Botnia Gold AB (publ)

Hej och välkomna till dagens webcast med Botnet Exploration där vd Fredrik Bergström kommer att presentera bokslutskommittén för 2024. Efter presentationen kommer det hållas en Q&A och med det sagt så lämnar jag över ordet till dig Fredrik.

Thank you, my name is Fredrik Bergsten and I'm the director of Botnia Exploration. I'm going to tell you a little bit about our Q4 report. But I will also talk a little bit about the presentation and the update of mineral resources that we also released today. Today we will listen to what we are going to talk about in the Q4 report. important events during the quarter and also during the year. And a little bit about what we can expect from the production and the financial results as well. So we will end later and talk a little bit about the block model and the changes of the year and a little bit about our assumed mineral resources and our geological potential as you can see. The fourth quarter har varit väldigt intressant och spännande och framgångsrik kvartal för Botnia. Vi började kvartalet med att leverera vår första guldtacker, som ni kan se på en bild här till vänster. Vi har också under hösten genomfört ett diamantpårprogram tillsammans med vår entreprenör Protec. Det var väldigt mycket framgångsrikt. Vi fortsätter att ha väldigt bra båleträffar mot djupet. We have also, during this period, carried out two additional short-term development campaigns with adjustments in the development board between each campaign to try to optimize the results. Then it is also very, very exciting that Bergsstaten announced a withdrawal from the so-called prohibition year due to our investigation status. for the Stenberget area. And that means that it now feels very safe and with high probability that we will get our renewed research status, which will be called Färbockärn number 2, but actually the same, even if it is still not clear. So a very exciting fourth quarter for Botnia, both the first quarter with malm production and supply and distribution of gold for us. It follows the previous quarter of 2024, which has also been very eventful and successful for Botnia. It starts with one of the last important pieces of the puzzle being put in place for us, with us being able to sign our agreement on legal enrichment with Dragon Mining's refinery in Svartliden. We have also strengthened the organization during the year to adapt it to the future production organization. with a participant of mine, but during the autumn we also added a production geologist, Jessica Sidenmark, and a new CFO, Robert Johansson. During the spring, we have done a lot of intensive work to complete the the industrial area by the mine. And this led to our first high-tech day, which was the introduction of underground work in the mine on the 2nd of May. What happened after the end of the year, at the end of January, is that we have now also carried out a block model update, where we were able to take into account Both the drill results that we got from the autumn, but also actually added some of the tests that were taken in connection with the test break that was done in 2017 to generate a new block model. When we look at the year as it has gone, we say that we have broken about 19,502 tons of malm. 13,850 of them now in the last quarter, so you can see that we are ramping up the production here. But the year has above all been characterized by an incredible amount of cleaning work, as we call it, and actually what it's about is to make tunnels in the mountain on the side of Malmö. And in this sketch, as you can see, we first have the straight ramp that we made during the summer, then we have the spiral ramp that goes down to the side of Malmö, to give us a lot of opportunities to work with. And in connection with the change of year, we had three production levels, sheet 1, 2 and 3, and we were on our way down to sheet 4. We were about where the yellow marking is in the middle of the ramp. Skiva 4 has been in production today. It is the first marble machine on Skiva 4, which is very exciting. And we are now also preparing Skiva 3 to become the first bottom board, so to speak, for our slightly larger method. Because what you can see is that all the marbles we have broken so far have been signifikant dyrare av de två brytningsmetoderna som Botnia använder sig av. Vi använder sig av den för att skapa positioner för den mer storskaliga brytningsmetoden. När det gäller våra produktionsförväntningar för 2025 så ser ni här egentligen, det här är en bild som visar liksom ackumulerade anrikade tonnager under året. Vi räknar med att landa strax under anrikade thousand tons. But as you can see, there is a small weight point during the first eight months of the year. This actually has the production level of the mine, which is illustrated by the monthly, isolated month's production level here. You can see that we have a much higher production capacity here in the first half of the year. This is part of the natural variation, with a cycle of about 8-10 months, where we have a period with a large-scale, very productive rupture, while we also prepare new positions for that type of rupture, but we then get a lower period when we only have rupture with a less productive method for a few months before the large-scale method starts again. This also happens when we look at the Q4 report on results and cash flows. that we see that the cost level has been higher than what is actually the planned future average of the mine. And that actually means that we have just broken with this higher cost method, which has a little lower productivity to create positions for those who are large scale. And that is also a result of the mine initially We can also say that we have transferred almost SEK 58 million during the fourth quarter from these three enrichment campaigns. This is a little better than the expectations we had ourselves, and it actually depends 100% on the fact that the gold price has been better than expected. A part of the mulch that has been enriched during this period is also a B-mulch, a mulch of lower quality, which actually has its origin in a test break from the Varvbäcken Fyndigheten on the other side of the river, which we have post-treated during the autumn. In this post-treatment, we noted that there was a mountain range that we needed to get rid of, and we suspected that this would lead to positive results, so we took that into account as well. It generated a post-treatment income of about 1.1 million, which is why we see that it will be a negative post-treatment in our work, because this has been returned as a negative post-treatment balance. As you can see, the majority of our costs are built on external costs and production and management costs. This is a natural cause of the fact that the mine is driven 100% by entrepreneurs. So the absolute majority of these costs are in return for our entrepreneurs, Dragon Mining and Bell Team. We have also, during the period, started to write off our mining grants that we have received, both through prospecting and the status quo earlier, also by building the physical infrastructure. When the mine starts to generate money, we have to write off this compensation. We also see what is very exciting here, that we already have the first quarter with income, a positive EBIT, a moving margin, at 13.6 million. This is a strong message for a new start-up to go directly into profitable operations. And something we are happy about, of course, is the help of good gold prices. This also makes us feel quite safe with the fact that we will in the future be able to use de skattemässiga underskottsavdrag som Botnia Exploration historiskt har upparbetat och gör att vi är nu beredda att värdera det där som en uppskjuten skatteintäkt. Det är därför vi får en positiv skattekostnad här nere också. The company's cash flow, we can say here that we are ready to show a cash flow in balance already during the first quarter of revenue, which is a strong message. This is a little better than what we have previously guided for, but Vi står ändå kvar vid vår rekommendation, vår guidning sen tidigare, att vi blir kassaflödespositiva i slutet av första kvartalet eller i början av andra kvartalet. Orsaken till det är att vi har fortfarande väldigt mycket investeringar på kassaflöde som ska ut under de första två månaderna av 2025 som hör till byggnationerna och gruvan. Vi ser också här att vi har bundit en hel del i förändringar i rörelsekapital. This is due to the fact that the last campaign, the money from it was delivered just days before the change of year. And even if we had been able to invoice this and register the revenues, it took a few days before these revenues had appeared on our accounts, so to speak. So we have built a short-term plan for the change of year. When we look at the company's balance sheet, we see that the company continues to be fully financed, largely through capital, plus a bridge loan that we took up during the autumn from a consortium of our three largest owners. We also have a smaller convertible loan from Norrlandsbonden, which will expire in 2027. We can also see here, during short-term feedings, that here we have the short-term feedings that we had, as I mentioned, in the previous year's shift, linked to the last delivery of gold at the end of the year. We can also see from the analysts that we have invested a lot in our analysts, even though we have started to write them down.

Thank you for the presentation, Fredrik. Let's jump straight to the questions. During the fourth quarter, you did the first diamond drilling program of the FÄB and the nuclear analysis is ongoing, but are there any early projections on how long the drilling can be extended?