Evolution Mining founder Jake Klein sold $36 million worth of EVN shares days after the company posted a record profit and tripled its dividend.
Evolution Mining founder Jake Klein has cashed in on the goldminer’s recent bull run, selling $36 million worth of EVN shares after the company posted a record profit and tripled its dividend.
Mr Klein, who became Evolution’s non-executive chair in early July, sold just under 4.6 million shares late last week for close to $8 a pop.
But there was more than just a selldown captured in last week’s market filings: Mr Klein and Evolution’s chief executive, Laurie Conway, have also pocketed new shares after vesting some performance rights awarded in FY23.
According to two change of director’s interest notices published on Monday, Mr Klein vested close to 1.19 million performance rights, while his chief executive picked up just shy of 1 million new shares in the process.
However, just over 57,000 performance rights (tied to Klein) and 47,000 performance rights (tied to Conway) lapsed after performance conditions were not met.
Following the performance rights vesting, Mr Klein holds 11 million EVN shares (worth close to $86.6 million based on the company’s $7.87 share price), while Mr Conway’s holding lifted to 2.76 million shares (worth $21.7 million).
Evolution shares jumped last Wednesday on news it had more than doubled its net profit to $926 million.
The goldminer’s earnings per share doubled to 46 cents, while its underlying earnings (EBITDA) rose 51 per cent to $2.2 billion.
Evolution’s board declared a fully franked final dividend of 13 cents per share, taking the annual payout to a record 20 cents — almost three times last year’s total.
The goldminer’s financials were buoyed by record commodity moves, with the precious yellow metal climbing from about $3,500 an ounce in mid-2024 to $5,146 this week.
That pushed Evolution’s achieved gold price up 35 per cent to $4,300 per ounce for the year, eclipsing a 12 per cent rise in the miner’s all-in sustaining costs.
For FY26, Evolution is aiming to produce 710,000–780,000 ounces of gold and 70,000–80,000 tonnes of copper at all-in sustaining costs of $1,720–$1,880 per ounce.
Shares in the $16 billion company have risen 92 per cent over the past year, but are down 1.69 per cent today to trade at $7.87 per share.
