-kilometre Main Trend remains open in every direction, with David Lalonde, executive vice-president exploration, as the qualified person. The release reports core lengths rather than true widths, and the resource estimate's effective date of February 28, 2026 means drilling completed since then goes into the next estimate rather than the current one. Maple covered those results the following morning.

At Zgounder, the September 16 release reported 3.5 metres at 3,501 grams per tonne silver in a Central Area hole, with true widths undetermined and values uncut, and said drilling west of the mine's fault from a new exploration drift would begin in the fourth quarter.

The feasibility study has no completion date in the October 21 release. In the September 22 release the chief executive referred to "the updated Feasibility Study expected next year", and the infill drilling described there runs for the next 15 months.

The October 21 release lists the project as permitted, with an existing mining licence. The report notes that the Boumadine mining licence, covering about 31.7 square kilometres, expired in May 2026 and that Aya has told SRK it is renewing it for a further ten years on unchanged terms; SRK writes that it understands there is no reason the renewal will not succeed (technical report, section 1.2). The Moroccan environmental impact assessment, prepared by NOVEC, was submitted in July 2026, per section 1.12 of the report.

The shares closed at C$37.32 in Toronto

Aya's shares closed at C$37.32 on the Toronto Stock Exchange on October 21, 2026, up 1.11 per cent, per end-of-day data read at 15:17 Pacific on October 21, 2026.

Volume was 439,780 shares, about 0.43 times the 30-day average, a figure from a 15-minute-delayed snapshot rather than the exchange's own page.

The range over the past year is C$13.12 to C$43.12, and the exchange's quote page shows 144,190,352 shares outstanding and a market value of about C$5.38 billion.

The company's October 21, 2026 release lists TSX: AYA and NASDAQ: AYA; in Frankfurt the shares carry WKN A2QAQY, symbol 0HE1 and ISIN CA05466C1095, with no last price shown on Deutsche Börse's instrument page when read on October 21, 2026.

Five releases in six weeks, with results due November 12

Since September 9 Aya has put a sequence of documents in front of the market, each checkable against the one before it: the study's results, two sets of drill holes with their metres and grades, a production quarter with its tonnes and recoveries, and now the full report behind the September valuation with its qualified persons named. The company had set no date for its third-quarter financial results when it reported production on October 14; the October 21 release sets them for Thursday, November 12, 2026, before the market opens, with a call at 10 a.m. Eastern.

From here the company's own documents date three steps: the third-quarter financial results on November 12, 2026, the feasibility study the chief executive expects in 2027, and the infill drilling that runs for the next 15 months and feeds the next resource estimate.