BQE Water Reports Q3 2025 Results

VANCOUVER, BC, Nov. 27, 2025 /CNW/ - BQE Water Inc. (TSXV: BQE), a leader in the treatment and management of mine impacted waters, is pleased to release its interim consolidated financial results for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2025.

"The third quarter continued our solid growth in technical services revenues to a record of $22.6 million for the nine-months of the year. During the quarter, we completed the commissioning of a new selenium plant in the USA and a new SART plant in China, both of which have begun to generate new recurring operations revenue in Q4 2025," said David Kratochvil, President & CEO of BQE Water. "We anticipate a strong finish to 2025 with two engineering projects coming to completion before the end of the year and several new major engineering design projects set to kick off, with each of these projects having the potential to generate new recurring revenue."

FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS

• Revenues under GAAP and Proportional Revenues of $9.3 million and $10.7 million in Q3 2025 respectively, compared to $6.2 million and $9.5 million in Q3 2024.
• Gross margin of $4.7 million in Q3 2025 compared to $3.7 million in Q3 2024, a $1.0 million increase.
• Net income of $2.8 million in Q3 2025 compared to $3.5 million in Q3 2024, a $734,000 decrease.
• Earnings per share (basic) of $2.15 in Q3 2025 compared to $2.75 in Q3 2024.
• Adjusted EBITDA of $3.3 million in Q3 2025 compared to $4.4 million in Q3 2024, a $1.1 million decrease.
• Working capital of $20.5 million at September 30, 2025, compared to $12.6 million at December 31, 2024, a 63% increase.

Selected financial results for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2025 are as follows:

COMMENTARY AND OUTLOOK
We are pleased to have delivered another strong quarter in Q3 2025. On a year-to-date basis, the Company generated record GAAP and Proportional Revenues and also ended the quarter with record working capital. Particularly strong technical services revenue continued to drive our strong performance in Q3 2025, partly offset by lower recuring revenue from water treatment operations and a significantly lower contribution from our JCC-BQE joint venture. As always, we remind readers not to rely on any given quarter or two to forecast upcoming quarters. Our performance in Q2 and Q3 2025 resulted from several factors that may re-occur in the future but not necessarily in a predictable way.

Strong Growth in Technical Services Revenue Offset by Decreases in Water Treatment Operations Revenue
The Company's main strategy is to generate recurring revenues from operations of water treatment plants. On a year-to-date basis, our recurring revenue from operations decreased by $2.8 million relative to the same period in 2024. As discussed in the Company's prior two MD&A's, the decrease was caused by no contribution from Minto Mine in 2025, and the restructuring of two operating contracts in the US, which led to a reduced scope of services over a term extension of seven more years.

On the other hand, we have been operating at two sites that have contributed significantly to our technical services revenue for over a year. These two sites include water treatment operations at the Eagle Mine in the Yukon and a new operation in Quebec where we operate a sulphate removal system to achieve compliance with regulations. These projects generated a combined $10.0 million of additional technical services revenue on a year-to-date basis in 2025 when compared to the prior year. Although the nature of our services for these two projects is operations at site, we do not classify them as recurring operations revenue because we do not have multi-year contracts. However, in both cases, our operations services have been renewed multiple times in the last 12 months and we are optimistic future renewals are likely given the requirement for water treatment services in 2026 and our track record and value proposition. It should be noted that these projects have also generated technical services revenue such as engineering design and lab testing. The Eagle Mine project also provides opportunities for new revenue sources from water quality monitoring, including aquatic toxicity and supplying equipment to the project.

Q3 2025 technical services revenue was also particularly strong as we completed the commissioning of the new selenium plant at the Coeur Wharf Mine in South Dakota and completed a field pilot of our Selen-IX™ technology at a mine in the Midwest, US. Piloting and commissioning are two project stages that contribute significant revenue, but they are sporadic in nature. By comparison, smaller contracts consisting of preliminary engineering assessments or lab testing contribute much lower technical services revenue, but they are valuable indicators for our long-term growth.

Lower Copper Recovery from Our China Joint Venture
Year-to-date sales of recovered metals from our JCC-BQE joint venture decreased substantially when compared to the same period in 2024. Here we sell high grade copper and zinc concentrates produced by mine water treatment plants owned and operated by the joint venture. While we aimed to take advantage of the historically high metals prices and our related operating leverage, our year-to-date share of net income from the JCC-BQE joint venture was $741,000, down from $3.0 million in the prior year period and an historic low.

The main reason for the decrease in our share of revenue and net income from the JCC-BQE joint venture on a year-to-date basis was the lack of metals available for recovery reporting to the treatment plants. The simultaneous drop in recoverable copper and zinc at all three plants that treat water from different sources indicates this was weather related rather than an irreversible depletion of recoverable metals. Nevertheless, the inventory of recoverable metals contained in the waste rock piles that serve as the sources of these metals are expected to gradually deplete over the long term. We expect lower Q4 2025 results from the joint venture as we enter the seasonally dry season.

We are pleased to report that our annual dividend of $1.7 million, which was based on 2024 annual results, was received in Q3 2025.

Outlook for Year End and Q1 2026
We continue to anticipate a strong finish to 2025 with several active engineering projects coming to completion before the end of the year and several new major engineering design projects set to kick off in the Yukon, BC, Manitoba, Ontario, and Mexico in the next three to six months. These new projects have the potential to generate recurring revenue in the future. In addition, there will be some new recurring revenue coming from the projects commissioned in South Dakota and in Shandong, China this year that will lift the base of operating revenue slightly.

We have optimized and strengthen our Company's organizational structure to enable the Company to deliver the next phase in its growth. One investment, announced earlier this year, is in aquatic toxicology and involves the acquisition of talent as well as physical lab space and equipment. The cost of the new aquatic toxicology lab will be more fully reflected from Q1 2026 onwards. Similarly, as a result of our organization optimization and continued strategy for revenue growth, the Company's cost base will increase over the next two quarters due to an increase in headcount and incentive compensation to retain our valuable talent. These new investments may temporarily decrease our operating margins in the short term, but we anticipate ongoing revenue growth with our robust project pipeline ahead.

OPERATIONAL SERVICES HIGHLIGHTS
Our operational services consist of the operation or technical supervision of water treatment plants, which generate recurring revenues from three main sources: sales of recovered metals, water treatment fees and operations support fees. The Company's operations by source of revenue are as follows:

JCC-BQE Joint Venture Operations
Our 50/50 joint venture with partner Jiangxi Copper Company ("JCC") operates three water treatment plants at Dexing Mine and at Yinshan Mine in Jiangxi province of China. The volume of water treated, and metals recovered by the plants fluctuate seasonally depending on precipitation levels in the region. The operating results for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2025 are as follows:

In Q3 2025, all three plants met mechanical availability and process performance set by the Company. The volume of water treated decreased by 48% and the mass of copper recovered decreased by 67% when compared to Q3 2024. Such changes in water volume and metal grade in feed water from period to period are largely the result of environmental conditions beyond the control of the joint venture.

MWT-BQE Joint Venture Operations
Our 20% share of MWT-BQE is with our 80% partner Beijing MWT Water Treatment Project Limited Company ("MWT") and together we operate a water treatment plant at a smelter in Shandong province of China. Starting Q1 2025, MWT-BQE amended the contract with the customer from generating revenues from the sale of recovered metals to water treatment fees for the treatment of smelter wastewater. Operating results for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2025 are as follows:

BQE Water Operations
The number of operating days contributing to water treatment or support fees for three and nine months ended September 30, 2025 are as follows:

The volume of water treated by geographic location for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2025 are as follows:

The Company, with our Inuit partner Nuvumiut Development, operates four water treatment plants at Raglan Mine for Glencore Canada Corporation ("Glencore"). During Q3 2025, we continued operating all four treatment plants for our 22nd operating season at the mine.

In 2021, we began operations of the Zhongkuang SART plant and the Zhaojin SART plant at metallurgical facilities in China. Both plants have been under our technical supervision since the start of full production. Both SART plants operated fully throughout Q3 2025 without disruption.

In 2022, we began operations of a treatment plant utilizing our Selen-IX™ process to remove selenium from ash pond water for WesTech Engineering ("WesTech"). In Q3 2025, our team continued at site providing water treatment services with the Selen-IX™ circuit to manage the presence of selenium in the feed.

In January 2022, we completed the commissioning of a treatment plant utilizing a combination of nanofiltration and our proprietary selenium electro-reduction process for the simultaneous removal of selenium and sulphate from mine water for a base metal project in the American Southwest. In August 2023, our team completed the performance test milestone for a 2nd newly constructed selenium removal water treatment plant which entered the operation phase. Starting April 2025, we have reduced our scope from full operations of the treatment plant to operations support by providing technical onsite supervision at the treatment plants.

TECHNICAL SERVICES HIGHLIGHTS
BQE Water's technical expertise and IP are applicable globally across broad areas of water management. Highlights of some of our technical services and technical innovation projects during Q3 2025 are summarized below.

Trusted Advisory Services (Water Management and Water Studies)

• Completed the commissioning phase of a water treatment facility to support the clean-up of legacy tailings site in the Yukon.
• Continued to provide ongoing advisory and water treatment services in response to the environmental emergency caused by a heap leach failure at the Eagle Gold Mine in the Yukon.
• Completed the commissioning process with a performance test on a selenium removal plant using BQE's Selen-IX™ to meet end-of-pipe limit of less than 5 parts per billion at a gold mine in US.
• Continued assisting an integrated lead smelter-recycling facility in Eastern Canada with completing upgrades to existing treatment system and implementation of new sulphate removal stage to a discharge limit less than 1,500 mg/L and initiated operations support for the newly upgraded facility.
• Completed the on-site pilot demonstration of Selen-IX™ at an operating mine in the US using the company's mobile unit.
• Initiated the design of an ion exchange system for lithium brine purification for a customer in Canada.
• Continued to provide field commissioning and operations support for a water treatment system integrated into a rare earth extraction pilot plant in Brazil.
• Provided engineering services to support the completion of a feasibility study involving water treatment as part of a rare earth extraction project in Chile.
• Completed a peer review of a front-end-engineering design of cobalt recovery from heap leach solution in Chile.
• Initiated lab testing of nickel and cobalt recovery from acid mine water at an existing operation of one of the major metals producers in Africa.
• Initiated laboratory scale testing of rhenium recovery from wastewater produced by gas scrubber blowdown in Chile.
• Initiated a preliminary assessment of water treatment to enable water reuse for mineral flotation in Mexico.
• Initiated a preliminary assessment and lab treatability testing for dewatering of an open pit at an existing gold-silver mine in Mexico.

Cyanide Management (Destruction and Recycle)

• Initiated optimization of an existing cyanide destruction circuit at one of the operations of Kinross Gold.
• Continued to provide plant engineering design services to a US project requiring the end-of-pipe cyanide level below 8 ppb.
• Continued to provide basic process engineering design of a SART plant aimed at improving tailings water quality at a gold metallurgical facility in Canada.
• Completed a preliminary economic assessment of SART to be integrated into an existing heap leach operation in the US.
• Initiated the design for construction of a SART plant at a mine in Mexico.
• Completed the commissioning for Shandong Gold for the third SART plant in China.

SELECTED FINANCIAL INFORMATION
For a complete set of Financial Statements and MD&A, please go to www.bqewater.com.

NON-GAAP MEASURES
The Company uses non-GAAP financial measures to supplement our consolidated financial statements presented in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (IFRS), or GAAP, to enhance overall understanding of the Company's current financial performance with investors and observers. Proportional Revenues and Adjusted EBITDA are reconciled as follows:

Proportional Revenues

Adjusted EBITDA

About BQE Water
BQE Water is a service provider specializing in water treatment and management for metals mining, smelting and refining. We are helping to transform the way the industry thinks about water in the context of natural resource projects by offering services and expertise which enables more sustainable water management practices and improved overall project performance at reduced risks. BQE Water invests in innovation and has developed unique intellectual property through the commercialization of several new technologies at mine sites around the world for organizations including Glencore, Jiangxi Copper, Freeport-McMoRan and the US EPA. BQE Water is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada and trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol BQE. Visit www.bqewater.com for more information.

The Toronto Venture Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or the accuracy of this release.

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION

Certain information contained herein may not be based on historical fact and therefore constitutes "forward-looking information" under applicable Canadian securities legislation. This includes without limitation statements containing the words "plan", "expect", "project", "estimate", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "may", "will" and other similar words or expressions. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the statements are made, and are subject to a variety of risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual events or results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, the Company's dependence on key personnel and contracts, uncertainty with respect to the profitability of the Company's technologies, competition, technology risk, the Company's ability to protect its intellectual property and proprietary information, fluctuations in commodity prices, currency risk, environmental regulation and the Company's ability to manage growth and other factors described in the Company's filings with the Canadian securities regulators at www.sedarplus.ca (including without limitation the factors described in the section entitled "Risks and Uncertainties" in the Company's MD&A for the year ended December 31, 2024). Given these risks and uncertainties, the reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. All forward-looking information contained herein is based on management's current expectations and the Company undertakes no obligation to revise or update such forward-looking information to reflect subsequent events or circumstances, except as required by law.

SOURCE BQE Water Inc.