Deutsche Rohstoff AG ($DR0)

Ladies and gentlemen, we warmly welcome you to the roundtable of Deutsche Rohstoff AG. I'm pleased to welcome the CEO, Jan-Philipp Weitz, who will guide us through the presentation in a moment, after which we will move to the Q&A session where you can ask your questions via audio line and chat. And with that said, I'm handing over to you, Mr. Weitz.

Perfect. Thank you very much for the introduction, and thank you very much, everybody, for participating in today's Montega Critical Resources Day and especially listening to our presentation here on the latest updates of Deutsche Rohstoff. It will be a week with several updates. As some of you may know, we are going to publish our full financial year report for the year 2025 tomorrow, and we will also do an earnings call on that on Thursday. So you can have Deutsche Rohstoff content every day this week, which I think is good because we have a lot of content to deliver. Deutsche Rohstoff, I think many of you know the company, but for those that don't, I'll give you a little bit of a high-level update. It does say at the top we are very well positioned for 2026. There's a lot of reasons for that. Obviously, as an oil and gas producer, high oil prices certainly are a key feature of our positioning here and our ability to deliver very strong results in the year 2026 and beyond. Very high level, I mean, we're a German company. We're listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. We have been active in the U.S. oil and gas space for the last 15 years. We are currently operating in 3 states in the U.S. and are for the first time ever running more than 1 drilling rig and not only 2, but actually 3 drilling rigs currently in the U.S. That means a lot of capital investment, EUR 220 million are planned for this year. Our oil reserves have grown substantially over the last 15 years. I'll give you an overview of that in a minute here. And in a nutshell, it's fair to say we're a U.S. oil and gas producer listed in Germany. Our enterprise value as of today is EUR 470 million. But we don't only have oil and gas to offer, we also have a very significant exposure to the metals and mining industry, which stems from our past as a not only oil and gas but also mining company. The most significant thing to mention here and the most significant asset to mention here is our ownership in a tungsten mining company called Almonty Industries that has been listed on NASDAQ since last year. The market share of that ownership alone as of today based on its market cap is roughly EUR 250 million to Deutsche Rohstoff AG. And that is after we have already received roughly EUR 100 million of proceeds in the year 2026 so several weeks ago from divesting roughly 1/3 of our position in Almonty Industries. So as I said, very well positioned as an oil and gas producer, very strong cash reserve, very high oil and gas reserves and ready to develop those in 2026. But we don't only want to look ahead, we want to take a quick look into the past too because I think it shows that in 2025, we did also have a very strong year, and that is despite a much more challenging price environment than what we are seeing as of today. Today's oil prices are hovering around $90. Last year, they were more in the $60 to $65 range, which is a reasonable price, but not the most attractive price. And obviously, with the tariff implications last year and some months of steep oil prices drops, I think our results last year here with EUR 132 million of EBITDA they do show that we were actually able to navigate this environment very well. We generated EUR 29 million of net income and produced close to 14,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. When I say oil equivalent, that means we produce oil as well as gas. Oil makes up roughly 80% of our revenue, gas and natural gas liquids make up roughly 20% of our revenue. And that revenue has strongly grown here in the last 6 years. We are looking at the 6-year time frame kind of coming out of the COVID pandemic as obviously revenues in those years were very low. From '21 through our guidance of this year, our revenues nearly gone up fourfold. So we're expecting EUR 270 million on average or as a midpoint of our guidance in 2026, the last 2 years, in line with oil prices. '25 was a little bit lower oil price, close to EUR 200 million of revenue. And as many of you know, the EBITDA in oil and gas is always a relatively high percentage of revenue because it's a strong cash flow business. At the same time, we obviously do have to reinvest a certain portion and a high portion of that EBITDA every year, roughly between 50% and 90% of our EBITDA for us in the last few years has been deemed for reinvestment and reinvestment means CapEx, drilling and developing additional oil wells as well as building out infrastructure. And you can already see, obviously, there's a massive step change in our EBITDA here anticipated in 2026. There's 2 reasons for that. The one is that we are executing the biggest capital program that Deutsche Rohstoff has ever seen with EUR 220 million of CapEx, like I said in the beginning, we are about to drill -- we have started to drill 26 oil wells, which is going to add a very tremendous amount of production and cash flow and is going to take us to significantly higher production levels here than what we have seen last year. At the same time, obviously, our operating cash flow is going to grow to EUR 200 million here, and that does exclude the EUR 100 million divestment of Almonty stock that I have mentioned earlier. But in the EBITDA, you will see that. So if you were to adjust the EBITDA for purely oil and gas-related EBITDA, that would be roughly EUR 200 million to EUR 210 million here in the year 2026. But I think it's fair to say that '26 will be an absolute catalyst for us to take a step -- to take the next big step here and take Deutsche Rohstoff forward to an even larger oil and gas producer. I mean as compared to the oil and gas world, we're still a relatively small company. But I think, yes, we have shown that we are on a good track here to produce up to 20,000 barrels in the second half of the year, which definitely marks an absolute milestone for us as a company. Our stock price, I think, does reflect that. I mean there's several factors that come into play here. Oil prices have obviously gone up massively, which is giving oil and gas companies a lot of tailwind in terms of their valuation and just future prospects. But obviously, I mean, what Almonty Industries has been able to achieve here as becoming the largest tungsten producer outside of China and also the most relevant Western player in the tungsten space is obviously something that has benefited us tremendously and is a, yes, very rewarding journey so far. Switching gears briefly just to the macro situation. I think many things have been said and read and nobody knows what's going to happen here in the next few weeks, months or years. But just to look at the fundamental picture, I think what's very material to us are obviously the oil prices and the question, what are oil prices going to do in the coming months here over the course of the year. Like I said, nobody knows, but there is certain estimates around where supply is currently headed and how big the supply disruptions are. And I think what we can see here is that in April, the actual supply disruption seems to be hovering around 9 million barrels per day, which is an extraordinary large number. I mean as for comparison, during the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war, there was maybe 1 million to 2 million barrels off the market. So this is very, very significant. And in our view, it's going to take a very long time also to restock global warehouses and stocking. And I mean it should have a subdued impact on the oil price here for many, many months and probably should add a certain premium here beyond 12 months or so to come. So we are relatively optimistic, obviously, that on the one hand, the conflict gets resolved as soon as possible. But then on the other hand that prices below $70 oil don't seem like something that we should be seeing here in the near future given where the macro situation sits at this point. And what is also interesting is that, obviously, activity in the U.S., especially, which is usually the market to react the fastest given that it's onshore, it's an ultra-developed market with the high availability of drilling rigs, equipment, et cetera. What is fascinating is that the rig count has -- despite the current situation, it is lower than it was last year actually. So we had 573 oil rigs in the U.S. operating in April '25. As of today, we're hovering around 530 oil rigs. Yes, it will take some time and the drilling rigs are getting more efficient. But at the same time, it is fascinating how slow the U.S. industry has been responding initially. We are seeing signs of that now to change. There is more and more demand. But I think what is a very interesting, yes, data point here is that we, as Deutsche Rohstoff AG, a rather small company, we were able to pretty quickly secure an additional 2 drilling rigs here despite the fact that, obviously, oil prices have gone to north of $100 and had obviously taken us, yes, to these levels where it seemed everybody was still taking some time to digest before they were ready to respond to the situation. Where we are at in the U.S. for those that don't know, as I said, we're active in 3 states. Those are Wyoming, Colorado and Ohio. They are all 3 very well-known oil and gas producing states. The Powder River Basin is an oil field in the state of Wyoming. That's by far the largest part of our activity in our footprint. You can see here that our footprint in the basin is roughly 70,000 acres, which is 280 square kilometers. That's just a very small part of that oil field. The whole field has a size of circa 30,000 square kilometers. That is as big as roughly the state of Lower Saxony, Niedersachsen, in Germany. So -- and that's just one of many, many oil fields in the U.S. So definitely a very large field in which yes, we hold probably around 1% or less of the acreage and are developing there, currently producing 11,000 -- 11,500 barrels of oil per day, which makes up a not completely insignificant amount of the field's production, roughly 3% to 4% here. And this Powder River Basin in Wyoming is an oil field that is very much starting to see more and more activity here. I think it's actually one of the few basins that has seen an addition of 1 or 2 rigs, obviously, also due to our activity in the last few weeks and months. But also in Colorado, we still have significant production. We are not drilling there anymore. And Ohio is kind of one of our new frontiers. So we are always trying to be active outside of the basins that we are -- have been in for a long time. And last year, we started to build an initial position in the Utica formation in Ohio. Outside of the geographic location, obviously, what's also important is how much oil do we have. And with that, I mean, how much oil -- how big is our reserve? What is still left in the ground in the fields that we are operating. And I think in summary, we have grown our oil reserves significantly here in the last few years. Especially last year, we had a step change in reserves growing from 54 million barrels of oil equivalent of proved and probable reserves to 79 million barrels of oil equivalent. That's a very significant step change. That's another 46%. And we are currently producing or have last year produced around 5 million barrels of oil equivalent. If we have an 80 million barrel of oil equivalent reserve, that means our reserve life at the current pace here, we'll probably be able to produce those kinds of volumes for another 14 years. But this is not really a static number. I mean as you can see, the reserves have grown every year, and that's not only by acquisitions of additional acreage, but mainly also by just continued development on the acreage that we have because by drilling more oil wells, we are able to demonstrate that there are existing reserves and thereby grow our reserves in the ground. So in summary, this is important because it shows we have a lot of running room. We can continue what we are doing even if we're increasing CapEx for many, many years. And again, are very well positioned. Again, geographically speaking, if we zoom into Wyoming, the Powder River Basin, as I said, roughly the size of Lower Saxony, Niedersachsen. We can also zoom into our position here. The blue boxes here or the blue map, the blue prints on the map, they show where our oil wells are. The purple squares show you where the drilling rigs are. There's 3 pictures of the 3 drilling rigs that are running. As of right now, they're obviously running 24/7 drilling oil wells here. We're planning to drill roughly 91 kilometers of oil well this year, which is a lot, like I said, EUR 220 million of net CapEx to us. Usually, in the past years, we have only had 1 oil rig drilling, and we were drilling maybe 10 wells on average per year. Now we've ramped up to 26, and we actually do have the ability if oil prices stay high or we see the conditions to be favorable to even increase that drilling program if we wanted to. At the same time, though, we have not entered into any extreme long-term contracts or so with these drilling rigs. So we remain super flexible. That's always been a very important topic for us to be very flexible and to be very agile here. I think the fact that we were able, as I mentioned earlier, to bring 3 rigs onto our acreage and start drilling is a very clear sign of that. I mean if you look at the graphic here on the left-hand side, you can see we had initially in February and March, we had 1 drilling rig under contract and had planned to use that drilling rig for probably an initial 10 wells. And then the red bar here shows you when the Iran conflict began, and we were able to add another drilling rig within 2 weeks and then another rig within 4 weeks. So despite the fact that there's a lot of things to be done ahead of drilling, I think we were ready. We had a little bit of overcapacity in our staff, which was by design because we wanted to be ready. We did obviously not see this coming, but we've always learned that it is a core competitive advantage to be very agile and flexible. And I think that's something that we can capitalize on now. And when I say capitalize, I think a very simple way to look at that is just the economics. I mean we have a scenario comparison here of our base case and our high case. What we're seeing here in the base case, I think that's very illustrative is at a $75 oil price, these 26 oil wells that we're planning to drill this year cost roughly $9.5 million. The oil reserves of 500,000 barrels per well is what we're expecting. I think in the last years, we have seen partially quite a bit higher reserves, but I think that's our base case. And if we can do that, we will generate a 45% rate of return. If oil prices are higher at $85 and the reserve is more like 600,000 barrels of oil per well, then we would actually see returns north of 100% and the payback of our CapEx here within 1.4 years, which obviously is spectacular well economics that would help us to generate significant cash flow and also free cash flow here this year and next year. And last but not least, as I mentioned in the beginning, what is very, very important for our portfolio as well is our investment in Almonty Industries. Almonty Industries is, like I said, a tungsten mining company that is bringing the largest tungsten mine in the world outside of China into production. Right now, they started commercial production in December 2025. And you can see in the picture here where the mining and the processing is being done in South Korea. So it's been a spectacular story, not only for us, but the company in general, I mean, has developed massively, has a market cap of roughly USD 5 billion right now. And as I mentioned, listed on the NASDAQ. And you can see on the pie chart here that conflict-free tungsten is an absolutely scarce material, but at the same time, tungsten also is very scarce itself. So the conflict-free portion of the material here, just 13%. Almonty as it fully ramps up the Sangdong mine here in South Korea is going to deliver a very significant part of the conflict-free tungsten to the world and is therefore, a key strategic player in the Western supply chain. They are producing not only in South Korea, but also in Portugal. They have additional assets in Spain and the U.S., where they recently made an acquisition. So there's still continued growth coming from Almonty. I mean the share price, as I mentioned, has developed quite spectacularly here as you can see in blue, but also what has developed massively, and I think representing a very tight fundamental market is the tungsten price. So we have recently seen tungsten prices of roughly $300,000 per tonne of tungsten or $3,000 per MTU, which is the unit in which tungsten is measured. So a very significant development. And yes, that's why the value of the remaining stake that we hold in Almonty of 14 million shares roughly is hovering around EUR 250 million. So again, very, very significant for us as a company with EUR 470 million enterprise value. And on the last slide here, just a look at our guidance for 2026. We have obviously recently brought out a guidance update here since we went from 1 drilling rig to 3 drilling rigs and from roughly EUR 100 million CapEx to EUR 220 million of CapEx and 17,000 to 18,000 barrels of oil expected production here for the year 2026. I think overall, that's obviously a massive step change in our guidance. And yes, revenue of EUR 260 million to EUR 280 million. And I mean, in the high case, if oil prices remain at around $85 through the end of the year, we would even be able to generate an EBITDA close to EUR 350 million, which is, obviously, more than 1/3 of EUR 1 billion of EBITDA and could mark again another milestone in our company -- yes, in our company history. And I think what's also interesting is the oil price increased by 25% has yielded a revenue step-up by 50% from EUR 180 million to EUR 270 million. That's obviously also a function of CapEx, but it does show, again, that we are very quick to react. We're very agile here as an organization and are trying to be as good and as positive and fruitful as we can in this very volatile market environment. And I hope that you will continue to follow us and yes, on our journey here and appreciate the attention. And I think for the last 9 minutes, I'm ready to take questions, if there are any.

Yes. Thank you very much for your insights. Ladies and gentlemen, now it's your turn. We are opening the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] And so far, let me check, we have not received any questions, not in the chat and no risen hands so far. So I'll give you some more minutes. [Operator Instructions] But I guess...

I have answered all the questions.

Too good. And there are no open questions.

I think we can answer some other questions that people may have on their mind, but that we can't answer, we can answer them maybe, like I said, with our annual report that we're publishing tomorrow and then also our earnings call in 2 days from today. So questions around, for example, our guidance for 2027 is something, yes, that we have not published yet and also everything relating to potential dividend proposal for 2025 and potential thoughts around share buybacks. So I think that's where people still have to be, yes, a little bit patient and just follow us here, like I said, over the course of the week.

Yes. So I mean, no more questions, no risen hands whatsoever. So I would say, as we have not received anything, we come to the end of today's call. Thank you for your interest in Deutsche Rohstoff AG. And if there are any further questions, please feel free to contact Investor Relations. A big thank you also to you, Mr. Weitz, for your presentation and your time. I wish you all a successful day and handing over to you, Mr. Weitz, once more, if you have any closing remarks.

Perfect. Thank you very much. Yes, thank you, everybody, for your attention. And I'm looking forward to see everybody soon again on our next call. Thank you.