26% of Aya's Record Quarter Came From a Stockpile

Aya Gold & Silver Inc. (TSX: AYA) reported on 2026-10-14 that it produced a company record 2,034,628 silver equivalent ounces in the third quarter of 2026. Most of the increase over the previous quarter came from a pile of waste rock rather than from the mine.

Output was up 51 per cent on the same quarter of 2025 and 21 per cent on the second quarter of this year. Investors took the print well: C$36.00 at the close, up C$1.30 or 3.5 per cent, on about 777,930 shares against an average near one million, per 15-minute delayed market data read after the close.

Two different things produced that record, and they do not have the same future.

Where the extra ounces came from

Aya operates one mine, Zgounder, in Morocco. It also reclaims and sells a historical pile of pyrite at Boumadine, a polymetallic project that is at the exploration and evaluation stage and is not in commercial production. Pyrite is iron sulphide, the mineral miners once called fool's gold; this pile carries payable silver and gold because it was left behind by earlier operators who could not recover them.

The release gives both lines. Zgounder produced 1,497,749 ounces of silver in the quarter against 1,489,526 ounces in the second quarter. Boumadine's reclaim produced 536,879 silver equivalent ounces against 187,784.

The arithmetic follows directly, and it is the quarter in one table.

All figures are from the company's release of 2026-10-14; the percentages of consolidated output are our own division. The 26 per cent figure circulating among holders on Tuesday is correct. So is the 11 per cent comparison and so is the 21 per cent group increase.

What the division also shows is that essentially the entire quarter-on-quarter increase came from the pile. Zgounder's own silver output moved by about 8,200 ounces, which on a base of 1.49 million is noise.

The mine is doing better than that number suggests

Reading Zgounder's flat quarter as a flat mine would be wrong, and the release is specific enough to prove it.

Ore processed rose 6 per cent on the quarter and 23 per cent on the same quarter of 2025, to 376,863 tonnes. The milling rate averaged 4,096 tonnes a day against 3,889 in the second quarter. Aya's own project page gives the plant a design rate of 3,650 tonnes a day through 2026, so the mill ran at about 112 per cent of the rate it was built for. Head grade improved to 146 grams of silver per tonne from 141, and combined recovery, the share of contained metal the plant actually captures, rose to 92.0 per cent from 91.2 per cent. Over the first nine months recovery was 90.9 per cent against 87.4 per cent a year earlier.

Those are operating gains, they are the company's own disclosed figures, and they compound. A plant running above design with rising recovery is the hardest thing in this business to fake, because it shows up in tonnes and ounces rather than in adjectives. Year to date Zgounder has produced 4,252,287 ounces of silver, up 23 per cent, and consolidated output is 5,204,752 silver equivalent ounces, up 51 per cent. Chief executive Benoit La Salle said Zgounder is on track to meet 2026 production guidance.

Two smaller disclosures cut the other way and belong beside those numbers. The quarterly silver figure excludes 138,100 ounces of silver cement that had not been smelted at quarter end. And the Boumadine ounces were converted at a realised gold-to-silver ratio of about 68 to 1 rather than the 80 to 1 the company uses for 2026 guidance; at the guidance ratio the quarter would have carried roughly 52,011 more equivalent ounces.

The pile has an end date, and the company published it

Aya has been consistent about this. The release states that the reclaim, which began on 19 November 2025, is expected to be of limited duration, lasting approximately 20 to 24 months from that date or until the stockpile is depleted. On that schedule the material runs out somewhere between July and November 2027.

That matters for a specific reason. A quarter whose growth comes from reclaiming a finite pile tells you about this quarter's cash flow and nothing about the mine's capacity to repeat it. When the pile is gone, consolidated output falls back towards whatever Zgounder alone is producing, unless Boumadine itself has become a mine by then. Boumadine is not a mine. It is an exploration and evaluation asset, and the company says so in the same release.

The favourable account and the cautious one are both true here, and they sit on different timescales. Through 2027 Aya is converting a waste pile into revenue at a time when silver and gold prices are high, which is capital the company does not have to raise. After that, the production line reverts to one operation that is itself running well above the rate it was designed for.

The run-rate figures circulating on Tuesday, measured against the release

Two numbers travelled quickly after the release and they deserve different treatment.

The first is an annual figure near 7.25 million silver equivalent ounces for 2026. That is arithmetically consistent with what Aya has published: nine-month output of 5,204,752 ounces plus a fourth quarter equal to the third gives 7,239,380 ounces. It rests on an assumption the company has not made. Aya has not guided a fourth-quarter number, and about a quarter of the third quarter came from a pile whose depletion date is disclosed only as a range.

The second is an eight million ounce annual rate paired with a sixteen dollar all-in sustaining cost. Neither figure is in the release. The 2026-10-14 release contains no cost disclosure of any kind. Aya's second-quarter release of 2026-08-13 reported a consolidated cash cost of US$16.82 per silver equivalent ounce sold, down 9 per cent on the first quarter, and disclosed no all-in sustaining cost at all. Cash cost and all-in sustaining cost are different measures: the second adds sustaining capital, site general and administrative expense and other items, and it is always the higher of the two. A sixteen dollar all-in sustaining cost for Aya has not been published by Aya, and it is not carried here.

The balance sheet that funds Boumadine's development is also already on the record. Aya reported cash and cash equivalents of US$182.8 million at 30 June 2026, excluding US$16 million of restricted cash, and said the EBRD facility had been repaid ahead of maturity. Third-quarter financial results, which will carry the cost figures the production release does not, have not yet been scheduled in a company release.

One disclosure question the company has not answered

A question put to management during a webinar on 2026-10-14 asked whether high-grade points attributed to the Touda permit in Aya's investor materials represent drill results or surface grab samples. The distinction is not academic. A drill intercept measures grade over a known interval beneath the surface; a grab sample is a piece of rock picked up at surface, chosen because it looks mineralised, and it carries no width, no continuity and no statistical meaning.

Aya has published no news release reporting exploration results from Touda. Its 2026 exploration releases cover Zgounder, on 2026-09-16, and Boumadine, on 2026-05-20 and 2026-09-22. Under Canadian disclosure rules, material exploration results are released by news release with a qualified person's sign-off, and Raphaël Beaudoin, P.Eng, the company's vice-president, operations, is named as the qualified person for the production figures in Tuesday's release. For Touda there is no such release to check against, so the question of what those points represent is open, and the company is the only party that can close it.

That is a disclosure gap in a company whose production reporting is otherwise detailed enough to let an outsider do the division themselves. Aya published the two line items that let anyone work out where its record came from. Few producers do.

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.