Americas Gold and Silver Hits Record Quarter as Cosalá Funds Galena’s Richer Ore

• Americas Gold and Silver produced a record 800,458 ounces of silver in the third quarter of 2026, with Cosalá at 415,879 ounces and Galena at 384,579 ounces.
• Cash from Cosalá’s EC120 orebody, which has a 7-year mine life under the current plan, is funding the Galena upgrades.
• Time studies identified hoisting and the mining method as Galena’s primary bottlenecks, and secondary fixes cut tram loading from 5 minutes to 20 seconds per car.
• Galena’s silver-copper ore has roughly 2 times the silver grade of its silver-lead ore, and waste development is under way to reach it.
• Turner said the fourth quarter must exceed the third to reach the low end of 3.2 to 3.6 Moz guidance, and the paste fill plant is due in the first quarter of 2027.

Americas Gold and Silver (TSX: USA | NYSE American: USAS) is using cash from its Cosalá Operations in Mexico to rebuild the Galena Complex in Idaho’s Silver Valley one bottleneck at a time. Speaking at the Precious Metals Summit in Zurich, Executive Vice President of Corporate Development Oliver Turner described a method the management team has applied at previous mines: measure where rock stalls between the face and the mill, fix the constraint, then measure again.

The setting is a pullback in precious metals equities. Turner put silver at 94% of the company’s revenue mix. With that much exposure to one metal, the Galena programme aims to lower unit costs so that more of each ounce reaches free cash flow.

Record Third Quarter Sets Up a Larger Fourth Quarter

The company produced a record 800,458 ounces of silver in the third quarter of 2026, with Cosalá contributing 415,879 ounces and Galena 384,579 ounces. Turner called it the best quarter in the company’s 25-year history. Year-to-date production reached 2.3 million ounces (Moz) against full-year guidance of 3.2 to 3.6 Moz at all-in sustaining costs (AISC) of US$30 to US$35 per ounce.

Turner said reaching the low end of that range requires a fourth quarter bigger than the third, and that the company is on track to deliver it. Management has guided to second-half-weighted production with lower associated costs.

Available liquidity was US$113 million at September 30, 2026, made up of US$63 million in cash and US$50 million undrawn on the SAF credit facility. Turner said that position is by design. Cash from Mexico lets the team pull projects scheduled for later years into the current one.

Cosalá’s EC120 Orebody Funds the Galena Work

Cosalá produced a record 1.2 Moz in 2025. In 2026, mining moved from the zinc-dominant San Rafael zone into the EC120 orebody, which has a 7-year mine life under the current preliminary economic assessment. Turner said the company will update those numbers next year. EC120 is mined bottom-up, so development capital went in during 2024 and 2025 ahead of production, and 2026 is year 1 of 7.

The modelled average grade was just over 100 grams per tonne (g/t) silver. Turner said the operation is seeing grades above 125 g/t as tighter underground drilling replaces the fan drilling done from surface. Drilling also returned 20.5 meters at 654.7 g/t silver and 1.5% copper just outside the 2025 Inferred Mineral Resource boundary at EC120. Turner said that intercept lies about 20 meters from existing infrastructure and matches Galena-type silver grades over roughly 10 times Galena’s widths.

Turner said Cosalá drew inbound interest from buyers when the current team took over, but management kept it because it resembled the Spargos mine at Karora Resources: a cash generator that funded heavier spending at the main operation.

Interview with Oliver Turner, Executive Vice President of Corporate Development of Americas Gold and Silver

Time Studies Set the Order of Work at Galena

The team began at Galena in 2025 with time studies that follow 1 ton of rock from the face, through the shaft and the mill, to concentrate or tailings. Turner said the studies found ore sitting idle for as long as 72 hours. The 2 primary bottlenecks were hoisting and the mining method.

On hoisting, the No. 3 Shaft upgrade raised the skipping rate from 40 to 105 tons per hour, and Turner said the shaft has demonstrated up to 3 times its previous hoisting capacity. The company is targeting 1,350 short tons per day (stpd) of hoisting. On mining method, Galena is shifting from underhand cut and fill to long hole stoping, toward a 70/30 split that Turner placed in 2028. He said 23 long hole stopes have been mined to design limits.

A second round of time studies then exposed secondary bottlenecks. The company stated that 4 new grizzlies above the ore shoot loading pockets cut the time to load a single 4-ton tram car from 5 minutes to 20 seconds, and fiber optic communications now run through the mine. Turner said internal weekly figures show a 30% improvement in breaking rock at the face, and a further time study is under way. He described the end point as rock moving from face to mill without delay, a stage he calls exit velocity.

Paste Fill & Waste Development Open the Silver-Copper Veins

Galena hosts 2 ore types. Its silver-copper ore carries roughly 2 times the silver grade of the silver-lead ore the mine was set up to process over the last 10 years, and Turner said that 8 to 9 years ago lead was mostly paying the bills. Reaching more silver-copper ore requires waste development. Turner said the mine had about a month of waste development ahead of mining when the team arrived, against a rule of thumb of about 2 years for a mine of this type.

Executive Vice President of Corporate Development of Americas Gold and Silver, Oliver Turner, said the grade lever deserves as much attention from investors as tonnage:

“I would really advise all investors to not just focus on tons because we also have that grade lever. If we move one ton of silver-copper ore, that’s two tons of silver-lead ore that we don’t need to dig. That is an absolute no-brainer of economics.”

The paste fill plant is the next step for long hole stoping. Turner said the plant will be completed in the first quarter of 2027, followed by commissioning and the underground reticulation piping. Paste is stronger than the sand fill now used, puts less water underground to be pumped out, and allows mining directly beside a filled stope. The company is also validating a move to dry stack tailings, which Turner said would provide decades of tailings capacity, and has sized the filter press and paste plant for that option. The mill target is 1,200 stpd, up from about 750, with new flotation cells due for delivery in the fourth quarter of 2026.

Crescent & a Larger Galena Complex

The company treats Crescent as part of the Galena Complex because its ore will feed the Galena mill. Turner said stoping at Crescent cannot start until a secondary egress is connected. Samples from development headings processed through the Galena mill returned recoveries well above historical levels, and the material blends well with Galena ore. Crescent has 3 adits, and the company sees potential for it to add about 1.5 Moz a year of high-grade mill feed.

Turner said the company already looks past its first target of 5 Moz a year at Galena. He cited a resource of about 200 Moz and said 5 Moz a year would equal about 40 years of mine life. The company reports Galena Measured and Indicated resources of 87.9 Moz at 501 g/t and Inferred resources of 105.7 Moz at 498 g/t. The company is adding remote-operated equipment underground, and engineering on the larger complex will run well into 2027 before it publishes that plan.

The Investment Thesis for Americas Gold and Silver

• Americas Gold and Silver produced a record 800,458 ounces of silver in the third quarter of 2026, and the fourth quarter has to exceed that figure for the company to reach the low end of its 3.2 to 3.6 million ounce guidance.
• Cosalá’s EC120 orebody is in the first year of a 7-year mine life, and Turner said grades are running above 125 grams per tonne against a modelled average of just over 100 grams per tonne.
• Time studies at Galena removed the primary hoisting and mining method bottlenecks, and the team is now clearing secondary ones such as tram loading, which fell from 5 minutes to 20 seconds per car.
• Silver-copper ore at Galena has roughly 2 times the silver grade of the silver-lead ore, so waste development into those veins lifts silver output per ton hoisted.
• The paste fill plant is scheduled for completion in the first quarter of 2027 and supports the shift toward a 70/30 split of long hole stoping to cut and fill.
• Monitor fourth quarter 2026 production, all-in sustaining costs against the US$30 to US$35 per ounce guidance, and paste fill commissioning in 2027 as the next tests of the plan.

The order of work at Galena follows measured bottlenecks, and Cosalá is funding it. The fourth quarter is the first reading on whether that spending is reaching production and costs.

Macro Thematic Analysis

The current pullback in silver equities comes after a run that Turner said left the market euphoric a year ago at similar prices. The company realized US$60.54 per ounce in the third quarter, against 2026 AISC guidance of US$30 to US$35 per ounce. For an operator still upgrading its main mine, that spread is the funding source for the work, as long as the metal price holds.

Turner framed the long-run price setting for silver:

“$50 silver was basically the resistance level for the last 50 years. Now that’s become a floor. I think that's probably a pretty important signal was to come here.”

Rising energy and input costs, raised during the interview alongside weaker metal prices, put the most pressure on mines with high unit costs. Americas Gold and Silver’s first-half costs were above guidance, and the Galena programme targets them through higher hoisting and mill rates, long hole stoping, and more higher-grade silver-copper ore.

Turner compared the current period with the team’s time at Karora Resources, when gold was about US$1,400 to US$1,500 per ounce and the company was mining 1.8 g/t gold underground. He said Karora used cash from Spargos to fund continuous improvement at Beta Hunt so the mine was ready when the gold price rose. Beta Hunt, a 40-year-old nickel mine when the team took it over in 2019, is now the flagship of Westgold Resources, and Turner said it produces a large amount of free cash flow. He sees the same potential at Galena, which ranks second among primary silver mines on 2025 average head grade, at 473 g/t.

TL;DR

Americas Gold and Silver produced a record 800,458 ounces of silver in the third quarter of 2026. It is using cash from Cosalá’s EC120 orebody to fix Galena bottlenecks found by time studies. Hoisting capacity has risen, long hole stoping is replacing cut and fill, and tram loading fell from 5 minutes to 20 seconds per car. The next steps are waste development into silver-copper ore with roughly 2 times the silver grade, and a paste fill plant due in the first quarter of 2027. Turner said the fourth quarter must exceed the third for the company to reach the low end of its 3.2 to 3.6 million ounce guidance.

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