Côté Gold Made 64,400 Ounces for IAMGOLD in the Third Quarter

The mill at Côté Gold, IAMGOLD's large open-pit mine in Ontario, ran faster in September than it was built to run. The company reported the September rate on October 21 in a preliminary third-quarter update, a day before it walked analysts and institutional investors through the site, and in the same release it said Côté's 2026 output is expected at the lower end of guidance, which starts at 270,000 attributable ounces.

The shares fell with the rest of the gold group the next day. IAMGOLD closed at C$23.01 on the Toronto Stock Exchange on October 22, 2026, down 7.96 per cent on 1,433,874 shares traded on the TSX, per end-of-day data read at 13:21 Pacific on October 22, 2026 from TMX Money.

Spot gold was quoted at US$4,027.34 an ounce that afternoon, down US$106.38 on the day, on the price feed carried on IAMGOLD's own investor site.

IAMGOLD describes itself as an intermediate gold producer with three operating mines: Côté Gold and Westwood in Canada, and Essakane in Burkina Faso. It owns 70 per cent of Côté and runs it with Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. Ltd., which holds the other 30 per cent, according to the October 21 release. All of the company's figures below are in US dollars, as its releases report them, and production numbers are IAMGOLD's 70 per cent share unless marked as 100 per cent.

September ran above the plant's design rate

Nameplate capacity is the tonnage a processing plant was designed to sustain. At Côté it is 36,000 tonnes of ore a day. In September the plant averaged a record 37,100 tonnes a day, about 3 per cent above design, and put 1.1 million tonnes through the mill in the month, the company reported.

In the third quarter of 2024, its first months of ramp-up, the plant milled 1.6 million tonnes, about 17,800 tonnes a day, according to IAMGOLD's October 15, 2024 update.

The quarter as a whole moved less than the month. Mill throughput was 2.9 million tonnes, in line with the second quarter, because of an extended annual shutdown in August and the switch to crushing ore with the company's own equipment only. IAMGOLD ended its contract for outside crushing at the end of June. September brought record crusher throughput, the release says.

The mine itself moved more rock than ever. Crews mined a quarterly record of 12.4 million tonnes of material, with a single-day record on August 10. The strip ratio, the tonnes of waste rock moved for each tonne of ore, was 2.3 to 1, down from 2.8 to 1 in the second quarter. The company attributes the current level to capital stripping, the waste removal that opens up the next stage of the pit.

Recovery dipped for a mechanical reason

The release's quarterly table, on a 100 per cent basis except the last row, shows where the quarter moved and where it held.

Recovery is the share of the gold in the ore that the plant actually captures. It averaged 90 per cent in the third quarter against 93 per cent in each of the first two quarters. The company attributes the drop to downtime early in the quarter on one of the plant's two Vertimills, the large vertical grinding mills that reduce ore to a fine powder before the gold is dissolved out of it.

The size of the effect can be worked from the release's own table. The 2.879 million tonnes milled at 1.10 grams per tonne held about 102,000 ounces of gold on a 100 per cent basis. Each percentage point of recovery on that ore is therefore worth about 1,000 ounces, or roughly 700 ounces for IAMGOLD's share. Three points came to about 2,100 attributable ounces in the quarter, a little over 3 per cent of the 64,400 ounces Côté produced for the company.

IAMGOLD has started work on a third Vertimill, which it expects to install in early 2027. The release also says the reconciliation between the reserve model, the grade-control model, mill feed and production remains within expected tolerances. That means the ore reaching the mill is carrying the grade the models predicted.

The fourth quarter now carries the year

Côté produced 64,400 attributable ounces in the third quarter and 184,000 over the first nine months of 2026.

The full-year guidance for Côté is 270,000 to 310,000 attributable ounces, and the company now expects the year to finish at the lower end of that guidance. To reach 270,000, the fourth quarter has to deliver about 86,000 ounces, roughly a third more than the third quarter did.

IAMGOLD gives two reasons for expecting a stronger quarter: higher grades from the mining sequence and higher processing rates. The release says the mine is moving into higher-grade zones as the pushback advances, and the plant has already shown in September that it can run above design for a month.

On the company's numbers, Côté's plant ran above the rate it was built for in September, after averaging below it across the quarter. The full fourth quarter will show whether the rate holds.

A plan for 40,000 tonnes a day is due before year end

The company expects to publish an updated Côté mine plan and mineral reserve estimate in the fourth quarter of 2026, followed shortly by a technical report. A mineral reserve is the part of a resource that a study shows can be mined at a profit, and it is the number a mine life is built on.

According to the October 21 release, the plan is expected to show "a significant expansion of Mineral Reserves and life of mine". It is also expected to set out ways to lift sustained processing to about 40,000 tonnes a day through debottlenecking and targeted plant changes. That target is about 11 per cent above nameplate. The study will fold in the consolidated Côté and Gosselin resource, which the company announced on June 1, 2026; Gosselin is the deposit beside the Côté pit.

These are expectations, in the release's forward-looking language. The company says it is separately evaluating a larger-scale expansion of the plant, and that technical, infrastructure and permitting studies on its size and configuration are under way. No capital cost or timeline for that larger option has been published.

Renaud Adams, IAMGOLD's president and chief executive (title per the October 21 release), framed the plan as the first of several studies across the portfolio over the coming quarters, "each a step toward building a leading, modern, Canadian-focused gold producer."

The day gold gave back US$106

The share price fall on October 22 came on a day the whole group moved. Agnico Eagle Mines closed 6.24 per cent lower at C$246.72 and Kinross Gold 5.06 per cent lower at C$31.73, per TMX Money end-of-day data read at 13:21 Pacific on October 22, 2026. Spot gold's US$106.38 fall was about 2.6 per cent of the previous level. IAMGOLD fell further than both larger producers. IAMGOLD's own news that day was the mine tour itself.

On the TSX, 1,433,874 shares changed hands, about 0.89 times the 30-day average of 1,605,284, per the same TMX Money data. Trading was a little lighter than usual.

The 52-week range is C$15.30 to C$34.09, per QuoteMedia data on TMX Money on October 22, 2026. The close is about 50 per cent above the low and about 33 per cent below the high. The same page showed a 50-day moving average of C$27.17 and a 200-day average of C$25.52, both above the close.

For a producer, the gold price runs straight through to the margin. All-in sustaining cost adds the capital needed to keep a mine running to the cost of producing each ounce. In the second quarter IAMGOLD realized an average US$4,384 an ounce against an all-in sustaining cost of US$2,271 an ounce sold, including royalties, according to its August 6, 2026 results. That left a margin of about US$2,100 an ounce. The MD&A attributes cost running above its US$2,000 to US$2,150 guidance range to royalties, which rise with the gold price: the first-half realized price of US$4,631 was above the US$4,000 the guidance assumed.

A US$106 fall in the gold price takes about 5 per cent off a margin that size. The afternoon spot quote is about 8 per cent below the second-quarter realized price. The third-quarter realized price arrives with the November 5 results.

The money behind the plan

IAMGOLD held US$501.4 million of cash and cash equivalents at June 30, 2026, according to its second-quarter management's discussion and analysis (MD&A) dated August 6. Long-term debt was US$449.3 million at June 30, 2026, almost all of it 5.75 per cent senior notes, excluding US$90.5 million of leases, and the company put its net debt at US$42.6 million. The credit facility was undrawn. Available liquidity, which adds undrawn credit lines to cash, was US$1,348.1 million at June 30, 2026, a little under three times the cash balance. Those are the latest figures the company has published; the September 30 balance sheet arrives with the third-quarter results.

The company has been reducing its share count rather than adding to it. Under a normal course issuer bid, a TSX-regulated programme that lets a listed company buy back its own shares on the market, IAMGOLD had repurchased about 27.9 million shares for about US$510.4 million between December 2025 and August 5, 2026, according to the August 6 release. The buyback spending is roughly equal to the cash the company held at June 30. The shares bought amount to about half of the 57 million the programme allows over twelve months.

The August 6 release describes no share sale or at-the-market programme. The company's news releases since then cover the third-quarter notice, its naming to the 2026 TSX30, the closing of its Bambadji sale in Senegal and the Côté update.

Across the company, 2026 attributable production is guided to 720,000 to 820,000 ounces, per the August 6 release, and the October 21 release, which covers Côté only, does not address the group range.

November 5 brings the full quarter

IAMGOLD will report its full third-quarter results after the market closes on Thursday, November 5, 2026, and hold a conference call on Friday, November 6 at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, according to its October 5 notice and the October 21 release. Those results will carry the quarter's costs, cash flow and balance sheet for all three mines, which the Côté operating update did not include. The updated Côté mine plan and reserve estimate are due later in the fourth quarter.

The company said the presentation from the October 22 tour would be posted on iamgold.com the same day. Two autumns ago the Côté mill was averaging about 17,800 tonnes a day, and its owners are now drawing up a plan around 40,000.