Earnings Labs

Elemental Royalty Corporation Common Stock (ELE)

Q1 2025 Earnings Call· Tue, May 20, 2025

$17.06

-5.12%

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Transcript

Frederick Bell

Management

Thank you, everyone, who has come in today for Elemental Altus' Q1 2025 Earnings Call. We're just giving it a little bit of time as we've got a few people still joining. But in the meantime, thank you for those in all the way in Vancouver, morning time. And I see we've got some Australian shareholders as well. So, well-represented across the different time zones. And today you have got myself, Frederick Bell, the CEO of Elemental Altus; and you've got David Baker, our CFO, who is going to take the majority of this call and walk you through. I think we're good to begin now. And I would say that Q1 2025 was the strongest quarter in the company's history. We had record adjusted revenue of $13.3 million. And for comparison, Q1 in the equivalent period 2024 was $4.7 million. And on top of that revenue, subsequent to the quarter-end, we received approximately $9.6 million related to the mainstream that we had. And I think it's worth mentioning our newest producing royalty, Korali-Sud, that also made a strong contribution this quarter, and that was about $6.6 million. And it puts us in a position today where we have over $70 million available to the company in non-dilutive capital to deploy. And that is from a combination of cash and undrawn credit facilities. And that is by a long distance, the largest in the history of the company. And it's worth mentioning that we do have flexibility. We have a normal course issuer bid that we put in place earlier in the year and is available for us to use going forwards. A bit more detail and color on some of the -- on some of the numbers coming out from Q1. So, it was a record both in terms…

David Baker

Operator

Thanks, Fred. Yes, portfolio continues to be underpinned by two cornerstone cash flowing, assets and royalties, Karlawinda and Caserones. Both in the quarter delivered strong, operational performance and then that continuing upside potential. At Karlawinda, we had gold production of over 30,000 ounces, that led to over, $1.8 million of revenue. That was driven by its higher-than-expected volumes from the Bibra Open Pit, combined with record gold prices. Capricorn itself has maintained production guidance of a 110,000 to 120,000 ounces of gold for the year to June 2025, so in line with our estimates. And as we've spoken to previously, Capricorn have announced a major expansion at Karlawinda targeting 150,000 ounces of gold annually. That's a 30% increase on what they're currently doing, while still maintaining that current 10 year mine life, which we think has plenty of room for expansion. Caserones also shown strong performance in the quarter, revenue of $1.6 million that benefited from higher mill throughput, and some of those delayed, December shipments that we'd spoken to previously, that were completed in Q1. Lundin, has reiterated 2025 production guidance of a 115,000 to a 125,000 tonnes of copper, and that's pretty consistent with previous years. These two royalties, a quarter of our cash flow base. We got clear visibility on growth, and mine life expansion, which leaves us well positioned to benefit from both commodity upside and operational scale. We also see strong contributions from the border portfolio, in spread sales including the commencement of revenue from Korali-Sud, continued strong performance at Bonikro, and also like to give you an update on Wahgnion. Bonikro contributed to Q1, royalty sales on nearly 19,000 ounces, slammed slightly year-on-year, but we'd expect stronger performance, ahead, as Allied expects to process high grade material from H2 2025 through 2026 and 2027.…

A - Frederick Bell

Analyst

Well, look, and thank you, David, and also to the team to bring out together and all the work. And where it puts us -- it puts us in a position where 2025 will be a record year both in terms of gold equivalent ounces, but also with the corresponding exposure to the gold price and that leverage to a day-to-day. And I think where the gold price is today gives us material room for improvement on the guidance in terms of revenue numbers that we had at the start of the year. We also have the milestone payments of which we're expecting the majority to land in the first-half of the year, and we have received, that first large payment on the main stream. In terms of the portfolio, we continue to be anchored by two really high quality uncapped royalties in Caserones with Lundin Mining in Chile and Karlawinda with Capricorn Metals in West Australia. We have continuing growth from the portfolio with the addition of the second-half of the AlphaStream portfolio contributing coming into 2025 with the first revenue from the Korali-Sud royalty. And then, looking ahead, actually, even into 2026 with the expansion underway at the Karlawinda gold project, we have a track record of value creating transactions, and if you look at our presentation, we update that as every quarter goes by with revenue numbers that we can incorporate. And I think what it shows is over time, those returns tend to get better, and it shows the value of the royalty model and the value of the optionality that comes through that. We are in terms of financial positioning and positioning to transacting opportunities, we are in the strongest position the company has ever been in. And to put that into perspective, I think…

David Baker

Operator

Thanks, Fred. We got only one question, which is on Korali-Sud. Just a breakdown of ounces for Q4 and Q1 and the expected quarterly run rate, I can kick off with that. So, in terms of the production line or the sales, royalty sales, because we get paid on sales, not production, we had about 49,000 ounces, that was unsold in Q4 that contributed to Q1. And then, let's say, approximately 80,000 ounces that were in Q1, so that would be the difference. So, we're looking at approximately 30,000 ounces in Q1. We don't guide on an asset. We don't guide any revenue by or GEOs by asset. But we had approximately, based on discussions and publicly available information from Allied, we had about 100,000 ounces for the year from Korali-Sud in terms of our internal expectations. So, we're about 80,000 ounces of that at the moment. Again, I still expect that to be weighted to the first-half of the year. I would say that does leave a lot of room for exploration upside, commingling potential of Korali-Sud as well. So, I think there's upside to that. So, say about, 49,000 ounces -- 40,000 ounces in Q4, about 31,000 ounces in Q1. And then, expecting about another 25,000 ounces for the rest of the year, but again, we're still awaiting updates from the operator on the upside there.

David Baker

Operator

Hi, Brian, so question from Brian MacArthur. I hope you doing well. I'll talk about cash flow from Wahgnion. We didn't book revenues in Q1. When did we lay our last cash payment and how much is owed? Thanks, Brian. So, we received a cash payment in Q3 2024, and that was related to Q2 production. So, the current receivable on the books related to Q3 and Q4, that's just a bit over $1 million in post-tax revenue and we have booked that as a receivable. And so, to say, we haven't booked anything in Q1. So, our view is that, that receivable is full and payable. We've had nothing to the difference from either the company's external auditor or the operators. So, we're looking to get those payments restarted post audit. I might pass this over to you. Another question from Pierce, do we a goal for metals exposure long-term? Is that goal, is that silver? Is that anything else?

Frederick Bell

Management

Okay. It's a good question. Thank you, Pierce. And I think that currently, we have approximately 85% in terms of our revenue exposure to gold and 15% to copper. And our portfolio has a heavy weighting to copper with some of the development assets. I think that long-term, we'd like to keep the majority of the portfolio weighted towards precious metals and include silver in that and not as many silver opportunities in the market, as we have discussed. But it is primarily gold and silver, but I think what it does do and where we are today is it also allows us the flexibility to opportunistically look at assets and royalties that are in different commodities where we see compelling value. And so, broadly speaking, that is how we'll approach it, which is a focus on precious metals, but also willingness to look at other opportunities where we see really compelling value and with the basis that we have the majority of the portfolio weighted already towards precious metals. Great. And then, there was one question, Dave, just in the chat from Adam, which was around the -- thank you for the comment, but it was also around the $10.8 million that's accrued royalty income and how much of that is related to Wahgnion.

David Baker

Operator

Yes. So, thanks, Adam. So, it's an excellent question, yes. So, we recruited nothing for Wahgnion for the quarter. We've taken a conservative approach given that we don't -- we don't have the statements available. We certainly -- that was a very considered approach by management. We decided to take a very conservative view there. But what we would look to do is when we have those statements available to us that we will accrue that revenue in a subsequent quarter. So, yes, at this stage, we've accrued no revenue -- revenue in Q1 for Wahgnion.

Frederick Bell

Management

And it might just be worth saying that we have accrued approximately $1.1 million in post-tax royalty revenue from Wahgnion today. Dave, correct me if that --

David Baker

Operator

Yes, correct.

Frederick Bell

Management

But we have not for Q1.

David Baker

Operator

Yes, exactly right.

Frederick Bell

Management

At the moment, that is all the questions we have. So, I'll just ask if anyone else has a question, please add it? Here we go. Yes, we have a question here from Mark. Thank you, Mark relating to, can you talk to any promising developments in the non-producing royalties perhaps looking ahead over the next 12 months? Look, I think that is a good question because we don't often get the chance to talk about the other 60 to 70 royalties in our portfolio. I think on these quarterly calls, the focus is largely on the producing assets and the cash flow, but it is a large part, the majority of our portfolio are actually on assets that are in the preproduction stage. And I think there are some exciting events in some of those and one or two we can perhaps talk to in a bit more detail, maybe two development assets that we have acquired in the last 18 months. One of those is the Cactus Copper royalty with Arizona Sonoran. And that is a project where we bought the royalty approximately 18 months ago. We have seen the metal in our royalty area approximately triple over that period. We have seen Hub Bay coming as a strategic investor alongside Rio Tinto and also Tenbo. We have seen the company, I think, make a lot of progress across studies, both incorporating Newton which is a technology Rio Tinto have incubated, but also looking at more traditional processing routes. And we recently saw, I think, in two to three months ago, Royal Gold actually come in and acquire a sister royalty to us at about a 65% higher price. So, I think that is a good demonstration of the value-add on one of those assets where I think…

David Baker

Operator

Apologies. Try again. Thanks, Fred. Thanks everyone for joining. Again, a record quarter for revenue, EBITDA and profitability for the company made in revenue at Korali-Sud with our newest producing royalty and looking forward to that trend and continuing with record gold prices and growth in some of our material assets. So, thank you, everyone, and I look forward to speaking soon.