Q3 2025 Altius Minerals Corp Earnings Call
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the LTS minerals Q3 conference, call and webcast.
At this time, all lines are in less than only mode following. The presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this, call, you require immediate assistance. Please press star zero for an operator. This call is being recorded on Wednesday. November 12th, 2025. And I would like to turn the conference over to miss florwood. Thank you, please. Go ahead. Thank you Ena.
Good morning everyone and Welcome to our Q3 conference. Call our press release and interim, filings were released yesterday after the close and are available on our website.
This event is being webcast live and you'll be able to access or replay the call along with the presentation slides that are on our website at Altus minerals.com.
Brian Daulton CEO and Stephanie hazy CFO are our speakers for the call.
You've heard Stephanie before when she substituted for been, but this quarter I'm proud to introduce her as CFO.
Now, I'm on forward looking statements.
Before we're looking statement on slide 2 applies to everything we say in our formal remarks and during the Q&A. And with that, Stephanie is up first.
GNA costs are up slightly related to 1 time, retirement payments and moving forward, we can expect a reduction in base salary costs of approximately 40%.
The corporation also recognized the 64 million gain in other comprehensive earnings following the origin. Triple flag plan of arrangement.
Altius received cash of 2. 2, 9. 5, 0, 0.
Increases in royalty revenue and adjusted Eva for Q3. Reflect higher attributable, petsch volumes, and realized prices higher copper stream, deliveries and 3.4 million in interest and investment income.
These amounts are partially offset by lower incomes from Iron Ore.
Growth in operating cash flow for the quarter was driven by higher royalty, revenue, and interest receipts offset by taxes paid in working capital changes.
Technical royalty foreign exchange and related tax impacts.
Following our 2 significant transactions in the quarter. The corporation considerably, strengthened, its balance sheet, and liquidity profile.
In Q3 we received 250 million us of the 275 million purchase price of the Arthur royalty. And in Q4, we can expect the remaining 25 million net of any withholding taxes and this will be following the expiry of any Challenge and appeal period. This is associated with our arbitration process.
Current total liquidity available is approximately 540 million and this includes cash on hand 125 million available under our revolver, as well as 62 and a half million potentially available, as an accordion feature subject, to certain criteria under the terms of our credit agreement.
During the quarter, we made debt repayments of 11 million. This consisted of 9 million voluntary repayment on the revolver and a 2 million principal repayment on our term debt, we pay total cash dividends of 4.2 million and issued approximately 13,000, common shares under the dividend, reinvestment plan,
in August, the
Corporation renewed. Its normal course issuer bid for another year and we purchased and cancelled fixed 52,000, common shares for a total cost of a million and a half dollars.
Yesterday, our board of directors approved, a quarterly dividend of 10 cents per share to be paid to shareholders of record on November the 28th with a payment date of December the 15th.
Our renewable royalty business. Also, remains well-funded with increased Market activity, a new opportunity is arising from development construction and operating level Investments. We expect to see continued portfolio growth, over the coming quarters.
Before I hand it over to Brian. I wanted to thank both been Lewis and Chad Wells for their guidance and support throughout my career. Been has been a mentor of mine since 2006 before I joined Altius. In 2014, I look forward to working with them, both in their advisory roles moving forward. And with that, I'll hand it over to Brian.
Hey Steph, thank you flora and uh to everyone for being with us today. I would like to start where staff left off in thanking been and Chad for many years of dedicated service and camaraderie as we work together to grow Altius from a small, Junior Explorer to a well Diversified royalty company, in highly profitable, exploration business,
Your efforts have left Altius and far better shape than when you joined.
While we wish them well in their retirements, we are delighted to be able to still Avail of their wisdom, going forward and to continue to call them friends.
I know I'm speaking for the entire team.
Congratulations to Stephanie on her advancement and progression to the role of CFO, where we know she will continue to excel.
As noted by Stephanie Altus finds itself today in excellent, financial help with a very strong balance sheet from which to base future potential growth.
The effort of figuring out how we might best. Deploy. Our capital resources as well underway and our corporate development team is busy analyzing and comparing a host of interesting options.
You will hear more on this effort in the coming quarters, I'm sure.
All this work certainly includes analysis of various external opportunities. We continue to keep sight of our already established internal growth profile.
That stems from existing assets and Investments. We made primarily through a Les Rosie or optimistic part of the mining industry cycle. And we currently seem to be experiencing
This past quarter saw an improvement in prices, for many of the Commodities we are exposed to particularly for paudash, copper us-based, electricity, gold, and lithium, and this is naturally begun to translate into higher royalty Revenue.
Price is only half the story at best. However, when considering royalty investments at obvious,
We are far more intrigued and focused on the volume side of the equation, noting that it is drawing the up parts of the cycle when sentiment and capital availability drive decisions by operators to expand existing operations and to build new ones.
We are seeing positive signals in this regard across our portfolio.
This is a function of the very dedicated Focus. We placed over the past decade, or more on selecting for assets that we felt will be the most likely investment candidates for these types of Investments.
Essentially, this meant attaching ourselves to Assets in which existing production rates seem low as a function of resource size and or in which cost structures and other development parameters.
Are more favorable than most competing alternatives.
No worries. This feature more prominent within our portfolio that we're with respect to our Ultra long life, low cost, low geopolitical risk podcast podcast mine, exposures
Food continues to track along a well-established Trend and a signal from our operator is about continuing to hold if not grow market, share are currently amplifying.
So while we still believe even after strong movement over the past 2 years, that current Pace prices do not readily, incentivize a new wave of major growth Investments.
We do know that these must ultimately come, and that our asset exposure represents the most advantaged opportunities to bring on the supplies that the world will need—need—and need sooner than most observers currently anticipate.
This, our continuing work to estimate incentivization, pricing for both, ground fields, and brown Fields product development in Saskatchewan was recently informed by updated costs and time to completion estimates that BHP announced for Jansen project.
This has led to our view that the gap between current prices and the levels required to keep the global market. Supplied has further wide in recent years,
Sorry, I'm going to go and pause for a moment.
Sorry about that. Fire alarm in the building—uh, just a test. No worries.
Um another area of potential future volume growth that we are monitoring closely is with respect to Lundin's, current efforts to expand production levels at a chipata complex.
It has been reported that it is exploring a relatively low capital cost project to incorporate higher grade ore from its recent AUA discovery, which would result in a meaningful increase in final copper output.
We're expecting more details of this plan in the first quarter next year and note that our copper stream rates extend to the Suva lands.
We saw good news during the quarter from Silver, Corp that, it continues to track. Well in terms of cost and timeline for its under construction Curry pombo mine where we hold a 2% NSR,
At spot prices, our annual revenue, expectations and irr estimates on the original investment have increased meaningfully.
This is in large part driven by Curry Pompa strong precious metals content.
Turning to our U.S.-based electricity royalties, we saw excellent progress during the quarter. We are continuing revenue ramp-up.
as new projects continue to commission and our interconnection funding initiative began to deliver results.
Our portfolio. Now, consists of 13 operating stage, royalties, and 5 projects under construction by a very strong suite of counterparties.
Perhaps most importantly, we note the freeze-up in investment activity that has characterized the renewable electricity sector for most of this year, driven by heightened political uncertainty.
Has begun to thaw. This has led to the resumption of project sales, activity for our developer partners, and the associated de-risking of our underlying royalties.
It has also led to increased industry project financing activity that has allowed us to increase our near-term, expectations for deployment into New World Investments.
We anticipate being in a position to provide further, detail on this front in our year-end update.
At Arthur we heard another very encouraging update from Agra that spoke to ongoing resource growth and project scope potential based on continuing positive drilling results.
This included references to growth and continuity for a particularly high grade portion of the Merlin deposit that in previous studies was shown to give the potential for several years of plus 1 million Oz per year, production rates in the early part of the mine plan.
to the extent that this high grade core continues to expand the obvious implication, is that there is increased potential for this type of production rate to continue for longer,
At current prices that production rate implies royalty, Revenue levels and potentially more than 30 million a year for our 0.5% NSR.
We look forward to learning more. When AA publishes a PFS this coming February.
Turning next to Cammy, we congratulate champion and partners nipon steel and soldiers and closing the first phase of their investment partnership during the quarter.
We were also encouraged to learn of continuing progress, Pro progress, with respect to engineering studies environmental permitting, social licensing, and efforts to attract infrastructure support associated with Canada's new, push to strengthen, its critical mineral sector,
As mentioned previously, this project has particular strategic importance to nipon as it continues to execute a major investment program that is designed to modernize its steel. Making Fleet to Electric Arc Furnace based technology.
which is reliant on high Purity, inputs of the type Kami is being designed to produce
Our 3% Kami royalty has the potential to become our single largest by Revenue.
Is that it results in an increased availability of capital for explorers? There's more money available for the juniors.
In turn naturally leads to increased drilling activity across our portfolio of early stage, royalty projects, and therefore enhance Discovery potential, and the possibility for more Cami and silicon type events in our future.
I'll conclude by saying that while our efforts to source external opportunities have certainly notched up following the closing of the partial sale of our Arthur royalty.
We do not believe that our growth is at all dependent or solely dependent on this work.
The work we did in selecting for higher probability expansion and new build opportunities over the past number of years already solidifies our potential organic growth profile.
We look forward to updating you further following Q4 and what we expect will be a particularly busy and period of reporting from several of our royalty operator counterparties.
And with that, I'll turn it over to your questions. Thank you.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press star, followed by the 1 on your telephone keypad. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to cancel your request, please press star, followed by the 2. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question.
And your first question comes from the line is Ryan. McArthur from Raymond James, please go ahead.
Good morning, I have 2 questions. My first 1 is just a technical 1 on the 25th from Franco. They talked about making it in Q4, and you're rewarding sort of sounds like, you think you'll get it in queue Q4, but there may be additional challenges.
Are you seeing challenges or is that just being cautious language? But when you get the 24th 5 million in,
Well, the payment is due upon the expiry.
you know, date of any challenge assuming that no challenge has been made and to date, we don't know of any Challenge and we're getting very close to that uh,
Deadline for uh uh for Anglo to make make any challenge. But that's really it's it's a technical answer as well. It's a very formal trigger for that uh for that payment. And essentially it means we've got to go past the
Appeal, period appeal is probably not exactly the right word but challenge period and um without Challenge and at that point, the payment is automatically do.
But that time period is in Q4, technically.
Okay, great. Thank you very much. Um, my my other question just relates to gbr. There's a lot of discussion now about if I'm reading this correctly that you're putting, um, debt into a lot of these deals at the moment. Did when you do that, um, when you get your 7% return, is there a link that you're entitled to a royalty or or, or how, how are you thinking about that because again,
Um, maybe it would be royalties get a different multiple than doing debt deals at the end of the day.
Yeah, no, I think you're exactly right in that assessment. Uh, so there is a dedicated debt financing facility in place that is being utilized to support both these interconnection deposits.
uh, to date, there isn't a formal linkage to
Uh, to royalties but at some point these deposits that are currently fully refundable uh will turn to refundable deposits and then you know at that point our payments are due. So we do see a lot of opportunity there to continue these relationships with those groups as they as that shifts over and we could potentially convert.
Some of the facilities to, uh, to royalties in the future. But obviously that, uh,
That's a 2-part equation of both sides would have to see something reasonable there. So I think it's probably better to look at it as yes. A nice sort of incremental source of Revenue. A means of supporting
Uh, our partners and others in the industry. And certainly a, uh, hopefully, anyway, a means of uh.
Um, you know, a relationship building tool that hopefully leads to additional deal flow?
but, you know, for the meantime it's, it's
It's, uh, quite profitable and, uh, but I, I wouldn't treat it as sort of, you know, this is not long term, recurring Revenue, these are relatively short duration.
Um, instruments.
Great. Thanks. That that that color is very very helpful. Thank you.
Thanks Brian.
Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Um, Brian.
Can you please give us some color on what Altius plans to do with this cash windfall that it's received? Uh, from the recent transactions. I mean you're sitting with uh, near enough, 400 million plus of cash. How do you plan to deploy that moving forward? And do you see opportunities out there to deploy it? Uh, and, and if you do, I'd be curious, sort of what Commodities, um, you're looking at right now.
probably, I'll give you some call around the last part, but
You know, think in terms of the kinds of commodity exposures, we already. We already have. We like those.
Um, you know, we're careful about managing balance across that but, you know, we're not afraid to have something. Get
Uh, get bigger if that's where the opportunity.
Unity risks but, you know, we're not looking at, um, any kind of, you know,
Big foray into into anything exotic. We like the kinds of commodity exposures that we have.
you know, as far as
the deployment question goes, yes, there are potential opportunities out there in marketing, the team or...
Pretty busy working through those. Um, but, you know, you know us we're going to be very patient and disciplined and uh, take our time with sorting through things and
Uh, there's lots of opportunities with the fullness of time here. It could involve, you know, external opportunities. It could also involve um,
um what we would call internal m&a and that's, you know, using the buyback to increase our exposure to
the existing growth profile that we already have in place, so
You know, we're taking our time, we're going through what our alternatives are and um you know, this will be done.
Um, methodically and and obvious like fashion. I mean, you know, us the last time we had a pile of cash and we talked about deploying it into
New opportunities. We, uh, we ended up waiting for, I think it was over 5 years till the window opened. So we're not afraid of that either. It's not the base assumption here.
but um,
Yeah, it's a world-class problem. And we're, uh, we're working through it. It's, uh, it's a fun effort, and I think everyone certainly is, uh,
Excited to have the shackles off a little bit in that. Anything we’re looking at now, as potential external opportunities, at least doesn’t necessarily involve.
You know, Equity or the dilution of the um what's already embedded as a grow profile within within the company. So I'm not going to get any more specific than that as you might imagine.
Well, I'll try. I'll try anyways with a follow-up question. Do you?
I I totally understand that it takes time, and these opportunities come up when they come up, but in terms of the potential to increase your buyback, is that something we could see sooner rather than later,
Well, put it this way: when we're looking at external opportunities, everything has to measure up against what we see as the upside in terms of owning more of our own assets. So that's part of the mix right now.
That's the the sort of the an analysis that's going on. How does that opportunity compared to this 1 over here, this 1 over here and the 1 that's always available for us. And some of that's going to be
You know, Market circumstantial.
I know it's been a strong Market here, but, um,
markets have been known to be volatile in the past and uh, we're kind of excited about
That volatility was quite frankly at Altius and, you know, ready to move but
Yeah, I think we're getting there. We're getting there in terms of, uh,
Priority lists and and just when we do make a priority list, it doesn't mean it's immediately actionable. But at least informs us to be ready and poised to potentially, uh, potentially do things whether that's on the buyback or, or something external.
So there you get a little more out of me, but that's it. I promise.
Thank you. Have a good day. Good luck. Cheers.
Thank you. Once again, should you have a question, please press star, followed by the 1 on your telephone keypad.
And your next question comes from the line of Craig Hutchinson from TD Cowen. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, guys.
Um, maybe it's just a follow up. Question from from Brian's question earlier, just on the gbr. Um, it seems like there's a lot of opportunity in on in this kind of deploying, uh, Capital to support, um, these refundable interconnection deposits. But
Of, you know, how long you expect to to take to get repaid, you know, just looking at a 7% margin spread that seems to imply Lisa my my view there is some risk here giving us a pretty healthy margin but just any kind of context in terms of you know the potential opportunity here. Um those duration of those, the timing of the repayments of the refundable interconnection deposits and just maybe if you can speak to, to why that margin is so hi. Thanks.
Uh, I wouldn't actually characterize it as.
A function of the the Investments being risky, the fact, it might be a little bit the other way.
It's largely a function of how low our cost of capital is for um you know that we're utilizing.
Because these are fully refundable deposits. We're not actually making the payments to the counterparties, these are being you know, pledged on their behalf.
But we retain full control. So, you know, these are not, it's not cash, that's gone to a counterparty. So, for example, if the counter card counterparty got in trouble, um, these deposits are not, you know, essentially they're not part of their
Their asset mix, and we retain full control. So we've got quite a high rating attached to that facility.
Um, and so yeah, so it's pretty low cost capital. And then on the other side, um,
It does speak to.
You know, pretty.
How would I put it like money is fairly expensive in the in the renewable sector? And so a lot of these groups as well would be developers by Nature, right? It's it's not going to be the next year or the world that are looking for this money from us, who can, you know, fund it from
Existing balance sheets. These are groups that, quite frankly, would rather not have their own capital tied up with these deposits; they'd rather...
Advanced their projects on the ground. So, you know, they you know, the return.
Or what we're getting paid to provide these uh facilities is a function of, you know, more difficult market conditions, particularly, you know, for Equity type. Um
Capital and, you know,
prioritization of uses of capital by some of these groups. You know, this isn't going to be out there for extended periods of time. Um, so the cost is uh you know, it just makes sense for them. It's it's it's it's what the market is, is bearing right now.
you know, if you go further with it,
And think more about what we're, you know, like I guess more focused on, which is acquiring long-term.
Royalty type interests, recurring.
Revenue streams, optionality, all that sort of thing; the same can be true for returns.
Are expected returns have edged up.
um, in the last while and that's
You know, it's largely a function. Just look at the equity markets in the renewable space right now. It's.
It's uh, it's not.
Particularly strong. Although it does seem to be improving. Um, and I'll, I'll be honest on the other hand and this is what's remarkable is that um, there is some
Uh, reticence amongst Landing groups and Banks because they actually fear.
You know, repercussions from the US Administration about being seen to be supportive of the industry. So quite a while backdrop really. Uh but but you know,
If you've got conviction in the long-term belief, what it results in is, uh,
Uh, you know, competing forms of capital are ...
scarce are now then, then they would have been uh, and uh, returns of
adjusted accordingly, and the other thing that's remarkable about this is that the actual fundamental backdrop
Is really strong. So you've got these challenging market conditions and um you know, reluctance on the part of competing forms of capital against what is probably the strongest electricity Market that anyone, you know, who's an investor has ever seen in the US market.
and the Gap, that's sort of how that Gap is in some ways being filled is through,
Its the end users of the power. It's the bars of the power who are stepping up and signing quite long term.
Um, above-market priced contracts to buy the electricity. So that's sort of what stepped in to fill the hole.
so, you know, on that hand it's extremely
bullish conditions out there, but
Remarkably weak um financing conditions. So quite an interesting uh,
Just position there but I love it.
Okay, great. I'm pretty sure the color brown.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. Miss would please proceed?
Thank you. Ah, we do actually have a question from a shareholder whose email is thanking you for doing that, by the way, and it's about the Labrador Trough.
Um, high grade low impurity iron door. And the first part of it is really about the Outlook especially in light of Simon do coming on. And the second part is, do we have any update on Julian Lake?
Uh the second part is the easy no, no real update there. And in fact, there was a recent um,
Change in government in in uh, within Newfoundland. And this is obviously the the process that I think is being referred to is, uh,
Proposals that we've made to the proper provincial government, uh around. Um, um, advancing or developing the Julian Lake deposit that it controls. So we don't
Have uh, have the results of that process in front of us yet and uh, you know, it may take a little time for the new government to get their heads around.
what's going on there, but we'll certainly be updating
Uh, whenever we do, uh, the Sim do question, there's a little bit of confusion, I think, out there in the market with respect to that. It's not actually designed.
Uh, to produce.
You know, ultra high purity.
Dr. Grade iron ore. There's talk of that potentially being some of the, the mix down the road, but really what it is. It's more the higher grade end of the blast furnace.
spectrum, and it's it's sort of it's a function of
How rapidly overall grades are declining in Australia. I would say there's even pushes now to reduce the benchmark of 62 down to 61, all sorts of challenges. Um,
From the established producers there that are emerging and trying to meet, you know, Basics back for uh for Blast Furnace grade. So, as I understand it anyway, Simon do is meant to be, you know, that that that Continuum for Blast Furnace grade would be sort of say
58 to 65. And that's meant to, uh,
To, uh, improve Rio's, you know, contribution at the higher end of that spectrum and to bring their overall grade to sort of a rest, the overall grade decline they've been dealing with.
hope that answers it.
That's good. I think there's, uh, no further questions.
So, we'd like to thank everybody again for joining us, and we'll look forward to speaking with you for Q4.
Thank you, everyone. Thank you, and congratulations. Thank you very much. First one under your belt.
Thank you. Thanks, everybody, for joining.
All right. Bye bye. Thank you. And this concludes today's call, thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.