Central Asia Metals (LSE:CAML) — Full Year Results

0:00 Good afternoon and welcome to the CENTRAL ASIA METALS PLC Full Year Results Investor Presentation. Throughout the group presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and they can be submitted at any time by the Q and A tab situated in right hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review the questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll.

0:29 I'd now like to hand you to CEO, Gavin Farrar. Good afternoon to you, sir. Good afternoon and good afternoon to all of those joining today and welcome to the CENTRAL ASIA METALS twenty twenty four financial results. Before we start, I'd just like to send our condolences to our colleagues and everyone else in North Macedonia who's been affected by the recent tragic events in Kocheny, which is a town not very far away from where we operate there. The whole country is in mourning currently and we sympathize with everybody out there. Thank you very much. So I'm going to do an overview of our performance for the year. We're pretty pleased with this and it's a fairly robust performance financially. Dollars $214,000,000 of revenue translating to just a shade under $102,000,000 of EBITDA at an EBITDA margin of 47%, which is a very respectable margin for a mining company.

1:25 But we importantly generated $65,700,000 of free cash flow during the year. That's an important number for us and our shareholders. That's the number we use to calculate the dividend from. And we're also pleased to announce today a 9 p final dividend, bringing the total for the year to 18 p, which represents 63% of that free cash flow that I mentioned before. The underlying operating performance that drove those financial results was good. Kunrag produced 13,439 tons of copper. That was right in the middle of the guidance range and produced that extremely profitably. At SASA, we produced, 26,617 tons of lead and 18,572 tons of zinc, which is fractionally short of guidance due to some challenges posed by our transition in terms of mining methods and replacement of paste underground.

2:19 But we still managed to achieve a decent EBITDA margin of 35%, again, above the sort of mining industry average. So very solid financial base underpinning that business. That production performance was conducted as safely as we could. We clearly aim at zero harm and unfortunately have to report two lost time injuries. We were fortunate in these cases that neither of these injuries were serious, but we do take away a lot of learning from these incidents to try and prevent these sorts of incidents happening again. So just to give you an overview of our operations, the top two are the effectively the engine room. Those two are the ones that are generating cash by producing metals. On the left hand side, SASSA. It's a lead zinc mine that we've owned since 2017.

3:04 It's been on an operation for a very long time. Actually, it's been operating since the nineteen sixties, and we have a life of mine there out to 2039. Put a note on the right hand side, as I said, very profitable. We've been operating that since 2012. We've actually built and put that into production in 2012. That is an institute dump leach mine producing copper cathode, and we have a license after 2034, and we'll talk about some potential beyond that as well later on. The other two boxes represent the longer term opportunities with our... Within our business. The left, Aberdeen Minerals. That is an investment we made into a private company, which is exploring for copper and nickel in Scotland. We put 3,800,000 in there, and we own 28.4%.

3:51 That business in CAMLEX is a greenfields exploration venture that we established last year alongside some very seasoned explorers in Kazakhstan. We own 80% of that business and we're going into our first full year of exploration there and I'll tell you more about that later too. If we go to the CUNRAD operation, we're now in our thirteenth year of operation at CUNRAD. It remains a unique asset. We've never seen anything like this anywhere else where we are actually treating waste material. These are dumps previously mined or at least been placed on service by... So the previous operator, Kazakh Nissen, before that, you know, during Soviet times. We simply irrigate these dumps with what we call a raffinate solution. That solution allows us to leach the copper into the solution. We collect that solution and put it into an SXEW plant, which produces high quality LME grade copper cathode ready for sale to the market.

4:50 Although, well, we just thought it was answered. So if we look at the diagram, then we've the Eastern Dumps and the Western Dumps to give you a view of production of the Eastern Dumps produced around 27% of our copper. During 2024. The balance coming from what we call the Western Dumps, the bottom left hand side of that image. And we believe that the Eastern Dumps, you know, whilst they were originally forecast to sort of hold production, we believe that production will continue well beyond 2025 for those dumps now. Copper production, as I said before, was in a shade under 13 and a half thousand tons, and we're guiding 2025 between thirteen and fourteen thousand tons of copper again. That 85,000 tons of minimum recoverable copper, that is based on our sort of theoretical models, but the diagram in the right bottom right hand side shows us the actual performance as the solid line against the predicted performance. And what that's showing you is that these... The Western dumps in this case are actually outperforming.

5:49 So we're actually recovering slightly more copper than we originally forecast, which is good news for the future because we've experienced exactly the same on the East as I mentioned before. And that allows us to look at options for Cunroit into the future that is potentially and possibly stretched beyond 2034. Up until that time... Up until now, at least, the copper production has remained fairly consistent. We do have, you know, the... Many of these dumps maturing. So, you know, and and if you divide that 85,000 that I mentioned before by the nine years left that we've got there, it doesn't come to the guidance range we're getting now. So we are going to see in future production tailing off at Kunrad. But as I said, there is a possibility we tailing off slower and will last for longer. At SASA, we produce lead and zinc. It's a much more traditional operation in North Macedonia.

6:39 The key thing here is we've actually transitioned our mining method from what is called sublevel k, which is sort of bulk mining methods to much more selective mining methods for cut and fill and long hole stoping. Those two methods are allied with what we call paste backfill, and we've had our paste backfill plant in operation for a full year now. We've put about 240,000 tons of paste underground using that that plant at at at... So I beg your pardon? 240,000 tons of tailings as part of the cemented paste product that we put back underground. And these methods allow us to extend that mine life up to 2039. Majority of the concentrate that we produce there is shipped to EU smelters. So very simple from a working capital and logistics perspective.

7:25 And lastly, we've also had some good replacements of depleted reserves during 2024. So there's again potential here to extend that life beyond the 2039 number.

7:37 Zinc and lead production, we can see that sort of solid line in the histogram. As I said earlier, we're fractionally below below guidance. You can see that solid line on top of that histogram tailing off from 2023 to 2024. Our aim is to get that back up to the 800,000 ish ton level. And you can see in the table on the right hand side, you know, we're about 43,000 tons short in terms of tonnage when we compare 2024 to 2023. That was mainly as a result, as I said, of that transition from sub level cave to coming through a long hole stoping. It was fairly disruptive when we were trying to introduce two new mining methods into an operating mine, also introducing all of that paste back on the ground as well. So in the context of those projects, the guys actually did fairly well to get to that seven sixty two, but we are really focused this year on getting back up to that 800,000 tons of throughput.

8:34 Now I've mentioned these transition projects a couple of times just to cover them off. Well, hopefully, finally, because we... We're pretty much done with it now. The paste backfill plant, we actually completed construction at the end of twenty twenty three. That's been the first quarter commissioning it and getting that recipe of that paste backfill correct and allowing us to sort of modify the recipe depending on where that fill is going. As I said before, we've put 240,000 tons. It represents around about a third of the tailings that we produced in 2024, and that's gonna be the target. We're gonna be happy to be... To put about 30 to 40% of our tailings back underground using that paste backfill plant for the rest of the life of the mine.

9:12 That paste backfill goes into two areas. One is what we call voids. These are all mined out areas, particularly in the sublevel cave, large areas underground that we can replace this this material. And then also into the new stopes that we're using... We're creating using cut and fill and long hole stoping. That makes the mine much more stable at depth and also allows us to more selectively mine the ore body. As as the ore body goes to depth, it is getting slightly narrower, is bending and twirling and moving around, so we do need to mine it a little bit more precisely and that ensures that we get better recoveries out of that ore body. Dry stack tailings in the middle. We're really in the last throes of that that part of the project now with wet commissioning taking place as we speak, and we're looking to put filter cake, which is a really dried out tailings product onto a dry stack tailings land form by the end of this month.

10:07 So good news there. And the central decline, which is the last key limit to this this transition project that we completed at the end of twenty twenty four, right down to what we call the seven fifty meter level. That's the lowest level in the mine that this is going down to right now. The effect is already being felt on on the mine where we've seen improvement in cycle times. We're getting ore out of the out of the mine a lot quicker than we used to via the trucks, and we also see the great proportion of ore being hauled on these trucks that has traditionally been done. We used to have a split between the central decline... Or the declines and the shaft, and ultimately, we'll be phasing out any ore hoisting on that shaft in the future, which will again increase efficiencies on the mine. One of the things that we've done here is we've designed this this central decline to accommodate much larger trucks than we currently have in our fleet. We're running a fleet of 20 ton trucks. We are testing a 30 ton truck right now.

11:03 We might even test a 40 ton truck, but it does give us further opportunities to improve haulage efficiencies out of that out of that central decline. So good news is that from a mining perspective, it's all about stabilizing that asset now using these three new elements to the mine to their best capacity. So going on to the sustainability. Look. It's always been a key a key area for CAML. We believe that operating sustainably and in an environmentally responsible manner is sort of... Is good business sense anyway. You know, it basically ensures that your relationships with your local communities and the governments that you operate within remain stable, and that that is a a key thing in our industry. What we do is we measure ourselves using KPIs, and we establish those KPIs against the five key pillars of our sustainability strategy. Those are down in the left hand column. In the right hand box in the green, those are the key areas that we focused on for this year. And I'd only draw your attention really to the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions where we've got a target of 50% by 2030 or for 2020 base. We're already 44% on that.

12:13 We're also about to publish our fifth sustainability report, I think is a great achievement for a small mining company like ours. And a few initiatives we've undertaken, including a biodiversity strategy, you know, tightening up on health and safety, that's always a key to to an industry like ours, and undertaking a human rights assessment, you know, covers off a lot of the areas that we wanted to complete in 2024. Getting more sort of of zeroing in on the on the two on the two assets here. So at CAML itself, we are proud to say we employ a 100% locals. You know, we pay our taxes. We've got, you know, a great relationship through the foundation that we've established there, plus also ad hoc sort of donations we make in terms of some critical kind of battle disasters in one case and a a fire in a local village. And in total, we spent around $3,200,000 on the local community at CUNRAD. The key thing here to point out as well is our solar power plant has now been operating for about... For one year during 2024.

13:22 It's the first full year of operation at least. That generated 14% of our power, but importantly, it's also generating power at much cheaper than the grid electricity.

13:32 Grid electricity in Kazakhstan is very low in comparison to a lot of its competing countries, but, you know, we effectively generating, including depreciation power around two thirds of the cost of the electricity from the grid. Moving on to SASSA. We've, again, spent around $2,300,000 since we've owned that on the local community initiatives. Again, local employment is really high at 98%. And key to our sustainability activities there is that we've achieved conformance with the global industry standard on tailings management. Now if you can... That doesn't trip off a ton. We just call it GISTM. This is a voluntary initiative that we've undertaken the second of three years to get there. And in July last year, we had an audit which confirmed that we conformed with those standards. What that means for us is that we now have best operational practices in place for our for our tailings dams, which is really important.

14:26 Plus, also, it complies with a bunch of ESG targets as well, which is which is... Gives it a nice holistic kind of view of life on the on the on the. So let's move on to the financial results. And for that, I'm gonna hand over to Louise, our CFO. Thanks, Gavin. Yes, if we start by looking at the market conditions that set the scene for the results that we've announced this morning. Commodity markets, firstly. Commodity markets were generally pretty supportive for us in 2024. And we saw a 9% increase in the copper price versus 2023, an 8% increase in the zinc price and just a 3% decrease in the lead price year on year. In terms of inflation, this was a little bit more helpful to us than the previous year. We saw inflation still high in Kazakhstan at 8.6%, coming down significantly to 3.5% in North Macedonia versus 2023, where inflation in Kazakhstan was almost 10%.

15:30 And actually, Macedonia was over 9% as well. In terms of foreign exchange, a couple of key movements there. Firstly, we've seen a weakening of the US dollar against sterling. And what that does for us is means that there is effectively an increase in our group admin cost because we report those in dollars. It also increased the cost of our dividend, which we pay in pounds. And then we've seen a weakening of the local currencies where we operate, the Kazakh tenge and the North Macedonian dinar versus the dollar. That's generally positive for our operating costs there. And also, we've seen particularly with the weakening of the tenge, that's resulted in a significant foreign exchange gain on our income statement, and that's been a swing of GBP 9,000,000 year on year versus 2023.

16:23 Just to set the scene for the income statement, we have been over the last few months, we've been communicating with the Financial Reporting Council, the FRC, and they have made two key recommendations to the way that we report our accounts. And we've incorporated those changes into our 2024 accounts and also restated them for 2023 to make sure that we're comparing like for like. One of those was on revenue and the other was on share based payments. So on the revenue one, what we used to do was net off from our revenue the cost of us buying silver on the open market fulfill our SASSA silver streaming obligation that we have with the Cisco. But the FRC suggested that arguably a more appropriate accounting treatment for that is to move that into a cost of sales.

17:15 What that does is effectively increases our revenue, and it increases our cost of sales by the same amount. So there's no change to profitability. In terms of the share based payments, in the recent past, we have typically been cash settling more of our employee options than equity settling them. This is because we've had excess cash, we haven't had any debt, and we haven't wanted to introduce unnecessary dilution. But the FRC believes that we have now effectively set a past practice of cash settling. And so therefore, we should account for those as such. What that means is the previously equity settled options move from the equity part of the balance sheet into a liability part of the balance sheet.

18:05 The fair value gain or loss on those annually goes through the P and L in the new line. And the old equity settled share based payment charges that were in admin have now removed been removed from admin. We've put a slide in the appendix explaining what we did report in 2023 versus the restated 2023 numbers. So you can compare the two for any eager accountants out there. So now in terms of actual 2024 results, and we are now comparing apples with apples, we have reported a 5% increase in revenue year on year up to $214,000,000 That was driven by 8,500,000 increase in KunRALAS revenue and a $2,600,000 increase in SAS' revenue.

18:57 Our cost of sales increased by 8%. That was just under $8,000,000 increase. And there's two main components actually that accounted for over half of that. One is just over $2,000,000 to operate this new paste backfill plant that Gavin has mentioned. We operated that for a full year at SASSA. Have a the past. We of increased revenue now in the revenue line as well to offset that. Our group admin costs rose by about 2,000,000 but actually, that's pretty much all attributed to our business development activities and our growth aspirations.

19:46 Just under $1,000,000 was additional BD costs that we have spent last year looking for a material transaction. And also, we had an additional $1,000,000 of costs first full year of CAML expirations expenses coming through our income statement as well. So all that led us to report a consistent EBITDA year on year of $101,800,000 at a margin of 47%. We've also reported EPS from continued operations of $0.02 $89 That's a 42% increase year on year, and that significant increase is driven largely by foreign exchange gain and also lower tax.

20:32 We now look at the cost base for the two operations. At CAML, we have reported a C1 cash cost of $0.80 per pound. That's an increase of $06 per pound. 33% of that C1 increase is actually related to the fact that we have lower copper production year on year. So we're splitting those costs over a smaller number of tonnes.

20:59 Two of the key areas where we have seen cost increases, one of those is reagents. We've had increased consumption in two key reagents called Lix and Escape, which are important for the solvent extraction part of our operations, and that's accounted for $02 per pound. And we also had an increase in payroll and consultancy costs of about $03 per pound. That's largely related to a 10% pay rise, which we gave to the employees last year to compensate them for the high in country inflation.

21:32 All that means is that we have had a C1 cost base increase of just over $1,000,000 or 5%, which we think is impressive in U. S. Dollar terms given that we've had inflation in country of around about 9%. And that leads us to a very impressive EBITDA margin for CAMLARAD of 73 percent.

21:55 Turning now to SASSA. Our run of mine costs on a per tonne basis at SASSA were $64.6 per tonne, and that's an $8.4 per tonne increase year on year. Importantly, 58% of that increase was related to 5% lower run of mine tonnes mined at the mine that year. So the actual increases in dollar terms were actually pretty minimal. The main increase at SASSA was this new paste backfill plant, 2,100,000 or $2.7 per tonne. Our C1 cost base benefited significantly from lower realization costs, and that's reduced treatment charges from the smelters of $2,900,000 and also lower freight costs as well.

22:45 So that meant that all in all, our costs at SASSA only increased by $500,000 year on year. And that allowed us to report an EBITDA margin for SASSA of 35%.

23:00 Moving on to CapEx. We spent just under $21,000,000 on CapEx during 2024, which was just below the lower end of our guidance with a small amount carried into 2025. Key part of that CapEx is capital projects of $6,400,000 That's really as we're coming to conclude those capital projects that Gavin ran through, and that's significantly lower than the $14,000,000 which we spent in 2023. We've just got some costs for the dry stack tailings and in particular, increasing the size of the landform that will come through this year in 2025. Sustaining CapEx at Punrad was, as expected, at $2,500,000 We move on to the balance sheet. We have a strong and flexible balance sheet. And we've reported group cash of $67,600,000 as of the thirty first of December last year, and we have no material debt. The only debt we have is just under $300,000 of an overdraft facility in North Macedonia.

24:13 But importantly, we've got about $10,000,000 worth of facilities available there with two Macedonian banks. Just a couple of other aspects to point out, investment in associates and also a component of other assets that represents our investment into Aberdeen Minerals, where we spent $3,800,000 buying a twenty four twenty eight point four percent shareholding. In other assets, we have $400,000 worth of warrants, which if we exercise those, would increase our shareholding to 37.6%.

24:51 We also show on the balance sheet there this new line, it's called SBP liability. This is these new share based payments liabilities that I mentioned on the income statement slide, and they've been reallocated out of the equity and reserves line on this slide.

25:11 And then finally, for me, moving on to our cash flow slide. So if you look at the waterfall chart, we have produced from our operations $94,000,000 of cash from operations. We paid just under $41,000,000 out in dividends. That's the 2023 final dividend and the 2024 interim dividend. Our income tax and withholding tax paid at just under 20,000,000 was a significant improvement on 2023, where that was GBP 27,000,000. CapEx, we've just discussed of GBP 20,800,000. We can see the investments in Aberdeen there, 3,900,000, which is the investment plus a little bit on costs.

25:57 And that really brings us to the cash position at the end of last year of 67,600,000. We've added the little table in at the top, which means that you can use the waterfall chart to get to the free cash flow number of 65,700,000 for us last year, which is an important number because that's how we use to calculate the dividend. On that note, I'll hand back to Gavin to run through the capital allocation and outlook for us. Thank you, Louise. Well, I'll start with our growth strategy because I know there's a lot of people, you know, wondering what we're going to be doing on that front. And we've been very transparent about it for the last few years that we are on on the lookout for for new assets. So just quickly run through what sort of types of opportunities that we're interested in. You know, we've got the earlier stage exploration opportunities our existing jurisdictions.

26:52 We clearly have an eye out for those. We can talk about CAMLEX in a minute. We're looking at increasing our scale through the acquisition of large cash flowing in production assets. And then the third is, you know, what... Are there any assets out there that are... What we call overlooked? Are they development assets that are... You know, there's no discovery risk, there's a a resource, but possibly the company doesn't have enough money to develop the develop the assets or, you know, they don't have the wherewithal to finance the construction of it or something that. So, you know, we we do focus on those three things. You know, the timing of which is difficult to to, you know, to control, but I think it's fair to say that our more recent focus has been on the ad hoc overlooked things and potentially some of these larger acquisitions given that we've got two things at the earlier stage in the in the portfolio already.

27:45 Where are we looking? Trying to keep things as simple as possible. So we, you know, we talk about this European time zone. It does include a few select countries in Africa that we would look at. And, of course, Kazakhstan. You know, we know it well. We're operating well there. We have done successfully for a number of years, and it is got... You know, it's a highly prospective country. So that that is a a clear area of focus for us as well. We're stick with our commodities that we're in now. I think, you know, we we know we know our way around what we're doing, and they do align with our purpose of producing base levels essential for modern living. So that's where we wanna stick... Stay. We have considerable borrowing capacity off of that balance sheet Louise has talked you through. So, you know, things, you know, are quite affordable from that perspective. I mean, we could pay cash for things. But the main thing is it's gotta be accretive to our shareholders.

28:31 Right? So we... We're not going to look at anything that is not going to provide value to shareholders from day one onwards. And from a sustainability perspective, you know, clearly, you're not gonna buy anything that's going to dilute our our sustainability ratings or our own standards that we set for ourselves in terms of environmental protections around us. The key thing is here, we're looking really to get a third part of that portfolio. That first slide I showed you with the operating assets and then the longer term. Longer term opportunities, getting something in between there, you know, is is something that we'd love to do as well where we've got something that's either in cash flow or much more near term cash flows than we presented. And what did we do last year? We reviewed 37 opportunities. Sounds a lot, but we do have a fairly formal process to do that. We signed 13 nondisclosure agreements so that we can look more closely at a lot of these and attended six site visits, you know, some of which actually led to us making offers on things, which, unfortunately, for us all, no one's more disappointed than the team here that we couldn't consummate any of these deals, but, you know, we... It's not through lack of trying.

29:40 So let's just talk about a couple of things we we did get right. Aberdeen Minerals is exploring the Arthraf project in Aberdeenshire. We believe it's got very good potential, and our geologists have noted analogs to existing mines that they worked on in the past. So we put $3,800,000 in there for a 28.4% shareholder. That investment has funded a a drilling campaign, seven deep holes, as you can see, down to 520 meters. We drilled between July and October. We've now got the assay results and they basically validate the exploration model and what we've seen in the core is some, you know, very encouraging mineralization, visible mineralization of massive and what we call net textured sulfides.

30:28 The remainder of the... Well, we're to use some of that money again to commence the next round of drilling, which kicks off in May this year. And we have the option, I guess, off the back of those results really to invest more in this business going forward if those results are positive. Going back to Kazakhstan, as I mentioned earlier, we've established this company called CAMLEX. We own 80% of it. The other 20% is owned by some very experienced geologists that we've effectively partnered up with. These guys have been working in that region for a long time. They understand the Kazakh geology. They've worked for big Kazakh companies and have helped us to identify what is now four licenses that we have, and they will be running their first full field program through 2024...

31:14 2025, I beg your pardon. That's going to involve surface mapping, soil geochemical sampling, some geophysical surveys to look a little bit, you know, beneath the surface, which will hopefully then guide us... Guide the exploration for the next couple of years with the ultimate aim of really getting some drill targets going in in Kazakhstan. So like I said earlier, early stage, not spending a lot of money there. Spent $1,300,000. Last year, we're probably gonna spend in the order of sort of 3.5 to $5,000,000 on it, you know, over the next few years progressing these these projects. But we're still looking for, you know, more prospective ground in Kazakhstan, and you'll have seen that Kazakhstan is attracting the attention of a lot of the major mining companies now. So still a lot of opportunity out there in Kazakhstan. So we talk about returns to shareholders, which is probably why most of you on the call today and really why we're in business.

32:06 You know, we've got a... You know, since the IPO, I think, you know, CAML has stood out as a a junior mining company that's paid dividends, but it's an extraordinary stat here that we've paid back $380,000,000 to shareholders via dividends since that IPO. We've only raised $214,000,000 from the market at IPO and then when we bought SASSA. So, you know, that gives you some context in terms of the capital returns that our shareholders have enjoyed. Now we've got that dividend policy of 30 to 50% of free cash flow Louise mentioned, and we've paid outside of it for the last few cycles. 63% is what that 18 p in bold letters there represents. Now we believe that's the correct thing to do for the time being. We're gonna keep that dividend consistent, and and that's in the absence of a material transaction. There's no reason for us to change capital allocation sort of methods right now because we... You know, getting that third asset in would maybe change that up a little bit.

33:01 We might have some debt to repay. We might some engineering work to finance. We might have some construction to fund. So, you know, it's at that point that we'll start re digging it, but the only the only time we will do that is when we believe that growth is available to the shareholders via the capital appreciation of the shares through those activities that we're looking to undertake. So it remains a core sort of fundamental part of our DNA. In terms of, I guess, my last slide now is really summary and outlook. So where do we where do we go from here? I mean, we've got the production guidance, which is unchanged from the previous year. You know, as I said earlier, the the challenge now is to get get SASSA back up to, you know, what we were used to before we put these... You know, we disrupted everybody's sort of day jobs by putting them, you know, under pressure with three projects and a change in mining method, but a lot of training, a lot of experience have been built up there now. So, you know, that 800,000 tons looks achievable.

33:50 We've completed, you know, the the trans... All all of these sort of works around this this this transition to the pace for mining methods. So... And we're looking to put price tag tailings on the ground the end of Q1. We'll continue to invest in our business in terms of capital allocation. We've got CapEx at Sassafran and Cronrad, which Luis spoke you through, but whilst continuing a disciplined search for new opportunities. That dividend of nine p is gonna be payable on the May 20, assuming shareholders approve it at the AGM. But then in in future, what we've got is a, you know, is a great platform here. We've got that flexible balance sheet. We're debt free at the moment. We've got $67,500,000 in the bank and strong cash flows. So what that means is that we can self finance any internal projects that we may have without tapping the market. We also have the ability to borrow for longer term capital requirements as well. So therefore, you know, no... Little to no dilution for our shareholders.

34:50 Really looking forward to, you know, the rest of 2025. I think it's gonna be, you know, an exciting year from an operational perspective, but, you know, we've got a a really active BD program going on as well, and hoping to come back to you with good news at some point later in the year. At this point, I'm going to open up to questions. And I think Richard has got a few questions, so he can read them out, and we can go through those. Right. Okay. Our first question is from Andrew b, and he asks, if a project in Kazakhstan could be found, would we be able to develop it from free cash flow? It's a good question, Andrew. I think it all depends on what the size of the project is and what the the entry price is. So, you know, if we could pick something up that we could pay for with our existing cash, I guess Louise and her team would then map out our cash flows over, you know, fine fine grained paces over the next few...

35:45 You know, over the the months that we need to develop that asset and ensure that we've got the liquidity to do that from our own... Of our own balance sheet. And I remember Luis also mentioned we've got that $10,200,000 of of overdraft facility available to us. And whilst that's in North Macedonia, we can apply that across the group if we need to. Right. So next question is from Mike w, and he asks, are Aberdeen Minerals and CAML exploration distractions from the search for a substantial earnings enhancing acquisition? Mike, I think the the simple answer to that is is no. And I'll tell you why. It's because one of the key reasons or the key things that attracted us to Aberdeen was the quality of their team. They are, you know, again, you know, seasoned veteran explorers. They've got a good sort of advisory group around them.

36:36 So they don't really need a lot of input from us. We do, however, make our geologist, Graham, available to them who goes up once a month to Aberdeen, takes them a couple of days. So not a lot of his time on that. Luis sits on the board, and I think you have Courtney Gordon? Yeah. So it's not hugely time consuming from our perspective. And I think what we like about that is the... You know, we understand... Graham understands the geology because he's seen it in the previous life. You know, he's able to provide input when required, but Fraser and his team, you know, we completely trust them to do the work to a high quality. So happy with that. Right. And our next question is from Richard l, and he... Richard asks, given the growing importance of copper in electrification and renewable energy, does CAML have any strategic plans to increase copper focused exploration or acquisitions?

37:29 Again, Richard, there's quite an easy answer to that, which is yes. We are... We've always said that copper is our favored metal. It's... You know, I think it's everybody's favorite metal. So it doesn't make competition a lot higher. And, you know, in an ideal world, you know, we'd be, you know, focusing almost entirely on copper, but I think we've had some success in zinc. We do believe fundamentally in in all of the metals that we produce right now. And the key thing here is to make profits for our shareholders and and generate returns for you. So that's that's really the way we look at these things. We're in this business to make money and make profits so that we can, you know, distribute those out to to everyone and use them to grow the business even further. But, yes, you're right. Copper is is probably everybody's favorite, but it does make make the competition a little tougher.

38:16 Alright. Next question from Colin c. What are the key criteria for M and A? And how soon do you expect to close a deal? Well, I'll take the second part of your question first. Look, that is very difficult to predict. I think, you know, we we do constantly search for opportunities through our own networks. The three of us here are... You know, we've we've all been in the in the industry for a long time. We've got some very experienced board members, you know, who, through their network, show us opportunities as well, plus we get some inbound coming in via the sort of investment... By the investment banking community.

38:56 But, you know, we we do, you know, have an active whip list. You know, whether or not we can conclude one of those things is is down to, you know, the results of due diligence, you know, meeting of minds on negotiation and so on and so forth. So a lot of variables at stake here. The... Can you go back to the question? It was key criteria. Oh, the key criteria. Sorry. That's explained. Yeah. I think the... You know, I was sort of run run you through the strategy that we look at there, but I think one of the things we do look at, which is maybe not explicit in there, is, you know, it's gotta be accretive for shareholders, and the way we try and start the analysis is by by saying, okay. Well, we produce around a $100,000,000 of EBITDA as a business. So what is a meaningful and, you know, value accretive change to that?

39:41 And that's really got to be around $50,000,000 of EBITDA. And that's the kind of starting point. And then you say, well, can you produce that, you know, profitably, safely, all those sort of things. And then we sort of... We we drive down from there. And ultimately, you know, we we we run the analysis that make sure that on the income statement, we, you know, make doing an accretive transaction on a per share basis for all of our shareholders.

40:19 Well, look. Taking again the second part of your question, so we don't actually own that mine. Our license is... It's kinda carved out from our license area, and it is owned and occasionally operated by the existing owners. When I say occasionally, they own a a large smelting complex about 20 kilometers away from the site, and they will scrape away at what little bits of ore are left in that mine to blend with all that's coming in from all over the other world. But it's not a fully functioning and operational mine. So, you know, I think to answer your question, it probably is exhausted. And certainly, you know, if it was run by a western company, probably wouldn't be operated at all. In terms of the the life of mine, as I said, you know, we're at the very early stages now that we've got this body of evidence that, you know, the leach codes are outperforming, that we are starting to look at ways in which we could potentially extend that life of mine, but it's at a very conceptual stage at the moment.

41:18 You know, we've done the study work on that, so let's kinda watch the space. Okay. I've got one that came in by email here, and that's from Ted Coleman. And he asks, at the moment, there is an unusually large difference between the London and New York prices for copper driven by Americans rushing to import copper before possible tariffs. Today, London's... Or today's London LME price is roughly $4.50 a pound, whereas the New York price, the one we see on our screens, is roughly $5.12. I think you wrote this last night, actually. Yes. Yeah. Is the price CAML is receiving nearer the London price or the New York price? Well, thanks for the question, Ted. I think the... You know, we we do receive LME prices, so it would be the London price for our copper. I think this dislocation between the prices is... You know, it's obviously driven by protectionism and and trade wars and tariffs.

42:14 You know, there are going to be parts of, you know, I think... I guess it's really just The US and everyone else at the moment in a way. I'm I'm in... I'm not really qualified to comment on that properly, but it appears that the tariff regime that's been proposed has driven a kind of dislocation in the prices between The US for copper, and you'll probably see that for many other goods as well in materials. Okay. Another one on on quality prices. Ben g asks, given the volatile... Volatility in in commodity prices, how do you assess potential risks to revenue and cash flow in 2025? Yeah. You want to Yeah. Sure. So when we get our accounts for 2024 audited, we go through a very detailed going concern type process with the auditors, and we'll look at various scenarios and how different commodity prices could affect our revenue and our cash flow.

43:09 And we're extremely fortunate that both of our operations are actually very low cost. So there's no conceivable commodity price that we see at the moment that would have us lying awake at night worrying about losing money either either of our operations. This is also supported by the fact that we haven't got debt either at the moment. If the question's along the lines of do we hedge, we do have a hedging policy. We don't typically hedge unless we have a specific reason to. So a specific reason could be if we do the acquisition and we have debt, then we may hedge to be able to ensure our debt repayments. In the past, we have... When we first started the capital project investments at SASSA, we did hedge at that point to sort of defend our budget.

43:54 But typically, we don't tend to hedge. As I say, we have low cost operations. We are debt free, and so we can reasonably take some commodity price risk. Right. Next question from Mark a. Have you lobbied the UK government regarding the halving of IHT relief on AIM? And if so, have you received any feedback? Our brokers have. Our brokers have. I guess we have. And we've contributed to that Yes. Exercise. Yeah. So, yeah, we haven't directly marked, but through our brokers, they have been quite actively doing that and, I guess, seeking feedback from ourselves and our peers to feed into that program.

44:33 Right. Next question. Does the low share price, assuming our share price, reflect political risk... The political risk of Putin invading Kazakhstan?

44:44 Look, again, Mike, I don't you know, the share price is probably a function of a lot of things, but I don't think the risk of Putin invading Kazakhstan is one of those. I think, you know, the government of Kazakhstan has walked a diplomatic tightrope in terms of the Ukraine situation whilst on the one hand, you know, providing some aid to Ukraine and and... But but at the same time, recognizing that Russia is a a key trading partner for them. I think if we go back to, what, think, 2023 when president Xi from China was in town, he effectively kind of underwrote the sort of sovereignty and and border security of of Kazakhstan anyway. So I don't think that that's a risk and certainly not one that's on our register.

45:33 Yeah. We do spend quite a lot of time monitoring geopolitical events in in all of the jurisdictions we work in, and that's not being raised in any of the reports I've seen. Next question from Steve White. There are plenty of gold projects in Kazakhstan. Is it worth looking at metal projects other than base metals?

45:52 Yeah. Look. I think there are some gold projects. I think Kazakhstan is, you know... And and those that are there are are large. And I think there there have been there have been a couple for sales since, you know, since we've, you know, since we've been up and running in in Kazakhstan, but, you know, way beyond our sort of range of affordability. I think the other thing is that gold sort of changes the investment thesis for for CAML. You know, gold is a little bit of a different commodity to all the base metals with, you know, minimal sort of industrial applications in in in comparison. So I think we're gonna stick with the base metals, and we we understand those markets, and we understand, you know, how to mine, process, and and sell them. Alright.

46:37 Next question from Kiraakos w. What does the board think of the performance of the share price? And is there any intention to initiate a buyback program and or a special dividend as the cash balances are growing?

46:53 Kiriakis, I think at the moment, the answer is... Look. Mean, every... Everyone's disappointed with the the performance of the share price over the last sort of six six to twelve months or so. There have been, you know, quite a lot of factors affecting that, not least of which has been, you know, more recently these trade rules affecting the copper price. Now the copper prices responded positively to it, so I don't think that the commodity prices really know what to do there either. But the... In in terms of managing our sort of capital allocation program, I think if we if we look at the forecasts and we look at, know, what Luis is saying about CapEx coming down over the next few years, you know, we... We're generating cash. We will... In the absence of doing a transaction, we may start building a larger cash pile. And it's at that point that we'll start considering these things so that we can, you know, allocate capital, you know, back to our shareholders in in one of those ways. I think for the time being, this dividend paying outside of the policy and rewarding our shareholders with, you know, good returns that way is the way to go whilst, you know, you know, trying to execute on this on this growth prospect.

47:57 That is effectively a special dividend as well. It is Even if it's not marketed as such, we are paying above above the policy. So that's our that's our chosen capital allocation approach in terms of the the growing cash balance. Right. Next question from Mark a. Is there any prospect of disposing of Copper Bay, and what is its book value?

48:21 So, Mark, in... I think it was the twenty twenty one accounts, I believe. We actually wrote that down to zero. So the the carry value on the books is is nothing, but it is an asset that's held for sale. We do have an adviser appointed to assist us with that sale program, and, yeah, we're trying as long as we can too. We've we've announced in the results that Well, then we would agree with them. Yeah. We agreed to. I mean, it it should be... Hopefully, we've got some good news on that coming out soon. Yeah. If you look in if you look in the results statement, there is there is a note to the effect that we've... That we have agreed a disposal. Right. Any more questions?

49:02 I think we're probably in there. Perfect. That's all. Gavin, Louise, Richard, thank you very much for answering those questions from investors. Of course, the company can review all the questions submitted today and we will publish those responses out on the Investor Meet company platform. But just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which you know is particularly important to the company, Gavin, could I just ask you for a few closing comments? Yes, thanks very much. Well, firstly, thank you everyone for attending. We do appreciate your continued support. We do think all of our investors are important, so we're glad we can interact with you in this way. I think that, you know, we've got a fantastic platform as a business, cash flowing, you know, stable production, and it's gonna be an exciting couple of years, I think.

49:51 Great. That's And thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session? I should now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, but some should be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of CENTRAL ASIA METALS PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.