Rana Gruber ASA (RANA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to this presentation of Rana Gruber's results for the first quarter of 2025. My name is Gunnar Moe, and I am the CEO at Rana Gruber. With me today is our CFO, Erlend Høyen. We will now take you through our operational and financial performance. And you are welcome to send us questions during our presentation by using the Q&A feature. Questions will be answered at the end of the session. Despite volatile markets, iron ore prices have remained quite stable throughout the quarter. This stability has supported our results leading to a quarterly revenue of NOK 401 million. Our revenue was also supported by strong production volumes, which lands on 473,000 tonnes. This is the second quarter since we announced our cash cost target. This quarter we landed at USD 55 per tonne, which is at the higher end of our range. While our cash cost performance in the previous quarter demonstrated an exceptionally strong response to external factors, we acknowledge that quarterly results may fluctuate somewhat. Nevertheless, our clear goal remains to consistently deliver in the lower range of our communicated target over time. Rana Gruber continues to return capital to our shareholders, while the Board of Directors resolving to declare a quarterly dividend of NOK 1.27 per share for the first quarter. The dividend represents 60% of adjusted net profit reduced from 70% to strengthen the balance sheet and prepare for a continued macroeconomic uncertainty while supporting investments that ensure long-term competitiveness. Our most valuable asset is our people, and their safety should always be our top priority. In the first quarter, we had 1 small injury resulting in absences from work. These incidents provide important lessons that we continuously strive to implement in our [ operation ]. In our annual report for 2024, we published our sustainability report. Sustainable mining is important for us, our customers and all our stakeholders. This reflects our dedication to responsible mining practices and continuous improvement in environmental and social performance. The first quarter continued the positive trends from 2024 with strong production figures for both hematite and magnetite. As observed at the end of 2024, magnetite volumes have increased, and we expect them to rise even further towards the end of the year when the Stensundtjern facility becomes operational. As mentioned last quarter, we plan to discontinue our Colorana production by the end of the year. Preparations are well underway, and we remain on track to complete this process as planned. Now I will hand over to our CFO, Erlend Høyen, who will present the financials.

Thank you, Gunnar, and good morning, everyone. Starting off with the revenue side of the P&L. As you can see on the graph on the right, first quarter revenues increased from the first quarter of '24 and ended as Gunnar has mentioned, at NOK 401 million. The main reason for the uplift is linked to price effects as well as lower shipping costs this year and a higher magnetite sale. Compared to last quarter, however, the revenues held slightly. This is mainly related to a different shipping volume, as you can see on the graph on the left-hand side. From the graph in the middle, you can see that the realized prices for both magnetite and hematite has been relatively stable for the last quarters. And as mentioned, we still expect magnetite sales to increase throughout the year due to the strategic uplifts that we have done in production volumes on this project. Switching over to the cost side. As previously announced, we established a cost target of staying between $50 to $55 per tonne of iron ore produced. For the first quarter, we met our cost target ending at NOK 575 per tonne or approximately $55. This is in the higher part of our range and beyond the strengthening of the NOK. The underlying cost structure was impacted by several planned maintenance initiatives in the first quarter. We had a higher volume of waste rock removal in the open pit than the previous quarter. And we had a lot of seasonal works related to annual reports, increasing the cost per tonne from previous quarter. However, we are still in line with our target range, and we are also in line with the first quarter from last year. Going forward, we do expect seasonal variations in part of our cost structures, but we still remain confident in delivering on our target throughout the year. Busy slide, but some comments on some of the figures shown here. EBITDA increased to NOK 180 million from NOK 56 million last year, mainly due to the increase in revenue. In the first quarter, the pretax profit was adjusted with negative NOK 66.4 million related to unrealized changes in the company's hedging portfolio, resulting in an adjusted net profit of NOK 78.5 million, up from NOK 68.2 million last year. As noted in the last quarterly presentation, please note that there has been a change in the APM related to how we adjust the hedging portfolio on freight and foreign exchange. And details regarding this can be found in both this and the previous quarterly report. So please see that one. This then gives us an adjusted EPS of NOK 2.12 compared to NOK 1.84 last year. And by following our dividend policy, the Board decided to pay out NOK 1.27 in dividends per quarter for the first quarter of '25. Moving on to cash flow. The total net cash flow from operations in the first quarter amounted to positive NOK 174 million. Included in this is a tax payment of NOK 44 million. CapEx for the period was NOK 43 million, NOK 35 million of this was development CapEx related to projects, mainly the new mine level, but also smaller investments in the processing plant. And the remaining NOK 8 million was related to scheduled investments in machines, building improvements, et cetera things that is classified as maintenance CapEx. Financial activities, NOK 67 million was payout of dividends for the fourth quarter and NOK 17 million was payment of principal portions of our lease liabilities. All in all, this gives us a positive change in cash of NOK 47 million for the first quarter of '25. As always, let's end the financial review by shortly looking at our financial position. We still hold a solid financial position and no bigger change on the balance sheet since last quarter. After the dividend distributions for the fourth quarter of '24, our equity ratio was 60%, where part of the uplift is related to the strengthening of the unrealized hedging portfolio that we have. Leasing debt was reduced to NOK 293 million within the quarter. And by the end of the first quarter, the total cash holdings in the company was NOK 92 million. That concludes the financial section, and I'll leave the back word to you, Gunnar.

Thank you, Erlend. We continue to make progress towards our ambitions, steadily improving our business to meet the evolving demands of the steel industry. While we are focused on developing our operations for the future, we remain committed to maintaining cost discipline. We continue to deliver within the cash cost range we have communicated, between USD 50 and USD 55. Our strong balance sheet, solid partnerships and skilled teams gives us the ability to navigate volatile markets with confidence. We are on track to deliver iron ore concentrate with a 65% grade Fe and to increase magnetite production. I'm also pleased to highlight that we have now achieved 17 consecutive quarters of dividend payments. With that, we conclude this presentation, and we now open the floor for the Q&A session. Thank you so far.

Thank you, Erlend and Gunnar. We have received 2 questions, and we can -- the first one will go to you, Gunnar. Do you think you will be the first full electric mine worldwide?

That is still our goal, whether we will succeed in being the first in the world is a little bit difficult to predict because it's very linked to the delivering of machines that can compete with traditional machines. But we will -- we think that this will be the same situation for everyone. So let's see, we are in the race.

Perfect. Erlend could take the next one. Do you think in the future you will make a non-virtual shareholder meeting?

Yes, we do. We typically -- the setup that we have run so far is that we have 3 virtual meetings in Mo i Rana throughout the year, but then the November meeting where we present the Q3 numbers, we typically hold that in Oslo as a physical meeting, combined with the Capital Markets Day that we have.

Perfect. And that was all the questions from the Q&A feature, but I have also received 1 at e-mail. And I think Gunnar could elaborate a bit on that one. And that's the dividend policy. We are now moving on to 60% from last quarter, we had 70%. What's your thought about the future?

Well, our target is always 70%, between 50% and 70%, but the target of 70%. The reason for going for 60% this quarter is linked to macroeconomic uncertainty. If that stables, which there are a hope that will happen, the target is 70%. In normal situation, it would have been 70%. But macroeconomic situation is the reason for 60% this time.

Thank you. I think that was all for today. So I will thank you all for listening in today, and we'll be back in August with our second quarter results.

Thank you, everyone.