Almonty's $300 Million Buyback Lands as Sangdong Shifts From Promises to Production
Published on 08/25/2026 at 18:13 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The tungsten market is fracturing along geopolitical lines, and Almonty Industries is positioning itself squarely on the western side of that divide.
Washington's export controls on tungsten scrap and waste — set to take effect August 27 — are the latest salvo in a broader campaign to sever critical mineral supply chains from Chinese dominance. The Bureau of Industry and Security's temporary rule restricts those secondary materials to domestic buyers, a move that doesn't mandate defense procurement but does starve Chinese purchasers of a meaningful feedstock source. For producers like Almonty, one of the few significant tungsten miners operating outside China, the strategic tailwind is unmistakable.
The pricing data tells the story of a market coming apart at the seams. Western reference prices for ammonium paratungstate hit $3,087.50 per MTU on a Rotterdam basis as of August 14 — nearly nine times the level at the start of 2025. Meanwhile, China's domestic price has fallen roughly 24.6 percent from its July peak, dragged down by soft demand and swelling inventories. With Beijing still controlling about 79 percent of global mine output, the structural supply gap for non-Chinese producers only widens.
A Buyback Timed to a Milestone
It's into this environment that Almonty's board approved a share repurchase program of up to 14.4 million common shares, valued at as much as $300 million, to run over 36 months beginning Monday, August 24, 2026. Management framed the decision in straightforward terms: the current share price doesn't reflect what the company's tungsten assets are worth, particularly with the Sangdong mine in South Korea's Gangwon province now moving into operation.
The timing was deliberate. Just a day earlier, Almonty confirmed that the processing plant at Sangdong had entered throughput operations — the moment the market had been waiting years for. The project has long been the company's central value driver, and pairing its operational debut with a capital return program sends an unambiguous signal about management's view of the equity's worth.
The financial foundation for that confidence came into focus with second-quarter results released August 11. Revenue jumped 498 percent year over year to C$43.0 million, while adjusted EBITDA swung from negative C$4.8 million to positive C$17.6 million. Mining margins came in at a robust 60.7 percent. The headline net income of C$181.8 million, however, was largely a function of a non-cash revaluation of derivatives and warrants worth roughly C$173.1 million — a figure that deserves a skeptical eye even as the operating picture strengthens.
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Balance Sheet Firepower
The buyback isn't a stretch for a company that has spent the summer fortifying its liquidity. In early August, Almonty closed a US$800 million convertible note offering after buyers exercised the upsizing option in full. Combined with operating cash flows, that left the company with C$1.23 billion in cash — ample room to fund repurchases while continuing to develop its asset base.
That war chest also supported a renegotiated supply agreement with Global Tungsten & Powders, a member of the Plansee Group, announced in early July. The contract extension added six years to the relationship, boosted contracted volumes by 40 percent, and improved pricing terms by approximately 6.3 percent. For a company betting on multi-year visibility, such offtake agreements are the kind of ballast that matters when supply chains are being redrawn.
Structural Shifts and Skeptics
The buyback coincides with a streamlining of Almonty's listing structure. The company has already executed a voluntary delisting from the Toronto Stock Exchange effective July 31, 2026. Its Australian CDI listing is expected to be suspended at the close of trading on August 28, with a final ASX delisting set for September 1. That leaves Nasdaq under the ticker ALM and Frankfurt under ALI1 as the remaining venues — a consolidation that should concentrate trading liquidity in fewer markets.
Not everyone shares management's conviction. Diamond Equity Research trimmed its earnings forecast for the current fiscal year on August 14, cutting estimates from $0.55 to $0.39 per share. The revision landed in the same week as the delisting and production announcements, a reminder that Sangdong's operational ramp-up isn't being viewed with uniform optimism on the sell side.
GBC AG's analyst struck a more constructive tone on August 20, issuing a Buy rating with a $30.00 price target and arguing that the transition of Sangdong to production status — long flagged as the key risk — was now resolving itself. The buyback announcement has added fuel to that view, lifting the shares 3.3 percent since Monday.
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The question hanging over the stock is whether the repurchase program can close the valuation gap management sees, or whether the market's caution about execution at Sangdong proves the more durable force. The answer will come as the mine pushes toward full throughput in the months ahead.
