The Northern Star Resources Ltd (ASX: NST) share price is down 11% after the ASX gold share’s weak FY26 update.
Northern Star Resources is one of the world’s largest gold miners. It has operations across Australia and North America.
Weak production and guidance update
The gold miner said that the December quarter’s gold sales were impacted by a “number of isolated negative events”. Northern Star Resources said that total sales were around 348,000 ounces in the quarter, resulting in FY26 first-half gold sales of around 729,000 ounces.
Due to the softer operational performance, the ASX gold share decided to revise its annual production guidance to between 1.6 million ounces to 1.7 million ounces of gold. This was reduced from guidance of between 1.7 million ounces to 1.85 million ounces.
What happened to the gold production?
On top of the previously disclosed events at Jundee and South Kalgoorlie, which collectively felt a production impact of 20,000 ounces, the quarter was affected by several unplanned maintenance and operational challenges.
Northern Star Resources said its Kalgoorlie project was impacted by a failure of the primary crusher at the processing plant, which hurt production for four weeks. It’s expected to return to normal operations in early January.
The ASX gold share said that Kalgoorlie’s production is expected to remain variable during the second half as it transitions from the existing plant to the new expanded million, which is on track for commissioning in early FY27.
The company also said that South Kalgoorlie operations returned to normalised underground mining during December after the wall slip event.
At Jundee, recovery works have taken longer than expected, with up to a 20,000 ounce impact, with a return to normal operations now expected during the March quarter after a structural failure of the crushing circuit in early October.
With Thunderbox, gold sales were impacted by continued lower mined grades from the Orelia open put and unplanned processing downtime associated with carbon-in-leach tank failures.
Pogo gold sales were affected by lower mined grades due to underground mining dilution.
The company said that it will provide quarterly costs and revised annual cost guidance as part of the quarterly update to be released on 22 January 2026. Lower production is likely to mean higher costs per ounce of gold, in my view.
Is this the Northern Star Resources share price a buy?
The gold price has soared over the past year or two, which has boosted the profitability potential of gold miners. However, they are still in danger of mining risks, as we’re seeing from Northern Star Resources.
The company described these issues as one-offs and they do appear to be fixable, but it’d be unwise to expect a miner to never face issues.
We can still see the Northern Star Resources share price is up 55% in the past year, so I don’t think it can be called cheap. But, the sell-off could prove to be a good time to look at the miner if the gold price maintains its strength (or rises even further). But, there are other ASX growth shares I’d rather buy which offer a better risk-reward opportunity.
