Gemfields Group Limited (GEM) Q4 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning and welcome to Gemfield's 2025 full-year results shareholder and investor webcast. Sean Gilbertson, CEO, and David Lovett, CFO, will present Gemfield's financial results. At the end of the presentation, we will go into a Q&A. If you'd like to ask a question, please write it in via the webcast page by clicking the Ask a Question button. Before we start, please take a note of the important information in our disclaimer on slide 2. with a full disclaimer in the appendix. And with that, I'll now pass you on to Sean. Thank you very much, Heinrich. Good morning and welcome. Thank you for your time and interest in what was an extremely difficult year for Gemfields. Ignoring the COVID year of 2020, 2025 saw us deliver our weakest annual auction revenues since 2013, more than a decade ago. and only 41% of the peak auction revenues which we achieved in 2022, which was the height of the post-COVID so-called revenge spending boom for us. I think it's worth recapping on what transpired in getting us to this situation. First, buoyed by the post-COVID boom, we paid out $80 million in dividends to shareholders between May 22 and May 24, and we also did a $10 million share buyback. We then went on to initiate a growth strategy, which included the largest CapEx project Gemfields has ever undertaken, being our second processing plant at MRM in Mozambique at a cost of $70 million. Then, in the second half of 2024, we saw the deterioration of the Chinese economy and a marked decline in China's share of luxury goods consumption. That was followed by the contested general election in Mozambique in October 24, giving rise to civil unrest in many parts of the country and a direct attack on MRM on the 24th of December 2024, leading in turn to significant illegal minor incursions ...