ATUSF (ATUSF) Q2 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Altius Q2 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded on Tuesday, August 11, 2026. I would now like to turn the conference over to Flora Wood, VP of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Vincent. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Q2 2026 conference call. Our press release and interim filings came out yesterday after the close and are available on our website. This event is being webcast live, and you'll be able to access a replay of the call along with the presentation slides that have been added both to the home page in the Investors section of our website at altiusminerals.com. Brian Dalton, CEO; and Stephanie Hussey, CFO, will speak on the call; and Ernie Ortiz, VP Corp Dev and Head of Lithium is also here as a resource for us in the Q&A. The forward-looking statement on Slide 2 applies to everything we say both in our formal remarks and during the Q&A session. And with that, Stephanie is up first to take us through the numbers.

Thank you, Flora, and good morning, everybody. Yesterday, we reported Q2 net earnings of CAD 8.6 million or CAD 0.16 per share, reflecting higher revenues and higher expenses, including cost of sales, G&A, share-based comp and amortization when compared to Q2 2025. Royalty revenue of CAD 30 million, which was a record and adjusted EBITDA of CAD 23 million for the second quarter reflect higher realized prices, timing of copper stream deliveries, the addition of four operating lithium royalties as well as higher electricity royalty revenue. Operating cash flow of CAD 14 million reflects higher royalty receipts and interest income, offset by higher tax payments and working capital changes. Adjusted net earnings of CAD 0.14 per share for the quarter was higher than Q2 2025 with the main adjusting items being foreign exchange, revaluation of derivatives and nonrecurring costs associated with the LRC acquisition. Some highlights from the quarter include an investment in ARR for our contribution of the Coles Wind acquisition, a 311-megawatt construction stage project for USD 12.4 million. We also acquired CAD 15 million in other investments, including TNR Gold and Blue Moon. We received CAD 42 million from the corporation's original investment in Royalty Capital Funds, funds controlled by Waratah Capital. These investments were made by Altius at the time of the founding and early development of LRC. And as these funds were wound up, proceeds in either cash or Altius shares were distributed to unit investment holders. Subsequent to the quarter, Altius announced three transactions. On July 21, we closed a bought deal public offering of 3 million common shares at a price of CAD 60.50 per share and received net proceeds of CAD 174 million. On July 24, we completed an amendment to our credit facility to upsize to CAD 350 million from CAD 225 million. The previous term and revolving credit facility is now replaced with a single revolver with no principal payments required. The debt balance outstanding of CAD 87 million at the time of the close was transferred to the amended credit facility with maturity being extended from August 2028 to July 2030. The corporation completed a drawdown of CAD 100 million on the revolver at the end of July. And finally, on July 30, the corporation completed a share purchase agreement with Northampton and Apollo in which Altius increased its effective interest in GBR from 29% to 50%, while Northampton increased its interest in GBR from 22% to 50%. The transaction structure involved the acquisition by Northampton of Apollo Funds' 50% interest in GBR for total consideration of USD 390 million while Altius concurrently acquired Northampton's minority interest in ARR for consideration of USD 167 million. The purchase by Altius was funded through cash on hand and debt. And going forward, we will report our 50% ownership of GBR. Following these transactions, current total liquidity available to the corporation is approximately CAD 500 million, and this includes cash on hand, CAD 163 million available under the amended revolver as well as CAD 150 million potentially available as an accordion feature, subject to certain criteria under the terms of our expanded credit facility. During the quarter, we made scheduled debt repayments of CAD 2 million, paid total cash dividends of CAD 5.2 million and issued approximately 7,000 common shares under the dividend reinvestment plan. Yesterday, our Board approved a 10% increase to our dividend or CAD 0.11 per share to be paid to shareholders of record on August 28 with a payment date of September 15. And with that, I'll turn it back to Brian.

Thank you, Stephanie. Good morning, everyone. Our second quarter efforts included the integration of the acquisition of Lithium Royalty Corporation, the acquisition of an increased effective interest in Great Bay Renewables and an equity raise plus expansion of our credit facilities to strengthen the balance sheet and replenish liquidity for further accretive capital allocation opportunities that may emerge. We were also busy with replenishing our PG equity portfolio and growing our longer-term royalty growth portfolio. Our royalties performed well in Q2 and revenues were up materially relative to the comparable quarter last year. More importantly, we continue to gain confidence in the further growth potential of the portfolio as a number of preproduction stage royalties achieved important advancement milestones. In lithium, we continue to receive positive signals from the operators of several of our royalty projects concerning expansions, restarts and new builds. These collectively have caused us to revise upwards our revenue estimates for this segment over the next several years. Lithium demand growth continues to exceed expectations, driven by both increased global electricity, grid battery storage adoption and increasing EV sales in certain regions as a consequence of heightened oil-based fuel price volatility. The average quarterly price for most lithium-based projects increased materially versus the first quarter as strong demand growth outstripped supply growth and resulted in inventory depletion. Ernie is with us on the call today and will be available to answer any specific project or general market-based questions you may have for us during the Q&A. In base metals, we heard positive updates from Vale regarding ramp-up progress at Voisey's Bay. Chapada saw strong production levels plus the commencement of investments by Lundin to grow copper production through the integration of the new Sauva deposit discovery. Silvercorp made steady construction progress at Curipamba and positive PEA results were reported for the Gunnison Copper project. Quarterly average copper and nickel prices both increased by approximately 4% over Q1 as fundamental market balance factors, while increasingly volatile, continue to develop constructively on a net basis. Within ARR and our electricity royalties business, there were significant developments during and subsequent to the quarter. A new advanced stage investment was made at Coles Wind that will add meaningful near-term revenue, and we received positive sanctioning and construction updates from several additional projects. The portfolio now includes 16 operating stage projects and 15 others at various stages of construction. These developments are driving an upwards inflection point for overall electricity royalty portfolio revenue and we're certainly supportive of our decision to increase our effective interest in the underlying GBR joint venture, from 29% to 50%, alongside our long-term focused partners, Northampton Capital Partners and its underlying investor, APG, the major Dutch pension fund. The opportunity to increase our interest came as our original funding partner, Apollo, exited their investment upon the approaching scheduled wind up of the fund entity that it made its investments through. We take this opportunity to thank the teams we have worked with at Apollo for their contributions to the growth and development of this business and commend them on their early recognition of its potential. Underlying macro level demand growth expectations for new electricity generation across the U.S. continues to be strong and broad-based, and the GBR team is continuing to identify a heightened number of potentially accretive deployment opportunities, particularly with respect to near-term production stage projects. Turning to potash. We are sensing a subtle change in outlook from the operators and more particularly, those analysts that cover them. The narrative seems to be shifting from the one heard over the past several years, reflecting concern around competing supply coming online to instead a questioning of established production leaders as to how they might invest to bring on additional supply as existing prebuilt capacity is increasingly being recognized as approaching full practical utilization. In any event, potash demand has been very strong again thus far this year across most regions with annual global consumption forecast ranges beginning to tighten towards the higher end of prior forecasts and causing benchmark prices to strengthen; wonderfully boring stuff as usual. In iron ore, we look forward to results from Champion and its Japanese partners, Nippon and Sojitz later this year regarding the feasibility study for Kami. We also heard Rio Tinto reaffirm its commitment to investment and long-term operational improvement at IOC. Iron ore prices were relatively flat quarter-over-quarter, and our revenues continue to be impacted by lower production and higher capital investment amounts at IOC. In project generation, the team was very busy and continue to create royalties through project sales as well as to identify equity level deployment opportunities that generally included royalty business development components. This work is serving to continue to grow our longer-term growth portfolio and builds upon strong progress last year that was highlighted by the rapid advancement of the Arthur Gold project and our underlying royalty interest. At Arthur, AngloGold Ashanti has announced that it is advancing the project into a full feasibility study during the second half. Before I turn over to your questions, I want to publicly acknowledge and thank my fellow team members for their incredible enthusiasm and work effort over the past 12 months. This started with the partial sale of our Arthur Gold project royalty interest late last summer and then progressed immediately and continuously since then into the redeployment of the proceeds and then some. Amazing job, guys. It continues to be a pleasure and a privilege to work with you. And with that, I'll turn it over to questions.

[Operator Instructions] First question comes from Shane Nagle from National Bank.

Congrats on all the transactions over the past quarter. Just one more of a technical question on consolidation of ARR or I guess, the 50% of GBR going forward. Can you give any color on -- I'm assuming you're going to proportionately consolidate your 50%. Just any color on where that balance sheet stands today after some of the transactions that have taken place like Coles Wind and others within GBR.

It sounds like a stat question to me.

Thanks for the question. We haven't kind of cracked open going forward, but we expect the equity account for GBR as a joint venture. So we'll pick up our 50%, but it will be through equity accounting. We don't expect to do proportionate accounting. So we'll be picking up.

Okay. And then maybe just, Brian, just quickly, you kind of provided some color in your prepared commentary. But just within that renewables section, is that kind of where you see the most accretive opportunity set at the present time? Or maybe just talk about kind of the strategy and the landscape here in terms of allocating capital now going forward?

There certainly is a lot of deal flow coming across the desk at the renewable side of things. But I wouldn't say it's exclusively there. I don't know what it is, but maybe somewhat more subdued market conditions over the past couple of months, I guess, led by declining gold prices seems to have shaken a little bit of other stuff out of the [ woodwork ] as well, and we're seeing some packages and some individual royalty assets on the mining side come across our desk as well. So I'd say we're pretty busy really on pretty much all fronts. Again, I can't promise what will result in transactions, but there are some quality assets that are looking to transact royalties around or existing royalties that we're seeing some groups that have other uses of capital that may be willing to transact as well. So I'm going to tell the rest -- I'm going to tell the team what I've been telling them that take it easy for the rest of this month. It has been a big year, but I do expect a busy fall for everyone.

Your next question comes from Gabriel Chu from Bullpen Research.

I wanted to start off with a question on lithium. So there's some reports that were coming up on the battery tech mix. I imagine you've seen some of it. Sodium ion got a bit of attention. So I'm just wondering how are you guys thinking of this? I imagine this is sort of a scenario where the pie is growing so rapidly space for both lithium and sodium tech, love to see how you guys are anticipating the space to shape up?

Your turn, Ernie.

Yes. So I think you brought up a good point in your question that I think the pie is growing so much larger that there's room for other technologies. But at the same time, the main chemistry that's being massively adopted is lithium ion. So for perspective, this year, battery -- global battery shipments are expected to be approximately 3 terawatt hours. And from research that we've seen, sodium within that, it's roughly 10 gigawatt hours. So it's still just a very small fraction of the overall market. To your point, there are new developments going on in sodium ion, but we do expect lithium ion to be the vast majority of it. Every kind of battery maker in the energy storage market has commented that they're running full out and energy storage shipments are expected to grow by 70% year-over-year this year. So it is a function of the market growing so fast that we need all the batteries, especially for storage that we can get. But whether it's this year or for 2030, all the kind of data that we see is that lithium ion will still be the main chemistry going forward. And of course, sodium does have some benefits in cold weather and so forth, but lithium ion will still be the predominant chemistry.

All right. Power for everyone, rapid growth, everything is needed. Everyone is all hand on deck. Yes. Maybe I'll just wrap it up on the energy side. I'm just curious, the state moratoriums on data centers, Texas coming to mind right now. Has that sort of changed the level of power project entering in any way or has GBR's deployment strategy has changed at all at the regional level in response to this?

I mean I think you raised a good point around -- that's certainly where the narrative is focused in terms of electricity demand growth in the U.S. The big headlines are all around data centers and AI use. But in reality, the demand growth is pretty broad-based and across a lot of sectors or different parts of the economy and different industrial applications. I don't really buy into the demand growth projections that we're seeing around data centers, and it has more to do with -- or less to do with difficulties that some of the proponents are having around social licensing and those efforts. But really, there isn't capacity on grids in the near term. We just can't put that much generation in place. So I think some of the forecasts and whatnot are a bit wonky. Basically, what I'm saying is I don't believe that in any kind of reasonable time frame that supply can come close to coming -- to reaching the sort of demand that's being called for. And so I expect a lot of that's just going to simply fall away or offshore or something like that. But I still do believe that we are in an environment where as much generation as can possibly get built as needed. And that is not going to be sufficient to meet anywhere near the kinds of crazy demand forecast we're seeing out there.

Your next question comes from Mac Whale from ATB Cormark.

This is probably a question for Ernie. I'm wondering, we've seen pricing in the lithium market pretty strong in the first half and then kind of weakened from quite a robust kind of pricing. Looking at the balance of the year, when you're -- maybe you have better insight on inventories, and are they reversing? Like do you expect pricing maybe to dip further and come back up to this level? What's your thought on sort of the near to middle term on pricing?

Yes. With lithium, it's always very volatile. So it's ultimately hard to predict. But to your point, inventories are at cyclical lows, especially considering the market continues to grow. Inventories are extremely tight. We heard one of the largest producers of lithium last week comment about essentially below one month across the chain, whether it's cathode, carbonate or hydroxide. So I think the physical -- and even speaking to traders in our contacts, they do comment about a very tight physical market. And the other thing I would say as far as the demand side, you did have a sequentially slower EV sales in China in June and July. But now we are getting into the busier type of seasonal period where roughly 2/3 of overall EV sales happen in the second half of the year. So you are seeing, I guess, positive signals that could have tailwinds for the second half of the year. But again, I think prices where they are today, still almost 4x what they were a year ago. Our business is performing quite well. Our operators are moving forward with expansions and I guess, new starts with the restarts of core by the end of the year for concentrate shipments. So I think this overall price level is very healthy for our business. And of course, there's volatility for lithium pricing in the near term. But at least the physical market is very strong, and we do very tight, and we do expect for seasonal strength to materialize in the second half of the year.

Okay. And then as a follow-up then, do you -- how does the new ownership change your -- how aggressive you might want to be or can be given, let's say, the strength continues in demand, you might want to be able to maybe expand that portfolio, even though it is a big part of Altius' outlook. Would you kind of give a recap or really update your thinking on like whether you'd be more aggressive in places, say, like in Africa, where there's a lot of development and opportunity. Can you just speak a little bit to sort of the change of what we might expect on the lithium side from new royalties?

I can grab that one, Ernie, if you want. I don't think that's how you should think about how we look at things. I mean our investment criteria is always going to be very, very project-specific. Obviously, we recognize that there is a need for more production in lithium just to keep pace with, obviously, the very strong demand growth that's occurring there as it kind of fits that as part of the adoption curve. But again, we are going to look at assets that we believe can weather full cycles. We're still going to maintain our views around political risk and either avoid or price accordingly. So again, we're not adverse to adding more exposure to lithium. But again, a lithium project will have to compete with a copper project on project quality, price, jurisdiction and so forth. So it's not about trying to drive exposure one way or the other. We're technical investors.

[Operator Instructions] We have no further questions. I'll turn the call back over to Flora.

Thank you, Vincent, and thank you, everybody, for dialing in. Very good to see you. I think I haven't seen you since the ARR IPO and look forward to speaking with everybody again on the Q3 call.

Thanks, everyone.

Thank you, everybody.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.