Almonty's Debt-Free Debut: How a Record Tungsten Rally Reshaped the Balance Sheet

Almonty repays Sangdong construction loan, boosts cash to C$1.23B, and expands across four projects amid record tungsten prices.

The tungsten market has a new bellwether, and it just took a wrecking ball to its debt. Almonty Industries, the Toronto-born miner now headquartered in rural Montana, has wiped out the construction loans tied to its flagship South Korean project — a milestone that arrived just as ammonium paratungstate prices hit levels the industry has never seen.

The KfW IPEX-Bank term loan, which financed the first build-out phase of the Sangdong mine, was repaid in full after the June 30 quarter-end. The payoff clears the books of the project's original capital burden, freeing management to pursue a far more aggressive growth agenda than the one that carried the company through its development years.

A Cash Position Transformed

Fueling that repayment was a liquidity surge that borders on the dramatic. Almonty ended the first half of 2026 with C$1.23 billion in cash, nearly five times the C$268.4 million it held at the close of 2025. The bulk of that came from an oversubscribed US$800 million convertible bond offering in June, carrying a 2.25% coupon and maturing in 2031. Operating cash flow added another C$31.6 million during the first six months.

The company isn't done raising capital, either. Shelf registrations covering roughly US$246.8 million in common shares have been filed, with proceeds earmarked for the Gentung tungsten project in Montana and the Panasqueira mine expansion in Portugal.

Pricing Power Meets Production Ramp

The timing of Sangdong's commissioning phase has proven fortuitous. European average prices for ammonium paratungstate hit US$3,075 per metric tonne unit in the second quarter of 2026 — a more than sixfold jump from the US$453 recorded in the same period a year earlier. Management has framed the rally as the first genuine validation of Sangdong's earnings potential, a project that spent over a decade in development before reaching this inflection point.

The mine's initial phase targets an ore throughput of roughly 640,000 tonnes annually. A fully permitted Phase II would double that to 1.2 million tonnes, and the company now has the balance sheet to pursue that expansion concurrently with its other initiatives rather than sequentially.

Four Fronts, One Strategy

With the old debt structure behind it, Almonty is pressing ahead on multiple fronts simultaneously:

• Sangdong Phase II: the approved capacity doubling in South Korea
• Tungsten oxide plant: a new processing stage in Korea aimed at deeper vertical integration
• Gentung project: development of the recently acquired Montana deposit
• Panasqueira expansion: modernization and mine-life extension at the Portuguese operation

That parallel-track approach extends to the commercial side. Almonty renegotiated its long-term offtake agreement with Global Tungsten & Powders, a member of Austria's Plansee Group, extending the term by six years, lifting contracted volumes by 40%, and improving pricing across all contracted tonnage by roughly 6.3%.

The Numbers Behind the Narrative

Second-quarter net income came in at US$181.8 million, a sharp reversal from the US$58.2 million loss posted a year earlier. Investors should note, however, that US$173.1 million of that figure stems from non-cash gains tied to the revaluation of derivatives and warrants. The cleaner operational metric — adjusted EBITDA — turned positive at US$17.6 million, versus a US$4.8 million loss in the prior-year quarter.

A US-Centric Pivot

Almonty's transformation extends beyond the financials. The company relocated its corporate headquarters from Toronto to Dillon, Montana in April, and Jorge Beristain took over as chief financial officer on June 1. Inclusion in the Russell 1000 and Russell 3000 indices at the end of June, alongside its existing Nasdaq listing, has boosted the stock's visibility among institutional investors.

The strategic thread running through all of it: positioning Almonty as one of the few significant tungsten suppliers outside China, a selling point that resonates increasingly with defense and high-tech buyers in the United States. The chess depository interests listed on Australia's ASX last traded at A$19.59, reflecting the market's growing attention to a company that has spent a decade in the shadows — and now finds itself at the center of a strategic metals story.