Deutsche Rohstoff AG ($DR0)

Good afternoon, and good morning, everybody, in case you're in North America. Thank you very much for dialing into our call. I think we'll give it another 10 seconds or so for every participant to join the room here.

Welcome, a warm regard also from my side.

All right. Yes. Thank you, everybody. And once again, welcome to our Deutsche Rohstoff 2025 earnings call. Thank you all for attending here today. I will skip the disclaimer. Yes, we're very happy to welcome you here and to inform you about what happened in 2025, walk through the financials for 2025 and give you an outlook for this year and the next year. I think in summary, it's fair to say Deutsche Rohstoff is extremely well positioned for the next 12 and 24 months and also beyond that. I think we're in as good a position as we have been in since the starting of our company, we are in an extremely strong liquidity position. Operationally, on the oil and gas side, we are in full development mode. For the first time ever, we're running 3 rigs at the same time. Our non-op side of the business is also developing very well. And we have divested 1/3 -- roughly 1/3 of our position in Almonty Industries, which has been a tremendous success, one of the most successful junior mining companies on the planet, and we were able to realize an initial profit of roughly EUR 100 million, substantially strengthening our liquidity base, which currently sits at around EUR 150 million. Nonetheless, our investment in Almonty still has a value of EUR 250 million market-wise. And at the same time, our oil and gas reserves have been growing. Our portfolio of minority investments on the mining side has also been developing very positively. And we're very much looking forward to shape the future of the company here and move things ahead as we are marching through this current year 2026. But nonetheless, I mean, the quick look back into '25. '25 was not the easiest year for oil and gas and natural resources companies. We've had a strong performance despite that, we're able to generate almost EUR 200 million in revenue, EUR 130 million in EBITDA and strong production at roughly 13,500 BOE. At the same time, we placed another bond, increasing our total bond issue volume to EUR 193 million. I think that's another sign of trust of the capital market here in Germany. We could have placed significantly more capital if we had needed to, which was not the case, obviously. At a coupon of 6%, I think that's also quite competitive if you look into our maybe North American peer group. And yes, we were able to generate EUR 29 million of net income. So despite the big significant drop in oil prices in the first half of 2025 and the not easiest environment, I think we can look back and can say, even in those more difficult environments, we are capable of navigating those and continuing to build out our asset base. And with that here, taking a look at our existing asset base, I think it is very, very strong and will help us shape the future of Deutsche Rohstoff on the debt side, roughly EUR 230 million in debt that primarily stem from the bond side here in Germany, the close to EUR 200 million of bonds that we have issued by now. On the asset side, there's obviously our stake in Almonty, which has a value of roughly EUR 250 million as of today. The cash we are holding roughly EUR 150 million. And in addition to that, our oil and gas reserves, just as a good kind of reflection of the asset value that is there. We're only looking at proved reserves here. So the PDP, proved developed producing reserves and the proved undeveloped reserves. If you add those 2 together, that's roughly EUR 400 million. So a total asset base of around EUR 800 million. If we were looking at -- if we were to look at our oil and gas reserves at an $80 price deck instead of a $60 flat price deck, you can see here, we would probably add EUR 350 million. So that would take the potential value of our assets to north of EUR 1 billion. If you put that in relation to the EUR 220 million of debt. I think we are a, modestly levered; and b, we have a super strong asset base to continue to grow here going forward. And with that, I'll hand over to Henning Doering for the financial side of things.

Thank you very much. Let's continue with a deep dive into the financials, starting here with a multiyear overview using 2021 as a reference. And as you can see in the upper left corner, revenue has increased since 2025 by more than 2.5 fold. EBITDA in the middle chart doubled since then. And you see in the lighter blue bars, this is our guidance, which we extended yesterday towards 2027. So we want to continue this past growth, profitable growth in sales revenues by towards EUR 300 million sales and regarding EBITDA beyond EUR 200 million with an extraordinary income in the current year in 2026 of EUR 100 million gains from the sale of around 9 million shares of Almonty. We managed this growth mainly by using the internal financing capabilities of Deutsche Rohstoff. As you can see on the right-hand side, the strong operating cash flow and in the lower end that the leverage-related figures has either improved or increased disproportionately low like net debt, which came in at EUR 146 million at the end of 2025 and the net debt-to-EBITDA ratio, which was 1x1 EBITDA end of 2025. Looking forward to end of Q1, we might here in the corner of 0.4x EBITDA. Equity increased by more than 175% despite the fact that we did dividends and share buyback programs in this period of around EUR 36 million. If we now continue to the next slide and take a deeper look into the volumes and the realized prices, we, first of all, need to state that 2025 was not a year of maximum production for us, as Jan-Philipp Weitz already pointed out, but rather a year of targeted optimization. Following the Liberation Day last year and the decrease of oil prices, we have strongly reduced our CapEx by around 45%. We have reduced the number of new wells, which we brought online. So overall, kind of 50% of net new wells. But despite that fact, you can see that our volumes kept pretty much stable. On a BOE basis, we had a decline by 8%, but which is more important because oil is the more valuable product still. And even more today, on an oil level, we produced 3.2 million barrels of oil, which is pretty much comparable to the same amount the year before. In the middle chart, we suffered from, of course, realized prices, which fell realized means after hedging effects by around 14% gas prices recovered decently by more than 50% towards $3 per Mcf. On the right-hand side, you see the exchange rate impact. The average euro-USD rate decreased by 4%. This translated into P&L figures, just to give you an impression, this was EUR 7.5 million lower sales conversion by this effect. And from the closing rate basis, you see an even weaker dollar from [ 1.04 ] towards the [ 1.18 ], which had an impact on the equity by around EUR 35 million. And in the P&L, an additional losses from currency translation of around EUR 3.3 million. If we now go over to our P&L and balance sheet. We, first of all, can state that the numbers published yesterday fully confirmed the prelim numbers published early March. Revenue came in 3% above the guidance range of EUR 170 million to EUR 190 million. EBITDA came in, in the upper end of the guidance range of EUR 115 million to EUR 135 million. So since 2020, we are continuously keeping or overachieving our guidances, thereby. If we now look on the left-hand side, revenue declined by 17% towards EUR 195 million. The decline is 80% price driven, 20% FX driven. EBITDA compared to the prior year was at 21% decline. The reason for that is that we had roughly EUR 10 million of onetime effects driven by workovers. Every second well in the DJ Basin has been worked over last year. The FX effects I just mentioned, but also some upfront costs for the first bigger drilling program on our Western Powder River acreage, so -- which spreads pretty much by 50-50 between cost of material and other operating expense. After depletion, interest and taxes, we recorded a net income of EUR 28.9 million, representing earnings per share of EUR 6.03. If you look on the right-hand side, total assets increased slightly, mainly driven by the issuance of the bond towards the end of the year towards EUR 578 million. Equity decreased by 70%, both by the reason I just mentioned, FX translation reserve effects. And last year, we had a dividend and the share buyback program by totaling EUR 13.6 million. Equity ratio still was at EUR 38 million in a pretty solid area. Financial liabilities increased by the bond measures. Cash and cash equivalents more than tripled towards EUR 70 million. And net debt could be decreased by 70% -- 7% towards EUR 146 million. The operating cash flow already mentioned, investing cash flow in total by EUR 110 million, thereof EUR 97 million in new wells and the rest in additional acreage in Ohio and some infrastructure additions. And our free cash flow was strongly positive, close to EUR 24 million, which was contributing in the increase in cash and cash equivalents. So for our deep dive, looking into the numbers, I'm handing back to JanPhilipp Weitz.

Thank you very much. With that, I'll switch over to the share price development here. Obviously, if we look at the time spent here that we've continued to look at in the pre-COVID year until today, our share price has developed very nicely. It's up almost 600% since then, including dividends from a total return standpoint. We are proposing a EUR 2.25 dividend to our Annual General Meeting assembly this year in June again. So that's another step-up in dividends by EUR 0.25 and kind of is in line with the continued increasing dividend that we have always tried to pay out here as our earnings allow. On top of that, we are planning to engage in a EUR 7.5 million share buyback program. So that is a total investment of roughly EUR 17.5 million into shareholder returns, which would also be north of 60% of our net income in terms of distribution and shareholder return ratio. That's obviously quite high compared to the shareholder return. But I mean, with the current developments, I think higher oil prices and the prospects that we have here for the coming years, I think it's more than justified to have the shareholders benefit from that as well. And at the same time, obviously, reserve enough liquidity for future development. Talking about liquidity, I think what's also been very positive is the liquidity in our stock trading here on many days, EUR 2 million to EUR 3 million per day or even more here over the course of last year, especially currently as well. So therefore, we are certainly ranking on one of the more liquid companies here in the German small and mid-cap space. Looking over at the macro side of things, I mean, everything almost has been written and said and nobody knows where we will be in 2 months from now. But just very high level, I mean, obviously, currently, we are expecting roughly a supply disruptions of north of 9 million barrels of oil per day, which is very, very significant. I mean if you add up the total supply disruptions, many expect now that by late April, early March -- sorry, early May, we will be around 700 million barrels of oil that has been taken off the market. And this kind of amount of oil, even if production fully resumes is going to take a significant amount of time to come back into the market to restore the storage across the globe. And I think it's fair to assume that we will see elevated oil prices for quite a while. At the same time, when you look at the U.S., which is obviously our core market when it comes to the oil and gas side of the business, it has been interesting that until, yes, last week, the rig count, which is an interesting indicator of activity was significantly lower, 8% lower than it was last year in April. I mean that basically tells us that at least there has not been an immediate extremely quick reaction to these higher oil prices. At the same time, it has only been roughly 8 weeks or so since the start of the Iran war. So I think we are expecting all to see an uptick in the rig count and development activity in the U.S. in general. But until right now, that has not really materialized and is something that obviously we'll touch on as we come to our development program here since we were quite quick, I think, to react to these higher prices. But before that, I want to also take a look at Almonty Industries. Almonty will be the largest supplier of conflict-free tungsten to the free world here starting as of this year with the Sangdong mine in Korea taking on production and then over the next 12 months, ramping up completely also to its Phase 2 production profile. And as you can see on the pie chart here, I mean, conflict-free tungsten is an extremely scarce material. It's even scarcer than just tungsten itself. And that's also been one of the key things why the tungsten price has been rising so significantly over the past 12 months. As we move to the next slide, you can see here on the red line on the chart that the APT tungsten price, which essentially is the price for 100 kilos of tungsten has gone up to $3,000 per MTU, which is -- I mean, that's an incredibly high price that equates to a tungsten price per tonne of roughly $300,000. So this massive uptick in pricing here is obviously in line with the performance of Almonty share price, and it has been an extremely successful story. The mine is ramping up at exactly the right time. There's a massive structural supply deficit on the tungsten side here. The Chinese export ban continues for now, and I think we expect it to continue for quite a while because China obviously wants to onshore all of the tungsten downstream businesses. And yes, being a non-Chinese Western world tungsten producer with U.S. production also going to ramp up in the near term here. Almonty is perfectly well positioned and its performance on the NASDAQ, I think, has shown that our investment, even after the divestment of 9 million shares here with the 40 million shares that we have left from existing shares and potential shares that we will receive through the conversion of our existing convertible bonds has a value of EUR 240 million. So obviously, still an incredibly valuable position for us that we are happy to own and to continue to follow the story. And switching gears again to the oil and gas side of the business. I mean, we are active in 3 basins by now in Wyoming, Colorado and Ohio. As you know, our main asset here is the Powder River Basin in Wyoming. At the same time, we're still a producer in the DJ Basin in Colorado. And in Ohio, we have -- until the end of last year, we had acquired roughly 4,000 acres. We're continuing to acquire additional acreage. We will not drill there in the next 3 to 6 months. But we are building a continuously growing position here and are reaching enough concentration at this point. And I think it's fair to assume that over the next 12 months, we will definitely be getting ready to do our first development here and Bright Rock is our subsidiary there is going to be the operator of that acreage in Ohio, while obviously, we will continue to grow our acreage position. And not so much the acreage in Ohio until now, but the acreage that we own in Colorado and in Wyoming has also led to our reserve profile here growing quite substantially. I mean, over the last 6 years, we've grown from 30 million BOE up to currently roughly 79 million BOE. So we have grown our reserves significantly. At the same time, we've obviously produced oil. And that means we have always managed to replace the reserves that we have produced. Last year, we produced around 5 million BOE. At 80 million BOE, it's fair to say that our existing reserves, if we were to produce exactly those reserves would last another 10 to 15 years at that development pace, but we are obviously trying to develop more reserves to grow our reserve base while we also continue to grow our production profile. And I think an important way to do that and especially obviously growing our production profile is going to be core this year, we should be north of 20,000 BOE of daily production in the second half of the year. And that also comes from the strategy shift that we have performed here in the last 2 months, basically going from last year's strategy, which was very value and discipline driven and had relatively limited capital with only drilling 10 wells ourselves and then a little bit of development on the non-op side. That shift has now gone to the opposite. I mean it's what we call growth and momentum. I mean we are targeting to, yes, increase our production as much as we can on the operated side, our subsidiary, 1876 is moving full steam ahead with 3 drilling rigs, as I mentioned. At the same time on the nonoperated side, I mean, we had entered into another joint venture last year, but we are looking at additional growth potential here right now, too, buying acreage in Ohio and also looking at other places in the U.S. to purchase acreage right now. So really trying to capture the momentum that we have here from higher oil prices, but also from our very good financial and liquidity situation. Basically, yes, we are able to even expand beyond what we are drilling here right now if we wanted to. So 1876 this year is planning to drill 26 wells initially. But beyond that, there is the potential to drill significantly more wells, obviously, if we were to continue maintaining or operating one or even more rigs throughout the year. I mean, as it sits right now, I think we would be finished with the majority of our development around the second or third quarter here from a drilling standpoint. But yes, there is obviously the option if prices remain elevated to change that and to keep the foot on the gas pedal. And for us, it is a very substantial drilling operation. I mean, 1876 operation alone is going to add roughly 180 kilometers of drilling, and that is even before the non-op development that we are facing over the course of this year here in the other entities. Just again, some of the details here, Salt Creek, $40 million will have been spent through the end of June, and that production should also start ramping up in the summer. And then once again, I mean, Bright Rock looking to continue its development in Ohio. And what is obviously extremely beneficial is the potential for significantly increased well returns as we are seeing this higher price environment. I mean, many of you will know that last year, we have roughly guided WTI price at $60 and our high case is looking at $70 to $75. And at those prices, the potential rate of returns of development are obviously lower than in the price environment that we are facing right now. And despite the fact that today's oil price is $96, our base case is still looking at a $75 flat price deck, which if you look at the WTI strip is obviously not too far away from the strip, let's say, from next year onward here. And if we manage to develop the wells and the initial production as we have forecasted here around our 500,000 barrel type curve, if we manage to continue to be above that or even on that type curve, the expected rate of return is roughly 45% on our average wells. This is looking at basically all formations. So the Niobrara formation, Turner, Teapot and Mowry formation. But in general, I mean, we are averaging this a little bit to 45% rate of return and a 2.5-year payback at an $85 oil price and improved well results around 600,000 barrels of oil per well, we would even see rates of return of north of 100% and potentially a 1.5-year payback here. I mean, in order for that to happen, we would obviously have to see $85 oil or higher for the next 16 to 18 months. But I think that is not completely impossible. And if we manage to improve our well results, that is something that we can potentially achieve. Some of you will notice that the CapEx per well here are a little bit higher. Last year, we managed to drill our first Niobrara wells significantly at right around $9 million or slightly below that. We have increased the average cost per lateral foot of our wells again to roughly $950 in this year. That's not necessarily a function of increased service prices. It's more a function of improved completion designs, some more expensive equipment and a different completion setup that we are going to use here in this coming year. So I think -- we think there will be a very good rate of return on those extra $500,000 that we are spending here per well or the extra $500 per lateral foot, expecting potential performance improvements that could be very significant. So we will see how the '26 development looks on that front here. But overall, we are very happy with the well results that we have been achieving last year, Chinook pad, obviously, with 4 wells having produced north of 150,000 barrels after 8 months already was very, very positive. Some of the wells on the Mowry -- in the Mowry formation that we drilled last year have not been as positive as of yet. But I think we have a good plan how to improve those well results. And at the same time, we will also see how the wells continue to perform here over the next 24 months. We have seen with other wells that sometimes the first 3 months are not everything. So we remain optimistic on that front also and the fact that we have a very deep inventory for our size of the company to develop our acreage in the coming years, and that's obviously before potential acquisitions of additional acreage in Wyoming or even in other states. And with that, I'll turn over to our hedge book. We have received quite a few questions recently around where does our hedge book stand. Overall, in the group, we've hedged 1.6 million barrels of oil as of today. It's a bit of a complex chart here with swaps and colors. But I mean, in a very simplified way, I think it's fair to say the average hedge price is roughly around $72 to $73. So looking at today's price, that's obviously not too spectacular, but we have to remember that a lot of these hedges were -- I mean, some of these hedges were ended last year. And then also the strip for the futures curve of WTI has not been too attractive. I mean, if you hedge for '27 as of right now, you would probably be able to hedge around $70 to $72 and the second half of this year, maybe around the $80 mark. So while oil prices feel like they are $100 today, they're much lower down the road on the strip curve here. So that's why we have also been relatively cautious. If you look at '26 total production, I think we are hedged below 30% on our total production, which obviously leaves a lot of room for us to either grow the hedge book here or to capture the upside that could be there with elevated oil prices. And in 2027, we're obviously significantly below 20% hedged. So still a lot of room here to capture potential high prices. At the same time, we want to be cautious, and we want to make sure that we do hedge sufficiently in order to be able to service our debt and our liabilities. But I think since we are in a very well and positive position from a liquidity and cash standpoint, yes, I think we're taking -- trying to take a measured approach here to not overhedge or underhedge and still capture the momentum that we are seeing as of right now. And with that, I'll turn over to the last slide, which is the '26 guidance and the '27 guidance, which we have published yesterday for the first time. We had already published or adjusted our 2026 guidance to a revenue of EUR 260 million to EUR 280 million and EBITDA of EUR 300 million. As Henning Doering mentioned earlier, the EBITDA here is north of the revenue, which stems from the EUR 100 million profit of the Almonty shares divestiture. At the same time, I think what's very important also is you will see in '27 at a $75 or $85 oil price, we'll be in the range of EUR 300 million revenue. And in both scenarios, we will be north of EUR 200 million in EBITDA. I think that's a very important milestone. So we have kind of taken the step change now to becoming a EUR 300 million revenue, EUR 200 million EBITDA company from only having been north of EUR 100 million for not too many years. So quite a significant step change, I think, in our overall financial profile. And obviously, this has been supported by the tailwinds from the high oil prices and the Almonty divestitures, as I mentioned. But now really kind of circling back to the beginning of our presentation here, I think we have almost perfect setup for our company for these coming years here. I think we're positioned for very, very strong growth on the asset base that we have. We can further continue to grow our portfolio on the oil and gas side, also on the metals and mining side. And with that, we're looking forward into the future. We appreciate you following us in our story, and we will turn over to the questions, which we are very happy to post into the chat.

All right. So yes, I'll maybe start with the first question here. Will the higher oil price positively improve the oil reserves of the company? Will there be a new reserve report this year if oil prices stay up? So generally, we publish an annual reserve report always at the beginning of the next year. So that would be early 2027. I don't think we'll publish like another intra-year reserve report. Generally, the effect of higher oil prices on the reserves would be twofold. I think the main reserve effect is the effect on the net present value of proved and probable reserves that we are publishing. There could be an increased reserve also in terms of oil volumes with higher oil prices since potentially more locations could become either economic and also the tail and life of some of the oil wells could extend a little bit. So the short answer is, yes, that could be, but I think the major effect always from higher prices is what is -- what happens to the net present value of the reserves. Another question is, can we expect a similar share of earnings to be distributed for '25 as for '24? I think, I mean, for '25, it will be north of 60%. Maybe the question more intended to be '26 as for '25. I think we can't really comment on that right now, and we'll have to see where our earnings sit. Obviously, with the very high extraordinary income, it's the question of how do we deal with that, how much capital do we reinvest and where are we going to sit here at the end of 2026. One other question is, can you elaborate on the premium that we are currently realizing, so the physical delivery compared to the monthly WTI futures? In March, I think we have not realized any significant premium over WTI. It was pretty much at spot WTI prices, how our oil sales were compensated. But it is going to be the case that in May I think we will have roughly a $10 premium to WTI. And there's obviously a lot of fluctuation right now in that market and the spreads market. So we don't really know much further than that. But I think the short answer is there's going to be a little bit of a premium here, roughly 10% in May and how that develops in the month after that is probably also a function of how the Iran war situation is going to develop. Can you give an idea about the size and investments in your opportunity fund, which is essentially our metals and mining fund? So we do have outside of the Almonty investment, we obviously have other natural resources investments also in that specific opportunity fund, the investment side is on the minority junior mining site that we use that's hence the name to generate opportunities for additional future investments, that fund roughly has a current invested volume of EUR 25 million. And I think that's all that we have published on that front so far.

How will the Almonty sale impact the 2026 Q1 and full year tax rate? As already mentioned, we sold with a profit of EUR 100 million. Due to German tax law, the German income tax law paragraph 8b, this is pretty much tax-free. So the overall tax rate on this gain will be more or less 1%. So this is actually a little present from our government in that respect.

I think there's a question around the 90,000 options given out in 2025. So I think that relates to stock options. Yes, so we had the stock option program 2022. And in 2025, the last stock options under those programs were issued. That's been to German employees and German management. And I think that stock option program has now been fully issued. And hence, there are no further options that could be issued. Just maybe as a side on what we have done with our 2018 option program, the stock option program for the most part, meaning 95% plus, we have settled that with cash such that no results -- no dilution results from that. I think that has been an important factor also because the roughly 200,000 options that have been granted in 2018 and 2019, they have all been cash settled and therefore, no dilution to be expected or have resulted from that program. And then could we please quantify the production or reserve increase by using different completion design? Yes, we can't really speak to that. Obviously, the question is when you change your completion design, generally, you would want to have an overproportionate effect on your capital, meaning if you increase your well cost by 10%, you would expect to have at least 15% or 20% higher cash flow resulting from that in order for that investment to make sense. And I think that was also something that we are looking at here and hoping to achieve here, but we'll have to see how that continues. And there's also been a question around just in general, higher service costs going forward. I mean we have not seen incredible huge increase or spike in service cost as of today. But obviously, I mean, similar to what I mentioned on the drilling rig side, I mean, there had not been an increase in the rig count in the first few weeks or until last week. But you are seeing more and more signs, obviously, of activity picking up. Even the larger companies are now starting to look at their budgets and potentially ramp up their activity, and that will trickle through into the service market. I think to some extent, we have been very early movers here. We have been extremely flexible with adding drilling rigs. We went from 1 drilling rig to 3 drilling rigs. within roughly 8 weeks or 6 to 8 weeks of the Iran war start. That's a pace that maybe not many can match. But at the same time, I mean, yes, we expect, obviously, that if prices continue to remain at these elevated levels here that, that will trickle down into service costs. But we are trying to be ahead of the curve here. And if we can continue to do so, then we hope that we can still capture ideally as much as we can of last year's service cost and this year's pricing environment, that would also be obviously the ideal setup. I think with that, we have covered all of the questions. And yes, I would once again like to thank you for your attention for dialing into our web call this morning and -- or this afternoon, depending on where you are on the globe. And with that, thank you very much once again, and we're looking forward to develop the company here with your support.

Thank you very much. Bye-bye.