Earnings call transcript: Sayona Mining Q4 2025 sees strong production gains

Sayona Mining Ltd reported its Q4 2025 earnings, highlighting significant production increases and operational improvements. Despite a slight decline in stock price, the company demonstrated robust performance in several key areas, including record spodumene production and enhanced lithium recovery rates. The stock’s last close was at $0.022, marking a 2.27% decrease. According to InvestingPro data, the company maintains impressive gross profit margins of 90.85% and holds more cash than debt on its balance sheet, earning a "GOOD" overall financial health score.

Key Takeaways

• Record spodumene production increased by 35%.
• Lithium recovery reached a record 73%.
• Ore mined and processed saw double-digit growth.
• Merger with Piedmont Lithium aims to create a leading North American lithium producer.
• Cash position decreased, but cost reductions were achieved.

Company Performance

Sayona Mining’s Q4 2025 results showcased notable operational achievements, with a 35% increase in spodumene production to 58,533 dry metric tons. The company also improved its lithium recovery rate to a record 73%. These gains were achieved despite a challenging market environment where lithium index prices fell by 15-20%. The company’s efforts to streamline operations resulted in a 10% reduction in unit operating costs.

Financial Highlights

• Quarterly revenue: $71 million (second-highest since restarting production)
• Cash position: $72.3 million, down from $88.9 million
• Average realized selling price: $10.54 per tonne (8% lower than previous quarter)
• Cash operating loss narrowed to $55 per tonne

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, Sayona Mining is preparing for a merger with Piedmont Lithium, which is expected to generate $15-20 million in annual synergies. With a current market capitalization of $165.41 million and a beta of -0.13, InvestingPro data shows the stock often moves independently of broader market trends. Access the complete Pro Research Report, available for 1,400+ stocks, to gain deeper insights into Sayona Mining’s potential merger synergies and growth prospects. The company is focusing on sustainable recovery rates and plans to release updated mineral resource estimates in August. The strategic initiatives aim to position Sayona for a strong performance in FY 2026, with projected revenues of $158.07 million for FY 2025 and $111.92 million for FY 2026.

Executive Commentary

CEO Lucas Dow emphasized the company’s commitment to safety and productivity, stating, "We delivered improved safety performance with zero lost time injuries in May and June." He also expressed optimism for the future, noting, "We’re entering FY 2026 with positive momentum on both cost and pricing fronts."

Risks and Challenges

• Fluctuating lithium prices could impact revenue.
• Integration risks associated with the Piedmont merger.
• Potential delays in achieving projected cost synergies.
• Market competition and supply chain disruptions.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the sustainability of lithium recovery rates, sales, and shipment details. Questions from the webcast addressed ESG policy perspectives, short selling market dynamics, and expected cost reductions post-merger. These discussions highlighted investor interest in Sayona’s strategic direction and operational efficiency.

Overall, Sayona Mining’s Q4 2025 earnings call reflected a company poised for growth, leveraging operational efficiencies and strategic partnerships to navigate a challenging market landscape.

Full transcript - Sayona Mining Ltd (SYA) Q4 2025:

Conference Moderator: I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Lucas Dow, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer.

Please go ahead.

Lucas Dow, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Sayona: Hello, and welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Ciona’s June 2025 quarterly results presentation. I’m joined today by Sylvain Collard, Chief Operating Officer and President of Canada, Sujal Elder, Chief Financial Officer, and Andrew Barber, who heads up Investor Relations. This was a milestone quarter for Sayona, one where we not only delivered record production at North American lithium, but also improved our cost structure, achieved our best safety performance in almost a year and progressed the transformational merger with Piedmont Lithium. Today, I’ll walk you through our safety performance, operations, sales and cost results, our exploration progress, and finally, the steps we are taking to position Sayona, soon to be a lever of lithium for the future. Unless stated otherwise, all dollar amounts discussed today are in Australian dollars.

Let me start with safety. I’m pleased to say that May and June were lost time injury free months, which is a fantastic achievement and our best safety performance since September 2024. This outcome reflects strong field leadership, proactive hazard identification and reporting and an ongoing focus on embedding safe behaviors across our workforce. On the environmental side, we progressed baseline studies to support a potential expansion at NIL. Importantly, no significant environmental concerns have been identified to date, which is a positive sign as we look to grow in a sustainable and responsible manner.

Turning now to operational performance, it really was a standout quarter. Ore mined for the quarter increased to 361,893 wet metric tons, up 12% quarter on quarter as we focused on improving ore availability to feed the mill. Ore process jumped even more sharply to just under 358,000 tons, up 24% on the March. Tire throughput came alongside a record mill utilization rate of 93%, just 13 percentage points higher than the March. This is a direct reflection of the reliability and efficiency improvements that Sylvain and our operations team have been driving over recent months.

Lithium recovery was also at a record 73%, up 4% quarter on quarter, reflecting excellent operational process discipline and improvements in the plant. All of this translated into record spodumene production of 58,533 dry metric tons, up 35% on the March. It’s worth noting that even with this higher throughput, our concentrate grade remained steady at 5.2%. So we’re increasing volume without compromising product quality. On the sales side, we executed well on our strategy to wait shipments to the 2025 when forward prices were more attractive.

In the quarter, we sold 66,980 dry metric tons, up 148% compared with the March. That resulted in revenue of $71,000,000 which is the second highest quarterly revenue result we’ve achieved since restarting production at NIL. Average realized selling price came in at $10.54 dollars per tonne on an FOB basis or $682 per tonne, That’s 8% lower than the March, but still a strong result considering lithium index prices were down 15% to 20% across the quarter. Our forward sales program has proved its worth helping us secure high revenue and achieving and achieve stronger price outcomes than the market benchmark. The cost story also reflects continued and sustained improvement.

Unit operating costs on a ton sold FOB basis fell 10% to $12.32 dollars per ton sold or US791 dollars per ton, reflecting the benefits of higher production and continuing efficiency improvements at NIL. On top of that, our unit cost of production dropped to US737 dollars per tonne. Combined, these improvements in realized pricing and unit cost of production costs narrowed the cash operating loss to just US55 dollars per tonne for the quarter despite the weak pricing environment. In recent weeks, we’ve seen spot lithium prices improve with spodumene pricing having recently touched levels of more than US150 dollars per ton since quarter end before settling lower. So we’re entering FY 2026 with positive momentum on both cost and pricing fronts.

Turning now to the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with $72,300,000 in cash, down from $88,900,000 at the March. The decrease reflects the reality of operating in a low price environment with operating losses at NIL due to pricing pressure, broader group operating costs and non recurring merger transaction costs. As said, we received $8,000,000 in contributions from joint venture partners, which partially offset these outflows at NIL. In exploration, the focus has shifted from drilling to evaluation and resource modeling. We’ve now completed more than 268,000 meters of drilling across NIL and Moglan over the last two years and updated mineral resource estimates for both projects are on track for release by the August.

In Western Australia, we made progress at Mount Eden, particularly on its rubidium potential, and we signed a research partnership focused on rubidium processing. We’ve also advanced Tabataba and across other Pilbara lithium and gold targets. Finally, our merger with Piedmont lithium is progressing as previously communicated. All regulatory approvals are now in place and shareholder meetings are scheduled for the July 31. This merger creates Elevra Lithium, a premier a premier hard rock lithium producer with a leading position in North America and dual listings on both the ASX and Nasdaq.

Importantly, and subject to shareholder voting, the merger will also deliver $69,000,000 equity investment from Resource Capital Fund, RCF, at a significant premium to the current share price, strengthening the balance sheet and providing the funding capacity to drive forward our growth initiatives. To summarize, we delivered improved safety performance with zero lost time injuries in May and June, record production and cost reductions, progress on resource growth projects, and a clear pathway to completing our transformational merger and launching a lever of lithium. Despite challenging lithium market conditions, our team’s resilience and focus have positioned us strongly for FY ’26 and beyond. Thank you for your time today, and I’m happy to take any questions.

Conference Moderator: Thank you. If you wish to ask Your first question today comes from Austin Young with Macquarie.

Austin Young, Analyst, Macquarie: Just two questions from me, please. The first one is on the recovery was quite good at 73%. Could you just please provide more color on that and how sustainable this high recovery rate is into the next financial year? And second, I will come back with the second question. Thank you.

Lucas Dow, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Sayona: Thanks, Austin. Yes. Look, I think, I’ll I’ll pass to Sylvain in a moment, but I think just probably a couple of, overarching comments. I think the benefits and the improvements you’ve seen in the mill have been a sustained effort over really last eighteen months. It’s been ongoing work around refinement for the use of collectors and how we dose and and getting the right collector, aligned with our ore types.

So there’s been a number of factors. I think, Austin, we’ve we’ve likely have to probably just string a couple more months together, but we’re certainly it’s encouraging what we’ve seen in terms of performance. But I’ll hand over to Sylvain, and he can give you a little more color in terms of what the metallurgists have been up to.

Sylvain Collard, Chief Operating Officer and President of Canada, Sayona: Thanks, Lucas. So, yes, you’re absolutely right. So the focus on the team right now is mostly on the magnetic separators. We know when we optimize the operation of these two critical equipments, we can decrease, let’s say, the loss in in terms of recovery. So that is the the first major point.

The second one, like you explained previously, optimizing all the parameters related to the flotation, the collectors, and so on is making a huge difference. And then we were hearing that also with operators training how to react when they see some specific outcome in the flotation and loss of recovery. So the operators has been trained, let’s say, very focused on specific parameters by the metallurgist lead by Sal Boso. So all these parameters altogether has been reflecting the the good recovery we we had in the last quarter.

Lucas Dow, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Sayona: Austin, we we bank some of that into our FY twenty six guidance, which will be out at the August. But there’s probably a little bit more that we just wanna be able to really nail down. So we wanna be we wanna be known as a company that delivers on what we say we’re gonna do, and we’re going to be able to make sure that those elements are sustainable. But all the indicators are certainly positive of that being sustainable outcome.

Austin Young, Analyst, Macquarie: You. Look, that’s excellent. And just second question on the sales. Was there any kind of a slippage of shipment in this quarter? Or was it just everything being kind of carried out to schedule?

I had a kind of a probably more higher shipments in this quarter than what’s been delivered. But I recognize, you you have achieved the full year guidance nevertheless, but any color would be helpful. Thank you.

Lucas Dow, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Sayona: No. No. We certainly went it went according to plan. As you’ve noted, our sales profile was back ended in quarter four. So now we delivered upon that.

We haven’t seen any slippage in terms of in terms of shipments. And we finished the quarter. We finished good stockpile at just over 25,000 tons of stock.

Austin Young, Analyst, Macquarie: Thank you. We’ll talk to you now.

Lucas Dow, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Sayona: You.

Conference Moderator: Thank you. It appears there are no further phone questions at this time. I’ll now hand the conference back over.

Webcast Questioner: Thanks, Ashley. Just taking a couple of questions off the webcast. First question is, Larry Spink, the CEO of BlackRock, who started DSG reporting has openly confessed the program was somewhat of a disaster and has been withdrawing these policies from their organization. I understand that still involved in measuring reporting on ESG. It seems that it’s a waste of time and effort administering these policies and costing the company money.

Could you please comment, Lucas?

Lucas Dow, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Sayona: Thanks. And thanks for the question. Well, I think probably a couple of things just at the outset. Clearly, I think, AHT depends on how swung back from where it had been and and but importantly, across different jurisdictions, it’s quite different, obviously, in The US. So the pendulum’s probably swung further back.

Australia has been probably some moderation, not to the same extent. I think the other component as well is that those principles that ESG have founded upon around environment, sustainability, and and social license and good governance are basic principles that we have gotten our business in any case. Shareholders shouldn’t be sitting there thinking that we’re spending additional money on ESG. It’s just good practice, and I can tell you a safe operation is a productive operation. We need to be complying with our environmental obligations, so making sure that we’re hitting those aspects imperative.

And then, obviously, social engagement with First Nations and so forth is critical to potential expansions in our ongoing operations. So those principles really still stand the test of time and, you know, we can certainly assure investors and shareholders that we’re focused around where our expenditure is going. But the work that we’re investing on around the ESG element are all very much focused around being able to enable continued operations, the successful continued operations at NAL and also our growth prospects at both NAL and Mobland.

Webcast Questioner: Okay. Thanks, Lucas. I have a further question on, in particular, some historical short selling in the standard stock, which I might just take the question if that’s okay. Sure. Firstly, I just want to reiterate that short selling in the Australian market is a legal practice.

Whether we like it or not, it is something that is available. It is regulated to the degree that the regulators have set the boundaries. The company monitors it, but has no ability to influence it. And whilst it can be frustrating for shareholders to see that going on at times, unfortunately, from the company’s perspective, there’s not actually anything we can do about this. I think at the end of the day, I’ve been in the equity markets for twenty odd years and you know, those who have shorted ultimately have to buy it back.

So, you know, you do tend to find that these things work through the market over time. So I think, you know, it feel, you know, it can be reassured that the company does keep a close eye on this, but any issues really are down to the regulator. Another question that we’ve now received is, what’s the expected decrease in all in sustaining cost with the when the merger is completed?

Lucas Dow, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Sayona: Yeah. Obviously, we’re gonna see we’ve well, so let me go back a step. We’ve identified synergies in the order of it’s in $20,000,000 US as part of the merger, and we’re on track to be able to deliver those. Been a lot of work done around the planning for the merger. So a number of those will be across, if you like, corporate headcount, corporate efficiencies, but then also operationally, the collapsing of the off take agreement and then also logistics as well.

So there’s really a a broad spread across there, but we’d see that in that sort of 15,000,000 to $20,000,000 US annually being out being achieved through the merger synergies.

Webcast Questioner: So it’s especially no further questions from the webcast at this stage.

Conference Moderator: Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now

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