Mako Mining is no longer a single-asset Nicaraguan junior. It is a Wexford-controlled gold platform that listed on Nasdaq this spring and is trying to convert San Albino's cash margins into a multi-jurisdiction producer without selling new shares. The second-quarter print sold a record volume of metal and still generated mid-teens net income, but sequential profit compressed because realized gold fell from the first-quarter spike. The debate is not whether the mines print cash at four-thousand-dollar gold. The debate is who captures that cash: public minorities, or the related-party recycle into Sailfish Royalty and two unbuilt projects.
San Albino still carries the economics. Consolidated all-in sustaining cost sat near $2286 an ounce against a $4201 realized price, but that blended figure hides a split. Nicaragua printed roughly $1535 while Moss ran above $3700 as the Arizona heap leach ramps. Cash, receivables and gold-linked securities closed near $113 million, and management parked about $40 million of that cushion into gold-linked paper. That is more gold beta, not a true cash reserve. The operating story remains intact only if Nicaragua keeps delivering the cheap ounces that fund everything else.
The Moss reserve study put a $254 million after-tax value on an asset bought for roughly $2 million. That is the bull case in one line. The offset is a September letter of intent to sell up to twelve thousand ounces a year for twenty years to Sailfish at a quarter of spot, paid in locked-up related-party stock. Whether that letter becomes cash returned to Mako holders, or a transfer of the cheapest ounces to the controller, is the question the next two quarters resolve.