Amaroq Ltd. (AMRQF) Q3 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Q3 2025 results from Amaroq. Thanks for joining. We'll follow the usual call for today. So management will take you through the presentation, and then we'll follow that with Q&A. First of all, from the line, moderated by Sharon. And then I'll moderate the questions on the web. So thanks very much for joining. I'll hand over to Eldur Olafsson, the Chief Executive.

Thank you, Edward. Good morning, everybody. It's a pleasure to be with you here today after a very busy and successful quarter. I want to start the day up by giving you a snapshot of our operation as we usually do on this quarter. So we are very much focused on our mining development in Greenland, meaning now production, development and exploration. To do that, we are in Greenland. And as you can see, Greenland needs a lot of services and energy to enable these businesses to be successful. And therefore, out of necessity, we have set up this business as well. We are mainly focused on 2 different regions in Greenland. We are in South Greenland, where you have Gold Belt, you have rare earth, non-rare earth areas and then you have copper and base metals. There, we have the Nalunaq mine. We have the Nanoq exploration development project, and then we have early-stage exploration in Vagar. In West Greenland, there we have the Black Angel past producing mine, and the intention is to bring that into production in the coming years. We have the Kangerluarsuk exploration in [ SEDEX ] play, again, very similar to what we have in Nanoq. So we have high-grade development or producing assets supporting larger scale exploration assets. These 2 regions in Greenland are the most developed region in terms of mining. That is well known by the market, by the various participants, even though all of Greenland is obviously very prospective, but we managed to situate ourselves in these 2 regions with the most advanced asset to date. Now to give you highlights of the quarter, we had a very, very successful quarter. We produced in early October, 5,000 ounces. We sold 2,636 ounces during the quarter. And year-to-date, we've sold 4,347 ounces on an average price of approximately 3,500 per ounce. Liquidity is very strong. The cash balance sits at $55 million. And mind you, after a very heavy CapEx quarter. So we've been fast-tracking development on the plant and various different things. Furthermore, this quarter is also very heavy on explorations. We do most of our exploration work within it, and we have finished all of that exploration to date. They come on budget. We finished all of the work that we wanted to do. The only thing that still remains and will be ongoing during winter is drilling in Nalunaq, both on surface and underground. And we will be reporting on Nalunaq exploration result in Q4, and we'll be reporting on Nanoq in Q4 as well as some strategic mineral target that we've been exploring. We commenced trading on the OTC within the quarter, which has been very good and gave us good access to the U.S. market. We invested in one of a kind of a fully operating -- or moving from a contractor to a fully operating mining setup. This means that we acquired our own equipment, our own supplies. We've been, over the past year, hiring our own people. And so this will mean, yes, it has some CapEx involved, but this will then mean a lower OpEx and more throughput going forward. And this has been going really, really well. And on that, we've seen, and you will hear that from Joan Plant later on. We've seen a very good operational uptime, both in the plant, also in the mining. And then we have delivered our gold production this year. And as you see in the outlook this year, we have updated our annual outlook to be producing between 6,000 to 7,000 ounces by year-end. I wanted to take this opportunity to give you a little bit of understanding on how our business model works and how we develop our assets using something that is called the Lassonde curve, which is very well known in the mining industry. Now the Lassonde curve sets out where projects are on the development cycle. So their exploration asset versus development assets or producing asset. And what is usually the multiple on P/NAV during that process. As you can see, Nalunaq should have the highest multiple as it is in production, and that multiple should go higher and higher. What controls that multiple is grade, it's a jurisdiction. And it's the fact that if you can grow the resources while you're producing from it. So the good thing about both Nalunaq and Black Angel, we have the opportunity due to the fact that it is high grade to start with resources of somewhere between like we did in Nalunaq 6 to 10 years and then continue growing the resources. So that in itself gives a good value proposition for the investor. The intention is then to utilize the management team and more importantly, the cash flow to move Nanoq, Kangerluarsuk and other exploration of this curve. So that gives a very good proposition to the investors. Now the enabler of developing all of these things is the services and energy. In most countries around the world, you have services and energy. In Greenland, we have to build them ourselves. And so by doing that, we allow these projects to go up the development time line, and we allow them to do that at cost competitive. And what I want to say, the reason why we do it in this manner in Greenland is because Greenland is underexplored. And the hindrance in Greenland to explore has been it's remote and doesn't have a lot of people. Now with these 2 operations, we have all of these things and the service equipment. So this will allow us to move off this curve, in our opinion, relatively quickly, especially with the positive cash flow coming next year.

Thanks, Eldur. In Q3, we had sales of 2,636 ounces for gross proceeds of $12.8 million with average price per ounce of $3,568. In comparison, gross revenue in Q2 amounted to $3.4 million. Subtracting cost of sales results in $5.9 million in gross profit and subtracting G&A results in $1.7 million in operating profit. Our Q3 is always our most busiest month when it comes to exploration, and this year was no exception. Total expenditure this quarter was $5.5 million, but most of it was incurred at the Nanoq campaign, that is $4.4 million (sic) [ $4.6 million ] out of the $5.5 million where we drilled roughly 5,000 meters this year. And at the end of the reporting period, approximately 60% of the core have been logged and sampled with results pending in Q4. After incorporating other income and expenses, the company recorded a net loss of $5.3 million for the period, a big improvement from the $14 million loss in the prior year when, of course, no revenue was generated. Now the key balance sheet movements in Q3, consistent with prior periods was a $21.1 million increase in capital assets to $221.9 million at quarter end. And this was obviously driven by the Nalunaq project and primarily reflecting ongoing construction at our 300 tonne per day processing facilities by the mine. Supplies, inventory and escrow account is more or less in line with the last quarter. but we are seeing continued increase in metals inventory, which stands at $11 million at quarter end compared to $9.2 million at the end of Q2. This represents our gold contained in ore stockpiles and tailings as well, as well as gold in circuit, which is associated with process but not yet smelted material in the processing plant. Our prepaid worth mentioning, they increased by $3.6 million between quarters. And this is mainly due to operational spares and supplies being stocked up for winter and down payments on mining equipment that we are acquiring as we transition from contractor operated mining to owner-operated mining, which we will discuss in more detail later in the presentation. Change in loan payable, you can see there in Q3, which is our RCF facility, is due to accrued interest or no drawdowns or payments made on the facility in the quarter. And including cash balance of $55.3 million at quarter end, total assets amount to $339 million and very healthy 79% equity ratio. The last 4 lines on the slide are connected to our investment in the Gardaq joint venture. Exploration activities continued there in Q3 and the cash balance sits at $2.8 million at quarter end compared to $3.6 million at the end of Q2. Amaroq's receivable balance from Gardaq increased and amounted to $8.4 million at quarter end. And as a reminder, this receivable represents allocated G&A costs to manage the joint venture, and this will be converted to shares in Gardaq in 2026. Yes. Next one on liquidity and cash movements. At the end of the quarter, our cash balances are sitting at $55.3 million, as mentioned before, adding undrawn credit facilities of $8.9 million and subtracting payables of $18.8 million results in $45.4 million in liquidity compared to $75.1 million at the end of Q2. And this reflects our main cash flow movements in the quarter in relation to the Nalunaq project, a total of $23.9 million in cash outlay in the quarter. This is mainly attributable to additions in capital assets of $20.2 million as well as increase in prepaid that was mentioned before as well as metals inventory. And additions to capital assets represents cash outlay, not only due to construction but also mine development as well as capitalized cap costs.

Thank you, Ellert. Good morning, everyone. My name is Joan Plant, I am the Interim COO. Achieving stability within the team at Nalunaq has meant we've seen steady improvements in operations, enabling us to deliver consistent gold production. I was delighted this culminated in us reaching the year-end guidance of approximately 5,000 ounces ahead of time in October. I'm pleased to report that the planned shutdown of the plant has ended with all Phase 1 activities successfully completed as planned and on time. We have restarted operations, and we now expect 2025 full year gold production to be 6,000 to 7,000 ounces. The transition to becoming owner operators has gone exceptionally well with our highly competent team already demonstrating a positive approach to achieving operational efficiency and cost savings. We have also invested in our own mining fleet. Our investments in improving infrastructure at Nalunaq has, of course, resulted in high upfront CapEx, but will reduce our OpEx going forward and ensure we protect the operational stability we are now achieving. We will continue to focus on the optimization to enhance operational efficiency and performance to ensure we can maximize gold production and cash flow in 2026. Finally, exploration have had an excellent season, and we look forward to updating the market on the results there's still to come from the Nanoq and Nalunaq programs as well as those from the wider portfolio. In addition, there will continue to be worked on over the winter to define and increase resources at Nalunaq. We have been in positive negotiations with the government and the local municipality to finalize our Impact Benefit Agreement and we are on track to have this and the final mine plan approved and in place by the end of this year. I could not be more proud of what our teams have achieved during this period. This is just to remind everyone of Nalunaq's key metrics. I'm very pleased, lost time injuries are low, especially given the significant amount of manhours. We are working on a new mineral resource estimate aiming to move some resources from the inferred to the indicated category. Please focus on the fact that we have considerable exploration potential so the company will be looking to increase resources year-on-year.

Thanks very much, Joan. It's Ed Westropp here, the Head of BD. I just thought it would be worth double-clicking into the West Greenland hub quickly. We announced early in the week that we're pleased to see that all the CPs are done so the Black Angel acquisition and the Kangerluarsuk acquisition is finalizing as well. At the same time, we also re-assayed some of the stockpiles. We thought it was prudent to do so because the type of mineralization at Black Angel can host some other minerals. And so we re-assayed that there to see what else was in there. We had a hunch that there was some germanium and gallium, and we're really pleased to see that, that came through in levels that are deemed commercial. We're also very pleased to see the grades coming through on the zinc, lead and silver. And indeed, the silver grade was very good. So really encouraging around that. Clearly, they are quite an interesting strategic and commercial angle to the West Greenland hub and Black Angel restart with the EU, U.S. and U.K. interest, growing interest in critical minerals. Clearly, this is something that we're going to be playing on, and we're going to try and take advantage of in the future. So you'll hear more about this as we go forward, but clearly, very positive to begin with. So I'll hand over to Eldur, who will take you through the outlook for the remainder of the year.

All right. Thank you, Ed. Right. So to sum up, our updated guidance of 5,000 ounces was already achieved in early October. We're extremely pleased about that to see how the team and the commissioning has gone really, really well and gives us a very good wind in the back to rerate as an operator, as a producing company. We're also pleased to see that in the construction of Phase 1 is complete, and operation has restarted on time, on budget, and we're now getting into wet commissioning. The management expects the year-end production to between 6,000 to 7,000 ounces, and which is higher than our revised guidance. Now with Phase 1 finished, the intention is our ongoing work on Phase 2 have been happening. So we only have CAD 6.5 million of capital left in Phase 2, and the plan is to have that operational by end of Q1 2026. This means Phase 1 is giving us recovery of gold between 50% to 70%, depending on grade, and this will then move us from recovery from the 50% to 90% or 70% to 90% or above 90%. This will increase cash flow significantly with the same amount of ore that we put through the plant. Now one of the most exciting exploration results are still yet to come. Our biggest program in exploration this year was Nanoq. We drilled 5,000 meters there. We're waiting for the core to reach the assay facility, and the asset will then be with the market in due course and in Q4. And in Nalunaq as well, we have been doing underground drilling. That means we drill from underground in the current area that we are mining or above the current area that we are currently mining in the mountain block. This is both to define reserve, but also to see larger resources there. But on surface, something that markets may be not as much aware of, we have also been drilling in the South block. So we went -- drilled 250 meters below the current mine working to extend the resource in that direction as well, or that is the aim I should say. And we are currently drilling that. We drilled about 8 holes to already, and we can be drilling that during winter as well. So that is something we are very excited about. Now given the strong financial position of the company, the net debt -- with no net debt, the project pipeline we have to grow value and the fact that we will have positive cash flow next year, this allows -- sets us up for a very, very strong quarter, but more importantly, a very strong year in 2026, which we are very excited about. On that basis, I want to give gratitude to the whole team, Board, stakeholders, service providers in Amaroq, they have done unbelievable and amazing job in a difficult jurisdiction. I want to also give a gratitude to all of our operational team to make all of the work done in such a seamless way in a place like Greenland, which is by far, not easy to operate in, but it's getting easier and easier for us every quarter. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions]

Yes, we have some questions on the line actually. So I'll just take those and we'll go through them, if that's okay. So I think the first question is in regards to the EU and the U.K. government, U.S. government interest in Greenland and the resources and regarding future grants and financing. Eldur, I think it's probably one for you. Is there anything that you -- any information that you'd like to be able to provide on that subject matter?

Yes. So we have been in dialogue with representatives from all of these governments about various different opportunities to support the growth in Greenland. Currently, what we've seen in the marketplace and the general investors have seen that there are incentives that the U.S. and European Union as well as Denmark has been put in place. The most evident part of that is obviously the participation in the last capital raise of EIFO, the sovereign fund of Denmark, as well as pension fund and U.S. investors within Amaroq on the equity side. What is also being offered and provided are export credit financing. There are talks about the tax incentive from -- for U.K. investor to participate in Greenlandic companies, et cetera, et cetera. So we see a lot of interest, and we are highly involved as the only developer and operator in Greenland to date. There are plenty of opportunities in Greenland that can see value from that being in rare earth base metals or precious metals, but we very much are in those discussions, and we'll continue the discussion to help provide minerals from the stable jurisdiction in Greenland into the U.S. and European market.

The next one is in regards to gold production guidance for 2026, and I'll take that. We will be providing guidance in a sort of budget and guidance announcement in February. We'll talk through production guidance for the year. We'll talk about CapEx budgets and OpEx budgets and things. So we're not providing that now. Clearly, we've given an updated guidance for the year-end this year of 6,000 to 7,000 ounces, and we'll come out in February and give guidance for 2026 full year. The next question in regards to Black Angel. Please expand on the scale of investment required for Black Angel, expected time lines to bring it back in production and assumptions on payback period for the investment.

Yes, it's a good question. I mean, we are operating under what we call JORC-compliant code and/or 43-101, which means that any statement in regards to feasibility will have to be done on the basis of us finalizing resource estimate, feasibility studies, et cetera, et cetera. So that is the work next year we intend to do in Black Angel, as well as drilling as well as bringing some of the infrastructure into shape. The process then in '27 and '28 is then to target on further resource growth and prepare the mine to take out a bulk sample, effectively a large sample, which we can then ship out to Europe and sell with the zinc, lead, silver, germanium and gallium. And for reference, for people, you can see when we were -- did a bulk sample and a mine contract with Thyssen, when we started the mine in Nalunaq, that was a 2-year contract of roughly CAD 40 million. The drilling programs we are conducting every year, they range from $5 million to $10 million to give people kind of an idea. And the beauty in Black Angel is that majority of these infrastructures such as [ harbors ], cable car and a camp is already there. So those are our investments that we don't have to put in place like we had to do in Nalunaq. Now the commercial liabilities is such that while you grow the resources and you take out the ore on a high-grade resource, we know that, that will be fairly successful. And the key is here that the funding opportunity now that we have germanium, gallium and cadmium and also in the ore will be even greater for the company.

Next question is in regards to -- we recently announced that we're issuing single minority in gold currently restricted to Greenland, and the question being, when do we anticipate being able to make this available to nonresidents? We expect this to be the case in Q1 next year or early 2026. At the moment, as part of our license commitment, we needed to provide sole access to the gold to Greenland residents to begin with. So that will be there. Eldur, maybe one for you here. When are we expecting to increase throughput in Nalunaq to 450 tonnes per day?

I would say that the goal here is that the mill can process 300 tonne by end of this year. And we make sure that the mine and the mill reach the same level of production with the full year guidance, the plan is when we have Phase 1 and Phase 2 fully operational, then we will be operating at 300 tonne per day. We will be doing that for a full year for sure for the first year. The general lead time on a new mill, to give you an idea, is about a year. So if we make an acquisition or a down payment on an additional mill, it will take us at least a year, which kind of works well in our time line. Now we would want to be operating them in the second block, either the South block or the 75 Vein at the time. So that also takes us time to develop into those blocks as well. So I would say from '27 onwards is the period of time which we could be in that position. So it's a lead time on the mill and lead time on developing into the next block, which we will be focusing on next summer to put in place and then you will have to give us the time that it takes to bring all of this stuff on play. So you would at least give us another year to get that in place. Sorry, I should say though, most of the design and concept design of increasing to 450 tonne has been done, and the current crushing cycle has the availability for 450 tonnes as well as there is room both for a second mill and flotation within the plant.

The next question is in regards to the potential cash flows from Nalunaq next year. How much profit for full year do you expect Amaroq gold mine to make when it's fully operational?

I think as we said earlier, we will be doing our guidance in February, and we kind of -- you need to allow us to wait for that. But I think what we have given an idea to the market is that almost 300 tonnes per day with a 90% recovery where you're operating somewhere between 12 to 16 grams per tonne, that generates on an annual basis in or around 40,000 to 50,000 ounces. So that's on an annualized basis. We told the market that our all-in cost is going to be in around USD 5 million to USD 6 million, which is based on the overall cost, which is based on the fact that we also now have Black Angel and other opportunities. So that gives you an OpEx for the year and CapEx or all-in cost for a year, it gives you an idea of throughput, it gives you an idea on grade. So this can be very, very cash flow positive operation and that is the aim for next year. Also just to further support the 4 development projects we are going to be investing in next year and is in our current plans to date.

Joan, maybe one for you here. Why has the Impact Benefit Agreement taken so much longer than indicated to obtain?

I think the issue has been that the government has had other priorities that they are concentrating on. So we only received the text of the Impact Benefit Agreement towards the end of September. But we've recently just received the final version. And so we are definitely on track to have that signed up by the end of the year.

Next one is on exploration spend for 2026. What is the expected exploration spend for 2026 and the rough split between the various projects, given the successes from the 2025 program, albeit you haven't released the Nalunaq results yet.

If I may, or Ellert, you can step in here. So it's a very good point that Nalunaq results need to come in before we [indiscernible]. But all in all, we are looking at -- you can look at the exploration spend into mainly 4 categories. So it is early stage exploration. Given the results we had on Vagar on the satellite deposits, which were very, very good, 38 gram per tonne and copper seems to be in the Gold Belt, which is very interesting and is a new discovery. We have several of these outcrops that we want to target and ideally to do a scout drilling to start doing the same in Nanoq. Ideally, we would like to then continue resource drilling in Nanoq, subject to the result there, which we don't know, and as well as in Nalunaq. Then in Black Angel, as I mentioned earlier, it's upgrading of the camp and drilling there as well as scout drilling in Kangerluarsuk. All in all, this could be a scale of somewhere between CAD 15 million to CAD 30 million during the year, but most of that capital is expenditure would be spent towards end of the year because that's when the payment dates are for these like we have now in Q3, right? So that gives you an idea.

The next one is something done in '27, '28. I would say the question is, is the dividend strategy still on the cards, albeit perhaps for '27, '28, '29?

Yes.

Next question is now that Black Angel mining is confirmed as a stand-alone development and with the critical minerals adding new commercial opportunities. How far are you assessing integrated service and hydro solutions, power processing, technical services as a way to lower CapEx intensity across these projects and create more scalable development platform?

Yes. Well, we set up Suliaq, our services company, and we are in the process to have a financial partner alongside us with that in that company. We have already acquired the equipment in there. We have finalized rental agreement between there, and we've started to dialogue with many partners in Greenland about using the services. So we see that as an opportunity to do a cost-plus agreement with us and other companies all on the same basis to lower generally services cost for all operators. And more importantly, how we can service or lease equipment to the actual service industry in Greenland that does not have a balance sheet to acquire some of this equipment. So this has been well advanced, and we will be updating the market in due course. So for example, the mining equipment was acquired into Suliaq to give you an idea. In relation to our first hydropower project, the feasibility study of approximately 1 megawatt power project in Nalunaq has been finished. The time line and the budget is -- the previous time line and budget is also at the final stages, and equipment selection and lead times have also been selected. So we see that very much coming in construction mode in initial work in '26, but mainly '27, '28. I should say, in Black Angel, there are old plans to also have hydro facility in Black Angel, which was made by [indiscernible]. So very much, Black Angel has the same similarities then in terms of power as we have in Nalunaq. This will lower our cost. It would give us more stability, it will lower our logistical costs and most importantly, it will give us lower carbon footprint. And last but not least, we are in discussion with NunaGreen and Nukissiorfiit about what happens when the mine is finished, if this power facility, then they have the right of first refusal to acquire it, to use it for the local town. So this has a great benefit, not only to our operation, but to Greenland as well.

So this is actually the last question we've got on the line here. If you have a question, please add it in now. It goes back to the all-in sustaining cost. You touched on it briefly earlier in terms of how that translates to cash flow. But could you just set out what you think the all-in sustaining cost will be when we're at full run rate?

Yes. So the only thing I can deliver right now is to give you an idea of our cost. And so if you're working of USD 5 million in terms of all-in cost, then that's approximately USD 60 million annually. Then what is going to control that all-in cost is how many ounces you make in a full year time. So if you're operating the plant as we have now on a full recovery basis, meaning 90% recovery for 9 months, then obviously, you will have lower ounces than you would have in a full year. So that gives you an idea. So if you do 50,000 ounces divided by $60 million or 40,000 or 30,000 based on the throughput and the full recovery, that is the key thing to deliver on. But this is high grade. So the all-in cost is -- our focus is to have the all-in cost should be low.

We've just got one last question come in. Does Mr. Trump own any shares in the company? I'll take that. We -- not to the best of our knowledge, but he'd be very welcome if he wanted to become a shareholder. But that's not probably something we can comment on. Anyway, thank you all for joining. I'll hand over to Eldur just to close out the meeting.

Yes. Thank you, Ed. And again, I'll just say this, we've been very glad, obviously, to see the amazing success by the team. We've been very fortunate by the support of the market as well. And both us, the market, the team on site will be beavering away into next year. And that will set us up for great success and continued success in our operation.

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.