KEFI Gold and Copper Plc

Yeah. Maybe it's just Well, good morning everyone. Thanks very much in particular for staying late, and I know this is getting towards the end of the conference, so I'm really appreciative of you all being here. And so my name is Patrick Chidley. I'm a consultant for CAE, and so I'm here to just give an introduction to the company to to most of you here. The management team is not here unfortunately because they're over in in between Ethiopia and London closing a very important $340 million financing which will fund the Tuluapi project in Ethiopia, which is the company's main asset. Some disclaimers and some information that you can read at your leisure. There are some presentations around, I think, if you want to take one home on some of the tables here. So CEFI is a company that's been around for quite some time. It's been operating in the Arabian Nubian Shield area in particular since 2008, it's been in Saudi Arabia, so one of the first movers in Saudi Arabia. And then subsequent to that, after making two discoveries in Saudi Arabia, the company also picked up the Tullaapi Gold project, which is in Ethiopia. The company is listed in London. It's a name listed company and it's got a market cap of around about $110 million. The company's really come on very, very strongly this year and brought on some big new shareholders, including some funds as you see there Rafa, Conwayve and Phoenix Gold Fund. And so there's been a bit of a change in the shareholder structure this year as the company's progress towards actually finishing its financing and hopefully beginning construction very soon on a new high grade gold mine called Tulicapi. So the company has several different units. The Tulliapi mine in Ethiopia is the main one as I expressed, it's about a 160,000 ounce a year gold gold mine, that'll be the first year of production. And it's a high grade open pit gold mine with a grade of about 2.1 g a ton in reserves. And going forward, the company also hopes to be able to prove an underground section at Tuapi which will boost production potentially up to 200,000 ounces a year. The company has also been in Ethiopia for quite some time and and has a good relationship with the government and has picked up a number of additional permits in critical materials including nickel and copper projects as well as also some lithium as well, and as I said, they've been in Saudi Arabia for probably longer than most juniors here and they have a very important and valuable stake in a joint venture there., it's called the Jimco joint venture, and the partner is a, a well known Saudi company, Saudi family owned company called ATA. And the joint venture has been busy since I think around 2008, and they made two discoveries in Saudi Arabia and they've developed those now into pretty advanced stage projects. One's called Hoa. It's a VMS project, copper, gold, zinc, and silver, and the other one is a smaller mine, but it's about 900,000 ounces of gold, orogenic gold project. And it's, it's it's the more advanced project now and it should go into being quite a, a significant asset for them, in, in due course. The update on the financing is really that there's a $340 million project financing ongoing now that should be completed by the end of September. So that's actually what we're hoping for and because the project is very advanced, we can actually get into construction as early as October. So then there's $100 million in addition to. $240 million which is the project debt, and the $100 million is coming through various tranches here. I won't go into too much detail here, but that has been brought by a number of different products that the company is currently negotiating with different parties in the country. So a lot of the money here, first of all, I should back up and say that the $240 million of debt financing is coming from. Two African banks and those banks are the AFC and the TDB. They've been very supportive and putting up the money for most of the project here and then there'll be some tranches of equity that are coming in from the government, the company, and also local investors in Ethiopia. This is the structure of the company, so it shows you that the company owns about well it'll be about 80% of the asset once once all is said and done in Ethiopia. So that's the Tulapi mine, and then in the green you see that they are in 15% of the Saudi assets in that joint venture. So the company's been progressing with the Tuaapi project for quite a long time actually and so it's had some of the top consultants here in the world, including obviously Snowden, like a podium who has done the feasibility study and is going to be actually managing the build, and then obviously some very well known consultants here, so it's been done., in, in to a very high standard, and the company's had a lot, a lot of time to plan this, this, this, this endeavor. So that's a picture just shows you some of the initial site work that's been undertaken. The government is funding road construction and also power line construction to the site. It's in a pretty remote area in Ethiopia and so some of this infrastructure is actually contributed by the government, and that's why the government will end up probably with something close to a 20% stake in the project. There is a 5%. Free carry that the government has in projects in Ethiopia. I think there's a 6% royalty and then it's a fairly standard income tax regime and there's been not a lot of interest in mining, I'd say historically by foreign companies in Ethiopia, but in recent years, largely as a result of the efforts of CEFI and the management team there at CEI, there's been. A lot of progress in terms of making the country more attractive to investors overseas, and one of one of those things that they've managed to do is to actually allow companies to repatriate money out of the country because there's obviously some currency controls in Ethiopia. So this is the site layout and just to show you., you know, some of the main features of the project, it's a fairly standard open pit project. The grade, as I said, is high grade, 2.1 g a ton. high recovery here 93%. It's a fairly standard CIL plant, 2 million tons a year is the is the rated capacity. And then beyond that, the company plans an underground mine underneath the open pit, basically, and that will contribute much higher grade or to the the plan in the future. The underground portion is not yet in definitive feasibility studies. The open pit is fully banked. This is a project that's construction ready and it's fully permitted, but the underground will be worked on while we build the open pit mine. The underground will be worked on and we'll generate a definitive feasibility study on that and hopefully we'll be bringing in underground high grade or 5.6 g a ton is the average., within a few years, after, after opening the, the open pit mine, so that'll boost production, and we could see production go as high as 200,000 ounces a year with this project. This just gives you some idea of what the the situation is, the layout, it's a fairly rural area, rolling hills, and the company's been active for many years here. They've done a lot of the CSR work that's a school that the company built for the local community. There is going to be a relocation program for this asset, this mine, and there's going to be about 200 or 300 villages or families that will need to be relocated from the site, and that's all been negotiated with the members of the community for quite some time. It's all going to be done under the auspices of international and in country standards, and the government is actually going to be implementing the relocation itself. This slide just shows you that there's been a lot of drilling in this project, it's actually been under several different companies for, for quite some time, and there's been several different drill programs to, to, to bring us the resource that we have today. The deposit is open at depth. It's got some pretty interesting intersections here right at the bottom of where the resource is, and so we expect that the future drilling will actually yield some pretty good results as well. So the deepest hole there is 90 m at about 2.8 g a ton, and so this is a very chunky and high grade gold deposit. Here's the resource table and reserves. There's 1.7 million ounces in total resource at a grade of about 2.65 g a ton, and inside that resource is a proven improbable reserve of 1 million ounces, grading 2.1 g a ton, and that's going to be the beginning of the mine life as an open pit. Obviously the grades will be slightly higher in the initial years and so there will be a very quick payback on this project. So we anticipate a $3000 goal, we could have 1 year payback on, on, on the actual debt portion of the funding. Saudi Arabia is the other portion of the company. Obviously this is a minority holding in joint venture with ATA, and it's it's a pretty big company in the Saudi mining industry. It's called Golden Minerals, the joint venture. They have around about 100 geologists, and they've been at it for, you know, a good number of years now, and they've made these two very important discoveries in Saudi Arabia. is the one discovery. This is now progressed to basically definitive feasibility studies. There was a PFS completed in 2023. It's a VMS with gold, zinc, silver, and copper, of course, and the copper content at the moment is about over 300,000 tons in this deposit. It's got 38 million tons of total resources and it still continues to get bigger with drilling. As you can see from that picture, on on the lower side of the picture, there's there's a license there, Hijan. That one's been only awarded to them this year. It has significant early stage exploration results on it, including a significant sized Gossan, which is to be drilled. And if we can add that to what we have at Haa and at the El Goggia project, which is which is also on the slide there. Those two make up the resource at the moment, then we can make this into a much bigger sulfide copper deposit. There's also oxide gold there as well, and so that's in the works potentially as a as an initial gold producing asset and using the oxides and then moving to a much bigger sulfide asset after that. This is a long section of the Ha deposit, the main deposit at Haa. It's 5 kilometers long of outcropping mineralization VMS mineralization, and as you can see, the joint venture has been continuing to progress deeper and chasing those higher grade shoots within the system. The other asset, Gibel Cookman, is a gold, an orogenic gold deposit also in Saudi Arabia, obviously. And it's got 900,000 ounces in resources. This one is more advanced actually and is proposed as a initially quite a small heat bleach gold mine, and that will be there will be an investment decision by the end of the year here on this, so it's fairly fairly advanced stage and it's another mine in the company's portfolio. In addition to those two advanced stage projects, the company also has, I think, 16 additional licenses in Saudi Arabia and is progressing with exploration on these at the moment. The latest one to be awarded is the Al Hajar North project. That's about 60 kilometers to the east of the project which we just talked about. It's also a prospective for VMS deposits. They've just done a joint venture here with Hancock Prospecting, which is one of Australia's biggest mining companies, as I'm sure many of you know. this slide is in here really just to show that in Saudi Arabia if you list a mining company in Saudi Arabia, it can actually attract a pretty high valuation. So there's a company called AMA. And they have two small mines operating in Saudi Arabia, similar similar style to the two projects that Jimco has, although obviously Jimco is still not in production, but once you get to production, I mean the AMAC valuation is $1.5 billion and so you know it just gives you some idea about what our our assets could be worth in the Jimco joint venture. The board of directors here, so Harry and Agnes Starus Adams is the executive chairman and founder of the company, and he obviously sends his apologies. He could be here today, but he's been with the company obviously since the beginning, and the team on the board here is very experienced in mining engineering in banking and and also obviously with with Ethiopian experience as well. There's below them there's a management team that is is pretty busy in both countries, and obviously that's included including the team that's going to be building the project alongside like a podium and that's that's the presentation. I appreciate your time and if we've got enough time for questions. If anybody has a question, please stick your hand up. No, OK, so I, I'll ask a quick question. Patrick is, I'm not sure what the plan is, but with, you know, pushing 10 billion shares out, is there a plan to consolidate the shares as part of the financing package, or how, what will the capital structure look like going forward? Yeah, that's a great question. The company has 9.3 billion shares and over a long period of time, obviously that's that's been generated. It's. Therefore, it's got a very low stock price in London. The company at the moment doesn't have any plans to change that situation, but it's definitely a possibility, and I think it would be helpful. Yeah. OK. And, and how much money has been spent on TK so far to get the project to the point it's at? How many I think there's been about $100 million spent so far. that's been the sort of equity that CEF has put into the. The Tullia project and Ethiopia has had ups and downs over a number of years in terms of politics and so therefore, in addition to the fact that a number of specific things needed to be arranged, including the currency control issue, it's taken quite some time to get to the point finally where we are today where, you know, if we are able to close this financing in the next few weeks then. It's fully permitted. The government is fully supportive and will be in construction very, very soon. OK. OK, if there's no other questions, good luck on closing the financing, Patrick, and, and thanks for your presentation. Thanks. Thanks everybody.