Trekor Metals Limited (TKO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to Trekor Metals Limited Q2 Earnings Conference Call. I'd like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded I would now like to turn the call over to Brian Bergot, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Joyce. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining Treker's Second Quarter 2026 Conference Call. The news release and regulatory filing announcing our financial and operational results was issued yesterday after market close and is available on our website at chkermetals.com and on SEDAR I am joined today in Vancouver by Trecker's President and CEO, Stuart McDonald; Trecker's Chief Financial Officer, Bryce Hamming; and our COO, Richard Tremblay. As usual, before we get into opening remarks by management, I would like to remind our listeners that our comments and answers to your questions will contain forward-looking information. This information, by its nature, is subject to risks and uncertainties. As such, actual results may differ materially from the views expressed today. For further information on these risks and uncertainties, I encourage you to read the cautionary note that accompanies our second quarter MD&A and the related news release as well as the risk factors particular to our company. These documents can be found on our website and also on SEDAR+. I would also like to point out that we will use various non-GAAP measures during the call. You can find explanations and reconciliations regarding these measures in the related news release. And finally, all dollar amounts we will discuss today are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise specified. Following opening remarks, we will open the phone lines to analysts and investors for questions. I'll now turn the call over to Stuart for his remarks.

Thank you, Brian, and welcome, everyone. Thanks for joining us today for the Kukra Metals second quarter earnings call. It was a solid quarter for the company, a steady operating performance at Gibraltar allowed us to capitalize on a great copper price. We've often talked about the leverage that we have to copper, and that was shown this quarter with very strong EBITDA and operating cash flows. Bryce can provide some more specifics on the financials in a minute, but first, I'll start with a review of the operating highlights from the quarter. Starting with Florence as it was the first full production quarter for the new operation. and we're very pleased with the progress on the ramp-up to date. We were able to produce just over 5 million pounds of cathode in the quarter at Florence. The operating team there has done a great job of stabilizing all the key process circuits, balancing injection and recovery wells in the well field, solution flows from the wellfield to the SXEW plant and all the way through to plating and harvesting of copper cathode. So the SXEW plant is running smoothly with no significant issues. On the wellfield, the team is continuing to adjust and optimize operations. But generally, the initial wells have achieved expectations in terms of flow rates and copper grades or specifically our PLS grade. So going forward, the key to the ramp-up is wellfield expansion. In June, we added the first group of 20 new production wells. Those wells are now providing additional copper flows to the plant. We have another set of new wells, which were just approved by the state regulator, and 18 of those are being integrated into the wellfield this week with more to come later this month. Drilling is progressing well, and we should soon be into a more regular cadence where new wells are being added every month. To be clear, when we talk about new wells, that includes recovery wells, injection wells and hydraulic control wells, and they can all be repurposed and used in different ways as the wellfield advances. In addition, the wellfield is expanding into an area of the deposit that is a thicker portion of the ore body, and we expect wells in that area to be higher producing. So not all wells will be equal. We're still targeting 30 million to 35 million pounds of production for this year and still have the goal of running the plant at capacity by the end of the year, and that's a run rate of about 7 million pounds per month capacity. Operating costs at Florence are generally tracking in line with plan with no big surprises so far. Florence generated positive operating margins and contributed roughly $10 million of EBITDA in the second quarter. We also reported a C1 cost of USD 4.72 per pound, but it's still early in the ramp-up, and this is not indicative of where we will be in the future. A high portion of our site operating costs are fixed. And as the ramp-up continues, those fixed costs will be spread over a much bigger production base, which will drive down the C1 cost significantly. Sulfuric acid is the largest component of Florence's cost structure. We have a fixed price contract for this year at USD 270 per tonne, and that's a good price considering what's happened in the acid market recently. This fall, we will be engaging with suppliers to establish next year's pricing, and we can expect there will be some price escalation in 2027. But once ramped up, Florence's cost structure is so low that even with high acid prices, we still expect very strong margins. Turning to Gibraltar now, which had another quarter of strong operating performance. The mine produced 30 million pounds of copper, which is a third consecutive quarter at that level. Grade recoveries and mill throughput have all been quite consistent over the last 9 months as ore release has been coming from the lower benches of the connector pit. We will be moving back into some of the more challenging ore later this year, which will impact recoveries. -- but still on track for our annual guidance of 110 million to 115 million pounds. Gibraltar cathode production in the second quarter was a bit lower than expected as the SXEW plant experienced some electrical issues after the restart in late April. We believe those have been addressed now, so we should see a good step-up in cathode production in the coming months with improved plant performance and the second leach pad now running. Total site costs at Gibraltar were in line with the previous quarter as cost pressures continue in the area of fuel, explosives and parts and equipment. Timing of repairs and maintenance activity was also a factor as some mill maintenance activities were pulled forward into June. Offsetting some of the inflationary pressure is a strong molybdenum byproduct credit and moly prices have been back over $30 per pound recently. Smelter treatment and refining costs also continue to trend lower. We've now contracted almost all of the 2027 tonnage, and we're seeing an average TCE next year in the range of negative $140 a tonne. That's an amazing rate that we've never seen before. And with our contracted terms for next year, we also expect to get paid for the gold content in Jib concentrate, which is a small but further additional benefit. Sustaining capital expenditures at Gibraltar were about $48 million in the first half of 2026. That's higher than we've seen in the past, and we expect that elevated spending level to continue. The main driver of the increased spend has been implementing design changes at the tailings storage facility to better utilize the TSF's existing footprint and also for improvements to site water management. Lastly, a comment on our Yellowhead copper project, our longer-term development project. The permitting continues to steadily advance and we've had a few notable milestones recently. Last week, the BC EAO issued a positive readiness decision and the project is now moving into the next stages of the EA process. The BC government recently highlighted Yellowhead as one of its priority projects. So we believe it's a supportive environment right now, and we'll keep moving the project forward. There are very few copper development projects of this scale in North America, and we continue to believe Yellowhead will be a very valuable asset for us. We're also continuing to work on other opportunities in our portfolio. In July, we were invited by the National government into their community for a ceremony to recognize the new Prosperity agreement that we signed a year ago, and that's a relationship that we continue to build on. For the Harmony Gold project, we just extended our option agreement with JDS. And at our Alley Niobium project, we continue to advance network and product marketing initiatives, and we'll be able to share some additional updates on that work in the coming weeks. So there's lots happening and lots of opportunities to unlock value that are still in front of us. And I'll leave it at that for now and turn the call over to Bryce for his commentary on the financials.

Thank you, Stuart. It was a very good quarter for Treker in terms of financial performance, supported by a strong average LME copper price over $6 a pound. We are seeing an arb on the COMEX copper pricing again, which is approximately $0.35 per pound higher than LME. As a reminder, this year, most of Florence's sales are COEx-based pricing as is our cathode at Gibraltar. Sales in the quarter were 32 million pounds from Gibraltar and 5.3 million pounds from Florence. The sale of 37 million pounds of copper generated revenue of $331 million, which is the highest ever for Tucker. It also includes $26 million from moly sales. Moly prices today are $33 per pound, so moly is helping to buffer some of the inflation pressures we are seeing in diesel and explosives at Gibraltar. Cash flow from operations was $183 million, and adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $125 million. Adjusted EBITDA reflects a realized loss on our hedging derivative position of $24 million in the quarter for our $5.40 copper calls that we had in place for last year to support our construction and ramp-up at Florence into 2026. Going forward, for Q3, we have collars with a ceiling price of $7.50 and $8.50 per pound to protect a 4.75 minimum copper price. Beyond Q3, we don't expect to have of any additional ceiling price limits. But we'll continue with our long-standing practice of protecting the downside with purchasing out of the money put options. We have recently acquired straightforward options, that's put protection at 475 for Q4, and we'll look to extend those -- that put protection into 2027 as these higher copper prices prevail in the current market. Net income for the quarter was $22 million or $0.06 per share, and adjusted net income was $40 million or $0.11 per share after backing out unrealized losses and accretion. Total site costs at Gibraltar for the quarter were $146 million slightly higher than the previous quarter. This amount includes $28 million of capitalized stripping costs for the connector pit. We had a higher strip ratio in the quarter, which was 3.3:1, which contributed to this higher stripping rate. At Florence, we provided some more details on its cost this quarter in the MD&A and show the contribution of Florence in our operating segment note, which is in Note 22, and we'll do so going forward. Site operating costs at Florence were USD 24 million compared to approximately $30 million in revenue. And then like Q1, we didn't capitalize any of these site operating costs in the quarter. While Florence did generate some EBITDA in the period, as Stuart indicated, at these copper prices, we are still funding a portion of the well field development. Our total field development costs were USD 26 million in the quarter. Total liquidity at the end of June increased by $20 million to $342 million, and it includes $186 million of cash, growing production from Florence as well as no expected ceiling on our realized copper price going forward. Will further improve our liquidity in future quarters. We are beginning to review and prioritize debt repayment strategies as we look to delever in the quarters ahead, given this copper backdrop, coupled with our 2 producing assets. And with that, I'll turn it back to the operator to open the lines for questions. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Craig Hutchison from TD Cowen.

Just the first question is on Gibraltar, just in terms of the cadence of the back half of this year. You mentioned that you're moving up in the benches and get back into more of the difficult or the transitional ore has some oxides and recoveries fall off. But I was question just around like grades and throughput. Obviously, grade has been quite strong first half of this year. Did they fall with the with the movement to the upper portions of the pit. And then my second question is around throughput. You've been trending a fair bit below design here. Is the expectation that throughput increases in the second half of this year is the ore softer in these upper upper benches.

Craig, it's Stuart here. I'll start. And yes, in terms of the the production outlook for second half, as I said, moving into some transitional ore. That's more a fourth quarter thing that we're seeing right now. And that will include some reduction in grade as well as part of that. And will be -- I don't think we'll be dropping off quite as much as we experienced in the first half last year. But certainly, there will be, I expect, lower grades or slightly lower recoveries in the last few months of the year. Yes. And I forgot the second part of your question.

Side, it really comes down to watching how the mills are performing overall and taking advantages where it's possible to turn up the throughput and get more tons through while not giving up significant drops in recovery or challenges meeting the grind size that we're targeting. . Okay. Great. And then from a cathode perspective, with the SXEW plant back up and running, like can we expect sort of a similar cadence we've seen in the past quarters or just under GBP 1 million per quarter type thing? .

Craig, Richard again. It will actually with the second leach down brought online now, which we did back in April, we'll see production kind of tweak up from that. So envisioning stronger performance here in the second half of the year. .

Okay. That's good to hear. And then in your comments, you mentioned about the TCRCs next year, I think, around negative $140 a ton. Have you guys locked that in already? Or are you still kind of waiting to lock in next year's TCRCs .

That's our contracted rate. That's kind of a weighted average of several contracts that we have got in place. So yes, it's firm. Yes, it's quite -- it's pretty amazing. It's actually a different type of byproduct credit really. It's quite a change from where we were 5 or 10 years ago. .

That's great to hear. Maybe 1 last question for me. Just on Florence, you mentioned the to start contracting for next year on sulfuric acid later this fall. But just can you tell us what the spot prices are right now in that region? And do you have a sort of fixed amount you want to contract for next year? Are you going to kind of maybe do a blend of kind of term contract and spot contracting .

Yes. On the sulfuric acid front, we're really just starting to engage in kind of more formal discussions with suppliers and exploring all like a number of different scenarios or a number of different options, and I think that's probably all I can say at this point.

And Stuart here. I would add on the spot pricing. What we're seeing and learning, I guess, in the market is that there's not a lot of trade or volume that happens at spot prices, right? Most of the big suppliers and buyers are buying on long-term contracts. So I'm not sure how much how much to read into spot prices. But certainly, as I indicated, we expect some escalation next year given what's happened. .