Agnico Eagle posted record adjusted net income and strong free cash flow in the third quarter, driven by higher gold prices and consistent operational performance. The company is expanding its exploration efforts, advancing the Hope Bay project, and pursuing new growth opportunities in Ontario and the U.S.
BNN Bloomberg spoke with Ammar Al-Joundi, president and CEO of Agnico Eagle, about the company’s record financial results, growing exploration pipeline and new initiatives in critical minerals.
Key Takeaways
- Agnico Eagle posted record quarterly adjusted net income and strong cash flow, supported by higher gold prices.
- The company maintained consistent production and cost control across all operations.
- Hope Bay continues to show strong exploration results as the site advances toward feasibility and development.
- Agnico Eagle invested early in Perpetua Resources, calling it one of the most promising U.S. gold projects.
- A new subsidiary, Avenir Minerals, was launched to pursue critical minerals while keeping gold as the core business.
Read the full transcript below:
ROGER: The gold mining company Agnico Eagle — shares are up today after a Q3 beat. It reports higher gold production and expansion in investment and locations. Here to talk more about it is Ammar Al-Joundi, president and CEO of Agnico Eagle. Ammar, thank you very much for joining us.
AMMAR: My pleasure, Roger.
ROGER: Let’s talk about this report. It’s a good report — production was up. What was driving that?
AMMAR: Well, you know, we’ve had a very strong year — consistently good production, quarter after quarter. So what I would say, Roger, better describes it as just consistent, good production and consistent, good cost control.
ROGER: And no blips, no hiccups, anything like that?
AMMAR: No hiccups. Our operating team, I think, is the envy of the industry.
ROGER: And how much of a factor, with your profits and everything, how much of a factor were the gold prices increasing — and any concerns about what we might be looking at depending on where gold goes over the next year?
AMMAR: Well, I mean, clearly we are providing tremendous leverage to the gold price for our owners. Even when you look at our all-in sustaining cost, Roger, our margin at some point this quarter went over $2,000 an ounce. So we are delivering — and it’s higher, considerably higher than that at these current prices. So we are delivering exceptional leverage to the gold price. It’s showing up in yet another quarter of record financial results.
ROGER: And where are you finding those efficiencies that are helping with that?
AMMAR: Well, again, I have to say it’s clearly a team effort — and at the front of that team are our operating teams, our procurement teams, our maintenance teams. We spent a lot of time on today’s call, particularly talking about how, even as we are experiencing exceptional gold prices, record margins, record profits — even in that environment, at $4,000 an ounce gold — our team is every single day focused on operational efficiencies at every mine.
ROGER: And with that production up, how are reserves and replacements shaping up right now?
AMMAR: Well, we’ll give reserves and replacement updates at the end of the year, but what I can tell you is we have by far the most extensive exploration program we’ve ever had in the history of the company, and we are getting tremendous results across the board. We’ve never been in a stronger position in our almost 70-year history than we are now — when it comes not only to operating performance and pipeline, but also to exploration success.
ROGER: And how is Hope Bay looking right now?
AMMAR: Hope Bay falls right toward the front of that exploration success. We’ve had some exceptional, exceptional holes — you know, some numbers that are more than an ounce per ton in some of the holes. So it’s looking really good. We are working through the engineering. We’ve done a lot of work to get the site ready once we’ve done our final feasibility assessment and once we go to the board for approval. But we’ve upgraded the port there. We are upgrading the camp. We’ve started — we’re well on our way to the ramp at Madrid, which is one of the ore bodies, and we are prepared to start another ramp at Patch Seven, which is where we’ve had a lot of our recent exploration success.
ROGER: Let’s talk a little bit about Perpetua as well. Where is that going right now? How is that looking?
AMMAR: Well, it’s very early. You know, as you probably know, Roger, Agnico — our strategy is to come in early into projects that have great geologic potential and that are in good jurisdictions. So if you look at Perpetua, I think it’s one of the largest undeveloped, highest-grade open-pit projects out there. As one of our senior exploration people said — I’ll paraphrase — she said Perpetua was the most exciting exploration project she’s looked at in the United States in many years. So it’s a gold project. We come in early. It’s in a good jurisdiction. It’s got good geologic potential. This is what we do at Agnico Eagle.
ROGER: And is that the start of something — do you see yourself looking south?
AMMAR: Well, you know, Agnico, we are more of a regional operator than global, even though we’re very big and operate around the world. We focus on regions that have great geologic potential and political stability, and certainly Idaho and other parts of the United States fall into that category.
ROGER: And you’re also looking at investments in critical minerals. Is that something you want to expand, or is that just kind of off on the side there?
AMMAR: Well, we are a gold company. We are, you know, the second-largest gold company in the world. We like gold. We’re more gold-centric than any of our peers. You know, sometimes there’s copper that comes into play as well with gold mines. On the critical metals, we understand there’s a lot going on with critical metals. We understand how important it is. We understand our competitive advantage in Canada, broadly speaking, in mining, but we want to remain a gold company.
So what we’ve been doing, Roger, is for the last three years we’ve had a very small team — by small, I mean three people — but three very smart people. We’ve mandated them to understand the critical metals potential in the regions where we operate, primarily in Canada. After three years of really good work on their part, we’ve decided that, especially given all the gold projects we have going on, we’d give that team a little bit more independence.
We’ve transferred our non-gold, non-copper assets to them — about $80 million worth of assets. We’re going to seed them with about $50 million, but they’re going to operate on their own. We won’t have any obligation to put in more money, but we will have a right of first refusal — with a team of smart people looking at opportunities. So we are looking at critical metals, but we’re looking at it separately from our primary and key business, which is our gold business.
ROGER: OK, Ammar, thank you very much for joining us today.
AMMAR: My pleasure, Roger. Thank you.
ROGER: Ammar Al-Joundi is president and CEO of Agnico Eagle.
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This BNN Bloomberg summary and transcript of the Oct. 30, 2025 interview with Ammar Al-Joundi are published with the assistance of AI. Original research, interview questions and added context was created by BNN Bloomberg journalists. An editor also reviewed this material before it was published to ensure its accuracy and adherence with BNN Bloomberg editorial policies and standards.
