ASX All Ords gold stock Ausgold Ltd (ASX: AUC) is slipping today.
Ausgold shares closed up 4% yesterday, trading for $1.04. In morning trade on Tuesday, shares are changing hands for $1.02 apiece, down 1.9%.
For some context, the All Ordinaries Index (ASX: XAO) is up 0.3% at this same time.
Today's underperformance is unusual for the miner in 2025.
Amid a surging gold price and Ausgold's own successes on the ground this year, investors who bought the ASX All Ords gold stock on 2 January are now sitting on gains of 142.9%.
Here's what the miner reported this morning.
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ASX All Ords gold stock ramping to production
In an ASX release before market open, Ausgold announced that it had completed the updated Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) for its 100%-owned Katanning Gold Project (KGP), located in Western Australia.
The ASX All Ords gold stock needed to update its June 2025 DFS following a key land acquisition deal adjacent to Katanning, which it reported in August.
The miner explained that its June 2025 KGP Ore Reserve was artificially constrained to remain within the eastern boundary due to land access restrictions. At the time, Ausgold didn't expect to be able to mine the area outside of its existing land holdings in the near future. As such, this was excluded from the June DFS.
Now, following its expanded tenure position, the ASX All Ords gold stock said it has completed a further optimisation of the KGP mine plan. Ausgold expects to add incremental life-of-mine gold production from areas within the Central Zone of the deposit. And management said mining costs will come down after Ausgold relocates waste dumps to more strategic locations, reducing haulage distances.
Digging into the numbers, the life-of-mine forecast gold production increased by 82,000 ounces to 1.22 million ounces. Ausgold expects to be able to increase its average annual gold production to 143,000 ounces in the first four years.
And costs will come down as well, with the all-in sustaining cost (AISC) now forecast to be $2,157 per ounce over the first four years and $2,252 per ounce over the life-of-mine.
What did management say?
Commenting on the DFS results, which could support the ASX All Ords gold stock longer-term, Ausgold executive chairman John Dorward said, "We are delighted with the outcomes of the optimised DFS Update, which clearly demonstrate the robust financial returns that will be generated by the KGP."
Dorward added:
In addition to the extensive drilling program currently underway, we are progressing pre-development activities at pace, including front-end engineering and design and tendering of key contracts including construction of the workforce accommodation facility, power supply and EPC/EPCM and debt financing, whilst in parallel progressing activities to finalise permitting for the project.
