Halo Minerals (LSE:HALO) — Investor Presentation

0:01 Good morning, and welcome to the HALO MINERALS 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. Just simply type in your questions and press that. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. And I would now like to hand you over to CEO, Andy Denon. Good morning to you. Thank you very much. Very good morning, everybody, and thank you for your attendance and engagement for this meeting, and thank you to Investor Meats Company for hosting us. I'm joined today by our CFO, Frank Jackson, and senior independent director, David Minchin, over my shoulder. And obviously, we're happy to give you the updates as to the company progress the company is making. We'll also touch on what the next milestones are as we move the company forward.

0:52 Then I'll hand over to Frank who can run you through the annual results, which we released last week. And then we'll obviously do the Q and A. And David, please feel free to jump in as we sort of make progress through the slide deck. So, yes, we're HALO MINERALS. For those of you who don't know us, we are a company listed on the AIM market as of the end of March this year. And we're focused on the near term development and production of key strategic and battery metals from the reprocessing of legacy mine waste, which is surface accumulated metal rich mine waste and a strategy we internally refer to as ESG metals. Please take note of the disclaimer. I'm not going to read this through, but obviously, you can take your time to have a look at the details there, which are very important.

1:44 So as I said, we're focused on the near term production of key strategic and battery metals, executing our ESG metal strategy, which is really anchored around our flagship project, the Playa Verde project in the Atacama region of Northern Chile, which is a very well advanced and technically derisked project. It's completed PFS and DFS stage studies. We've got JOR compliant resource and all reserves. And as of October last year, the project received its EIA approval, which was really the catalyst to seeing a list here in London to elevate the platform, create the greater market awareness and advance the project through towards a position where FID can be taken, which we hope to be able to achieve later this year. The project is based in the Atacama region of Chile. It's a deposit of tailings which were originally deposited into a dry riverbed by two large mining operations 120 kilometers away from where they reside today which is subsequently washed downstream to effectively form a beach which is in terms of orders of magnitude about 5.5 kilometers of shoreline, about one to 1.5 kilometers from the shoreline to the back of the beach and within that onshore formation we have 53,000,000 tons of resource at 0.24% copper, so approximately 126,000 tons of contained metal, which I think is a metals value of around $1,700,000,000 in today's commodity price deck.

3:14 And within that resource, we have 32,000,000 tons of ore reserves at 0.25% copper, which is approximately 80,000 tons of contained metal. And in accordance with the competent persons report that we published earlier this year, alongside our AIM admission, we have evidenced or that CPR has evidenced we have a very economic project which has an NPV 10 after tax of $154,000,000 and an IRR of approximately 51 percent And that was based on commodity prices of 5.30 per pound of copper of $4,300 an ounce. Copper is nearly a dollar higher than the level that was used there and obviously gold at the moment is going through a bit of a volatile period, but it's in and around that same level at the moment, but principally exposed to both the copper and the gold price as a result of the production we expect to achieve once operations commence.

4:08 We own the project 100%, and it's not burdened by any royalties or any other economic slippage. So that obviously gives us a very solid foundation to be able to advance the project forward. Next one, Nick. In terms of this initial project, as we spoke of, it's got 53,000,000 tonnes of JORC compliant resource onshore on the beach. Quite uniquely for a tailings project though, we also do have the opportunity of a blue sky growth story. That sits within our existing license area, which covers the beach that we've spoken about, but also extends about one and a half kilometers into the sea covering the Bay Area where we believe there is an estimated 100,000,000 tons of similar, so the same resource sitting at the bottom of the seabed.

4:56 Now we have began that journey to unlock the access rights to that offshore resource whilst it's within our concession area. It does require a Ministry of Defense territorial waters application process. And in fact, I was in Santiago last month and sat down with the Ministry of Defense to talk to them about what we're applying for there and to garner their support. And uniquely, not many projects have a situation like this and a lot of the approvals that the Ministry of Defense do are for port access rights, which obviously go into territorial waters and require that access application. And often they're sort of fifty to maybe even one hundred year projects, so they take quite a lot of scrutiny in order to get approved. Whereas I think we're able to effectively communicate to the MOD that the project that we're doing here is a retreatment project and the access rights that we need are a lot more or less time demanding and potentially we can be in and out within ten to twenty years and it's not a case that we'll be installing fixed infrastructure like obviously they do in the ports.

6:01 It's more a case of getting the access rights to bring in a dredge ship to be able to access those minerals. So that journey has begun now. The reason why it's only begun now is because the EIA approval has been in progress since the end of twenty nineteen, beginning of twenty twenty. And in October last year, was formally ratified with the ministerial committee unanimously agreeing to that. So that's the big milestone that obviously then can create the pathway forward for you to get your submissions in for the ancillary permits that are needed. And we're getting on with that as well as we'll come on to in the following slides. But this is a really robust project. So our subsidiaries invested around $8,000,000 since 2013 when it acquired the licenses and all that money has gone into technically de risking the asset, those preliminary feasibility studies, the definitive feasibility studies, the drilling of the resource body, the JORT compliant resource estimates and obviously the EIA initial studies, baseline studies and the approval process which you were successful in achieving in October last year. So we've got a lot of project knowledge, a huge inventory of technical data that supports the validity of the project and at the moment in time we're just currently updating that definitive feasibility study. The core thesis of how we're going to mine and operate the asset remains the same.

7:25 But of course, that was done contemporaneous with the EIA initial submission. There has been a passage of time since that was compiled and we think there's some optimization work that we can now incorporate maybe using some slightly better, more efficient technologies in certain areas, but also including incorporating Chinese vendors into the quote process. So there's 800 requests for quote tenders out at the moment. I think five fifty, five sixty ought to come back. So we're still waiting for a couple 100 more, but we're making significant process on that. We're looking forward to hopefully having the outputs of that study, which is the sort of optimized DFSBFS level CapEx and OpEx numbers at stage potentially next month.

8:12 So it's a very exciting time for us to be continuing to make project momentum and obviously we're deploying the emission proceeds that we raised in March to be able to achieve that and that gives us a very extended funding runway out to Q4 next year. Just in terms of the production, we'll be mining this resource using a single wheel electric suction dredge. So you should be thinking this as a floating platform that can sit on top of the beach with a rotating bucket scoop to move the volumes. One of the benefits of this resource and that 120 kilometer journey downstream to where reside today is they've effectively been prograded on that journey. So you've got a very blended, homogeneous, very consistent ore body here. So we don't see a lot of variability across the ore body, which obviously lends itself very well to processing operations.

9:06 We'll use the single wheel electric suction dredge to process 5,000,000 tons of ore per year and just in terms of scale that's about a square kilometer of the beach every year. We'll rotate that dredge around in a sort of clockwise motion to sweep through and retreat all of the tails that are there. And then they'll be belted to a state of the art modern SXEW and flotation processing plant which we'll install at the back of the beach to produce approximately 7,700 a half thousand tons of copper cathode per annum, so very much a premium product, and about 8,000 to 8,005 tons of concentrate at 20% copper, but with a 5.5 gram per ton gold credit included as well. So, both exposure, as I say, to copper and gold commodity price decks.

9:59 So, in terms of the project, we've got very robust economics. In the context of copper and mine developments, an initial CapEx of sub $90,000,000 as was estimated in the CPR is very affordable and reasonable. I think primary mines can come into the billions. So sort of $86,800,000 of CapEx for a project that can produce meaningful amounts of cathode and concentrate is a very cost effective way to get into production. The economic analysis that you see on here only focuses on the reserves. This was compiled for our AIM admission, so it's in accordance with what AIM requires. It uses a 10% discount factor, obviously uses the commodity price deck that we spoke about on the first slide and only focus on that 32,000,000 tons of reserves.

10:51 But notwithstanding that, you can see in the bottom right corner there that we have a sort of eighteen month construction period where we're spending that CapEx to install the facilities, do preparation and be in a position to start processing operations. But then once we get into processing operations, we very quickly ramp up to full operational capacity. One of the benefits of a tailings project is that you don't need to ramp up a new underground mine. So as long as you have the equipment and the plant installed, you can quickly get up to that full operational capacity. And the results of that is based on that 5.30 per pound copper price and $4,300 an ounce gold price. Is we would have a project that throws off between 50,000,000 to $60,000,000 of free cash flow per year throughout the project life. And we've got a seven year run of mine life to exhaust those 32,000,000 tons of reserves.

11:46 We would extend that another four years to process the additional 21,000,000 tons of resource which is contained in the Western Berm in the shoreline area. And as we go down this journey to unpack the access rights and modify the EIA to incorporate the potential 100,000,000 tons of resource offshore in the bay. We will probably take advantage of that EIA amendment to see if there was the ability to double the plant capacity on the thesis that we could get in and out quicker in order yeah, in order to get the minerals out quicker and to disband with industrial operations in the location as soon as possible such that on completion of our reprocessing operations we will be able to return what is currently a restricted toxic beach back to the local municipality in a state suitable for recreational use once again.

12:39 In terms of how we're going to be producing here, we're going to be doing a dual processing operation. So we'll be doing both SXEW and the flotation circuit, treating both the sulfides and the oxides, and we expect to recover at least 72% of the contained metal there. Despite doing the dual processing operation in accordance with the CPR that was published earlier this year, we're expecting to have an operating cost of around $2.19 per pound of copper produced, which I believe places us firmly at the bottom end of the second cost quartile with an opportunity perhaps to pop down into that highly coveted lowest cost quartile producer. But I think the core thesis here is that we've got a lot of capacity in terms of elasticity in commodity price on the downside to still have an economic project and that sensitivity analysis table that you can see in the top right corner there gives you an indication of the orders of magnitude of what we're looking at there.

13:39 I think before I just go on to the broader strategy and some of the things that we've achieved since IPO, maybe David is there anything that you would add just in terms of the processing operations? I think you covered it off highway. We covered it very well. I mean, fundamentally, I just wanna have a sort of a quick dive into that into that into that $2.02 $2.20 cost because that does seem quite unusual for something which is a relatively low grade deposit being building the tailings. You know, first first of all, in the process of being transported from where it was first mined to where it sits now. It has been upgraded in the process of moving. A lot of clays have been removed and you end up with a higher grade on the beach than you would have in a standard tailings project and a much higher grade than you'd find up up in the mountains.

14:31 The other thing, as you say, is the is a bucket wheel ex excavator. This is one of the cheapest forms of mining that you've got. You know, you're you're not having to drill and blast and muck. You know, it's literally coming out of the ground in a in a slurry and is piped directly to the to the plant. So you're not having to pay any trucking costs, your diesel costs are through the floor. And all of this contributes towards that that that highly effective price. You know, the the the dual dual processing route means you're maximizing your your recovery, which is driving the price down as as as well. So all of these things are contributing towards highly economic project, a low cost producer, albeit from a low grade deposit.

15:18 Yes. And I think that leads quite nicely actually on to the next slide, Nick. I mean, I think in terms of 0.24, 0.25% copper, in old money that may have been seen as a sort of low grade deposit, but it's not too dissimilar to what new primary ore bodies are coming out of the ground at the moment. And I think David touches on a key point here in terms of lower CapEx, in terms of lower upfront mining costs. So for us, we're focused on legacy mine waste processing or reprocessing. So it's different from traditional mining, which has high geological risk, high upfront capital requirements that can run into the billions of dollars, long development times. Think I saw a statistic which said that a copper mine can take twelve to twenty years to get permitting and go into production.

16:05 And obviously involves a large environmental footprint often displacing communities or deforestation and opening new mines. Whereas for us, we're focused on tailings. Some of the benefits that come with that is that a, they're at surface, so they could be volumetrically assessed, they can be drilled, trenched, they're there. They're at surface so we can touch, we can feel, we can understand them geologically and mineral mineralogically, But they're often already constituted within an existing mining license. So that gives you speed to being able to advance projects forward, because they've been they come out of a prior mining operation and the benefits from that also continue on to the fact that they're often located close to existing infrastructure. So roads and electricity infrastructure, there's often a community or township nearby that is perhaps maybe now not working or is ready to work but has skilled labor available to it.

17:03 So all of these things can help speed up obviously your path to production because you're truncating down other mission critical elements that primary minds have to navigate to be able to get to that position. But also, as David mentioned, you're dealing with ore that's already been blasted, extracted, crushed, transported, processed. So you also get to do away with a lot of those energy intensive, CapEx intensive upfront requirements for new mining operations as well. So, we get the benefit of that. And obviously, we also get to do a positive thing environmentally. You're containing mining operations within existing footprints of where they've already historically been. You're not having to disturb new communities or deforestation. In the case of Channelerral, we have a toxic beach that will be detoxifying and reducing the heavy metals and arsenic concentration in the return sands so that the population can enjoy that as a recreational beach once again, which they haven't been able to do for many decades now. And I think as part of that, Frank, we intend to put like a swimming pool and football courts and things of that to improve the livelihoods of the community of Channerell at the same time as well. So that revenue is aligned with environmental restoration and we think this model is very scalable.

18:21 We have a number of meetings with state owned entities and governments and regional governments and the direction of travel areas that are desperate for companies like us to come in and address these metal rich legacy tailing assets to retreat the metals to contribute towards circular economies and how the world creates and consumes these key strategic and battery metals. And obviously, copper really is the staple of the global move to electrification. That's a statistic that an average data center requires 2,000 tons of copper. I think everyone sees these Teslas and BYDs more prevalently on the road. Think an EV is four to five times more copper content than a conventional internal combustion engine motor vehicle.

19:09 And obviously all the transmission infrastructure that needs to go into place to support the world's move towards electrification all requires copper as well. So the fundamentals of the copper industry remain strong, really underlined by that Indonesian Grasberg mine going offline last year and the world awaking itself to how fragile the copper supply balance is. And obviously, we're seeing that in terms of the copper price and those moves forward that we're experiencing as well. But we're executing this strategy primarily in Chile where we've got a team on the ground, we've got local knowledge and we can navigate the regulatory landscape. I think it's important to flag that it really is the world's premier destination for copper mining. It's the world's largest copper producer. It's home to the world's largest copper mine. And in March, the Mr. Cast administration on the right wing were appointed.

19:57 And again, I was in Santiago last month and met with the mining minister, the energy minister, the health minister, a number of government and regulatory bodies over there and sort of change in attitude to pro business and supporting companies like us seeking to grow, develop resource, contribute to job creation and obviously tax revenues is a very supportive environment. But just as I mentioned tax issues, it just comes to mind that one of the cast administration's initiatives is to reduce corporation tax from 27% to 23%. So that's a welcome initiative for growing companies like us as well. And Chile, despite having over a century's worth of mining activity is still relatively under explored. So a lot of the big boys are still going after the primary mines, the big blue sky opportunities, which is a valid strategy if you have that balance sheet and that risk appetite.

20:47 But for a company like us, there is also seven sixty tailing deposits in country that no one's really giving any amounts of attention to and that represents a large fairway for us to target new opportunities, new inventory in country. We are also looking at other jurisdictions as well. Next slide please, Nick. So in terms of the company, obviously we're focused on driving forward the Playa Verde project and we'll come on to the sort of timetable as to how we expect to achieve that shortly. But we also have a number of organic growth drivers within our existing footprint. So as we've spoken about the NPV and IRR numbers that you've seen there only relate to the 32,000,000 tons of ore reserves that we have. We also have an additional 21,000,000 tons of dual compliant resource on the beach and they're obviously hugely valuable and synergistic minerals for us to process while we're there and we fully expect to retreat that additional resource to have an eleven year run of mine life to exhaust that onshore asset base.

21:47 We also have significant potential upside offshore where there might be 100,000,000 tons of the similar same ore body contained at the bottom of the bay there as well. We began that maritime concession application process last month as well. So that journey is moving forward at the same time. Obviously, as we've spoken about, we've got exposure at the moment to copper and gold commodity price decks. But we are also pursuing that inorganic growth strategy and we're hopeful to be able to do more business in Chile as well and take advantage of the access and relationships and momentum that we've got on the ground there and we'll work with the cast administration to advance Chile's agenda. We are also looking at Peru and Brazil and one or two EU jurisdictions, but always focused on predominantly strategies led by surface accumulated metal rich material with a near term pathway towards being able to either benefit or process the metals out of those materials to be able to access near term cash flows, which then hopefully obviously can be recycled into new projects as well. So creating a platform that ultimately will be able to fund its inorganic growth organically.

23:03 Next slide please, Nick. So in terms of where the company is at post IPO, obviously, raised GBP 4,000,000 at the end of March. As we spoke about, it gives us a very well funded runway moving forward, but it also gives us the financial resource to aggressively get after advancing the Playa Verde project towards FID ready. I think just to touch on some of the things that we've been working on since IPO. Firstly, compliance. So, safeguarding your licensing, your EIA approval and your social license is very important to longevity of business. We're doing that by using the best in class sort of specialist environmental consultancies in Chile. We've got a very specialist team led by Ms. Carolina Parodi, who's a graduate from the Chilean University and former employee of the health ministry.

23:53 And she's helping us with the audit process and the baseline test work. If you go on our LinkedIn, you'll see some of the pictures relating to that test work that's ongoing at the moment so we can comply with the EIA and we can have the robust audit framework to make those annual reports back to the government bodies to continue to operate the license. That's a very important point that shouldn't be overlooked. We've also got the ancillary permitting progressing. So as mentioned, with the EIA approved, that gives us the pathway to make the applications for the ancillary permits that we need to be able to start construction. I think the near return permit that we're hoping that gets approved next is the beach mining permit, which we might expect in the coming weeks. And then there's obviously ancillary permits, which are being submitted at the same time as well.

24:42 And as of the time of today's presentation, I think we're on track to be able to start site works potentially as soon as the end of this year, which obviously goes hand in hand with us hoping to be able to take FID later this year and begin the construction phase of the project as soon as January 2027. Obviously, in order to start the project and to know that you're going to be able to operate it, you need to do your power planning. So again, we're using specialist teams in country to be able to do that. I think the snippet to highlight to you is that the learnings that we've made is that we think we're in a good position to be able to blend some grid power with some new solar panels, which I think will ultimately reduce our ongoing OpEx, but also obviously enhances the ESG credentials of the project at the same time as well.

25:34 I think as I mentioned, we've got the DFS optimization in progress as well. We appointed specialists BIOS mining and infrastructure. They've worked with the project for at least eight years now, supported the project on its definitive feasibility study. They've got a team of some seventy, seventy five people in Santiago, I think 15 to 20 of which are currently working on this project for us. And obviously they've got retained knowledge of the definitive feasibility study and the processing flow sheet. They're currently optimizing that. They're about 75%, 80% completed on the work streams that we initiated them initially for. And they're also optimizing the dredge strategy. So at the moment or in terms of the CPR that we publish, we've got about a 10,000,010,500,000 budget to acquire and own and operate our own dredge.

26:21 We've identified a number of parties who would be able to do a lease dredging model. So that looks like it could be an attractive solution to reduce initial CapEx and effectively defer that I guess into OpEx is the way that you should be thinking of that. I think more importantly for us operationally is that it gets us down to the business of owning and operating a dredge. We want to be in the business of processing minerals and so if we could potentially outsource that, then that would be an attractive way to mitigate risk and effectively lean on broader shoulders who are specialists or more specialized in that type of equipment. But we've also identified a number of used units and they might be available towards sort of scrap valuations.

27:06 So they could also operate could also be a significant cost saving over the initial expectation of buying and furnishing a new dredge, which is the current working assumption in that CPR that we published earlier this year. So that work's progressing. I think they're probably slightly ahead of the schedule, which I'm pleased to report and in line with budget, which I'm also pleased to report. And obviously, we enjoy working with Victor and his team in country. They're a very valuable asset for us to rely on. And that obviously leads me into the BFS work streams, which again are on track. So, this is taking that BFS, incorporating these updates that we just spoken about, but completing that retender process using some of the Chinese equipment manufacturers as well. Now, we think there's some very good technology and good equipment out of China at reasonable prices with vendor financing options potentially available as well.

27:57 So incorporating them into the tendering process, we're hoping to see some benefits from that as well. And as I said, we hope that we might have those updated BFS standard CapEx and OpEx numbers within the next sort of four to six weeks. And that's really the sort of precursor then for us to be able to make significant strides in terms of putting the funding mix as to how we're to finance this project. And then obviously, we've got the organic growth which we've spoken about. I won't touch further on this, but obviously beginning of that maritime access application as well as obviously inorganic growth opportunities that we're sort of pursuing and working at relationships around at the same time as well. Next slide, please, Nick. So, in terms of preparing for FID, a number of questions that I get from investors and I think some of the pre submitted questions sort of relate to this as well. So, this is probably a helpful slide and it might navigate us actually being able to reduce down the number of questions that we come to at the end.

28:54 But questions are how are you going to fund this? So obviously, today we're sort of 10,000,000 ish pound market cap company. We've got a $90,000,000 ish CapEx requirement in order to go into production. And I think the first thing that I would say upfront is that we're looking to execute a layered funding approach to how we fund this project. So we've got a number of parties already in the VDR, then that's mostly responding to organic inbound inquiries that we're receiving as the project's been approved. Obviously, that gets published in the press. A number of industry press clippings are picking up the project and as we raise our profile, a number of organic inbound inquiries have come to us and we're responding to those. I think for us strategically, we're targeting a blend of non dilutive industry capital to really fund the FID capital stack, really leveraging the fact that sort of nearly $8,000,000 has been spent on technical documentation to derisk this project and the permitting momentum that we've got and that near term production pathway all seem to be very desirable in a rising commodity environment, which we're at the moment, which is focused on supply deficits and the opportunity of producing meaningful copper in the near term, I think is strategically desirable to those industrial players.

30:14 So, how we think that the funding stack will pan out, so we think prepay and offtake finance is a part of that financing blend. I think that lends itself to the bankability of the project and really a revenue underpin for how you're going to monetize your future production at the same time as well. Again, it's leveraging the tightness in the copper market and the tightness of future inventory coming to market, which I think is strategically desirable to those sort of tier one, tier two metal traders. And the sort of funding arrangements that you can achieve there almost become self liquidating by future production. So, it lends itself quite well to a project of our nature that's got really low ramp up risk given that the resource is there and obviously once the plant is installed, as we spoke about before, you very quickly get to that full operating production runway of 5,000,000 tons per year.

31:12 Obviously, we're already working to sort of build those long term relationships. So we think prepay and offtake finance is definitely part of that blend. Vendor finance, I think we touched on in terms of the equipment tendering process that's going on at the moment. So this is really about CapEx efficiency and leveraging the balance sheets of the vendor equipment providers who want to get their equipment into projects. They're industry type people, they understand projects and that we believe that there is opportunities to again take advantage of the platform and how de risk it is to be able to potentially finance 50% to 60% of those equipment costs through a vendor financing structure. And for us, obviously, that's about reducing our initial capital upfront in a non dilutive way to be able to fund the project development.

32:02 We're also not dismissing copper royalty and gold stream financing. Again, it's a meaningful way of accessing non dilutive upfront capital to be able to advance a project into production. Obviously, it involves an exchange of future production or future production revenues, but comes with some flexibility that the payments are typically therefore linked to production. So that might improve cash flow performance or resilience through any future commodity cycles. So it's definitely part of our considerations at the moment in time. And then there's also primarily one of our more personally, maybe Frank, you can confirm as well your interest, but one of the areas that we like is project debt finance as well.

32:50 So there's a number of parties that are potentially interested in providing project debt finance, really leveraging the fact that we have a highly cash generative asset once it's in production. But I think that might be towards the lowest end of your cost of capital. Obviously, it's secured by your future cash flows. But that we also think could be a meaningful player in how we do that. And then at the bottom of that sort of equity stack is equity, sorry, the funding stack is equity and that's really a residual risk component if needed. Our target is to reduce any component of equity and as I said leverage the technical data of the project and how well established it is to bring industry pools of capital in. But at the right price point in the future, once we've gone for our value inflection points, it might be strategically desirable to do an element in there just to bring your overall blended cost of capital down. So we don't discount it, but it's right at the bottom end of our considerations on how we fund FID.

33:51 Next slide please, Nick. And then how do we get to FID is probably the next question. And here we've got a bit of a graphic that shows our development timeline and aspirational development timeline and sort of the near term catalysts that go within that. And I think what we're showing here is that we do have a very clear pathway towards production with some defined milestones which are in the near term and hopefully can be received as value inflection points for the company at the same time as well. So just starting on the left at the beginning of that journey, we discount the last twelve years since the project was incepted in the subsidiary back in 2013. I think let's start as of end of March. So we completed the IPO with a £4,000,000 fundraise, so that's in the green agenda that's been achieved.

34:42 We've obviously used those proceeds to initiate the environmental audit, the power planning, the ancillary permits, the maritime concession, the DFS optimization and the BFS tender quotes, which are all ongoing and which we've spoken about in prior slides. So that's all work in progress. In the background, we've been responding to organic interest in industrial partners who potentially can be coming in to play a part in that capital stack to fund our FID requirements. So those are conversations that continuing. We have a strategic plan to even further widen that net as soon as we have those updated BFS standard CapEx and OpEx numbers. And as you can see, that's the first sort of long tailed yellow milestone, which we hope to have at the beginning of Q3, which is just around the corner now.

35:31 So obviously with those, we can sort of focus those conversations into now definitive conversations anchored around contemporary updated and very well defined numbers. As I mentioned, there's some 800 requests for quotes tenders out at the moment, five fifty of them have come back, but that's quite an exhaustive and detailed study. So we're expected to have very detailed, accurate and contemporary numbers to a bankable feasibility study level. So that's something to look forward to. We've also obviously got in the background the permit approvals and that relates to the mining use of beach license and the ancillary permits, perhaps maybe slightly less sexy for financial investors, but fundamentally required in order to be successful and get to that FID position.

36:17 So I'm pleased to say they're in progress and there are news announcements that we expect to be able to achieve next quarter in relation to those permits getting approved. So please do stay tuned to look out for those milestones getting ticked off as well. And then obviously, we hope to reframe this all really as that final optimized DFSBFS at next quarter as well and then put these funding discussions into a structured process to drive them towards a timetable oriented output event. And that we hope then can lead to securing the financing on terms that are acceptable to enable us to take FID before the end of this year. And if we're successful in achieving that, then we begin the construction phase really the beginning of twenty twenty seven. As we've spoken about, it's an eighteen month construction phase, which would as of today position us to start production as soon as the second half of twenty twenty eight.

37:13 Whilst all of those fundamental drivers continue to get the onshore resource into commercialization and first revenues, obviously we have the maritime concession approvals progressing in the background as well. They're not to distract us. We already have an economic project just focused on our ore reserves alone, but obviously are huge value drivers if we are successful there as well. So that's kind of the development pathway, the near term catalyst that we see. I think the next slide is moving over to the full year results. In fact, Nick, just flick back to that last landing page because here's a picture, a recent picture of the beach so you can see the sort of scale of what we've got there in Chennai and the sort of situation that we're out there, so very typical of Chile. But perhaps maybe I can, with a whistle and just hand over to Frank just to talk you about through some of the highlights that came out at the back of the annual results which we published last week. Thanks, Andy. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

38:10 I'm talking to the 25 results, as Andy just said. For those of you who haven't seen it, it's available on the company website. You can download it from there. You will see in the balance sheet that it's a transformed balance sheet from that of December 24. As we shape the company to take on these projects, we acquired the Copper Bay and Playa Verde assets in the end of March. And during the course of the year, we cleaned up the balance sheet, took out all of the debt. So that is totally free of debt now, and it's lined up for the developments that Andy's been talking about.

39:01 We are totally funded for an eighteen month runway, which takes us through to the FID and the development of the new plant. And the intention, as Andy has also said, is not to fund it through the balance sheet, but to take project finance, which will come in either through HALO or through its subsidiaries. The project economics shows a 154,000,000 NPV at 10 with a 51 IRR. With those sort of economics, we don't anticipate any difficulty in raising the project finance, and we have spoken to a number of potential interested parties. We are well advanced in that that negotiation.

40:00 And we believe that we can develop the company not only on the Playa Verde project, but on a number of other projects. So organic growth will will be seen by the time we produce the balance sheet for December '26. The project is royalty free. It's leveraged on our core skills. We only employ six people full time in the company, so our overhead infrastructure is very small and tight. We outsource all the skills that we are looking to to use, which reduces the risk and makes the the company very solid for its future development plans.

40:49 I think that probably wraps probably about wraps it up, Andy. Yeah. So yeah. I I thanks for that, Frank. So, yeah, I think just in summary, the company is well funded, well positioned. It's got a clean asset with an attractive capital structure to be able to succeed in securing the FID that is needed. And obviously, we're on that pathway to transform ourselves from development to production and hopefully achieve that as soon as possible. That's great. Andy, Frank, David, 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 recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published Q and A can be accessed via our investor dashboard.

41:37 Nick, 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 the team at the end. Thank you. Brilliant. Thanks very much. Look, the first two of the pre submitted questions, I think you've largely covered and to do with funding and sort of securing project finance packages. Two bits of it, which you might not have touched on, however, you might not be able to touch on it completely. What timeline are you looking for for some of the project financing packages? And is there a current horse that is leading the race on this? Yeah. I think, well, the timeline for us, there's a number of conversations already ongoing. I think as we spoke about in the presentation, it's about having the BFS level updated CapEx and OpEx numbers, which is just around the corner now.

42:25 And once you have that, I think you can really herd the cats into a structured process to say, well, let's talk about concepts and start talking about definitive term sheets on what you can and can't do and what the definitive cost of capital are for that proposed solution and then putting that in the funnel to sort of grade them as to preferred provider of choice. So that's hopefully things that we can start being achieving through the summer months now. Obviously, have an ambition of taking FID prior to the end of this year, so that's only six months away now. So we're on with that. We've been on with that for some time. But with these BFS updated numbers, now we have the what the the really only only question is is, well, what is it exactly you need in terms of CapEx in order to get there?

43:10 So in the near term being sort of weeks to months away, we're hoping to make meaningful strides in that regard. In terms of a leading horse, think was the phrase there, was it Nick? There's a number of horses. I mean, there's I think as we've spoken about, there's a number of different industry pools. Over the last ten days. We've had a number of organic inbound interest from international consortiums sort of sovereign fund style investors. And again, we're more than grateful to have that inbound come in and we're highly attentive and responsive towards it. And we fully intend to widen that net. I mean, there's a list of some of the 30 sort of financiers or industry players that I have that we haven't yet heard from, and I intend to fully go and speak to as soon as we've got these updated DFS.

44:00 What I find interesting in this process is the amount of inbound interest that we've had. You know, we're we're it's it's sort of speaks testament to the scarcity of the copper supply and the lack of sort of construction ready projects, which which ours are with a short lead time into into production to really take advantage of this scarcity of supply and high copper price that, you know, quite large groups, quite large people are approaching us. You know, we're not we're we're very much pushing against an open door. There is a demand out there to provide finance for the for for this kind of project and it's been refreshing and interesting to see. Yeah. I totally agree, David. I mean, there's always like a perfect storm for people who do have well defined projects with a clear pathway towards production.

44:51 Yeah. There's lots of people putting money out there on much more speculative and longer term dated things. But there does seem to be significant interest in projects that can be producing within two to three years and that's definitely the realm in which we're currently in. So yeah, it does feel the macro picture is very supportive of us being successful. Okay. Thanks, James. In the final results, you mentioned how you want to diversify from single asset status. Are you looking at projects that are synergistic with La Belle Verde or totally separate? If separate, how do you justify the cost of this considering you're not revenue generating? How will you fund this? Yeah. I'll I'll take that, Nick. The yes. We are planning to expand the base of the company, as I said earlier.

45:43 We do need to get away from the risk of a single project company, and we are looking at business development across the region within South America as well as other jurisdictions, including the European Union. How will we fund it? It will be all project finance. We do have the liquidity at the moment to do the initial project assessment without risking putting any detriment to player verde, which is the primary mover and shaker at the moment as far as the company is concerned. So, again, once we have established that a project is viable, then we are very confident that we will be able to raise the project finance as just previously discussed in the in answering the previous question.

46:36 There is a shortage of the metal, and there isn't a shortage of capital. So as Andy said, the perfect storm. Yeah. I think just to add on that as well. For us, executing ESG metal strategy, often maybe current operators or tailing dams that have been abandoned and therefore the license has basically been relinquished back to the government, sit there as liabilities on their balance sheet. So people aren't ordinarily commanding huge upfront sums to transact with them. I think they're looking for partners that can come in and any money that they are spending ultimately can go into the ground to derisk these projects and advance them forward. So we kind of benefit from the environment of the assets that we're targeting. And for example, companies like Inemi, which is the state owned copper company in Chile, they've got hundreds of tailing deposit licenses that no one's doing anything with.

47:31 They're principally focused on mineral processing operations. So the scarcity of cash that they have are going into funding those types of things. So people like that represent opportunities for us to collaborate on JVs or structures like this so we can get into new projects without having to write big checks up or potentially any checks up upfront on day one. And as Frank says, be very efficient with the capital given that the deposit is at surface. These are much more accessible to sort of understand and figure out than having to go and drill a greenfield. Yeah. They're they're very cheap drilling with air cores and RCs and sort of, you know, it's it's all at surface and it's all on consolidated, so it's very cheap ex ex exploration.

48:17 The main thing for me is the size of the opportunity. I mean, Chile is a very mature mining jurisdiction as is the European Union. Recoveries in the seventies, eighties and nineties are nowhere near what they are today. And there is commercial grade in several large tailings projects. You know, we're we're we're a £10,000,000 company now. You know, Playbird should bring us up to up to a £100,000,000 company, but that's not where we want to be in in five or ten years years time. We wanna have a portfolio of assets which are in in production or near to production, which can can make us a company worth several tens, if not hundreds of multiples over where our share price is.

49:05 Yes. And obviously, the project that we've got, if we get that into production, we're maybe throwing off 50,000,000 to $60,000,000 of free cash flow per year. There is an opportunity to potentially establish a dividend policy and start returning cash back to shareholders, but there is also a runway of organic cash flow to then support these future projects. But like I say, you need to start that process sooner rather than later. The opportunity is definitely now. So it's up for us to get after it. I think the other part of that question was, is there anything synergistic with Playa Verde? So I think in terms of the synergies with Playa Verde, obviously, it's the additional 20,000,000 tons of resource onshore. There's the 100,000,000 tons of resource offshore. The BD team have found six or seven projects within a 75 kilometer radius, which are between 20 to 70,000,000 tons of ore. So commensurate sizes to what we've got on the beach there, they could be kind of synergistic, but Playa Verde is unique in terms of its beach situation or beach setting.

50:03 I wouldn't expect to see too many more of those types of projects. So more in more conventional situations, not interacting with the sea in the way that we're doing with the Ministry of Defense at the moment. The next question is pre submitted. Can you tell us more about this Chinese consortium interested in investing in Chilean mining projects? Yes. So I think that came from a snippet that I think Bloomberg released a week or two ago following a conversation. I think we said there's been a number of parties that have organically approached us, not just China, The Middle East and other types of entities. It's premature at this stage to get into specific details on the names of those entities. As I said, that process is proceeding forward now and it's going gain more momentum as soon as we've got these updated BFS level OpEx and CapEx numbers.

50:55 And at the appropriate time in the coming weeks and months where we expect those outputs to convert into you know, bent parties of choice. And at that point in time, obviously, we'll put pen to paper and have to make the relevant announcements. And we'll talk about the no ends at that point in time, but I think we've spoken, Nick, about a number of organic inbounds and that's an example of one. Steps are management taking to advertise and market the equity to investment funds, investment banks, brokers, etc? Yeah, well we're trying to do more of that. Obviously we understand there's a job for us to do that. I think maybe this just might be an appropriate time to address the elephant in the room in terms of post IPO share performance. We don't specifically comment on share price performance, but I do receive inbound from investors confused that the situation we're in at the moment.

51:47 Yes, what I would say is it's hugely frustrating for us, right? I think we could have raised money at a higher price at the time we did IPO. We sort of closed at the AT and P level, raising that significant funding to extend our runway and fund us to achieve what we need to achieve with the expectation that those investors would still see near term upside on the share price. So, it's confusing for us. I don't think we're alone. I think the other IPOs that have been this year are also trading below their IPO price. So there's maybe a dampener on the post IPO market at the moment. I think there was a little bit of sell pressure come out from those people that we weren't able to lock up, but I'd just reiterate that about 60% of the shares are currently locked up between four significant shareholders. Obviously, 31% of that share capital is in people that supported us pre IPO and at the IPO stage.

52:37 And yeah, we're obviously frustrated by that because we want shareholders to be having a positive experience given that the project I think, believe has only got better since we completed that RPO, the commodity prices have improved and the cast administration have come in and organic inbounds being received. So from us on the ground, things have operationally things don't warrant we don't believe that operationally things that we're delivering warrant the share price being where it's at today. We understand that there's a job for us to do in terms of creating more market awareness and visibility and I think that's probably one of the issues that we have is not a lot of people know about us. I'm expecting a research note to be out on the company later this month. So hopefully that can go some way to help articulate our story to a wider audience, obviously doing things like investor meets company and some of these other sort of online presentations as part of the job, and we're going to be more active on investor meets company, so keep in tune with this platform.

53:41 We'll try and do some more sort of engagements with maybe some of the wider team. Maybe I can get Eric, our COO, who you haven't seen on video just to introduce himself and talk to you about the project as well. So stay tuned for that. And I think when we have that research note in hand, that's a perfect platform for us to continue to engage with wider institutions and be able to articulate the message in a format that they're used to receiving as well. So it's an ongoing process. We understand that there's a responsibility on us to create the awareness. Now we've had a number of press articles in the industry, which is why we're receiving organic inbound, but perhaps maybe they don't access to the investor community here in London or Europe as well as they did more industry pools of capital. So it's a work in progress. It's not at the bottom of our to do list. It's a sort of daily thing that we're engaging with.

54:32 And we hope that the fruit of those efforts will stop being borne out with improved price environments and improved interest in the shares. Yeah. Think from my point of view as an independent non exec, I'm I'm not overly worried about it. For me, it's a question of not if does it not if it cracks up upwards, but when does it crack up upwards. You know, we're we're we're and, you know, we're we're not raising equity to finance the the project. We don't need to raise equity in the short term. You know, it will, you know, in in eighteen to twenty four months, we'll be a a positive cash flow generating company with fully financed project in in production and growth projects to expand our our portfolio and increase our footprint.

55:26 So, yeah, it's it's I mean, how it corrects upwards is what we're we're working on and trying to accelerate the if into a when and make the when soon. Yeah. And I think converting these concepts and things that we've spoken about in this presentation into definitive deliverables, which are now in the very near term and certainly expected to be meaningfully actioned upon in the next quarter, are all going to help create better awareness, show financial derisking for FID, show execution capability. And you know we're highly confident in the work streams that we've got ongoing there as well and as David says we're fully funded through to I think Q4 twenty twenty seven so we don't need to raise equity so yes it's disappointing to see the share price where it is today but it's not like we're needing to access the equity markets to have to crystallize these price points from our perspective.

56:18 Next question. What are the comparable listed similar mining projects? Another question on the sort of mining technology, how reliable is the mining technology? Yeah, good question. I think in terms of similar mining projects, there's not a huge amount of them that are super similar to exactly what we're doing here in Chile. There are other companies in Chile that are processing tailings, but they don't own their resource. They've got a mineral processing plant, they take a processing fee. I guess similar operation in terms of recovering metals from already processed ore bodies. In terms of the mining technology, well this is kind of one of the key benefits of our project here. We're not reinventing the wheel. We're not doing anything new or untested.

57:08 We're using tried and tested SXEW processing technologies. We're using the best in class, the most efficient of that technology, but it's tried and tested. So there's very little risk. Think David, is there anything you would just add in terms of processing technology? Subduction dredge mine mining is incredibly commonly used, albeit not not so much in copper mining be because copper is normally a hard rock. But, you know, if you look at mineral sands, if you're looking at industrial minerals, it's generally used in lower value stuff because it's a cheaper form of mining. So, yeah, it's it's a very well known and a very low cost form of both mining and and and processing. Next one, how is accessibility infrastructure electricity?

58:00 So accessibility is phenomenal. So we've got the Pan American Highway that basically runs adjacent or just behind the license area. Obviously, it's located on the coast there. So accessibility really isn't an issue, certainly for the onshore. Obviously, we're unpacking the access rights for the offshore, which is a work in progress as we go now. Sorry, what was the second part of that question? Think just electricity. Yeah, infrastructure and electricity. So the local substations, I think five or six kilometers away from the site, Frank, correct me if I'm wrong. So it's a short tie in to be able to access that. We think there's readily available five megawatts there. There might be a further investment needed to be made if we wanted to take all of our power from there. But I think as we spoke about as we progress through the presentation, one of the elements that we've seen an opportunity is to use solar panels. And obviously given this is there is a number of solar parks being developed currently in the Chennai region that can supplement our energy demand or energy costs having to take it from the grid, but also boost the ESG credentials of the project as well. So that's part of obviously the power planning exercise that's ongoing at the moment as well. Next question is how much is eroded each year or straight goes offshore?

59:22 Yeah, that's not actually an issue that we have at the beach situation here. If anything, there's sort of minerals kind of washing back out. So those minerals have been deposited on that beach. They stopped accumulating in 1978. A number of studies have been done and they haven't actually moved significantly. There was a slight alluvial flush in 2015 which just deposited a layer of silts on top of an element of it. But actually the minerals themselves aren't being dragged out to sea anymore because they're stopped being deposited. Next question was on project financing which you've covered. One of that was what is the modeled electricity cost? I don't have the model in front of me. I don't know, Frank, if you've got that to mind at the moment. But I think just again, it's expected to be supplemented by on grid access to, let's call it, 50% of it and then 50% supplemented most likely through solar parks.

1:00:19 I think it is in the CPR that's obviously on the website, but I don't have it off the top of my head, unfortunately. And the last question we have is have you permissions to build a refinery? How close to the beach is the site? And how much is it going to cost to build the refinery? Have you secured a source of electricity? Have you secured a source of sulfuric acid? Okay, a couple of questions there. So permission to build the refinery, so that's the main precursor to building the refinery is the EIA approval, which as we've spoken about was received in October last year. There are some ancillary permit permits that need to be achieved, and these are much more simpler and really procedural to get, so less subjective than the EIA approval, has obviously been sort of five to six years in progress.

1:01:08 BIOS mining and infrastructure are supporting us on that. And obviously, they've got all of the skills and expertise and historic knowledge and the relationships in country to effectively do that. So that's a work in progress. We've got the main ones. We do need some ancillary ones. We're taking that box off in the position to get FID ready, which we're hoping to be later this year. So yes, we've got all the fundamental ones that we need. There are some ancillary ones that we still need to do, but that's normal course of progressing projects at this stage. How close to the beach is the site? Well, it's out on the back of the beach. So it's right there at the back of the beach adjacent to the ore body. Benefits of that again being reduction in diesel and trucking costs and reducing the footprint of moving the materials around.

1:01:56 And that allows us to effectively use the dredge to belt the materials to the processing plants and then effectively return the clean sands to the same area. So think of this as a sort of continual pick up dirty, clean them, put them down, put down clean tails back again to reconstitute the beach. So there's a good efficiency of how we're going to process the operation. How much is it going to build the refinery? Well, I think we spoke about that. It's about $86,000,000 CapEx is the latest CPR level estimation. I think $33,000,000 of that was plant and equipment, which is effectively the refinery. I think it's about $26,000,000 of sort of construction costs. So let's say the refinery specifically in the orders of magnitude $50 odd million plus obviously the dredge plus obviously the electric grid access, the transmission lines, plus contingency, which gets us to that $86,000,000 number.

1:02:53 Have you secured a source of electricity? Well, we've engaged the electricity or the power engineers. I think we've touched on how we expect that blend of power to come from. And have you secured a source of sulfuric acid? Well, as of today, we haven't and we wouldn't want to be sourcing sulfuric acid in today's market. We're obviously very hopeful as the rest of the world is on the reopening of the Homer Strait. And hopefully that happens sooner rather than later and certainly before we need the sulfuric acid in the second half of twenty twenty eight. Sulfuric acid has been readily available in Chile certainly before the Iran war situation, sort of put price pressure on that key ingredient. I think in terms of our OpEx, sulfuric acid is about 20% to 25% of our total OpEx needs. So there is latitude in there for us to be able to still be very economic with a higher sulfuric acid price.

1:03:45 But logistically, obviously, Chile is a world's biggest copper producer. So as you can imagine, there's significant amounts of inroads in availability of sulfuric acid. Think in fact, they import a lot of it from Peru as obviously well as The Middle East. Obviously, China has put a hiatus on its export of sulfuric acid at the moment, which is exacerbating the near term price action that we're seeing there. But I think as we spoke of just so as we said, and NAME has three large sulfuric acid containers where it imports sulfuric acid into the region just on the next headland south of where our beach is. So availability of sulfuric acid logistically in Chile is certainly very day to day affair.

1:04:33 But obviously, yeah, there is price pressure on that contributing element at the moment given the state of the world in The Middle East. That's great. Andy, Frank, David, if I may just jump back in there and thank you for addressing all those questions from investors today. But Andy, before we direct investors to provide you with their feedback, which I know is very important to yourself and the company, could I just please ask you for a few closing comments? Well, thank everyone for their time and engagement. I think just to summarize, we're obviously focused on the near term development and production of key strategic and battery metals anchored around a flagship technically derisked and well advanced and EIA permitted flagship project in Chile. We're funded through to the back end of next year on a G and A basis and most importantly through hopefully big meaningful value inflection drivers such as being able to take the FID later this year and begin the construction phase of the project.

1:05:31 And we look forward to engaging with investors and making ourselves available to answer their questions. And hopefully, you'll see us more active on the Investor Meets company platform as we continue to build our relationship with this audience. Thank you. Fantastic. Andy, Frank, David, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session? As you know, we'll On behalf of the management team, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.