TSX runs higher on rate cut expectations
BC Iron Ltd (BCI) held its fourth-quarter earnings call on July 29, 2025, reporting significant developments and financial movements. The company’s stock saw a notable rise of 4.48%, closing at 34 cents, reflecting investor optimism. According to InvestingPro data, BCI is currently trading near its 52-week high of $21.84, with a strong year-to-date return of 6.78%. Key financial maneuvers included drawing $115.4 million from a syndicated debt facility and a market capitalization now standing at $1.65 billion, according to latest InvestingPro data. While BCI operates with a moderate level of debt, InvestingPro analysis indicates the company is currently burning through cash at a concerning rate. Additionally, BCI’s strategic advances in salt and sulfate of potash (SOP) production were highlighted.
Key Takeaways
- BCI’s stock rose by 4.48%, closing at 34 cents.
- The company drew $115.4 million from a debt facility, with total cash drawn at $236.1 million.
- BCI’s market capitalization hit $1 billion following significant financial and operational strides.
- The company is developing a pilot SOP plant, with full-scale production expected to generate $99 million EBITDA annually.
- Salt production is targeted at 5.3 million tonnes per annum, with first production expected in December 2026.
Company Performance
BC Iron has demonstrated robust performance in Q4 2025, marked by strategic financial and operational advancements. The company’s share price increased significantly, reflecting investor confidence. BCI’s ongoing construction projects and innovative developments in SOP and salt production are positioning it as a key player in the industry, especially with its strategic location offering port advantages.
Financial Highlights
- Syndicated debt facility draw: $115.4 million
- Total cash drawn: $236.1 million
- Share price increase: 39% from 24.5 cents to 34 cents
- Market capitalization: $1 billion
- Proceeds from Iron Valley sale: $34.1 million
Outlook & Guidance
BC Iron is targeting the first dividends around 2029 and aims to repay its debt facilities by February 2035. With projections of 6.8 cents per share free cash flow at full salt production and 8.8 cents per share with SOP production, BCI is optimistic about its financial future. The company plans to have 70% of its annual production under offtake agreements, ensuring revenue stability.
Executive Commentary
David Bossoff, Managing Director, emphasized, "We are laser-focused on delivering salt production by 2026 and proving up SOP." CFO Steve Feuchner added, "With its infinite resource and low sustaining CapEx requirements, money has the potential to deliver long-term annuity-style returns."
Risks and Challenges
- Potential supply chain disruptions could affect production timelines.
- Market saturation in the salt industry might impact pricing power.
- Macroeconomic pressures could influence commodity prices and demand.
- Environmental regulations may pose operational challenges.
- Exchange rate fluctuations could affect hedged US dollar sales.
BC Iron’s strategic initiatives and financial maneuvers have set a promising trajectory for the company, with significant investor interest reflected in its rising stock price. The company’s focus on innovation and strategic positioning in the salt and SOP markets underscores its potential for future growth.
Full transcript - BC Iron Ltd (BCI) Q4 2025:
Webcast Moderator: Quarterly Update Webcast. All participants are in a listen only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you’ll need to type your questions into the ask a question box below the webcast frame and click submit. I’d now like to hand the conference over to David Bossoff, managing director.
Please go ahead.
David Bossoff, Managing Director, BCI: Good morning, everyone, and welcome. I’m David Bossoff, and with me is our CFO, Steve Feuchner. We’re pleased to be joining you today for this June quarterly update. Before we get underway, I’d like to highlight that today’s presentation should be read in conjunction with our June quarterly report, which is available on BCI’s website. As we move through today’s session, please feel free to add questions to the chat function, and we’ll respond to those at the end.
It’s been a strong quarter for BCI. We’ve progressed with filling the ponds, commissioned the first crystallizers, and made solid progress across construction. Importantly, safety and our community remain at the forefront of everything we do. We are excited about the milestones that demonstrated the momentum we are carrying as we progress towards first revenue. This success is driven by our people and our contract partners who brings our values to life every day.
The team has truly exemplified our value of winning as one team, delivering together. We are laser focused on delivering salt production by 2026 and proving up SOP. We’re committed to do what we say. Salt is now in full operations and set to deliver $286,000,000 on EBITDA every year. The SAP pilot plant work is also progressing well, targeting $99,000,000 of EBITDA once in full operation.
Cape Preston Westport also offers additional upside with potential third party revenue from the spare capacity. Maori is already Australia’s largest solar salt operation and the third largest scope globally. It is also the most significant salt and SOP development in this country in thirty years. Strategically located on an established solar salt region, Maori offers a difficult to replicate asset base with port advantages, access, and approvals as well as land tenure. We’re targeting production of 5,300,000 tonnes per annum of high quality industrial salt.
Within scale, coastal location, and integrated port, Maori is exceptionally well positioned to meet rising demand across Asia. Now I’ll take you through a quick update of our progress this quarter. In safety, we’ve continued to strengthen key fatality prevention controls, verified through over two fifty critical control verifications. We also recorded over 500 field leadership interactions this quarter, and our total recordable injury frequency rate also reflects our ongoing SAFE operations with a twelve month rolling average now at 2.3. Construction continues to run on schedule and within budget with the overall completion now at 70%.
I’ll share more details on that later. This quarter marked our successful transition to full scale operations and performance tracking to plan. We’re now pumping seawater from both the primary and the secondary in inward intake stations, achieving 77% service inundation and moving over a 146 gigaliters of seawater to the June. Importantly, we remain firmly on track for our first salt on ship in the December 2026. On the corporate front, we continue to strengthen our leadership team.
Mari Cameron was appointed as general manager for operations based in Carratha, and Elizabeth Shaw has also been appointed as joint company secretary. During the quarter, we held an implementation committee meeting with the Aboriginal Corporation. We extended our university scholarships with the Paulbrook Kimberley University Center and continued our partnerships with Carratha Senior High School through the positive behavior support program. I’ll now hand over to Steve to provide an update on our financials.
Steve Feuchner, CFO, BCI: Yeah. Thanks, David. Financially, BCI remains in a strong position. We drew a $115,400,000 in the quarter from our syndicated debt facility, taking total cash drawn under that to $236,100,000. The next drawdown will involve all members of the syndicate.
And now that we’ve commenced full scale operations, which provides a clear pathway to revenue, we’ve implemented our treasury management strategy. We’ve now hedged around about half of the US dollars that we will receive from the sale of salt in 2027 and 2028 at rates between 64.2¢ and 65.7¢, which is well below our targeted rate of 69¢. I’d also like to share a little on our drawdown process with you. Our funding is for a forty five day period. And prior to each drawdown, we are required to undertake a project cost reconciliation and provide this together with an opinion from our lenders independent technical expert.
Now this this opinion validates to lenders that BCI remains fully funded to be able to complete the construction of the project as well as having sufficient working capital requirements to operate beyond that. Today, we’ve received approvals under this process to issue five drawdown notices. Now this test gives us confidence as we continue delivering on our project that BCI remains fully funded. It is also pleasing to see that our share price finished the quarter at 34¢. Now this is up 39% from 24 and a half cents that we closed at March.
And the catalyst for this rerating was largely the approval to move into full operations. Now we’ve since seen our market capitalization move to a billion dollars, but that is still below the $1,100,000,000 we’ve invested to date. On the July 1, we also received $34,100,000 from Polaris Minerals, a subsidiary of mineral resources, filing the completion of the Iron Valley sale as was announced in June.
David Bossoff, Managing Director, BCI: David will now share more detail on the operations and construction progress at Marty. Thanks, Steve. As mentioned earlier, we’ve transitioned to full scale operations this quarter, and we closed this the process off with 77% of surface pond inundation. At the June, we had water through Poles 1 all the way to 0.6 as well as 0.8. And just after the end of the quarter, we’ve commenced pumping water into 0.7 following the commission of transfer station six seven.
Additionally, just this weekend, we’ve opened the weir gates from 0.8 into 0.9, so we now have water from 0 all the way to 0.9. We’ve commissioned also key other several several key other pieces of infrastructure. This included the secondary seawater intake. It included the first crystallizer, which we start filling with water, also transfer stations two, three, three, four, and five, six. We commissioned the site wide SCADA system that’s now fully installed to allow remote operations from our village based control center.
We’ve also awarded the fabrication of our salt harvested GAMCO engineering right here in Perth, and the manufacturing of that of that capital infrastructure is progressing really well. I’m pleased with how we’re tracking with construction. We remain on schedule and within budget. At quarter’s end, crystallizer construction was well advanced with 76% already completed. The marine package for our Cape Preston West Port also reached 91% complete.
Also with the Pilbara Ports Access Road, that’s progressed to 82% complete. As it stands, only two major contracts are yet to be awarded. The first of those are for the salt wash plant construction and the second for the dredging. Both of these contracts are either under design or are nearing award. Steve will now take us through the all aboard financials.
Steve Feuchner, CFO, BCI: Yeah. Thanks, David. Look. I’m really excited about what’s happening in the market. Now having recently visited Indonesia and Singapore, what we’re seeing around the medium term outlook for high grade industrial salt is there’s gonna be strong demand coming through the Asian region.
Now this is largely being driven by the effects of high energy costs and high labor costs in Europe. And as a consequence, the Europeans are being forced to close a number of their chlor alkali plants. And meanwhile, demand for the chemicals that are produced in those plants continues to grow in line with global GDP. So consequently, we continue to see new plants being commissioned throughout Asia, and that’s replacing that capacity that is closed in Europe. In fact, during June, I visited one of these plants that has been constructed in Indonesia.
The pricing data for the June was still being submitted at the time we prepared this report. And so we had incomplete dataset in the in the databases that we use for tracking. However, early indication is that salt prices have firmed a little since the March. Now I do note that anecdotally, some of the salt buyers that we’re talking to remain relatively cautious in the near term, and that’s really being driven by the current geopolitical landscape. As discussed in our previous quarterly, BCR wholly owns the Cape Preston West Port infrastructure.
Now this is a multiuser port that has been designed to deliver approximately 20,000,000 tonnes of bulk commodity capacity, and that can be through the delivery of salt, SOP, and other products such as iron ore. At our nameplate capacity, Maori salt and SOP needs are only around five and a half million tonnes. Now this leaves us with surplus capacity of around 14 and a half million tonnes per annum that we could be running across this infrastructure. Now this could be an important solution for some of the mine developers in the West Pilbara region who don’t currently have access to a port. Now by the June, we’d completed a significant portion of that marine infrastructure with it now being 91% complete.
The work that we’ve completed recently includes the jetty piling, the installation of the ship loader tower, and the boom during the quarter. And in fact, in the last visit, I was at the top of that salt wash at the top of the salt stacker. Work continues on the small boat landing module, and and still to come is a relatively short dredging program, which will take around two months, and that’s scheduled to commence around April. This is an important precursor to trans shipping operations being able
David Bossoff, Managing Director, BCI: to commence. David will now step you through an update on the SOP pilot plant. SOP remains an important part of our future. As a byproduct of our salt operations, SOP represents a high value sustainable fertilizer ingredient that is especially important to supporting food security in our country. Our full scale SRP production is expected to generate an estimated EBITDA of $99,000,000 per year.
The KTMS trial crystallize are nearing completion, and we’re almost ready to receive the first KTMS brines for the SOP pilot plant. The SOP pilot plant design is also taking shape with construction plan to align with the KTM South production. Steve will now step us through the cash flows.
Steve Feuchner, CFO, BCI: With its infinite resource and low sustaining CapEx requirements, money has the potential to deliver long term annuity style returns. Now when solar is fully ramped up at 5,300,000 tonnes per annum, it is expected to generate free cash flow that is equivalent of around 6.8¢ per share. And when we produce a 140,000 tonnes of SOP, this lifts that to around 8.8¢ per share. Now this also excludes any potential contribution that may come from the Cape Preston West Port. Currently, we’re targeting first dividends around 2029, and we’re likely to be in a position to fully repay the debt facilities for the salt operations in around 02/1935.
I’ll now hand over
David Bossoff, Managing Director, BCI: to David to conclude. Thank you, Steve. As we close out this quarter and financial year, we do so from a position of strength, winning as one team. Maori is a premium large scale operator positioned to address a forecasted supply shortfall amid rising global demand. With 62% of our salt production already under offtake agreements for the first three years, we anticipate strong annuity style returns over a sixty year life.
Combined with the potential upside from Cape Preston Westport and SRP, PCI is well positioned for a short run rate to profitability and long term sustainable growth. This brings us to the end of our presentation. We’re now moved to questions. If you haven’t already, please submit those questions to the chat box.
Q&A Moderator: Thank you, David and Steve. So our first question that we have here, in your presentation, we heard pumping commence into Pond 9 over the weekend. Can you tell us how long will this take to fill up?
David Bossoff, Managing Director, BCI: Yeah. Absolutely. So on the weekend, we opened the Weir Gates. That’s the gates that allows water to flow through the culverts into Pond 9. Port 9 is the last pond in our pond circuit all the way from Port 1 all the way through to Port 9.
And this pond, we expect by the August to be at capacity. That means that at that time, all our ponds will be at capacity and ready for the evaporation process start in the summer season.
Q&A Moderator: Lovely. And you also mentioned that there were two outstanding construction packages. Can you share a bit more detail on these with us?
David Bossoff, Managing Director, BCI: Yeah. That’s correct. So both the salt wash plant construction package as well as the dredging package is not yet been awarded. The salt wash plant is at 30% designed through one of our contracted partners called Sedgman. Sedgman is making really good progress.
We’ve already procured all the long lead items, and the construction of that facility is yet to be awarded. I’m expecting that the physical the S and P construction to happen early in the New Year. We’ll start with civil construction this year already. On the dredging component, we’re still going through a last component of our approval. As the, as you might be aware, we’ve had full approvals to do onshore dumping.
However, it’s more cost effective and environmentally, friendly to be able to do sea dumping close to our location. We expect those approvals to come through later this year, ready for dredging to commence in April year. Now Steve mentioned it’s a short dredging program. That’s because we’ve been able to optimize the volume, so I don’t see any risk in terms of the dredging, be able to commence and be completed on time.
Q&A Moderator: And now, Steve, do you have a progress update on your transhipper?
Steve Feuchner, CFO, BCI: Yeah. Thanks. So our our transhipping strategy is is to use two different transhippers. So in the first twelve months or so, we’re using a transhipper called the Osprey. It’s a it’s a transhipper that’s already been built.
It’s in China at the moment having some modifications being done to suit the application at Mahdi. Those works will be complete early next year. It will then relocate to Mahdi in or around July year. It’ll go through a commissioning phase. The pilots will be trained, so we, so we have a pilot exemption from the PPA.
Sorry. The the skippers will be trained. And so that that transport will run for around about the first twelve months. Annual capacity of that transship is around 3,000,000 tonnes per annum. In around July 27, our new trans shipper will will arrive, and that trans shipper will be what services across the twenty one year life of that agreement, and that trans shipper has around about 6,000,000 tonnes per annum of capacity.
So the new trans shipper final designs are underway at the moment, and I would expect in about the next three to four months, the first deal will become and construction of that will start to to really come to life.
Q&A Moderator: Thank you, Steve. And I’ll just remind you to please pop your questions into the chat box if you have them. Now we’ve got a question here on ex on expenditure. How confident are you at maintaining your capital budget, and are you cutting any corners to make it happen?
David Bossoff, Managing Director, BCI: Well, we’ve made a lot of progress on the construction. As the audience would be aware, we are nearly 70% done in terms a large portion of our money that we’ve into or edit. Therefore, the remaining risks to capital is two contracts, the dredging of wash pump construction. On the South Marsh pump construction, again, we might really be pricing cost, so I expect that to in well under. The efficiency we’re able to get in terms of savings is mainly due to productivity savings on earthworks.
As you would expect, the earthwork is a very large pro component of our construction costs, And the main cost savings has been by things that actually does not change any outcome in terms of physical construction, but reduces the cost. Simple example, if you run with the scraper, your circuits are shorter, get find good material close to your construction areas. That reduces cost, but doesn’t change anything in terms of the quality and the construction finish. So all our construction that we’ve done has been able to meet or actually exceed some of these specifications, and some of those savings has been applied to bring forward some of the capital construction we’ve actually had planned for future years.
Steve Feuchner, CFO, BCI: I want I to just add in on that as well, if you don’t mind. As part of our our debt facilities, we also have the banks appoint an independent technical expert. Now that expert, on a quarterly basis, goes to site and writes a formal report back to the lenders to give assurance to the lenders that we’re building in line with the scope that that underpins the debt financing. If for whatever reason we ever do wanna bury that, we need to go through quite a rigorous process to have that independent technical expert sign off that any changes we make will still maintain our our capacity. So there’s there’s firstly, we’re managing the project really, really well.
But secondly, everything we’re saying is being audited by that independent technical expert as well.
Q&A Moderator: Lovely. Now we’ve got some questions about the Cape Preston Westport here. One in regards to Agriemen who have a plan to build a very long road to a remote port. As part of the 14,500,000 tons per annum surplus capacity of the Cape Preston Westport, will this be available to make AgriMen a more viable proposition?
Steve Feuchner, CFO, BCI: It’s certainly. If if AgriMen can get the economics on their project to stack up through the use of our port facilities, then we’d we’d certainly welcome them as a potential partner.
Q&A Moderator: And you mentioned some other interest in the Cape Preston West Port. Is there anything more you can share about this?
Steve Feuchner, CFO, BCI: At this stage, it’s too early to make any comments. Suffice to say that anybody that none knows or understands that West Pilbara region, there is certainly a shortage of capacity, existing capacity, and the ability to get approvals, and the cost to build another port in that area is very difficult. So I would expect as more people get to understand what our capacity is, and as we get closer to completing the project, we’ll see a lot more inbound inquiries around access.
Q&A Moderator: Now on those inquiries, for those interested in the area, what’s the process to secure that capacity?
Steve Feuchner, CFO, BCI: Yeah. I think if you come through to myself, I believe my contact details are on a number of our LinkedIn posts. But, certainly, I’ll be the first point of contact.
Q&A Moderator: Lovely. And now I’ve got a question here about what keeps management awake at night. What are you currently focusing on, and is there anything that’s not on schedule?
David Bossoff, Managing Director, BCI: Well, I think, certainly a lot less getting you awake at night now than it used to two, three years ago. I feel like we’ve we’ve narrowed down the amount of risks that’s outstanding. The last one that, I’m quite happy with how we closed with the Jenny construction, as you would have seen from the slides. We’ve, made really good progress. Ship load is on, and and final, S and P work is is well underway.
The two items that’s outstanding is the salt wash plant and the dredging. Those are the two items that I would that I’m focusing on. The salt wash plant, we as I mentioned, we are actually managing those costs really well. The construction team has done a really good job in making sure we are building a fit for purpose facility. On the JG component, while we have full approvals to do onshore dumping and even if we had to do onshore dumping that is within our current budget, The opportunity to reduce that and make it more efficient is important to me.
And so we’re really focused on getting that sea dumping permit, which is one of the subsets of that approval. So those are the two items I’m focusing on. And thirdly is, of course, the ramp up in first salt on ship, which can bring us to first revenue. The ponds are progressing really well. The next focus for us next next quarter is progressing a lot more on our crystallizer filling strategy, and I’ll be I’ll certainly be keep the shareholders informed on how to progress on that.
Q&A Moderator: Thanks, David. Now turning to marketing and offtake. We’ve had several agreements in place for a while now. So what is your plan for the rest of sales?
Steve Feuchner, CFO, BCI: Yes. So our target is to hit a minimum of 70% of each year’s production having been sold under an offtake agreement. Two two reasons for that. Primary reason is our debt facility is required 70% to to be to be sold. Second reason is we do we do remain quite bullish around the prospect of salt prices.
We do wanna be able to have some product that’s going into the spot market because we do see an opportunity to take advantage of those prices as they move up over time to be able to use the spot market to take advantage of that.
Q&A Moderator: Thank you. And so you’ve spoken about BCI remaining within schedule and on budget. Can you share more about SOP and the next steps in that space?
David Bossoff, Managing Director, BCI: Yeah. Absolutely. So currently, we have almost completed the KTMS pilot crystallizer on-site. Now these are scaled down crystallizers. It’s actually built in location right next to where the final location for the SOP plant will be.
So that’s progressing really well. We expect to put our first KTMS bronze in that from next month, and that’ll then be ready for the summer season to start generating KTMS salts. Now, you might recall in previous updates, we have already produced KTMS salts on-site, but that was in a much smaller scale, more like a laboratory style, scale. So this will be an important next step to demonstrate to the market that we can generate high quality kTMS salts on-site at Mali location. The next step is also then to con continue our design of our soft pilot plant sorry, SOP pilot plant.
I’m actually heading to China to go and visit some existing operating pilot plants in the next couple of weeks. That pilot plant construction, I’m expecting to start early next year. And then we wanna run that pilot plant for at least twelve months to be able to capture a full cycle of the weather up at Mali and to demonstrate we can generate SOP of that. So when we commence construction of the SOP pilot plant, we’ll be sure to make sure the market’s informed about that, and then we will continue to verify those test results and ensure we can get a good outcome. I think the important point I do wanna make here is our SOP pilot schedule is based on outcomes, not time.
That’s important distinction because I wanna make sure that we verified all those different chemical outcomes and and testing outcomes we need to make sure that we can be confident that when we invest in the full scale SOP plan, that it’s gonna be efficient, it’s gonna be productive, and it’s gonna be it’s gonna deliver what it’s intended to.
Q&A Moderator: Speaking about engineering and design, can you give us an update on the progress with the salt wash plant?
David Bossoff, Managing Director, BCI: Yes. Certainly. So I mentioned in one of the early questions that we are 30% complete. We’ve already ordered the four key long lead items for the spark plug sorry, for the salt wash plant. The design is progressing really well.
We’re now in the final stages of the SMP and electrical design. Once that’s completed, we’ll then start to award the earthworks package first. I’m expect expecting that to be before this this calendar year before Christmas for us to finish the earthworks. Then soon after that will be the footings and then the actual physical construction. This plant is actually quite small compared to, you know, other plants that I’ve been involved in construction before.
And so we’re really focusing on production efficiency, so construction efficiency that will include modularization of some of the components, but also to ensure that we’ve got an efficient supply system for those components of the plant to decide.
Steve Feuchner, CFO, BCI: And and with the design of the salt wash plant, when we originally had the approvals put in place, my understanding is we’re gonna put quite a large complex structure in place. Does the final design look like now, and to what extent has that helped in terms of managing our budget and and perhaps getting a better cost outcome?
David Bossoff, Managing Director, BCI: Yeah. So the original design had a very large illiterator, approximately 30 meters in height, and the location was based at the jetty. The problems with that, of course, is you’ve got a single production stream. So if there’s any you’ve got a single point of filing in the production system, which makes it quite vulnerable. Its location was also close to the jetty, which in our areas, the Saoq on Prime, which means you means you have to do significant footings and construction design, which it begins at cost.
So we’ve moved it to the first plant. That was about two two and a half years ago. Additionally, we’ve lowered the height of the plant and and split the production system into two streams. So what that means is if you’ve got maintenance on one stream, you can still run the other stream. So you only have 50% of your plant down.
Or if you have a breakdown, which, of course, happens with all plants, you’ll be able to run one stream while you’re fixing that. So it increase your reliability and reduce your cost.
Q&A Moderator: Lovely. Thank you, David and Steve. That brings us to the end of the presentation. If you have any further questions, we welcome them at any time. Please reach out to us directly, and we will see you next time.
Steve Feuchner, CFO, BCI: Thank you.
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