Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to welcome you to Boliden's Q1 2026 Results Presentation. My name is Olof Grenmark, and I'm Head of Investor Relations. Today, we will have a results presentation led by our President and CEO, Mikael Staffas, and our CFO, Håkan Gabrielsson. We will also have a Q&A session led by the operator. Mikael, welcome.
Thank you, Olof, and welcome to all of you. We are welcoming you from Askersund. For those of you who are maybe non-Swedes and wonder where that is, that is the closest big municipality to Zinkgruvan. We will have our AGM here in a couple of hours, following the tradition that we try to have our AGMs close to our operating sites. Now, regarding the quarter. The highlight for the quarter is that we've had a good production quarter. We're coming in with an EBIT excluding the process inventory revaluation of around SEK 4.4 billion, and also a strong cash flow. A strong cash flow also considering that Q1 is normally a relatively weak cash flow quarter.
We've had solid performance in both of our operating units. We've had it in mines and in smelters. Then on top of that, we have strong metal prices and with our business model with deferred pricing coming a little bit later, we of course benefit from having strong metal prices rather than when reevaluating previous periods deliveries. The gold and silver production has also been very strong in the smelters. Regarding the Garpenberg site, I will come back to that one, but the impact on the financials for the quarter has been SEK 400 million negative on volumes and SEK 700 million negative from a one-off write-off of assets connected to that. In Odda, we have managed in the quarter to start the ramp-up of the expansion project.
We had the first feed, I think, on March 31, and I'll come back to that also in a little while. The financial performance in general has been strong with a strong cash flow. The CapEx in the quarter is right around where it should be according to our budget and according to what we have guided to you. On Garpenberg, I think it's time to take a little bit just so we get these numbers more in perspective. As you all know, we had a rock fall followed by seismic events that happened in mid-March. What then happened is basically three things that we need to separate. In Garpenberg we have altogether 105 million tons of reserves. The upper part of Lappberget is 14 out of those 105, and we have 91, which is other positions.
Those other positions were basically totally undamaged, whereas the damage to the upper part of Lappberget was substantial. We have all the infrastructure in Garpenberg that was damaged, but not very severely. What has happened now? Given the fact that we have all these 91 million tons left, but it's largely undeveloped, the most critical thing, the critical path for us, is to get development going. I'm very happy to say that as of last week, we had our first development explosives, and the tunneling is now going on at full speed. We have gotten all power restored, we have pumping restored, we have ventilation restored, we have water pumping restored, so we are able to do lots of things. There are certain infrastructure, I would say also the workshops by the way, are restored and working fully.
There is some infrastructure linked to the paste infrastructure in the mine and also linked to the ore hoist and the personnel shaft that are still being repaired and will take another couple of weeks or a couple of months to get ready. I said the critical path to get the developments going has been passed. Regarding the guidance for 2026, we had to give a very rough estimate that once we get up to production, we will produce roughly 100,000 tons per month, and we're standing by that. If you, we're gonna be able to get only later in this quarter up to production, so we have 100,000 in Q2, and then we have about 100,000 per month for the rest of the year.
If you add that up together with what we have already produced, you get around 1.5 million tons. The guidance for 2026 is right in line with what we had said before. Now, we are issuing two new pieces of guidance, which I think are very important. Number 1, we are saying that for 2032, we should reach full capacity, and full capacity is not just the 3.7 million tons that we had before this happened, but the 4.5 million tons that we had guided for the capital markets day. We will reach the higher production level in 2032 that we're gonna do. We're also issuing that we're gonna be able to get to about 2.3 million tons or just shy of 200,000 tons per month in 2027.
The developments are going ahead as expected and actually faster than expected, so we can get mining from the other ore bodies up to speed. In this plan, we have not put anything in Lappberget because the upper part of Lappberget is still very much unclear. We have not been able to get our arms around what we potentially can produce and with what method and at what cost production can be done. We have hopes that this is going to be able to get production out of there to some extent, and that's gonna help us for the years 2028, 2029, and 2030, and so on. But that's still very much unclear, and we'll get back to that once we've been able to get our arms around the Lappberget situation.
That's hopefully giving you somewhat of a good understanding of where we're standing on Garpenberg. If you look at our other projects, I already alerted you to Odda. We're happy to announce that we had first production, even though it was on the last day of the quarter. We got some little production in there. We've had some teething problem during April to get this one up to speed. We've had to change some elements in a boiler. We've had some pumps, and we've had also some other smaller issues that needs to be changed. As we're speaking right now, it is up and running again. We haven't produced much in April. Hopefully, we'll get up to speed and have good production in May and then in June going forward.
The other projects, the Rönnskär tank house is progressing very well. Just as we had said on the capital markets, they were aiming for a start in Q4 of this year. Boliden Sand Recycling project, very much running forward on track. On Garpenberg, the expansion with the new shaft, that project is also, although it's very early days, moving ahead, and we do not see that will be impacted by the seismic events. We should be able to pursue that project according to the original plan. On the ESG side, I'm happy to announce that the positive development here is that we're going down in the sick leave, and we're about to hit pre-COVID levels finally, after having been way above that for a while. Sick level is really going the right direction.
The LTI frequency is, we've had a little bit of a setback in the quarter. Now the numbers are still quite much lower than they were if you go back a couple of years, but we're slightly worse than we were the same quarter last year. On the greenhouse gas effect, it might look silly here as it looks like we're increasing it. Here you have to remember that we have not restated the numbers for the Lundin acquisition. If you do that separation, we're very much in on our plans for our decarbonization program. Market side. The market side has, of course, been what has been really pushing us up in the last couple of quarters. You can see here from the graph that it's the metal prices have gone up.
Even though they peaked a little bit early in the quarter and they came off a little bit during the quarter, it's still on a very high level. At the same time, you can also see down there that as the metal prices tapered off a little bit, we actually got some positive push again from the currencies in there. We also have relatively weak TCs, although TCs is getting less and less important as part of the revenue mix for a smelter. We also see byproducts, especially sulfuric acid prices, growing on spot. We have a contract portfolio that doesn't really contain any spot on sulfuric acid prices, so we haven't really seen the uptick yet.
If these levels continue to be on this levels as we see them today, of course, that will slowly also get into our longer term pricing that we have. If you start looking into the outside world and where we're standing, you can see that copper prices have remained on a relatively high level, actually going up a little bit here lately. You can also see that the margins for copper mines in the world are actually very large, and it looks like every copper mine in the world is good at getting cost out. This is, of course, not quite true because the reason for the cost reduction is very much linked to the high gold prices that comes as a negative to the cost level. The same thing on the zinc price.
You can also see there that the price level stabilized on a decent level. Costs are coming down very quickly. This has to do with the silver content in the mine that comes in as a negative cost. If you look at our production, I would say that Aitik is producing more or less according to plan. We've had a winter quarter and then still working through the diorite issues. Grades are relatively low, but we are not changing the guidance for the year. We still expect higher grades to come later in this year.
What you don't really see in the picture here, but we just want to make the point, is that after having had a couple of years of quite low stripping, development, we have been able to push the stripping quite a lot, already in previous quarters. In this latest quarter, it was another very strong, you know, mine production quarter in the sense of lots of stripping going on, which we feel very good about. Garpenberg, we've spoken quite a lot about. I think that, we don't have to say much more about that right now. In Kevitsa, stable and reliable production, it's been a good production quarter. Here the grades are picking up according to exactly what we have also guided, and also very happy that the recoveries are also going up in Kevitsa.
That is sometimes actually related to the higher grades. Somincor, despite the fact that we lost, as we've spoken of before, we lost a week in the mill due to very heavy rain. We managed to keep on producing in the mine, and we've caught up maybe some of that already in the quarter, and the rest will catch up during the rest of the year. We had a very stable production and a good production coming from Somincor. Zinkgruvan, where we're standing today, also had good and high milled volume. Tara, slightly below expectations, but still in a ramp-up phase, and we still feel relatively good about that. On the smelter side, also good production quarter, improved process stability in Rönnskär, increased silver production coming out of intermediate products, which has helped us. Harjavalta also stable production.
Copper cathodes coming out in a good way. We have slightly lower nickel production due to feed mix where we've had to add pyrite to get the energy balance right. Kokkola, strong production generally speaking. Bergsöe, small unit, but very strong and stable production. All that we've spoken about a little bit, we had the first feed in the quarter, but we have not been able to speed that up and get it into meaningful production numbers. With that, Håkan, I'll leave it to you and talk a little bit about the numbers.
Thank you, Mikael, and good morning. Yeah, as Mikael said, we had a good quarter. We deliver an operating profit excluding process inventory of SEK 4.4 billion, which is actually one of the better quarters we've had. Free cash flow at SEK 1.7 billion, and earnings per share of SEK 13.45. All in all, a good quarter. Looking by business area, you can see that both Mines and Smelters are roughly on par with the profits from Q4. Mines is on par with Q4 in spite of a hit from the Garpenberg event of about SEK 1.1 billion. Smelters is on par with Q4 in spite of Q4 being positively impacted by a one-off in Rönnskär of SEK 400 million. All in all, a strong underlying performance in both business areas.
Internal profits roughly zero in the quarter. Looking at the EBIT bridge, year-over-year, comparing to Q1 of last year, as you can see, we are helped by stronger prices, close to SEK 1.8 billion positive impact there. That's of course mainly a result of the strong development of metal prices that we've seen. Metal prices alone contributes by more than SEK 3 billion. It's mainly gold, silver, but also copper. On the negative side, you have currencies and a little bit of TCs that adds up to SEK 1.8 billion in total. Volumes are higher, and this number is explained entirely by the acquisitions of the two mines from Lundin Mining, Zinkgruvan and Somincor. On top of that, you have a negative impact from Garpenberg, which is then offset by positives in other operations.
Same thing with costs. That number is entirely explained by adding two new mines. Excluding those new mines and comparing apples to apples, costs are more or less exactly flat. We see an inflation roughly at zero and good cost control in the operations. You're aware of the one-off that we've had here, and that's the write down in Garpenberg of SEK 700 million. Comparing sequentially, again, very strong development in prices, + 1.3%. It's basically across the line for most metals, but with gold and silver being the main contributors. I should also say that the provisional and the definitive pricing of contracts that were open at last quarter end, December 31, contributed by about SEK 450 million.
I think those of you that are modeling it in detail would have that number in there. Volumes, a negative impact, mainly as a result of the Garpenberg seismic incident. Q4 or costs are significantly better than the fourth quarter. The fourth quarter was an expensive quarter. It typically is. We had a lot of contractors and external services, and also as we had a good run of prices towards the end of last year, we had to adjust provisions for profit sharing and similar, which weighed on the cost in Q4. You know, good cost control. Moving on to cash flow. When we talked about our earnings, we talked about the CapEx, Mikael did. I'm happy about the working capital side.
Typically, we tie about SEK 1.5 billion in Q1. Q1 is normally a weak quarter for working capital, and this time we're roughly flat in spite of stronger prices. It's good work in the smelting divisions behind this, working with working capital, working with inventory reductions, and then also a little bit of impact from the situation in Garpenberg. Another thing that stands out here is the tax side. Again, we had a good run of prices towards the later part of next year, and we've been catching up in tax payments. There is always a delay there, but you see it's a significant amount paid in Q1.
All in all, this leads to a strong balance sheet, net debt to equity of 18%, payment capacity of close to SEK 22 billion, and all in all, a strong balance sheet. With that, Mikael, you want to continue with the outlook?
Thank you, Håkan. Regarding the outlook, it's easy to say first that regarding guidance for everything except Garpenberg, we have no changes. It's all the same guidance for the full year as we had before. That's also true for CapEx levels and so on. Just to repeat regarding Garpenberg, we are now guiding for 1.5 million tons in 2026. That is roughly a run rate of 100,000 tons or so per month for the last seven months of this year, and then adding on the production that we have had already in Q1. Very much in line with the very preliminary guidance that we issued in connection with the profit warning once we had the seismic event.
Regarding 2027, we have a new guidance that has not been issued that is basically doubling production from the 100,000 tons per month pace to almost 200,000 tons per month or what 2.3 million tons for the full year of 2027. We are now also guiding that in 2032 we should be up to the new estimated full production of 4.5 million tons, which is then clearly above what we were producing before the seismic event at 3.7 million tons. Grades are the same. The grade for Garpenberg for this year has changed slightly. Slightly lower zinc and slightly higher silver as a consequence of other positions being mined and the Lappberget positions.
We're also here just very clarifying that we are guiding for the maintenance impact in smelters, where the big chunk of the maintenance for 2026 will come into Q2 of SEK 350 million. With that, operator, I think we're ready for questions.
If you wish to ask a question please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad, to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Adrian Gilani from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.
Yes, hello and good morning. My first question is on the 2027 guidance in Garpenberg. Just to clarify, in that guidance, is it included that you also expect to reach a run rate of 3.7 million tons at some point during the year? Or do you expect to be below nameplate capacity for all of 2027?
We will expect to be below nameplate capacity for all of 2027.
Okay. Understood. I guess also a question you talked shortly about acid prices and not having any spot exposure. Can you talk a bit about how that contract portfolio is structured? When you will see a P&L effect if the high prices were to remain? Is this something that should boost earnings in Q2 already?
Most likely not so much in Q2, but for the second half of the year it would. We have a portfolio which is a little bit complex and combines all kind of length of contracts and they have longer contracts with adjustments that are kind of slower to spot prices and so on. But if the current spot prices will hold on, we will see some meaningful effect in the second half of the year.
Okay. Just to follow up quickly, can you say roughly how much of the volume will be priced on current prices in the second half of the year? Is that possible to say?
This is now when it gets really complex because as you know, there is one kind of European spot price and there's a global spot price. We have much bigger exposure to the European spot price than we have to the global spot price. The European spot price increased already a little bit in 2025, so we had good byproducts there already. It has not spiked as much as the global one so far this quarter. That's the most important one to us. I don't know, Håkan, if you have a number what it could be if that one were to stay. Then we have some that's on the kind of international global spot price, but that's a relatively smaller part.
Yeah. I don't have a number apart from the fact that it's less than 20% that is exposed to the global spot. Most is European levels.
Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you. That's all for me.
The next question comes from Alain Gabriel from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Again, on Garpenberg, you've given the guidance for grades for the average for 2027. How should we think about the sequencing of the grades for both zinc and silver over the course of the year and into 2027? That's one. Two, on the run rate you've given for next year, the 2.3 million tons, if I may interpret your comments suggesting that there's a wide range of outcomes, how should we think about the bottom and the upper end of that range? And what needs to happen for you to meet the bottom or the upper end of the range for 2027 mil throughput? Thank you.
Just to clarify on that, and it has to do with the Lappberget ore body, we do not at presently expect to be able to mine anything at all from Lappberget in 2026 or 2027. We have not yet been able to conclude that investigation. We have hopes that we can mine something coming to 2028 and beyond. The 2.3 million tons that you've seen is then based on no Lappberget. Of course, there's a potential upside if we were to be able to produce out of Lappberget, but we do not think that we will, even though we do not know. I think that the 2.3 million tons is based upon getting access to Kaspersbo Huvudmalmen and more positions in Dammsjön and Kvarnberget with relatively little risk. We would feel pretty good about the 2.3 million tons.
We have not guided formally for grades for 2027. They are similar to the grade for 2026. Regarding sequencing, no comment really on that. We tend to avoid to guide on grades for the individual quarters.
Thank you. A follow-up on that as well on the flow of material from Garpenberg into your smelting system. Do you expect some disruptions, and how do you plan to mitigate this disruption? If you can give us some financial indications of what we should be expecting as a fallout from the concentrate shipment disruption. Thank you.
I think that the financial implications are relatively small. There are two potential issues. There is very little risk that we will not get zinc units, so we cannot produce. That was close to zero. We have already basically procured zinc enough to be able to mitigate Garpenberg. There is a little bit of a financial impact that, of course, when we procure something now, we have to buy it at spot terms. Of course, spot TC terms are not that good right now, so there is a little bit of a financial impact from that. There is a second financial impact which is very much difficult to get your arms around, but it shouldn't be that big. As you know, in zinc smelting, it's not just having enough amount of concentrate.
You're very dependent on making sure that you can get the right recipe to be able to feed it well through the smelters. Losing Garpenberg, which is a very good and a very useful ingredient, makes it difficult to replicate the recipes, which might impact a little bit on throughput availability and so on and some of the performance in the smelters. But we don't think it's gonna be a major financial impact.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
The next question comes from Liam Fitzpatrick from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Mikael and Håkan. A few questions on Garpenberg. The first one, just to step back a bit, can you just explain in a bit more detail what you mean by substantial damage to Lappberget? Just to give us an idea of the challenges you're facing. The second question is just around how high production can get through other areas if you can't re-access that part of the ore body. Is 2.3 million tons sort of about the limit, or could you push that higher before the second hoist or the new hoist comes in? What you haven't told us is sort of additional CapEx for the development work to open up the new areas. Is that expected to be substantial? Will that have some impact on 2027 CapEx? Thank you.
If we start from the back, CapEx relatively not so substantial. I think it's part of the more normal development. On Lappberget, just for you to give you a sense of what has happened, and this is of course very much oversimplifying things. You can imagine that Lappberget, which is kind of 300-meter wide, 150-meter thick and kind of from 1,100 meters up to 400 meters, so 700 meters height. Without going into kind of any detail, I would say that this thing has fallen down 5 meters. The whole thing has fallen down 5 meters. What's the challenge with that? Well, of course, all the kind of development that we had done in the ore doesn't match the developments on the outside.
That might be the simpler thing to kind of fix, if that would be the only problem to get that to happen. The much more challenging thing is that when this has happened, how has the ore body cracked? If this has just kind of moved down, you could imagine going into the ore body and keep on mining the way it was mined before. It will be very easy. Most likely it has cracked, not uniform in the same part, but it has cracked in different pieces. Where it's cracked a lot, it might be impossible to go in because as you start going in and try to tunnel things, you'll just get rock fall over you. It will be unsafe to do that. In other areas, it might be possible. It might be possible with smaller dimensions.
It might be possible if you mine slower. These are all the issues that need to be answered. On top of that, there is a kind of another challenge. The Garpenberg mine has quite a lot of water into it, and as this kind of thing has fallen down, there is also the need to make sure that we control the water levels within the ore body. With the new cracks and everything else, we might have a different level of water and a different way for water to go through. That also needs to be investigated thoroughly so you understand what it is. Therefore, coming back to what I said, we think this is gonna take months until we kind of have our arms around what can really be done. We think it's not going to be easy.
We hope that we're gonna be able to mine, but as we said before, we don't think that we can mine anything in 2026 or 2027. The 2.3 million tons that we have guided for should be fine. We should also, even without Lappberget, be able to gradually step up in 2028 and 2029. It might be that they will not be stepping up so much if we don't get Lappberget in until we get the new hoist in 2032.
Okay, that's very helpful. Just a quick follow-up on seismic activity. Is it kind of back to normal or are you still experiencing abnormal?
It's back to normal. After the 48 hour of rollercoaster, if you want to use that word, it's basically been back to normal since. There is no increased seismic activity at the moment.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes from Marina Calero from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thanks for the call. I have a couple of questions. One follow-up on Garpenberg. When do you think you'll be in a position to announce to the markets the extent that you can recover mining at the Lappberget ore body? My second question is on inflation. You've had very good cost control so far. Given the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, do you expect any inflationary pressures in the second half of the year?
I heard you a little bit poorly, but if I understood you right, your first question was about Garpenberg and about Lappberget and did I understand right how we could mine that one? I didn't really understand the question. I can repeat what I just said, hopefully answering your question that Lappberget it will not be mined exactly as we have historically mined it, I'm pretty sure. It doesn't mean that it cannot be mined, and it might have to be mined with a smaller, more small scale type of mining method. It might mean that we might need to leave more pillars. There are lots of issues around that. When will we know that? As I said, it will be months.
This is very difficult to push these kind of investigations. It will be towards the end of the year. Hopefully, we'll have some more feeling around the 2028 and beyond. Regarding inflation, Håkan.
Yeah. I think that's not an easy question. I mean, there is you know obviously a great deal of uncertainty. But I mean, we're obviously monitoring the development of oil prices and so on. I guess that's if we get inflation that's mainly connected to oil. We spend each quarter a bit more than SEK 300 million on diesel and oil, so any increases will have an impact on that. On top of that, we have about SEK 700 million spend, which is chemicals, explosives, transport and similar, not directly connected to oil, but with a significant impact. That might also have an impact. As a follow on, an additional roughly SEK 700 million per quarter on electricity.
All that will depend on what happens in the Middle East, et cetera. We'll just have to monitor that.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes from Amos Fletcher from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Morning, gentlemen. A couple of questions. I guess the first one was just to think about the EBIT bridge into Q2. Could you give us what the Garpenberg EBIT contribution was in Q1?
I think that Garpenberg had a contribution of about, let's see if I get this right, about SEK 1.4 billion-SEK 1.5 billion in Q1. We'll lose a fair part of that gross profit. As you saw, the SEK 400 million impact that we talked about, that was just for the couple of weeks that the mine was closed. That will have an impact. Prices, I mean, we'll see what happens. On top of that, we'll have some maintenance in smelters. I think those are the main components. Odda, we'll see how much impact we get of that.
Okay. I just wanted to ask on the working capital side, can you give us any guidance for future quarters? Obviously, as you noted, you know, Q1 was a very small build versus normal seasonal patterns.
Well, I think typically Q2 is a quarter that is relatively flat on working capital. As Odda gets up to speed, we will tie a little bit. It's not as much in a zinc smelter as compared to, for example, a copper smelter. I would expect a flat quarter with the exception of the build from Odda, which could be about SEK 500 million or something like that.
Okay. That's great. Final question was just related to Marina's earlier question on diesel. I was just interested to know, you know, your purchasing position because obviously it seems like there's very little effect realized in the financials for Q1. Is that just, you know, the inventory position that you hold? I was just wondering how big that is, how many weeks that is, and when we might start to see, you know, higher prices flowing into the financials through Q2.
I don't have an exact number, but you're right. It's you know, 1.5-2 months of lag before the diesel hits the P&L because of the inventory positions of the material we've already bought, so.
Great. Okay, perfect. That's all. Thank you very much.
Mm-hmm.
The next question comes from Krishan Agarwal from Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks a lot for taking my question. Can I clarify that the guidance for 4.5 million tons for Garpenberg by 2032, does that include any of the mining happening into the Lappberget area?
Sorry, does it include any of the what?
Lappberget.
Yeah.
The 4.5 million tons, then we're into the new hoist, and it doesn't contain any Lappberget.
Understand. The second question, more of a clarification. The Odda smelter ramp up, I mean, is it on track for the Q4 full run rate? Is that a fair assumption?
Yeah, I think it's still on track for a relatively full ramp-up rate. Of course, you know, the challenge with this with running up a smelter is not really getting it, you know, where exactly you get the first, you know, the last percentage. We need to make sure that we get production production going. As I said, as of right now, when we're speaking, we're producing fully, and it looks relatively good. So it looks like these teething problems with the boiler and with the pumps that we had seem to be now all working. Does that mean that we will not find something else or maybe something else will also show up in this, in this ramp-up period? We should clearly be able to ramp up during you know, during the next few months.
It shouldn't be that long.
Understood. The final question is on the tank house. I remember, I mean, you saying that, okay, the tank house building you are doing is essentially a higher capacity than the earlier one. Would you be able to give us some kind of a sense of how much of the production we should expect, after the commissioning of the tank house in the Q4 and probably full ramp-up in 2027?
Now, the tank house that we're building has 230,000 ton capacity, which is very much in line with the one that burned down. We are not increasing capacity because of this. This means that if you combine the 100 ton and 230 ton with the 170 ton that we have in High Level, that we will be slightly long tank house capacity. We are unlikely to buy anodes because of logistics and other things. The limiting factor is going to be our anode production and not the tank house going forward.
Understood. Thanks a lot.
The next question comes from Daniel Major from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for questions. Just follow up again on the Garpenberg kind of earnings bridge from Amos's question. Can you provide us a estimate of what split in the cost base is fixed versus variable? If we look at 2025, your reported costs defined as revenue less EBITDA was about SEK 2.1 billion. Yeah, can you just give us a sense of what the cost base will look like when you're running at a lower volume?
I can at least try. There is obviously some uncertainty still, but you're right. It's we had, I think, about SEK 550 million-SEK 560 million in the first quarter, so it adds up to the number you gave for last year, just to confirm that. We typically consider about 30% to be variable, meaning energy consumables, et cetera. There will be some savings on that. However, we will use more resources for tunneling, not in the ore body, but two new ore bodies, and we'll have to decide whether that should be treated as CapEx or OpEx. On top of that, there will be some repair costs.
Without giving an exact number, 30% is variable, but I think you should treat the cost savings quite conservatively in your assumptions, because there is a lot to do to get this up and running again.
Okay. That's clear. Much closer to the SEK 550 million than SEK 550 million less 30%. Is that the right way of thinking about it?
The next question comes from Richard Hatch from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for the call. Just a few questions. Just firstly, just quickly on Tara. Just wondering if you can just give us a bit of a steer as to when you hit that 1.8 million ton run rate. Should we expecting that to be occurring over the coming quarters, or should we be going below that? That's the first one. Just the second one is just on grades at Garpenberg in 2027. I don't think you've given guidance, but I just wonder if you would be able to give a direction of travel. Thirdly, you mentioned that you were comfortable in obtaining zinc material for the smelters to offset the Garpenberg reduction in volumes.
Can you perhaps just give a bit more color around just what you're seeing in that zinc concentrate market? If you do see it tightening over the next couple of years, or if you feel comfortable that you're gonna be able to secure the material you need, while Garpenberg’s off. Thanks.
There at 1.8 million ton, we haven't changed the full year guidance from 1.8 million ton, which means that we need to reach that level within the next few quarters to keep the full year guidance. At grades 27, order of magnitude similar as 26, without going into detail. Zinc material, we don't see and we don't foresee there being any issues in finding the zinc material. It's a matter of cost and where the spot TCs will develop on zinc. I think your guess is as good as mine.
Okay. Mikael, can I just push you a bit on Tara? I mean, your run rate's currently well below that 1.8 million ton, right? What are the challenges, the bottlenecks? Where are you sort of seeing the areas to improve and get to the level you wanna get to?
It has been developments. We have not been able to keep developments up to the level we need. We have done, you know, efforts to increase developments. They have not given quite the effect that we wanted, but they've given some effects. The developments are coming, and we're working hard with developments also now in this quarter. As I alerted you before, we've actually sent some crews from Garpenberg over to work with developments in Tara as Garpenberg has been down.
Okay. Very helpful. Thanks.
The next question comes from Boris Bourdet from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. The first one is on Garpenberg about the seismic activity. Now that you have more insight into what happened, can you say whether that was linked to the mining operations, this rock fall, or whether it was connected to external seismic activity? I'm asking the question because recently we had medium magnitude seismic activity in Norway and Sweden on the western part of Sweden. The second question is on Aitik grade. We see the grades further going down. So, what makes you comfortable that the grades will go up in H2? Thanks.
Aitik grade, I think we were very clear in our early communication that the first half would be lower and the second half would be higher when we communicated at 0.18. We have better positions that we're coming into in the second half of the year with higher grades. Garpenberg why? This is of course something that we cannot definitely say why, and that's part of the investigation why this happened. I think it's fair to say that it's because of our mining. This is an area that is quite seismically stable, and should not normally have seismic activity. Maybe theoretically, there was also an outside event that triggered this thing. That we do not know, and we can absolutely not say for sure.
I think it's more likely that this has been triggered by our own activities. Of course we need to take the learnings from that to make sure that this doesn't happen again on this scale. As I said, this is very early days and the investigations are still ongoing to both why this triggered and why it triggered in the way that it did. Once it triggered, why it continued the way that it did.
Thank you. Maybe just to follow up on Garpenberg. If I get you right, there is no specific additional costs or CapEx, I mean, no significant amounts to be expected on top of the already impaired SEK 700 million and the missed volumes, or should we include additional things?
I think this was Håkan said that there will be some repair costs, but those repair costs might be more seen as not getting down the operating cost for operating only at 30%. I think that that's more the way to see it. I don't think there will be any increased costs as such, but maybe not quite as much lower as you would have expected otherwise. We don't see any additional needs for write-downs or so on.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Pavel Kirjanovs from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for the call and the presentation. I just had another one on Garpenberg, and apologies if this was asked previously. As we think about Garpenberg through 2032, what would allow you to reach that earlier potentially?
Well, I would say that the way to reach it earlier and the only way to reach it earlier would be that we will get significant mining coming in Lappberget, because we will not be able to develop the other ore bodies any faster. This is in line with the development pace that we have. It would be dependent on getting mining and some meaningful mining out of Lappberget. Just to make sure again, we do not in any way promise that we do not know. We hope, but we do not know the situation in Lappberget.
Okay. Understood. Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Daniel Major from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks. Couple of follow-ups, if I may. Just on the depreciation line, I'm assuming this quarter, the SEK 700 million write down at Garpenberg went through here. Can you just provide us a guidance level on the quarterly run rate of D&A across the group, following the changes at Garpenberg? Then a second follow-up I've asked many times before, but why do you focus on EBIT, not EBITDA, when all of your peers focus on EBITDA?
Let's say the depreciation then. We take out SEK 700 million from the asset base, which is depreciated over a quite long time. If you just spread it across the lifespan of those, that's been the development. That is a fairly limited change in depreciation. What will happen though is that when Odda gets up to speed, we will increase the depreciation there, as we talked about earlier. Also a reminder is that Aitik is largely depreciating based on metal value produced. Also the depreciations in Aitik will increase. Regarding EBITDA and EBIT, well, I don't really have any specific comments on that. I'm aware that many people focus on EBITDA.
We're working with EBIT excluding process inventories, and then I think it's easy to get the EBITDA number as well. I guess we might have to think about that. Until further notice, we're sticking to our regular follow-up.
Sorry, Håkan. Just to push you on that slightly. What would be a sensible run rate with those moving parts on depreciation on a quarterly basis through the remainder of the year?
Let's see now. I think that we're going up in order from about SEK 200-SEK 300 to about SEK 800 per year. That would be the change there. I think it's not so much this year, but as we go over the next few years and getting closer to higher grade areas, that would be fairly significant numbers, but it all depends on what exact year you're looking at. For all, there's about SEK 200-something to SEK 800-something.
Per year?
Per year.
Increasing about SEK 100-
Right. Quarterly through the remainder of this year?
Yeah, about SEK 150
SEK 150 or SEK 200.
slightly lower because of the SEK 700-
Yeah.
But that's, um, maybe-
And that's-
SEK 50 comes out or something like that.
Yeah, yeah. I'd say less because it's quite long depreciation times on those assets.
Right. We should take the base, which is this quarter less SEK 700 million, and then add those variables on. Is that the right way of thinking about it?
Add about SEK 150-SEK 175 per quarter, then I think you should be fairly spot on.
Okay. Versus this quarter, less SEK 700 million.
Yes.
Okay. Thanks. Just one other follow-up, if I could, just a clarification that you mentioned earlier. Did you say that the net provisional pricing impact was a positive SEK 450 million this quarter total?
It depends what you mean by net, but the value in the Q1 profit that came out of preliminary priced volumes at the end of Q4, and that was then definitively priced in Q1, that was SEK 450 million. If you refer to the EBIT bridge, you'll have to compare what the impact was in the respective-
Okay.
quarter prior. The impact on this P&L was SEK 450 million this quarter.
Okay. All right. Thank you.
The next question comes from Liam Fitzpatrick from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi. A couple of quick follow-ups on the numbers as well. Just on that SEK 1.4 billion number that you gave us, Håkan, for Garpenberg, I assume that's before the impairment. I just wanted to confirm that. Then you've kind of suggested that you're still not entirely certain or clear in terms of how you're going to classify between OpEx and CapEx at Garpenberg, in terms of the additional development work. In terms of what you're sort of guiding to us at the moment, are you assuming that most of this sort of additional tunneling work and so on is flowing through OpEx? Or is it sort of split, or how should we think about it? Thank you.
Now, when we say that be conservative on your estimates of OpEx, that we will not be able to save that much on OpEx, that's based on the fact that we'll still have to do the tunneling. If we decide to classify some of it as CapEx, then you will see slightly lower OpEx and slightly higher CapEx. It's, I think we're talking about, you know, SEK 100 million-SEK 200 million order of magnitude. What we've said today is basically based on that being mainly OpEx. Normally, when we develop towards a new ore body, that will be CapEx, so we'll just have to come back on that. It's relatively small numbers anyway.
Garpenberg, the SEK 1.4 billion, is that pre the impairment?
Yes.
Yes. Okay. Thank you.
There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Okay. Thank you all. Thank you all for very insightful questions. I am personally gonna go out for a few minutes and enjoy the sun here that we're having at Zinkgruvan before we continue with our AGM. I hope that wherever you're standing, that you're having a good day as well. Thank you everyone.