Canada-headquartered Kinross Gold had a “great year” in 2023, CEO Paul Rollinson said on Wednesday, reporting that the company had met its production, cost and capital guidance, as well as completed its projects at Tasiast, in Mauritania, and La Coipa, in Chile.
“Our portfolio of mines produced solid results, we more than doubled free cash flow year-over-year, while maintaining our investment grade balance sheet, and we are carrying this momentum into 2024,” he said, announcing the group’s fourth-quarter and full-year results.
Kinross produced 546 513 gold-equivalent ounces (GEOs) in the fourth quarter and 2.15-million GEOs in the full year, at an all-in sustaining cost of $1 316/oz.
Free cash flow surged to $559.7-million in 2023.
Kinross posted net earnings of $65.4-million, or $0.22 a share, in the fourth quarter and $416.3-million, or $0.34 a share, in the full year.
Looking ahead, Rollinson said that Kinross was forecasting production of 2.1-million GEOs in 2024.
“Our development projects are progressing well and we look forward to first production from Manh Choh [in Alaska] in the second half of the year.
"Great Bear [in Canada] continues to exceed expectations and we were excited to add more than one-million ounces of higher-grade underground resource. We continue to successfully target extensions of the resource at depth, reinforcing our view that Great Bear has the potential to be a large, long-life, high-grade mining complex,” he said.