Rana Gruber ASA (RANA) Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to this presentation of Rana Gruber's results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2025. My name is Gunnar Moe, and I am the CEO at Rana Gruber. With me today is our CFO, Erlend Hoyen. We will now take you through our operational and financial performance, and you are welcome to send us questions during the presentation by using the Q&A feature. Questions will be answered at the end of the session. The strong production trend from previous years continues, both at the mine site and at the processing plant. The production processing plant was close to our capacity at 1.85 million metric tonnes, and the mine site delivered another strong year. For the underground mine, we had a record high production at 3.4 million metric tonnes. Fourth quarter was slightly below internal expectations and concentrate production reached 413,000 tonnes in the quarter. The reduction compared to previous quarters was related to a temporary production disruption in the processing plant and reduced recovery as we increased quality. Mitigating actions to improve recovery is described and will be implemented during the first half of 2026. Global macro uncertainty remained during fourth quarter, but iron ore prices has remained quite stable above USD 100. Revenues for the quarter landed at NOK 413 million, below last year's NOK 443 million. Cost discipline is and will be one of our main focus going forward. Fourth quarter was a challenging quarter as we were hit by increased energy prices and lower production. This resulted in a cash cost per tonne of NOK 647 or USD 64. In absolute terms, cost year-over-year has been stable, and we are confident that we will be able to improve our cost position going forward. Just before Christmas, Champion Iron launched a voluntary cash offer to Rana Gruber shareholders, valuing Rana Gruber to approximately NOK 2.9 billion. The offer was accepted by the Norwegian Financial Supervisory Authority on 26th of January with the acceptance period of 4 weeks. There were 2 minor production-related injuries in 2025, which led to short-term absence from work as well as 1 serious incident, which led to long-term absence from work due to injuries sustained. A comprehensive evaluation of the incident found no systemic factors requiring adjustment and the current safeguards were deemed sufficient. The company is constantly working to ensure safety measures in all parts of production and promoting a healthy work environment. I'm therefore happy to announce that there has -- there was no reported injuries in the fourth quarter of 2025. Going forward, we will continue to strengthen our safety culture to ensure that everyone who works at Rana Gruber returns home safely every day. A full review of our environmental and sustainability work will be provided in our annual report. The full year of 2025 confirmed the positive trend from previous years with solid production of both hematite and magnetite in line with our expectations. Looking ahead, magnetite volumes will increase further as Stensundtjern becomes on stream in first quarter of 2026. Fourth quarter of 2025 was unfortunately somewhat below previous quarters and in internal expectations due to a temporary production disruption in the processing plant and reduced recovery following the quality improvement. During this transition period from being an Fe62 producer to converting all sales to Fe65, we will continue to prioritize volume as a short-term mitigating measure, while recovery improvement initiatives are being implemented to support both quality and volumes going forward. Underground production continues to develop positively with a 19% year-on-year increase, reflecting stable operations and improved execution underground. In parallel, the Stensundtjern open pit has been successfully commissioned and was ready for ore production in early January 2026, marking an important milestone in our mine development and supporting production flexibility going forward. Now I will hand over to our CFO, Erlend Hoyen, who will present the financials.

Thank you, Gunnar, and good morning, everyone. Starting off with the revenue side of the P&L as usual. As you can see to the right-hand side of the graph, fourth quarter revenues decreased from the previous quarter in 2024 and ended at NOK 413 million. The main reason for the decrease is linked to lower sales volumes as well as the FX effect compared to last year's numbers. Final settlement of sales for the hematite for the third quarter contributed positively and partly offset the other effects in the quarter. From the graph in the middle, you can see that realized prices for magnetites have been slightly increasing over the year, while hematite prices have fluctuated with the variations in the iron ore market. Development in FX also affects these curves, of course. Going forward, as Gunnar has mentioned, we expect the magnetite sales to increase as we transfer it to the new open pit from Ortfjell to the new open pit area in Stensundtjern. And currently, we are following market opportunities for the extra volume both in the chemical market and the high-grade market for steel applications. Switching over to the cost side. Cash costs in absolute terms were in line with previous quarters and for the full year, in line with 2024 figures measured in Norwegian krone. Measured in cash cost per tonne, you can see that as a result of the slightly softer production volumes and increased energy prices in the region for the quarter, the cash cost per tonne increased compared to previous quarters. Looking ahead and pending a potential realization of the planned infrastructure investment at [indiscernible], we do expect some upward pressure on costs, primarily driven by increased transport distance to the crusher from the new open pit area as well as higher energy costs in Q1. Measures to improve production volumes is initiated and is expected to contribute positively on a cash cost per tonne basis going forward. One of the business slides, but some comments on some of the figures. EBITDA decreased to NOK 128.1 million from NOK 147 million last year, mainly linked to the effect from reduced revenues and increased costs, partly offset by inventory buildup in the quarter. In the fourth quarter, the pretax profit was adjusted with NOK 18.5 million related to our unrealized changes in the company's hedging portfolio, resulting in an adjusted net profit of NOK 44 million, down from NOK 95 million last year. This then gives us an adjusted EPS of NOK 1.19 for the quarter. And as a part of the transaction agreement with Champion Iron, Rana Gruber has undertaken not to declare or distribute any dividends prior to completion of the offer period. Looking at the development in cash for the quarter. The total net cash flow from operations in the fourth quarter amounted to NOK 218 million. CapEx for the period was NOK 105 million, mainly related to mine Level 91 to new mine Level 59 that we have started and preparation for the production at the new open pit in Stensundtjern. Of the financial activities, NOK 59 million was payout of dividends for the third quarter and NOK 17 million was down payment of our lease liabilities. All in all, this gives us a positive change in cash of NOK 37 million for the final quarter of 2025. And let's end the financial review by shortly looking at our financial position. We exit 2025 with a solid financial position. After the dividend distribution of the third quarter of 2025, our equity ratio remains strong at 56.9%. With that, our equity has improved with approximately NOK 100 million over the financial year of 2025. The increase in lease liabilities in the fourth quarter mainly consists of delivery of 2 new underground loaders and 2 new underground trucks in addition to a new tunneling rig for the underground tunnel development. Rana Gruber still holds an unused credit facility of NOK 100 million. And by the end of the fourth quarter and exiting 2025, the total cash holding was NOK 62 million. That concludes the financial sections, and I will leave the word over to you, Gunnar, for your final remarks.

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. Our strong balance sheet, solid partnerships and skilled team give us the ability to navigate volatile markets with confidence. We are on track to deliver iron ore concentrate with a 65% grade and to increase magnetite production. With that, we conclude this presentation, and we now open the floor for the Q&A session. Thank you.

Thank you, Erlend and Gunnar. For the moment, we haven't received any questions. So I think we'll let the audience have a couple of minutes to be able to provide their questions, we will wait until then. And, of course, if no one has questions now, it's always possible to send questions on our IR e-mail at [email protected]. Okay. It doesn't seem there are any questions. So I think it's crystal clear, and we will end this session today. And thank you for today.

Bye, everyone.

Thank you. Bye.