American Resources Corporation (NASDAQ:AREC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Mark Jensen: Yes. So they just started up recently, doing some development in mining, the attractiveness of what the team brought in over there, they brought a hydro mining, hydro miners are very, very efficient form of mining, very low cost form of mining. They’re targeting right around that start off phase around 30,000 tons a month, is what we’re being told, which would translate into right around a couple $100,000 in revenue does have cash flow does, a month. And they’re looking at some pretty significant expansion opportunities around there. But they’re hitting what they said they’re going to do, and they’ve been delayed a little bit but or, but it’s not expected. Not unexpected, they guess in this industry when you’re starting up a new mine. But thankfully, they’re in production today. And they’re hitting their stride.

Mike Niehuser: Got it. And as far as like with Perry, you mentioned that the trying to get the right price for it and takin, some of the equipment and moving it or transitioned over to Wyoming County, in West Virginia. With if you take that away from Perry is that going to cannibalize or degrade the value of that asset as you would present it to a potential purchaser?

Mark Jensen: I mean, we’re looking at maximizing the value for our investors. We believe Wyoming County is one of the most attractive opportunities we have in front of us today, high margin looking at generating cash. I mean, we could talk very frank, coal businesses sometimes aren’t €“ we want to look at maximizing the value of our coal business today, maximizing the revenue in the cash flow generation from our coal business today. We believe the value of our assets redeployed to Wyoming County would be roughly $40 million, the cost to reclaim the complex would be roughly $5 million, that would be a net realization of value to our investors of roughly $35 million. If we deploy it to Wyoming County, if there’s an investor that would like to buy it, they can come in around those values and pay us cash for it.

We are open to that. We are open to monetizing it in the most creative way for our investors, but that those assets and that equipment, and there’s other assets and equipment we can bring to Wyoming County as well. But today, our focus, it needs to be run as a three section mine, if that was all our focus, and all we were focused on doing is just running Perry County, we could put three sections in there, we can make money. There is a lot of people that want to do that. And we have had offers on the complex, they’re not at a position, those offers weren’t quite as high. Some of them were close, actually quite close to the replacement value of redeploying those assets to our Wyoming County division, but they weren’t there yet. And so, ultimately, right now, it’s we’re looking at the cost benefit analysis, and we’re looking at what’s the most creative aspect for our investors.

And if that means redeploying our equipment and infrastructure and assets to Wyoming County, we will do that. And but what we’re not going to do is sit on our hands and wait for somebody to come and match that value, they either need to move quickly, or we’re going to redeploy the assets and maximize the value today.

Mike Niehuser: Well, I would never accuse you of sitting on your hands, that’s for sure. With regards to Wyoming County, I think the bond is $45 million. With that, if that’s correct it will that balance the construction budget. And of course, you’ll benefit by moving equipment over but there’s also inflation. So at the end of the day, are you going to need to raise equity or do you think you’re going to be able to €“ with cash flow and equipment and all these things together not need to go to the markets?

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