Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Central Asia Metals PLC Annual General Meeting and Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded meeting on the Investor Meet Company platform, attendees will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged in connection with the investor presentation. They can be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question that is submitted today. All questions will be reviewed and as many topics as possible will be covered in the time available. I'd now like to hand over to the Chairman of Central Asia Metals, Mr. Nick Clarke. Good morning.
Thank you. Good morning. My name is Nick Clarke, I would like to welcome you to this Annual General Meeting of Central Asia Metals PLC, our 16th AGM since our listing on AIM in 2010. I would also like to welcome those watching online via the Investor Meet Company platform. With us today are my colleagues on the board, Gavin Ferrar, Chief Executive, Louise Wrathall, our CFO, Mike Armitage, my extreme left, Alison Baker, Roger Davey, Gillian Davidson, Mike Prentis, and Nigel Robinson are all our Non-Executive Directors are here with me. Before we proceed, I would like to set out the running order for today's proceedings in line with the notice of meeting sent to shareholders in April. First will be the Annual General Meeting at which we will handle formalities required in connection with this, including answering any questions relating to the AGM.
Due to the legal requirements of an AGM, only those here at the meeting will be able to participate in this. Those online can, of course, observe the proceedings as they take place. Voting, which will be by a poll to ensure all votes lodged in advance are taken into account. The results of the AGM will be announced to the market later today. Once the formal AGM has concluded, we will then move on to the presentation from management. After which, there will be an opportunity to ask questions in connection with the business. Turning to the formal business of the AGM, the necessary quorum being present, I now declare the AGM open. The business of the meeting is set out in the notice of meeting contained in the circular to shareholders dated 15th of April, 2026, and distributed with the annual report and accounts.
With your approval, I would like to take the notice of meeting as read. Is that agreed? Thank you. The notice is taken as read. I should now be happy to answer any questions in connection with the business of the Annual General Meeting. I intend to call a poll on all resolutions, I should be grateful if all questions in connection with the business of the Annual General Meeting be asked at this stage. There will be an opportunity to ask general questions following the presentation after the formal meeting is concluded. Are there any questions in connection with the business of the Annual General Meeting? As there are no questions in connection with the business of the AGM, I shall now turn to the formal business of the AGM, being the resolutions set out in the notice of meeting.
In accordance with the company's articles of association and to enable all proxies lodged in advance to be taken into account, I now demand a poll be taken on all of the resolutions set out in the notice of meeting. There are 18 resolutions. Resolutions 1-15 are being taken as ordinary resolutions, which require a simple majority of the votes cast to be passed. Resolutions 16-18 are being taken as special resolutions, which require approval of at least 75% of the votes cast to be passed. Now, moving on to the voting, I declare the poll open. Will those shareholders, proxy holders, and corporate representatives wishing to vote, please complete a poll card now and pass these to Company Secretary.
If any shareholder, proxy holder, or corporate representative wishes to vote and does not already have a poll card to do so, please raise your hand and the company secretary will pass you a poll card for completion. I plan to close the poll shortly. If there are any other poll cards to be submitted, please pass those to the company secretary now. Thank you. There being no further poll cards to be submitted, the poll is now closed. Our company secretary and registrars will be counting votes cast at this meeting. The result of the poll will be available later today and will be announced to the London Stock Exchange as soon as practical. That concludes the business of the AGM. I now declare the Annual General Meeting closed. I will now hand over to Gavin Ferrar, our CEO, to give a presentation on the business
[Thank you, Nick Clarke].
Thanks.
Good morning, everybody. I hope you can all see the presentation on screen and behind me. I'll just give you a brief overview of our business for those of you pretty familiar with it by now. We have two operations, one called Kounrad Operation, which produces copper cathode in Kazakhstan, and we have the Sasa lead and zinc mine in North Macedonia, which is producing lead and zinc. Kounrad has been in operation since 2012, Sasa is an operation that we acquired in 2017. In addition to this, we have exploration ventures in Kazakhstan through two holding companies there, looking for high-grade base metals in outstanding and prospective regions there. We also have a minority position in a privately held U.K. company called Aberdeen Minerals, that is exploring for base metals mineralization up in Scotland.
A quick overview of our business from 2025 shows that we have a strong production profile. We produced 13,300 tons of copper from Kounrad in Kazakhstan, 17,880 tons of zinc and 25,150 tons of lead from the Sasa mine in North Macedonia, all done in a safe manner where we had one lost time injury with a lost time injury frequency rate lower than it was the previous year. Our target is to keep that rate moving downwards. It's a real focus for us on the health and safety side. This production led to good financial results, which we published in March this year.
Little shy of $230 million of revenue, $102 million of EBITDA, translating into a 44% EBITDA margin. Importantly, we generated $56 million of free cash flow. That free cash flow is important 'cause that's the money we use to pay our dividend. The dividend that's being approved today is a total of $0.12 for 2025, which is at the upper end of our dividend policy range, which I'll talk about later. Just setting out an investment case for Central Asia Metals. You know, this is a strong cash generative business with a disciplined focus on growth. We generate a lot of free cash flow. Our free cash flow yield is around 15%, which is very high. We have a strong track record of shareholder returns.
We've returned $420 million to our shareholders by way of dividends and buybacks versus $214 million that we've raised in equity only twice from the market, once on IPO and once when we acquired Sasa. We're committed to value accretive growth. We have a clear ambition to build a pipeline of projects, either through exploration but also through acquisition, I'll talk about that in a minute. We've got a great team, both sitting around me here today, plus also at our operations and in our office in London that support the strategy. We have a robust financial position. We have a balance sheet that's free of debt and has $80 million in cash on it. Importantly, we're also strategically positioned in critical metals. We're in the right metals.
Copper, we call it here the metal of electrification. This is essential for transmitting electricity and generating electrical power all over the world. Zinc is very useful in industrial production, plus also makes steel last a lot longer. Lead's a reliable energy storage metal as well. We're in the right metals, and we call them the base metals essential for modern living. Like I said, we've created a lot of value for our shareholders here. Our total shareholder return since IPO has been 274%, which is a stunning result for a small mining company. This is because of our disciplined approach to capital allocation.
Like as I said before, we have this dividend policy of 30%-50% of free cash flow, that provides us the flexibility to continue with capital returns to shareholders whilst financing our internal growth, internal investment, plus also our growth ambitions. Turning to our operations. As I said, Kounrad is a leaching facility. We are leaching copper from old dumps by irrigating them with a solution. We extract the copper from those dumps and plate them into copper cathode. This copper cathode is a sellable material that is 99.99% pure and goes straight to the market. The image on the top right of the screen gives a view, a satellite view of the operation. That open pit in the top center, just for scale, is about 2 km north and south, north to south.
The area of the dumps, which are labeled with the little numbers, is equivalent to around 1,500 football pitches. It's a huge undertaking that we have here. Our guidance for 2026 is to produce 12,000-13,000 tons of copper. Quarter one has seen us on track to achieve that guidance. Since we started producing, we've produced over 180,000 tons of that LME grade copper, as you can see in the bottom right-hand picture there. You can see a couple more photographs of our site on this image, on this slide here. That's the production facility on the top right with the copper coming out of the EW cells on the bottom right there.
I'll draw your attention to the chart in the middle, which what that is showing is that our actual recovery of copper has actually exceeded our initial expectations. We do expect the, as is normal with these dump leach facilities, we expect that output to gradually decline over time, and that's reflected in that guidance I spoke about earlier. Our focus remains on extracting as much of this copper and maximizing the efficiencies that we can in terms of extracting copper from these dumps. Our cash costs are some of the lowest in the industry. We're currently producing copper at a cost of $0.82 a pound. Mining industry is terrible. We always quote our costs in pounds, and we sell our metal in tons.
Current copper price is $6.12 a pound, that's driving that extraordinary EBITDA margin that we achieve at 75%. Moving on to Sasa. This is a much more traditional mine. It's mining lead zinc from underground operations, crushing, milling, grinding, moving things around and ultimately sending concentrates. These are smelters that are located primarily in Europe. Here's a photograph of one of our new facilities that we've constructed. This is what we call paste backfill facility. We've just completed a bunch of capital programs at Sasa building two new plants plus a big tailings handling facility, including and also a decline into the bottom of the mine. That effectively sets Sasa up for the rest of its life.
What I'll draw your attention to on this slide is the tonnages that we have achieved in 2025 versus 2024 as we ramp up from that transitional phase, and moving upwards, you know, we're aiming at a little more tonnage this year. We were able to guide back to where we were in 2024, 18,000-20,000 tons of zinc expected in 2026 and 26,000-28,000 tons of lead in the same period. We weren't without our problems at Sasa last year, and we've done a full review of the business, starting from underground in the resource and reserve calculations all the way through every aspect of our business. The focus this year is to drive all of those initiatives through the business and ultimately see the results coming through on the bottom line.
This includes mine planning, processing technologies, productivity, staffing levels, and importantly cost control as well. So a lot of that's going on and we've also focused on, in that top right-hand photograph, just depositing our tailings, which is the waste we produce at Sasa, in a much more environmentally fashion. This is what we call the dry stack landform. Around 40% of our tailings every year goes onto that landform. The other 40% goes underground, with only 20% going into what should be our last remaining surface tailings facility. See the costs at Sasa, while we don't get the spectacular margins that we achieve at Kounrad, it's certainly a solid little performer with $0.80 pound zinc costs there versus the current price of just shy of $1.60 a pound of zinc as well.
As I said earlier, with all those implementation of those initiatives that we've got going at Sasa, we expect that this operation to start performing a little bit better through 2026. Getting to our capital allocation and outlook, as I said earlier, we're looking to drive some value to the shareholders via exploration and acquisition. That means we've got to build our portfolio to replace what we're depleting at Kounrad and Sasa. We're doing that through an agile and exciting exploration program in Kazakhstan, where we've got a really excellent team of geologists working hard there. They're properly incentivized. They own 20% of the CAML X business, and we're targeting high-grade metal prospects there. This year, very exciting, we're drilling two of these prospects.
We've got around 5,500 right now, and I'm really looking forward to seeing those results as are all my colleagues on the board here. We're also, when I say agile, we go through, we've got the luxury of the cash flow behind us, so we don't have to hang on to these things and flog dead horses. We do drop licenses that aren't looking good. We've already identified four additional licenses that we look to add to our portfolio this year. Importantly, we've signed a term sheet for an option agreement in a very exciting part of Kazakhstan and look to start exploring that in the near future.
I won't go through that column on the right-hand side of the screen in great detail, but what I will say is to populate the area between the early stage exploration and the production, we are looking for growth assets. We're looking to grow by buying a development asset. That'll allow us to generate value for our shareholders by conducting studies, conducting more drilling, and applying all of the engineering and operational knowledge that CAML has built up over the years into, well, bringing a new asset to the market that'll start replacing the production at Sasa and Kounrad. Lastly, and in conclusion, you know, we're a great little business, great platform for growth.
We've got a flexible balance sheet with a lot of cash on it, $80 million at the end of the year, plus we're generating good free cash in this commodity market as well. We're looking to produce 12,000-13,000 tons of copper in 2026, 18,000-20,000 tons in zinc, and 26,000-28,000 tons of lead. This year is, you know, key for us in terms of improving the productivity at Sasa and maintaining focus and efficiencies and costs at Kounrad. We're looking to identify and structure a material transaction to populate that area between the exploration and the production, as I said. All the time, we're gonna be retaining disciplined capital allocation and making sure that our shareholders benefit from all of the good work that my team does every day.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Gavin. I now invite questions on the business, both from those in the room and those watching online. We have around 10 minutes for this. I won't be able to repeat all the questions submitted online, though we'll try to cover each of the topics raised. Can I ask if anyone in the room has a question? Yes.
Yeah. With the minerals, what is the mineral that's likely to be discovered? Is this copper or?
Gavin?
Yeah. It's an ultramafic deposit, so the target mineralization is copper and nickel in that one.
Oh, right. The motive for investing in Aberdeen Minerals, was this just to diversify away from Central Asia or I'm thinking, are you worried about geopolitical risk in Kazakhstan?
No. No, we're not. In fact, our stated kind of geographical boundaries for our strategy are the European time zone. Aberdeen obviously fits in well with that, plus Kazakhstan. We're very comfortable in Kazakhstan. We've been operating there a long time and, you know how to operate and navigate our way through the bureaucracies there, so we don't see any risk there.
Yeah.
The motivation for Aberdeen was more sort of asset quality and the quality of the team that is conducting that exploration.
Thank you. Any more questions from the room? Yes, please.
How's the has the Strait of Hormuz impacted business at all ? Do you, how do you foresee any impact?
No, fortunately not. That's a very good question because we do consume sulfuric acid, and obviously it's been in the headlines that a lot of the sulfuric acid globally comes through that strait. We are very fortunate in that there's a smelter only 18 km to the south of our operation that generates sulfuric acid as a byproduct, and we purchase our sulfuric acid there. From that perspective, it hasn't. At Sasa we have seen a slight increase in diesel costs, That's about 2% of our cost base, it doesn't affect us too much. Energy costs, we've actually, at Sasa, again, electricity costs we've hedged to the end of June.
We've been watching that market very carefully as well 'cause those, like, those are the sort of biggest inputs for us that would be around processes.
Thank you. Although I would like to address the topics coming up in questions submitted via the online platform.
Right. We've had a few questions on our post questions, a few points asking about is the current market environment creating opportunities, practical opportunities, and also what are the biggest opportunities that we're seeing?
Sure. Look, I don't think, is the current market generating more opportunities than usual? I don't think so. I think we've got a strategy that revolves mainly around the knowledge that we have of the industry, plus all the connections we have. The nine people sitting up here are all industry veterans who know their way around. We get a lot of opportunities arising through those, through our teams on the ground, and also through our relationships with banks and traders. You know, we do see a decent pipeline of opportunities coming through regardless of the market at the moment. If we're talking about the price of the metals influencing the prices of assets, look, these things do move.
In general, the modeling that we use uses what we call consensus pricing. That is a price that is put out by several people, consensus, of all the analysts forecasting copper prices. We use that price in terms of our determinations, and that's kind of a standard thing. We don't see huge dislocations in terms of what people are asking versus what the prevailing copper price, for example, would be.
We've got a couple questions about the level of executive remuneration, both Non-Executive and Executive. Really it's about whether or not you consider that the level of Executive remuneration is appropriate for a company of our size, and size being measured here by market cap.
Mike, would you like to address that?
We do spend a lot of time assessing the appropriateness of Executive remuneration. We look at benchmark studies in the industry to see comparable, you know, what we think is happening for comparable-sized companies. It's quite difficult to find exact comparables, you know, we look at broad industry data to assess appropriateness of pay. We spend a lot of time looking at our LTIP and how that should be driven, the KPIs underlying that. We're, you know, broadening out that as much as possible to make sure it's a fair challenging. I, you know, I believe our pay structure generally is reasonable in line with market norms.
I haven't heard any suggestions that it isn't.
We've got a specific question about Kounrad and whether we see opportunity to increase, to optimize recovery and extend the life of the operation in the future.
As I said earlier, the asset has actually outperformed our initial expectations. I think we've produced, depending on which dump we're talking about, between 13 and 16% more copper than we initially expected. The current forecasts are for that sort of outperformance to continue. You know, the issue with Kounrad is that you've got a finite resource. It's sitting on surface, you can measure it fairly easily. The challenge is getting more either, as you say, more recovery out of it or more resource into the plant. We look at both. We look at, you know, various sort of optimizations that we can do with our normal course of business, leaching operations. Plus also we do, from time to time, test new technologies in terms of leaching copper minerals as well when they come out.
In terms of additional material, the plant will have capacity, and we're experts at piping and pumping solutions around. If opportunities do come up within the region that allows us to exploit that plant capacity, we would do that. We do have an active business development program in Kazakhstan looking at those sorts of opportunities as well. You know, so far we haven't been able to set our foot on any of those, but we're not gonna stop looking.
A similar question on dump operations actually about, is there a copper price at which we might go back and look at those business cases?
Without dusting off a bunch of old models, I don't know the answer to that question. You know, in general, when we do reject those things, the economics is only one part of the analysis. We also do a lot of technical analysis and look at the acid consumption, the recovery rates, those sorts of things. You know, don't forget that Kounrad is actually a unique asset in many respects, that we don't have to rehandle material and put it on a heap pad or crush it or grind it or inject air or bacteria into the system. We've got all of that at Kounrad. We're very fortunate to have that. It's very difficult to find an analog to it. The copper price, of course, would compensate for higher cost operations.
In most cases, when we reject these sorts of things, it's for, you know, pure technical reasons rather than just economics.
There are a couple questions on strategy. One's from a general question asking what is it going to do to basically define the share price? On a similar theme, looking at the first question and say, has the board considered selling part of the business and returning proceeds to shareholders?
There's a lot of questions there. Look, I think the strategy is important clearly, and we discuss that at every board meeting, and make sure that, you know, the board and our Execs are aligned on what we're doing strategically and taking into account the sort of views of all of our stakeholders there. You know, that gets reviewed every 4 months, effectively. We review it 4 months when we have a board meeting. I think we're on the right path in terms of strategy. In terms of, you know, any sales of the assets. Look, if someone makes an offer for something that is compelling to the board, we'd be, you know, irresponsible not to consider that. I think in terms of, you know, returning capital to shareholders, we've got a good track record of doing that.
I think we've essentially proven to the market that, you know, in terms of the $420 million we've given back well in excess of what we've ever raised from market is probably speaks for itself.
Right. Can I ask a new question on, I guess on Aberdeen, just saying with the greens in coalition in Scotland, is the new mine in Scotland at risk?
That's a good question. I suppose, you know, the first thing I'd say is that, you know, We're a long way from, you know, a mine there anyway. We've gotta make a proper economic discovery first, which Aberdeen does, and then, you know, then CAML needs to decide on that basis whether or not it continues to invest. I won't speak for the Aberdeen team there, but, judging by what we've seen and driving our investment is that any mine that would potentially be developed there is gonna be an underground mine. The footprint's gonna be small, it's in an area of Scotland that is fairly deprived. It's looking for jobs, it's not, you know, outstanding natural beauty by any means.
We're not gonna be, you know, encroaching on any national park, any of that kind of stuff. I think from that perspective, you know, it represents a solid investment on our part. In terms of politics, you know, all I'd say is the cycles around politics are probably much shorter than mine development. You know, let's see what happens.
The only thing I'd add to that as well is the two metals that we would be producing from there should there be a mine are key for environmentally friendly future of the U.K. and the world. We're talking about electric vehicles. We're talking about batteries for nickel. We're talking about electrification in general for copper. There's a very, you know, pro-green approach to the need for the metals that we will be looking to generate should we be developing a mine with Aberdeen in Scotland.
Well, we're out of time on questions. If anyone out there has got any other questions they'd like to ask or if they feel their question's not properly addressed, please do email me at [Central Asia Metals ]. Email address is on the website, [finance@centralasiametals].
Thank you, Richard. I think we have now covered the topics raised, and thank everyone participating both in person and online. We appreciate your interest in the company.