Titan Mining: The Improvement Is Real — and Already in the Price

Titan Mining (NYSE American: TII) just reported the best quarter in its history, and the headline numbers are genuinely impressive: revenue of $25.7 million, up 57% from a year earlier; adjusted EBITDA of $9.6 million, up 272%; net income of $5.4 million versus $0.5 million. The company owns the Empire State Mine in upstate New York, one of the few operating zinc mines in the United States, and it is pouring its cash flow into Kilbourne, a graphite project it hopes will make it the first end-to-end domestic natural graphite producer in decades.

The market has noticed. Since Titan uplisted to the NYSE American in November 2025, its market value has climbed roughly 44%, to about $318 million. The question this quarter actually settles is not whether the improvement is real — it is. The question is whether the shares have already paid for it. On the arithmetic, I think they largely have, and that changes what the stock is now offering fresh money.

A record quarter, and what it's made of

Understanding the quarter requires separating the two things moving in Titan's favor, because they will not move together forever.

One leg is real operational progress. The mine produced 17.5 million payable pounds of zinc in the quarter, up 13% year over year and ahead of plan, with C1 cash costs at $0.88 a pound and all-in sustaining costs at $0.96. The balance sheet is cleaner too: net debt fell to $12.8 million from $24.2 million a year ago, and the company reaffirmed full-year guidance of 62–66 million payable pounds and $20–$28 million of adjusted EBITDA, with the first half already contributing $13.6 million.

The other leg is the commodity. Zinc has rallied about 55% since mid-2025 to a four-year high near $3,900 a tonne, and at those prices a mine with all-in costs under a dollar a pound earns fat margins on every pound it ships. That is the tell: revenue up 57% but costs barely moving is the signature of price leverage, not a new secular cost structure. EBITDA growing 272% on 57% revenue growth is a mining textbook — the marginal pound sells at spot, and this year's spot is at a cyclical top. None of that is Titan's fault. But it means the current run-rate of profit is a best-case zinc tape, and a miner's multiple gets built around the assumption that the tape persists.

The graphite story is real

The reason Titan trades where it does, though, is not the zinc mine. It's Kilbourne, and the bullish case there is not imaginary.

The project targets 40,000 tonnes of natural flake graphite a year, and a preliminary economic assessment published late last year put its after-tax net present value at a 7% discount rate at $513 million, with a 37% post-tax internal rate of return and a 2.7-year payback. The financing scaffolding is in place to a degree: the U.S. Export-Import Bank has extended a $5.5 million feasibility credit and, more importantly, a $120 million letter of interest for construction financing under its "Make More in America" program.

The de-risking is real and steady. This month the company said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had substantially completed the public comment phase of a key Clean Water Act permit, with Endangered Species Act consultation targeted for October, all running on the FAST-41 federal fast-track, and it still targets commercial production by 2028. Qualitatively, the commercial validation is advancing too: a conditional supply agreement with refractory leader RHI Magnesita, a non-binding letter of intent with a U.S. aerospace and defense manufacturer, battery-grade spherical graphite validated across the full processing chain, and conditional selection by the U.S. Army to host the purification plant on its property.

So I am not arguing the story is broken. It isn't. The issue is what portion of that future has already been handed to the shareholders who bought it before the run.

What the market is already paying

Do the arithmetic at today's price. Add the roughly $318 million market cap to the $12.8 million of net debt and you get an enterprise value near $331 million. Against the midpoint of this year's $20–$28 million guidance, that is about 14 times trailing forward EBITDA. A mainstream zinc producer trades at single-digit multiples; the market is therefore paying full freight for a cyclical zinc profit at a four-year price high and assigning a large portion of Kilbourne's $513 million NPV to the shares now.

That is the crux of "priced in." Nearly every dollar of the $513 million NPV is a promise about the late 2020s — the project has not been built, its feasibility study is still underway, its capex is secured only by a letter of interest rather than a closed facility, its permits are not final, and production is targeted for 2028. The market has collapsed that multi-year, financing-dependent outcome into a price today. That is a generous posture, not a skeptical one.

The burden of proof has shifted accordingly. When this stock traded in the low-$2s last year, the gap between a beaten-down price and a functioning mine plus a plausible graphite option made it a legitimate contrarian candidate — the market was pricing a scenario the fundamentals did not support. That gap has closed. What remains is the mirror-image risk: an investor who buys here is being asked to pay for the recovery that already happened, and to underwrite the execution of an unbuilt project against a zinc price already sitting at a cyclical high.

What the setup needs to resolve

This is not a short, and I am not calling the top. If zinc stays elevated and Kilbourne closes its construction financing and pushes through permitting near schedule, the shares can still deliver real upside from here — the project economics, if achieved, justify more than today's market value. The honest read cuts both ways.

What waiting means is concrete: the setup resolves on two things happening at once, zinc holding its cycle and Kilbourne converting its letters of interest and permit stages into a financed, permitted, buildable project. The disciplined entry, if you believe the story, is on that confirmation or on a pullback that restores some margin, not on paying 14 times EBITDA for a cyclical producer at the top of its commodity's cycle. When the market has already noticed the good news, the low-risk version of the thesis has been taken. Handing over the burden of proof to the bears is the contrarian discipline that keeps you from mistaking a strong business run by an improving price for an underpriced one.