Thor Explorations (TSXV:THX) — Q1 2026 Results update

0:02 Good afternoon, and welcome to the THOR EXPLORATIONS LTD investor presentation. Throughout today's recorded presentation, attendees will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted via the q and a tab situated on the right hand side of your screen. Before we begin, I'd just like to submit the following poll, which I kindly ask you to submit your responses to. I'd now like to hand over to CEO, Shagan Lawson. Shagan, good afternoon. Good afternoon, Jack. Thank you. I'm pleased to be here to talk through our Q1 twenty twenty six financial and operating results.

0:32 Welcome, everyone. We have a disclaimer here. There are some forward looking statements here, and this can be read in detail on our website. I will start with my usual overview of the company for any new joiners that might be here. THOR EXPLORATIONS is a West Africa focused gold producing company. We're advancing projects in three countries. We have our flagship project in Nigeria, the Sagalala Gold Mine, which we're now in our fifth calendar year of production after producing roundabout 92,000 ounces last year. We've just completed our first quarter, and we poured just over 20,000 ounces of gold. In Senegal, we have our advanced Duta project, which we have continued to grow in terms of land position and equity stake in. We now have a 100% stake in the Duta project after buying out our minority equity partners in this project. We're very excited by this project. We completed and filed the preliminary feasibility study in the current period, q one, which we're reporting, which demonstrated some very strong economics with a project NPV of $908,000,000, 5% NPV as of using $3,500 gold price pretax.

2:01 The project has grown to a mineral reserve of 1,200,000 ounces at a grade of just over one gram per ton and a total global resource of 1,700,000 ounces. We're still very encouraged by the growth prospects of this project, which I will speak about in more detail in this presentation, and we certainly expect to continue to grow the size of this project in terms of ounces over the course of this year and throughout the construction period. Finally, we have an early stage portfolio in Cote D'Ivoire where we have acquired a number of exploration license. We've we're continuing to carry out drilling programs on two of them and advancing geophysical exploration and also auger sampling across all our portfolio. We're very excited and encouraged by the prospects we have here in Cote D'Ivoire as well.

3:01 As a company, we're listed on both the a market of the London Stock Exchange and the TSXP market of the Toronto Stock Exchange. We have a market cap hovering just below a billion dollars Canadian at the moment. We are well institutionalized on our share register with a number of shareholders on both sides of The Atlantic. We still believe there is significant upside to come in our share price. We have a number of catalysts in terms of milestones to achieve through the course of this year. And after our performance last year, we expect that to to continue through the course of this year. And you can see by some of the target prices missing here. So getting into the nitty gritty, q one financial highlights, you know, our our working capital and our balance sheet starting with the balance sheet, we've been completely delevered since the end of twenty twenty four where we fully repaid all our senior debt.

4:08 We are now in a a material surplus working capital position and net cap cash position. I think we it's it's clear to see that we have been really benefiting from the rising gold price. If you look at in the top left hand graph on a quarter by quarter basis, I think the other key takeaways here is if you look at our in the bottom right hand position and the bottom left hand position, you look at our liquidity and our cash flow generation, that has continued to grow and is continuing to grow. We have a working capital surplus now of just under $200,000,000 and an adjusted net cash position of $177,800,000.

4:54 I think, importantly, if you look at our costs, all in sustaining costs and cash costs per ounce through the course of the last five quarters, they have been very well maintained with Q1 finishing below $1,000 per ounce. In Q1, we paid the usual 1.25¢ per share, which is a quarterly dividend payment as per our policy. This was coming off the back of closing out 2025 within a surplus cash position, paying out not only our regular dividend, we paid out a a bonus dividend of 1.5¢, per share.

5:39 So following that to date, we have now returned, to shareholders in the form of dividends just over $38,000,000, and our policy is continuing through the course of this year. In q one itself, our revenues were supported by the high gold price, the highest achieved gold price for a quarter, $74,000,000, and we finished the period with a $160,000,000 in the bank. We, however, did have 4,000 ounces of gold bullion, which we haven't sold yet and have since sold subsequent to the end of the period. So that resulted in an adjusted net cash position of $177,800,000. So from a financial perspective, the company is in a very healthy position.

6:27 No debt, clean balance sheet, growing trends in all the right directions in terms of financial performance, and this is all being being done whilst maintaining our cost discipline.

6:46 In terms of our operating highlights, we poured 20,000 ounces for the quarter. And as I mentioned just slightly earlier, we we had we sold 15,400 ounces at a very high in terms of quarterly gold price achieved gold price of just over $4,800 per ounce. We also in addition to our bullion, we had gold ore of an additional 2,000 ounces. So in terms of operating performance, we we've been running in a steady state. We had a head grade of just over two and a half grams per ton being fed into the mill, and our recoveries were about 93.1% for the quarter.

7:35 Mine production is slightly down as we move down to the southern end of the open pit. However, that has also had a, should I say, a net positive effect on our costs in term in terms of using less diesel and and lower production rates. One thing we are pleased to, again, highlight is we've added another 3,844 ounces of gold to our stockpile. This has all been part of our strategy of delivering sub one gram material to the stockpile. That's now sitting at 54,000 just over 54,000 ounces, waiting at 0.76 grams per ton. So, you know, given the fact that we have sunk, you know, the majority of these costs in terms of mining and stockpiling, there's a significant amount of value here still remaining on the stockpile at today's gold price, you know, roundabout $250,000,000.

8:38 In terms of exploration, we are there has been a lot of feedback and questions as to extension of the the mine life and transition to underground. There is a lot of focus on this internally at the moment. We are trying to get to a minimum milestone to transition to to to update our reserve officially. We have six rigs currently working at this. It is a learning process. It is an understanding process of the structural controls underneath the pit. We are on the positive side continuing to intersect minable widths and goals that remain open at depth, and that will continue.

9:24 We had in our NDA some of our highlight results, which we're continuing to follow-up on. We do have a near term plan to begin to carry out these scoping studies of the underground. And when I say near term, means sometime over the next the course of the next six months whilst we continue to carry out the exploration. We're aiming to have another set of drill results out in terms of this underground. There is a bit of catch up to make since this last update, and we're aiming to have that through the course sometimes through the course of June.

10:06 We've also continued to progress work in satellite areas of within the 50 kilometer radius of the plant. We have a new project area not a new project area. We have a project area, shall I say, which we are continuing to work up gradually down to the south where we've consolidated a number of licenses. We also have a number of previously drilled smaller satellite deposits, which we're also evaluate evaluating the economic potential of, which we're aiming to incorporate into any resource update we do from underneath the pit. The ideal situation would be to combine the the best ounces in in terms of the mind processing sequence. So whether it's from satellites, whether it's shallow underground, whether it's a stockpile or a blend of all three.

11:05 These are all part of the scoping studies we're looking to carry out now. So moving across to Senegal where we delivered a preliminary feasibility study on the Duta project, we we were very pleased with the outcome of the Duta projects. The project economics there were economically robust. This is a project which we've grown from grassroots, having made the first drill hole discovery as far back as 2012. We've drilled over a 130,000 meters here, and we've had a very successful, should I say, delivery cost in terms of ounces, indicated ounces of $8.5 per ounce.

11:53 It's in the Permian, in the Caniba Inlay, in the Southeast area of Senegal, and we've now expanded our footprint over 540 square kilometers here. This project is now growing into a district scale project. There's over 40 kilometers of mineralization to be further tested and converted into resource economic resources and reserves. We're currently sitting with over just over 1,200,000 ounces grading at just over $1 per ounce. And in terms of resource, we're sitting at 1,700,000 ounces. Looking at the the Duta project itself and the economics, we've increased our ownership here to a 100%. This is prior to any government free carry.

12:47 And we have now been spending since completing the PFS, spending a lot of time progressing additional work streams on the engineering and the other critical work stream being in country with the with the government to advance this to collect our mining conventions, should I say, our mining license to transition to to get the full fully permitted for our mining operations. We're still targeting and expect this to be done over the next couple of months, and we are still in a position to we're aiming to complete all our work streams and make this final investment decision in q three with a targeted first gold pour date in the first half of twenty twenty eight.

13:42 I've I've spoken and I've given an independent presentation on the PFS, so I won't spend a huge amount of time here. But I will just highlight to the few things here. First of all, the project is a two phase project with an oxide phase and a fresh ore phase. The oxide phase has an all in sustaining cost of just below a thousand $500 per ounce and an extremely fast payback period. And a $3,500 gold price, has a payback period of eleven months. At a $42.50 gold price, it has a payback period of nine months. So it's extremely cash generative and extremely profitable with a very fast payback period, and this has driven our rationale to continue to extend the length of this oxide period. And we believe we're well on track to be doing that now. We've had a recent press release with our initial first set of drill results, which has shown exploration success from all over. I mean, if we start off with looking outside the resources and looking at the earlier stage targets, we have we are in the process, should I say, of doing a 40,000 meter drill program where we've defined, should I say, grassroots grassroots mineralization targets for an extent of 14 kilometers.

15:02 So what we're seeing on my screen now is soil and rock chip results on a a structure that runs parallel to Mucosa and the existing Baraka 3 South deposit. So we're we're very excited about this. We've released our first set of drill results here. The first set of drill results here, we had success in all three of our targets. The drilling program first part of the drilling program has been designed to increase the project economics. And when when I say that, that's by converting previously existing inferred resources that lay within the pit shell, for example, to indicated so they could be included in our economic evaluation.

15:49 So we've done that at the Baraka 3 deposit. We've done that at Macossetail where we were very successful hitting high grade mineralization within the oxide. We're flushing that out now. And also in the prospect where in the previous slide I showed the rock chip and soil samples, we've now done some first pass aircore, and we're continuing to flesh that out and finding additional wide high grade oxide mineralization, which is which we're we're looking to follow-up. So where where does this leave us as a project? We have set ourselves up with a internal target of adding an additional 500,000 ounces of oxide reserves prior to the end of the year, prior to the and also prior to our first gold pour here. And that takes that's a step change in terms of valuation, in terms of the the the data project oxide phase changing the low cost phase from a four year period at this rate to an eight or nine year production period producing north of 100,000 ounces per year.

17:06 Drilling is ongoing here. We will continue to have periodic updates with the next update coming again in the course of this quarter q two. So to summarize our next step steps, this 40,000 meter program is targeting and extending this oxide phase. We are looking once we receive all these results, we're going going to put these into, should I say, an updated or optimized feasibility study. We're still on track to close out on ordering our long lead items. We're finalizing our engineering detailed engineering designs at the moment. We're in advanced discussions with financing parties with looking at closing all this out in line with closing out with the Senegalese government over the next five, six weeks.

17:56 And we're targeting our first goal for in the first half of twenty twenty eight. And we see ourselves very well positioned in a high this high gold price environment to build this project without any additional shareholder dilution where we believe our growing balance sheet combined with project financing opportunities that are out there should make this possible. Moving over to Cote D'Ivoire where we have a much earlier stage portfolio. We've added a a new license here, the Laudiba license, in addition to our two priority licenses, the Guitri and Marahui. We also have the Bundiali license.

18:41 Needless to say, the exploration potential in Cote D'Ivoire has been extremely encouraging over the last ten years. We're seeing mines being built there. We're seeing a very friendly mining code there, and we're very pleased to be advancing projects there. Starting off with a summary of the Gwishu project, we carried out a first pass drilling in only a small area of the soil anomalism, which was 4,600 meters of drilling. We've now taken our drilling activities to an additional two targets and apologies. Our exploration activities to an additional two targets within the license and working them up into much higher resolution drill targets to be to be drilled out as well. We've already put in a a a number of scout holes in these additional areas, and we're encouraged by these results. And we look forward to drilling these out and updating the market with our drill results.

19:42 Looking at some of the results, these are combined results from last year and earlier this year. We are in in the first area where we drilled. We've previously released these results. These loads and these this target remains open in several directions and has demonstrated a number of high grade shallow plunging, low also oxide mineralized oxide mineralization. So what we we think we have a a number of good targets here. We which remain open. We look forward to to drilling this these up, and we've allocated a a significant budget for our projects in Kodewa, both in Guichi and our final projects in Marahui.

20:34 This is a project which I have spoken a lot about. We're very encouraged by the early stage exploration, which has shown very high grade gold mineralization in rock chips and surface over significant strike lengths. I can't say too much here because we haven't released any drilling results, but we're also looking to have our maiden drill results from Marahui out in this quarter. So I look forward to updating the market here. Looking at a snapshot of some of the rock chips we've already got here, it's demonstrating very typical quartz vein mineralization, a bariumian style, very high grade, and we're very encouraged by this. We set out a a wide space drilling program.

21:21 So if you can see these lines here, 400 meter wide space drilling program to design that has been designed to test both of these parallel structures, and we are looking forward to getting these results out. So I will summarize now with our

21:44 production and cost guidance remaining on track. We're allocating roundabout $30,000,000 towards exploration across all three jurisdictions. We continue to target as a priority the extension of the mine life with scoping studies being carried out into an initial underground phase. We're finalizing permits and engineering designs of the duty project. We are still on track to reach investment decision in q three and start construction this year. And we continue to continue our we continue our exploration in Kuglivat to advance both the Gucci and Marahi projects.

22:31 And we are maintaining our dividend policy through the course of the year as a minimum of 1.25¢ per share per quarter. Thank you very much. Perfect. Thank you, Shagan, for your presentation this afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions via the q and a tab on the right hand side of your screen. For your reference, recording of today's presentation will be available on the Investor Meet company platform shortly after the meeting's ended. But for now, Shagan, as you can see, there are a number of questions which have been submitted. Can I please ask you to read out the questions and give your responses where appropriate to do so? And I'll pick up from you at the end.

23:16 Sure. Thank you. Which exploration license in Nigeria are you most excited about and why? Not life of the mind question. It's it's difficult to say, you know, there's a there's a an evaluation that has to be done in internally, but I would say it's slightly earliest earlier stage. But if you look at our South South projects where we've consolidated a number of licenses there, demonstrating initial, at least, golden soil and golden stream, and normalism and results, there is a lot of work to do to to try and understand, but that's probably where I think I'm most excited about in terms of scale in Nigeria.

24:05 What are your thoughts on exploring listing on additional major exchanges with high liquidity there. Would you consider share repurchases? Okay. I I I do get this question a lot. Look. At at the moment, we haven't considered another major exchange. I we're extremely busy. We we are exploring very aggressively, and we are developing a project which we're looking to go into a build on, and we're also looking to go into development phase underground in in Nigeria. So we haven't looked at that. But but in terms of if we if we continue to hit our milestones, we get to that financial final investment decision in Senegal. We're going into a build. We've demonstrated at the moment a a plus twelve year mine life.

24:59 It might be worth looking at, should I say, promoting ourselves to more senior exchanges on the on the existing exchanges we're on at the moment. So this is all very hypothetical, but, you know, it's it might be just part of the evolution of the company. But to to give a definitive answer on that, no. We're not currently exploring any additional major exchanges. Why are all the trades on UK AMUS off book for THOR is maybe giving higher spread and thus reduces volumes? My honest answer is I don't know, and I I didn't realize they were all off book, but it's something we can speak to Nomad adviser about and and and figure it out.

25:52 You've mentioned previously you intend to release an upgraded resource when you have material reserves to release what level do you consider material in this context. Mhmm. I look. We we we discussed this internally. I would personally like to have, you know, set a target of between, let's say, two hundred and fifty and three hundred thousand ounces, which is extremely material compared to the initial 500,000 ounces we started off on there. And that just enables us to continue to explore aggressively, continue to return cash to our shareholders, and also to carry out the development work we need to do in Senegal.

26:37 Looking at the revenue growth chart, it looks like q one twenty six volumes down versus q one twenty five. In revenue, no. That's not the case. In q one twenty twenty five I'm gonna freestyle this, but I could probably quickly check. Q one twenty twenty five, I believe our revenues were around about $64,000,000. Q one twenty twenty six, our revenues were just over $74,000,000. I think maybe maybe ounces produced is what you're referring to. But if yeah. The answer is certainly down. We have a lower guidance this year than we did last year.

27:25 Okay. This is given the improved lithium price, what is your approach to lithium deposits in Nigeria?

27:35 It's interesting that that question has been asked because we we continue to prioritize our gold. However, we do have an early stage lithium portfolio, and we haven't absolutely stopped exploration there. We continue to advance low cost exploration. In Nigeria, we own our own drilling rigs that are prioritized on the gold. We are also trying to find a window to maybe remobilize these rigs if we get the right opportunities and the right drill targets on the lithium to to actually drill some of our lithium targets. But we we're doing some some low costs work to see if we can actually generate some drill targets in in the meantime.

28:24 So, you know, the core our core business remains gold, and and we are our core business is gold, and we're still looking to focus on that. The the biggest bag of for our buck we can get at moment is additional ounces underneath the pit in Nigeria and satellite deposits that are within the tracking distance of the processing plant. So that takes a priority of where we allocate our exploration dollars and also where we position our drilling rigs. Can you confirm that you're targeting to release Marahui results in q two?

29:08 Okay. That's that's that's a loaded question. Yes. I I I think the key question here is targeting. So we are we we will continue to target that. A lot of things out of our hands here in terms of labs. But, yeah, we we are we are targeting a release in in the next six weeks for sure before the end of q two, five weeks.

29:40 Okay. Two questions. Please provide an update on safety at site and any time lost. Please speak about government relations in the respective geographies. Can you provide a sense of how often the company engages with respective government representatives? Thank you. Look. We we put all our health and safety numbers in our MDA every quarter. We take this very seriously as a priority. We are a pioneer in the country in the mining sector, and we try and keep everything at best practice standards. So all the data's there for you to for anyone to refer to. We also include our sustainability report on our website.

30:30 Our community activities are also there on our website. In all three jurisdictions, we're very, very active with the government, with all the regulatory bodies. There is monitoring on-site in Nigeria. There is from the Ministry of Environments as well, in addition to the work that's carried out by the Ministry of Mines. In Senegal, we have a very strong relationship with our communities, local mines offices, and at federal level. I'm regularly in all three in in in front of all three regulatory supervisors supervisory bodies, should I say. And, yeah, I would say we have a a good relationship.

31:19 Okay. I think, yeah, that's it for now. Brilliant. Thank you, Sagan, for answering all of those questions. Before we ask investors to share their feedback, which I know is important to you, if I could just ask you for a few closing comments to wrap up with, that'd be great. Yeah. Look. I I would close by saying it's been a strong start to the year. We we are very privileged to be in this gold price environment. Our cash position and balance sheet continue to grow. We remain on top of our costs. I think we have very importantly, we have some big catalysts to come this year. There's a lot of work that's going on in between the two catalysts. It may seem a bit quiet in between the the the I think three major catalysts that that we're aiming for. And, you know, I think in addition to all this, you know, whilst we're underpinned by our strong cash, we still have a lot of very encouraging, exciting exploration potential to deliver as well through the course of this year. So we look forward to that as well. Thank you.

32:27 Perfect. Thank you, Shay, and once again. Ladies and gentlemen, could ask that you don't close the session just yet as you'll now be automatically redirected to a page to give your feedback, which helps the company better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. I wish you all a good afternoon.