Anglo Asian Mining issues lower gold production forecast

Azerbaijan-focussed gold, copper and silver producer Anglo Asian Mining said revenue for the 2020 financial year would “significantly increase” to more than $100m at current metal prices, in its guidance for the year on Wednesday.

The AIM-traded firm said forecast metal production for the year was for between 75,000 and 80,000 gold equivalent ounces, compared to 2019 production of 81,399 gold equivalent ounces.

Forecast production was for between 65,000 and 67,000 ounces of gold, compared to 2019’s 70,098 ounces produced, and between 2,200 and 2,400 tonnes of copper, compared to 2019’s 2,210 tonnes produced.

The board said the lower gold production forecast was due to a higher proportion of Gedabek open pit ore being processed by agitation leaching, and reduced mining from Ugur.

It explained that open pit ore had lower gold grades and required longer processing

Gold equivalent ounce production would be reported in the future using both budget and actual rates to aid comparison, the directors said.

“Once again, 2020 is set to be another year of solid performance from Anglo Asian Mining with forecast revenue of over $100m and production between 75,000 to 80,000 gold equivalent ounces,” said chief executive officer Reza Vaziri.

“Despite the marginal reduction on the previous year's production, due to lower production from the Ugur mine, the increased metal prices seen so far this year should enable the company to maintain its financial performance as we progress into exploiting our recently reported new mineral deposits.”

Vaziri said future growth in both production and the company’s resources and reserves continued to be highly important to the firm.

“We are continuing at pace with our exploration programme to identify possible further production expansion in our three existing contract areas.

“In this respect, we recently released the highly encouraging results from our exploration programme which highlights their potential.

“We also continue to look at other opportunities for expansion.”

At 1545 GMT, shares in Anglo Asian Mining were down 2.55% at 122.3p.