Endomines AB (publ)

Welcome to End of Minds webcast. Today we are talking about the 24 financial result presentation. And what it will show is the significant turnaround that was achieved last year, creating the foundation for the future growth. My name is Kari Vyhtinen. I'm the CEO. With me here today is Mini Lempinen, our CFO.

Hi.

and Anni Turpeinen, our communications manager.

Hello, good afternoon.

And Anni will help with the Q&A session after the presentation. So today I will start with the presentation and I will go through the highlights. And then we go through the strategy update, including production and exploration. Then Minni will have a financial review. And after that I will finish with the strategy and with the guidance. And then after that we have a questions and answers session. So, please type your questions to the chat and questions can be presented in Finnish or English language and we will reply in the same language than the question was asked. But let's go to the details. We start with the highlights. July, December 24 was really significant time period for Endomize. We really had a significant turnaround in the business, both operationally but also financially. Like if you look at just our revenue, the revenue grew by 74% to 15.6 million. And that came from two sources. So we had a successful production. We increased the production by over 20%. and then the gold market was extremely strong, so that also helped us during the second half of the year. The group EBITDA was 25%, so also they're very healthy level, but if we look at the Pampalo, production segment figures, the EBITDA was 40%, so we are extremely happy with that actually, that we have reached this high level compared to previous year when it was 10%. And the net result of the group was also 1.3 million compared to previous year, minus 3.5 million, so very pleased with the result and really want to thank everybody at EndoMines and also our partners for the great work done. If we go back and what is EndoMines and what is our vision? So we are a Finnish gold producer. Our operations are based in the Karelian Gold Line in Eastern Finland, very close to Ilomansi. It's an archaea and greenstone belt. where the geology is very favorable for gold mining and exploration, very similar to the biggest gold production areas in the world. And our vision is to make this significant production area in world scale. And what does this mean? It means that there is millions of ounces of gold production, several production locations, Naturally, it will take time. We are still in the early phases, but the potential is there and the geology is there. That's the most important, because that you cannot transfer. And we own the rights for the belt almost as a whole. But there is also now changes in the previous year. We also discovered that there is tungsten and molybdenum in the area, so that's something that we will focus more on in the future, because those are critical minerals in the European Union, and we will focus more also on those minerals in the future. In the Karelian Gold Line, we have a place called Pampalo, and at the Pampalo, we have... We are mining gold, and then we have a mill where we produce a gold concentrate, and that goes to Boliden for processing. And then we perform exploration in two main locations, the northern gold line and then the southern gold line. We also have some mining operations in Horsko that was started last year. If you think about our strategy, We changed the strategy in 22 and the change has been absolutely fantastic since we did it. So we have four main areas in the strategy. One is that Pampalo is the center for our production and we grow the production volumes each year. And we have very successfully have done it. And if you look last two years, our revenue has increased by by 113%. So we have over doubled the revenue and we have successfully each year increased the volumes. Then one of the most important points, if you think about the long term, where does the growth come from? It comes from exploration. So, we started large-scale exploration in 23, and in the last update we increased the resource base significantly. Now we are actually just reviewing the 24 drilling results and updating the resource, and that will come out in the next four to six weeks. But that's very important. Have a large resource first, one million ounces, so that we can take the company's production to a new level and then beyond. We also have some assets in the USA and those are not the strategic focus area for us. So we are looking for a partnership arrangement. That can mean that we divest some of the assets or we have a joint venture or something like that. We have been doing the negotiations now for some time, but we are still confident that we will get to the result. And then ESG is really the center of the business, so we want to do things in the right way. So we want to take care of the environment, we want to take care of the people, our partners, and the people who live close by. So be very open in the in the discussions that what are we planning to do and how we do it and take the feedback from all the stakeholders and then design our operations based on the feedback. And if you look last years, what we have achieved since we changed the strategy in 22. So for example, just the group EBITDA, so we had a negative 6.4 million in 22, now positive 5.8 million, so absolutely huge change. Pampalo EBITDA even bigger, so we had a 5% EBITDA in the production segment in 22, now 36% and over 10 million, so increase in revenue at the same time, increase in profitability and that has really made a huge difference. And then EBIT in 22 it was minus 15.5 million and now 2.6 million positive, so it's also there very significant turnaround. USA, there has been a lot of questions about what is happening with the USA, and we have been negotiating for quite a while now. We still don't have an answer. The assets were bought in 2018-2020 for 44 million, And our aim is to achieve the partnership agreement as soon as possible. When that will be, we don't know exactly as yet, but we want to get to the finish as soon as possible, because we have also some costs in the USA. We want to keep the assets in a good condition. So last year, our operating cost in the USA was 0.7 million. But there are also other things that it takes time of our key people and we want to find a solution as soon as possible. Sustainability. We published a new ESG program that was approved by the board of directors in December last year, and there are six points. It's an ambitious program, but we want to be ambitious, clearly above all the minimum requirements. We want to really achieve change in the industry. So there are six main areas. One is the climate. We want to have a CO2-free production by 2035. Water, it's a key element in Finland. Everybody in Finland loves nature and lakes and so on. And if there is any discharge waters, we want to ensure that those waters are clean. We don't want to... pollute any lakes or anything like that. We love the nature. Biodiversity, so we restore any areas that are not anymore used at the same time when we finish, so not leave like big areas unrestored when we leave the area. As soon as some area is mined, then do the restoration and move to the next area. Personnel, safe and pleasant place to work, that's the key. No accidents, everybody comes to work and returns home safely. And then the community, we have a very strong support locally, but it's because we communicate a lot. We tell what we are doing, we invite people for a visit, we have information sessions, and take into account the feedback that we receive from the community. And that's something that is extremely important, and we want to continue that way. And then on the governance side, we want to work in an ethical way and train our people so that everybody knows what does it mean, how should they operate, that we do the right things in all the situations. This is something that will now go to implementation. It was just approved in December and we are very excited about it and believe that it will really make a difference. If you look at the production in 2024, we had first the market. The gold market has been extremely strong. And like when you follow the newspapers and news, there is a lot of discussions about the gold market also. And currently, even today, I think the gold is hitting all-time high levels. So we are above $2,900 today, U.S. dollars per ounce of gold. If you think about last year's result, the gold was actually at the $2,400 level. So currently, the gold price is approximately $500 per ounce today. at a higher level than last year. So when you look at our results, they are based on 2400 gold price, and currently we are at 2900 level. So the gold price has really increased significantly. And the main reasons for that is that there is so much uncertainty in the world, and now Trump being a president, that has also affected the gold price, because there is talks about tariffs and so on, and China and USA, what is the trade situation and so on. There is also a forecast that the Fed will lower the interest rates, like when you look back last 25 years. Every time that has happened, then that has affected also the gold price in a positive way. So the outlook is very strong. There is also speculations about currencies, new currencies that could be linked with the gold. And so it's very interesting times and currently the outlook is very strong. At EndoMines, we haven't hedged any of the production at any level, so we strongly believe that this strong price level will continue, and therefore we haven't done any hedging on the gold price. Any changes will affect our revenue immediately, so we are working on a sort of every month spot price. If you look at the production last two years, we have increased the production by 66%, so it has been a big change also on the production side, and each year this is something that we want to continue. Last year, we produced 14,300 ounces, and the growth was over 20% during the second half of the year. So, even though there were some production difficulties, we had still strong growth on the second half. and we estimate that in 2025 the annual production will be between 16,000 to 22,000 ounces, fairly wide range, but that's due to the fact that there are some variables that will happen this year and we are still fine tuning the plans and therefore we have a fairly fairly wide range in the guidance, but I think the main point is that we forecast strong growth on the production volumes also for this year. And our target is to increase the volumes every year. Then if we go to exploration and look at the big picture in the Karelian Gold Line, So at the Pampalo and Hosko, we have the production facilities. Hosko is the new mine that we started last year, and now it's operating underground. So we want to also increase volumes from Hosko, and we increase volumes from Pampalo. And at Pampalo, we have excess capacity, so that's very important. We can increase the production volumes without any major investments at the mill. So, that's very important. But then, the exploration focuses on two main areas. We have a southern gold line and we have a northern gold line. And at the north we have a Kartitsa, where we did some exploration in 24, and we want to continue in 25, 26 and make a resource. Currently there is no gold resource yet, and in the south we are looking We have a significant cold resource, and we are looking to increase it, and then take it to production. We have done permitting now for one year. So, we estimate that this area will go to production in 2030, and that will take the company to a completely different level in size. So, we are doing the permitting and environmental impact assessment as we speak in the south. And Southern Gold Line, the resource is currently, in the last update in 23, it was approximately 150,000 ounces and since then we have done drilling, so we are currently updating the resource and that will be published in the next four to six weeks. We have done a lot of base of till sampling which is done before the drilling and from the base of till you get indications where there is gold and what are the areas that you should be drilling at. And we have hundreds or several hundred samples where there is indications of gold and those areas we will be investigating in 2025 and beyond. But we believe that there is a lot of potential in the area. There is also tungsten and molybdenum in the south, especially in Kuittila, and tungsten is one of the critical minerals in the European Union. There is 14 minerals that European Union has defined that they are critical, and that's something that we really want to investigate and take also the tungsten into production in 2030. Very, very important item. So we see that there is a lot of potential. Currently, we are doing the permitting, and this will take us to the next level of 70,000 to 100,000 ounces, and it will also include tungsten and molybdenum. If you look at the development plan and how this will happen, so in 24 we did nature surveys, we did also the environmental impact assessment program draft, so it's almost done. We will launch the program in March, April, and then it goes to the report phase and permitting phase. So, we estimate that we have the environmental permit in place in 28, and then at the same time in 27, 28, when there is the technical design ongoing, we will finalize the financing negotiations and then in 29 we are building the new facilities and 2030 take the area into production and then the production will be raised to 70,000, 100,000 ounces and if you think about today's production or last year's production it was 14,000 ounces so this is five to seven times more than the current production, so there is a significant increase that we are planning to do, and we would like to emphasize that we have permitted four mines in the area, so we know quite well how it's done and what is required to start operations in the Karelian Gold Line. Northern Gold Line also very interesting. This is a new area. There has been some preliminary studies done in 22, 23, but in 24 we actually went there first time and we did some drilling and on this picture on the left side you can see some magnificent drilling results that we got in the area. So we did two campaigns, one in June and we got some promising results, so we went back immediately in September, October, and the second campaign confirmed that there is actually a wide gold mineralization that is very continuous. And in this Kartitsa area, this is just scratching the surface, like there is a big area where we have done magnetic surveys, and these surveys indicate that there are similar structures in the other places of the Northern Gold Line. So we have a lot of work to do in 2025-2026, but we are very excited about the potential that this will create. Then just what we published this week, Ukkolanvaara, this is like a textbook example of a potential gold deposit, so when you look how the gold deposits in the world, how they usually occur, they are often in the shear zones connected to iron mineralization, and this is exactly how it is here, and that was the reason why we went to take some samples, we took 73 samples and 30% of them had gold and they were actually significant crates also. So we see that the potential is so great that we will go here in April, May and start doing some drilling and hopefully those drilling results will confirm the potential that we now see. And then the critical minerals. This is a really important item, and when we think about tungsten, when we think about molybdenum, and when we think about the world today, there was just last week, in the news, there were stories that when Trump was raising the tariffs towards China, then China replied that they will limit the exports of tungsten to the USA. So this is really important mineral, it's actually used in the military, it's used also for example in drilling, like USA has a big ambition to drill oil in the next four years. tungsten will be required, and there is a shortage of tungsten in many areas, like the tungsten supply, because China controls 80% of the global supply, then the other big suppliers, there is Russia, there is Vietnam, and so on, so it's... it's something that we see that the importance will grow over the years. Like, we are still in the early phases. In 22, 23, when we were exploring the Southern Gold Line, we were focusing solely on gold, and if we hit tungsten, then that didn't get much attention, but currently, we are looking both options, really. really focusing on both of minerals because we see that the importance will grow on the future years. Okay, so then that's my part. I will give the floor to Minni and continue after Minni's presentation.

Thanks. Let's start with three main points of 2024. We had a positive turnaround in group financials. EBITDA operating result and net result, all positive. The gas cost has remained at a low level, even though we had some difficulties in production in H2. And the gold price is high and it's supporting financials. Here we can see the group financials for H2 and full year 2024. In H2, the revenue increased by 74% compared to the previous year. Group EBITDA was 25% and operating result 16% of the revenue. In full year 2024, the revenue increased by 46% compared to the previous year and Groups EBITDA was 20% and operating result 9% of the revenue. The turnaround from negative to positive has been significant. Here we have the financials divided into reporting segments. Pampalo production here in red is the most important segment. The group's revenue comes entirely from Pampalo. Pampalo's EBITDA 36% and operating result 30% of the revenue. The Karelian Gold Line segment includes only payroll and other operating expenses. Exploration costs are investments in the balance sheet. The USA operations segment's expenses remained moderate, around minus €0.7 million in 2024. The amount was around minus €1 million in 2023. Other operating expenses in common functions and unallocated items include, for example, legal and advisory expenses and also other expenses that are common to end-of-minds group. In 2024, the cash cost in Pampalo has remained at a low level, and at the same time, the gold price has been 24% higher than in 2023 on average. The high gold price together with the strong USD rate has supported the growth in revenue and cash flow. The gold price is estimated to stay high also in 2025. Group's financial position at the end of 2024, cash balance was 2.1 million euros, net gearing 32% and equity ratio 54%. In 2024, new convertible loans of 3.8 million euros were agreed with the current owners and 7.4 million euros were converted to shares. This year in January we announced that we are preparing a financing package of around 10 million euros to speed up the development of the Garelian Gold Line. We have already announced that 2.3 million euros of the package are convertible loans and that's basically all we can disclose now. We'll tell you more about the new strategy and financing in spring 2025. Thanks.

So, to finish the presentation, just to say that we are entering a new phase. Like, we have made a significant turnaround. We are very pleased with the result. but the journey is still just in the beginning. We want to take the company to completely new levels, so we want to increase the production each year. We are taking the new areas into production, like, for example, the Southern Gold Line, and then after the Southern Gold Line, hopefully the Northern Gold Line, and then there is the potential for Ukkomanvaar. So we are looking for strong growth and the strong growth means also investments. So we are entering a new phase where the focus will be more on the technical and economical design and studies related to the expansion. So we have done now permitting for one year And now it's time to go a little bit more detailed and start to really design the process. How do we get the tungsten also product included? How do we get the molybdenum? How do we ensure that the expansion to 70-200,000 ounces can be done in a most cost-effective way and sustainable way, taking care of also the environmental side? So this is the next phase. So we will update the strategy, like this is something that we are now planning to do, and this will happen in the next, I would estimate in the next three months. We will update the strategy, and it's not going to be a huge change that we completely change everything, but we want to include, for example, the critical minerals. We want to be more precise on the actions that we plan to do in the next five years. and give a little bit more light to our plans, to everybody who is following our journey, our golden journey. So this is something that we will do, and therefore we have also announced, just like Minni said, that we are looking for financing to ensure that this can be completed. How we see it is that there is, of course now, there has been a significant... turnaround, so that helps us. There is a strong gold market, that helps us. But just to ensure that everything can be done, we are looking also that our financing has to be solid and our financial position has to be solid. But it can be also that this is something that is agreed but could be done in phases because currently we are in a situation that also the financial situation and the growth and the gold market supports our journey towards higher levels. And the next step that we want to take is to increase the production to 16,000 to 22,000 ounces this year. So it's a significant increase. So if we think about we are now in the 14,300 level and we want to increase it to 16,000 to 22,000, that's a significant increase. It will not require significant investments for the mill. However, it will require that we invest into the mines, so we accelerate the work at the mines so that we can go to the higher production level. And our target is to increase increase production each year. This year, we estimate that the growth will be higher during the H2 than H1. But very pleased to be here, significant turnaround, exciting things happening, good results in exploration in 24. Everything is proceeding as we have planned, and we aim to keep it that way also in the future. So, thank you very much, and now it's time for the Q&A session.

Okay, thanks. So, we will now move on to the Kuete section. We have had actually quite many questions here in the chat, and thank you all of them. We have received questions both in English and in Finnish, and we will answer the questions in the language in which they are sent. The first question is, In which locations in Ilomantsi and in the USA does endomines have critical minerals and what kind of business opportunities could critical minerals bring for endomines?

We have the critical minerals, they are in the Karelian Gold Line and they are actually in the Southern Gold Line area, especially near Kuittila. It's a situation where there is the gold deposit And these critical minerals are not actually connected with the gold, but they are in the side rock. But they are so close to the gold ore that we would need to mine the side rock anyway to be able to access the gold. So it's a very exciting opportunity. We see that there are two points. With critical minerals, it's very difficult to predict the future because the demand is growing so fast. and also the importance that the supply is close to the place where the mineral is consumed. So we see that there is a lot of potential, like in the Kuittila area, currently the global supply is 60 to 80,000 tons and we estimate that from Kuittila it could be 0.5 to 2.5 percent of of the global supply, that's just roughly it can change. And what it would mean in money, it could be anything from 5 to 100 million per annum. But currently the prices are really increasing a lot because of this trade war and so on. It's very exciting times, but it's also the thing that it's important for the European Union, it's important for Finland and we want to be there to help with the supply.

What are the main drivers behind production growth this year and what are the reasons behind your estimate growth to be greater in H2?

The drivers are that we have been continuously investing into the mines, so if you think about the underground mine, for example, what does it mean? In the underground mines, you have to build tunnels to access the gold, so we are accelerating that work continuously. We are also accelerating Hosko, that's a new mine that we took into production last year and it's now going underground and we are accelerating the work. And then we continue the Bambalo, there is the open pit, so the growth will come from having a steady flow from three sources. There are also options that we are reviewing, like for example, there has been gold mining done and the permits are in place, and we are reviewing that should we take that one into production, it won't be like a very big... change but still bring some additional growth for 25 and maybe also beyond. So that's something that it's... So we speed up the current locations and at the same time look at the new options that we have in the area.

What was behind the positive development regarding cash cost despite production difficulties and do you see still room for improvement?

Yes, that's a good question, actually, because we had to lower the guidance last year, but still we had a significant growth. During H2, we increased the production by over 20%. So the positive development, even there were some difficulties, the positive development came from... from the increased volume. And that's how we see also the future, that we have to increase the volumes continuously to also lower the cost level in the future.

Would you give a little bit more information on the process in the USA Assets solution? What sort of parties are interested in them?

Yes, there has been many discussions on the USA assets. Usually the assets are fairly small, so like the big major mining companies, they are not so interested. There are the smaller or medium-sized companies that are interested, and usually they have... They have different agendas. Some companies might have some assets and they would like to combine these assets and go public, for example, or just create a growth story that is a long-term story. And then some companies would just like to go to production. Friday is almost ready to go to production, so they would like to go to production as quickly as possible. So there are several companies. It has taken longer than anticipated. I think in the beginning the financial market was not so strong. Currently the strong gold price supports the negotiations. There is quite a lot of interest. But in these kind of situations when you When you discuss about selling, for example, assets or joint ventures, the process goes often so that when you go to detailed negotiations, you only discuss with one. And it can take a few months, and then either it goes ahead or it doesn't go ahead. And if it fails, then you have to start with a new one, and you sort of start from the beginning. It's a long process. It often takes two, three years. And in my opinion, it's okay. The main thing is that we get a solution that is good for the company, good for the shareholders, and also good for the party who we discuss with. So it's a win-win for everybody.

What are the variables that affect on where you land between the guidance low and high?

The variables are, there are some, like how fast we can accelerate the production at the mines, we are fairly conservative, because sometimes there has been also challenges and we want to be on the conservative side, but that's the thing that how fast we can develop the infrastructure and accelerate the production at the mines. It's not so much related to, for example, permitting or something like that, because we have all the permits in place, so it's just that there are several locations and how do we balance the production from each location. Because, for example, at underground, the grade is the highest. So if you manage to increase that production site a lot, then the effect on the total gold production is the highest.

The following two questions are in Finnish, so we will also answer it in Finnish. Karjalan kultalinjalla on paljon kultaa. Kuinka monessa kohteessa siellä louhitaan 5–10 vuoden sisällä? Entä USA?

That's a good question. I would believe that in many cases. We have always been starting to schedule activities, and here, for example, with the Southern Gold Line, we want to launch later, and then our view is that after that we will go north, that we will take it further, and hopefully we will get to a situation where there are more launching sites, and through that the growth will continue after the South Gold Line production. There is a lot of potential in different places, and we believe that we can achieve it in many areas.

What areas do you have environmental permits for and plans for?

Ympäristölupa on meillä on tekeillä sellaiseen paikkaan kuin Pampalo NV. Se on, me arvioidaan, että ensi vuonna vois tulla siitä päätöstä ja sit me ollaan luvitettu tätä eteläistä kultalinjaa, mutta siellä se lupaprosessi on vielä alkuvaiheessa, että kestää enemmän. Maybe I can also explain in English, just that there was a question about the permit situation, that how, where do we have permit applications in place, so we are currently permitting a small open pit, which is Pampalo Northwest, and we expect to get a permit decision next year, hopefully, and then we also permit in the Southern Gold Line, so we have been doing that for one year, and expect a permit decision in 2018.

We have another question from the USA.

Is it possible for US sales to decline in funding needs? Yes, it can really decline. If we get the trade goal, then of course. But we have now started to move forward. We still want to create this bottom line. If you look at this big picture, how we get there, to the largest production volumes, the change will be enormous. If we go from 14,000 to 70,000 or 100,000, and along the way, we will need some funding for this project. That's why we don't see it as so critical as to how this will go. Will we get funding now? Will there be an increase? There will always be opportunities to return capital owners and so on. There will be all kinds of options.

Endermines has been releasing promising exploration results from Kartitsa. How do you see the potential of Kartitsa in the future?

Kartitsa is really exciting. It's a really exciting place because often in the gold exploration it's fairly scattered, so you have gold crates in different areas and then you have to mine a larger area to actually have a gold production. But in Kartitsa, it seems to be wide and continuous mineralization, and we just discovered it. So, we have just scratched the surface, so we are very excited and believe that there is a lot more that can be found. And it's also like these magnetic maps. So, we have done surveys with drones, And these maps on the larger area, they really indicate that there are similar structures close to the place where we did the drilling and where we got the good results. So it's not very common to have these kind of 20 meters to grams, what we got in Kartitsa in many places. Usually, like for example, if you think about gold production in the current gold price, To have an open-pit mine, one gram per tonne is enough to make profit. Here you have 20 metres, two grams. It's a very potential area to have a profitable gold production.

How much drilling is planned for this year as a whole?

We are going ahead full speed as we have done now from after 23, so I think we are somewhere between 20 to 30,000 meters and we are starting the drilling in April. So now January, February, March we will do the resource updates, the planning and then in early April we start the drilling and we will go full steam ahead and that's also the reason why we have published about plans to look at also the financing options.

And the next question would be the last one. You recently launched a new sustainability program. How do you plan to turn the goals into actions?

Sustainability is really key in mining, so you really have to take care of the environmental side, you really have to take care of people, it's all about the people, and how we plan to do it now, we have ambitious program, so each of these targets, ambitious targets that we have, we will have a project group, and there is a leader who is leading the group to take the actions into reality and then we have steering groups and I will personally be involved to ensure that this will go ahead because we really want to be a company that is making a difference and doing things in a right way and really in an ambitious way and this will be incorporated now when we are planning to to take the Southern Gold Line into production in 2030. So this new program and the principles of the program will be incorporated also into these investment plans that we have in the Southern Gold Line. So we believe that it will be a world-class gold production facility, or should I say gold tungsten and molybdenum production facility that we will create in the Southern Gold Line. Thank you very much for good questions and for following the presentations.

Thank you.