Black Cat Syndicate Ltd

Thanks, Daniel., Got the presentation up, here we go., good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and. Yeah, appreciate the introduction, Dan. look, Black Cat is an ASX listed Australian gold producer. we've got, 2.5 million ounces of gold with 3 projects or within WA., we've just started production at not one but 2 of those operations in the last 9 months, so we're a rapidly growing junior producer. And you could argue we're not established yet, but we're certainly running hard and we are planning to establish ourselves very soon. So more gold sooner is our mantra. we've been in operation now for only 9 months, but we're seeing rapid acceleration and our plan is to be a 100,000 ounce per annum producer by the end of this year. That means we're, you know, ramping up new mines, to feeding to the two mills that we have have running. we've got very, compelling ground. Lots of exploration targets. We've got rigs back out spinning again now growing those resources and like the previous presentation, we have exposure to antimony as well. I'll talk to that soon. Our major focus is gold. Our major focus is growing that resource base production base to the 100,000 ounce per annum run rate and. We have the three projects. Once we have all three operating and once we have ramped up the two that are currently operating, we plan to get to a 200,000 ounce per annum run rate. So you can see the rapid growth that we've got, although we've only just started, we plan to be, you know, competitive and, and comparing ourselves to other 100 to 200,000 ounce per annum producers. It's a good, good time to be in gold, clearly, we've got plenty of cash and bullion in the bank. We've got no debt, we've got zero hedging, and in fact, our intention is to, you know, store some of our production as bullion for additional exposure to gold. So it's been a really good year for for Black Cat. you can see, you know, everyone knows the gold price has gone up 40%, it's been great. Black Cat's had about a 200% increase in, in, share price. that has come because we are very active, we're starting new operations, you know, we're, we're very active on market. With the current shares on the market of 709 million, we've got now a market cap of just over 800 million, really good liquidity in the stock, and we're about to enter into the ASX 300 as well, so I expect that that will continue for a while., we're at the point, you know, in our growth as a, you know, a junior producer, we're taking an interest in other exploration companies, so we've got a holding in a, in a small company, Dreadnought, that has great exploration and gold exposure near one of our mills up in the Pilbara. So that's a, that's a holding that we're happy with, Top 20 have about 55% and that's it's creeping up. directors hold about 3.2% of the stock, and we've got a really strong director base, Paul Chapman and Les Davis, they, they founded Silver Lake Resources and they were co-founders with myself with Black Cat back in 2018. Few other directors on board, Nick Dwyer is our chief financial officer, he's here, in Colorado as well, so very strong team. Now more gold sooner, as I said, that's our mantra, our catch cry, and if you're producing more gold in a rising gold price environment, you're going to have more cash, and that's fine, and that's great, but we all know that cash is a depreciating asset, so our intention is always to hold a bit more, bit of our production as gold. We set ourselves a target of about 4000 ounces a few months ago. And we've been sitting on that and that's obviously going up in value so we we're making money, and, you know, talking to investors at Beaver Creek, they're very very happy, they want exposure to gold, that's why they invest in gold production companies and we're doubling down on that. So all of our Projects are in Western Australia, we've got our two production centers. Call, which is As the name would suggest, just to the east of Kalgoorlie, which is arguably one of the best, you know, production capitals of of the world for gold., and then we've got our Paulson's asset, which is up in the Pilbara, and it's the mine that started Northern Star on their journey into production, both really good, resource bases and growing production of those two assets. Our third gold project is Coyote, it's up in the Tanami. that's very high grade, it's got built infrastructure, and it'll be the 3rd project that we turn on in the future to, take us to 200,000 ounces. And then we've got our Mount Clement polymetallic project. So that's in exploration phase right now, we're drilling that, there'll be project work that continues over the next 12 months, but that's where we've got an antimony, exposure. The main value driver there is is the antimony. So we'll talk to that in this presentation. Firstly, let's look at the operations. We've got CE. It'll be the bigger of our two production centers. Just to the east of Kalgoorlie within you know 50 kilometers of the city. The big news here is the 1.2 million tons per annum lakewood mill that we acquired in the end of March this year. Within a day of taking ownership, we were pouring out producing our own gold through that mill., it brings forward and it accelerates and it grows what we were planning to do at Kalgoorlie. We're always going to have an 800,000 tons per annum mill here that was going to take 18 months to build. so this acquisition is transformational for us. It means we've accelerated, our production. It's 50% larger and, arguably it would have cost less than than building in the current environment. And it's allowed us to increase our gold output here at Kell East rapidly. we're mining from Mire and boundary open pits, they're coming to an end and we're we're starting up new open pits and, and undergrounds at the moment. So the Lakewood Mill, as I say, transformational for us, it's centrally located about 5 kilometers from the, from the center of Kalgoorlie, so we've got a local workforce, we've got bitumen roads, grid power. There's lots of benefits. it's been had recent updates and upgrades, so it's all working really well, and we're really happy with this purchase. It's a lot bigger than we planned to build ourselves and in and when we're still ramping up two new operations, they will be fully ramped up by sort of the middle of next year. Until that point there's some capacity in Lakewood and we'll be filling that capacity with third party ors. There's plenty of those around Kalgoorlie, plenty of people seeking seeking to process, and so we can make money off that as well. And the big, the big point here is that it's expandable to 1.5 million tons per annum, so 1.2 is great and it's a lot bigger than what we originally intended, but there's another mill. There's been a lot of pre-work done to tie that in. we're doing the finalizing the engineering on that, and then our intention would be to tie it in and increase our production here by another 25%, so 25% more throughput and 25% more output. All of our, all of our mines are within a 40 odd km radius of Lakewood, so it's a, it's a hub and spoke approach. We, we truck those higher grade undergrounds and base load open pits to the mill. Majestic, this is a brand new underground, so we, we're starting new mines on a on a regular basis. this one has just commenced. It's got a roughly a 4 year mine life at the moment, but it's open at depth, so as soon as we have access and drill position in here, we'll we'll get back in and start drilling for extension as well as as well as operations., but we're, we're firing this, we're, we're now mining in, both this and the vent portal, and, we expect first order start coming out in December. obviously we'll see stokes sort of next year at some point. But this will make up about 30% of the feed for that 1.2 million tons per annum meal. The other new operation here at Kalgoorlie, the other new mine is the Fingal's Fortune open pit. it was mined in the 1990s, and certainly we've got a, a really large resource base here. this will be a 3 or 4 year mine. it'll be, it'll be larger than that, production target that you'd see on that on the screen there. There's a high grade component here, so it'll eventually go underground once we've finished the open pit mining in in several years' time, and, And I think you know this will start delivering ore from October and and it'll ramp up and we'll be, we'll have stockpiles building sort of in the middle of next year. Paulson's This was a focus for us in 2024, so as a junior, this was the, the lower cost project for us to ramp up. We spent most of 2024 refurbishing the Paulson's mill. And we got first gold here on time and on budget in December. we've seen this year as we've started our mechanized mining in January, we've seen, you know, quarter on quarter growth, and that will continue throughout the rest of this year, and this will be a, a sort of 40 to 50,000 ounce producer, you know, next year once we, get this thing., ramped up. It's a 450,000 tons per annum processing facility, you know, the studies show that we weren't weren't quite filling that, but we've got additional narrow vein equipment coming to site. We expect that we'll start, you know, adding more tons and ounces to this to this plan. And we're drilling here and we're also looking at some of our other mines in the area to bring them in and bring them forward. So a million ounces was produced by Paulson's, the mine, by previous operators. It operated for 13 years producing 70,000 ounces per annum. Potential is, of course, that our 40 to 50 could become 70 once we we find additional ores and we, we get additional production out. But throughout its operational history, it had less than a 2.5 year mine life. we've currently got a 4 year mine life and obviously we're drilling right now to try and extend that. The Gabro veins, which is gonna make up 30% of our life of mine, getting some really, really quite exciting grades coming out of, out of that area. the hanging wall is a big target for us with with drilling going on right now, and there's there's opportunity everywhere in this system. We're also drilling things like Paulson's West, which is a parallel, system that we're looking for the same type of structure. The potential is that it's got the same type of mineralization., you know, sitting adjacent to Paulson's. If we look at the organic growth projects in the portfolio, as as I said earlier, Kwai is up in the Tanami, it's about 200 kilometers long strike of Newmont's Tanami operation. Similar geology, similar structures, it's got a high grade resource, the jewel here is of course the the really high grade underground component to that resource, which is going about 15 g per ton. It's very narrow, sort of the sort of widths that, you know. Cost of field is showing, but it's certainly very high grade. What what previous operators had here was a 300,000 tons per annum plant. we think that's too small, so we're looking to upgrade that. We're doing engineering work on that, as well as we'll be drilling here. Again next year, so we intend to keep growing the resource here, update the studies, and then this will be a third project that we switch on, you know, ultimately be a 40 to 60,000 ounce producer. It'll take help us take the company up to that 200,000 ounce per annum run rate. The the Mount Clement project, which is 30 kilometers from Paulson's, this is the polymetallic deposit which is, you know, value driven by by antimony at the moment., it does have gold, copper, lead, silver, and of course antimony. It's one of the larger antimony deposits. It's never been developed in the past. The resource itself sits on one of 6 veins that we've mapped at surface, so we're actively drilling this right now and we are looking to grow that resource. The chalk exploration target here is up to 100,000 tons of antimony metal., and we're looking at ways that we will be able to, you know, produce a concentrate, probably at Paulson's, which we have all the infrastructure, apart from a float plant, already, you know, in place, so. We're well placed to develop this in the future. First off, drilling, metallurgical work, and the studies that go with that. And of course governments are very interested in this critical mineral now, so we do have some some assistance from the government to do some deep drilling to see how big this system is because potentially it's quite substantial. It's not just the antimony we're drilling, you know, with multiple rigs up at Paulson's. I mentioned the Paulson's West. We've put one hole into that target now. We've found that the Gabro, which is what we were looking for, the mine Gabro continuing out there, we've found that now we're repositioning for a second hole to try and target in on where the structure would cut that. The underground drilling will be ongoing for the life of mine, fantastic grades coming out of the Gabro Gabro veins, which has been the major focus in the first part of the year. We're now moving on to sort of hanging wall zones and main zone extension. Big Sarah's another regional target, you know, for us, you look at Big Sarah, it was mined in the 1930s. Paulson's was mined in the 1930s, both had very high grade production. Subsequently, Paulson's was drilled in, drilled in the 1990s, Discovery made, built in 2000s, and the rest is history, but Big Sarah's never been drilled, so, we put first holes into that and we're, anxiously waiting for the results because, yeah, we're very hopeful., Ke East we'll drill come summer, we'll get out of the Pilbara back to Cal East and we'll, we'll put a lot more, drilling efforts back around there, which is has plenty of targets, lots of, lots of discovery potential, and then as I said, back up to Coyote, next year. So in summary, you know, Black Cat is brand new, multi-asset gold producer. You know, we've got two operations running now, there's expansion opportunities at, at all of them. we're targeting 100,000 ounces by the end of this year and then growing that further, next year. And once we upgrade the Lakewood mill, that will, will move up substantially. The the the Mount Clement Antiy project, pretty exciting and we're drilling that at the moment, so that should give us some, you know, some news flow coming. But what we're a 100,000 ounce producer by the end of this year and then we should be comparing ourselves to several other ASX listed 100,000 ounce producers, and typically they have a 1.5 to a $2 billion market cap compared to our $800 million do market cap. So there's a lot of room for growth, should we show that we are an established producer. We've got exposure to gold, we're holding bullion. We've got good cash flow coming in, strong balance sheet, and no hedging, so. There's still time to come and see us, book a meeting, otherwise give us a call when we're back in Perth and happy to catch up., so at this stage, open the floor up for questions. any questions from the floor? Maybe a quick one for me, Gareth, just the, strategy of holding gold on the balance sheet, can you just expand on, like, is there a target or is there a percentage of your production? Yeah, what's it, yeah, yeah, that's fine, Dan. It's a, it's a fairly low percentage of our production target. I mean, initially we set that a few months ago when we're still ramping up our minds, and we set a 4000 ounce limit, so that's what it's sitting at at the moment and and we'll hold that 4000 in time. You know, we may decide to move that, the board will, will consider those options, but certainly we're, we're strong believers that the gold, gold will appreciate against cash, so if we don't need the cash, we'll just hold the gold for the time being. It's it's a very very active, portfolio, there's a lot going on. could you maybe just re-summarize, like in 12 months' time if you're back presenting here, what would you have liked to have achieved versus what you've got now on your business? Sure, well, we'll, we'll be an established 100,000 ounce producer by that point and we'll be, I would think in this time next year we'll be undertaking activities to ramp up to, Somewhere north of 120, probably up to 140, by upgrading the Lakewood mill and, and you know, hopefully at that point we'll be getting steady state and therefore upgrading, you know, the grades going through the Paulson's mill. So at that point we could be, you know, looking at up to 140,000 ounces per annum. And you're Tanama asa. how did that come into the portfolio and is is that is that is that core, can maybe expand on. It's a fantastic asset. We, we picked up both the Paulson's and the, and the Coti asset, in 22 from Northern Star, so it was a basically a single transaction where we included both of those assets. We liked them., as a junior, they had built infrastructure and infrastructure is important. The guy that has the mill, you know, controls, controls most things around, around these gold projects. so they both came with mills, they both came with high grade resources, and we saw opportunity to grow those, and they because of the infrastructure they're lower, lower cost for us to get into production, and so we've proven that with Paulson's., now we're obviously focused on C East, that was opportunistic to go and buy that 1.2 million ton per annum mill, down there, and we're very busy ramping those two up, but Cody is definitely a, a third project that we would like to start. In the in the meantime, before you've got enough ore to fill your mill at Lakewood, can you just talk about the, the, is the mill going to be full with toll trimmer deals? What, what is the nature of those deals? Yeah, so, absolutely it will be full, and we've we've announced, you know, we've got a a third party, Oric Mining, they're they're gonna be putting some ore through the mill over the next quarter or two., and then West Gold are continuing to, they have an option to treat up to 50,000 a quarter until the end of next year, so they, they are certainly gonna be treating, you know, over the next quarter or so. And what sort of terms have you, are in the region for toll treatment deals at the present time? Oh, they're, they're standard commercial terms, so they, yeah, we're making good money from that mill. OK. Alright, at this point I'd like to thank Gareth for presenting and thank you very much. Thank you.