Almonty: Sangdong Enters Commercial Production While Tungsten Prices and Valuation Yardsticks Diverge

Almonty has checked off a milestone that investors have waited years for: Sangdong is now in commercial operation. The company announced the step on October 13, adding that the second expansion phase is being pushed forward and that short-term supply programmes are running at Los Santos and in Rwanda.

Yet a mine in operation is progress, not insulation against a re-rating. That distinction sits at the heart of how the Almonty story should be read right now — operational substance on one side, a softer tungsten market and lower peer multiples on the other. Both can be true at once.

A planned shipment is not a completed one

CEO Lewis Black used his newsletter of October 11 to flag the first commercial tungsten delivery from Sangdong in more than 30 years, alongside progress in Rwanda and the second expansion phase. The wording matters. Black described a planned shipment; nothing in that points to ore already on the water. For shareholders, the operational test lies in execution of the announced steps, not in the announcement itself.

The same discipline applies to the commercial-production declaration. It marks a change in status, not a guarantee of economics. Whether the mine earns its keep depends on the price environment it sells into — and that environment has been getting less friendly.

The metal has been drifting

Chinese tungsten markets were defined on Friday by weak seasonal demand from downstream industries and thinner trading activity, according to media reports. That is background for Almonty rather than a company-specific piece of bad news, but it is the backdrop against which the operational news must be weighed. Tungsten and APT quotations have eased to $2,700 per MTU.

Two separate questions follow. Softer commodity prices can dampen expectations for a producer; progress on its projects answers a different question — whether the planned operational steps are actually moving forward. At Almonty, both are on the table simultaneously.

Two analysts, two conclusions, one shared yardstick

Oppenheimer cut its price target on Thursday to $19 from $25 while keeping an "Outperform" rating. The reasoning, per media reports, was lower valuation multiples among comparable companies — a recalibration of the yardstick, not a verdict that Almonty's operational progress has stalled. Keeping that line clear stops a valuation adjustment from being mistaken for fresh company news.

DA Davidson went the other way in substance, reaffirming on October 12 its buy recommendation and a $33.00 price target after talks with company representatives. The firm did revise its revenue estimates and its expectations for adjusted EBITDA.

So the Street is not of one mind, and the split is instructive: one house shortened the multiple it applies, the other kept its target and reworked the underlying forecasts. Neither move settles what Sangdong will earn.

What Friday's tape does and does not say

Shares showed a daily change of -2.7% on Friday. No proven link exists between that move and the target cut — proximity in the calendar is not an explanation for a price move, and the sector weakness itself has not been tied to the decline either.

The investor day announced for today is designed to pull the threads together: the global tungsten market, price development and the operational progress of the individual mines. The announcement, made roughly a week ago, sets the frame for exactly this balancing act. What matters most is how Almonty positions its expansion plans against a weaker market — that intersection is where the durability of the positive project expectations gets decided.

The yardstick, then, is neither mine progress alone nor a single trading session. Almonty has to be read as the interplay of operations, market price and valuation. Look at only one of those layers and it becomes easy to confuse progress with value — or price pressure with operational retreat.