What changed
Evolution Mining is an Australian company that digs gold and copper out of six mines. Every dollar here is Australian, because that is how Evolution reports. Its 2026 release shows production and profit moving in opposite directions from the prior year, because profit followed the gold price rather than the tonnes. Production fell. Profit rose. The company mined 715,000 ounces of gold in the year to 30 June 2026, down from 751,000 the prior year, which means the mines gave up less gold, not more. Copper went the same way, to 66,000 tonnes in 2026 from 76,000 the prior year, which means less of both metals came out of the ground. Statutory profit is the figure reported under the accounting rules, not the company's own adjusted version. It was a record $1,475 million for that same 2026 year, up from $926 million, which means it rose 59%. The reason sits between two other lines. Evolution sold its gold at an average of $6,023 an ounce in 2026, up from $4,300 the prior year, which means each ounce sold for 40% more. Its all-in sustaining cost, the company's own per-ounce measure, was $1,717 in 2026, up from $1,572 the prior year. The gap between what an ounce sold for and what it cost is what pays for a record year, not extra metal.
How much Evolution's statutory profit rose in the year to June 2026, while the gold it produced fell 5%.
- 30 JuneYear end
Evolution closes the year holding more cash than debt, with its last gold hedges delivered.
- 19 AugustResults
Record profit reported. Dividend payout target raised to about 60% of Group cash flow.
- 2 OctoberDividend due
The 21.0 cent final dividend is scheduled for payment. Anyone buying from 9 September does not receive it.
- Year to June 2027Guidance
660,000 to 730,000 ounces of gold at a guided all-in sustaining cost of $1,795 to $1,995 an ounce.
- Year to June 2029New ore
First production scheduled from the Bert project at Ernest Henry.
Why it matters
A miner cannot answer a higher price by digging faster. The next ore sits behind years of mine development. Evolution reinvested $1,089 million into the business in the year to June 2026, which means it put more back than the $668 million it paid out in dividends. It also repaid $280 million of term loans in the same 2026 year, which means the payout was one call rather than the only one. What Evolution plans to spend next is published ahead of time. That is guidance, its own public forecast of what it expects to produce and spend in a financial year ending at the close of June. It guides $440 million to $500 million of mine development for the 2027 financial year, and ore from that work takes years before anyone pays for it. The change that matters here is the rate it pays out of Group cash flow, which is what the business generates before dividends, debt repayments, equity raises and any acquisitions or divestments. The board raised the share of that annual flow it aims to pay to about 60%, up from about 50%, because the cash was there. It declared a record final dividend of 21.0 cents a share for 2026, up from 13.0 cents the prior year, which means the final dividend rose 62%. That took the full year dividend to 41.0 cents a share for 2026, a record, which means about $833 million is declared for that year rather than the $668 million that left it. Group cash flow was $1,389 million for 2026, up from $787 million, which means that dividend is about 60% of it. Evolution also ended the year unhedged, meaning it holds no contracts that lock in a gold price ahead of time. It now takes the market price in both directions. The payout rate went up and the hedges came off. That pairing suggests a company willing to take the gold price as it comes. The same release carries a smaller story, about a mine at the other end of its life. Mt Rawdon spent its final full year of operation processing low-grade stockpiles, the leftover ore piles too poor to have been worth treating earlier. At the end of June the Queensland Investment Corporation confirmed, on behalf of the Queensland Government, that the pumped hydro project proposed for that site will not be prioritised. Evolution says the decision carries no additional financial implications and has minimal impact on its options for Mt Rawdon after the remaining stockpiles are processed. The release schedules the last of those stockpiles for the September 2026 quarter, which means the processing ends within months rather than years. What Mt Rawdon becomes after that remains unclear. The release does not say what happens to the people who work there.
What to watch
The release is specific about the year it is now in, and those numbers are already published. Evolution guides gold production to 660,000 to 730,000 ounces for the 2027 financial year, a band that brackets what it just mined, which means output near where it is rather than a step up. It guides all-in sustaining cost to $1,795 to $1,995 an ounce for the 2027 financial year, up from the $1,717 it delivered, which means the whole guided band sits higher. All-in sustaining cost covers the cash cost of mining, plus royalties paid on what it sells, the capital spent keeping a mine running, and corporate overhead, calculated per ounce sold. It does not include the capital spent building new mines, which the release counts separately. The release guides Ernest Henry and Northparkes, the two operations that also produce copper, to an all-in sustaining cost below zero an ounce. The release does not spell out the arithmetic. It does show the Group guided to $1,795 to $1,995 an ounce for the 2027 financial year, below Cowal's $2,200 to $2,400, which means the copper operations pull the average down from there. So the headline cost per ounce is a blend that already contains those two mines. The release also says that figure is not an accounting standard measure, and that the non-standard figures in the announcement were not audited or reviewed by the company's external auditor. Those guided costs for the 2027 financial year assume a gold price of $5,700 an ounce, with copper at $18,000 a tonne, which means the number depends on prices rather than on mining alone. If either price lands away from what the release assumed through the 2027 financial year, the guided cost could move too, so the range is only meaningful next to those assumptions. If you hold a producer like this inside a fund or a retirement account, the profit headline is not the signal to track. Watch whether output rises once the development money has been spent, because first production from the Bert project at Ernest Henry is not scheduled until the 2029 financial year. Watch the dividend too, since a payout defined as a share of cash flow falls as fast as the cash flow that filled it. The release also shows the scale of what a producer does not control. Two bouts of rain cost Ernest Henry its underground production for a time, about 300mm in 24 hours in late December 2025, then more than usual through the March 2026 quarter. It returned to full production in the June 2026 quarter, which means the loss was a pause rather than a permanent cut. That weather still cost about 12,000 ounces of gold from the 2026 year just reported, plus about 8,000 tonnes of copper.
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