Ramaco Resources, Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Remarko Resources' fourth quarter 2024 results conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star and then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star, then 2. Please note that this event is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the conference over to the Chief Financial Officer, Jeremy Sussman. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. On behalf of Ramico Resources, I'd like to welcome all of you to our fourth quarter 2024 earnings conference call. With me this morning is Randy Atkins, our Chairman and CEO, Chris Blanchard, our EVP for Mine Planning and Development, and Jason Fanning, our Chief Commercial Officer. Before we start, I'd like to share our normal cautionary statement. Certain items discussed on today's call constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements represent Ramico's expectations concerning future events. These statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are outside of Ramico's control which could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which it is made and except as acquired by law, Ramico does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. I'd also like to remind you that you can find a reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures that we plan to discuss today in our press release which can be viewed on our website, www.ramicoresources.com. Lastly, I'd encourage everyone on this call to go onto our website and download today's investor presentation. With that said, let me introduce our Chairman and CEO, Randy Atkins.

Randy Atkins Good morning, and thank you for joining the call. On the Metco side of our business, the fourth quarter was clearly our strongest quarter of the year, both financially and operationally. This was despite continued market headwinds on pricing. We controlled what we could control, which were costs and volume. We also achieved three milestones for the quarter. We had record tons sold. We exited the year with cash costs well under $100 a ton, and we ended with record levels of liquidity. All in all, we had a very strong quarter. As a result of this solid performance, especially on cash mine costs, the fourth quarter margins remained at $33 a ton. This was down just $2 a ton since the second quarter, and despite an almost $30 drop in met coal prices between the second to the fourth quarters. Based on the results from all of our publicly traded peers in Central Appalachia, Ramico's cash margins were almost 50% higher than the next highest public peer for both the third and fourth quarters. For that, I compliment both our mine operations and sales teams. The year-long negative pricing environment, of course, stretched into the fourth quarter. China continued dumping its overproduction of steel to all world markets. This has hurt prices. Steel companies have cut back their own production and reduced the price they can pay for Metcalfe's feedstock. But while the overall steel demand remains weak, there are reasons to hope that the MET prices may hopefully increase in the second half of the year. Indeed, we've already seen a bump in the domestic steel HRC pricing from less than $700 per ton in Q3 to $940 per ton today. Looking at the supply side, I'm not sure the investing public understands how much carnage the drop in pricing has done to met coal production in the U.S. over the past year and is still doing. We believe that by the end of this year, as much as $16 million domestic tons of MET production will have come out of the U.S. market since its peak in Q2 of 24. If you take 16 million tons out of an overall U.S. MET coal production that was 72 million tons last year, that 20 percent drop in supply is going to eventually impact the market. The main reason for the production drop at higher-cost producers is simply the crushing negative cash burn. This has already caused a number of recent bankruptcies. In addition, there have been two large long-wall mines that experienced ignition events that caused those mines to remain offline and, in one case, to declare bankruptcy as well. Also in January, we began to notice an increase in inbound European customer interest for spot availability. We believe this was primarily due to an increase in demand from Ukraine as a result of the closure of the country's only domestic coal mine. And also, in Poland, a large mine had an ignition event about the same time. The aggregate impact of all these factors has created a noticeable tightening of supply in the U.S. Going forward, we expect to see more domestic idling of high-vol production destined for Asian markets. Current netbacks are cash negative for high-cost operations. Several producers in this spot probably can't renew all of their annual Asian contract business, which would typically begin next month. Absent a large increase in pricing, we expect another round of highball supply cuts over the next few months. I would also note that Australian producers, in terms of volume shipped from Queensland, are off to their worst start of the year, going back for several years. The cyclone last week will not help. On the demand side, everyone is watching potential impacts of tariffs on steel imports. Our own analysis is that tariffs might produce roughly two to three million tons of potential increase in domestic coal demand. This happens when tariffs limit steel imports and domestic black furnaces then ramp up production to fill the gap. You are starting to see that already in the run-up in domestic HRC pricing. I'd also like to touch on our balance sheet. We have recently been maintaining record amounts of liquidity. It was about $140 million at the year end. We regard keeping this high level of dry powder as both defensive as well as offensive. In a tricky market environment, it's prudent to have liquidity to meet whatever conditions might arise. We also want to position ourselves to execute on opportunities that might present themselves during market distress. One item I want to emphasize is that despite the current market gloom, we remain positive over the medium and longer term on our plan to increase future production. When we can finally see some stronger market clarity, we are ready to add roughly 2 million tons of lowball production in relatively short order. Specifically, we would proceed with both the 1.5 million ton deep mine expansion at our Maven complex, and also continue mining into the number three and number four sections at our Maven complex, which would add another 500,000 tons. These low vol additions would allow us to increase overall production to roughly six and a half to seven million ton level within a 24 to 36 month period once we start. This would also shift our overall production slate to a majority of low vol production, which we feel gives us a strong quality posture for the future. Now, switching gears to our Wyoming operations, I'm pleased to report that our Rare Earth and Critical Minerals project is moving forward at an accelerated clip. We have been delayed for months in receiving third-party chemistry and meteorologic test results. Almost all of that test data is now back. We expect later in April to release both FLUR's preliminary techno-economic analysis as well as an update from WEIR on geology grade and concentration. When these reports are released, this will provide not only granular technical information on the development, but also the economics and CapEx estimates. I would note that to date, considering the outsized potential impact on us, We have spent a relatively modest $10 million directly on this project. Upon release of these reports, we will have a great deal more to say and may indeed hold a special call on this as we did last year. To give you a sense of how we feel about the data that's coming in, we have decided to begin full-scale mining in July to provide the rare earth material for a pilot processing facility we will start construction on this fall. We are, of course, mindful of the U.S. government's interest in rapidly creating a domestic supply of critical minerals. I can disclose that we are in ongoing discussions with several arms of the federal government regarding our development. On the Wyoming front, we are pleased to have received a $6 million matching fund grant recommendation from the Wyoming Energy Authority, which is to be applied towards building our pilot plant. While we wait to disclose all the technical data with the release of the FLUR and the WEIR reports, I will provide some preliminary results today. The overall size of the resource is now estimated in the range of 1.7 million tons. This increased from the 1.5 million size we disclosed last year and now includes results from all rare earths and critical minerals we will be focusing on. We will continue additional coring and exploration on the overall area. As you remember, to date, we have only tested about a third of the site at predominantly shallow depths. We will now core at deeper levels, which frankly, in many instances, have shown higher concentrations of rare earths than at shallower formations. But any way you look at it, given both the size of the unconventional deposit and the fact that it is found in softer, non-radioactive material makes this a generationally unique development. As we view the project today, we will concentrate our commercial efforts specifically on about seven rare earths and critical minerals. These comprise about 30 percent of the material discovered to date that are estimated to generate over 95 percent of the revenue. On the rarer side, we will focus on the heavy and medium magnetic oxides of neodymium, presidentium, dysprosium, and terbium, which are all showing extremely strong rates of recovery. On the critical mineral side, as discussed in December, Fleur informed us that the Brook Mine may be the only primary source mine in the world for gallium, germanium, and scandium. Indeed, scandium may be one of the strongest revenue components of the product mix. As you know, gallium and germanium were banned by China from export to the United States last year. One last point which should bear some emphasis, though. We will approach this project with the same conservative business discipline that has characterized all of our investment decisions. This is a new and complex business It is one with a far different macro competitive overlay than coal. Indeed, here the Chinese have a monopoly on the space and want to make it commercially difficult for anyone else to even get a foothold. But with that said, the Brook mine would be the first new rare earth mine in the United States in over 70 years. There is clearly a need for this strategic product. But as I said, we will approach the investment and financing of what could be a transformative business in a measured fashion and ensure that it delivers a strong return to our shareholders. To wrap up my remarks, while the world's met coal markets still remain weak, we're cautiously optimistic that our price levels are near bottom. By late summer, we hope they begin to move higher throughout the back half. I'm also, again, incredibly proud of the Ramico team for being able to improve our operational sales and financial metrics throughout 2024. And to end by emphasizing again, this culminated in the fourth quarter being our strongest of the year, despite being the period with the weakest pricing. We're looking forward to 2025 improving as the year moves along. And lastly, on the rare earth front, I will leave it to be further updated next month. With that, I'll turn the floor over to the rest of our team to discuss finances, operations, and markets. So, Jeremy, please start with a rundown on finance. Thank you, Randy.