Kamoa-Kakula's Final Quarter: The Mine Needs 78,000 Tonnes to Reach Guidance

The copper mine at the centre of Ivanhoe Mines has one quarter left to meet a 2026 production range the company lowered in the spring and narrowed in July. Ivanhoe's October 8 production release says Kamoa-Kakula is trending towards the lower end of that range.

The shares closed at C$9.18 on the Toronto Stock Exchange on October 22, 2026, down 3.67 per cent on 9,262,704 shares traded on the TSX, per end-of-day data read at 14:00 Pacific on October 22, 2026 from TMX Money. No company release accompanied the move. The business behind the price is three operating mines on two continents, and the most useful numbers for the next few weeks are the ones Ivanhoe has already published about them.

Seventy-eight thousand tonnes in the last quarter

Kamoa-Kakula's 2026 guidance is 290,000 to 310,000 tonnes of copper in saleable products, on a 100 per cent project basis. Ivanhoe set that range in its second-quarter results release of July 29, 2026, and repeated it on October 8.

The quarterly figures come from two company documents. The management's discussion and analysis (MD&A) for the period to June 30, 2026 reports 71,417 tonnes for the first quarter and 64,328 tonnes for the second.

The October 8 release reports 76,401 tonnes for the third.

Added together, the three quarters come to 212,146 tonnes.

Subtracting that from the range gives the fourth-quarter requirement, in Maple's calculations from Ivanhoe's own figures.

A repeat of the third quarter would leave the year about 1,450 tonnes short of the low end. The company's "lower end" wording fits these numbers. The guidance is met if the fourth quarter runs about 2 per cent above the third.

Two definitional points matter here. The first-quarter figure in the MD&A is labelled contained copper in anode, blister or concentrate, the second-quarter figure copper in anode, blister and slag concentrate held for sale, and the third-quarter figure copper in saleable products; Ivanhoe reports both against the same guidance line. And the guidance counts the whole mine. Ivanhoe owns an indirect 39.6 per cent of Kamoa-Kakula, so the company's attributable share of the third quarter's 76,401 tonnes was about 30,255 tonnes.

Three mines, three different stages

Ivanhoe is a Toronto-listed miner whose assets sit in the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa. Each is at a different point between discovery and steady production.

Kamoa-Kakula, in the Congo's copper belt, is a joint venture. According to the June 30 MD&A, Ivanhoe and Zijin Mining Group each hold an indirect 39.6 per cent, Crystal River Global Limited holds 0.8 per cent and the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo holds 20 per cent directly. The complex runs three concentrators and its own smelter. A smelter turns concentrate into anode copper, which sells at a higher payable value and costs less to ship.

Kipushi is a zinc mine in which Ivanhoe holds 62 per cent, per the MD&A. It produced 77,147 tonnes of zinc in concentrate in the third quarter, a quarterly record and 10 per cent more than the second, according to the October 8 release. Ivanhoe said it is on track for the upper end of its 2026 zinc guidance of 240,000 to 290,000 tonnes.

Platreef, in South Africa's Bushveld Complex, is a platinum-group metals, nickel and copper project 64 per cent owned by Ivanhoe. Its first concentrator started on November 18, 2025, according to the July 29 release. In the third quarter it produced 4,552 ounces of platinum-group metals and gold, the October 8 release says. Platreef has not declared commercial production, which the July 29 release expected in the fourth quarter of 2026 once bottlenecks in materials handling and the processing plant are cleared.

Why the 2026 range came down

The guidance history is the main fact behind the share price's year. In December 2025 Ivanhoe guided Kamoa-Kakula to 380,000 to 420,000 tonnes for 2026 and 500,000 to 540,000 tonnes for 2027.

The December plan followed seismic activity in May 2025, which flooded part of the Kakula mine and led to a long dewatering programme.

Revised mine designs announced on March 31, 2026 required a longer period of underground development before ore could be mined, the July 29 release explains. The company also cited adverse geotechnical and hydrological conditions that slowed development, and it cut its target development rates by about 15 per cent. New dewatering infrastructure is being built at Kakula. In July the 2026 range was narrowed to 290,000 to 310,000 tonnes from 290,000 to 330,000.

Ivanhoe reset the later years on March 31, 2026, and the July 29 release, which says the 2027 range remains unchanged, and the MD&A repeat them: 2027 guidance of 380,000 to 420,000 tonnes at a C1 cash cost of US$2.10 to US$2.50 a pound, and a target of annualised production returning to more than 500,000 tonnes from 2028 at a C1 cash cost under US$2.00 a pound.

C1 cash cost is the direct cost of producing a pound of copper, net of by-product credits, before depreciation and sustaining capital. Maple's October 8 piece on Ivanhoe described the December 2025 figure of 500,000 to 540,000 tonnes as the 2027 guidance; the March 31, 2026 revision had already replaced it with the lower range, which the July 29 documents repeat, and the figure here is the current one.

Robert Friedland, Ivanhoe's founder and executive co-chair, said in the July 29 release that "we firmly believe we have turned the corner". The third-quarter production figure, up from 64,328 tonnes to 76,401 tonnes, is the first full quarter of evidence after that statement.

A smelter at 60 per cent, and acid near US$900 a tonne

The cost side of Kamoa-Kakula has moving parts the production number does not show.

The 500,000-tonne-a-year smelter continued to run at about 60 per cent of design capacity in the third quarter, the October 8 release says. Sulphuric acid, a by-product of the smelter that the mine sells, reached a record 118,638 tonnes in the quarter, and the average net realised price roughly doubled from the second quarter to about US$900 a tonne. Acid revenue offsets cost, so higher prices feed straight into the C1 figure.

Power has been the other constraint. A 60-megawatt solar and battery plant reached full operation in late September and, in the company's words, is "delivering 60 MW of continuous baseload power to Kamoa-Kakula's operations." Diesel generator use fell about 40 per cent in September against July, the October 8 release says, and under power purchase agreements described in the same release Ivanhoe would double on-site solar to 120 megawatts within 18 months.

The cost baseline before those changes is in the July 29 release: a second-quarter C1 cash cost of US$2.84 a pound against 2026 guidance of US$2.60 to US$3.00. The copper price is the other half of the margin. Kamoa-Kakula realised US$5.99 a pound in the second quarter, per the MD&A, and its second-quarter EBITDA was US$385 million, a 44 per cent margin.

The build is funded by cash, project debt and the joint venture

Ivanhoe had cash and cash equivalents of US$635 million at June 30, 2026, according to the July 29 release. The MD&A for the same date reports consolidated borrowings of US$1,285.6 million, of which US$761.0 million were senior notes. Counting its share of the Kamoa-Kakula joint venture's debt, Ivanhoe's pro-rata total debt at June 30, 2026 was US$2,162.7 million.

The spending those figures support is large. The July 29 release guides 2026 capital spending of US$1,100 million to US$1,400 million at Kamoa-Kakula on a project basis, US$350 million to US$380 million at Platreef and US$60 million at Kipushi. For Platreef's second phase, a US$700 million senior project finance facility closed on April 30, 2026, and US$87 million was drawn in July. Phase 2, a 3.3-million-tonne-a-year concentrator, is scheduled for completion at the end of 2027, with Platreef's Shaft 2 expected to hoist ore by the end of 2029.

In Maple's view, Kamoa-Kakula's cash flow and Platreef Phase 2 spending fall in the same period, which is why the fourth quarter matters to the balance sheet as well as to guidance. The November 3 statements will update every balance-sheet figure here to September 30.

Makoko is a resource, with a scoping study due in 2027

Posts on Canadian retail investor boards on October 22 described Ivanhoe becoming a major producer within three to five years through Kamoa-Kakula, Platreef and the Western Forelands. The company's own documents support part of that. Kamoa-Kakula has the 2028 target above, and Platreef Phase 2 has a 2027 completion date.

Western Forelands is at an earlier stage. Ivanhoe's September 8, 2026 release raised the Makoko District resource by about 30 per cent, to about 12 million tonnes of contained copper.

Most of it is inferred: 612 million tonnes at 1.80 per cent copper, against 34 million tonnes at 2.66 per cent in the indicated category. An indicated resource has enough drilling to support a mine plan; an inferred resource is less certain and cannot be used in reserves. The qualified person is Simon Bottoms, Ivanhoe's executive vice-president, technical services, who is not independent of the company. A scoping study is expected to start in early 2027. As of October 22, Ivanhoe had given no production date for Makoko.

The shares at a 52-week low

The close of C$9.18 sat below C$9.45, the bottom of the 52-week range of C$9.45 to C$20.34 before the session. TSX volume was about 2.3 times the 30-day average of 3,949,901 shares, and the company's market value was about C$13.1 billion at the close, per end-of-day data from TMX Money.

The same data put the 50-day moving average at C$11.79 and the 200-day at C$12.58. Both were above the close. A company release before the open, or a move back above C$9.45, would be the first dated change to that position.

Retail board discussion centred on traders' chart levels, which appear in no company document. The last Ivanhoe item before the decline was the October 8 production release; a conference agenda published on October 9 listed the company among presenters and contained no new company information.

My own judgment is narrow. The third quarter was the best of the year at Kamoa-Kakula, and it was still a few hundred tonnes a month short of the pace the guidance now needs.

November 3 adds the money to the tonnes

Ivanhoe will release third-quarter financial results after the market closes on November 3, 2026, with a conference call on November 4, according to the October 8 release. Those statements will carry the quarter's C1 cost and realised copper price. They will also update cash and debt to September 30, and the status of Platreef commercial production.

The fourth-quarter copper figure follows in January. The number to compare it with is about 77,854 tonnes.