Champion Iron Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
July 28, 2023

There are 6 speakers on the call.

Operator

Morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Champion Iron 4th Year 20 24 Results Conference Call. At this time, all lines are star 0 for the operator. Now I would like to turn the conference over to Michael Marcotte. Michael, please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, operator, and thank you everybody for joining our call to discuss our Q1 results of the fiscal 2024 year. We We apologize it's turning a little bit late. We had a little bit of a technical issue. Before we get going, I'd just like to turn everybody to our website where you can find the presentation, in which we'll be discussing today at championiron.com. We'll also be making forward looking statements throughout this call.

Speaker 1

In. You can go see our MD and A with regards to these forward looking statements and risk and assessments, also available on our website. In. Joining me on this call today is our CEO, David Catterford, who will be doing the formal presentation in the webcast and then we'll turn it over to people for Q and A at the end. Also joining me or us is Alexandre Belot, our COO and Daniel Tremblay, our at the end of the call.

Speaker 1

I'll now turn it over to David for the formal portion. Thank you. David? Hi, everyone. Thanks a lot

Speaker 2

for waiting these long 5 minutes before the call started. Very happy to be able to announce the results for the past quarter. As you probably noticed, it's a bit of a mixed quarter, but I think we did a good job and very proud of the teams to have navigated through these forest fires. I mean, This was one of the most significant forest fires in the past 100 years here in Quebec and in Canada. And I think the results are still fairly positive despite what we saw.

Speaker 2

We'll go a little bit more into detail with the elements of these forest fires. But I think When we look at the quarter, the main highlights is obviously the 3,400,000 tonnes that we produced, reaching over 90% of our nameplate capacity here at Bloom Lake. So the ramp up is going according to plan. We will have a discussion on costs, but costs were coming down if we remove the volatility of these logistics issues during the quarter and very happy with the way that the teams have managed to navigate through this. When we look at the financial results, these were obviously impacted by the fact that we were not able to send down all of the tonnes that were produced, but these tonnes are stockpiled at the site and we'll be able to go through the plan to be able to get them to the market.

Speaker 2

If we look at the environment, very proud to say that again another quarter without any major environmental issues. So since the commission recommissioning of Bloom Lake in 2018, we've done an excellent job in keeping the environment safe and have invested significant CapEx over the past years to make sure that we can continue to operate in such a safe way for decades to come. In terms of the community, also very happy. As you've probably seen in the past quarters, we've announced that we're working very closely with our local communities with First Nations. Up, but it's always good to be recognized by our peers.

Speaker 2

And we have the Mining Association of Quebec and also the Federation of Quebec Chambers of Commerce recognized as the best company working with local communities this year. So very proud to have that. And this will not only help us to continue to operate, but also help us significantly when we look at potential growth initiatives in line with our expectations. Because as you know, in these days, it's very important for companies, especially mining companies to work with their local communities. In.

Speaker 2

In terms of the industry, well, in the past quarter, you probably saw the iron ore price dip a little bit around 11% decreased for the P62 and the P65. We also saw the sea freight increase about 16% during the quarter as we saw volumes from Brazil increase following seasonal impacting seasonal factors impacting the production, but we still see the freight rates significantly lower than where we saw the high last year. So still in an area that allows us to have significant margins for our material. And as we ramp up the nameplate capacity and also bring down the tonnes from Loom Lake, we do expect to fully benefit from the high grade premium for our material. In terms of forest fires, so as we mentioned on the highlights page, significant forest fires here in Quebec that impacted production a little bit less.

Speaker 2

The fire was pretty far away From the mine, where it impacted production is that for some time, we were not able to haul up explosives or fuel. As you can imagine, these are the first things that are cut from roads when there's potential forest fires near the roads. So this made us take some decisions on how we manage the mine to be able to save some fuel to make sure that we don't stop production, above that caused some little hiccups at site, which impacted a little bit our production. Still happy with the 3,400,000 tonnes that we produced, But we could have done a little better if we had not been impacted by the forest fires. When we look at the real impact, it was really associated to the logistics.

Speaker 2

So the QNS and L or the rail line operated by IOC was shut down for some time and running at at a slower pace following that as they ramp back up and rebuild the infrastructure that was destroyed by the forest fires. The actual track was not impacted, But all of the communication systems around were impacted at certain areas around the rail. But very happy to be able to say though that, one, the fires did not come close to our actual operations. So there's no impact for our equipment. And also when we look at local communities, everybody managed to stay safe.

Speaker 2

There was some evacuations in areas near Sateel near the port, in. But since then, people have returned home and there was no impact to their actual home except for the moving out and moving back in. When we look at the impact associated to the rail stoppage and the rail decreased capacity for a short period of time, that caused us to stockpile roughly about 1,300,000 tonnes of our high grade material at Bloom Lake. This is all material that is at the same spec as what we produce. So roughly about 66.2% fully sellable material, but as currently stockpiled here at Bloom Lake.

Speaker 2

As the our 3rd party carriers receive their rolling stock and bring this into production, We do feel that we'll be able to gradually bring down this material in the quarters to come. When we look at the operations, as we mentioned, very proud that we managed to reach a record production of 3,400,000 tonnes on track to be able to deliver our full nameplate capacity run rate in the near future and very happy with the way that the mine is progressing now that we've received most of the mining equipment to be able to deliver all of our tonnes. The one drill that's still missing that will allow us to remove certain contractors that are at site that are costing us a little bit more. But when we look at the trucks and at the loading equipment, we do have sufficient equipment to be able to deliver on our mine plan, which is the ore and the waste and the ore required to be able to achieve at full nameplate capacity. You probably see the iron recovery being slightly lower than our target.

Speaker 2

This is something that we'll be able to optimize once we've reached full nameplate capacity, very difficult to be able to optimize that while we're in ramp up mode because the equipment needs to be tweaked once we have our full run rate and there's some modifications that will need to be done. This is on an operations level, not on a CapEx level, in. But operations wise, there's things to tweak to be able to maximize the iron recovery, but we don't see any reason why we would not be able to achieve that once we've had a full nameplate capacity. We do believe the equipment and the design will be able to allow us to reach full recovery. In terms of revenues, well, that was impacted mainly by the fact that we have about 1,000,000 tonnes less of sales than we should have in the quarter, mainly associated to the forest fires, but we'll be able to fully benefit from that in the coming quarters as we bring this material to our clients.

Speaker 2

If we look at costs, this is where I think the teams did a great job even though we were navigating through these forest fires. The higher production impacted positively our costs, reducing the costs significantly, bringing us closer to our sub $70 target here short term. And when we look at the diesel and explosive prices, They've also dropped in the quarter, exposes by about 10%, diesel a little bit more. So that's also helped softened the price. Where we were impacted during this quarter is the volume effect at the port.

Speaker 2

So at the port, we have fixed costs every quarter And this was spread over 2,500,000 tonnes instead of being spread over roughly 3,400,000, 3,500,000 tonnes. So that was one of the impacts that negatively impacted our costs. And secondly, the inventory build is the other element. So we had to move inventory at the site in and that caused us some extra costs during the quarter. But we do feel that we'll be able to bring our costs down in the coming quarters once we solve that those logistics issues associated in this quarter.

Speaker 2

Another area where we were impacted during the quarter, you probably saw that at the end of March, we had booked a price of $140 per tonne. That price softened very quickly once the last quarter ended and the final price that we've achieved for this material was roughly about $123 So that had a negative impact of about US35 million dollars because it was we had a roughly about 2,000,000 tonnes on the water and because this was spread on only 2,600,000 tonnes during the quarter, Well, that had a negative impact of about $13.5 per tonne. When we look at this quarter, the price that we booked was about 121 And we've seen prices a little bit higher in the past week. So if things stay the way they're at, We should be able to see a positive provisional price adjustment at the end of this quarter. But again, if we take a little step back and we look at what we achieved, again, this quarter we achieved roughly about the P65 index.

Speaker 2

So if you look on a larger time period, we always pretty much get the P65 benchmark in and that's our target. There is some noise on the short term, but we do get the full P65 index when you look at the yearly results. In terms of cash, well, the cash reduced a little bit during the quarter, mainly due to the fact that Our sales were much lower than expected. We did pay the dividend this quarter, so about $52,000,000 And there was some sustaining expenditures associated to the work at Bloom Lake for Phase 1, but also and 2 and also the work that we've started now on the Doctor pellet feed project.

Speaker 1

Open. If we look at

Speaker 2

our balance sheet, still very well positioned to allow us to continue our growth initiatives. In for our shareholders in the coming years. We just talked about operations. If we take a little step back and look at The market and more specifically on the Doctor grade material, what we're seeing right now is more and more Subsidies from governments around the world to be able to convert blast furnaces into electric arc furnaces. Answered.

Speaker 2

We've now seen Germany be able to join that journey to be able to convert blast furnaces to electric arc furnaces, But that still poses the question where the feed is going to come from. And when we look at different assumptions on where the market will be, most assumptions even in a conservative way see DRI material grow from 5% to roughly about 25% in the market by 2,050. That's a significant increase of DRI required to be able to supply these electric arc furnaces. And when we look at where else the material can come from, Well, realistically, there won't be enough scrap to be able to supply all of these and especially not enough scrap of high enough quality. And this model also assumes that there's quite a significant amount of blast furnaces that use carbon capture, which we'll see where that lands.

Speaker 2

But regardless where that lands, we do see a significant increase for DRI in the coming years. If we look at quantifying that, what is going to be required by 2,050 is roughly about an additional 350,000,000 tonnes per year of high purity iron ore required to make DRI. Just to put that in perspective, that's roughly about 40 new average scale mines of high grade material or about 20 minutees equivalent to Bloom Lake. And if you take into perspective the fact that Bringing on a new mine of high grade takes between 12 to 15 years in today's day and age. I mean 2,050 is pretty much tomorrow.

Speaker 2

And we have seen no projects of scale being announced to be able to produce this type of material. So there's going to be a demand of roughly about at 20 Bloom Lakes in the future without any other projects apart from the one that we're working on at scale that we've seen being announced in the market. So we see that as a very positive potential for Champion shareholders to benefit from higher premiums for this high grade type material. And this is pretty much the path that we're on to be able to create more value for our shareholders. And if you look at our growth initiatives, there aimed at either increasing the quality of what we have at Bloom Lake or maximizing value for the material that we make are potentially adding new tonnes of Doctor grade into the market.

Speaker 2

How to do this? Well, we have at 2 significant feasibility studies that we're working on right now. We're still on target to deliver those by the end of this calendar year, So by the end of December 2023. And this is the pellet plant in Pointe Nantes, the feasibility study to be able to build An 8,000,000 tonne per year pellet plant in Point Naul and the second one being the Kami project. So to be able to have roughly about 8,000,000 tonnes per year of Doctor grade material from the Kami asset.

Speaker 2

So these are the 2 projects that we are working on feasibility studies that we should be able to deliver by the end of this year. Open. If we look at our growth initiative, this is the Doctor pellet feed project to bring our material to 69%, essentially the highest grade material in the world and allowing our clients to decarbonize their operations and also benefit from increased productivity at the same time. When we look at this project, we're still on target to be able to deliver it by August of 2025. So we've started ordering long lead items.

Speaker 2

We've worked on the detailed engineering during the quarter, and we're still very confident we'll be able to reach This time line, the only element that's missing for us to be able to officially announce that we'll deliver this project in August of 25 is to have full investment decision and to have that we need to have the power allocation from the Quebec government for our project. When we look at the criteria required to be able to get power here in Quebec, basically high level. What the government has mentioned is we need to have a good relationship with our local communities and it needs to benefit local communities. In. And as we've mentioned early on the call, while we've just been recognized as the best company in Quebec in terms of community relations, it needs to decarbonize.

Speaker 2

And as we've disclosed previously, this project will help our clients decarbonize by roughly about 5,000,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year. So we largely tick that box. It needs to create value for Quebec, which this also does. So we tick pretty much all the boxes. When we look at timeline to be able to get power allocation here in Quebec, the government had announced that this would happen in June and then postponed to July.

Speaker 2

But realistically, the new CEO for Hydro Quebec comes in on the 1st August. So we do expect that probably in August or September, we should have some official news on this and then we should be in a position to have full investment decision from our Board to be able to go forward to deliver this project by August of 2025. That being said, I'd like to thank all of our staff who have done an incredible job in being able to navigate through these challenging times. In. And even if we were impacted to be able to have positive results in this challenging quarter, I think It's quite a testimony of the skill that we have within our company to be able to not only deliver projects, but also deliver on our operations.

Speaker 2

In. So that being said, I'd like to turn it over to the Q and A portion of the call.

Operator

In. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. You will hear a 3 tone prompt acknowledging your request. If you would like to withdraw your request, please press the star followed by the number 2.

Operator

Right. Our first question comes from Orest Wowkodaw with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Speaker 3

Hi, good morning. Obviously, a tough operating quarter given the situation around the wildfires. Can you give us a bit more clarity though on what the operational outlook looks like for the current quarter? And by that, I mean, was the rail in the logistics all back to full capacity at the beginning of July or have some of these impacts potentially impacted the current month.

Speaker 2

Yes. Thanks, Orest, for the question. So there has been some slight impacts still. So the rail is not fully to its full capacity yet. I mean, the rail is operational.

Speaker 2

I don't see any in the reason why we would not be able to deliver all the tonnes that are being produced in the quarter. It's more a question of bringing down the inventory and the backlog That is something that we definitely are looking for. One of the impacts also is, as you can imagine, The summertime is when the rail typically has its shutdowns to be able to do maintenance. They did not do that during the fires. So this still has to be done.

Speaker 2

So there will be some potential small impacts on delivery of material. But on a normal run rate, I feel that it's back up to where we're able to bring down all the tonnes that are being produced. And we're working closely with IOC to make sure that in the coming quarters we're able to bring down that backlog so we can sell this material to our clients.

Speaker 3

Thank you. Just to clarify, does that suggest that you don't expect to destock the inventory in this current quarter that that probably takes That's probably pushed out 1 quarter. Did I understand that right?

Speaker 2

Yes, it's correct. I wouldn't see many tons from the inventory being brought down in this quarter. I think it'll be over the next several quarters where we'll be able to destock the Bloom Lake inventory.

Speaker 3

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. Next question, we have Lucas Pipes with B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead.

Speaker 3

Thank you very much, operator. Good morning, everyone. Also, I want to add my congratulations on managing very well through the challenges during the quarter. David, I wanted to ask kind of longer term, you have an attractive growth profile with a number of projects. And How do you think about derisking those from a commercial standpoint?

Speaker 3

Do you need offtake? Do you need fixed price? Would appreciate your thoughts on that. And if you kind of could walk us through project by project, how you think about locking in economics or if that's necessary or not, I would appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2

Yes. Thanks for the question, Lucas. So as you probably see, Our balance sheet is in pretty good shape and all shareholders have the advantage that management and directors own over 11% of the business. So When we take decisions, we're fully aligned with all of our shareholders because we are major shareholders. And the reason why I'm saying this is that locking in fixed prices in an environment where we see a huge gap between supply and demand and a gap in the right favor for us.

Speaker 2

I don't think it would make a lot of sense to lock into prices long term now. Could we have some potential prepayments for future premiums? It's things that we'll definitely look at. But I think the first step for us is really to have all of these feasibility studies, So we can evaluate the cost and the value accretion for our shareholders from all of these projects, then we'll be able to weight them one against the other and see which one makes the most sense. But if we look at projects like the Doctor pellet feed that's costing us roughly US350 million dollars That in a normal environment, we should be able to fully finance out of cash flows.

Speaker 2

We don't see a lot of advantage for us to be able to lock into fixed prices. When we look at potential offtake, we like the current deal that we have with our partners where we make most of the money and we work with partners to be able to help us to bring down or to find the right clients. But when we look at the potential demand in today's market. If we were the type of company that signs a whole lot of MOUs, we'd be able to sell many times the amount Tons that we're currently going to produce with the Doctor pellet feed. But what we're doing is we're advancing projects And potential partnerships.

Speaker 2

We've just come back from Germany because as you probably heard, the German government is also subsidizing The change for electric arc furnaces, so converting blast furnaces to electric arc furnaces. We're pretty close to our Japanese customers doing a lot of work in the Middle East. And when we add up all the potential clients, we have much more demand than what we're actually going to produce.

Speaker 3

That's very helpful. So David, just to maybe put a bow on it, we shouldn't necessarily think of Offtake being a requirement for a project decision?

Speaker 2

Correct.

Speaker 3

Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you. And in terms of kind of the near term market outlook, in there's a lot of speculation about steel production in China in the second half and whether stimulus is necessary to maintain at current levels of steel production in China. In the event that a stimulus forceful stimulus doesn't come forth, how do you think your business would be impacted?

Speaker 3

How do you think the iron ore market overall would be impacted? Thank you for your perspective on that.

Speaker 2

Yes. Thanks for the question. So when we look at current situation in China, they're chasing much more economic growth than Climate related elements in the steelmaking business. We do feel that that's going to come back. So right now, we see the premium for the high grade being pretty low.

Speaker 2

But if there is some potential pressure, you probably also seen that in China, they're building more and more of these large blast furnaces and less and less of these small ones. So So when you look at productivity in these blast furnaces, even if there's some production that would potentially be shut down, we do think that that could bring some positive in news for the premium for high grade. We're monitoring it very closely. We've seen some I mean, when you look at China over the past in a few years every day. It seems that there's a different headline.

Speaker 2

But realistically, when you look at the amount of tonnes of steel that's being produced, there's a significant amount of tonnes being produced and they are even exporting tonnes right now. So we're seeing the market in China being pretty healthy. Is stimulus required to be able to increase the price short term potentially? But we do feel that with the type of material that we make and the demand for our type of material, we're somewhat protected in a scenario where They would reduce the tons out of China.

Speaker 3

Very helpful. And a quick technical follow-up question on that. The larger blast furnaces, how does that, from a technical perspective benefit higher grade ore?

Speaker 2

When you have a larger blast furnace, it's a little bit more difficult to be able to put a whole lot of low grade material. You can, but you're going to have much less productivity in your cost per tonne of steel. It's always the balance between how much you're willing to pay for the high grade type material to be more productive with your blast furnace versus buying lower grade type material to reduce your cost. But when you see the current environment, we do see that typically We've seen this in Japan. We've seen this also in other areas in China.

Speaker 2

When you build larger types of blast furnaces, They do favor a significant portion of high grade material to be able to reach their productivity. Very

Speaker 3

helpful. David, keep up the good work and I'll turn it over. Thank you very much and best of luck.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Lucas. And maybe just to add on that, when you have a large blast furnace versus a few others, you don't want to realign that too often. So you want to maximize also the amount of that you're producing out of that blast furnace realign. So that's typically another reason why these large blast furnaces will favor high grade material.

Speaker 3

Makes a lot of sense. Thank you for that.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from Alexander Pierce with BMO. Open.

Speaker 4

Thank you. Good morning all. So just building on the first question actually, Would you guys go into any more detail on the rehandling costs that you flagged for when you do start drawing those stockpiles? It sounds like it's later in the year, but maybe you can give us some kind of Order of magnitude there.

Speaker 2

Yes. Thanks for the question. When we're looking at rehandling cost, We can't give a sort of blended rate because there's roughly about half of the tons that we have at site that is stockpiled right next to the load out facility. So that is very low cost to be able to re handle. It's just a loader to put this in a new system that we built in the past years that allows us to re handle this very efficiently.

Speaker 2

When you look at the material that's a little further away from the site, we're looking at a few dollars per tonne to be able to move that material back to the site. But it's a bit difficult to say which tonnes are we going to move first. Obviously, the ones near the plant are first ones we're going to move because if ever we have another event, well, we want to be able to restock there. So those are the first ones that will go and then gradually we'll start moving also material that's a little bit further away from the plant. Okay.

Speaker 2

That's That's a little bit further away from the plant.

Speaker 4

Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you. Just the second part of the question is Just obviously given the potential for near term restrictions on that line, how does the arrangement with IOC work in terms of Did they get priority or would you get priority in terms of tons if we just saw we saw another issue such as this?

Speaker 2

Yes. The way we see it and the way that we're in discussions with IOC, I mean, it's been a pretty good partnership since the beginning. They've always been very accommodating for both their site and ours as well. They do have some backlog as well, but there's no situation where they would only move their material. They also have some restrictions at the port anyways, so it doesn't make that much sense to be able to only move their tonnes.

Speaker 2

And you have to remember as well that it does cross to 2 provinces. So it is a common carrier that is subject to the Canadian Transport Act. In and there are some obligations when you're a common carrier to be able to not only supply yourself and some pretty strict mechanisms associated to that. So I don't think it needs to go to that level because it's always been a very good partnership and we feel that we'll be able to work with IOC to bring down our tonnes and theirs at a decent rate over the next quarters.

Speaker 4

Great. Thanks, David.

Speaker 2

Thank you, sir. Open.

Operator

Your next question comes from Gordon Lawson with Paradigm.

Speaker 3

Hey, good morning. Congratulations on a great quarter here. I just want to make sure I heard you right with respect to the decision from the government for the direct feed plant. Did you say August 2025?

Speaker 2

For the delivery of the plant, that's correct, yes.

Speaker 3

Okay. And so Harmit, how comfortable are you with continuing to approve CapEx And ordering long lead items before this decision is made.

Speaker 2

Right now, we expect that the CapEx that we have approved or be able to allow us to go to the timeframe where the government would announce. So This brings us well into the end of September. So we feel pretty confident we'll get an official answer by that time. And as you know, We're a pretty creative company. We also have some new nature plans, even if that wouldn't happen now.

Speaker 3

Okay, great. Thank you very much. Thank you, Gordon.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question, we have Craig Hutchison with Citi Securities.

Speaker 3

Hey, guys. Good morning. With respect to the ability to deliver the 15,000,000 at. Like last quarter, you had mentioned your time was to kind of have it up and running in August. It sounds like you have all the upstream equipment minus 1 drill.

Speaker 3

Is that still the case?

Speaker 1

Do you guys think you can get up

Speaker 3

to full capacity here in August at the site?

Speaker 2

Yes. Thanks for the question, Craig. So we had hinted that in the past quarters. We still feel confident that we'll be able to reach the full nameplate capacity near term. Now with the little hiccups associated to the forest fires.

Speaker 2

Will that be August or September? I mean, we feel that we're pretty much there. We're over 90% now. Things have been trending positively since the end of the quarter. So I do feel that we're almost there to be able to reach that full nameplate capacity run rate.

Speaker 3

And when you say over 9%, you mean in the Phase 2, right? Just not the overall 59 tons?

Speaker 2

90% for the overall, When you look at 3,400,000 tons versus that call it 3,750,000 tons that we need to do per quarter, we're over that 9%.

Speaker 3

Open. And maybe just with respect to the Doctor project, you guys have done some traveling here since January and part of the study. Any kind of sense in terms of or clarity on the pricing mechanism? I think previously you said it would be something like you take the Doctor pellet, Maybe you would then subtract the pellet cost to produce a pellet and then some kind of subtraction from there. But just Given the dynamics of the market and how it's changed beneath this material, kind of any clarity in terms of How that pricing mechanism might play out in the future would be helpful.

Speaker 3

Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yes. Thanks for the question, Craig. So that's up in the air with a lot of the clients right now. So we're looking at creative ways to be able to price that. And the last thing that we want is to hurt ourselves in the future.

Speaker 2

So we still have quite a bit of time to be able to settle those over the next 2 years. But the way that we're still seeing it is a portion of that Doctor pellet material plus an increase for the FE units for our material. When we look at that feasibility study number that we have, We still feel that that's a conservative number when we look at the potential that we're seeing. And what's interesting as well is you probably saw the announcements from Klipsch wanting to get paid for their HBI type material and their green steel. So when we look at other potentials out of Germany, we're seeing also some premiums being announced.

Speaker 2

So we're something that was not there last year, we're starting to see now and this just the beginning. So we do feel that a lot of these higher grade material producers will want to make sure that they get the full benefit for this material over the next year. So that will potentially evolve, but we do see the result in our feasibility study as something that's fairly conservative. Great. Thanks guys.

Operator

Thank at. Next question, we have Dalton Baretto with Ken Acord.

Speaker 5

Thanks. Good morning, guys. David, a bit of a higher level question for me. Just given your high grade strategy, the quality of your broader portfolio and where your valuation sits today, are you seeing any interest From larger miners or steelmakers in terms of a strategic investment? And then Part B, I guess of that is, would you entertain such an investment if it came at a premium to market?

Speaker 5

Thank you.

Speaker 1

Yes. Thanks for the question.

Speaker 2

I think where we're seeing the most interest is when we look at, let's say, our Kami project. So quite a lot of groups in a project like Kami. So we do feel that's an area where we could develop a partnership. We've always said that this is a project that we would not certainly due on our own that we wanted to attract a partner to be able to do. So that's definitely something that we are entertaining for the growth into our project.

Speaker 2

Now when you look at the sort of Doctor pellet feed and I compare a little bit to lithium. So you look lithium a few years ago, everybody knew that it was going to be required. Everybody knew that it was something that was going to have a significant premium, But nobody was really investing or paying significant premiums for it. Now we're seeing more and more sort of panic mode elements. Yes, companies that have 3 holes in the ground and are valued at, I mean, pretty high amounts.

Speaker 2

So that's definitely something that that's definitely something that we're seeing in the Doctor market. So when you look at the Doctor market, we're just at the beginning of when we're seeing that growth for the near term in terms of demand and there's no new supply that's coming on. In. And the only difference I'd say between lithium and Doctor material is that lithium you can pretty much find anywhere. VR grade material is very limited to where you can actually produce it at decent costs around the world.

Speaker 2

And maybe on a final note, when you look at a project like Bloom Lake, I mean, replacement value of the Bloom Lake asset today is probably north of about US6 $500,000,000 and you look at our market cap today, we do feel that there's still significant room for this to grow. So would we entertain a partnership at these sorts of levels? When you look at the company, I do think that it would not be accretive for our shareholders at this time. It depends what you mean by significant premium. So something we could definitely evaluate, but I wouldn't see something at that level being done anytime in the short term.

Speaker 5

Great. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Dalton.

Operator

Open. Next question comes from Lucas Pipes with B. Riley Securities.

Speaker 3

Thank you very much operator. Thank you for taking my follow-up question. The prior question was actually pretty much exactly what I was about to ask. So I'll try to move into higher grade material. And if so, what are the key regions around the world where they are focusing?

Speaker 3

Is Eastern Canada on top of the list or maybe further down. I would appreciate how you think the industry is ranking Eastern Canada today. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yes. Thanks for the question, Lucas. I think Doctor grade material is such an interesting thing because I mean, we're a subset of iron ore. And iron ore unfortunately has been pretty much the most useful metal in the past, call it, a few 1000 years. So it doesn't necessarily have that sexiness that you'll see in lithium or cobalt or different of these elements.

Speaker 2

So when you're looking at this definition for critical minerals all around the world, you see governments, local and federal, having their list of critical minerals. And what we're seeing from the majors is that they're typically trying to get into this market. You look at some of the larger iron ore producers, they're heavily skewed towards iron ore. And what we're seeing is that they seem to want to going in a more diversified way. So we're not seeing a lot of investment in the actual iron ore space.

Speaker 2

In one area that had some potential and was looking to do it was Russia and Ukraine, but you've seen for the past year now that being significantly impacted and is going to take probably quite some time before they can imagine ramping that portion up. So we're not seeing a lot of focus on this apart from, let's say, a Vale that is definitely working towards that as well. But apart from that, we're not seeing that much interest. So is Eastern Canada a great place to produce Doctor grade material? I'd say yes.

Speaker 2

The unfortunate thing for others is that in the past 5 years, we've bought pretty much the equivalent of 10 Bloom Lakes in terms of resources in the area in and getting all the what we feel the best areas to be able to develop new mines. So we've pretty much taken a big chunk of what is possible in this region. So when you do the combination of what IOC has, Arcelor and what we have, there's not a lot left for other projects to be able to see potential in the area. So we do feel that we've positioned Champion very well to benefit from this key area, which is Eastern Canada. But maybe to answer your question, we haven't seen that much interest in terms of the other miners.

Speaker 2

Where I can say that we've had a lot of interest is when I look at the steelmaking companies. More and more are coming to visit Bloom Lake or coming to visit the area. There's more and more interest to see how can they benefit from this high grade type material within their operations. So that's the area where I say we're seeing majors start coming into the area.

Speaker 3

Very helpful. Really appreciate the additional color. Again, best of luck.

Speaker 2

Thanks again, Lucas. In queue.

Operator

Thank you. And there are no further questions at this time. I will now pass the call over to Michael.

Speaker 2

Yes. So sorry, it will be David just for now, but Michael is not in my spot yet. So in. But realistically, I want to thank everyone for being on the call today. I also want to thank everyone that's helped Bloom Lake be able to deliver the results that you saw in this quarter, especially our staff in the local communities.

Speaker 2

I do feel that we've got the right team to be able to navigate through various challenges that can come at us in the next years and also have the team in place to be able to deliver on our growth initiatives in line with our shareholders. It's always a pleasure to report our results and looking forward to talking to you all in the at the end of the next quarter. Have a great end of summer everyone.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today.

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Earnings Conference Call
Champion Iron Q1 2024
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