Amaroq (LSE:AMRQ) Q4 2025 Earnings Call

0:00 Welcome everyone to the, Amaroq Minerals full year twenty '25 results webcast. Thanks for joining us. We're gonna do slightly different format as usual. There's no conference call lines, so all questions will be written in via the webcast service. So please, if you have any questions, add those in, and we'll deal with those at the end of the call. We'll follow the normal form today. Elder Olsen, the chief executive, will take you through the summary of the year and some strategic areas. Albert Anderson will take you through some of the financials and I'll finish off and host the Q and A at the end. So thanks very much for joining. Welcome. Albert, hand over to you. Thank you. Good morning everybody. It's good to be with you here today.

0:47 I want to turn your attention to the first slide. I want to start this meeting here just to kind of set the scene a little bit where AMRQ is at the moment. Now we have an operating mine where we've guided 25 to 35,000 ounces for 2026, a full year, first full year of production for our Malmac mine. We have the West Greenland hub, which is our next development project, which we are focused on putting together a feasibility study and some recent development this year to start development of that mine in twenty seventwenty eight. And then we have the Nammo Gold project which we are actively pursuing to bring into resources. Now in Gardevac we are drilling two early stage projects but very impactful projects both in rare earth element and iron ore.

1:38 And then the two enablers to allow us to do all of this is Zuliaq and EMEK. Zuliaq seeing service venture that we've set up and we've just announced this morning about cooperation with IFO and other Green Antic funds on that. This will help our working capital, it will help other mining companies and interest of the company agreeing on working capital. And then IMMEC where we have finalized our feasibility study to start producing green energy at site which will decrease our uses of diesel by 1,600,000 liters, which will lower our operating costs and give more stability. Now, at a glance, you can see we are one of the largest license holder, very prospective licenses.

2:26 We have developed a mine now in Greenland. We are operating a mine. We are actively pursuing exploration. We have a large resource scale both in Black Angel and in Naluna. And effectively we have multiple company makers within Amaroq Asset Stand and we intend to use the experience from the great team that we've built up today to develop these other opportunities as fast as possible. Now taking you over to the next slide. So this is how we do it. This is effectively you can look at this as a five to seven year plan within Amaroq. Now what you see here on the right is the Nalnac phase one operating which is now in full scale production where we are producing through gravity recovery making a door rebar on-site every month now generating good cash flow.

3:22 Phase two, we will have in which is the flotation recovery. That means that we are taking moving recovery of the gold from each ton from 65 all the way up above 90% recovery. Phase two is progressing on plan, on schedule. We will have that operating by June. And phase three is what we are analyzing now is to grow the potential production in Naluna from 300 tonne per day to four fifty tonne per day. So that is still being assessed, but we've assigned that. So this is where the production is going, where the free cash flow is providing the group. Now Black Angel has a previous feasibility study that we are updating.

4:10 It was a mine, we know the operating procedure, we're doing the same thing again, kind of a scale in terms of investment and in terms of timing from a very high yielding asset. And then we're moving up the which we call the elephant in Nanook, Kankar, Pit, Minasu, Iluwa up the value curve by drilling them and defining them. So we can see that there's a huge value potential that we are building up within in AMRQ. Now we turn the focus on the next slide. So year to date, the production was above 6,000 ounces last year and we got our initial revenues. We went through various different aspects of selling and moving the gold out, selling it. We got an average gold price above $3,600 per ounce.

5:07 We transitioned our mining operation from kind of a contractor to an over operating operation. This means that on-site our biggest cost on-site is effectively people. We now control all of our mining equipment, our own people. This has given us more efficiency, control and lower cost in the end. And this has been very very successful process so far. We acquired the West Greenland hub in May last year. This sets us up, so as you can see now we're operating and generating cash flow from Nalmac, we have a whole development team that is now moving towards the West Greenland hub to bring that mine into production. And while we've been doing that, we've been had very successful exploration program in other assets and mainly Nanook that was what we drilled about 5,000 meters last year. And I just want to put this into perspective to the market that none of was we drilled about 27 holes more than 63% of the holes that we drilled were success hit gold mineralization.

6:18 To put this into perspective in Nalunak one out of eight hole gave us a grade. In this instance we were getting more than 63% of the hole. We're getting thick intersection all the way from one and a half meters up to nine meters with really really high grade. So now our intention this year is that we are starting the infill drilling of this area, focusing on creating amazing resource and then multiplying the scale of drilling to declare hopefully what we think could be a resource and a scalable kind of potential world class resources. So last year we obviously finished getting to a 300 ton per day. We finalized our phase one activities in terms of construction. So the last quarter last year was very construction heavy, which was a great result for us because it gave us the opportunity to produce really well during this first quarter and finalize phase two during this quarter and next quarter.

7:19 I'm going to turn now to Elder to walk you little bit through our finances before we go again on giving you a bit of an outlook for this year. Thanks, Elder. In Q4 we had sales of nineteen forty nine ounces for gross proceeds of 10,700,000 Canadian dollars and the average prices we were able to sell at was 3,920 US per ounce. In comparison, gross revenue in Q3 was slightly higher at 12,800,000 and it was lower in Q4 due to the planned shutdown for commissioning activities that took place in the quarter. And as Eltre mentioned, for the year as a whole, we recorded revenues of €27,000,000 from the sale of 5,310 ounces.

8:11 Exploration and devaluation expenses were 4,600,000 in the quarter, most of it was incurred at the Nano campaign, where we drilled roughly 5,000 meters this year with good results as mentioned. And after incorporating other income and expenses, the company recorded a net loss of 3,200,000 for the period. And moving on, please. On the balance sheet side, cash balance at year end sits at €21,500,000 compared to 55,000,000 at the end of September. And this is mainly driven by continued CapEx, which was quite heavy in the quarter at Nalunak, mainly processing plant construction as well as stocking up of spares and consumables in relation to finalizing commissioning of phase one and also driven by investments in a new mining fleet alongside taking over mining operations in Q4.

9:14 We continue to see an increase in metals inventory, which stands at 15,800,000 at quarter end compared to 11,000,000 at the end of Q3. This represents our gold contained in ore stockpiles, gold in circuit in the processing plant and as well as gold bearing tailings, which we will be bringing back to the processing plant launch phase two is operational in Q2. So that puts us at total current assets of 67,000,000 at year end. On the non current assets, the main movement here consistent with prior periods is a $30,000,000 increase in capital assets to $252,700,000 at year end, again driven by the Nalunak project and the 300 tonne per day processing plant.

10:08 On the liability side, accounts payables stay roughly the same between quarters at around 20,000,000. The main change here between current and non current liabilities is the amendment to our RCF facilities we announced in Q4, where we extended the facilities to February 2028. So that takes them from current liabilities to non current liabilities. So total liabilities at 74,400,000 at year end, which results in an equity ratio of 79%. And on the bottom there, you will see a cash balance at Gardak, our joint venture at 2,600,000 with not very much activity in Q4.

11:05 So moving on to cash flow. So we recorded a net loss of 18,600,000 for the year after adjusting for non cash items, cash flow used in operating activities negative 30,000,000 roughly and cash flow used for investing activities at 84,000,000 roughly, which represents the CapEx at our Nalunak project predominantly. And against that we had positive cash flow from financing activities of 90,000,000, which is mostly due to an equity raise that was closed in June of last year of 80,000,000 roughly and a drawdown on our facilities of about 10,000,000.

11:56 So all in all, this results in a reduction of cash of 23,000,000 throughout the year twenty three point six and and our cash balance was sitting at 21,500,000 at year end. And in excess of that, we had undrawn credit facilities of 8,900,000 at year end. The table on the bottom is where we show the main cash flow moments in relation to the Nylonnach project in and of itself. Now that that is closing completion, closing to completion, we had a total of about 25 roughly outflow of cash to two additions to capital assets.

12:49 And then we had, as previously stated, we were stocking up on supplies and consumables in relation to the commissioning of phase one and increasing our metals inventory as well. I think that's it on this one. Thank you, Ed. Back to you, Eddur. Thank you. Now kind of turning our attention to 2026 and walking you through a little bit what really, really exciting year we have ahead of us. If we look at our guidance for 2026, so this will be our first full year of operating the Nanmak mine. And our guidance is 25 to 35,000 ounces. Now using the current gold prices today, are looking at then a cash flow of anywhere between 112 to 160,000,000 US dollar within this year.

13:59 If we then look at the cost for the overall year, that sits if you take into account all in sustaining costs for Nalmanac, investments in Nalmanac, as well as the base case of exploration outside of Nalmanac of a total of $100,000,000 So the free cash flow generation will be or is targeting on these kind of a goal basis to be very, very good. Now to give us ample liquidity throughout the year and to even faster some of our programs because we have the potential to grow our exploration budget and develop faster this year. This means that we're effectively doing more this year. We have announced this morning that we have increased the loan facility we have by another 35,000,000 taking it from 35 to 70,000,000 doubling it and lowering the interest rate at the same time.

14:58 And so this shows really the development of where we are going from more of a development or exploration company to a more of a cash flow generating business, which is great. Help further on the enabling our strategy of developing faster and creating value quicker, we have now come to an understanding with one of our largest investor, IFO, to support us in the venture of setting up Zuliak which is a servicing venture we have in Greenland. Now to give you an idea why this is important not only for our company but for all mining and interest of the company in Greenland, working capital in Greenland is of importance. You need to buy equipment, drill rigs and maritime equipment mining equipment upfront and that obviously finds a lot of capital.

15:57 So having a servicing venture in Greenland will help us and a lot of other opportunities in Greenland and it will be a very good business because this is a very growing market. So we're extremely pleased with that not only for this but also for years to come and this will allow a lot more equipment availability in a country like Greenland as well as consumables and others. So we're extremely pleased with that. And underpinning all of that, we have announced to the market in this quarter that we are going on the main market in London this year. We appointed City Group to assist us in that progress. All we can say right now is that the work is progressing really well and we are getting a lot of very good feedback from the market there. We have subsequently delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange.

16:47 And the focus here is a little bit of plumbing of the business so to say in the way that we want more and more liquidity to remain within fewer markets to help with indexing and various other liquidity for the company as a whole. But overall, we couldn't be more excited about the strategy going forward. We have extremely strong team both on the ground in operation, development and exploration. For standardizing everything within the business and this will be a transformational year for the business as we see it. Over to you Ed. Thanks Albert. I just thought we might dive a little bit into that exploration program. It is the busiest we've done to date, and it's across the whole portfolio. I mean, it's the first time we've been to polymetallic in our exploration campaign, clearly focusing on the Nanite mine to begin with.

17:40 We're gonna continue to underground underground exploration. We're looking at if you take our current MRE, we're at 400 about 185,000 ounces, which gives us around a ten year mine life. The idea is we're going to replace resource each year through underground exploration to try and tap into some of that over 2,000,000 ounce exploration target that we've got. So that will be the strategy going forward in Alunak and we'll continue to talk about it in that way and give detail on the results of that this year. But we're extremely excited about the opportunity there. Nanonac, which Elder has talked about briefly there, is an incredibly exciting opportunity for us given the results we got from last year. We're going to continue, drilling this year on that. We've already winterized the rig. They're at site already. There's infrastructure there in place. So as soon as, as soon as the exploration season starts, we'll be there drilling, looking to target a maiden mineral resource estimate, as I highlighted earlier. So, you know, again, look out for that this year. That would be that that's a very exciting next gold project for us. And then around that, you've got the satellite gold. We'll continue to define targets there. We will continue to do some geophysical work on those, as we look to, derisk that whole gold the Nautilus gold belt that we talked about down in South there.

19:08 Outside of that, we've got our critical minerals asset base. Black Angel, we talked about clearly after the acquisition last year and the completion of it, there's been a lot of work on the technical data. James and Will and the team, the geos and his geological team have been doing quite a lot of work on the data sets that they've now received post completion and they're quite excited about that. And clearly since the successful reassay of the stockpiles, there's also really interesting internal discussions going on around the commercialization of the germanium and the gallium that we have there, which is quite a topic at the moment generally in the world. Outside of that and within our GARDAC JV, the mid turn, IOCG and iron ore prospect in the Far North, we had some really interesting and successful surface work done on that, which indicates it's a very high grade magnetite iron ore. This year, it's gonna be all about, doing some scattering on that to see the depth and and volumetrics of that.

20:12 And that this asset is right in the Far North, right up just, quite near Canada, actually, in in an area that we that seems to be an Arctic Desert very flat. So, we're looking at all the logistics of that at the moment as well. Down in the South again, we've got the Idua rare earth, element, exploration campaign. Again, scout pruning on that post some really interesting surface work that we did last year. And this is a pegmatite rare earth, so a sort of conventional rare earth. And again it's going to be working out the volumetric of that through scout drilling which will give us the opportunity to then potentially do some resource drilling on that thereafter. And Stendolen, that's still very much in the portfolio. Still looking to target the high grade copper and nickel there. We'll be doing some further geophysical work on that. So we just wanted to lay out some of the exploration catalysts this year, which we're very excited about.

21:08 The last slide is a sort of nice to have really. This is just some photos showing you the work to date on phase two progress with at Nanaimak. Clearly, you can see a lot of the civil works that are already completed and a lot of the equipment's now being installed in there as you can see. So, really just to highlight that, things are on track very much on schedule and a lot of work is going on there at the moment, which is is great to see. And certainly having gone through, you know, the winter season so far to date, we're really pleased with the progress there. So I think, we'll wrap up there. What we're gonna do is we'll take some questions from the line, and I'll just give a I'll just give a a couple of seconds for people if they want to just take a minute to to type in some of those questions there, and I'll I'll crack on the stars in in the meantime.

22:04 So first question, can you please discuss the timeline to profitability and any potential significant investment from government agencies? Yeah, so I mean profitability is something we see within this year from our absolute free cash flow and we're in a positive EBITDA already this year. So that is very good and as we mentioned earlier. In relation to, I mean, I reiterate here in the current gold prices, the range from 25,000 ounces to 35,000 ounces, it ranges from 112,000,000 to up to $160,000,000 in cash flow. Now that is on a $405,100 dollars gold price. All of the capital investment within the group both in terms of all in cost of Nalanac, further investments in Nalanac as well as all exploration expenditures within all of the group. We're still well above the free cash flow there for this year and in addition to that we have the new loan facility to give us even more wiggle room if we intend to do more this year.

23:09 So that puts us in a very good position. Now on what we said on various different agencies being Denmark, European Union and or US agency, we maintain a good dialogue with all of these different agencies. We have been in dialogue with all of these agencies now for four or five years and we will continue to doing so going forward. Thanks, Alan. Next one. Does the potential RCF upsize and equity conjecture to see that mean you can now spend more than the minimum on exploration in 2026? Yes, it does. However, we also need to take into account operational efficiencies, meaning we need to make sure we have the people in the rigs and all of that at the mid. Now the good thing about our programs is that most of the programs start around mid summer, June, July, when a lot of our cash flow this year as we've said in our release in the first half of the year, we're looking at seven to 10,000 ounces and in the second half of the year we are looking to produce more because then we're getting the flotation.

24:19 Now that helps us assessing how much we want to spend and how much we want to do, but we need to make sure we can secure the rigs and secure all of the people to be able to do the work. So that is also an element there that we need to look into. Yeah, right. Question around celiac. Do you already have potential clients or customers contacting you for these services or do you and do you currently have leases out of the equipment to other companies? Currently, we don't have leases out to other companies, but we have been contacted by various different parties. I mean the whole idea behind Zuliaq being Zuliaq is servicing Amaroq, it can be servicing various different projects within Amaroq who we either own 100% or partly.

25:04 And the idea here is that we need to have an arms length agreement with Amaroq. So meaning we will offer the same terms to anyone operating in Greenland. So it's a cost plus model and therefore we've already had three in bounds to us and more actually. And are 33 company in mining in Greenland, but mining is one thing. There's also a lot of infrastructure. There is hydro project, there are governmental services, there's defense projects. So there's a lot of interest here to set something up. And I do wanna emphasize the fact that this company comes as a servicing opportunity aside with all of the great Green Atlantic servicing company who lack often the equipment but have the people. So there is a win win scenario here for for all parties involved.

25:57 Thanks, Albert. Can Albert, there's probably one for you. Can you just confirm those 2026 cash flow numbers? Were they in Canadian dollars or US dollars? I think that's in relation to to, Albert's comments earlier, and and that would have been in US. Yeah. Yeah. In line with with the the guidance that we gave out. Yeah. Do you expect to move to the main market? Will that be completed, and what are the costs involved? Do want me to take that? Yeah. So we are as others suggested, we are we're right in the midst of that process at the moment. We're looking to see, like, the draft of the specs in there's a CPR being dropped in the background as well. So there are two windows, normally, the g end of June window and then the the the autumn window.

26:44 We're we're working towards the first window if we can, but if if, if we're not, then it'll be in September. But currently, our expectation is we're trying to do it by the end of June. And one of the reasons we're coming to the main market is because dropping, listing in Canada, etcetera, is to drop costs. So, whilst I'm not gonna give you exact cost of the process, the point of it is to drop costs in the first place. So that's that. Would it be possible for elder to comment on data points he looks at coming in from Would it be possible to comment on the data points you looked at that are coming in from Nanonite which gives me comfort on the 2026 gold target?

27:30 Yeah. No, I can certainly. I think the data points you wanna be looking for there is the following. I mean, we are estimating not a full production this year meaning in terms of tonnage. So we are estimating about 75 of tonnage of the total production just to give us to be kind of on the cautious side. Now what then controls the the ounces will come out is the grade and is the recovery. And I can say without going into details here because we will update in the Q1 is that both the grade and the recovery are very good in this first quarter. We are seeing them and so we are confident on that and furthermore from the drilling underground drilling and the resource drilling we are doing and resource conversion drilling we're also seeing the grade as well as what we call a coal factor. That means both the mining model is telling us and what then actually comes out the grade. These are all positive indicators so far. Therefore, yes, these are all already positive for us and therefore we are very confident for this guidance.

28:41 A question just on diesel and energy costs. Obviously, lower impact from leaving less diesel, which is great, but can you talk a bit about the sensitivity forecast for the diesel price? Yes, certainly. I mean, to give you a little bit of kind of idea of cost base, I mean about 60% of our cost base is actually people or something related to people. Then we have travel and we have consumer boards and so on. So actually the energy cost in Nalemag for the year we're estimating about 8,000,000 which is only about 8% of our total cost in that all in sustaining cost number. So we don't see a massive impact there. What is also important, we've purchased all of our diesel or energy up until mid summer. So we are quite well protected from there.

29:27 There is another angle here as well Greenland due to the fact that they are very much dependent on diesel for the heating of their towns and operated they purchase much of the diesel and they fix the prices usually for two years in the time. That can be negative you know sometimes the prices are higher than the market but it can also be positive because then you know you're operating on a diesel price that it you know doesn't have the impact or something that is happening in The Middle East at the moment. But very much this energy cost is not the big item in our cost category. Effectively, we have diesel now up until mid year. And thirdly, the agreement of the government or or polar oil has purchased a fair bit of diesel for the next two years for for the country. Thanks, Oliver. Elof, maybe one for you. Are we looking at putting a hedging with gold prices high at the moment?

30:18 So we haven't hedged, gold prices at all, up to this point, and we are looking into whether we can opportunistically hedge a part of our costs, capitalized costs this year. Other than that, we'll continue we'll be opportunistic. We're not too precious with kind of 100% no hygiene at all, but we haven't done so so far. If you were to do it this year, it would be to cover the rest of the CapEx. Yeah. As example, when we pre sold 1,500 ounces a couple of weeks ago on a $500 per ounce. So there are opportunities like that.

31:09 I don't wanna say we are very good at predicting the prices yet, but there are opportunities to cover your capital cost for sure. Thanks, Jed. Working capital outflows. Working capital outflows were consistent through 2025. How do you see them flowing this year? Yes, it will be different this year. So for the first six months, we'll continue CapEx and construction of the processing plant facilities, but that should recede quite quickly post Q2 and the non sustaining CapEx that we've guided on will be front heavy. But then once the flotation recoveries kick in and the CapEx recedes for the second half of the year, working capital will will become quite benign, and we should see that reflected in the cash balance in in in especially in h two.

32:15 Super. Thanks. I think the next one is around CapEx and capital spend. So can you confirm the 2026 capital spend? Was it a 100,000,000 US, and this is the minimum expiration? Yes. Above that number. Yes. And is only the 2026 capital spend on expanding to four fifty tons per day? We will do some assessment on that, but just to give you a little bit on the assessment there and an idea of increasing to four fifty. When we designed the plant in Nalmag, the only thing we need to expand is to put in a second mill. The rest of the plant is designed for four fifty. So we are doing the assessment now on the lead time of the mill and the construction.

33:04 So so that that and we will be updating in the either next quarter or the following quarter with with that plan. Now that needs to be followed with more mining, of course. And so having four fifty tonnes a day doesn't only potentially give us more cash flow, it also gives us also the opportunity to have lower grades for the plant if that would be the case in future years. Because the operating cost stays really the same if you're doing 450 a day tons per day versus 300 tons a day. That gives you an idea of why we're looking at that. Thanks, Oliver. This is a question regards sort of reconciliations of grades. Can you give us any indication on how the grade in Nanomac is now when you've experienced the processing compared to the drilling results?

33:50 Yeah. So what we're seeing the coal factor from the mine plan towards what we're mining is positive. So we're having getting higher grades. Is not only to look for is that we're getting high grades. What we also have to kind of look into is is, you know, what is a dilution, how well we mine it. That has also been going really, really well. So so those are the two elements, but positive and positive on both how we're mining it and also the grade so far. Thanks, Alex. Alex, maybe one for you here. Could you give us more insight on the gross profit margin and how you see that going forward with increased scale? Do you have a target margin in mind for the long term? Yeah, so we don't have a target margin in the long term, but I would say that the point to the ASIC really that we've guided on in Q4 being the range of $12.50 to $14.50 US dollars per ounce. And then depending on the gold price, you can calculate kind of net margins from those numbers.

35:07 A question on likely impacts, obviously very pertinent at the moment. What's the impact from the current Iran situation on costs and will our ASIC be impacted by it? We don't see that as changing anything for now. Obviously, we are impacted by kind of general inflationary effects. But again, as Elder alluded to earlier, fuel costs are quite a low percentage of our overall costs, so that we don't see a large effect at this moment. No. We're reiterating our guidance today. Yeah. And clearly, as I highlighted, the slight hedge we have on diesel cost and things. That's Yes.

35:57 I just made it as a comment. I mean, it's a very reasonable question to ask. In a in a mining operation where you have low grade, you need a lot of power to power big mills and so on. Right? So the impact of higher oil prices, it does have an impact. Whereas in an operation like we have that is high grade, high yielding, the impact of power and so on is much much much lower. Thanks a Last question and so if anyone has any other questions please add them in now but this is the last question for the moment. Can you please elaborate on the support that the executive management receives from the board in relation to any negotiations it has to have with government agencies in Denmark, Greenland, and The US? Do you feel that the existing board is providing all the support and contact base that it has?

36:47 Yes. The existing board is doing that, and the board is kept abreast to any discussion or potential opportunities within discussion with these agencies and the government. Thanks, Elder. So there are no further questions currently, but please if you have any, please send them through to me at Westrop. My email is in details on the bottom releases, etcetera, And we'll get to those if you need them. Thanks very much for joining. We will be coming back for another one of these at the time of the q one results in May. So we look forward to speaking to you all then. Thanks very much.