Atalaya Mining Copper (LSE:ATYM) — Q2 and H1 2024 Financial Results

0:01 Good morning, and welcome to the ATALAYA MINING PLC Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged, and they can be submitted at any time using the q and a tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses, which is appropriate to do so.

0:29 Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. And I would now like to hand you over to CEO, Alberto La Vendera. Good morning to you. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for being here in this summer summertime. I'll try to keep it brief the presentation because we have already re released the production results and we are talking here about the financial results of the corresponding to the first quarter and the second quarter and the first half of twenty twenty four. With me, I will have Cesar Santiv, if needed, that he can also respond to any specific question that you may have.

1:13 We had already released the production in the second quarter. It was better than the first quarter. It showed a good improvement, especially in the tons treated through the plant. One of the key points in this quarter is that we maintained the costs, all in sustaining costs of $320,000,000 and also more or less the same $320,000,000 during the first half, despite we had lower grades. And we kept the guidance of course around 03/20, although the guidance of the production has been reduced a little bit.

2:02 The reason of that is that we believe we are going to be having much better grades in the second quarter in the second half of the year, excuse me. But we will not be able to catch up production loss during the first half. Besides that, the fact that we had better higher copper prices and good cost control, We had a very good EBITDA of EUR26.4 million in the quarter and accumulated EUR36.7 million, which is around over EUR40 million. And we continue doing some investments in Helix and in the stripping of the San Luis Obispo. So at the end of the quarter, we the quarter and half of the year, we ended up having over EUR 50,000,000 in net cash with a very strong balance sheet, which allowed us to declare an interim dividend of another $0.04 per share to be paid in August 24.

3:09 Other things that you have that we have released, as you know, is that we passed to the May market, and we are going to be moving from Cyprus to Spain in the third quarter, which means that likely in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four, we'll be ready. And that will allow us or we think that we fulfill all the conditions to be part of the index, which would improve the liquidity and the trading of our shares. Talking about the assets, as you all know, our total project has been declared strategic by the Centauri Galicia, the regional government.

3:57 And this is a huge step forward in which it will streamline the permitting process. Permitting is ongoing. I will speak a little bit more about that in in the the next few minutes. But things I can say are are going very well. Same thing the permitting of the final pit of Saint Dionisio, although we continue with interim pit that has been approved and we have where we have continuous stripping activities during the first half and also started to touch some of the ore already. And this will provide better grades in the months to come to be blended with the Federal Colorado main pit. At the same time, we continue commissioning the LX plant, which is handled by Align Technologies.

4:48 And also, we have almost finished the construction the solar plant finally, which is basically ready to start up almost in the immediately. We have also made some changes in the board, as you all know. Nick Rexon will be the the the new chair substituting the Roger Davy. Roger Davy will continue at the board, but due to the fact that he had been over twelve years in the company, he was not considered independent, although he is independent. So for compliance rules with the London Stock Exchange, he will continue as a Director and Iljuk Rexel will take the Chair of the company.

5:37 Kate Harcourt has been appointed as Senior Independent Director and Karl Wittel has been appointed as new Non Executive Director. Karl comes with a huge experience in M and A from Arthur Lohr Mittal and also CFO roles in London listed company. So overall, very good quarter in even in spite of a slightly lower rate at the end, the results have been quite good. I've spoken most about this already, but basically, the reason for why we had good better copper production than the previous quarters that we treated more tons. So we had the same grade, same recovery, but more tons, which resulted in the increase in copper production of 11,600 tons of copper, which is quite good considering that we have been treating only 0.33% copper grade. This copper grade was already flagged.

6:46 It has already been known that we're going to go through a period of low grade that we wanted to mix with San Benicio, which had a couple of months of delay. So as a result of that, we had slightly lower grade. Note that the expansion that was originally signed for 50,000,000 tons, it's running at 4,100,000 per quarter, which means 60,000,000 tonnes per year. So the production wise, things are going quite well. As a result of this production, as I said before, we had, as you can see, higher revenues. Why it was higher revenues? Basically because we had copper higher copper prices. Due to the fact that we had higher sales and lower costs, we have very good EBITDA, and we it allowed us to increase our cash balances and maintain a very good working capital position of over USD 63,000,000, which is basically USD 70,000,000, which is, as you can see, quite consistent with what we have had in the last few years, even with the fact that we have given dividends and we have also been doing some investments.

7:59 The conclusion for this is that this company is very leveraged to copper price. As you can see, a very small increase in copper price even through a small period of rates, big increase in EBITDA and in cash. The summary of the results for the half of the year are summarized in Slide nine. As I said before, revenues due to the higher copper prices, even despite of lower production, have been similar to the previous year. But operating same thing with operating costs, but in EBITDA has been better. And cash flows has also been quite consistent with previous years, even in spite of lower production. The details of the cash costs and all in costs are, as you know, we always break down all these details.

8:55 There is an increase in in mining costs versus previous years due to slightly higher waste mined and lower production mainly, basically, lower production. The same thing happens with the others other side costs. The processing costs have been kept lower, lower than previous years. And the reason for that is that the electricity prices have been also slightly lower. And also, we had, if you remember, we had some long term contracts for one third of our production. What was a big change is the the the by product rates. We had a very good by product rates due to two facts.

9:42 One is that this by product is is formed by silver, silver in our concentrates. So silver prices have been good. But in addition to that, we have been processing some areas with higher silver rates, knowing those those areas were quite accessible. And knowing that we were going to be having lower copper copper grades, we at least were able to mine this higher silver to compensate a little bit the copper rates. So then we were able to maintain the costs in a quite good range in spite of this lower production due to the byproduct rates. Overall, the cash the total all in costs have been quite consistent during the year and within the guidance.

10:37 Important to note here is we used to compare ourselves with peers, and you will see our costs in the last quarters all in costs in our last quarters in the left columns in orange, you will see that we have been quite consistent after the big increase that happened with in 2022. But also quite well controlled compared with other companies that are shown there. All of this is based on public information. So it's very important because we always report all in cost due to the fact that for the mining, it's it's contracted out and being contracted out, the the contractor, the operator takes care of of purchasing the equipment and the the mining equipment. And so we don't have extra cost to buy once in a while equipment to replace the fleet.

11:35 We have reiterated the lower guidance than we had already flagged about one month ago, with copper containing concentrates at the end of the year being between 45,050, which is roughly 3,000 tonnes less than originally planned. But we have kept the cash cost within the guidance. And we will still be investing because we believe that the copper prices will stay as they are. We'll still be investing in some money in finalizing the solar plant, the helix plant and the road and investments associated with the development of some division.

12:25 As I said before, we have given a dividend consistent with our policy of distributing back to the shareholders between 3050% of the free cash flows without considering extraordinary investments. So the midrange of that was was is 4¢. And the the the dividend rate, the the is is going to be almost, and it's going to be pay payable more or less mid mid September. So what are we doing for the rest of the year? Basically, the reconciliation is going quite well. Alex supposedly is going to be ramping up in the last part of the year.

13:15 The first part of the the solar plant will be connected finally after receiving a small permit and finalizing that was pending due to a change of scope and will be collected. You will see a picture that basically is where everything is finished. So in this year, we continue with this working quite normally. Total, we believe we're in a key period of of permitting

13:39 Because total, we have already submitted the 24,000 pages project proposal, very well received. We have had presentations to the public, to the authorities, very well attended. And we are almost sure this project is going to be attended soon. An important thing is, as we say, is something you can see that in the central part of the picture that the activities are going quite well. I mean, this prescription. So there's big activity there. Remember, we started on the early part of this year. And as you can see that the main roads crossing the main road that separates both pits is crossing the central part of the picture. We this this our excavations do not affect the main road, we don't need to relocate anything, and we are already starting to touch the the the first ore, which is expected to have a better grade.

14:34 The solar plant, as you remember also in the previous pictures, the solar plant was has some missing panels and has a small problem with the relocation of the change on the high electric line that was crossing the road that in theory was going to be crossing under the road. And finally, the the road authorities required us to cross on top of the road, we had a small delay. But as you can see, basically, this is ready to start in operation. Right now, we have shown in green around onethree of our costs hedged at a lower price at around $54 which is a very good price. And in the future, when this gets into production, we will get over 50% of our production at a very low rates, which will help our operating costs.

15:23 Delix is is nothing really to show simply that they continue commissioning. They had lots of issues with filter, with cathodes, with the connection simply because of connecting something new, totally new with new people, with new persons, with new maintenance, new operators. It requires a lot of training. So this it's it's taking longer than we expected. By the way, and you can see in the picture in the right side of the right side of the picture, that white area is the solar plant. You can see the the quite big size of the solar plant. While you are seeing here some rigs, why are we showing rigs which normally we don't is because in Massawa Verde, you remember it's a satellite deposit that's around six kilometer from our side.

16:12 We have identified an area with copper grades, copper only, which can be added into our circuit without any modification of the circuits. Right now, we are doing some drilling to support where is the ventilation races, where where is the best rock conditions. The design is ready. The the the land on surface is ready. And we are in the, basically, the the our priority stages with all the designs to to start the the ramp access ramp at the end of this year, beginning of next year. Because as you know, this point is fully permitted right now. The idea is to bring ore from Masha Valverde to Togurtivo.

17:01 What can it mean? So you get an idea. And of course, we have not given too much information about this because we are quite prudent, as you know. We have areas, which you will see in past press releases of good very good intercepts of 2% copper. 2% copper with minimum territorial materials, those can be fed in our circuits without an approval. Well, if you could bring in zero five million tons of copper mine underground 2% copper into the just zero five million tons, it would be equivalent to bringing 4,000,000 tonnes 3,000,000 tonnes of grade of 0.35% copper. So as you can see, with a minimum material from this area can increase the production by 10,000 tons at least of copper, which is not in the federal, which is not in any of our plants, but you can see why we want to develop this product as soon as possible.

18:04 It's not that fast. It will require between year and a half and two years of development. Maybe we will go a little bit faster than that, but we are getting ready because it has some very promising production expectations there. At Toro, Toro, I think is without any question, growth project that can give more value to our company. This thing is going quite well. We have had multiple presentations during July since our project was declared strategic with hundreds of people attending with from all the sectors of the economy of Galicia. The project is going into public consultation.

18:51 It has received coverage to the media, constant coverage. And right now, the situation, I would say, is is quite good because the the company has made a huge effort in engaging with the local communities, with with all the stakeholders from the sea, from the area, from municipalities around the project, from potential local investors, from potential suppliers. And really, project, we are quite sure this is going to go ahead. The plan is to obviously, we don't have any control on the timing of the permits. But the way this thing is going with all the support, very likely, we will get the key environmental permit at the end of the year or beginning of next year, which would pave the way to start the construction of this project, which is if around EUR $250,000,000, which we have already we are working already in the funding mechanisms for this.

19:58 So in conclusion, we are in our way to get to our target of getting over 100,000 tons of copper in three years. And actually, I would say in less years, first coming from the expansion on Rio Tinto, where we are treating only copper only. The second increase is when we start increasing the polymetallic, which higher grades in San Di Vizio. And the third leg and obviously the more important one is the added production of very clean copper concentrates from DOR. As I said before, our company is very leveraged to to the copper price. We have seen the peaks of the copper price in May get into get into over four point over 11,000 tons of per ton of copper.

20:59 Now prices have gone down a little bit, but we are not, let's say, too much worried about that. The reason of that is that we are seeing that from the supply side, almost all the companies are showing lower production. Lower production in the first half, everybody is saying it's going to be weighted in the second half. And although China continues to have some issues with the construction itself in the real estate activities. The reality is that the consumption the consumption in infrastructure, electrical infrastructure is going very well and it's also going very well in in other countries.

21:48 At the same time, what's happening with the with the used to be the the biggest producer of the work of Elko is worrying because it's going down. And and although it seemed well, that's not very relevant. You should see that this this reduction of of production that's shown in the left part, it means, like, it's the likely equivalent of one very large big mine, like 400,000 tons of copper. So although the price of copper has gone down over the last months, the physical premium, so the demand for copper in China, which used to be negative, and it's a good indication of the demand of copper, physical copper, has already picked up and is positive again as well as a pickup of copper premium in The United States. So we are we believe that the when we get total back, this the copper project is going to go back over to $5 or even more. And as we have said before, our company is very, very leveraged to the copper price.

22:59 And of course, we're one of the few copper price in London. So with the inclusion of the company as in the index, I think the demand for shares, both from London market and from European market is going to be quite good.

23:25 And I think this is this concludes this part. That's great, Alberto. Thank you very much indeed for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions using the Q and A tab situated on the top right corner of your screen. While the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I would like to remind you that a recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published Q and A can be accessed via your investor dashboard. Alberto, as you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. And, Alberto, if I may now hand back to you and kindly ask you to read out the questions where appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you at the end. Excellent. Yes, I will do that. I have a few questions here. I want to read all of them and try to reply to all of them.

24:11 Third one is, what are the next steps in the permitting process in total? Is the process moving consistent with expectations? Yes. We the process is moving according to expectations. And the company have submitted already 24,000 pages of project of designs, studies of all type of the project, the full new project with new designs, including the electric line and all the auxiliary services. Right now, after that, the next steps the next steps as this information is going to be

24:48 made available for the general public in transparency portal and also in in it's going to be published in the official asset for thirty days. Simultaneous to that, the main bodies of administration are preparing what they call the sector evaluations, which means they look at each of the parts, let's say, archaeology, heritage, natural heritage, water, cultural roads, etcetera, and each of them gives their own opinion and their own conditions.

25:35 And after that, we will have a a couple of few months of preparation of the conditions of the environmental tax statement, which we believe is going to be positive because we have corrected all the potential shortcomings that were found in the process that was launched four four years ago. Second pre submit is, if you start the ramp at Massawa Verde at the end of twenty four, where can it reach production? Is CELx required for the ore to be economic? Two very interesting questions. We will get MASA Al Verde, as you know, consists of in several deposits. The main one is called Massa Alberde, which contains two parts. One is polymetallic, which means copper and zinc mixed.

26:30 And and the other one is is copper only, which is a stock work. And then there is another satellite deposit, which is called Majadales, which is a small but high grade and quite shallow, which is polymetallic. And then we have other deposits, which we have been drilling, but will not release a resource yet, which are also shallow, some of them are repeatable, which in general are polymetallic.

27:04 For to treat the copper only, the stock mark, we don't need to make any modifications on the plant, and this would be thrown into our existing circuit without any modification. In in the case of the the polymetallic, we have the option of of using conventional flotation, which is the way things have been evaluated, but we also have the possibility of using Helix. We would not decide to go with Helix until it's totally proven and is working normally. The specifically, case of Mahadales, we have made some test work with which is high copper and high zinc at the same time. It looks ideal for Alex. But again, we will only use it when the thing is up and running. We can mine for quite a few years copper only without having any modification to the server.

28:05 Next is always, at what stage are you in developing the modified recovery circuit for processing polymetallic ore? What CapEx is expected and when it will be incurred? The process the moment where we are is we have finished. We have completed lots of of flotation tests, both internally in in our own metallurgical labs, full fully equipment metallurgical labs, and also in some external labs, very well known labs. We are in the process of of getting the different alternatives to to how we can do it. Are we going to have a separate

28:46 global flotation followed by different flotation of copper, lead and zinc? And that's where we are. There are several variations. And that's the situation where we are. When is the CapEx going to be incurred? I would say in two years from now, so it's not needed immediately, because as you know, the upper part of San Di Vizio only contains copper, so we don't have any significant zinc, I would say, two years from now. Another question is, could you please provide some more detail on the San Dimitio permitting process? What is permit required for? What is the timeline and steps required to be granted the permits? Look, the state of San Luisi is quite a strange situation because initially, we were told that the permit of San Luisi would only be needed based on a way, which is called non substantial modification.

29:48 So basically, a small modification of existing permit. And that's the way we were going. When we were in the middle of this process last year, they said that the footprint of San Denizio was going out about 100 meters out from the original orbit, and and they believe that to to be safer, we should go what they call substantial modification. Going out 100 meters in a area which covers more or less three kilometers by two kilometers wide by three kilometers long, really, we don't believe it was substantial. But, anyway, in order to avoid any arguments, we we went to through that route.

30:35 What that route means is that it basically, it includes public information, consultation and simply takes more time. We are in that process of getting immediate access to the public information. And in the meantime, we requested a permit, interim permit to be mining a first stage without going out of the perimeter. And that's what we got and that's what we are working. So it was like a way that was given a way given by the administration to be able to to continue the normal work because, really, that thing that interpretation was really a very strict interpretation that really probably did not make too much sense.

31:27 But anyway, since the administration wants to make sure things are done correctly, we agree with that, but we don't expect any issues at all. It's a matter of time. And if and the time will likely be at the end of this year, more or less without having any effect in the overall plans. Another question is to what extent do you expect the recent uptrend in electricity prices to impact costs for 2024? Whilst the uptrend is normal, in summer, there's lots of demand, there's less wind, less hydro and the prices in summer are always higher than the than the prices in in autumn and in the spring.

32:25 So, yes, it will affect a little bit, but not much. The reason of that is that we have covered some of our costs at lower prices. Just to give you an indication just to give you an indication, we consume around a little bit less than 24 kilowatts per ton, which means roughly 700 gigawatts per year. I think it's a little bit less than EUR700 million, which means an increase in EUR10 per megawatt considering that we have one third of that covered already would probably mean around EUR 5,000,000 in the year.

33:20 So around EUR 3,000,000 extras in the rest of the year. So it's not material, it's important, but not material. We're talking about EUR $0.03 to $0.05 per pound, where you can see that we are roughly producing 100,000,000 pounds Another question is, how can you forecast the great quality of the material that yet to be mined? This deposit is has been drilled in a pattern of around 20 by 50. We have been mining during ten years and the production guidance has always been quite consistent. Why is that? It's because we have a drill hole that's helping in the calculation, very close to where we are going to be mined. Of course, this is not perfect.

34:08 When you have an intercept of of or x grade at 20 meters, when you said go away another fifteen, twenty meters, it may not be exactly the same thing as what was drilled. That's why we use your statistics. So far, this in this nine years, we have been plus minus, some months higher, some months lower. But actually, we have been having slightly more tons, about 1%, not big amount, and a slightly better grades than the model. But, of course, it means that sometimes you may have 1% or 5% less than the model. But the model has shown to be very consistent, and we don't expect to have any we don't have any reason to suspect that this thing is going to be different in the future. And the reason for that is because this deposit is very well drilled.

35:08 When do you expect to see the first results on commercial production rate in Helix? What are the main challenges you are facing here? Well, the main challenge we are facing here is that we are not making the commissioning. The commissioning in operation is handled by Lain, which is the owners of the technology, which is a technology that's quite secret, which means they are very careful in in in in showing this to people. And it means that they have to hire new people, train them, new maintenance guys, new operating guys, and this takes time to learn. The challenge we are seeing is that we are not doing it. I think there are some problems that have happened that are normal engineering, like clawing filters or like settling in tanks that was not expected. I mean, you have to have a kind of procedure that comes with experience, and the experience is not there. I have to say that from what I have seen, the problems that we have experienced or they have experienced have nothing to do with the LX system itself.

36:14 The difficult part of LX is to how to leach the concentrates. That's very difficult to do, and that's done quite successfully. The places where it has failed is in normal things, like filtering or settling or or pipes growing or burning a pump, which comes from from experience. And now they are setting a good team, and we hope that we'll have this during this month, second half, as we said, second half of the year. Probably, they will start producing more or less constant in the third the last part of this quarter already. But as I say, a little bit out of our control. This is an interesting question. In the case of the net cash as restatement compared to the production results announcing what is the reason for this change?

37:07 Well, it was a mistake. I mean, with lots of people in holidays, the person that was was to provide the number to to the people that prepared up basically forgot to consider one account that was in one bank because it was not the person that was doing it normally. And as simple as that, I mean, the cash is something that's either is there or not there. Simply when when they took the numbers and and nobody checked that they had been done correctly. The cash was there simply with the rush of giving the production the final numbers. What is the cash position and this was the cash position and the system is taking small account. But no, not any accounting or restatement, simply they forgot to take the cash that was in an account.

38:09 Does the does the LX process recover to contain silver in concentrates? In general, yes. When I say in general, it depends in if the silver is locked in parrot, normally, recovery is lower. But if the silver is is is with zinc concentrates, zinc, which is sold very well with copper, yes, it is recovered. Can you please add more detail to how the €250,000,000 for total will be financed? Well, look, euros $250,000,000, about half of that will be coming from loans. And the rest will be coming from our own cash reserves, which we have over €100,000,000 And we believe that we are going to get very good loans from local banks because we have been told that from them.

39:01 We already started the context. Just to give you an idea, we have had, over €60,000,000 without any, warranty for Rio Tinto. So right now, we have possibilities of giving warranty over the assets of Rio Tinto company warranties or the assets of Total without even going to a a full project finance package. The idea is not to go to a full project finance, but to go to basically a a loan from Spanish banks, maybe with addition to some other banks, but basically with the Spanish banks. Can you tell us one next question, can you tell what happens to the precious metal content in polymetallic ores that go through the helix plant?

39:53 With silver, as I said before, it can be recovered. It recovered, it's recovered, it's leached. And after the precipitation is staged in the sludge, and is not doesn't go to the doesn't go to the cathodes. In the case of the gold, I believe that's not recovered because the intensity of leaching is not enough to dissolve the gold. In a blue sky scenario, when will you expect to have the first production of total? Also was the total CapEx and that is number consistent with inflation of recent years. Yes. The original CapEx was around EUR 200,000,000, and now it's EUR $250,000,000 after the inflation. And we made this check-in December, January 20 December 23, January 24. So we ask for quotes to everybody, look at the prices of steel, concrete, everything.

40:54 And so the the number is quite quite recent, and and I would say quite sure, €250,000,000. This €250,000,000 do not need to be spent or ahead of production. They are spent in two stages, like less than 200,000,000 in the start production and the other 50 about two years later after production, but we are stating the whole production. The reason of that is technical. There's some time needed to develop the tailings before building the second expansion, this expansion. And yes, it's consistent with inflation and everything has been checked.

41:43 Another one is, are you concerned about the developing water shortage in Spain considering the use of water in production? Well, actually, we had a big huge drop two years ago. But this year, we have water like you cannot imagine. The reason of that is that, yes, there have been water restrictions in the rest of Spain. But in Rio Tinto at Rio Tinto, it's a kind of basin that receives lots of water from the Southwest, and the the dams there are full. We have, right now, water, enough water that if we had two years of zero precipitation, it would still be okay. The reason of that is that we have a tailings thickener that we recycle, 85% of the water back to the circuits, and the only water we lose is evaporation and the water entrained in the solids of the tailings, which is around 25.

42:45 But as I said, right now, we have no restrictions. In total, it's a quite wet area, which normally drains 1,400 millimeters per year compared to 700 millimeters, 800 millimeters in the South in. Still quite a lot, by the way. It's not a dry area due to this this range of mountains that is that receives the water from the Southwest with lots of rain. And this year has been very wet, and there's no restrictions at all. Can you make any comment on the Jaro Chaparral gold project, the initial initial evaluation that that took place recently. In Harrow, we continue drilling and but we are going to be stopping soon and to make some evaluations. It's a gold project very close to surface.

43:33 We have made some test of leaching preliminary indication that leaches extremely well. So it's a. Basically, gold doesn't it contains very low amounts of sulfides of copper. And we have not given any indication of size, but we believe it's not the it's not going to be the size that can make a difference for for ATALAYA. It still has a value. And we were looking at other options, at all options. One of them is to develop it, but other one could be to farm it out to a to a smaller company that can can get it without distracting our teams. The next question is, how would you think about the CapEx profile relative to over 2025, 2026?

44:31 What will be the main components of non sustaining CapEx? Well, I think we have guided already those CapEx. So I would say that the next year, '26 2526, the stripping of of the stripping of some initial will be done. The road will be we are starting this year, will be ongoing. And the solar will finish, the LX will finish. We have some non sustaining CapEx like a small modification in the crusher circuit to reduce energy consumption and which will be CapEx of around EUR 3,000,000, which is going to be started probably later this year.

45:23 Then we have the ramp of Massawa Berode, which probably would be around 10,000,000 to 15,000,000 per year in two years. And then in '26, we will have the CapEx for the modification of the circuit of the zinc, which I think is very early to to say the the total CapEx. But in the per PA, it was around $70,000,000, so around €60,000,000. I would say that's more or less the range it's going to be. This question comes from Jason.

46:23 Are you spending a lot of CapEx of Rutinto on precipitate in this project? Actually, is this project board approved yet? Yes. The the board has approved already this, and the pro the board has no no question about the the permits that we have right now to do the prescripting and the the roads and everything. So this is all ongoing and fully permitted, obviously, and approved also by the board, of course. Can you please tell us a bit more about Helix? You've thought it might be starting to see some commercial volumes of production by now. Does this technology work at scale? Well, I mentioned before that's true that I would say it's a little bit of a disappointment that the the the ramp up because of the issues we see are are quite quite normal.

47:13 I mean, the the solution technology works perfectly. We have seen that and then concentrates have been leached and and precipitates have been produced and cathodes have been produced, but they have had lots of teething issues with with burning cathodes, with, housekeeping, with filters clog being clogged because they stopped during the weekend. And when they come on Mondays, totally like a brick, which they should have cleaned it before. They have had a tax settle and then issues to to start up, things that are basically lack of experience. So I don't think the technology has a problem, but it's true that we are we have to be patient with the start up being a new thing and with new people and new technology.

48:07 Is this possible to apply for grants to help fund the total expenditure? Maybe yes, but not a big amount. If if there would be grants, there would be grants of small grants of $35,000,000 for specific cases, but not big grants of 20% or whatever for a whole project. Are you still considering wind turbines at Riutinto to generate electricity? No. We have stopped that evaluation because we complete the measurements and economics were coming at a overall level levelized price of electricity for around €50 megawatt hour long term. And, that price, you can get it with hedging without any problem, without the risk.

48:56 We had a it would be very nice to have it from our own our own wind farm. But if it doesn't make economic sense, we decided to to freeze it. Last question so far is strategic question. In addition to the organic growth project within the company, what is the longer term picture for the company? What's your view on potential M and A for the company, potentially adding assets outside Spain and having more geographically diversified asset base. Do you see attractive M and A opportunities at the moment? We have a team evaluating projects constantly. And right now, we were in two data rooms until recently. What I mean, until recently after until days ago, looking at things in Chile, specifically, looking at things in other countries of South America, looking at things in Spain and and also in in Europe, Northern Europe.

50:02 And we are working right now with other opportunities, which are a little bit early to say. But, yes, we look at diversifying in different places, not only in Spain. Obviously, Spain is the logical place. But having said that, we are not looking just for the sake of growth. We need to make sense, it needs to have the opportunity of growing and to have some value creation. If you pay 100% of the net asset value or even a premium, it doesn't come with a return for the shareholders, and it will be very hard to justify. And I think that's the last question I have. That's correct, Alberto. Thank you very much indeed for addressing all those questions for investors today. And of course, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll polish those responses on the investment company platform.

50:58 But before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which is particularly important to the company, Alberto, could I please ask you for a few closing comments? Well, briefly, it has been a challenging quarter and a challenging first half of the year. But I think we passed it quite way with maintaining the balance sheet, with good economic results. The company has a great future. We have lots of things in our plate. Total, which is a huge power generator, is is there. We can see it. MASA. We believe it's going to be a new project soon. And and the company has, I think, great future because we believe that the copper price will only go up from now on.

51:55 It can be hiccups, but the copper we are very leveraged to the copper price, and our share price responds very well with copper price. So I think this company has a great future. We have a good team, good assets in a great jurisdiction. So the second part of the year is expected to be better than the first part and also much better in the future. So that's the conclusion I can make for this quarter. That's great, Alberto Cesar. Thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you will now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback and whether that the Board can better understand your views and expectations.

52:41 This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of management team of ATALAYA MINING PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.