Green Minerals AS (GEM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this first half 2026 webcast for Green Minerals. My name is Stale Rodahl, and I'm the Executive Chairman of the company. First, financial highlights. The EBIT loss for the first half is NOK 3.1 million. There are some noncash items here related to Bitcoin as well as our option program. So to understand the cash cost development for the company, you should look at the net cash flow, which is a little bit above NOK 1 million. Also there, there are some costs related to cruises that the company has already finished so that the underlying cost development is actually lower. And with that, you will see that we are currently running at a cost level that is somewhat below what we guided here 18 months ago. The cash position is comfortable, and we are fully financed for all existing plans. When it comes to highlights for the quarter, I would say that these are basically along 2 lines for the company. 1 is the development for the industry as such globally, slowly but surely moving towards opening in various jurisdictions and the political work that the company is engaged in, in its areas to ensure that this indeed happens. And the second line of development is the strategic review that we are involved in that we announced in the beginning of the year, and that review is continuing. So the details here for the first half, most important is the U.S.-Japan agreement signed in March regarding rare earth elements in a small Japanese or outside a small Japanese island. Japan, at the same time, validates its extraction technology down to 6,000 meters, and it looks like they should be ready for commercialization as early as 2028. And with that, they are competing head-on with The Metals Company and their application under the U.S. NOAA, which is progressing towards late 2027 permitting. Multiple U.S. agencies have been involved in plans towards domestic nodule processing capacity. And indeed, confirming the understanding that the nation-states need to be involved in the processing end of the value chain in order to compete with China then on finished products, which I will get back to. So all in all, with this and following the executive order signed by President Trump in April last year, the U.S. is the nation that is in the driver's seat. I would say, at the moment, driving progress for our industry, while the ISA remains stalled and the Jamaica conference this year underlines this for the ISA. Unfortunately, but the good news is that sovereign states are driving progress outside of the ISA. When it comes to Norway developments and Green Minerals, just to continue on the U.S. being in the driver's seat. We promised our shareholders we would involve the U.S. authorities in our interest here, which are then in Norway and also in the CCZ. And indeed, we conducted a meeting in Washington at the political level with the U.S. administration. That was a good meeting, good and open discussion. And of course, I'm not at liberty to disclose details from that meeting, but let's see what the future brings in terms of bringing out details from that. My own impression from that meeting, though, is that the U.S. is definitely forward-leaning on this very issue. Along the same lines, Norway signed in addition to the agreement that we signed with the U.S. regarding the common development of the seabed in Norwegian jurisdiction in 2019, Norway also signed the MSP on the 6th of May 2026. And I think this is particularly interesting. It was signed by the Norwegian ambassador in Washington. And this is particularly interesting given the, call it, backroom dealing that the Labor government has been doing when it comes to stalling the first license round in Norway, where there is an 80% majority in parliament to get going, but where this has been given away to the far-left Socialists in backroom dealings amidst the budget. So this MSP signing is, I think, particularly interesting in that regard also when looking at what Norway's role in this agreement would be, and that would be to take a leading role to develop a critical or an alternative critical mineral supply chain outside the one that we all know well now. Now how -- or to see Norway take a leading role in developing such a supply chain without involving deep sea minerals is indeed hard to do. Further, there were 4 representatives from the Progress Party made a representative proposal to the parliament to be voted on in June. And this proposal entailed indeed getting going with the first license round. This was on the heels of the Center Party breaking with the government alliance on fuel taxes just before Easter. So the Progress Party representative testing the resolve of the government and the Center Party in this issue. In June, the Prime Minister managed to keep the coalition, the government coalition, together, so voting down the proposal. But I think the whole situation just goes to show that the current political situation in Norway is highly unstable, and it would not be a big surprise, I think, if both the government and this issue around the delay of the first license round were to be tested even more seriously before 2029. And I'll get back to how we are positioned to take advantage of something like that. Our strategic review continues. The nature of the review being such that I'm not at liberty to disclose much details. I can only say that we have several discussions going on. And -- but there can be, of course, no assurance that any of these will end up in an actual agreement. But that is continuing. And as soon as we have anything firm to report, we will, of course, inform the market about this. And then finally, when it comes to our Bitcoin treasury strategy, this, again, it is a support -- it's a financial strategy. It's not our operational strategy. It's a financial strategy that supports our operational strategy. And it was announced in June last year. We barely got started with our activities within this avenue of financing before the window effectively closed shut for equity for Bitcoin financing that we saw was open last year. So -- but we firmly believe in the strategy, and we are ready to act on it in the event that any opportunity would arise there going forward. And until then, I just refer to the press release from June in terms of how we will manage the strategy. So going back to the geopolitics of Advanced Energy then. I'd just like to show this to remind everyone that this is top of agenda really both for the U.S. and also for the EU, and it is becoming even more so for every year that passes. When it comes to mining, there are several countries involved. But in the processing part of this value chain, China is dominant, completely dominant. And given the geopolitical situation there with China as a rising force globally, there is an urgent need for the NATO allies to secure or to build alternative supply chains. And this is then what Norway has signed the MSP in order to take a leading role. MSP, by the way, is made up of 15 countries at the moment. So it's a pretty big commitment there. Now so this value chain then, of course, for renewables important for everything concerning technology. It is important and also remember, for defense, this is of utmost importance to secure these minerals. And I think it's interesting to note that the U.S. is also involving capital for concrete projects in order to get this going. And the latest we saw was a $400 million loan through the strategic office. This is a part of the U.S. Defense Department for financing a rare earth project in Australia. So as I said, U.S. is very much forward-leaning on this and is committing capital as we speak. All right. So why Norway then? The reason Norway is of large, I would say, global interest in this is that we hold a significant resource on a global scale. On copper, what you see here estimated by the Shelf Directorate as a resource is about the same size as China. And on cobalt, the estimated resource equals around 6 years of annual production. So this is a significant resource indeed. And as I will show you, it's not only significant, but it can also be made active within a short time frame and a particularly short time frame if you compare to other large-scale projects globally. The first licensing round is, I would say, all but ready. 386 blocks have been suggested for announcement. All the priority areas that Green Minerals pointed out in the nomination to the Energy Department has been included. And the WWF lost the case against Norway on the opening decision for DSM. So the only issue delaying the first license round, the papers are ready. The hearing rounds have been made and the papers are with the Energy Department and ready to be dispatched really. So the only thing delaying this is the Labor government giving in for the far-left Socialists and environmental parties in order to give them a so-called win in the budget negotiations. This is a situation that we believe cannot continue for very long. And in particular, seen up against the continued signing of important agreements by Norwegian authorities. There is an oxymoron here in terms of this delayed backroom dealing delays that the Labor government is currently doing. So we'll see, but highly unstable situation, and we'll see what happens or if anything happens before 2029. We are ready. I will not show you the animation of our production system 1 more time, but suffice it to say here, taking a brief look at the production system here. I think anyone with any knowledge of terrestrial mining will quickly see that this has something going for it, both in terms of environmental issues as well as when it comes to economics. And when it comes to the economics, I just want to remind everyone that the economics in deep sea mining based on the bottom-up approach that we have done when building or designing this concept for harsh environment deep sea mining on the Norwegian continental shelf, the metrics there are really superior to what you see in terrestrial mining. There are a number of reasons for that. Remember, there's no infrastructure investment needed. In terrestrial projects, you will see infrastructure investment that is before CapEx in any machinery or in the mine itself. You will see infrastructure investment in most cases, surpassing the total investment for getting a deep sea mining project going. So it's a big advantage right from the get-go. And when it comes to CapEx, we are more than 30% below the CapEx for a similar capacity terrestrially. And 1 of the most important points here is to remember that in deep sea mining, you can pick up the equipment and leave for the next site when appropriate. That means that it's much easier to manage the grade that we produce from in deep sea mining and make a cutoff when not happy with the grade. Put that in perspective of the largest copper mine in Europe, the Aitik mine in Sweden that is currently running at 0.16% ore grade. That means that turning out 60,000 tonnes of copper, which it does, you need to turn over more than 40 million tonnes of rock. Similar numbers in our project would be more copper that is 75,000 tonnes for production system, turning over only around 1.5 million tonnes of rock per year. So that also speaks volumes about the environmental benefit of deep sea mining. And the environmental issues are listed to the right. I go through them a number of times before. I won't repeat much here, only conclude that we and others who have been looking into this in detail, agree that the reduction in the environmental footprint will probably be more than 90% in deep sea mining versus terrestrial mining. So 1 can really question what sort of win the far-left Socialists think that they've been having here. That win is as long as we continue to source critical minerals from Mother Earth, it is really relative issues. And on that relative issue, deep sea mining wins over terrestrial mining undoubtedly. So in summary, we have an 80% majority in the Norwegian Parliament. That decision came in January 2024. We have, unfortunately, a social government, a very weak Socialists government, where the government party, the Labor Party is for this has voted for opening for deep sea mining, but this is being delayed to give away this, how should we say, tabloid wins then to the far-left Socialists, which is a pity both for the country and for the environment, we think. The production concept has been developed with globally leading partners, and it is ready. So I think that's an important thing to take away from this. We are ready to go on short notice as soon as the license papers find their way to our desk. And yes, the rest of it, we then work both on the whole value chain and on the infrastructure in the Nordics -- and we have a very attractive setup here to get going really. And we think we can add lots of value to existing terrestrial processing with our world-class ore. When it comes to the economics, we have been operating with $175 million (sic) [ $176 million ] estimate on a company level on EBITDA from 1 harsh environment system. And I can just say this has been based on a copper price significantly below where it is today. And if you were to put in $13,000 copper, so close to where we are today, you can add approximately $300 million to this calculation. So that means on the company level, we would be looking at about $500 million in EBITDA on current copper prices. So the economics here are just outstanding. I'll just repeat that. So what we've done in our company is to take down costs. Our model is to maintain competency while reducing capacity. We use a Silicon Valley type of reward system to make this happen, and we're very pleased to have been able to do this. And we are working very hard while waiting for the license papers. We are working very hard to develop business both outside of Norway and through other channels as indicated by our strategic review. And we will, of course, update you whenever there is something new to report from that. And with that, I will close the prepared remarks. Of course, you are welcome to ask questions, and you can do so in the chat here.

So yes. So there is 1 question here on changes in the composition of the Board that we announced after the Board meeting yesterday and if it has any link to progress in the strategic review? And the answer to that is no. We have had a situation where Stale Monstad, our CEO, has also been a Board member in the company. This is over the last year or so and over the last few months, and we no longer see that as necessary and it's not something that is wanted by Mr. Monstad either. We strengthened the Board this spring with Stig Myrseth and expanded the Board to our maximum capacity, actually, which is 5 individuals. So all in all, this change was done has nothing to do with anything else. Another question is that the strategic review has been going on for over 8 months? And the question is if we can say anything about it. Now the review and these reviews normally are such that it is impossible to comment on discussions we are having until we have finished any of this. So unfortunately, no, we can't say anything more. And as I commented on initially, the only thing I can say is that it involves more than 1 party. These processes take time. And I can't give any guidance or assurance even on either the timeline or the potential outcome of this process. So there, you just have to be patient. But we are fully engaged in this. Okay. So the question is if you are planning to explore SMS outside of Norway or only nodules in the CCZ? I would answer even more general on that and say that we are a mining company and our primary responsibility is to deliver value creation to our shareholders. So we are interested in and looking at the prospects in a wide or in a broad manner. Our focus metal is copper, which we have explained the rationale for previously, but we are open to getting engaged in other prospects as well. So yes, I wouldn't say we are planning to, but there are no concrete plans on any concrete projects, but we are engaged in discussions that would broaden both the number of minerals and the geographic area for us. Give it another few seconds. All right. No further questions coming in. So I think we'll leave it with that and just close with the remark that this mining in general certainly requires patience from time to time, and that patience is being tested now in Norway for sure. Still, we are optimistic that we will be able to -- and maybe this situation actually will enable us to broaden our portfolio. So with that, we'll leave it there, and I will see you again in 6 months. Thank you very much.