Gemfields Group Limited (PLLHF) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Heinrich Richter
Head of Investor Relations

Good morning, and welcome to Gemfields 2025 Full Year Results Shareholder and Investor Webcast. Sean Gilbertson, CEO; and David Lovett, CFO, will present Gemfields financial results. At the end of the presentation, we will go into Q&A. [Operator Instructions] Before we start, please take a note of the important information in our disclaimer on Slide 2, with a full disclaimer in the appendix.

And with that, I’ll now pass you on to Sean.

Sean Gilbertson
CEO & Executive Director

Thank you very much, Heinrich. Good morning, and welcome. Thank you for your time and interest in what was an extremely difficult year for Gemfields, Ignoring the COVID year of 2020, 2025 saw us deliver our weakest annual auction revenues since 2013, more than a decade and only 41% of the peak auction revenues, which we achieved in 2022, which was the height of the post-COVID so-called revenge spending boom for us.

I think it’s worth recapping on what transpired in getting us to this situation. First, buoyed by the post-COVID boom, we paid out $80 million in dividends to shareholders between May ’22 and May ’24, and we also did a $10 million share buyback. We then went on to initiate a growth strategy, which included the largest CapEx project Gemfields has ever undertaken, being our second processing plant at MRM in Mozambique at a cost of $70 million.

Then in the second half of 2024, we saw the deterioration of the Chinese economy and a market decline in China’s share of luxury goods consumption. That was followed by the