Original-Research: Almonty Industries Inc (von Sphene Capital GmbH): Buy

Classification of Sphene Capital GmbH to Almonty Industries Inc

Los Santos off-take agreement fast-track route into re-production

Almonty has entered into a long-term tungsten concentrate supply agreement with Wolfram Bergbau und Hütten AG (WBH), a subsidiary of Sweden's Sandvik Group, covering concentrate to be recovered from the existing tailings stockpile at the Los Santos Mine in Spain. The agreement is structured on a take-or-pay basis and includes a conditional one-time upfront payment of USD 3.0 mn for the off-take rights. According to management, pricing will be linked to the tungsten market while including a contractual floor price. WBH’s contribution is intended to support the reactivation of the existing processing facilities at Los Santos, which has been on care and maintenance since February 2020.

In our view, the agreement is significant for several reasons. Most importantly, it substantially de-risks a potential restart of Los Santos by securing a committed customer even before production resumes. In our view, this is particularly relevant for a comparatively small mining operation, where the economics of a restart could otherwise be adversely affected by uncertainties regarding sales volumes, working capital requirements, and the availability of funding. The combination of a take-or-pay commitment, a minimum price mechanism, and an USD 3.0 mn upfront contribution should therefore improve the visibility of future cash flows and reduce the amount of capital that Almonty itself would need to contribute to recommission the Los Santos mine. In our view, this broadly follows a pattern already visible at Sangdong, where long-term contractual relationships with major industrial customers have become an important element in reducing commercial risk. In our update from July, we have already highlighted the positive implications of Almonty's expanded long-term GTP (Plansee Group) off-take agreement for planning certainty and future cash-flow visibility.

In our view, the most interesting operational aspect of the transaction is that Los Santos will not initially be restarted as a conventional mining operation. Instead, tungsten will be recovered from material that was already mined and processed during the mine's former operating periods. Almonty has continued to develop its tailings recovery technology since production at Los Santos was suspended and states that it has materially improved WO3 recovery rates in subsequent tests and trials.

We calculate a price target of USD 26.40 (previously: CAD 38.90) per share, implying a 92.4% upside from the last closing price of USD 13.72. We reiterate our Buy rating for the shares of Almonty Industries.