Jubilee Metals Group (LSE:JLP) — Interim Results Investor Presentation

0:02 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the JUBILEE METALS GROUP PLC Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time via the Q and A tab that's just situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Please 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 all questions submitted today and we'll publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so on the Investor Meet company platform. And before we begin, as usual, we would

0:32 just like to submit the following poll. And if you'd give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. And I would now like to hand you over to the executive management team from JUBILEE METALS GROUP PLC. Leon, good morning, sir. Hi. Good morning, and welcome to all our shareholders and interested parties who have logged in to this webinar. We really look forward to an engaging debate and discussion. We've received several questions that we will work through. I'm joined today by Johnny, our financial director, that will talk us through our results. And then, of course, we'll dive into our company's operations both in South Africa and in Zambia and talk through those areas and address some of the questions.

1:17 So without further ado, I thought maybe just to kick off before we jump into a very short presentation just to summarize some of our results, Maybe just to talk on the announcement we released this morning that related to our Zambian projects. I, in fact, just returned this morning from Zambia. And maybe just to clarify what we are doing and what we have achieved and why this announcement is so significant in in Zambia, as you know, and we'll go through it a bit later. Our large waste project is one of our key focus areas in growth in delivering growth in Zambia. And over the past months, we've been concluding our due diligence studies on that 260 odd million tons of surface material.

2:08 And the last stage of this work, we were quite excited to be able to enter into an agreement where a large multinational company has approached us and partnered with us to purchase and process 10,000,000 tons of material through their existing facility. Now 10,000,000 tons might sound very large, but if you compare that to the actual size of this opportunity, it's insignificantly small. But it does put to value what actually is contained in this dump. So under these terms, it means that this entity, this very large entity, is purchasing this material from us, and we'll be processing it. We'll be monitoring quite carefully how the process reacts to that material, and it directly feeds into our final design proposal for our own facility on this material.

3:05 Under these terms, they are paying an upfront fee, and thereafter, they pay per month as they remove the material from the property. We have no cost incurred. They pay all cost for uplifting and processing that material, and we have full access to those results. It's quite an exciting development for us. It also demonstrates the real keen interest that we are receiving for this project, and it's drawing a lot of focus and attention from large producers looking to see how do you put to value or bring to value such a large surface resource. With that said, stepping into the actual presentation that we've got today.

3:55 There's just a a couple of slides just as an introduction before we get into the discussions itself. Just as a quick overview, I mean, this is probably known to most of you. We, as as Jubilee, have a footprint mainly in two jurisdictions, one in South Africa, one in Zambia. South Africa being very established, something we started life back in 2014 when we started our journey in South Africa to implement platinum group metals as well as chrome facilities to process predominantly wastes. In time, we've migrated from waste only onto run of mine material as the techniques we applied on waste was equally applicable to the run of mine in this industry.

4:42 We've had a marked impact on this industry. Many briefs and materials previously regarded as waste today is regarded as resources and assets because of the techniques we have applied. The company has grown dramatically in across over these years, starting modestly in 2016 with our first production at 40 odd thousand tons of chrome, and today, heading towards North of 1.7 million tons of chrome per annum. And we'll address the questions that we've received around revenue growth, which has been significant, and EBITDA actually pulling back. And as Johnny goes through the market shifts that have become quite apparent, how the revenue number, which has jumped by 51%, really is test testimony to the increase in the chrome capacity that we've established over the past period, which we had told the market about, that we are expanding yet again our facilities as we roll out our modular chrome units, which are processing so successfully.

5:46 Every module we added is what we call market facing. In the chrome, we have two lives or two commercial contracts. We have one which is fixed term. We process other people's material. We charge a fee, and we hand back the product. And for that, we make a fixed margin. More and more and more of our production, every expansion we announced, is different in that we purchase material, we process it, and we sell it into the market, and therefore take full exposure to market dynamics. Our revenue that grew so dramatically is on the back of that chrome growth. Every extra ton we produce is an extra ton sold. It happened over last over the past period, as Johnny will go into more detail, during a sharply declining chrome price. Chrome prices declined nearly 40% over that period. So what you see is the revenue uptick, but not the earnings in the margin following because of that declining price. But, of course, things have changed dramatically over the past six months where the chrome prices recovered to its previous levels, and therefore, positioned to not benefit from that.

7:01 On the Zambian side, we have two operating footprints. We have our Rowan concentrator, which was a big focus of news flow and the challenges faced in Zambia, and we'll address that in more detail. And then, of course, our Sable refinery, which takes concentrates and takes run of mine material and turns it into cathode copper. Moving straight on into our actual financial financial numbers, and I'll hand over to Johnny to talk us through these numbers. Thanks, Leon. This will be the very dull and boring part of the presentation. Leon takes care of the the sex and violence part. This will be dull, for which I apologize. The announcement on Monday gave quite a detailed profit and loss and balance sheet and some commentary on our operations. So for this presentation, I'm just looking at very high level events, so forgive me.

8:02 We can see that the group revenue is up 51%. Fantastic. It's it's a big achievement. But if we go across the page to the right, we can see that most of the the revenue increase was in Chrome, up 75%. Again, that sounds great. PGMs next door to it, down nearly 10%. But the explanation for those can we just flick forward to page seven, please? Here, we can see on on the the right hand side average price of PGMs, and the one in the middle is the one I want to focus on, if I might, and that's the price of chrome.

8:49 Most people don't know the price of chrome. They know the price of gold. They know the price of copper because because they trade on exchanges. Chrome doesn't trade anywhere. There's no forward market in Chrome. You can't hedge it. It's a very odd market. And if you can see on this graph, it starts off at the beginning of the six month period, well over 300, and it ends up just over 200. So there are very few metals markets which see a third of the value knocked off in six months. Now that dip in price is a problem for us because we have to buy our ROM. Now we can see the price of Chrome go down quite quickly because we get a daily price.

9:38 However, the price of buying ROM, which is a very large lumpy amount, and it's infrequently bought. So as the price of Chrome comes down, the price of ROM doesn't come down at the same time. So there there is a time lag. So what we're seeing this year is that, you know, the price of of ROM has come down, but it and the price of Chrome is going up. So we should see a better benefit in this quarter.

10:10 So I think that explains quite a lot on the revenue, but it's only half the story. The other half I haven't mentioned was copper in Zambia. Now we put out two or three announcements about the power problem in Zambia, which I'm sure Leon will come on to in a minute, so I don't want to dwell on that. But the the real impact on the all of the figures of Zambia is related to the power. So there's not a lot more I can say to that. And if I could just go to page six, please. We've just seen where we've come from, and I just thought these charts might be quite useful.

10:59 If if it if we look on the left hand side on the copper one, it shows the production from Zambia for the first half of the year. Compare that to the the full year of 03/3422, you know, we are down, but not down by a great deal. So we we're trying to cover that back this quarter. But, again, Leon will come on to that. If we look in the middle one, chrome for the first half year, 974,000 is well over half of the total of the previous year. So you can see we're on track for chrome. So even with the the lower prices, we still produce an awful lot of Chrome, and that hopefully, that will continue.

11:51 The the only other point on Chrome I should mention is if we get if we go back to the front page, you will see that on Chrome, there's very little in the way of CapEx because all the CapEx has already been spent. So what we're seeing now is the benefit of that CapEx spend. So there will always be smaller amounts of CapEx going forward, but there'll be nothing like what has been going into CapEx over the the previous periods. So that's good. So we can see the benefit of CapEx in previous periods is coming through into revenue in this period. And just one last point which people may not fully appreciate is that in Chrome, we are not a miner as such.

12:38 We buy in all our ROM. So we're very much our cycle, we buy ROM, we process it, we have Chrome and other products, and we sell them. Now the difference the time difference between buying ROM and getting paid by our customer could be seventy five days. Now if you've got increasing revenues, you've also got increasing delays and increasing amounts waiting to be paid. So that is that's our working capital used up. So there's more working capital required to fund these huge increases in sales. But we're profitable, and we hope this quarter will sort of further consolidate our thoughts on where we should be.

13:31 And that's all from me. If you're still awake, back to Leon. Thank you, Johnny. Actually, well summarized. I think it's very important points raised. If you take some of those highlights out and addresses many of the questions here is to actually explain the fact that Chrome is driving our revenue and is positioning us for the appreciating Chrome price that is happening at the moment. And it is why you see such a step up in revenue yet a margin squeeze on Chrome, which we fully expect, to to see that benefit come through during this period. Of course, getting on to the hot topic, which is Zambian copper, is an area that I want to dwell on a bit and go through a bit detail. The picture you see there just out of interest, that that is there. It just suggests some of the road infrastructure that's a very long bridge section that we had to construct for our Mongkoyo project, which is one of our mining projects where we truck the run of mine high grade run of mine material directly to our Sable refinery.

14:46 And all of this infrastructure investment speaks to the capital increase that you would have seen in our numbers in Zambia as we have now completed the infrastructure investments for our Mokoyo mine as well to shorten routes, to make routes more reliable for that upgrade of that project, establishing a mining project as, as you can imagine, many components to it. Maybe just very briefly touching on what is it that we are trying to achieve in Zambia. It it breaks down simplistically into three core areas. The first area is our Sable refinery and what in time will become its dominant feed that's driving that expansion of our Sable refinery.

15:37 The Sable refinery, which is located within the central province of Zambia in the Kabwe region, is surrounded by many of these Munkoya opportunities. What is the Mounkoyo opportunity? These are outcrops, which means the copper reef breaks surface, and being exposed to the atmosphere means that reef is highly weathered. To process that reef requires a very specific focus and techniques, which we, as Jubilee, have well established. And Mounkoya was the first such project that we had identified, tested, and acquired. The Mongkoya project has proven to be a great success.

16:23 We paid in the order of $1,500,000 to secure this project, and it has shown to contain vast amount of corporate surface of which at the time we only had exposed a single pit. Monkoy currently is going through its resource drilling program as we define the size and magnitude of that resource, but we're doing it in parallel of both operating and enlarging the existing pit where we mine our high grade reef from and sending that to Sable through the new infrastructure while we are drilling and developing out the large project of Monkoi. Monkoi mines both a high grade reef as well as a lower grade reef, which we stockpile on-site, and it is the area where we will be implementing a on-site processing facility to process that material and send it as a concentrate into Sable refinery.

17:27 High grade in in Monkoy will vary as we strip and open the reefs during this development, and it ranges from as high as three and even higher to 4% copper down to a minimum of roughly 2% to 2.5% copper as that high grade portion is directly leased through Sable while we are mining the low grade reef as well. The stockpile of material which will form the basis for the feed to our local facility at Moncoya is already breaching a million tonnes of copper ore sitting on surface. That is just from the first pit before we have completed the expansion at Mokoyo.

18:12 The second project, which is we call it project g, which is a very similar resource in that it's also a a resource which is at surface or breaches surface. It's a weathered reef, very similar. It's a larger project than Moncoya, and it is going through its current drilling program as we define that reef to design the size of that first pit. During the interim phase, we have taken material from GROUP PLC, processed it through a local plant at GROUP PLC to confirm that it is upgradable and that our refinery responds to that material. GROUP and NICE on an accelerated development path as we complete the drilling, the design of the pit, and the implementation.

19:02 If you look at timelines, you would have seen that Munkoi from becoming involved in Munkoi to start delivering at a consistent monthly rate mining rate took us roughly about five to six months to stabilize that, and that's exactly what GROUP PLC will be going through. In the meantime, we're not stopping there. As we told the market before, we are engaging and are in discussions with several similar opportunities as we look to capture this market where we are able to secure this reef type and apply our processes and refine that material through Sable. So within a relatively short space of time, Sable becomes a dedicated refinery for the processing of this ROM and concentrates from these mining ventures.

19:55 It is a path we have opened up for ourselves in Zambia for now, and it's unlocked by the processing infrastructure and ability. These mines, as valuable as they are, they are not of great value if you have no access to your refinery or a a processing facility to be able to process that reef, and it's that opportunity that we are capitalizing on. One can therefore expect news flow around the expansion of these projects and the further projects we add to this portfolio. The second group or that middle section of the project has been our troublesome child, which we can speak through in a bit more detail, and that's been the Rowan Concentrator. The Rowan Concentrator, which is more towards the northern side of the central province, this concentrate is specifically designed for processing at the same time both historical waste as well as historical tailings through its facility and make a copper concentrate, which in the interim phase, while Sable still holds capacity, is being refined at Sable to to be taken to cathode.

21:08 As Sable is capacity is taken up by its mining projects, Rowan will either sell its concentrate into the market, or we will extend the Rowan process by adding a refining component in time to the Rowan plant. Originally last year, when Rowan completed its upgrade and we completed the development of the Rowan plant, which was a complex project built out in the Andola area to be able to process these materials, We celebrated the fact that Rowan had hit its throughput targets, and the throughput of Rowan is a variable number depending whether you're you're processing historical tailings, which is soft sand, or whether you're processing the historical rock and in what combination.

21:53 So it can process from 70,000 tons of tailings down to 40 to 45,000 tons of rock, which is the capacity of of Rowan. Of late, the news flow on Rowan has been, after addressing some of the challenges we faced, which we'll go through a bit later, is to migrate Rowan onto a high grade run of mine material, which has grades of 1.6 plus percent copper to accelerate our copper unit production to make up for that time lost that we faced during the electricity crisis in Zambia. The last component there is what we call historical wastes and stockpiles, which is a combination of historical process tailings as well as the very exciting, very large waste rock project, which was part of this morning's announcement, which is this 260,000,000 ton of of rock pile on surface. It's the largest rock pile in all of Zambia.

22:55 And just to imagine the size, you're speaking of many kilometers long and many kilometers wide materials. So a concept of cherry picking such a thing is is is impractical. It is an extremely large body of rock that we have done an enormous amount of work on both laboratory, pilot trial, and that has led to the announcement this morning where we now can run large full commercial scale on that material where we take no exposure because we simply are selling that material per ton to the facility to actually test our design concept. And that is the Zambia strategy we are are driving hard. We are focusing on our priorities.

23:41 Our priorities on the waste side, the right hand side column, is focused on the large waste project because it's a better project. It's a more developed project than the large waste tailings portfolio we hold, and therefore, that is the priority. Within Rowan, our priority right now is running the high grade run of mine through Rowan. We've adjusted the Rowan process to allow it to run on dedicated rock only, where normally it was designed to have rock and process tailings through the facility. If we then step down to the next slide in Zambia, and basically just a short summary of the actual results in the operational update that we had given.

24:30 Johnny spoke of the numbers. The numbers clearly were significantly impacted by Rowan's stoppage end of last year. Came at the worst time for us, and we had completed the capitalization. We had completed the commissioning and the ramp up of of of the facility, incurred the working capital to to commence and ramped it up only to stop it for to protect the integrity of the equipment after multiple power failures that ultimately led into a whole network of good failure and power companies declaring force majeure in Zambia. Chaotic state for any project to have to be ramped up and then immediately stopped and placed under a part care and maintenance while we had to address the power crisis that faced not just JUBILEE, but many, many, many other companies in in Zambia. The way we reacted showed our our team's ability to secure and and and overcome this severe challenge.

25:34 We implemented me immediately a private power agreement from a private company that was actually owned through a European shareholder to start supplying us a power to at least operate in part our refinery in in Zambia. Unfortunately, even that proved to be a challenge because the the the single power supply company is reliant on the national grid to be stable in its area to allow it to wield its power. We had to adjust again as many Zambian companies had to to rather enter into what we call a distributed private power offtake agreement, Basically, meaning that we are not contracted to any single power generating company, but instead through a power trading firm, we are buying electricity from a multitude of power companies.

26:30 So we're not exposed to a single power generation company and its reliability or its ability to have its power connect to the Zambian network. It's proven to be very successful. It's a trend that has taken, that's grown significantly in Zambia where companies have moved to this distributor type agreement, a very progressive law and and brilliant how Zambia had reacted so rapidly to allow for such a privatization of power supply and network access

27:03 to address the crisis that we had faced. That led to us to be able to recommence operations again during the second part of February for our Rowan plant and then to make up to try and make up of this significant time lost for the Rowan plant, which is still a fundamental deliverer of concentrate to Sable, we elected to move Rowan onto high grade ROM because we were able to secure this high grade ROM. And, you know, instead of processing a north call of 7% copper average feed, we moved that up to processing a 1.6% copper. We had to adjust the recipe. It's not something you just switch off and on because you're taking a plant designed for tailings and rock, and you're taking that plant to run exclusively on rock, which means your chemical balance, your water balance, your mechanical flow has to adjust, and that's what we have stepped Rowan through.

28:01 We have taken the decision that will provide all the impact and how that now impacts our forecasts after running for a minimum period of six weeks on rock alone through Roan to give us the confidence to give numbers that are defendable and supported by actual delivery of our performance to give those guidances through. If we then step into our Sable area where we have our Mounkoy and GROUP PLC project. Mounkoy has been a a brilliant project for us to get involved in. We will no doubt update the market on its resource drilling program that is on the go and how we're stepping that up. But for a a mining project to a book by at $1,500,000 and be mining at north of 75,000 tonnes a month out of the mine. It gives you a sense of of what a great deal that has been for us, and that's before we start processing the low grade material on-site.

29:05 During this interim phase, only a high grade portion, as we discussed, of Monkoe is sent directly to Sable. It's a modest tonnage. It ranges from five and a half, and we're gonna expand that up to north of 15,000 tonnes per month of this high grade ROM going straight into Sable. And project g will follow Mongkawi. Drilling drilling program has indicated that, yes, there is potential that this is not just an open pit. There might be more below that. But we'll bring those results out as they are independently verified for both those projects. And that has driven and confirmed our decision to pursue more of these opportunities before we educate the market on the ability to process these reefs very effectively and the number of these opportunities that exists in Zambia. JUBILEE is a great brand that

29:59 attracts people who sit with these type of resources who are unable to capitalize or develop them, and JUBILEE is able to attract interest from these parties to us. Moving straight on to where are we off to in Zambia? Where are we off to in Zambia? Just maybe to show you again the picture we just quickly jumped over. It just basically, again, is the example of the actual road infrastructure. That's a brand new road developed and built by JUBILEE to connect Mounkoyo to Sable Refinery, a 51 kilometer piece of road that actually connects the two facilities, just as an example of a kind of capital and investment that drives such a project.

30:53 What is we're trying to achieve in Zambia? I think we touched on on this quite a bit. Of course, is getting Sable dedicated to its mining ventures that brings in its ROM. We've got two under the belt. We look to expand that to add a couple of additional projects to that. Sable's expansion, which will end up depending on the grade you feed into this refinery, will be anywhere from 14 to 16,000 tonnes per of copper per annum, comes in as the anchor for those for those investments. Rowan, on the other side, is an entity that is dedicated towards its run of mine and its waste processing.

31:38 And in time, as Sable's capacity is full, it means Rowan's production is in addition to Sable's capacity. Our waste a large waste rock project, no doubt this trial of 10,000,000 tons that is being run on our behalf and paid for by an external company and and and provides great revenue for such a trial to to JUBILEE is that final evaluation on the commercial and the processing detail of that project. Very exciting project. It's something that we are pursuing very keenly on that project. And if you look at the size of that project and and what a 10,000,000 ton trade is valued at, that that is money being paid for that 10,000,000 tons, it gives you a sense of how other companies are valuing that large waste project in Zambia.

32:44 South Africa, where we are in South Africa. Johnny spoke of the growth. Johnny spoke of how that chrome tonnes have increased over the past year and the sheer capacity. We've established a capitalization that's come to an end in South Africa, and now we're at a point where the return of that capital is expected through a combination of the tonnes that's been delivered, the team has shown that it can operate at Target together with the market appreciating quite nicely in Chrome and also a slight appreciation in PGM prices coming at a very nice time when we are producing such high volumes. Of course, at the moment, it is obvious that as we expand our chrome, we have a disparity between our chrome capacity and our PGM refining capacity.

33:38 Our PGM refining capacity is smaller than the amount of PGMs that is produced from the recovery of chrome, and therefore, the stockpiled tailings of PGMs are growing versus our capacity to process at our Newby PGM plant. As communicated before, we do we are not looking to build or capitalize another PGM facility. But instead, what we are looking and as supported by the fact that we remain very profitable on our PGMs is to enter into potential joint ventures with companies who have spare capacity or additional PGM capacity to utilize that capacity to reduce our ballooning stock of PGMs at surface after our Chrome processing.

34:30 In the actual numbers we've discussed, we are processing at a at a rate that suggests we will far exceed our guidance in Chrome. Our margin in Chrome, as we explained, is two components. There's the fixed contracts where we're processing Chrome at a fixed margin, as we've told the market before, ranging from between 4 to $6 a ton. And and all our additional expansion is actually from chrome from run of mine we buy, chrome we produce and sell to the market, and therefore, margins are higher. And as the chrome price appreciates, that margin appreciates along with the higher chrome price. PGMs, as we showed in our results, remain very profitable, because it benefits from the fact that the chrome units have covered the cost of transport, of processing, of extracting chrome, and the smaller volume that remains that contains the PGMs is then fed into our platinum group metals plant.

35:34 And with rhodium appreciating quite strongly during this past six months, it no doubt points towards a better basket price for PGMs, and that benefits our Indioli plant significantly going through. And that summarizes, in short, who we are, where we are, and and what we've achieved. Just reflecting on what South Africa's growth has brought significant growth, spot on target as we told the market we would deliver, And, you know, we can't control market metal prices, but certainly look forward to benefit from the current metal prices that have appreciated so nicely over the past three three months. On the copper side, where we've come to, we've addressed the power crisis very effectively. We thought we did with our first power agreement.

36:25 We had to very quickly adjust to a a new distributed power agreement and have had very little power challenges since. In fact, following the heavy rain season that's now coming to an end in Zambia, the general power crisis in Zambia has now also been averted as most of electricity in Zambia is generated from hydropower in Zambia. On our on our on our facilities, we're in a fortunate position to have capitalized and operating Rowan concentrator and a operating Sable refining with great assets to feed into these refining and concentrator assets.

37:11 Yes. We have faced challenges. Yes. We have fallen behind our initial expansion targets because of those challenges, but we've come out the other side with a better power agreement than what we had before the crisis. We've come out the other side with better high grade feed than what we initially had targeted for Rowan, and we have a great opportunity in Munkoya and project g mining. Tony, I think at the conclusion of that, we will step into the questions. Now excuse me. Now I just point out that we we didn't update the guidance at the half year lease because of the the issues in Zambia.

37:58 What we have announced is that we will give a an an update on South Africa and the PGMs and Chrome sort of the middle of April, and we're waiting till the end of April to give an update on Zambia and Chrome just to make sure that everything is working as it should and in a sustainable fashion. Correct. So we can't really answer any specific questions on Zambia until we've we've actually got the update done. Leon, Johnny, that's great. If I may just jump back in there, and thank you very much indeed for your presentation this morning. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the q and a tab that's situated on the right hand corner of your screen. But just while the team take a few moments to review those questions that have been submitted already, I'd just like to remind you that a recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published Q and A can all be accessed via your investor dashboards.

38:54 Leon, Johnny, as you can see there, we have received a number of pre submitted questions and a number of questions that have come in throughout your presentation this morning as well. Guys, given the significant attendance on today's call, you may not be able to address them all, but of course, review all the questions after today's event. But for now, Leon, Johnny, if I may hand back to you just to read out those questions and give your responses where it's appropriate to do so. And if I pick up from you at the end, that'd be great. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you. I think just before we get to the order of the questions, we've just there's a few questions following this morning's announcement that we just address those, and then we can move on to the actually order of the questions we've received. And and two questions on this morning's announcement. The first asking around the statement of roughly $6,700,000 of the value of the contract and what is the margin on that value.

39:48 Just to explain the contract, the margin is the full $6,700,000. It is the purchase of the material. We have no incurred cost of loading or or trucking or transporting. Our duty stops at ensuring that the reclamation of the material is done safely and orderly. The material, 10,000,000 tons, which is a small pocket within this vast material we have selected where the loading should take place for our definition and complementing further our definition of that material. You know, the concept there's a concept of cherry picking.

40:34 It's physically impossible. It's not a concept that, in fact, as a mining or or or engineering is even conceptually possible when you have such a vast mountain of material. You certainly can't go down 40 meters and go cherry pick a rock. You are loading rock that is accessible as we dictate to add to our definition of that rock

41:00 stockpile. I hope that clarifies better how it is done under this agreement. The the monthly payments that is referred to, that is purely linked to the amount of trucks we allow to be removed safely. It's in the interest of the party that we're dealing with that this contract be executed as rapidly as possible with a maximum period of roughly fourteen months. We expect it to be done much, much faster of on the processing of this material. Then stepping into the actual questions, and and I might just hand some of them over to Johnny, and and between the two of us, we'll we'll address them. The first question that we received well, the first group of questions that we received, and maybe I can assume they've now been addressed, speaks to why our profit's lower despite the growth in sales.

41:55 I think it's fair to say that Johnny has addressed that quite accurately simply relating between revenue growth driven by growth of amount of material and metal sold and profits lower because of a absolute plummet in the chrome price of nearly 45%, which has since recovered and since the majority of revenue is in fact chrome. The the second question is when will the large capital amounts invested and the increase in turnover start bearing fruit in terms of profitability? Now as I pointed out a short time ago, there was no or very little CapEx in PGMs and chrome in the six months, and you can see the increase in turnover of 75% in crown.

42:52 So that shows that capital investors a capital investor does pay dividends, but it just takes a bit of a time lag. And we hope the same will apply in copper, but not just yet. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. Maybe question three for you, Johnny, as well as around the financing cost, and and at what stage will the financing cost actually be reduced? Yes. Well, financing cost is something very dear to my heart as I'm a sad fellow. And we obviously have very good working relationships with our banks and our major investors. We're always looking for ways of finding cheaper finance.

43:39 We're always looking for new projects to find better ways of financing them rather than I think, historically, there's been a tendency to have short term finance looking after long term invest investments. And what I'm trying to do is to get more long term finance, which is much more appropriate for long term investments. So I think through time, we'll see a a change in the the funding that we have as a company as a whole. Excellent. Then jumping into some of the operational questions. Could you please ex expand on the Chrome size of the business, how the contracts work, and how does this translate into margin? I think, again, we've addressed that.

44:26 And if you look at our numbers, we are moving towards an approximate fifty-fifty split between fixed term contracts, which is a fixed margin ranging between, as we said, dollars 4 up to $6 per ton. And then the remainder, nearly half and slow and slowly starting to go beyond half as we expand is material which we buy in ROM, process and sell chrome. That margin is directly related to the to the to to the Chrome prices. And as you can expect, as we buy in more Rome and sell concentrate rather than simply receive a fixed margin, our revenue will escalate sharply with that increase in buying and selling of the chrome concentrate.

45:15 And that margin, as our numbers show, is anywhere from 11 up to 15 and and even as high as seventeen, eighteen percent, which is typical for those processes. And and, again, the question five, which speaks of the full economic benefit of increased Chrome production is not yet fully evident because, of course, that we don't yet or we have not as yet expanded our platinum group metals refining capacity to take up all of that additional PGMs. That is a very good point and true. For now, our results and the capital we've invested into the expansion of the GROUP plants reflect the increase in revenue from GROUP It doesn't yet reflect the increase in revenue from PGMs or platinum group metals.

46:06 That has holds the potential to be entering into joint ventures with capacity that is available in the PGM space. And fortunately, there are such capacities available in the PGM space. Again, question six speaks of mentioning under the Sunday a Sunday roast interview at some stage that, we would look at pursuing PGM joint ventures, to process the stockpiled material. And the question asks, at what value does the PGM basket price actually make such a joint venture viable? The simple answer is is if you look at our numbers, PGMs are profitable even at current low basket prices, and therefore, such a joint venture would be profitable even at current levels of of PGM prices. So it would be our interest if we were able to secure such a joint venture.

47:13 A quest a further question is around copper margins. Why have they done why have they gone down, and and when will they recover? The the the copper margin purely related to two events. One, power outage. We had ramped up, fully invested into the working capital, employed workforces, stocked up with chemicals, commissioned the facility, ramped it up, incurred that cost at full ramp up stage, but not producing copper because we had to bring that facility back down during the power crisis period. The next question speaks of what is our percentage discount to LME copper prices that we secure.

48:05 As we discussed, we produce two products. We produce a copper concentrate, mainly called a copper sulfide concentrate or an insoluble copper, which means it does not leach to produce a cathode, and then we produce copper cathode. Copper cathode, we get full LME because it's a it's a a grade, high high quality copper cathode that we produce. Copper concentrates are sold in the market for absolutely the typical market prices, and copper sulfide concentrates, depending on their copper grade, ranges from low seventies to a high 70% of LME that such a concentrate secures in the market. The next question speaks to Rowan's capacity, which there are numbers ranging from 45 to 70,000 tons. And maybe just to explain, Rowan is a circuit that contains multiple processes, which you can either run next to one another or in series. So they either are cumulative in their capacity or they process and feed one another as well as you either process tailings, the sand, or the rock, or the combination of the two. So depending which recipe you select.

49:20 If you process pure rock, what we are targeting under our current strategy to process pure rock, as we've said last year, we're targeting to reach north of that 40,000 tons of material per month being processed through Rowan at that 1.6% copper input grade. On Moncoya, the next question speaks of our Moncoya project, which currently is being expanded and drilled. It speaks of the grade that often we refer to 3%, which is the initial grade that we brought in. And at the moment, we're speaking of exceeding 2%. And as we explained earlier, depending on the current development of the current purchase they're currently stripping before the project is further expanded, that grade will vary between two and a halfs up to exceeding three.

50:12 And as that definition of resource is being concluded. The next question speaks of project g, where we have originally discussed that as when we secured this project, we, in fact, mined a sample of material. We processed that on an on-site facility, which we had slightly renewed to produce a concentrate to bring into Sable to ensure the Sable refinery is suitable and that our commercial and technical numbers are verified. That actually has happened during the month of February. On the back of that, it motivated for the complete drilling of that project, which currently is underway, to then complete the design of that large pit to commence operations on a sustainable basis in the coming months.

51:09 The the next question speaks of whether we've considered drilling these pits to determine whether below the actual initial layer of copper, whether there might be a sulfide or copper vein running below the pit. The short answer is yes. We absolutely have considered that and definitely forms part of our drilling program as is showing that those potentials. The next question speaks of in or mainly Zambia of whether Zambia holds any spare refining capacities that could be either required or partnered with in some way to take up some of our copper as we expand both to fill Sable and then, of course, to take up Rowan.

51:58 The short answer is yes. There are several refineries in Zambia that have spare capacity that could offer that partnership, and it's something we'll look at and then continuously look at, whether acquisition, partnership, or own build is the right answer for Zambia. And it's often dictated to by the availability of infrastructure, such as power and roads to that refinery. Delays on Sable upgrade. Sable upgrade is still targeted to be completed by q four of two thousand twenty five financial year sorry, calendar year. And maybe that's where the confusion comes from. It's still on its target that we are pursuing. The re the next question speaks of cobalt with the recent jump in cobalt prices, which we all saw, whether it might be worthwhile to restart our cobalt circuit at Sable.

52:51 We have, for now, decided not to pursue that until we see whether the cobalt price is sustainably up or is it simply a reaction to the various threats that happen in the DRC and whether that cobalt price will simply sharply retract if those that crisis is resolved. And that's the review we are taking. But it is correct that cobalt that we are able and do have a cobalt recovery circuit at Sable refinery. The next two questions both speak of our copper production profile and looking forward for the next two quarters in the next twelve months and when do we reach our various targets. And as Johnny alluded to, we will bring the copper forecast out by end of this month on the back of Rowan's successful operation on its current ore, which will then give us the confidence to bring out that update.

53:52 We certainly look forward to bring out those copper guidance numbers for everybody that is looking forward to that, including ourselves. There's a a a technical question around Droslovka. Droslovka and and and it is and and and what is happening under that partnership. Just to explain for those who might not recall the name, This is references to a specific chemical that we look to develop in partnership to extract more of this withered copper at our mining operations. That project is certainly still part of our profile as backed by the fact that we have both Mogoyo and project g developing to the position where Mogoyo is sitting with north of a million tons of copper material that will be processed on-site.

54:45 And what we look to that technique is a chemical that will allow us to not only dissolve the traditional copper that normally would dissolve into acid, but also go after some of this transitional copper that normally does not react to that process. And that'll be part of the end of April update in any event. There's then a question around IRH and our large waste project and why is this deal off is the question. Basically, what where we've come to under the current large waste rock project and information from our due diligences is that that agreement we have allowed to lapse to put us in a position where we can now be more flexible in how we negotiate partnership on the back of all of this information that's come out from our due diligence and especially from the information that will be coming out of the current contract we announced this morning where the benefit of that current contract spotting a question is the fact that we are now able to profile not only a larger portion of that dump versus what we have sampled, but also we are able to set a baseline on copper extraction and recovery if the traditional process is to be followed on that material so that the so the techniques we are recommending to apply to that material now has a baseline to compare to if

56:16 we were to simply do what is commonly done to extract copper from both an oxide and a sulfide mineral structure. The last two areas of questions is around Zambia infrastructure and challenges. And, of course, you know, it's a developing economy. It it has challenges as many developing economies have in Africa. The power crisis certainly was brought on by a number of factors mainly due to severe drought in the whole region, not just Zambia, being a hydropower driven electricity profile hit Zambia particularly hard. It has dramatically improved. It is the power crisis improved systematically both from from the legislation, allowing us to buy privately, unlocking our ability to buy power not only from government, but also the fact that the heavy rain season followed, albeit late, has restocked the water resources to allow for the hydropower to ramp up in Zambia. And it is why most industries are now, again, fed, and and their power demands are met in in Zambia.

57:36 No one is just taking that for granted. There are a number of power projects currently being launched in Zambia on further renewable sources. Of course, solar being the obvious power generating potential capacity, and there's a there are a number of solar projects currently under construction to supplement the government's power network in Zambia. The last question is around Rowan. Even now that we've resolved so many of these challenges and and and then came out, you know, the other side is whether, in fact, can Rowan expand? And can it expand to include potential refining instead of selling concentrate? The short answer is yes. If you look at the footprint of Rowan and the and the property that that is accessible to us around Rowan, we have a number of areas to expand in Rowan, and it is a natural drive to take your copper concentrate and and and progress down the refining route, maybe not to cathode initially, maybe just to a precipitant where you're producing copper grades of north of 50% copper when you finally step into whether you plate or don't plate into cathode.

58:51 So in short, yes, there are a number of opportunities to expand Rowan. And then maybe just very briefly if we if we guide through some of the additional questions that we've received, and and, again, we there's no way we'll be able to answer all of them. But David and John and myself will just answer some of the themes that's come through. We've addressed this morning's announcement to explain all the benefits to us, both financially and technical, of this trial and also the indicative value it puts to 10,000,000 tonnes of this very large waste rock project. Now in South Africa, there's a question whether we also are looking to acquire more and more resources in South Africa. I think our our decision at the moment as a company is that now that we've invested the capital in South Africa, we've delivered the growth, is to now complete and ensure the return on that investment is realized for the group.

1:00:10 Of course, there are questions asking group around the investment return in Zambia, the amount of capital we've invested in the acquisition and and and and ramp up of Sable, the construction of Rowan and delivering the Rowan Concentrator and the acquisition of Project Mokoy and Project G. And as we said, now that we've got those facilities, all of them are operating, we certainly look at at those returns to be to be delivered. On capacity on on on on PGMs, our guidance of thirty six thirty six thousand ounces. Again, when you speak of processing capacity, there's no there's no single number that exists. It's impossible in science.

1:01:01 What you are referring to is for the ore type and the recoverability of that ore type. What is the capacity on that ore type that you can produce. It's a mechanical process, and therefore, there's a mechanical limit of flow, and then you apply chemistry and recovery to it. So in Jorni's capacity, it can range from 36,000 ounces as high as 44,000 ounces depending on the type of material that processes through it. There's a question around Mufuleera Slack project. And, again, as we've said in the last announcement, Mufuleera Slack project was subject to a to a tender process run through what they call a PPP, a private public participative process.

1:01:54 That award was made to JUBILEE, and the company who owns the Mufluru slag project then is required to confirm the commercial terms of that Mufluda Slack project. What complicated that decision making was during this process, Mopani has been sold to new investors, and it's that process that has delayed the Mopani entity of providing the commercial terms of that project. Just a last question before the rest. We'll we'll try and answer the rest through a written responses is there's a question around the copper market.

1:02:42 What what are we seeing in the copper market? We've spoken about the chrome market. To understand the chrome market, when I when I still understand the stainless steel market. Stainless steel is the end product, and the word stainless is coming from it comes from chrome that makes stainless stainless. So to understand the stainless market, which is normally a direct indicator of world economic growth as as in everything that shines, metallic is stainless steel, and you can imagine how broad those uses are. So the chrome demand is driven by stainless steel demand, which is driven mainly by China, which has shown a steady growth in stainless steel, which has driven the crow the chrome market and the growth in the chrome market. 80% of the world's chrome is sourced out of South Africa, so it's a good hedge on South Africa's own challenges as the world has to find their chrome in South Africa.

1:03:37 On copper, the copper price has appreciated quite nicely over the past couple of months driven by a number of factors, mainly driven by the difficulty on the supply side of copper. We have you know, in South America and Chile, you face the challenge of water being such a dry desert in Chile to sustain copper production. You have the challenges in the DRC, and you've had the challenges in Zambia to produce copper. And, of course, a new copper mine takes years to develop, and that is driving the view that the the disparity between demand and supply will only grow, giving further support to the copper prices.

1:04:27 Leon, Johnny, perhaps if I may just jump back in there. Thank you very much indeed for addressing all of those questions that that came came in. And, of course, we will make all of the questions available to you after the presentation to add any additional responses, of course, where it's appropriate to do so. But, Leon, perhaps now, just before really just looking to redirect those on the call to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company. If I could please just ask you for a few closing comments just to wrap up with, that'd be great. Thank you. Yes. Certainly. Thank you again, everybody, for taking the time to listen to us, to go through the numbers, and maybe just, you know, just two key elements out of everything that's been discussed. If you look at JUBILEE on the one side, a South African business that that's performing exceptionally well, positioned brilliantly to benefit from any response upwards in the metal prices with a an expanded operating footprint, capitalization coming to the end of its cycle, now looking to make and offer returns from that investment.

1:05:28 In Zambia, a copper side of the business that has faced challenges, that's come and addressed these challenges and is now positioned to make to actually benefit from the capital investment with its operating facilities commissioned and operating and and delivering copper. So you have two sides of a group. You have a copper showing and with all the potential to grow its copper production on the back of the investment and the hard work that has been invested into those assets, and that's what we look to deliver in the in the coming period. Perfect, Leon. That's great. And thank you once again for updating investors this morning. Could I please ask investors not to close this session?

1:06:21 She'll now be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the management team can really better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of JUBILEE METALS GROUP PLC, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. So good afternoon to you all.