⚠ The Best Ounces Were Mined FirstModerate threat

Every orebody is mined in roughly descending order of attractiveness. The highest grades, the shallowest ore and the simplest metallurgy get taken first, because that is what makes a project financeable. What is left afterwards is, by construction, worse.

That is the quiet arithmetic underneath every long-life mine claim in this file. Barrick's flagship operations have been producing for decades, and the ounces remaining in them are on average lower grade, deeper and more expensive to extract than the ounces already sold. It is visible in the cost line: all-in sustaining costs rose about 10 percent in 2025 to $1,637 an ounce, and the company guided to $1,760 to $1,950 for 2026 with cash costs of $1,330 to $1,470 against $1,199 the year before¹.

Some of that is inflation and some is mix, and some of it is simply the mine getting older. The three are difficult to separate from outside, which is exactly why a rising cost curve at a mature producer deserves more suspicion than a company usually gives it.

The defence is real: a genuinely long reserve life and a serious exploration programme, with Fourmile the one discovery capable of changing the average rather than maintaining it.

The number to watch is the reserve grade, not the reserve tonnage. Tonnage can be maintained by lowering the cut-off grade, which converts an accounting improvement into a future cost increase.