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Westgold Resources Ltd (ASX:WGX) has had a flurry of market notices out today, including a positive boost to its production guidance for the 2025 fiscal year, an update to its mineral resource estimate (MRE) and ore reserves, and the announcement of an exploration target at its focal Fletcher Zone.
But having taken it all in, investors appear uncertain, sending shares in the West Australian-focused miner down. At 12:40 AEST, they were trading at $2.76 – a fall of 4.17% since the market opened.
On the face of it, the news was mainly positive. Westgold said its production guidance for FY25 had risen to between 400,000 and 420,000 ounces of gold, up from FY24’s range of 220,000 – 235,000 ounces.
This was largely based on expectations of increased outputs from the Beta Hunt, Bluebird-South Junction and Great Fingall mines, which are set to lift production in the second half of the 2025 fiscal year.
Westgold also said its all-in sustaining cost (AISC) guidance for FY25 had also been reduced to between A$2,000 and 2,300 per ounce, from a range of A$2,100 – 2,300 per ounce in the previous year.
However, the amount spent on exploration is expected to double – from A$25 million in FY24 to A$50 million in FY25, with the work being built around resource definition programs at the Fletcher Zone (at the Beta Hunt mine), the Bluebird-South Junction mine and the Starlight mine, plus greenfields exploration across Southern Goldfields and Murchison targets.
Some have suggested that production guidance was expected to be better.
In its second key announcement, Westgold said it had fixed an exploration target of between and 23 and 27 million tonnes (yielding 1.6-2.1 million ounces of gold) for the Fletcher Zone, which lies within the Beta Hunt operation near Kambalda.
Stretching around 2 kilometres long, the zone is interpreted to be a new mineralised structure parallel to the Western Flanks deposit, only 300 metres away.
In pursuit of further resource definition, Westgold has committed three drill rigs to operate at the site.
In a final piece of news, the company said its MRE as of June 30 was 179 million tonnes (Mt) at 2.29 grams per tonne (g/t) for 13.2 million ounces (Moz) of gold, while its total ore reserves were placed at 50Mt at 2.05g/t for 3.3Moz of gold.
