Almonty's Sangdong Mill Ramps Up as Tungsten Producer Streamlines Its Market Footprint

Almonty transitions to tungsten production at Sangdong, repays KfW loan, and plans $300M buyback after record Q2 earnings.

The transition at Almonty Industries has reached a pivotal juncture. The company's Sangdong tungsten mine in South Korea has moved beyond test runs and is now feeding a 139,700-tonne stockpile of ore — grading 0.25 percent tungsten trioxide — through its newly commissioned processing mill. That shift from development phase to active throughput marks the moment the company stops being a project story and starts being a producer.

What makes the operational milestone credible is the financial firepower now sitting behind it. Almonty closed the second quarter with a cash position of 1.23 billion Canadian dollars, a war chest largely assembled through an oversubscribed convertible bond placement of 800 million US dollars, carrying a 2.25 percent coupon and maturing in 2031. That capital has already been put to work: the KfW loan has been fully repaid, and management has lined up a share buyback program of up to 300 million US dollars, set to launch on August 24. The repurchase could cover as many as 14.4 million shares — roughly five percent of outstanding stock as of August 14.

The numbers from the quarter ended June 30 illustrate just how far the company has come. Revenue surged 498 percent year over year to 43.0 million Canadian dollars, propelled by record tungsten prices. Net income landed at 181.8 million Canadian dollars, a striking reversal from the 58.2 million Canadian dollar loss posted in the same period a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA came in at 17.6 million Canadian dollars. Sequentially, the momentum also held: revenue climbed 69 percent from the 25.4 million Canadian dollars recorded in the first quarter.

Earnings per share of 0.62 Canadian dollars blew past the consensus estimate of 0.10 Canadian dollars, though revenue of 43.0 million US dollars came in just shy of the 45.7 million US dollars analysts had penciled in. The slight top-line miss did little to dampen the broader picture of a company in rapid transition.

That transition extends beyond the mine itself. Almonty has been deliberately consolidating its listing structure, exiting the Toronto Stock Exchange at the end of July and scheduling its delisting from the Australian Securities Exchange for September 1, with CHESS Depositary Interests suspended from August 28. The moves concentrate trading liquidity on the Nasdaq, where the company also gained entry into the Russell 1000 and Russell 3000 indices at the end of June following the annual index reconstitution.

The commercial side of the business has been reinforced as well. Almonty extended its offtake agreement with Global Tungsten & Powders LLC to a 21-year term and increased contracted volumes by 40 percent — a signal that long-term buyers see durability in the Sangdong supply story.

For investors, the converging threads are hard to ignore: a mine that has crossed the threshold into continuous processing, a balance sheet fortified by a landmark bond placement, and a capital markets strategy focused on a single primary exchange. The question now is whether the record quarter was a one-off spike driven by exceptional pricing, or the opening chapter of sustained earnings power as Sangdong pushes toward full capacity. The coming quarters will supply the answer.