Good day and welcome to the Ramaco Resources fourth quarter 2025 results conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question you may press star then one on the touch tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then 2. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jeremy Sussman, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

On behalf of Ramico Resources, I'd like to welcome all of you to our fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call. With me this morning is Randy Atkins, our Chairman and CEO, Chris Blanchard, our EVP for Mine Planning and Development, Jason Fanning, our Chief Commercial Officer, and Mike Wolacek, our EVP of Critical Mineral Operations. Before we start, I'd like to share our normal cautionary statement. Certain items discussed on today's call constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements represent Ramico's expectations concerning future events. These statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are outside of RAMICO's control, which could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which it is made, and except as required by law, RAMICO does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. I'd also like to remind you that you can find the reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures that we plan to discuss today in our press release, which can be viewed on our website, www.RamicaResources.com. Lastly, I'd encourage everyone on this call to go onto our website and download today's investor presentation. With that said, let me introduce our Chairman and CEO, Randy Atkins.

Randy Atkins Thank you, Jeremy. First, I want to thank everybody for being with us this morning. We had another extremely busy quarter on our critical mineral front out west and indeed the best quarter in years on our med coal operations. Given the great job our coal ops team did in maintaining cost control in 25, I'm going to start on that front. This quarter, we achieved the lowest cost we've seen since the fourth quarter of 21. At our Elk Creek Complex, cost averaged just $80 a ton. Quarterly costs and margins were the strongest of all our Central App peers. We're also proud that in this difficult market environment, we have not cut wages or benefits for our mine workers. We believe Ramico is a best-in-class employer and we continue to attract the top mining talent in our industry. Reflecting our strong workforce, productivity in the fourth quarter was also the strongest we've had last year. Quarterly cash margins of $24 a ton were tied with our first quarter margins as the strongest of 25. This was despite a 17% decline in high-vol Metcol indices during that period. As we look to where we're headed in 26, we are initiating our annual Metcol guidance, which was published in our release. We are now poised to gross total sales for the sixth year in a row while lowering overall cash costs for the third year in a row. We cannot control pricing, of course, but we are proud to compare our costs against any non-long-long peer in our space. As a result, if benchmark prices hold at current levels or even improve, we expect strong overall earnings growth in 26 versus 25. On Metcol sales, we've now committed to roughly 80 percent of our 26 production at the midpoint of guidance. Jason will go into the specifics on our sales metrics, but we achieved both strong domestic and export pricing. On overall Metcol markets, we've begun to see some clarity on what we hope is going to be a meaningful rebound this year in index pricing. The potential triggers are both supply constraints in Australia and some stronger Indian demand after a slow buildup. Australian premium low vol indexes have increased to roughly $240 per ton and by more than $40 a ton from the fourth quarter. Average low vol and high vol indices are also up almost 10% today compared to the fourth As a result of all this market clarity, we are now either accelerating or initiating some of our low-ball growth projects at our Berwyn and Maven complexes and moving them from 27 into 26, which we had previously deferred. These projects are expected to add about a half million tons of production in 27 and between 1 to 200,000 tons of additional production in 26. They're also at about 20 million in growth capex this year and have very strong paybacks. On high vol markets, we're currently seeing a crowded field of new projects from several of our peers. They're all fiercely competing for Asian export business and have created lots of pricing pressure with current high-vol index prices lagging well below historic relativities. We however have been able to secure recent high-vol sales into Asia at meaningful premiums because of our low sulfur character of our coals. It's our expectation given market conditions that published U.S. index pricing will eventually adjust. Now, I'd like to move to our rare earth and critical mineral business. We're excited about the new proprietary technology breakthrough from our internal team who has developed something called carbochlorination for purposes of separation and extraction from coal. Recall that we recently brought on board two of the most senior members of Flourish Critical mineral team that had spearheaded the work on our original preliminary economic assessment or PEA. We have referred in our earnings release to some of the details of this novel form of flow sheet. This carbochlorination process provides a fundamental de-risking of a previous complicated and costly separation and extraction process in a number of respects. It reduces the overall capital and operating costs. It improves overall product recoveries and yields. It will ultimately increase our cash flow. It creates a higher value product slate. It uses a proven technique, which has already been deployed in the titanium industry. And from a marketing perspective, it reduces the project's reliance on Scandium as the main product driver, although we still feel scandium is important future use for our rarers. We are now working with our independent consultant Hatch to validate these estimates and expect to publish a revised PEA with third party economics by the middle of the year. Despite being a coal company, we have a good deal of technology focus in our DNA. We've been exploring, as many of you know, new uses of carbon in coal and indeed rare earths for over a decade, both on our own and with the Department of Energy's national labs. We currently have an impressive basket of intellectual property which includes over 70 patents, pending applications, exclusive license agreements, and trademarks. Indeed, we have now already filed robust patent and trade secret protections around this novel flow sheet process and related technologies. We believe this will ensure that Ramaco and our Brook mine will be the only unconventional source of rare earth and critical minerals that will be able to use this novel proprietary process. As I said, our internal analysis shows that this flow sheet results in increased cash flow and a reduction of both capital investment and operating costs. These preliminary figures compare very favorably to the already strong original economics that were in both Flora's original PEA last July, as well as the upsized development case from my last shareholder letter in September. The new flow sheet also shows markedly increased separation recoveries and yields and a higher overall value product slate. Specifically, it changes the proportions of individual production levels of the overall basket of products. We now anticipate that the largest percentage of production will come from the combination of high-purity gallium, high-purity alumina, as well as high-purity quartz. These all target the semiconductor industries and are very high-value products. As mentioned, we also anticipate that this approach will reduce the overall percentage of scandium production. We continue to think that scandium use will prove to be a very important developing market. However, the current appetite for high-purity gallium and its related alumina and quartz in the semiconductor industry is both proven and rapidly expanding. We hope the Brook Mine will be an important and meaningful resource for this critical industry. Finally, another important benefit to the new product slate is that the flow sheet route will allow us to forego the costly solvent extraction process. We now expect to sell our rare earth production as a mixed rare earth carbonate, or what's called MREC to third-party metals and magnet processors at strong pricing. MREC will now be a smaller percentage of our overall production, and this will also now eliminate the significant CapEx expenditure and the ongoing operating reagent expense associated with the former solvent extraction technique. New flow sheet modifications will modestly increase the timeline for completion of our preliminary feasibility study from Hatch. However, on a project that could well exceed a billion dollars in capital investment, we would prefer to get it right before we build. We are continuing construction of our pilot plant testing facility in Wyoming, which should be complete this summer. We will begin moving our internal chemical and metallurgic testing operations into that building when it opens. We will defer construction of the internal processing infrastructure at the pilot until we finalize the flow sheet testing from HADS. As we've said, the internal equipment is being designed and optimized at the Zetan Inc fabrication operations in Ontario. We now expect full pilot operations to start in 2027. On our downstream critical minerals front, the Trump administration recently announced an initiative to establish international price floors for critical minerals. We remain confident that the U.S. government is committed to ensuring the development of a robust domestic supply chain and will take further steps in this area. We also continue to pursue procurement funding and development opportunities with both governmental and strategic stakeholders. We expect the new direction and information we've just announced today with this new flow sheet approach will inform a good deal of these discussions as we progress. We were also recently gratified to see the administration's discussion about the creation of a domestic rare earth stockpile program called Project Vault. This program dovetails with our previously announced critical mineral stockpile and terminal at the Brook Mine, which we are pursuing with Goldman Sachs. There should be more information on that in the near future. We are also now exploring some reorganization options for Ramico's overall corporate structure as we move further into our dual platform operations. We hope to announce more clarity on that in the coming months. We expect to set up separate corporate entities within a holding company structure structure to better reflect the different forms of assets and operations that we both now have and are developing for the future. We hope this structure will provide more operational and financial flexibility as we develop two different and separate businesses in the Met Coal and separately in the rare earth critical mineral space. All of this, of course, will be designed to enhance shareholder value. Again, we will provide more color about that as we roll it out. Lastly, I would note that our balance sheet is now in the strongest position that has been in our history. This is despite some challenging recent years in the Met Coal markets. As you know, we raised roughly a billion in capital in the second half of 2025. We also ended the fourth quarter with record liquidity above $520 million, up more than 275% year over year. We expect this additional funding will allow us to more rapidly move forward with our transition to a dual platform of Critical Minerals company. Now, I would first like Mike Wolacek, who leads our Critical Mineral business, to share Here are some further thoughts and details on our rare earth progress. I'll then turn the floor back to our team to discuss finances, coal operations, and markets.

Mike. Thank you, Randy. As you highlighted, we have some exciting updates to report on flow sheet development. We completed an expanded suite of testing of Brookmine composite samples at multiple external metallurgical facilities. These include chemical and mineralogical analysis or physical properties, chemical mineral extraction and purification testing. This expanded test program also included initial testing of the carbochlorination flow sheet. Commercial carbochlorination is a high temperature industrial process using carbon source such as coal and chlorine to convert metal oxides into volatile metal chlorides and water-soluble chlorides. This is the dominant technology used for nearly all titanium manufacturing today. And from our test work completed today, including the mineralogical analysis and metallurgical response of the critical minerals, initial testing of carbochlorination indicates the brook mine responds favorably to our proprietary process. In this flow sheet, the valuable volatilized critical minerals from the brook mine include gallium, germanium, aluminum, and silica. Initial tests show virtually all of the gallium was volatilized, and this is a significant recovery bump from the previous flow sheet. We also achieve high extraction of aluminum chloride, a portion of which can be recovered to produce high purity alumina. Germanium and silica are also volatilized under our intended operating conditions. These volatile vapor phase chlorides will be condensed, separated, and purified from the crude chloride mixture. This flow sheet allows us to produce higher purity gallium, which is sold at a premium. We will also generate additional revenue from the HPA and high purity quartz, both high value products used for semiconductor, renewable energy, and other advanced applications. Our carbonaceous clays contain abundant amounts of kaolinite, which is the source for high high purity alumina and high purity quartz. Effectively, we are now able to generate revenue from gang, something no hard rock rare earth project is able to do. Scandium and the suite of the rare earth elements are converted to chlorides in the residue. They remain in the solids after the reaction, and similar to table salt, they will dissolve in water, which is a much better option than leaching in large amounts of caustics and acids. We intend to selectively remove scandium and produce scandium oxide and simplify the balance of the rare earth portion of the flow sheet to produce mixed rare earth carbonate or the MREC product as Randy mentioned. Separation of rare earths into oxides is both technically complex and capital intensive. Production of MREC is a flow sheet simplification that will reduce the capital and operating costs associated with rare earth solvent extraction, separation, and finishing. The two main reagents in carbochlorination are carbon and chlorine, so a coal deposit has all the carbon we need, and it is not a reagent we have to purchase. Most of the chlorine is recycled by decomposition of non-revenue generating mineral chlorides, simplifying the bulk reagent logistics associated with the hydrometallurgical flowsheet option. Our focus going forward is to complete more test work to determine optimum conditions for the carbochlorination reactor and downstream testing on solubilizing the rare earth chloride residues to selectively extract scandium and produce the MREC. We will also conduct separation purification testing on the crude chloride circuits to define the flow sheet necessary to achieve the various gallium purities. The testing plan for high purity alumina and high purity quartz is analogous to gallium. Ramico filed provisional patents on the carbochlorination process to recover rare earths and other critical minerals from coal and carbonaceous clay deposits, and we feel this is a significant competitive advantage over other flow sheets being considered for critical mineral-hosted coal deposits. In parallel to the test work program, we have engaged a specialist consultant with experience in alumina carbochlorination to generate a thermodynamic simulation of the carbochlorination circuit and to provide design inputs for the updated preliminary economic analysis. We are engaging HATS to complete a PEA and this is anticipated to be completed mid-year followed by a pre-feasibility study by year end. With the flow sheet pivot, we pause the detailed design of the downstream pilot plant modules at Zeton until we generate a new basic engineering package for carbochlorination. This is anticipated that in Q3 2026, however, we anticipate Zeton's continued involvement since they have experienced piloting similar unit operations. We also anticipate conducting on-site testing, both at the existing ICAM Research Center as well as the new pilot plant building now under construction. We expect the pilot shell to be complete later this summer. Switching to an update on geology, we completed the fall drill program, which included both infill and step-out drill holes. We are nearing completion of an initial fence drill program, which will inform drill density necessary to increase geological confidence to support selective mining. We have additional fence programs planned and are increasing the number of drill rigs to complete this program this summer. We hope to have sufficient geological data from our drill programs to move to reserve status from inferred up to indicated, rather, by year end, in line with the completion of the Hatch Prefeasibility Study. As mentioned, we are building our internal laboratory to conduct internal assaying and metallurgical testing to mitigate lengthy external lab turnaround times. We have two ICP-MS machines, and we have equipment at site already that will be used for the carbochlorination reaction. We anticipate hiring technical and analytical staff to ramp up in-house geometallurgical testing. I would now like to turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Jeremy Sussman.

Thank you, Mike. Starting with the balance sheet, I'm pleased to note that we had record liquidity of $521 million at the end of the year. This is the strongest level of liquidity that we've ever had. liquidity was up over 275% compared to the same period of 2024 and we ended the quarter with a net debt position of $11 million. I want to touch upon the extraordinary financial transformation to our balance sheet that we achieved in the second half of 2025. First in July and August we raised $65 million in unsecured notes. Second in August we raised $200 million in new equity through an underwriting by Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Third in November, working again with Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and a larger underwriting syndicate, we raised $345 million in six-year unsecured convertible notes with a 0% coupon. Then in December, we increased our revolving credit facility led by KeyBank to $500 million, inclusive of a $150 million accordion feature. In terms of fourth quarter performance, as Randy noted, operational results were again extremely solid with cash cost per ton sold of $92. This continues to put Ramito in the first quartile of the U.S. cash cost curve. Q4 also represented the company's strongest quarter in terms of cash cost per ton sold in four years. Fourth quarter cash margins of $24 per ton equaled those of the first quarter as the strongest of 2025, despite the U.S. high-vol metallurgical coal indices having fallen 17% during that time. Our Q4 production fell modestly from Q3 to 892,000 tons, which was the result of the typical Thanksgiving and Christmas miner vacations, as well as our continued focus on value over volume. We'd rather leave production in the ground versus selling it at a loss into the spot market. Thankfully, our strong balance sheet, including our record liquidity position, allows us this flexibility. Should markets continue to improve, 2026 can provide a very meaningful working capital tailwind on the inventory front, especially in the back half of this year. While metallurgical coal price indices declined throughout Q4, they're now up meaningfully from the bottom. Unfortunately, however, U.S. highball indices fell another 4% in Q4 versus Q3. But despite the continued fall in index pricing, we managed to print Q4 financial results that exceeded Q3 financial results as cash costs fell $5 per ton sequentially compared to the realized pricing that fell just $4, incurred in connection with the structuring of a strategic critical minerals terminal at our Brook Mine. All of our primary peers have either reported Q4 results or pre-announced results. I'm proud to note that our cash costs of $92 per ton and cash margins of $24 per ton were easily the best in class among our central Appalachian MEC cold tiers in Q4. Looking forward, we're initiating 2026 guidance. Full year 2026 production is now anticipated to come in at 3.7 to 4.1 million tons, an increase at the midpoint versus 3.8 million tons in 2025. Full year 2026 sales are anticipated to come in at 4.1 to 4.5 million tons, an increase versus 3.8 million tons in 2025. Our guidance tables lay out a number of other 2026 expectations, such as CapEx, SG&A, DD&A, Interest Income, Tax Rate, and EIDL costs. While you can find the specifics in our earnings release, I want to touch on two areas. First, we anticipate net interest income in 2026 versus net interest expense in 2025 as a result of our large cash balance. Second, we anticipate capex of $85 to $90 million, up from $64 million in 2025. This includes spending on maintenance capital on our metallurgical coal mines of roughly $10 to $11 per ton, approximately $20 million of growth capital at the Berwyn and Maven complexes and roughly $20 million for our rare earth elements and critical minerals business. We anticipate first quarter of 2026 shipments to be 800,000 to 950,000 tons due to normal seasonality with the Great Lakes, which were of course closed for most of the first quarter. We expect cash costs towards the high end of the annual range for Q1 on the back of lower rateable shipments. As I look ahead, I'm incredibly optimistic about 2026. First, we have by far the best balance sheet in liquidity in our history. Second, our cash costs and margins are among the best in Central Appalachia. Third, coal markets appear to be improving in large part due to pricing having reached unsustainable levels from a cost curve perspective in the second half of 2025.

Lastly, we're making meaningful progress on our rare earth elements and critical minerals path towards commercialization I would now like to turn the call over to Chris Blanchard our EVP for mine planning and development thanks Jeremy and also to everyone who joined us today it's always preferable to share our operational results when we have been successful in controlling those things like costs and volumes which are in our control across all of RAMICA's operating complexes I want to give recognition to all of our miners and support staff who focused on the fundamentals all year to help us drive down costs across the board and to complete the year with our best quarterly performance since 2021. These successes are continuing as we begin 26. Productivity levels remain high relative to our internal forecasts, particularly at our flagship Elk Creek Complex. However, while the mines continue to operate at budget levels or above. Logistics bottlenecks with both of our railroad partners as a result of the extreme temperatures and snow in late January did cause delayed shipments in January and so far in February. These were primarily due to the difficulties in moving and unloading coal to the piers and ports and the subsequent backlog of loaded trains with insufficient empty cars cycling back to all producers for several weeks while we built clean inventory due to these events no production had to be curtailed however the impact of the interruption in rail equipment cycling cascaded and continues to be worked through as Randy mentioned the highball markets remain oversupplied and ultra competitive fortunately our Elk Creek product has some quality advantages over some of the incremental highball producers who tend to be of a lower metallurgical rank and have higher sulfur contents. To take further advantage of that we are transitioning a portion of Elk Creek's production into even lower sulfur areas of our reserve to better meet our customers needs. As mentioned earlier we've also kept our wages and benefit packages for a workforce constant even in the declining market over the last couple of years and we are taking opportunities to strengthen our workforce with some of the most talented miners available in southern West Virginia and Virginia. On the low-vol side of the company, we're seeing meaningful improvement in market dynamics and limited excess supply of high-quality low-volatile coals. Accordingly, our board of directors has approved pulling forward approximately 20 million dollars of planned growth capital from 2027 into 2026 at our berlin and our maven complexes first we'll begin to ramp low volatile coal production at berlin mine approximately one year ahead of schedule the timing of the full build out will be dictated by the completion of two additional air shafts into the coal mine work has been ongoing on these projects since late 2025 and will be completed during this summer. Once the ventilation system is in place, a full section will be added to the mine at an annual expected production rate of 350,000 tons per year. While the Berlin mine will not be running at this full rate until the third quarter, we will bring on some interim lowball production during the second quarter at our Laurel Fork mine, utilizing the same equipment capital and workforce. Combined, we project an additional 150,000 approximate clean tons of production during 26. Secondly, at the MAVEN complex, we are now moving forward with the construction of the flood load batch weight loadout system at our MAVEN processing plant. Once operational, this will allow us to ship our premium MAVEN product to our domestic and international customers without adding approximately $20 per ton of additional logistics, trucking costs which have negatively impacted this operation. We believe that having the fully operational loadout will potentially allow us more opportunities to purchase and ship other high quality low vol coal that would be advantaged by loading at Maven. Work has commenced on the loadout project already and we are projecting it being operational and loading its first train in the middle of the fourth quarter of 26. The completion of the loadout will make the development of the underground portion of the Maven property much more advantaged and we will continue to evaluate the full buildout of the underground mines at Maven at that time and let the market conditions guide the timing of that investment and expansion. Finally, to briefly turn to some of the mine and construction updates in Wyoming at the Brook Mine. During the fourth quarter, we expanded the Brook Mine pit to excavate additional thermal coal for an upcoming trial with a regional customer. During this mining, we also segregated several hundred additional tons of rare earth element and critical mineral ore from two different enriched strata zones for continued optimization testing. Construction has also begun on the ore storage facility on the Brook Mine itself, which will function as a staging area for mine products prior to being sent to outside labs and ultimately to our own on-site pilot facility, which Mike mentioned is also starting foundation work and will be under roof later this summer. Detailed design engineering is also underway for all of the electrical transmission to site and the substation to power our future commercial processing facilities. In closing, with the security and liquidity from all the transformational financial transactions that were consummated during the second half of 26. We find ourselves with the flexibility to modify our operational portfolio to quickly take advantage of the strengthening lowball met markets while also continuing the development of the Brook Mine at full speed as well. To discuss both the coal and the critical market, critical minerals markets in detail, I'd like to now turn the call over to our Chief Commercial Officer, Jason Fanon.

Thanks, Chris, and good morning, everyone. Today, I'll share our views on the steel and coking coal markets, provide an update on our 2026 Metcold sales position, and then discuss the progression of our marketing strategy at Brook following our recent flowsheet breakthrough. We continue to see global steel markets increasingly shaped by policy rather than supply-demand dynamics. China exported a record amount of steel in 2025, even as domestic crude steel production declined. That divergence between export growth and domestic contraction is unlikely to persist. Export licensing measures and rising political pressure suggest that Chinese steel exports could decline meaningfully this year, which would lend considerable support to global steel prices and in turn provide uplift to cooking coal prices. European steel production appears to be stabilizing and prices are already reacting to tighter import controls, rising nearly 20 percent since early Q4 2025. One of the world's largest steel makers has predicted a year-over-year increase in European steel production of approximately 6 to 8 million tons, reflecting improved mill margins amid a more constructive policy backdrop. North America, trade enforcement continues to support domestic pricing. U.S. steel prices remain among the highest globally, with spot pricing nearing $1,000 per ton for the first time since mid-2023. India remains the primary coking coal demand growth engine. Blast furnace production increased 17% year-over-year in 2025, and blast furnace steelmaking capacity continues to expand aggressively. Discussions between U.S. and Indian officials regarding increased U.S. met coal imports could lead to a potential removal of the import tax on U.S. met coal into India, which in turn could increase U.S. imports above 2025 to 9.5 million tons. Seaborne metallurgical coal markets began 2026 with an already tight Australian premium coking coal supply, further exacerbated by extreme weather events, with Australian premium lowball pricing sitting just below $240 per ton today, up nearly 20% from Q4. U.S. East Coast indices are approximately $196 per ton for lowball, $159 for highball A, and 149 for high ball B. This volatility underscores how thin the spot market truly is. Seaborne hard cooking coal supply is roughly 180 million tons annually, with less than 5% of that typically available on spot. That structural thinness magnifies short-term supply disruptions. That said, the development of significant long-wall high ball production capacity in the U.S. has intensified competition in both domestic and export markets. As a As a result, U.S. high-vol pricing continues to stubbornly lag historical relativities through Australian PLV. We therefore continue to focus our growth efforts on our low-vol portfolio, where the supply-demand balance remains tighter and pricing durability appears stronger. The new rail load out at Maven, once operational, will materially improve logistics economics and provide access to additional customers for this premium central app low-volatile Turning to our 2026 sales position, we have secured commitments for 3.1 million tons. North American customers account for 1.1 million tons at an average fixed price of $142 per ton. In addition, 2 million export tons are committed at index-linked pricing. Turning to our brick mine progress, our carbon fluorination-based flowsheet should substantially strengthen and de-risk our product mix and revenue basket. We are now placing greater weight on high-purity of gallium, high-purity alumina, and high-purity quartz, with a modestly reduced emphasis on scandium applications, although scandium does remain an important part of the Brookmine portfolio. High-purity gallium metal, if achieved at scale, positions Ramico directly within the strategic semiconductor material supply chain. In parallel, we now intend to market our magnetic rare earths, which represent a smaller portion of our overall revenue basket, primarily as a mixed rare earth carbonate or MREC. These flow sheet enhancements, combined with our elevated gallium focus, materially expand our addressable market. We are in active dialogue with several companies and a wide variety of potential customers regarding potential offtake and partnership structures. As we advance pilot operations and generate lab scale and pilot scale material, we expect these discussions to evolve into formal commercial frameworks. Finally, we continue coordinated engagement with defense primes and governmental stakeholders. The broader policy backdrop, including potential domestic stockpile initiatives and price support mechanisms, reinforces the strategic relevance of the Brook Mine, as well as the Strategic Critical Minerals Terminal, which we announced last year. For the terminal, our location with a dry climate and a site adjacent to both the Class 1 Railroad Mainline and the major interstate highway, puts Ramaco in a unique position to serve the U.S.'s stockpiling needs. To conclude, these are exciting times for the company. On Metcol, we enter 2026 with a strong and largely committed sales book, improving low-volve pricing dynamics, and a disciplined growth strategy focused squarely on higher return segments. We believe our cost position, product quality, and logistics flexibility leave us well positioned as markets rebalanced. On critical minerals, our flow sheet direction represents a meaningful step forward. It should enhance product quality, lower capital intensity, and sharpen our commercial focus toward high purity gallium and strategic MREC partnerships. With that, I'll turn it back to the operator for the Q&A portion of the call. Operator.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch tone phone. If you are using a speaker phone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw the question, please press star then 2. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Ben Kahlo with Baird. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question, and thanks for all the detailed information, a lot to go through. Maybe first, so you've had a lot of changes, you know, at Brookline and the process and technology. I'm just, I guess my question is, you know, how did you guys, you know, decide to go this I know that you guys have been working at this for a long time, and so from the outside, it looks a little abrupt, but I'm sure that, you know, this was a thoughtful process. So just if you could explain that. And then the second question, just as I'm following up on that, is as you make these changes, I know that you've been in, you know, in discussions with, you know, for off-take agreements and with the government, and does that change the timing of any of that? Thank you guys.

Let Mike take the first part of that question.

Yeah, sir. We had anticipated that this might be a flow sheet option some time ago, but hadn't completed the necessary test work to understand the magnitude. You know, granted there's some delays in completion of a PFS with this flow sheet change. The expected impacts on the economics are significant. So, you know, we were, I guess, delighted to see that almost all of the gallium went through gallium chloride, which is, you know, the ability to produce a higher purity gallium product comes at a significant premium. So, you know, we feel like for a long mine life project such as the Brook Mine, potentially 100-year mine life, that this is a material improvement to the economics.

Yeah, last flow sheet, you know, no issues with it, but again, the step change in improvements justified the change in our Yeah, and I think, Ben, to the second part of your question, you know, we have kept our discussions in relative real time in terms of different procurement and finance options. And honestly, the pivot to probably a more Gallium-centric product slate is an improvement and enhances our discussions, candidly, because in a number of respects, first of all, we We sort of de-risk the process. The carbon chlorination is, of course, a proven technique that's been used with titanium, so it's not as if this is a novel first-time approach given the fact that we've got a novel feedstock to start with. But secondly, of course, you know, it's been noted before, you know, we think scandium is going to be a very important part of the whole kaleidoscope of different types of rare earth usage moving forward. It's mainly going to be used for light weighting and obviously for some electronic storage. But it's a market that, you know, is a bit more in the future that's evolving. The gallium market for semiconductors is not only apparent today, but it's growing rapidly, given sort of the electrification of the entire economy and, of course, the AI business. So, we are finding, you know, a high level of receptivity both with strategics as well as with the government in terms of a pivot toward more gallium and perhaps a lesser emphasis on scandium. So, I hope that kind of generally addresses it.

Our next question comes from Douglas Orman with Discovery Capital. Please go ahead.

Good morning. I'm just making sure I caught that in the initial comments, it sounds like. but engineering enhancements would lead to material increased value relative to the September shareholder letter, which had the $5 billion NPV, and not just the floor PEA, when we think about a launching off point for what the new flow sheet will provide. Are we thinking about that correctly? Mike?

Yeah, I think, you know, we're looking at the increased production, obviously, see from the new product suite, the potential higher purity, what that translates into in terms of throughput, that's a conversation we're going to have. But the basket price, if you will, is materially increased because of these products. We've been, our internal estimates, we've been, I would say, conservative in terms of what we're looking at for purity, for both high purity alumina and high purity quartz. We've taken, you know, 4N-type purities in our projections, but if you look at gallium at 6N, you know, it comes at three times the price of 4N. And similarly with high-purity quartz, you know, if you produce a 5N versus a 4N, it's three times the price. So these are the things that we want to test going forward, the ability to produce those products, understand what the recoveries are. There's a whole lot of upside here, and we already see a significant increase on basket price.

Thanks.

Our next question comes from Carlos de Alba from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I wanted to maybe get a clarification on the new flow sheet, because I think I just heard that this is not a novel approach that has been used in titanium. But if that is the case, then would you mind please explain, just for our benefit, what is the fundamental technology breakthrough then that you have achieved with this processing? And then what is the level of confidence on the new approach? Can you maybe talk about the independent laboratories that have done initial testing on this new flow sheet method, and you can share the names and if there is any documentation that you will share with the market.

Sure. I think, you know, it comes back to geology. And you know, because this deposit has gallium, germanium, also the mineralogy, so, you know, we've published that the clays are aluminum silica clays. This carbon chlorination process basically breaks those clays and allows us the ability to produce those products. So high purity quartz, high purity alumina. And I think, you know, obviously the rare earths stay in the residue. So you'll find that there's been publications about carbon chlorination in rare earths, you know, and you've mentioned the titanium industry. this hasn't been done before in the way that we are viewing the flow sheet so we we have some IP around it we talked about patent pending applications exactly how we're doing it the operating conditions the temperature of the residence times how we separate these products is proprietary I would say that it's you know we were even surprised by the results we've been public in our in our disclosure about the labs that we've been using, Element USA. We've engaged a consultant, Kingston Process Metallurgy, who has carbochlorination experience in the aluminum industry, so we're working with them on the simulations. I'm very confident about this. The other benefit is, you know, we've significantly de-risked the bulk reagent requirements for HydraMet. So, you know, we aren't importing large trainloads of reagents in this process. The fact that we're a coal deposit, the reagent is right there for us to take. And chlorine is simply regenerated in this flow sheet as they do in the titanium industry. So most of the chlorine that we require will be recycled, will be, you know, more, I suppose, are operating costs, which were 70% of the processing costs for reagents previously. We'll now be, you know, we'll see electricity consumption go up, but that's certainly more favorable having, you know, operating costs tied to electricity in a place like Wyoming.

Thank you, Mike. And may I just follow up on the gallium aspect of the new flow sheet? And I understand that how – do you have any information that you can share on the economics and the cost advantage that maybe this new approach would have relative, for example, of extracting gallium from a red mud refining operations? Our understanding from other companies more on the aluminum supply chain is that it's It's not very profitable for them to extract the gallium. So, yeah, I wonder if you have any color that you can share with us.

Yeah, you nailed it. I think that's been one of the challenges of extracting gallium from other sources, red muds, you know, residues from zinc projects. Gallium is volatile as a chloride, and so that's why this process works. You know, as I mentioned, we saw almost all of the gallium go into the off gas, which will then be condensed as a crude product and separated from the other chlorides, you know. So what that translates into is a double-digit increase in gallium recovery and then compounded by the ability to produce higher purity products. This flow sheet is probably the only one that's going to be a, you know, primary producer of gallium that can really compete with the impurities required for semiconductor industry. So, you know, we're excited by that.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Brian Lee with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. I guess maybe following up on the prior line of questioning, you know, the RE basket, I think it's the price you're outlining on slide 12 went up to $500 and change from your prior view of $300 and change. I know maybe it's too premature to give us all the nitty-gritty specifics, but can you give us a sense of what's embedded in there? I think previously you had been talking about scandium, roughly 60% of the value of Brookmine deposit, assuming $37.50 per kg pricing. You're saying there's a modest decline in that. Can you kind of give us a sense of what's changing in terms of mix of scandium on the value of the deposit and then price, if any, change there, and then where kind of gallium sits in the context of the new flow sheet versus the prior views? Thank you.

Yeah, I'm glad you noticed that. That basket value, if you will, had some assumptions that we would be able to capture 5% of the high purity aluminum market at a 4N purity, and that didn't include any high-purity quartz in that analysis. So we think there's even upside with those numbers when we start putting high-purity quartz in that equation and higher-purity products. So I think truly that number could get better from what we've published, but we want to finish the PEA in order to get confirmation on the numbers and particularly on the costs, which we've mentioned is going to be mid-year. To give you an idea of the basket, we anticipate that gallium, depending on, and we're working with our internal marketing team, could challenge scandium in terms of, you know, equivalent production. But we anticipate scandium is going to be somewhere perhaps less than 40. We did see a double-digit increase in scandium recovery as well, right? So, it still maintains, you know, a significant portion of the revenue, but, you know, gallium is going to grow probably, you know, into the 30s and the HPA and HPQ is something that's going to be a significant contributor to this project as well. So, and the final point on that, of course, HPA and HPQ don't translate into the TREO grades at all. So, you know, that's why we want to be talking about basket price.

Brian, to your point, you know, that dollar per ton figure is up more than 50 percent previous to what we had, you know, previously disclosed. So kind of going back to an earlier question, I mean, the bottom line is our internal projections certainly, you know, show material increases in incremental revenue and free cash flow versus what we've previously disclosed. And obviously now that's what we're working with a third party to validate.

Okay. No, that's helpful, Colin. I appreciate that, guys. And then maybe just a question on timing. You know, I appreciate that the change in the flow sheet pushes out a little bit of the timing in terms of the pilot and the demonstration facilities. Seems like it's about a year delayed. How should we think about that in the context of, you know, how you're budgeting for timing of Brookmine, you know, ultimately coming online? I think most people had, including ourselves, sort of a 2028 startup timeframe for that deposit coming online. Is that still valid, or should we be thinking it's, you know, a year behind schedule like the pilot?

Yeah, look, I mean, that's obviously, you know, we're projecting a few quarters of delay because of this change. So, you know, that does push out the overall project schedule similarly. So that's kind of what we're anticipating is the overall schedule we'll put out as well. So, yeah.

Thanks, guys. I'll pass it on.

Our next question comes from Alex Furman with Lucid Capital Market. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Thanks very much for taking my question, and congratulations on all of the progress you made last year. I wanted to ask about, you know, the revised flow sheet and the decision to sell rare earths as a mixed product now, I'm curious kind of where you see that product going. Heavy rare earth separation capacity today is virtually nonexistent in North America. Do you anticipate that there will be some separation capacity in the future by the time that you have your MREC product to sell, or actually are there maybe applications for mixed rare earth products?

Hey, Alex, this is Jason. I'll speak to that. Yeah, I'd say taking one step back, you know, a lot will depend on what the TREO is on that MRAC, and, of course, that will depend somewhat as this flow sheet, you know, further develops any other separation processes that Mike and his team are working on. Yeah, I mean, as you mentioned, in the States, you know, most Most of the separators are, you know, at pilot scale are developing. There are obviously some that, you know, in allied countries overseas. We're in contact with nearly all these folks now and, you know, certainly in the last several weeks we've seen a big emphasis from the government here in the U.S. on that part of the supply They recognize the potential bottleneck to date and I think given the timeline that Mike just described and how quickly we see this developing, and as well as the conversations we've had with some of those parties, I think we feel confident that the capacity will be there when we're going to need it.

Okay. That's really helpful. I appreciate that.

Our next question comes from Matthew Key with Texas Capital. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Staying on Brooke, I was wondering if you wanted to do the rare earth separation down the road, could you eventually pursue that there? Or are the economics just not there to kind of justify the incremental process versus just doing a mixed rare earth carbonate?

I think you're onto that. I mean, with the revenue generators for this project, the rare earth side of it becomes So, you know, we're looking at 15% of the overall project revenue basket with rare earths. So it doesn't make sense to, you know, pursue a complicated, and it's technically challenging to separate all of these rare earths into products and build the solvent extraction plant to do so. We're better off selling the product to someone else and the change in flow sheet is really what's driving that strategy. We're trying to simplify the back end where it's a smaller portion of our overall revenue, reducing the capex and potentially the schedule and operating costs associated with it.

Got it. That's helpful. I guess I'll ask one on the Met side too. You mentioned that the rail loadout could facilitate the eventual development of deep mining at Maven. How soon could a project come online once you make that go-forward decision and in terms of capital investment of a project like that, could you maybe provide a ballpark in terms of just getting that across the finish line once you make that go-ahead?

So the deep mines are largely permitted already at the Maven complex, so once we decide to move forward, it's mostly relatively small construction lead time and acquiring equipment. So somewhere between six and eight months lead time from deciding to move forward on the underground to actually having first production. So it certainly could be a 27 event if the market supported that. And I think the way I would frame it for you is, you know, each underground section of equipment plus the development is, you know, between, you know, the face-ups and facilities and equipment is probably about $12 to $15 million. So, you know, in our long-term, medium-term plans, we project MAVEN as being about a million and a half tons per year. So to add an extra million tons is probably in, you know, $60 to $70 million total capex development to get there. But that's rolled out over a, you know, extended period of the build-out.

That's super helpful. Thanks for taking my questions and best of luck.

Our next question comes from Jeff Graham with Northland Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Morning, guys. I was curious with the change in the flow sheet and some of the timing being pushed back a bit, can you touch on your ability to qualify product for customers in the near term here? Is that something that would really ramp up more significantly once the pilot plan's Sure.

I think the objective of the pilot plan was exactly that, to produce a sufficient quantity for product testing, but, you know, we are looking at ways to produce sufficient volumes, particularly for HPA and HPQ at bench scale, because, you know, we may be able to do that. That's something that we're anticipating that we might be able to do some product testing on two of those before even piloting.

Got it. Okay, great. And for my follow-up on the Met Coal side, seems like there's potentially some upside to coal sales this year. I know you guys aren't guiding to that yet, but given the positive commentary you guys had on the macro, what might you guys need to see to feel good about pushing some more product out into the market?

Well, I'll let Jason provide the granular detail, but the reality is we've got some unpriced index tons out there right now. So if we see upward market movement, we're going to be able to ride that wave. but Jason go ahead and pick up.

Sure.

On the other.

Okay yeah and you know on the lowball side you know here in the States obviously we're seeing that already and that's why we're advancing you know bringing these tons forward both at Berwyn and then you know bring the load out forward there at Maven. Obviously it's still lagging you know the PLV the US lowball is by more than the freight differential. I think you'll see that that gap close as the year goes forward here. Obviously high ball stuff, Q4 was tough. You know, one Southern App producer came up to full production on a new project and one Northern App producer brought a project back online fully in Q4. So a lot of competition we saw in Q4. You know, here in the States we're already seeing supply side changes. You know, we've got a neighbor there at Elk Creek that come April will fully wind down. Some of that's due to the export market they face some of that's due to you know we've all faced lower domestic pricing this year versus last year and you know we've seen some smaller neighbors there in Central App as well that have either wound down or winding down now too so I think you'll see the you know those relativities on the highball start to creep back up closer to historical relativities which will Randy's comment obviously the biggest part of our Met portfolios is Elk Creek is highball so So those moves up, you know, have a big impact on it.

And Jeff, I'd just add, you know, we mentioned in the release the ability to sell, you know, almost 5 million tons. Just to be clear, that's without any incremental CapEx. We've built up a fair amount of inventory on the back of our kind of disciplined approach to sales last year. So, you know, just to be clear, I want to make sure that everyone is aware that's not with any incremental CapEx.

Got it. That's a really helpful commentary. Thank you guys for the time.

Our next question comes from Nick Giles with B-Riley Securities. Please go ahead.

Hi team, this is Sondaria on behalf of Nick Giles from B-Riley. I just wanted to check on the, like with the solvent extraction coming out of the flow sheet, directionally how capex might trend related to that prior 1.1 billion estimate. Even if it's just an order of magnitude, how much reduction can we see?

Look, I think we want to get the numbers from the PEA to look at what the CAPEX is. It's hard to compare exactly these two flow sheets. For sure, we pull out some CAPEX on the back end. We also shrink some of the purification because the crude product separation is a small part of the circuit. Carbochlorination is really where the CAPEX is going to be. So I would say that, you know, we still want to do those numbers and crunch those numbers and Hatch is going to give us what that looks like at the completion of the PEA.

Got it. And then just one more follow up. So now that the policy environment around critical minerals is quite favorable, how are you guys thinking about, you know, going behind DPA Title 3 or DOE loan programs as a part of financing? And has there been any conversation around this?

Well, I think as we've said before, we are in conversation with various government groups. I'm not going to get into the specifics about which programs that we're pursuing. But again, the fact that we're now somewhat pivoting to a slate of products, which I think I think the government is acutely interested in, which is the gallium for semiconductors, I think we'll provide a little bit of wind in our sail in terms of those conversations.

Thank you. And all the best, guys. I'll turn it back.

Our next question comes from Nathan Martin with the Benchmark Company. Please go ahead.

Thanks, operator. Good morning, guys. I'll be sticking with the coal side now. Gave some 1Q guidance there. Does that incorporate the impacts from the Arctic weather Chris mentioned earlier? And then how should we think about the cadence of shipments in 2Q through 4Q as the weather warms up and you guys catch up there?

Hey, Nick. This is Jason. I'll take that one. Yeah, the Q1 numbers that Jeremy gave earlier do, in fact, take into account the slowdown we saw there in shipments in late January, early February. You know, we've seen that improve greatly here over the last few weeks, but, you know, we're still working through the backlog there on the shipment side. You know, as far as cadence goes, obviously with the lake starting back up, you know, getting out of the winter season, you know, Q2, we're looking at about a million tons, Q3, Q4, about one, two each.

Great, Jason. Appreciate that caller. Maybe also while you have you, you know, talk about the relativities between, you know, premium low ball and high ball. Should we expect, I guess, the first quarter of Coke and Coke realization to be pressured, given that wide discount we've seen most of the quarter so far? And then maybe any thoughts on what the percentage versus the benchmark could ultimately look like for the year?

Yeah, I'd say on the second one, your second question there, that's a tough one. I've been doing this almost 30 years, and I'm always wrong. so they'd even wager a guess. I do think it will improve from where we're at, you know, Q4 and I'm seeing, you know, some supply side discipline in this quarter on spot that's out there. I think we'll see that improve again. There are, you know, our neighbor I mentioned earlier, it's two million tons a year coming offline and we've seen some other smaller ones come offline I think the higher-cost guys that just can't compete are going to go away, and I think the lower-cost guys that are left will have that discipline. It will start to shrink that relativity. But I think it will take some time for the markets to rebalance around the incremental high ball that's coming out of the U.S. now.

Yeah, got it. That's fair. And then maybe just one more if I could. The domestic tonnage of 1.1 million tons, obviously priced above the public guidance of the peers you guys mentioned. And can we maybe get some color on the quality mix of those tons and then, you know, a little bit lower both on an absolute end percentage basis compared to what you guys have done the last few years? So maybe a little information around that shift if there is some.

One thing I'd point out around the last couple years is there were some carryover volumes, I'd say 23 to 24, 24 to 25 that was in that tonnage number, on a deal-to-deal basis, you know, I'd say we're less than 10% down on contracted tons from year to year in that number given that carryover in previous years. And you know, on the mix, obviously as Chris and Randy both mentioned, you know, our lower sulfur side, you know, there's a limited amount of, you know, in the domestic obviously foundry business. We support both those plants pretty heavily. So with that lower overall number, you know, there's a little bit more of an impact from those sales.

MITS will be similar. It's, you know, about 15 plus percent low vol and the rest high vol domestically. One of the reasons we're moving forward with the rail load out at Maven is, you know, that's That's a very, very good domestic potential, but it's logistically challenged right now. So we think that will play nicely into the mix next year.

Very helpful, guys. Appreciate the time. Best of luck.

Thank you.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the call back over to Randall Atkins, Chairman and CEO, for any closing remarks.

Well, I just want to thank everyone for being on the line today, and we'll look forward to catching up here in the next quarter. Thank you.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.