AMR: Squeezed by the Cycle, Not Broken
Alpha Metallurgical Resources Q4 & Full Year 2025 breakdown. What the numbers say, what the market is missing, and why 2026 is a coin flip.
"I like this buy-and-hold investing. It's a lovely way to live a life; you deal with a better class of people and it's worked pretty well for all of us."
- Charlie Munger, 2015 Meeting
Alpha is the reason this channel exists. A decade from today, I believe investors will look back at this company as a case study.
The beauty of investing in coal is that everyone hates it. Interest in these stocks is extremely low. A few traders move in and out, but for the most part, we are alone here. As a long term investor focused on the bigger picture, that gives you a real edge.
I would argue that this thesis could still work in an extraordinary way. The stock price is down? That is exactly what makes it extraordinary. Alpha is a business where a falling stock price is actually good news. Every dollar goes into buybacks. And when the stock is cheap, it accelerates the whole process.
Yes, Q4 was bad. And yes, full year 2025 was ugly on paper. But the problem is not that the business is broken. The problem is that met coal prices spent most of 2025 in the gutter. Alpha still has close to 500 million in cash, almost no debt, and management is buying back stock aggressively. That is not the profile of a company in trouble. That is the profile of a cyclical business waiting for its market to turn.
Let me walk you through exactly what happened this quarter, what it means for 2026, and what the insider activity is telling us.
Insider Activity
Insider activity around Q4 sends a very clear signal. But first, you have to separate real buying from noise.
The real signal is in open market purchases. Kenneth S. Courtis bought a total of 82,000 shares in December 2025 across multiple open market transactions, for about $14.70 million in total, at an average price of about $179.23 per share. Michael Gorzynski and his group bought 38,576 shares on December 15, 2025 for about $7.27 million, at an average price of about $188.50. That is real money, at market price, with no obligation to buy.
On the selling side, almost nothing. CEO Andy Eidson and CFO Todd Munsey reported January 2026 equity award vesting, and shares were withheld for taxes. Those filings show up on Form 4, but they are not discretionary open market selling. The only clear open market sale in this window was Daniel E. Horn, who sold 8,125 shares on December 11, 2025 for about $1.53 million, in multiple transactions at prices roughly between $186.19 and $189.82.
That is about $22 million in open market buying versus about $1.5 million in open market selling. The ratio is roughly 22 to 1.5 in favor of buying. That is all you need to know.
Met Coal Under Pressure or Setting Up for a Rebound?
Before diving into Alpha’s numbers, you need to understand what is happening in met coal right now. It is the single biggest driver of everything that follows.
