3/19/2020

speaker
Emma Culver
Investor Relations and Communications Manager

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the Bannerman Energy quarterly update for June 2025. Thank you all for joining us today. I'm Emma Culver, Investor Relations and Communications Manager at Bannerman and we thank you for joining in an afternoon webinar this quarter round. Our Executive Chairman Brandon Munro has just landed in Namibia and we are going to be joined by our CEO Gavin Chamberlain in Cape Town. uh just to make way for those time zones we are on an afternoon but we will go back to a morning uh quarterly update uh next quarter i as i said we are joined by gavin and brandon today so brandon will run us through the highlights from the quarter gavin will be with us to take us through all the progress on site we'll then go to q a if you do have questions please use the q a tab at the bottom of your screen and pop in your questions or in the chat box and we will get to them once we get to questions and answers. So, Brandon, for now, I'm going to hand over to you. Thank you all for joining us.

speaker
Brandon Munro
Executive Chairman

Thanks, Em, and thanks to everyone out there. It's an absolute pleasure joining you from Namibia. I got to Bintuk yesterday and I'll be heading down to Swakopmund this afternoon, on site tomorrow, in fact, to see firsthand all of the fabulous work that Gavin and his team have been undertaking over the last Nine months or so. So very excited to be here and Namibia is still absolutely beautiful and functioning well and people are friendly. So I'd really commend it to everyone out there as a tourist destination for amazing landscapes, world-class wildlife and really interesting cultures and people. So it's been a really strong quarter that we've had at Bannerman Energy. We've continued with our core strategy and it's been amplified by a few points that we'll talk to now. So as you would have seen from the quarterly, we are extremely proud as an entire company of our safety record. We walked the talk, Werner Evert, our managing director in country, is known very well in Namibia for having the most sophisticated and passionate outlook and approach to safety. For example, a couple of years ago, he was tasked by the Namibian Chamber of Mines with leading a national safety review. And it shows. And I think a highlight of that is this figure here, a million LTI-free man hours. Now, LTI means lost time injury. And that's a very standard industry way of measuring a safety record. And obviously, if you've got worse injuries, they count as an LTI. So it's really a strong indicator that for 15 years now, we've had such a strong safety culture. That's important as you go into construction because You don't want to start losing the confidence of financiers, the confidence of your team, of contractors, of government. A safety inspection on a mine site or an incident inspection by the local government authorities can really slow you down. So it's not just the right thing to do and the right way to operate, but from an investor point of view, you want to see that as a really strong indicator of the exemplary risk management that we have in the company across the whole construction and operational gambit. So as Gavin will talk to, the early works are going really well. Construction activities, they're tracking, they're on time, they're on budget. We haven't had any issues. We fully recovered from the little bit of time that we lost during the heavy rain event. We've really amplified the corporate strategy and our flexibility through a well-timed capital raising that raised a gross proceeds of $85 million. It complemented an already strong cash balance that we had but it just means we're going into this next period both on the ground and in our financing and marketing work streams in a strong negotiating position with a position of real confidence we've got 140 million in cash and cash equivalents and that enables gavin and the team to continue moving forward towards what we still are seeing as a strengthening uranium market whilst we can do what we need to do corporately from that position of strength. So Gavin will talk to what we've still got coming up, but our approach remains be prepared, continue judiciously moving the project forward with a stage gate approach, And be patient. And so in the context of that, you can see, despite having a big cash balance, our contractual commitments on site are still modest at $23 million. And we'll continue progressively moving forward in that way as we see the sector strengthen and as the uranium market conditions start to present themselves in a more favourable way. And as we highlighted, there has been really pleasing progress on financing and offtake discussions. And they've really started to pick up. Both the utility sector and other industry players are taking note of all of the things that investors have been aware of for quite some time. And we are finally starting to see more consistent contracting and greater levels of engagement, which have really fed those workstreams. So that's the quarterly highlights. The real action has been on the ground. I'm pleased to report that there hasn't been any excitement at a corporate level. We're just steady as she goes. We're pursuing and executing on our clearly defined corporate strategy of constructing a tango, but at a time and on conditions of our choosing to best maximise shareholder returns whilst minimising risk. And I think in the mining sector in particular, having that focus on risk, executional excellence, thinking about risk from both a corporate perspective and an operational construction perspective as well, is earning us a lot of respect. And that is the promise that we'll continue to deliver on over the next several years. I think we can move forward, Em.

speaker
Emma Culver
Investor Relations and Communications Manager

Yeah, thank you, Brandon. And we will shift into all of the highlights from the project and we'll hand over to Gavin. Thank you so much, Gavin.

speaker
Gavin Chamberlain
CEO

Thanks, Em. Morning all. Yeah, Brandon obviously always gives me the fun bit to do. So building a project obviously is the most exciting thing you can ever do. So it really gives me great pleasure to share some of the highlights from the month. So the photograph that you're looking at there really combines progress and safety in one photograph. So the red and white poles, as you can see, are effectively height restrictors to make sure that we don't have any incidents when we drive underneath power lines. And those were all erected before we actually brought the construction power grid online. And that is now online and running. So really pleasing to see the progress on site. And then can we move on? I think a lot of you have heard me talk about the heap leach pad and how big it is. And some of you may have been lucky enough to go to site. And if you did, you would have visited that little small square on the right-hand side of the photograph, which is the construction yard. If you look at the earthworks, For the heap leach pad, it runs from that line that Emma's showing with her arrow at the moment, one kilometre into the photograph. So that heap leach pad, that's the full extent of the heap leach pad. So one kilometre by 300 wide, and obviously a key component of our bulk earthworks contract. And it's really good to see that we're starting to make good progress on the layer works in this area. And right at the end, at the top end, away from the offices, is the area where we have started the excavation of the leach ponds. another another aspect as well is we originally built this access road and had it up and running last last year already but we identified with the amount of traffic on this road that we needed to widen the access from a safety perspective we took it upon ourselves to do a widening of the c28 with the knowledge of the local roads department and at the moment that is work in progress and really will address any safety concerns that we have with vehicles traveling on the road and vehicles turning off and onto the road. So once again, Werner's attitude towards safety has come through, and we're very pleased with the progress that we've made on this widening of the road access at the entrance to site. And this really just gives you an aerial view to give you an idea of when we finally finish the project. This will be the main area where vehicles park before they move on to the site. And that's a fairly extensive area of of of covered parking area or won't be covered, but effectively the parking area that we will use when we go onto site. So it gives you an idea of how we will control access to site. And there will be a complex of buildings built around this as well to control access. And I think, Em, there may just be one. Here's probably the most important one because this is the slide that shows the progress on the design. So not many people are seeing these slides and obviously are not exposed to what the 3D design means. we made a decision to go with 3D design because it really helps us from an operational readiness perspective. In all of these models, we can do walkthroughs, we can do clash detection, and at the moment we're doing 3D reviews of our models every two weeks. So if you look at the one on the left, you'll see they're slightly different colors to the one on the right. So the one on the left is the dry plant, and that one in particular is the secondary and tertiary crushing building. And there, as you can see, the white color on that diagram indicates areas that are already 100% complete, and we have construction drawings ready for issue to contractors. On the right-hand side, though, you will see that they're slightly less white, and that's the wet plant area where we are currently starting the layout and finalization of the design process. So they're significantly less white than they is on the left-hand side. These sort of This sort of design will also help us moving forward when we go into operations, because we will take the 3D model and turn it into what we call a 7D model, whereby you can actually go into the model in the electronic format. You can pick out a pump, you can click on the pump and the details around what spare parts you need to service the pump. who was the supplier of the pump, what is the process to order a new pump, and also an estimate of the man-hours required to actually fix a pump. So that's the level that we will take the 3D design tool and move it into an operational tool in the future. So whatever work we're doing now will also be fed into the 3D design, which we will then use as part of our operational tools. And I think, Em, on that note, that's really what I wanted to share, and I think we should close for open for questions.

speaker
Emma Culver
Investor Relations and Communications Manager

thanks very much gavin and and brandon for sharing um those details and i think it's uh the the every time i see these models it blows my mind how the progress that that's come along and and gavin i just have one question that i think people will be interested in in terms of the models here is um You know, obviously we've progressively gone through why the approach of starting construction, like the approach of starting construction without the final designs done, what does that enable us to be able to do in terms of advantages of moving a project forward rather than getting forward in the design and then going to construction?

speaker
Gavin Chamberlain
CEO

I think the key issue here is because we're not fully funded is what we wanted to do was carry out the early works in terms of being able to establish ourselves on site. What that does for us is it protects our overall schedule in the future because there's limited design required to do the bulk earthworks and therefore we got in and did the bulk earthworks and then we took a decision Because the dry plant is relatively easy to design, those were the contracts that we placed on suppliers first. We've actually taken the dry plant area and taken it all the way to design with the same intent is that once again, talks about be prepared, be patient strategy. The be prepared here is by having the dry plant now designed, we're in a position to issue contracts where we issue 90% of construction drawings on day one. So what does that do for us? It gives the contractor a huge amount of confidence in what he's going to build. It gives us confidence in terms of the costing and the pricing of the work. And over and above that, it actually really helps us to protect the schedule as much as possible while we wait for FRD. So those are really the main drivers around why we've been doing what we've been doing. And we intend to continue along that process, always being prepared but being patient in the background while we fund portions of work that will help us protect the schedule as much as possible.

speaker
Emma Culver
Investor Relations and Communications Manager

Yeah, great. Thanks so much, Gavin. And I think that's a nice lead into a question that I've received here, which is how far can we get, how far can we continue to get in construction without the FID being finalised? Either Brandon or Gavin, over to you guys on that one.

speaker
Gavin Chamberlain
CEO

Yeah, no problem. So based on the current funds in the bank is we can get all the way through to mid-year next year with the current funds in the bank based on the suite of contracts that we want to now place. Once again, though, is all of those get presented to the board for approval before we move ahead with placing contracts, because we've always said we will stay educated. So we still take a risk driven approach. process into account so maybe let me just explain that a little is i'll go to the board and i'll say i would like to place this contract it's x amount of money that will come out of out of our budget and over and above that is If we do it, this is what the effect or the positive or negative effect on the schedule will be if we do or don't place the contract. So we follow that process on all of the orders to make sure we have tight control on our budget. But effectively, we have sufficient funds. And when I'm talking about mid-year, next year, that's the construction side. And obviously, we have additional funds in the bank that will actually cover overhead past that.

speaker
Emma Culver
Investor Relations and Communications Manager

Great. Thank you. Brandon, one for you is we have a couple of questions here on firstly, why the spot price has been quiet in the past few weeks. And I think another question here in regards to an update on the overall uranium market and how we're looking at decisions and potential offtake partners, how those discussions are going and the market overall.

speaker
Brandon Munro
Executive Chairman

Thanks, Em. So the market overall is still in principle performing exceptionally well. Now, what I mean by that is there's not a week that goes by without really strong positive news about the sector and we gave just a selection of items in our quarterly report by no means a comprehensive report a comprehensive summary just because there is so much good news going on and it's really a daily check to see all of the positive developments that are accumulating into this really strong fundamentals Now, we're not quite seeing that in terms of price. We're certainly not seeing it in the spot price. We're not seeing it in equities. But where it is starting to show itself is slightly more interest from utilities than we were expecting initially. given that we're going into a quiet seasonal time in this sector. So we have seen a bit of an uptick in utility contracting or RFPs and interest from utilities. We weren't expecting that necessarily. We were hoping we'd see it, but we weren't prepared to bank on it. And that's a good sign for when we come out of the quiet period, which usually starts in September. So for people new to this sector, Going into July and then certainly August is very, very quiet in the uranium market because utility fuel buyers either go on holiday or they take the opportunity to do seasonal activities that require focus away from procurement. And that's a very well-known function in this sector. And so because of that, the traders do the same thing and they're just in very little activity. That's helping to explain after an initial burst of volume as a result of Sprott Physical Uranium Trust executing on its capital raising and also probably a little bit of activity around and in anticipation of that, it's now quietened off. Some of the dynamics that we saw earlier in the year appear to be representing themselves and that is not a lot of demand because there's going into a quiet period and people would rather see how the next four weeks develop before the market starts picking up and still consistent dribbles of supply coming out of markets that do sell their product into the spot market. And it's not something that concerns us. I know that for investors, it's really important to watch the spot market because it's a regular metric that you can follow. But from our perspective, because we're looking at the more fundamental issues of under what circumstances and how do we optimize and build our contract book? We're not concerned at all to see spot prices where they are. Our real focus will be on how to spot and long-term contracting conditions develop from September when we would expect to see increased market activity.

speaker
Emma Culver
Investor Relations and Communications Manager

Great. Thanks, Brandon. I think that leads into another question that we have here, which is, you know, how are we feeling about that term market as it has been rock solid at 80 for over a year? And are utilities feeling pressure to contract at higher prices?

speaker
Brandon Munro
Executive Chairman

The baseline at 80 is really helpful because it's helped to create amongst the sector, just this understanding that 80 is at the very least the new normal. And so even when spot price drops as it has to a level below the long-term contract price, the sector generally realises that that's not a sustainable spot price. Now it doesn't trigger them to come into the market and start buying, as I just said, but it does help in the discussions that we're having with utilities, as opposed to a year ago when 80 was a relatively new spot price and it had not allowed time to stabilise and form a base. Utilities are very good at playing their cards close to the chest and What I would point to to answer that question was we were all at the World Nuclear, let me get this right, the WNFM. Thank you. Thank you. That's one for the Monty Python fans out there. The World Nuclear Fuel Market Conference in Sydney last month. And what we saw that really got people to sit up and take notice was what appears to be the new Chinese attitude towards long-term prices and price acceptance. And there were comments made on stage by the world's largest or the China's largest utility, followed soon after that by a publicly announced contract by CGN Mining in Hong Kong. Now, that is a strong precursor from the largest growing market in our sector that $80 just isn't going to do it. And we're seeing that because we're not seeing any new greenfields production or companies commit to new greenfields production. And at the same time, the production that is out there by and large, is struggling for one reason or another. So I think the utilities are starting to see the world the way that we do. They're starting to understand that $80 is getting them perhaps a little bit of volume, but it's not getting them a lot of volume. And the moment that they start to understand compete with other utilities in the long-term contracting market, and certainly if they start to think about rebuilding their stockpiles to give them some forward protection against the supply and demand deficit that they should all understand is coming, they'll see that $80 is just not going to get them volume and they will have to start moving up. And they're the types of dynamics that we expect to build bulk and scale and into our contract portfolio over the next year or so.

speaker
Emma Culver
Investor Relations and Communications Manager

Great. Thanks, Brandon. A question for you, Gavin. What strategies have we included in the plans to deal with water shortages, such as those that we have seen earlier in the year with other uranium miners and last year? What have we done at Batterman to mitigate that risk?

speaker
Gavin Chamberlain
CEO

Thanks, Ian. Yeah, so our strategy hasn't really changed. So what we did is when the day after we got the mining license, we placed the contract to put in the construction water pipeline. And what we did is we also built sufficient storage for 10 days on site. So up until now, the 10-day storage has more than protected us and we haven't had to stop construction once. However, for the operational side of things is we are still engaged with discussions with NAMWater, but we do have an MOU from them that guarantees us we'll get the supply of water we require. However, we haven't just taken them on their word. We've done our own sort of investigation with Orana to find out how much water they are selling to NAMWater and how much water NAMWater is telling us they are selling. And there is an alignment between those numbers. So right now, our understanding is that the volume of water is sufficient for all three of the operational mines, ourselves and the two municipalities, without any changes to the current plot. There was an issue earlier in the year with the actual distribution of the water. So the mines were battling to get the water from the desalination plant to the mines. That was fixed up in October last year already with a new line that was upgraded. And since then, we haven't seen any announcements around delays. And our strategy for operations will also be based on a 10-day operation. at least in terms of storage. So we've did our mass over the last five years and we've actually checked the amount of stoppages we've had and we are comfortable that the 10-day storage that we've allowed for in our design will be sufficient.

speaker
Emma Culver
Investor Relations and Communications Manager

And Gavin, a question here is, and I think you're perfectly placed for this, is the statement mining is hard and we've seen other peers have challenges and granted they are restarts, not greenfields projects. However, why are we seeing so many production hiccups and what's gonna stop that happening at Bannerman? Or how can we help to mitigate any of those risks?

speaker
Gavin Chamberlain
CEO

So I didn't get the gray hair for nothing. Mining is difficult. Projects is difficult. I think Brandon maybe touched on it really early in this discussion as well is what we're trying to do is we're trying to bring years of experience. So I've got a really experienced team around me. And what we're trying to do together is try and foresee anything that could go wrong on the project and put steps in place to make sure that if it did happen to us, that we've got a plan in place that can react to it extremely quickly. So I think it's really about being risk focused and being aware of what could derail us in the future. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have some pretty hairy moments in the future. However, I'm even more confident that the team around me will be able to get us through them and we shouldn't have any changes in terms of our delivery. So I think we've got a focused team. I don't think I know we've got a focused team. The wood team has been with us for a number of years, so they know how we think. And my own team is really experienced, not only in mining projects, but mining projects in Namibia. So I think we understand the environment and we understand the risks. And the whole thing is never relax. Never think you've got everything under control because that's when you're going to get wet. So at the end of the day is we keep, we've got a focus team that's risk focused and we understand the risks related to mining projects.

speaker
Brandon Munro
Executive Chairman

And I think- Emma, I'll just jump in there. Thanks, Gavin. That was excellent. And I'll just jump in. Investors who might not be deep in mining should understand that Etango is a very simple project technically. And when you look across the whole range of existing uranium mines and prospective uranium mines, we will actually be the simplest out there. It's open pit, the ore body's at surface, so we start mining from surface. It's got a low stripping ratio. It's entirely conventional. The scale that we're doing is very normal for Southern Africa. We've got multiple contracting parties wanting to do the mining with their existing fleets. And then when it comes to the crushing circuit, the dry plant, which means the plant that crushes the ore before it starts getting chemicals applied to it, it's simply a primary crusher, secondary crusher, tertiary crusher. There's no mill. There's no additional complex equipment. That just goes onto the heap leach. Simple, fast leaching with simple reagents, sulfuric acid and a little bit of binder and a And then it's into the back end of the plant where the uranium is extracted. It's all proven. And it's a very, very simple flow sheet in a jurisdiction that's well established, well proven. We've got all of the infrastructure around us. There's a deep water port right there. There'll be four mines in Namibia, so regular shipments. The list goes on. I say that for investors because it would be reasonable to compare the risk profile of these more complex operations and deduce that we're going to have that risk profile. And it simply isn't the case. It is a lower risk profile. And as Gavin said, it's one that we are nonetheless taking very seriously and not getting complacent about.

speaker
Emma Culver
Investor Relations and Communications Manager

Thanks, Brandon. And I will come to some questions now that have been asked around FID. So we've obviously completed the recent placement, gives us a nice cash balance now through to be patient, be prepared on that. Brandon, we have targeted FID for 2025. We do have a question here saying the new release doesn't include that. Is there reason behind that and how is that final FID piece coming together? What work streams do we have opened and how is that all progressing?

speaker
Brandon Munro
Executive Chairman

Yeah, so there's no change to our strategy on FID. It is still market conditions permitting. So we do need to see the market develop in September, October, November in the way that we expect for us still to be on track for FID this year. And I think what has changed is with the additional cash buffer that we've got, we are in a position to have more of our cake and eat it in the sense that we've always said that we won't rush FID, but we have our cake and eat it because we'll still be moving forward on that construction timeline, as Gavin said. if we do need to take more time because the market isn't developing quickly enough, or if we feel that even with the market developing, it's not fully responding to the potential that we think. And again, I just remind shareholders and investors, we've been at this project for a long time. We've been methodical and patient in the way that we've developed so far, now is not the time for our board or our management team to suddenly get a rush of blood to the head and force through an FID. And because that's the point when, to a large extent, you end up locking in shareholder return over the next four or five years. So we will be working very careful in the way that we execute on an FID. As I said before, we've progressed on all of those work streams in a really pleasing way. And I feel like we're poised to take action when it suits us. And that's largely related to the uranium market and equity markets appreciation for where this sector is at.

speaker
Emma Culver
Investor Relations and Communications Manager

Great. Thank you, Brandon. Thank you, Gavin. I think we have been able to go through most of those questions. I guess, is it, well, yeah, you've answered the question in terms of would we FIG at these current prices and what else are we waiting for? And I think you've nicely summed that up there, Brandon. Any final comments from either of you, Brandon or Gavin, before we close off?

speaker
Brandon Munro
Executive Chairman

myself apart from it's really pleasing to be able to have a positive quarterly and we hope to continue this tradition going forward great great and i'm just excited to be on site tomorrow and i look forward to reporting back to investors my own thoughts on the project

speaker
Emma Culver
Investor Relations and Communications Manager

Thank you, Brandon. Thank you, Gavin. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. I will share our latest project video now for those of you that want to stay on for the next few minutes to see all the drone footage of the construction on site. And if you have any questions, please reach out to me at any time. Thank you all very much.

speaker
Brandon Munro
Executive Chairman

Thank you.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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