Thor Explorations Ltd. (THX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Thor Explorations Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Olusegun Lawson, CEO. Good afternoon to you, sir.

Good afternoon. Thank you. Good afternoon, good day or good morning. It depends where you're logging in from. I'm pleased to be here to be presenting our second quarter financial and operating results for the 3 months ending 30th of June 2025. There's a disclaimer here. There will be some forward-looking statements. With full details, this presentation will be made available on our website, so you can refer to this disclaimer if required. I'll start off with my usual overview. We're advancing projects in 3 jurisdictions in West Africa. We're very well positioned for organic growth through exploration in all 3 jurisdictions. And our value is underpinned by our 100% owned Segilola Gold Mine located in Osun State in Nigeria, where we are now in our fourth year of production. We have consistently been producing between 85,000 and 95,000 ounces per year at a very, very competitive in global terms, all-in sustaining costs below $1,000 per ounce. We have a guidance this year, which we maintain at the half year point of 85,000 to 95,000 ounces per year, and we also maintain our cost guidance of below $1,000 per ounce, around about between $800 and $1,000 per ounce. In Senegal, we have our Douta Project, where we have assembled 2 licenses, which are contiguous to form the Douta Project. We're advancing this through to a preliminary feasibility study. That has -- the most recent work has been done on that, which will be in -- spoken about later on in this presentation is the completion of a 12,000-meter drill program. And we are now combining that and awaiting the final results and incorporating that into a PFS, which we believe will be more economic than where we were prior to adding this new project. And lastly, we're in Côte d'Ivoire on the gold front, where we have 3 licenses. We press released a couple of weeks ago our initial drill results from the Guitry license which we acquired from Endeavor. We've got some early-stage exploration, which has turned up some very encouraging results in our project called Marahui in the northeast of the country, and we have the Boundiali license as well. Lastly, we have a very early-stage lithium portfolio, which we have put on hold for the time being. We -- I will say we have brought our own drilling rigs into the country, and we will be revisiting our entire exploration portfolio and how best to flexibly carry out exploration across all our portfolio in Nigeria. From a corporate point of view, we're listed on the TSX.V and also the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange, TSX.V market of the Toronto Stock Exchange. We've had a very good share price performance over the last 12 months and through the course of this year. That's, I believe, really been catalyzed by being completely deleveraged from our senior debt with the Africa Finance Corporation, strengthening of our balance sheet on a month-by-month basis. And also, we are also currently returning money to shareholders in the form of a quarterly dividend, and this is all being done in a very high prevailing gold price environment. And we've noticed our shareholder base being broadened both on -- particularly on the institutional front. As you can see, we're getting a lot of interest institutionally. And also our volumes are increasing on both the TSX.V and on AIM in terms of daily trades. So we are also getting, I would say, a lot of retail interest. So we hope that with the continuation of strong operational performance and good exploration results, we believe our share price can continue to perform very strongly. This presentation is just characterized by what was a record quarter for us financially. We performed very strongly. I would say we -- early in the quarter or the previous quarter, we unwound all our hedged gold positions. So we are fully exposed to the gold price. There were a few final sales from Q1 that fell into Q2, and you will note that we sold around about 25,000 ounces versus the 22,700 ounces we poured. We did all this at an all-in sustaining cost below $1,000, and that meant that our balance sheet has gone through a very transformational period over the last 6 quarters. And at the same time, in parallel, we've been advancing exploration in Nigeria, in Senegal and in Côte d'Ivoire. And the big milestone outside Nigeria, which we're aiming for, which I believe will be the next big catalyst is the completion of the preliminary feasibility study, which we're in the process of advancing and hope to have that complete in the next couple of months. Looking at our financial highlights. Like I said, it's been a very transformational 4 to 6 quarters. I mentioned earlier in the presentation, we've completely repaid our senior debt facility. If we -- and this has been coincided with gold going to all-time high positions. If you look at our liquidity and cash flow generation, that's been very strong. You look at our net debt position, you look at where we were at the end of Q2 last year, where we had a net debt of $38.5 million to where we are at the end of Q2 this year with a net cash position of around about $53 million. And still strengthening, you could see that it has been a transformative period whilst in that Q2 this year already paid a first dividend of about $5.8 million, and we'll be paying our second quarterly dividend tomorrow, in fact, of around about the same. Our dividend policy is for an initial 2 years, after which it will be reviewed and can be extended and hopefully will be extended based on exploration results and extending the mine life in Nigeria. This is also a minimum dividend payment. So we will constantly review the quantum of the dividend that's being paid out to shareholders. The other thing to note here would be in the top right-hand corner of the graph there, we are continuing to keep our costs in extremely competitive regions on a global perspective and also an African perspective. This quarter, we had an all-in sustaining cost of $915 per ounce, and we feel confident that through the course of the rest of the year, we will be able to maintain our costs below $1,000 per ounce. Lastly, I would probably just quickly highlight on our working capital position, which continues to strengthen. And again, as I say, it also demonstrates the transformation the company is going through with a working capital position now around about $65.5 million. So I do believe we continue to generate strong cash, and we will at these current gold prices. However, we still believe we are a significant value proposition. There is still a lot of upside to come to be triggered by a number of catalysts through exploration, through completion of a preliminary feasibility study and through the exploration upside we have in our earlier-stage projects in Côte d'Ivoire. Operationally, we were pleased with how we performed this quarter. We mined 4.6 million tonnes of material this time last year. It was much lower this year. However, we're getting into a richer zone. The grade of the material we mined was just over 3 grams per tonne versus 1.78 grams per tonne in Q4 last year. And we're seeing this grade sort of stabilize at these levels as we're getting deeper in the pit. We do have ore stockpiled, and that's around about 40,000 ounces. That's a significant amount of gold on the stockpile that will be passed through and also passed through the processing plant at the end of the envisaged mine life at the moment. However, we do -- in certain quarters, call on that ore stockpiled to blend with some very high-grade material, so we can have a steady rate that's being throughput through the mill. So from an operational point of view and with our processing plant, we're very happy with our performance here. And we believe, based on this, there's no need to change our guidance for the course of the year. At the midway point in the year, we've poured around about 45,000 ounces. Annualized, that would land us right in the middle of our guidance between 85,000 and 95,000 ounces for the year. Very important for us, and we continue to prioritize this is our social responsibility and community development. This quarter was no different. We continue to prioritize this. We pride ourselves on maintaining the social license to operate in the area. Our community projects this quarter alone saw us commission community hall, donate 9 mini buses to the communities, which are now being used in a transport cooperative between us and the local communities. a football competition, which is always a very popular calendar fixture. In Senegal, where we're increasing our spend and moving towards development, we're also increasing our community projects there as well, where we have scholarships now being rolled out. We're also very proud to say in our workforce, we continue to hire locally and try and procure locally as much as possible, 99% Nigerian, of which 48% are from the state itself. On the environmental side as well, we're keeping track of our greenhouse gas emissions. We've improved our water intensity by reclaiming water from the tailings management facility and using that in the process plant. And also, we've seen improvements on our energy intensity and emissions intensity. And lastly, on the health and safety side, we also continue to maintain best practice standards there. So I did mention that we are underpinned by very strong cash flow. However, I do like to emphasize that we believe this is still a growth story. I am very conscious that we have been drilling through the course of the year, and we do have a backlog of drill results, which have been going into various interpretations as the drilling program has evolved. We believe that there is significant value to be unlocked underneath the pit. We completed 12 holes during the quarter. This was following a proof-of-concept drill program that had been done prior to this. And these were built on the initial drill results that we had early in the year. So we look forward to getting these results out to the public. They will be made public this month. And the drilling here is ongoing throughout the year. One thing I would say is the rate of drilling in Nigeria around and underneath this pit is increased -- is going to be increased between now and the end of the year. We have purchased our own drilling rigs, 2 reverse circulation rigs and a diamond rig. And that would have a positive effect in 2 ways. Number one, it will certainly increase the rate at which we drill. And secondly, it will decrease the cost of our drilling. So we -- after this rainy season and once these rigs are commissioned towards the end of this month, we look forward to upping the rate of drilling and also regularly updating the market with our drill results. So that was a priority for us in Nigeria. I'll now move on to Senegal. A quick update here is that obviously, this is a project that we've been working on for the last few years on these 2 licenses that form the Douta license. We -- the license is very well located. Should I say the project is 5 kilometers east of Massawa and having a significant amount of gold shows and deposits around it. We have a resource that has a global resource of 1.78 million ounces that hasn't been updated yet. We are very advanced in our preliminary feasibility study work streams. We completed further drilling on the main deposit, which is Macosa, Makosa East and Makosa North to convert the inferred material there to indicated to use in our preliminary feasibility study. However, as we were getting on the home straight to wrap up the preliminary feasibility study earlier this year, we did drill 2 discovery holes at a new prospect called Baraka. And the reason why these holes are so important and material to us was because they were on a mineralized structure that we could see extended for a couple -- a few kilometers, 2 to 3 kilometers in the soils. And when we drilled them, they were wide, high-grade drill results. Importantly, they were in the oxide, which is a very easily recoverable material. So we initially set out to do about 8,000 meters of drilling. We ended up completing 12,000 meters of drilling. And we expect to have all the assay results back this month. We're very encouraged by what we've seen there to date. We look forward to releasing these results to the market. We've also sent off a significant portion of our samples for metallurgical testing in Australia. First round of metallurgical tests we've done on these samples have been very encouraging. What we're trying to do here is target an initial 0.5 million ounce oxide easy process material as part of the project, and that would greatly enhance the project economics as a whole. And we're pretty confident that we're on track to do that. So like I said in -- when we were talking about Nigeria, we are conscious, we do have a backlog of drill results that will be coming out. Once these results start coming out in Nigeria and here in Senegal, we do expect a constant stream of news flow. Here, I'm just showing you the initial 2 discovery holes that triggered our decision to drill this structure out of Baraka 3 prior to completing the preliminary feasibility study. And as I mentioned, you can see 20 meters at 1.3 grams per tonne, 90 meters at 2.46 grams per tonne, strong rock chips along the entire structure, which based on what we're seeing has definitely justified the decision to move ahead and drill this structure out. So in Senegal, where we look forward to updating the market with our drill results and then updating the resource and then coming up with the preliminary feasibility study. And I do expect that we will have all the drilling results back through the course of this month and shortly after the resource and subsequent to that, shortly after that, the preliminary feasibility study. I will stick my neck out and say, look, we expect to have this preliminary feasibility study completed certainly before the end of this year. Moving on to our last jurisdiction in Côte d'Ivoire, where we have 3 licenses. This is our most advanced project in Côte d'Ivoire, the Guitry Project. Some of you may have seen we had drill results out a couple of weeks ago. This was our first set of drill results in Côte d'Ivoire. We couldn't have asked for a better start in the country. This was a great entry into the country, getting this project as low cost. It was characterized by an area which was 8.5 kilometers by 5 kilometers of soil, geochemical anomalies and historic drilling. We spent a lot of time reinterpreting the drilling and came up with a hypothesis where we had these Northwest, Southeast trending parallel loads. So we set out to drill them. We ended up drilling just over 3,000 meters in Q2. We got our first set of results, which we released to the market. We have a second set of results pending. And hopefully, we'll -- in fact, we are scheduled to get them through the course of August as well. But like I said, we couldn't have asked for a better start. The hypothesis proved to be right, high-grade, wide loads, parallel loads, which remain open in both directions. So looking at some of these drill results, 14 meters wide at 2.6 grams per tonne, 17 meters over 2 grams. Our best hole in terms of gram meters, 10 meters, 10.3 grams per tonne. Very strong encouraging start to what we're doing in the country. And we look forward to coming back here after the rainy season in early September and seeing how much bigger this thing can get. We have a milestone in Côte d'Ivoire to get to a maiden resource here by the end of the year, and we're targeting between 0.5 million ounces and 1 million ounces. And that certainly starts putting us on the map in the country. And it also gives us a great pipeline, organic pipeline of projects where we have production in Nigeria -- production and growth in Nigeria, a development project in Senegal and a maiden resource in Côte d'Ivoire. Staying in Côte d'Ivoire, our second project -- sorry, these are the drill results, which not only remain -- these are drill results from Guitry, which not only remained open a long strike, but also if we look at them in cross-section as well, we certainly haven't closed these resource sections out at depth. So part of what we do when we come back is also to test the strike, but also to see how much deeper these drilling results, these mineralized structures go. So our maiden resource of between 0.5 million and 1 million ounces targeted for the end of the year is very much our priority here. So -- sorry, staying in Côte d'Ivoire, I was very excited about this project, which is why I got slightly ahead of myself. We also have kicked off our early-stage exploration on the Marahui project, which we are very excited about and very excited to move forward. We've done all the work necessary to define a 6,000-meter drill program, which we will commence towards the end of Q3. This program has been delineated through soil geochemistry, which has also been reconfirmed with rock chip anomalism, which has been very high grade over a strike length of about 5 kilometers in very good rocks in terms of geology in the Birimian Greenstone. And prior to drilling during the rainy season, we will also be flying our Aeromag and geophysics over these licenses to aid the targeting of the drill program. There is -- all the community work is also being carried out at the moment. So we hit the ground running once the rainy season finishes. This is a project we're extremely excited about to come back and drill and has got significant potential. So all the initial results have been very encouraging, and we look forward to coming back to drill this between now and the end of the year -- between September and the end of the year. So I will wrap up with some key points. We're on track for our guidance for the year, and we're keeping it. We're tracking right in the middle of the 85,000 to 95,000 ounce guidance we gave at the beginning of the year. We're also tracking in the middle of our costs for the year, around about $900 per ounce at the moment. We have a robust free cash generation. Our net cash position is growing very strongly on a monthly basis and will be updated to -- updating the market on a quarterly basis with our financials, where we've demonstrated our commitment to return funds to shareholders in a sustainable manner, and that's ongoing. Based on the early results we've had in Nigeria, in Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire, we are increasing our exploration expenditure across our entire portfolio. The upper end of this is about $21.5 million we'll be spending on exploration this year. And this will be deployed in all 3 countries where we're advancing exploration, prioritizing our near mine and underground drilling in Nigeria at Segilola, where we believe we will be the most impactful in terms of value creation. We are continuing to advance our Douta project towards the PFS. That will be incorporating the drill results from Baraka 3. And we have kicked off our -- we finished our first phase of drilling in Côte d'Ivoire, and we will be kicking off 2 drill programs there, a 5,000-meter budgeted drill program at Guitry and a 6,000-meter drilling program at Marahui. Thank you very much. I will now hand over for the Q&A.

That's great. Olusegun, thank you very much for your presentation. [Operator Instructions] Olusegun, as you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. And what I'll do now is I'll just hand back to you for you to read through the questions, and then I'll pick up from you at the end.

Thank you. I'm just going through the questions, quite a few but I'll get through as many as I can. Okay. All right. I'll read out the question and then I'll answer it. So first question regarding Douta. Thor has announced that a minimum 500,000 ounce of oxide ore has been established from recent drilling. Given the likely 2 million ounce mineral resource estimated to be announced, can it be assumed that 1.5 million ounce is in transition or refractory? Look, I think until we have the official resource update, I can't speak too much about this, but we do have a target of having 0.5 million ounces in the oxide. We believe we're very well on track to do that. Historically, we've had a global resource of 1.78 million ounces, of which the indicated component was around about 900,000 ounces. For the PFS, I think, we will certainly have a material uplift on the indicated component. When will Thor release drill and assay results from the drill program conducted at Segilola in Q1 and Q2? Like I mentioned in the presentation, we will be -- we will start releasing these results this month in August for the Segilola underground. Will satellite deposits be included in the revised mine life? Yes, they will. The satellite deposits aggregated -- well individually don't make a huge impact, but aggregated, they certainly will and that will be part of the studies we're carrying out how to aggregate them and incorporate them into the mine life. For Segilola resource upgrade and reserves, will there be more announcements regarding drill results or just an upgrade later in the year? There will certainly be announcements with the drill results. I think through the -- since the beginning of this year, there was a lot of exploratory drilling. There was a lot of testing of hypothesis. We had to get fully on top of that and then drill out what we wanted to drill when we had some comfort before releasing the results. So there is a backlog. We are drilling now in a more systematic way, and I think that will correspond to a more timely release of results as they come in. Côte d'Ivoire seems like a great country to operate, can Thor have a mine operating there before Senegal? Côte d'Ivoire is certainly a great country to operate in. It's been a success story in terms of gold discoveries, project development and taking into production over the last 10 years. I think we have way more of a head start in Senegal than in Côte d'Ivoire. And because of that, even though the projects we have in Côte d'Ivoire are looking extremely exciting, I think, it will be very difficult to leapfrog the Douta project. Are there any actual plans or ideas in mind regarding shareholder returns after the 2-year dividend period, particularly if gold becomes cheaper, for example, keeping specific cash reserves, short-term external investments etc.? Yes, there are -- look, where -- we have our treasury management policy, which is being constantly reviewed by the Board. Our dividend policy is set to 2 years and will be reviewed at the end of 2 years, depending on the mine life, we will possibly extend it. And also for -- we will retain a significant portion, should I say, a sustainable portion on our balance sheet for our equity component for the Douta project in Senegal. We believe that we can, based on our existing pipeline, we can develop all the projects we need, return money to shareholders without any shareholder dilution. And that's one of the things we're priding ourselves on, and we're hoping to achieve. Congratulations on an exceptional journey thus far on Segilola extension. Do you see an underground operation? Or is there a potential for continued open pit mining? First of all, thank you. It has been quite a journey, and we're very pleased with the share price performance over the last 12 months and seeing that recognition in the share price performance. Regarding the operation, look, when we did our initial feasibility studies, gold was trading a lot lower than it is now. So we had looked at the mine life extension in the underground. However, given where the gold price is now, one of the studies we are carrying out now is the ability to cut back and make the open pit deeper in certain areas and recover some of that gold. It's worth remembering it's not a very wide ore body. It's 1 to 2 meters wide and a significant portion of the strike length and with a very high strip ratio. So a lot of studies have to be done in that regard to make sure it is economic. Obviously, our preference would be to continue as an open pit, but we'll only know once the economics have been fully evaluated. Any possibility of starting a share buyback in addition to paying a dividend? Look, we've looked at a share buyback before it wasn't the right fit for us based on our volumes. I think at the moment, we're comfortable with the level of dividend, and we will continue to review this. It seems like there have been a few repeat questions on the mine life extension and the drill results. So I've already stated what we're doing there. Will externally sourced finance be required to fund production programs at all existing projects we own and manage -- all the exciting projects we own and manage? Yes, we'll be looking at project finance, certainly for Douta. We will be in a position where we have a strong enough balance sheet to provide the equity component of that without going out to the market. But certainly, project finance will be required. And the emphasis is that we will be trying to develop our entire portfolio without any further shareholder dilution. Do you expect to pay down payables at a similar rate? And what is the current remaining mine life of Segilola? Yes, we do expect to continue paying down. In fact, we expect it to be slightly accelerated between now and the end of the year. The gold stream to the Africa Finance Corporation has been fully invoiced now at the end of June. So going forward, we don't have that accrual. In fact, by the end of the year, we expect all the payables to be no greater than $5 million or $6 million. And that's just based on current invoices. So I think that's all the questions I have.

That's great. Olusegun, thank you much for answering those questions from investors. Of course, the company can view the questions that have been submitted today, and we will publish the responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Just before redirecting investors to give you their feedback, that's particularly important to yourself, Olusegun, I just ask you for a few closing comments.

Yes. Thank you. I would close out by saying this has been a fantastic first half of the year for us, our best ever in terms of both operationally and financially. The company is in a very strong position with a balance sheet that's growing and strengthening. Despite a very impressive performance in the share price over the last 12 months, I still believe we're -- we still have a lot of value to unlock, and I still believe we're undervalued to be quite honest. We're underpinned by real cash flow, real strong free cash flow. We have a big catalyst coming up for our project in Senegal, which we are not just doing a feasibility study -- a preliminary feasibility study for academic purposes. We are looking to build our second mine, and we're already working hand-in-hand with our EPC contractor in that regard. And in addition to all of this, we have fantastic optionality in all 3 jurisdictions. There's a lot of exploration upside in Nigeria, where we're looking to extend the mine. In Senegal, where we've drilled this new discovery at Baraka 3 and in Côte d'Ivoire, where we have 2 great exploration projects that have turned out very encouraging initial exploration results.

That's great. Olusegun, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close the session as you'll be automatically redirected to provide your feedback so that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team of Thor Explorations, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.