TMC the metals company Inc.

Q1 2026 Earnings Call — May 14, 2026

Analyst Matthew O'Keefe (Cantor Fitzgerald): Thanks, Aubrey. Good evening, gentlemen. Sounds like things are moving along pretty well. I just had a kind of – I liked one of your slides there. You showed that you have some new – well, not new entrants, but there are more entrants jumping on to the American offshore industry here. We, you know, you've shown some other companies and all in their properties lying about in the CCZ and also, I guess, other parts of the ocean there. What are your thoughts on these other players and are you working at all with them? I mean, you have arguably a leadership position in this. I would imagine that there has been some outreach to you, just maybe for some best practices or, you know, given that you've done so much environmental work, maybe some advice on that as well?

Executive Name (Title): Yeah, look, Matt, we've been, you know, familiar with some of the other entrants. We know them well, and frankly, you know, the last five years as a public company has damaged my belief in the efficient markets hypothesis. But at the same time, it wouldn't be good for us to be the only ones through the wall here seeing the opportunity. So I think what it really signifies is the fact that the capital, the smart money, is flowing into names that are pursuing exploration licenses through the U.S. process as opposed to the international CBET authority process. That's clear. The market's voting with their feet.

Are there opportunities to work with some of these entrants? Sure. I mean, we've done quite a bit of work over the course of the last several years that many other people might want to catch up to. Of course, we released some of our environmental data just a few weeks ago. But there really is, I think, a recognition that many of the new entrants have some catch-up to do. They're starting on, you know, exploration-type work, whereas TMC has done much of that because we're preparing to launch an application to the IFA process with some of that data. So there will be, I think, a catch-up period for others, and that creates opportunities.

One thing to really focus on, and by the way, you would have noticed there was an announcement within the last couple of months that, you know, the team at DC Vision, we have an MOU to collaborate potentially together, whether it's on some offshore exploration side initiatives or potentially down the road on processing and refining. We do want to be able to help the United States create an ecosystem that can potentially create dominance in the metal processing and refining for nickel, copper, cobalt, manganese, potentially rare earths, and other metals. And to do that, it would be very helpful to say, hey, TMC will be the center of this hub, but perhaps one day that could be a destination for some other entrants as they catch up to some of the offshore work that TMC has done.

So we really have been in a unique position where the work that we've done has allowed us to be the one insurance so far who's been able to apply for the consolidated application process because we've been prepared with that work over the last 15 years and about $700 million in cumulative spending. So the answer, Matt, is we welcome the capital flowing into space. We know some of the new players, and I think there will be future opportunities to work together.

Analyst Matthew O'Keefe (Cantor Fitzgerald): No, absolutely. It definitely demonstrates that there's increasing confidence in the space, so... I think that's a positive. If I could ask just one other quick question, maybe a clarification. You are working on some pre-feasibility study, was it, for the Texas refinery processing refinery. Is that right? And is there going to be something released to the markets sort of end of year or something like that, just to get a sense of what that might look like?

Executive Name (Title): Yeah, I think our focus, Matt, is really on the feasibility work, specifically for the potential plant for processing and refining in Texas. That feasibility work really focused on, right, here's the detail on everything that needs to go into the planning and construction and operation of that plant. That is really the prerequisite to unlock some of the potential government capital that we know is sitting ready to fund major projects that can truly move the needle.

So I would say our focus is going to be on that onshore feasibility work. There may be opportunities to then say, right, we're working on the pre-feasibility side for the plant expansion down the road, let's say to 12 million tons or more. And then, of course, you know, we put out the pre-feasibility study for the Nor-ED area in August of last year, and we had the benefit from, you know, several years of talking about potential commercial terms with our partner, Allseas. So, you know, at some point, perhaps there might be an opportunity to provide some updates to that, but our focus in the near term is going to be the detailed feasibility work that might be able to unlock access to government capital.

Analyst Matthew O'Keefe (Cantor Fitzgerald): All right. Sounds good. We'll look for the government partnership, perhaps, in the future. That's great. That's all for me. Thanks, guys.

Analyst Dmitry Silverstein (Water Tower Research): Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my call. I just have a couple of follow-up questions, if I may. When you talked about reducing or the opportunity to reduce the operating costs or optimize the cost of offshore collection and transfer portion of your operating expenses, you know, there's a lot of stuff in here like, you know, autonomy and going to nuclear facilities that seem to be pretty far into the future. As you're ramping up your sort of first production of 3 million tons, how are you thinking about sort of more near-term, more realistic abilities to lower the production and transport costs and lower your offshore operating expenses?

Executive Name (Title): Yeah, that's a very good question. Yeah, hi, Dmitry. Sorry, yeah, Rick, you're good for it. Yeah. Yeah, thank you, Dimitri. That's a very good question. And as you rightfully indicate, there's a few items that are more future focused, but on the short term, optimizations in energy use and offshore logistics are definitely something that can be implemented within the short term. So we're talking about getting the first vessel operating and then start implementing some of those already.

Analyst Dmitry Silverstein (Water Tower Research): Okay. And then to follow up on the previous question about Brown's facility, you're looking at, I think, 12 million ton processing complex. Your phase one, at least, calls for about 3 million tons a year of blood nodules, going up to potentially 7 million as you expand to three collectors. Are you leaving that much room for sort of third-party processing, or do you have expectations of filling that 12 million ton capacity through the nodules that you yourself collect pretty quickly after the startup at the end of 27, early 28?

Executive Name (Title): No, I think this is one of those industries where scale really flows through to the bottom line, Dimitri. And so it's our ambition to put as much of that 12 million tons off our own license areas. However, we also want to be really flexible because, you know, when you go and establish a processing facility, there is so much investment in civil engineering and, you know, securing the ground and putting the roads in and securing power supply that, you know, the marginal cost of adding another line for another operator can be very attractive.

And, of course, you know, we want to have the welcome mat out to other operators. We see it as an opportunity to do deals that will be very beneficial for the industry and very beneficial for, you know, the T&C shareholders as well. And so there might be some operators who want to provide, you know, chunky capital to us to secure a certain amount of processing throughput. And so we'll have an open mind to that, and we are in some of those discussions as we speak now.

Analyst Dmitry Silverstein (Water Tower Research): Understood, Jared. Thank you. And then final question, you're getting ready to execute your offshore CapEx program and get ready for production. If I remember correctly, originally this was supposed to be funded 50-50 between you and Altese. You made a comment that Altese will be funding a significant portion of that now. So should we think that it's going to be more than 50% of the CapEx that Altese will be funding?

Executive Name (Title): No, you should, and you should continue to plan on sharing that.

Analyst Dmitry Silverstein (Water Tower Research): Okay. All right. Thank you, John.

Executive Name (Title): Thanks, Dimitri. I'm going to hop over, Latonia, to the webcast questions to see if there are any other questions that are going to populate on the audio side. In the meantime, we have a question from Ivan Schmidt. Given that we're expecting Q1 2027 permit timing, how should investors think about the political risk around 2026 midterms and potentially a transition to new Congress in January 2027?

Executive Name (Title): One of the nice things about this point, and I'm happy for Jared to expand on it, this isn't really a left versus right issue. Is it obvious that this current administration or Republicans have been very supportive of this industry? Of course. But even going back to 2023, it was I think June of 2023 when there was first an announcement of the National Defense Authorization Act with President Biden that focused on doing more feasibility work on nodules. And of course, Jared, we had quite a few conversations with many in the administration who saw the need for this new industry and to get there, frankly, before China does.

But specifically, on any risk for a midterm switch in the population of Congress, it's not going to affect this NOAA process. This is based on regulations put in place in the 1980s. Dishmore was signed by President Carter implementing regulations from 1981 for exploration, 1989 for commercial recovery. It's been the law of the land across multiple Democratic and Republican administrations. So we're going through this in a methodical way. And we are not skipping over any steps.

That's why Jared highlighted in our first slide the public comment periods that are not going to be compressible when it comes to the permitting timeline. That puts us in a good position to say, look, we've done the process exactly right. And we followed the letter of the law and the mandate given to NOAA, who, by the way, is in the best position of anybody in the world to regulate this industry, as the pioneers of the environmental science through the Jones Program in the late 70s and early 80s. So we don't think that's going to have any impact on the potential grant or validity of a commercial recovery permit for TMC.

Analyst: Another question, and maybe for Jared, I believe you touched on this in the last quarterly call, from Tim Hole. Q4 2027 is the target for system commissioning. Is that the same as saying it's our target for full production? So maybe just a little context on some of the timing taken for commissioning and leading the commercial production shortly thereafter.

Executive Name (Title): Yeah, thanks, Craig. Look, commissioning means getting the equipment on board, making sure it works, making sure all the components come together nicely. And, of course, you know, what that points to is that early in the year after, you know, we'll be out there testing and we'll be out there making sure that, you know, we're in shape for commercial production. So commissioning is really getting everything on the boat, putting it all together, making sure they all fit as they're meant to fit.

Analyst: And the last question that I'll take from the webcast from Ryan Bowley, will the September 2021 SPAC warrants be extended? Ryan, this is a question we get, I'm sure, from a lot of holders. The terms of that warrant is expiration in September of 2026. Look, it's our ambition to, you know, fill this summer with a great amount of news flow, such that we might, you know, render that question new. So we're going to keep doing everything we can.

But any discussions with our board are going to be announced publicly if and when there's anything to announce there. But it would be our focus just to, you know, push the share price to a higher level well in advance of that exercise date. But nothing else I can say, no other comment I can make

at this time.

Executive Name (Title): And Latonia, if you want to reprompt the phone line, see if there are any final questions.

Analyst: Certainly. As a friendly reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again.

As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 1-1.

Executive Name (Title): Yes, thank you. Well, firstly, thanks, everyone, for turning up. And I know a lot of people listen to these reports live, but even more listen to the transcript afterwards or read the transcript afterwards. Look, as you can tell, we turn up to these quarterly earnings reports full of enthusiasm because it's really important, quite exciting what we're doing, getting a new industry moving.

This administration has an absolute focus on re-industrialization. It's an honor to deal with the government agencies which we deal with because they are filled with people from the private sector who know how to get things done. And you get a sense of optimism when you're dealing with this administration and these government agencies. And I hope what that is going to lead to is us getting this industry moving a whole lot faster, a whole lot more reliably, and for the benefit of America becoming more independent and for the benefit of those people who supported us along this journey.

So thank you, and we look forward to being in communication a lot with you in the coming months. And on that note, I wish you a good day. And this concludes today's conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Q4 2025 Earnings Call — March 27, 2026

Joseph Osha (Guggenheim Partners): Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Congratulations on the strong results. You talked a lot about how your craft labor force availability is allowing you to take work even in very tight markets like data centers, which is great. I'm wondering if you're seeing changes or any other challenges in that market in particular as relates to your customers' availability of material or other things, or whether you're seeing those projects able to proceed on a timely basis for the most part?

Steve Hansen (Executive): Yeah, Joe, great question. To date, we haven't seen a supply chain issue that is pushing schedules out. Data center clients and our blue chip clients, they're looking far into the future and securing the materials they need and working with us up front to make sure that the material chain that we are working within is also available. So to date, no, we have not.

Adam Hubei (Goldman Sachs): Hi, good morning. Data center technology revenue, I think, was up 80% year-over-year. Can you just help us parse out that performance? How much was fabrication versus installation growth? And then in 2026, can you just talk about your expectations for the growth trajectory of the data center fabrication business specifically?

Management: Sure. You know, we are growing both just our installation at a nice clip of data centers where we're completing the whole installation for the mechanical or electrical services, but also the fabrication is growing probably at an even higher rate as we're participating in build-outs in these rural areas where we don't have an installation footprint. Just to give you a sense, even though we don't break out the fabrication-only revenue, but it's a proportion of our I&M segment revenue. In 2024, it would have been a mid-single-digit percentage of our revenue with FAB-only work, where it was a mid-teens percentage in 2025 with FAB-only. So it is growing at a higher rate, as you'd expect, given where many of these data centers are being built. We expect that to probably pick up a bit in 2026, but maybe not quite as much as you'd expect, because as we bring in Bowers, they historically, almost all of their fab capacity is going for their installation jobs and not serving other markets. So that's probably an opportunity as we get further into 2027 and beyond.

Management: Yeah, that's a great question. We are seeing, in a positive way, an elongation of that backlog, driven by a couple of factors. Obviously, with the ongoing boom in data centers, just longer lead times, and also larger projects. Larger projects obviously take a little bit longer to burn than smaller projects. Those are some of the factors. We expect to burn a little bit over half of our backlog in 2026. And then, of course, the majority of the remainder would be in 2027. But we also have backlog extending into 2028, and not an insignificant portion. So we have visibility through our backlog and awards of revenue going out much further than we ever would have in the past.

Sharif Elmaghrabi (BTIG): Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Pretty impressive beat this quarter. Can you shed some light on how much of Q4 revenue was driven by the backlog versus book and ship type orders that might have come in into a quarter? And how you see the business mix evolving over the last few months?

Management: Yeah, there's certainly a bit of both, probably more from backlog, and just really exceptional performance on larger projects, favorable project closeout, increasing proportion of the FAB work that we discussed, but certainly some quick-hitting jobs that provided some upside to the core.

Brian Brophy (Stifel): Yeah, thanks. Good morning, everybody. Appreciate you taking the question. Nice quarter. Just had one on I&M gross margins. Obviously, they were a little bit better than folks were expecting. You mentioned some strong execution benefits in the comments, but any other color on what drove the strength there? Was there any improvement that was more of a one-time benefit? And how should we be thinking about the sustainability of gross margins into 2026?

Management: Yeah, it's a great question. And we're certainly optimistic about our ability to continue to have this exceptional performance. But of course, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves on the guidance. We have had two exceptional quarters in a row from a project execution perspective. And so we're not going to forecast that level of beat every quarter. Again, I think I mentioned the increased proportion of fab-only, which tend to get a little bit higher margins on the fabrication-only business as opposed to the full install jobs, which are much bigger and tend to be much bigger even in scope, a bigger revenue opportunity. But also as we continue to complete more and more of these larger data-centered jobs, the work is similar, and so we're probably in the area.

Management: Yeah, as we mentioned earlier around the supply chain question, hyperscalers and developers are looking further out and getting commitments to build. And we've worked really hard with them. The earlier we are in with them, the better we can help them plan and manage and mitigate risk from supply. And so we're having more and more conversations with them on projects being built all over the place. And Stephen said it earlier, some of these projects that are just getting bigger in scale, they have to plan further out. We're well into 29 in conversation.

Michael Dudas (Vertical Research Partners): Yes. Good Friday morning, gentlemen. Taking a look at the non-data center technology side of the business, you highlighted a few times in your prepared remarks about diversity and the opportunities there. As you look to 2026 and into 2027, is it a normal growth rate relative to what you've seen? Is it accelerating? Is there any areas? Certainly, there's a lot of visibility in life science and healthcare, a lot of press releases on that front. But also, it seems like the education and think local could be very helpful. How contributory is that going to be relative to your prior expectations going into 2026 on your outlook?

Management: That's a great question. I'll start and my colleagues will chime in. We certainly like the long-term macro tailwinds from an onshoring and reshoring perspective on manufacturing. That certainly also applies to the life sciences space. We like, I think we're seeing some green shoots, if you will, on the biotech lab space as existing square footage gets absorbed and that turns into ultimately new demand for us from a tenant fit out perspective. And then I think we always have loved the education business because the installed base is so massive. And there's always a need to improve the efficiency of existing schools, whether it's primary schools, K-12 schools, or higher education from an R&D and STEM perspective. And that really fits right into our wheelhouse of having this holistic view of design-build in most facilities. And finally, this increase in the price or expense related to electricity. It helps from an energy efficiency, return on investment perspective. Essentially, the math is easier as energy becomes more expensive, which is a demand driver for us. Now, how do we turn that into a hard number in terms of expected growth rates from before versus today? I'll sort of pass the mic to Steven to try to take those vague comments and boil them down into a more specific number.

Steven: Yeah, and Jeff, you nailed it on those trends that are impacting the results. The reshoring is definitely a longer-term impact and something that we've probably talked about in past meetings with you all that we really see that having more of an impact as we get further and further into the decades. And a lot of these big projects, like semiconductor fabs, just multi-year planning cycle. We're seeing now benefits from reshoring that started at the time of COVID. Of course, there's been a lot of reshoring announcements with some of the administration's policies that we've seen in 2025 and 2026. And so we're obviously optimistic that that's going to provide some nice uplift as we get into 2027 and beyond.

Derek Soderberg (Cantor Fitzgerald): Yeah, thanks for taking my question. On your proprietary software, Trove, the real-time data evaluation software, to what degree is software now contributing to revenue? And is it a mandatory pull through for some of your larger data center installations?

Management: Yeah, that's a great question, Derek. You know, Trove is really focused on the commercial real estate market. And it's a tool that we use internally to do analysis of portfolios of buildings for building owners to sort of rack and stack and prioritize capital improvements to improve the performance of their buildings. It also is at times used by customers who want to sort of DIY that same analysis. We're happy to do it either way. That said, in either scenario, that really has a de minimis impact on our revenue. It's really part of our bundled solution that we sell to the large global property managers in the world.

Chris Sung (Wolf Research): Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe just asking on the data center deliveries in 29 a little bit differently. Are the data center opportunities for 29 onwards, or are there still hyperscalers bookings for 26, 27, 28 for new data centers?

Management: Yeah, no we're still looking at opportunities before that timeline 26, 27, 28 as well. I think that the key point is the relationship has allowed us to get further into the planning weeds with our client base and get a much better view of what's coming in the future.

Management: Yeah, I mean, we don't have a breakdown of that handy, but, I mean, certainly we're continuing to win larger and larger awards with our existing clients, and we're continuing to see new clients, even new blue chip clients. Often those initial awards are probably smaller than the awards that we see from our existing clients, but as we execute, we'd expect those to grow over time.

Joseph Osha (Guggenheim Partners): I made it back. This is a bit of a geeky question. We've heard a lot about the shift to 800-volt DC in data centers. I'm wondering if you all have encountered any of those yet.

Management: Yeah, we have not. And really, that shift will not affect our work. That we do for them, the conveyance of material and everything else that we're doing, that shift won't be a big driver for us. Our electrical installation team will see some of that, but we have not really seen that become prevalent in the market yet.

Oliver Davies (Rothschild and Co., Redburn): Yeah, hi, guys. Just one for me. So I guess obviously a very strong Q1 guide, even on an organic basis. Can you sort of discuss how you expect the cadence of organic growth to progress through the rest of the year?

Management: Yeah, you know, we don't have huge seasonality in our business, though we do have some. We tend to peak in the second and third quarters, and it's really driven primarily by our program and project management business. You know, if you look at the disaggregation of revenues, that business, a lot of that business is in the education end market, which really tends to peak in the summer months. There may be some pockets of seasonality elsewhere in the business, but that's the pocket that I would highlight as being most significant.

Management: Thanks, Daniel, and thanks, everyone, for attending our fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. A recording of this call will be available on our website in a few hours. We look forward to updating you again on our next earnings call. Thank you, everyone, again, and have a great weekend. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.