Eramet Sa Unsp/Adr

Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us for our H1 results. I know it's a busy time for most of you with a lot of half-year results being published today. So thanks for being with us and I'm pleased to present you What we think are very encouraging results versus the situation that we had only six months ago. 2025, as you know, proved to be a challenging year for Eramet in many respects. And in H1, I think we have demonstrated that we brought back the situation under control. And despite challenging events at some of our key operations, and especially in Senegal and in Ouedabé, H1 showed very solid and concrete progress across the group, demonstrating that the management team is fully operational and clearly focused on execution. We deliver stronger operational performance, which translated into a 45% increase in our adjusted EBITDA, our adjusted free cash flow return to positive territory, despite our traditional seasonality in H1. And we have then stabilized our debt. And while further balance sheet strengthening is still needed, the funding plan is progressing according to schedule. So today I will first take you through the main operational and strategic highlights in an introduction. Then I will hand over to our CFO, Simon Henochsberg, who will then present the H1 financial results, the operating performance. Then we'll move to the funding plan, and we'll finish with outlook and guidance. So a few words in introduction. Of course, safety first. It's always our top priority. Our safety results have improved increasingly in the past years at the group level. And we are still improving this year, both on lagging and leading indicators, by the way. The group injury frequency rate Keeps improving. It stands at 0.5 in H1 2026, which is good. However, this positive trend does not diminish the seriousness of the two fatal contractor accidents that we had in Ouedabé in January and in May. And raising the safety standards in Ouedabé is our number one priority as a group. We have a targeted action plan at Weda Bay with a clear focus on operational discipline, leadership, accountability and prevention, especially with our main contractors. As you know, it's a fully contracted mine, so we are dealing with the contractors there and we are pulling every leverage that we have with our partner to change the situation there. In other places the performance is good and we keep the momentum by continuously strengthening all aspects of our safety culture and standards. So, if I come to the operational performance, we showed strong improvement in operational performance, return to adjusted free cash flow breakeven after a big cash consumption last year. And I would like to highlight some of the key milestones that we delivered. The first one is lithium, and we are very proud of it. The lithium business unit reached 90% nameplate capacity in June, in line with schedule, contributing positively both to EBITDA and cash this semester. The manganese ore transport volume increased by 6% in Gabon, greatly helped by the railway, which is now performing much better and which is the result of huge efforts that we have put on it over the last years, both from a managerial and financial point of view. We unfortunately experienced a very negative event at Eramet Grand Côte in Senegal with the fire that we had in February. But thanks to the strong mobilization of the team, we managed to partially restart the plant as soon as April. So overall, our adjusted EBITDA reached 276 million. Up 45% year-over-year, only driven by our intrinsic performance. And the adjusted free cash flow was positive, slightly positive, at 7 million. And this result reflects the first impact of our resolution initiatives on cost, productivity, and the cash discipline applied across the group. The funding plan is on track but its full delivery remains absolutely critical in H2 for the future of the group with a capital increase that has been approved by our HGM in May and that has to take place before the end of the year. And last but not least, we continue to reinforce our ESG position. As you know, Eramet Grande Côte became the first Group side to reach the IRMA 50 performance level, confirming both the quality of the work done locally, but also our commitment to the highest responsible mining standards. More broadly, we are making steady progress across all our Act for Positive Mining pillars with concrete actions on local economic contribution, partnership with host countries, community engagement and decarbonisation. Let me zoom on some of those key achievements. Clearly, a few years ago, we made a very big bet on lithium, building on a first-in-kind DLE plant in the Western world with proprietary technology. and we are happy to show today that it was a good and successful bet. The DLE plant reached 90% of the nameplate capacity in June, only 12 months after 12 months of ramp-up, which confirms the robustness of the technology and the quality of the asset. We are targeting as planned to be at full capacity by the end of the year. Our cash cost is already good and on track to reach our targets. The lithium market proves to be very dynamic, growing faster than expected. We'll come back to that. And thanks to this, Centenario is, as I said, already contributing positively to both EBITDA and free cash flow this semester and will contribute even more for the full year. We are then really confident that with the strong potential of our Salah and our technology, this asset will be a strong contributor to the value creation of the company going forward. In Gabon, the railway performance has improved significantly in H1. It is, as I said, the result of the managerial transformation that we operated over the last two years and a strong investment in the track renewal that is now paying off. The transport capacity increased by 9% over the semester, allowing a 6% increase for Comilogue, Manganese or Flos. This performance of the railway allows us to be confident in our capacity then to progressively get the full potential of the mines at Moranda in the coming years and you know that we have invested We have secured a new financing in CETRAG of 225 million, which will support the next phases of the renovation and capacity expansion of the railway. And last but not least, of course, in Gabon, in July, we signed a memorandum of understanding with the Gabonese authorities, clearing the path forward on the transformation side. And it is a very important step as now we have a common frame and a common roadmap to progress on this critical topic. In Senegal, we faced, unfortunately, a big fire in February in our wet concentration plant. The operations across the site were fully suspended between, in fact, end of March and the end of April. A strong focus was put on reducing costs to the bare minimum to avoid too much losses during that period and until the full recovery. And thanks to the strong mobilization of the team, the production partially restarted at approximately 30% of the capacity at the end of April. And we expect to be back to full production after reconstruction, full production capacity in Q1 2027, restart by the end of the year and full capacity in Q1. The expected full net cash impact is around 45 million after the insurance proceeds, so this is the result of both the losses during that period and also the reconstruction cost. Now, let's turn to the key financial figures. As I said, adjusted EBITDA increased to 276 million. supported by strong intrinsic performance, notably the lithium ramp-up, better manganese ore performance and productivity and procurement gains. This improvement also translated into a positive adjusted cash flow of 7 million, helped by working capital discipline and very strict capex control. The capex are done 53% year-over-year, so significant reduction. These are very encouraging steps that help stabilizing the debt and reduce the leverage to 4.5. This is, of course, encouraging first steps, and we delivered what we planned to deliver in H1. But obviously, further balance sheet strengthening remains necessary. And this is basically what we announced in February with a free pillar. Funding plan on which we are making steady progress. The first pillar and obviously a very important one is this performance improvement and cash generation plan. We strict the control of cost, productivity improvement, and capital expenditure control. As I said, we delivered a strong first half on this front, but we must, of course, maintain this momentum and continue. and we are ahead of the resolution program that was presented to you end of last year. The second pillar, as you know, is a strategic review of selected assets with several monetization options under consideration that are expected to lead to one or more disposals of minority stakes in certain activities by year end. And third, and obviously very important, the proposed 500 million capital increase approved by our shareholders in May. It is targeted to happen in Q4 and it obviously remains a critical component of this funding plan. Of course this plan, so most of it, the second and third pillar are expected to materialize in the second half of the year and these are obviously significant steps of our overall reinforcement and restore of the balance sheet. And of course, last but not least, beyond our short-term operational and financial priorities, we remain fully committed to our long-term sustainability roadmap, Act for Positive Mining. In H1, we continue to make concrete progress across our three ESG pillars. I will give you a few highlights here. So I mentioned already Eramet, Grande Côte, IRMA 50 performance level. An important news since then, Eramet has joined IRMA as a mining sector member. We are now an official member of IRMA. and confirms our commitments to independent, transparent and demanding responsible mining standards. We also continue to demonstrate our local contribution to our host countries with 2.5 billion of economic contribution to those countries last year. And of course, the MOU sign in Gabon that I described earlier is also a strong illustration of our ability to build constructive and long-term and mutually beneficial partnerships with the countries where we operate. I will stop here and then I will hand over to Simon for the presentation of more details of our financial results.

Thank you, Christel. Good morning to everyone. I'll start with our financial results first, and I'll move to our operations afterwards. So as Christel said, we had an overall improving financial performance in H1. Turnover increased by 8% during H1. This is thanks to higher volumes, higher prices, and this despite the weaker US dollar in H1 compared to H1 2025. The adjusted EBITDA, as you know, we adjust with the share of FWDB and we remove SLN as it is fully funded by the French state. The adjusted EBITDA reached 276 million euros, up 45% compared to last year. This positive EBITDA performance combined with lower capex and good cash management allowed us to have a positive free cash flow, adjusted free cash flow for the semester. This is far above the free cash flow that we had last year. Unfortunately, this positive performance on EBITDA and cash does not translate into a better net income group share. The net income reached minus 146 million euros in H1. This is the result of an impairment test that we had to pass on our asset in Senegal. The test was triggered by the fire and it took into account the lower mining reserves as a consequence of the lower structural prices. As a consequence, our shareholder equity decreased while our net debt excluding SLN cash remained stable at 2 billion euros. This led to a net leverage improving to 4.5 times and the gearing which remained stable at 125% as per bank covenants. More details on EBITDA increase. This increase by 45% is driven mainly fully by our intrinsic performance. Two thirds of this intrinsic performance is volumes, thanks to the ramp up of lithium and the good performance in manganese. The rest is driven by all the cost savings that we managed to achieve in the first half and as Christel mentioned we are ahead of our resolution program and this is what allowed us to deliver such a high intrinsic improvement. We had a negative one-off impact of 32 million euros. This is due to to inventory depreciation in Gabon. So we reduced the value of manganese ore finds that we had in inventory. This is due to our revised mining plan and the priority we give to transportation of higher value ore and thus we are slowing the pace of destocking of those finds and this is the reason why we decreased the value in our inventory. The external impact is negative by minus 47 million euros. So we had a positive price effect during the semester, but this price effect is fully offset by the higher cost, higher freight cost, higher inflation, and the weakening US dollar. And we have on top of that a negative impact in Ouedabé with permitting limited to 12 million tons in H1. We maintained strict CAPEX discipline during the semester, with CAPEX reaching 100 million euros, down from 215 last year. This is because, of course, we've completed our investment in lithium, but it's not only this. We've also reduced and deferred some sustaining and de-bottlenecking CAPEX during the semester. So thanks to both of those items, We were able to reduce overall cash capex during the semester by 53%. Regarding net debt, it was stable at 2 billion euros during the semester. This thanks to our break-even free cash flow and this without receiving any dividends from WEDA-B during the semester. On liquidity, the liquidity at the end of June stands at 1.3 billion euros, down from 1.5 billion euros in December. This takes into account the RCF that remains fully drawn. The reduction of liquidity from December to the end of the semester is fully driven by the debt repayments, the sizeable debt repayments that we made during H1. We reimbursed part of our term loan, private placements and bank overdraft and some other debts. As a result, the remaining debt installments in H2 are quite limited and it's the same for 2027 where debt installments are limited with the 2028 being the year where our first bond will mature and where we will pay the last installment of our term loan. I'll move to operations, but first taking a quick look at markets during H1. So overall, we had a favorable price environment. It was offset by the lower, the weaker dollar and the higher freight rates. But overall, we had a positive price impact. In manganese ore, the higher prices is mainly the reflection of the higher freight rates. In manganese alloys, we've seen prices increase due to safeguard measures and CBAM that were introduced in Europe. In lithium, we've seen a price more than doubling compared to the same period last year. This is thanks to the huge demand pool that we see for lithium right now. In nickel, the price is also increasing. This is largely due to the permitting restrictions that we see in Indonesia. And regarding mineral sands, prices have been lower in H1, with some improvement in zircon prices at the end of this semester. and the dollar has weakened significantly compared to H1 2025 with 12 points reaching 1.17 for the semester. On operations, we overall had a good performance with manganese ore and alloys performing well and lithium performing very well. We had those issues, permitting issues in nickel and the fire in Senegal. So more precisely, in manganese ore, we reached 3.2 million tonnes. This is up 6% compared to last year. This is mainly due to the railway performance. In alloys, operations have been going very well. We've increased volumes. In lithium, Christel said it, the ramp-up is going well. It's on schedule, and we reached 90% nameplate capacity. In Ouedabé, we had exhausted our quota in May, so we produced the 12 million tons we could, and the mine has been placed in carry and maintenance since. and Emmanuel Sen. So the HMC production for the semester is a third of what it was last year. This is due to the fire, but we managed to restart partially production at the end of April. So into a bit more details, I'll first cover manganese. So, on manganese ore, the dark blue on this slide, manganese ore, we overall had a stable EBITDA. This is the result of higher volumes, but also this offset by this one-off impact of inventory depreciation because of manganese ore fines. But on the cash side in manganese ore, we moved from a negative free cash flow last year to a highly positive free cash flow this year. This is because this year we had much lower taxes paid, lower working capital requirements, and lower capex. So because of all those reasons, even though EBITDA remains stable, we have significant more free cash flow coming from manganese ore. Regarding alloys, EBITDA increased as well. This is because of... The additional volumes, but offset partly by the fact that manganese alloys prices outside of Europe have been going down, especially in the US. But on the cash side, we moved to negative free cash flow in H1 because of higher inventories starting from quite a low base in H1 2025. Overall, the cash cost for our manganese ore operation has increased due to the dollar depreciation. As you know, our costs in Gabon are pegged to the euro, so we fully take the impact of the dollar depreciation. It moved from 2.3 to 2.4 FOB. The CIF cash costs increased also due to the increase in freight costs, but taking all of this into account, the mine remains firmly into the first part of the cash cost curve. In CETRAG, we keep moving forward with our modernization and securitization program. It's a program we started in 25 that will expand until 2031. As you know, the goal is to have a reliable railway to increase the capacity by 50%. This will allow us to increase also the volume transported for Comilogue at more than 8 million tons. The financing of this program is partly done by a new debt financing that CETRAG was able to secure of 225 million euros plus a component of refinancing of 87 million euros. The remainder of the capex will be financed by the cash flow of CETRAG directly. There is a Gabonese part in this programme as the State of Gabon is in charge of the ground infrastructure and the Gabonese part of the programme is financed by an AFD loan and an EU subsidy. In lithium, so significant change compared to H1 last year. With the successful ramp up and positive prices and cost improvement as well during the ramp up, we were able to first of all have a positive EBITDA. and have a positive free cash flow with positive free cash flow of 32 million euros so this is a major change compared to last year where as you can see we had a negative cash significant negative cash outflow in H1 now we're turning to positive and this is a key difference comparing 26 to 25. This performance in H1 in Centenario The optimized cash cost X work that we target is still between 5.4 and 5.8 thousand dollars per ton. With this cash cost, as you can see on the left-hand side on the cash cost curve, we are firmly into the first quartile of the cash cost curve. This allows us to secure very high margins with current prices. It's also a very high margin business, even with long term prices of $15,000 per ton. And we believe that such a long term price is the minimum necessary to incentivize the massive increase in supply that is needed to keep up with demand growth. It's all the more necessary as we are in a sector that is very capital intensive. So now we fully own a world-class resource that has significant expansion potential. And so now we can look forward. As you know, the resource base is huge. We have 15 million tons of lithium carbonate. We have enough fresh water that can support those expansion phases. We have our own in-house DLE technology that is immune, by the way, to Chinese export bans that we see on technologies. We have the operational know-how. We're the only one in the Western world. We have the operational know-how. and we have access to energy. So with all of those ingredients we can look forward and we believe there is a lot of value to be captured with the long-term potential of that asset and we have launched studies both on brownfield and greenfield expansion phases. The first phase of expansion for that asset is first a brownfield expansion of 11,000 tonnes. We would use the existing plants and de-bottleneck the existing plants where there is already some extra capacity, allowing us to reach 35,000 tonnes in total for that plant. Overall, this expansion phase would be with a lower capital intensity and would reinforce the position of that asset in the first quartile of the cash-cost curve. We've completed a PFS already, and for this reason we target a potential FID by the end of 2027. And this project would be eligible to the RIGI scheme that is in place in Argentina. As you know, this scheme provides regulatory stability, lower taxes, lower duties, flexibility on trade, flexibility on foreign exchange, and this project is eligible to RIGI. On nickel, in Ouedabé EBITDA remained stable during the first half of the year compared to last year. This is due to lower volumes because of the limitation on permitting, but this was offset by the higher prices allowing us to have a stable EBITDA. Nevertheless, there were no dividends distributed during that semester because of the volume limitation as we're waiting for a revised permit and because the mine was placed in care and maintenance in May. Regarding our permits, we're still limited at 12 million tonnes today, so as a reminder, The demand for the IWIP industrial park, which is downstream of our mine. As you know, it's a huge industrial park. It's the second biggest in Indonesia. The capacity in that park is 25% of the global nickel production. And we are the main mine head in the upstream of that industrial park. And we only have 12 million tons. This is creating a significant supply-demand gap locally. For those reasons, we've requested an upward revision of our RKAB in July as per the usual process put in place by the Indonesian authorities. In mineral sands we had the impact of the fire which was offset by insurance in H1 but we also had a very negative impact linked to the lower prices during that semester leading to a sharp decrease in EBITDA in H1 and we had for this reason a decrease in free cash flow in H1 of minus 27 million euros lower than what we had last year. We expect to return to full production capacity Q1 next year. So we've already restarted partially the assets in April at 30% capacity. In July, we restarted the separation plant to be able to produce the finished goods. And we will restart shipments in August. We are working on the rebuilding, which this will allow us to restart the plants, the concentration plant by the end of the year and to be at full capacity in 27. Overall, the cash impact is expected to land at 45 million euros for the full year, net of the 50 million euros of insurance proceeds. And now our comments, the funding plan. So we are making progress. Critical milestones are ahead of us in H2, but we're making progress in H1. On the performance improvement plan, we're delivering on resolution. We had solid performance on the rail in Gabon, and we're making also progress with productivity, cost savings, as you have seen in our variance analysis for H1. Regarding the strategic review of assets, we're on track. We're considering several options right now. On the equity strengthening, the resolutions were voted by our AGM, which will allow our board to launch a rights issue. And we target an execution in Q4. At the same time, we've maintained a strict capital allocation policy. So we've reduced CapEx significantly in H1, 53% less than last year. We didn't pay any dividends and we maintain adequate liquidity also thanks to the waivers we have obtained from our banks during the first semester. On the timeline, The free cash flow protection, this is a permanent focus of the company and this has been ongoing and we will keep focusing on this. On asset monetization, we're targeting an execution towards the end of the year. And on the capital increase, as I've just said, we are targeting an execution in Q4. Let's move to outlook and guidance. So on the outlook, we remain cautious. We see the favorable price environment we have today continuing, but we also see persistent inflationary pressure on input costs. This is reflected in the consensus for H2. We see manganese ore prices and nickel LME being stable in H2 compared to H1. And we have, on the other hand, lithium carbonate with a consensus that is seen with an increasing price by 10% in H2. Regarding the FX rates, the euro dollar, the consensus is at 1.17. As a reminder, we have hedged half of our dollar exposure at 1.20, and this will last until the end of the year. On volumes and capex, we confirm our guidance. I just want to focus on capex specifically. We are able to confirm this guidance despite the additional capex that we have to spend in Senegal, and this is thanks to all the efforts that we made to reduce capex elsewhere. I will hand over to Christel for the conclusion. Thank you.

Thanks, Simon. So just in conclusion, you have seen that the performance of H1 is showing that Eramet is moving in the right direction with stronger operational performance, stop burning cash, and progress in the funding plan. We know that is a first good step, but we still have many things to deliver in H2. and our priorities are very clear. Safety first, and in particular the focus on Oued Abbé, I commented on. The second is discipline execution of our operational improvement plan. and including the full ramp-up of Centenario. We are very close to it now. The continued improvement of the railway in Gabon allowing us to continue to grow the manganese ore flow and the recovery of the operations in Senegal. Third, of course, we must deliver the capital increase in Q4. and complete the funding plan, which is, of course, essential to strengthen our balance sheet and unlock the full value of our great portfolio. And finally, we are working with the nomination committee of the board to ensure a smooth leadership transition while maintaining the full continuity in the execution of the group strategy. So overall, we entered the second half with confidence, thanks to this strong, I mean, Thank you very much. And now I will stop here and let the floor to the room and the chat to answer the questions.

Thank you Christel and Simon. So we will start with the questions in the auditorium and then move on to the questions on the call and end up with the chat box. So please state your name and your company. Who would like to start first? No questions? Jean-Luc.

Jean Le Cromat, CICIB. I've got two questions. One related to the depreciation of reserves in Gabon. Is it due to pricing effects or to something else? Second question is on Ouedabey Minerals. It's striking to see Euro-Euro. I will let Simon answer the first question. It's depreciation of inventory not reserve. Thank you.

Thank you. So, as you know, in Gabon, when we produce ore, 70% of that is lumpy ore, which has a high value. 30% are fines, which have a lower value. We produce both and we sell both, but as we have usually a bottleneck on transportation in Gabon, we try to maximize value by pushing the volumes of the higher value and we have inventories of finds in the mine. In the past, we've used price fly-ups in manganese to destock those finds accordingly. We've revised our mining plan recently, and what we see is that in the next few years, to maximize our present value, We will keep pushing the higher value ore and we will destock at a slower pace the lower value fines. And so the present value of those fines has decreased and this is why we reduced the inventory.

On Oued Abbé, I share your view. It's very difficult also for us to manage a mine with these ups and downs in the permit allocation. And especially, we are not the only one. As you know, this is a very big mine. which represent a significant part, I think it's about 20% or more of the overall Indonesian nickel production so it's huge. The point is, and a lot of investment has been made at the bottom of this mine, with a huge industrial park. And this industrial park consumes, as you have seen in the presentation, more than 100 million tons of nickel ore in the year. So even for the industrial park at the bottom of the mine, it's very difficult because They don't know how much ore from Ouedabé they can count each month and for the rest of the year. So it's an overall issue that we have. We are very agile in Ouedabé. And thanks to the model, which is a full subcontracted model We manage to reduce our costs significantly when we are not operating, but of course we don't remove all the people because we have to be able to restart at any time if we get an extension. We have obviously reported those issues to the authorities. As you know, we have filed our request for an extended permitting for the rest of the year. This is the time of the year, July and beginning of August, Usually they give a new allocation of extensions, so we are expecting to have news on the future permitting in the coming weeks, but we don't have a precise timing and of course we don't have any idea of the volumes that will be allocated to EDAB.

Any other questions?

We move to the chat, maybe. OK.

So we'll start with the call. Operator, I hand over to you. I believe Paul is connected.

This is the contact operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and 1 on the touch-tone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and 2. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and 1 at this time. The first question is from Paul Kirianos from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Good morning, it's Paul Triana from Bank of America. Thanks for the presentation, Christel and Simon. I had two questions this morning for you. One on CapEx. So I see CapEx decreased as per plan, as guided. But just to understand a little bit better, how much of that decrease is structural reduction versus deferral into 2027 and beyond? Or if asked a little bit differently, how much more flexibility do you have on CapEx to reduce it further potentially? And then my second question is maybe if you could give a bit more color on the asset monetization. So are you still kind of using the same approach? Is everything still on the table? Are you still looking for both majority and minority stakes, sales, et cetera? So some color here will be super helpful. Thank you.

Thank you, Paul. Indeed, on capex, as you've seen, we are reducing capex significantly in 2026. This is our policy, given the situation we are in. We have made all the efforts to decrease significantly capex. And you're right to point out that we have 100 million euros in H1. This is probably a historical low for Eramet. To answer your question, it's not sustainable to be at this level for a group like us. So this is why we maintain our guidance between 250 and 290 for the full year. And this is the level at which we fully cover our sustaining capex and this is a sustainable level outside of any additional growth capex we may have in the future. Now, regarding the asset monetization, so we are, as we said, we're still considering several options. We're on track, we're advancing multiple options that are progressing well. At this time, we cannot comment further on what that may be and we will communicate to the market in due course once we have something to announce.

It's very important also to have several options as we don't want to do any fire sale. And we want to do things that make sense, strategically speaking, for Eramet and also at the right value. So it's important that we keep several options going on.

Very clear. Thank you both.

Any other questions on the call?

From the call for the moment, there are no more questions.

OK, so we will move to the question on the chat box. And we have a few questions on Gabon.

So you recently announced the signing of a MOU with the Gabonese government. What will be the cost of building a manganese smelter in Gabon? And would you be open to industrial partners on this project?

So we signed an MOU that is putting a frame and a roadmap on how we will move forward with the studies and also with the requirements, the pre-requirements to be able to There are several types of transformation in Gabon. First I would like to highlight that building a smelter is not the only one. For example, we are studying seriously the transformation into manganese oxide. Manganese oxide is the first transformation of manganese that then goes into E.V. batteries and also to high performance steel. So many countries are interested as it is a critical component for both electrification and Defense and Specialty Steel. And so this is one way. So smelter and manganese alloys is another one. Today, it's premature to give you any number on the CAPEX. We are at the early stage of the studies. And what is very important in the roadmap that we have commonly established with the Gabonese authorities is that we are clear on both sides that they have first to provide energy. We all recognize that competitive energy is absolutely key in order to be able to build such a kind of high energy intensive type of transformation. So today we are working together on this prerequisite with the Gabonese government and we also agreed on the fact that any projects that we will put there should be economically viable, so having a profitability. Regarding the potential industrial partner, yes, we are open to have potential industrial partners in this transformation, but today, I mean, we are early stage in the studies, progressing, but early stage and it's premature to give any number.

To follow up on... To follow up on this question, in your MOU you presented three scenarios. Which one is likely to take place first?

Again, it's what I mentioned before. Manganese oxide is less capital intensive, and more important, does not require so much energy as it is the case for manganese alloys. So the prerequisites are certainly easier to put in place. So it could happen earlier than a manganese smelter that requires more infrastructure, I would say, and especially competitive energy, which is not available for the time being.

We have a question on mineral sands. What is the remaining carrying value following the new impairment? And what is now the remaining mine life following the reduction in reserves?

Simon. I'll start. Charles, maybe you want to comment on the remaining reserve first?

Maybe we have not introduced Charles before. Charles Nouel is ours, for the ones who don't know him, but he's our COO and has been for the last three years.

The mine life has been reduced following the review of the structural shift in the mineral sands market with lower prices and lower prices as Evidence by current prices but also by the different consultants and specialists in mineral sands. So it is now around 15 years and it will be reflected in our reserve statements in next year documents. And it is in the current one as well.

We already had a decrease. This decrease as a result of price led to reserved shifting from between 14 and 15 million tonnes of heavy mineral and this shifted to 12 million tonnes now and this is the decrease in reserves that led to that impairment. We do not comment on the valuation of that asset in our books as it stands.

And we have a final question regarding the RCF. So can you remind if the RCF is still fully drawn as of June 26 and whether you plan to repay it through 26?

So yes, the RCF is still fully drawn. We have a liquidity that stands at 1.3 billion euros at end of June. So as I've said, this liquidity is down from 1.5 end of last year because we've been repaying debts during the first semester, so now it's at 1.3. So we have a comfortable level of liquidity. It's also due to the fact that we have this RCF fully drawn. Our policy, especially with the uncertainties that we may have, our policy is to keep this RCF fully drawn until we have executed our funding plan, starting with the capital increase.

So it was a final question from the webcast. Thank you.

So thank you very much. And so it ends this session on the H1 results. And of course, we have, as I said, a very important H2 in front of us. But we are confident that we are all set to be able to deliver what we have planned. Thank you very much. Have a good day.