Sydney, January 13, 2026, 16:51 AEDT — After-hours
- Northern Star climbed 3.6% to A$26.35, with gold prices staying close to all-time highs.
- Attention has shifted to the miner’s quarterly update on costs and output, due late January.
- The company reported operational disruptions at major sites and lowered its FY26 sales forecast.
Northern Star Resources Ltd (ASX: NST) saw its shares climb 3.6% on Tuesday, closing at A$26.35. The gold miner ranked among the most active large caps as buyers stepped back in. According to an ASX report, turnover hit around A$133 million.
The shift was significant as bullion behaved typically in a jittery market, drawing funds toward “safe” assets. Australian gold stocks often react swiftly to such moves.
Northern Star faces a company-specific test: investors are watching closely to gauge how recent operational hiccups will impact costs, following the miner’s reset of expectations early this year.
Australia’s ASX 200 wrapped up 0.6% up, landing at 8,808.5 points, per an ABC market update.
Spot gold held steady Tuesday after surging to a record $4,629.94 an ounce the day before, Reuters reported. The market is responding to rising geopolitical tensions and the U.S. Justice Department’s criminal probe into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. “The dip in Asia hours could be bought pretty quickly,” said Kyle Rodda, senior market analyst at Capital.com, to Reuters. Citi bumped up its three-month gold target to $5,000 an ounce. Reuters
Northern Star lowered its FY26 gold sales forecast to 1.6 million–1.7 million ounces, down from the previous 1.7 million–1.85 million ounces, according to an operational update earlier this month. The company reported September-quarter gold sales of 381,000 ounces and preliminary December-quarter sales at 348,000 ounces, suggesting a tougher climb in the year’s second half to hit the updated targets.
The company told the ASX it only realized on January 1 that issues at its Kalgoorlie, Yandal, and Pogo sites would cause a significant guidance miss. It released the downgrade before the market opened on January 2. Northern Star also noted in the exchange that “lower gold sales across each of the three production centres are expected to impact cost performance.” The setbacks included a primary crusher failure at KCGM that cut processing throughput, extended recovery efforts at Jundee, and unexpected downtime at Thunderbox due to carbon-in-leach failures — a standard method using activated carbon to extract gold.
The stock faces risks on both fronts. Rising bullion prices might soften the blow of a tough quarter, but unexpected cost hikes could overshadow gains, especially since the miner is already warning the market about reduced volumes.
The downside risk is clear: if gold prices drop from their record highs and the quarterly update reveals costs climbing faster than expected, any rally could vanish fast. Operational improvements might also fall short, and boosting throughput—the volume of ore a plant can handle—is tough to recover late in the year if bottlenecks linger.
Northern Star is set to announce its December-quarter results before the market opens on Thursday, January 22. The management team—Managing Director Stuart Tonkin, CFO Ryan Gurner, and COO Simon Jessop—will lead a call at 9:00 a.m. AEDT.
Looking ahead, the company’s next key date is its FY26 half-year results on February 12. This report could clarify if the early-2026 disruptions were just a one-quarter setback or a problem stretching further into the year.
