Good afternoon, and welcome to the KEFI Gold and Copper Plc investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time by the Q&A tab situated in the right-hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions and press Send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand over to Harry Anagnostaras-Adams. Good afternoon to you, sir.
Good afternoon and thank you for everyone who's joined. I'm aware that there are some shareholders as well as some non-shareholders participating. If I do touch on anything that some of you already know, please forgive me. That is for the benefit of people who might be new. Those who have followed us know. By the way, I should apologize for my croaky voice and excuse me having a sip of water. Occasionally, I think I've had COVID one too many times, and there's a little crackle in my throat I just can't shake off.
Anyhow, we've focused on the Arabian-Nubian Shield since 2008, and, I've heard about the Arabian-Nubian Shield since I was in my twenties, a long time ago, because of its similarities in geology, where most of the gold and other minerals come from in Australia and Canada. It's under exploration in a modern sense. Despite ancient mining there going back thousands of years, the modern industry is only just waking up or being allowed to engage. Probably more to the point. Anyhow, we've been there 15 years and in that 15 years it'd be fair to say we've suffered many, many frustrations, learned many lessons. Over the last two years, things have turned for the better. We are one of the people, if you like, at the forefront of the industry.
The two countries we're focused on are Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia. We have joint ventures in each, one with a very large family office, a globally leading family office, and in Ethiopia with the government. Now, when we first arrived, there were few outside foreign companies engaging, and this image gives you an impression of some of the better-known companies that have engaged, including the world's two largest gold producers, and many other very well-known companies and explorers and producers. For example, of note in particular for Ethiopia is that the largest mining IPO for a good decade, I think globally, but certainly in North America, was that of Allied Gold a few months ago, which raised $260 million to put into its Ethiopian project.
Perhaps the most high profile, you know, companies that are engaged in the region now would be Newmont and Barrick. Indeed, I can see we don't even have on the list perhaps one of the most prolific explorers in the world, and that's the Ivanhoe Electric, which have now come into Saudi Arabia. A corporate snapshot. I won't go over all these details now, so we can, if you like, not waste time getting to questions. But we have, as a company, a beneficial interest in about a bit over 1 million ounces in each country. The first cab off the rank for development is the high-grade Tulu Kapi Gold Mine, over 2 gram open pit, 5 gram underground. Very conventional project. Very conventional processing plant.
I'll elaborate on that a little bit later. Some of the projections summarized on this slide are particularly important 'cause just that first project, the majority-owned Tulu Kapi project, which is in the midst of its financing now for launch, will generate based on the signed off numbers, at consensus forecast gold price of about 1,800 per ounce, will generate about $50 million, GBP 50 million, GBP 54 million per annum. It's KEFI's account net after everything, which obviously is more than our market cap today. That's just a very simple, if you like, highlight of the sort of returns we're pursuing from these projects. That's just the Tulu Kapi project. In an NPV sense, it represents today a bit over three pence per KEFI share, which is. What is that?
5 x the share price, something like that. 4x or 5 x the share price. Without even looking at our projects in Saudi Arabia, where we have a very almost the same endowment as a beneficial interest, with two projects coming along behind the Ethiopian one for development. I won't go through the details here, but Tulu Kapi I've mentioned in Ethiopia and over in Saudi Arabia are two discoveries. The gold Jibal Qutman and the copper-gold Hawiyah coming along behind. Between them in aggregate, much bigger than Tulu Kapi already and still growing, so to speak, through drilling. But also, because we only own a minority stake in them, the beneficial interest to KEFI is about the same as that in Tulu Kapi. Growth, a growth pipeline in both countries.
Now, very difficult to convey in words, in talking like this, the different sentiment that applies today compared to any time that I've been personally coming to the region regularly, you know, monthly, if not more often, over the last decade myself. You know, the excitement, the momentum, the driven commitments to launch projects, finance projects, you know, build an industry is palpable today in both countries. You would only need to visit, meet a few people over the course of the day, and you'd feel it. That's never been the case in my experience before. Changes of law inviting investors and companies to engage, any number of things I could quote.
In many respects, we've learned from experience, we've learned it the hard way, that one can make discoveries, one can make acquisitions, one can make plans, but unless the environment is conducive to get going, extremely difficult. No matter what people intend, no matter what goodwill is towards you, extremely difficult until the general environment turns to the positive, which it has done over the last two years and last year in particular. We have three development projects in the queue. One majority-owned, two minority-owned in Saudi, and a pipeline of exploration coming along behind them. A fairly healthy book, so to speak, and with the wind at our back for the first time. Now a company that starts very small as an explorer, we started as a GBP 2 million AIM explorer.
To have, if you like, the global credibility to attract major international investors, contractors, government as partner, leading, family offices as partner, it needs to do things in an exemplary fashion with independent signoffs. Because albeit that the individuals within the company might have had any number of years of experience, here, there, and everywhere, the company itself hasn't. It started as an explorer, and it's discovered projects, and now we're developing projects. We make a point of independent signoffs on the way through from global brand names for each discipline. Now, all that little step function going up from the bottom left to the top right, that's all been done. What is being done now at Tulu Kapi, has been followed for years, is security. Constellis, we've had them tagging us, I think since 2015 or 2016.
That's really the only sort of worrisome issue we have, albeit that it's come way down in importance and the concern as the country's settled right down and things are moving now. Everything else being signed off and the only thing left to sign off is just to witness that we prepare the community and start making arrangements all safe and sound, and everything's moving and flowing so that the independent experts can give a big tick to that as well. That will happen month- to- month over the next few months. Milestones achieved last year. I won't go through them, not to waste your time at this forum, but the bottom line is that we're extremely busy ticking boxes. The different boxes to tick off. Sounds a bit flippant to say that.
Hell of a lot of work went into each box. The major conditions precedent to launching the project were all satisfied. I'll come to what we have to do now in a moment, but basically, we took everything from nothing yet being approved, everything needing to be updated, some laws needing to be changed, particularly with foreign exchange controls. All of those things being done and the lead bank approving final credit committee approval by the end of last year. That was really the marker for us to move into launch mode. As I said, I'll come to the 2024 task list shortly. Over in Saudi Arabia, we're really up to our necks in two feasibility studies on two development projects, both of them discoveries of our company.
An excellent team, a highly driven group of professionals working through those studies through the myriad of issues under each topic to prepare each of them for commitment for development. Comparative valuation benchmarks. Any which way you look at it. Well, first of all, let me say that the other than the bottom right-hand corner graph, the other three are relative value measures against analog companies. The first thing I would say is that the actual analyst who does this work pointed out that since two years ago, when we asked that firm to do this sort of work and other industry research for us, the number of benchmarks in Africa of analog companies has halved from roughly 25 to about half today.
That's because there's been a consolidation of the industry with takeovers of smaller companies by the majors. What that means is that, to me at least, the majors are moving in big time, and as the difficulty of the stock markets in the last few years has made it very difficult for juniors to raise the capital for development, they're being taken over to achieve that through the balance sheets of majors. That's my interpretation. Anyhow, be that as it may, where we stand today, you can see is a very low price compared to benchmarks, comparatives. As we de-risk and move forward, we will climb those curves. The bottom right-hand slide is just the grade of the principal deposit compared to the rest, showing you that we're relatively high grade.
Now, I'm sorry this looks a bit busy, but if we were funding everything from the stock market, there would be one box on that chart, and that would be the KEFI box. Well, I suppose, and its shareholders. Two boxes. Because we're effectively doing all our financing in subsidiaries with a minimal of exceptions, it gets more complicated down below with partners and bankers and mezzanine financiers and so on. You know, in terms of how would I put it, stakeholder responsibility, the company has obviously its fiduciary responsibility for its shareholders and indeed to the other parties from whom most of the money is coming. We have a deep and seriously taken responsibility to our partners who rely on us as a technical partner.
To our bankers, albeit that they might be putting the loans into subsidiaries, they do look to the technical partner to be accountable, to provide human and capital resources as required. To mezzanine and other financiers down below. Once again, ironically, there's more capital available down in Ethiopia, and perhaps not so ironically, also down in Saudi Arabia, than there is in the stock market for mining. However, only as long as we honor our responsibilities to all these stakeholders. I only say that because it's sometimes a little bit difficult to understand the pace and language of our reporting, and I only highlight it because we have to be and be seen to be good fiduciaries for all the stakeholders, particularly when the ones who are not on the public share register are putting up most of the capital. Milestones ahead.
This is a bit more important, and I'll dwell on a couple of points here. Having had final credit committee approval of the lead bank on the Tulu Kapi project, and the lead equity investors there as well, the equivalent approval there, the other syndicate members are going through their approval processes. That was sort of like a trigger, if you like. Not so much that everyone piggybacks on one person's or one party's approval, but obviously, unless the leads approve, there's not much point the rest of them doing their approval process. That has happened, and we're now into that. That also allowed us to trigger engagement with the local authorities and the local community to lay out the plans for resettlement. It doesn't mean to say resettlement will be executed before financial close. It just means that we have to make sure that everyone agrees.
It's compulsory resettlement. It's not a discussion in that sense, but it is a discussion in the sense of consultation to ensure it's done fairly, properly, completely transparently and in compliance with the highest world standards. Satisfaction of conditions precedent. The keys to keep an eye on are security and the other things that are close to the heart of anyone making $ hundreds of millions of commitments or as a syndicate doing so. The insurances, and obviously, the insurers go through and have to do their own assessments and due diligence in their good form. Then all the, what you'd call, legal, formal satisfaction of title, confirmations, perfection of security, and so on.
You know, in a country like Ethiopia for which this is the first such transaction ever, an internationally syndicated project finance, where laws have had to be changed to accommodate it, from the federal down through regional down through zonal. I suppose we've learned through experience that changing a government system has taken more time than we had hoped. Having done all that, really the ticking off of compliance, having done the changes of law, hopefully now is fairly straightforward. Certainly, the appetite and desire is there among the authorities to do that. Finalization of definitive documentation. Most of it's very advanced drafting. Putting 12 different counterparties down and making sure that all their respective lawyers sign off, I would never underestimate the challenge of that.
All of these tasks that I've just outlined are scheduled out over the next few months. Then we move into closing and drawdown. Just calling public meetings and so on to approve anything that needs to be approved obviously takes a month or two, but basically, you're looking at a few months between those three sets of tasks above, and then a month or two of closing procedures with different people who have to call different types of meetings to put in their capital. In the second half of the year, procurement, community resettlement, construction to be launched. At the same time, we'd like to get going again on our exploration, both in the district and elsewhere.
The government has given us informal assurance that our provisional licenses will be properly registered for us to restart the exploration that we had already begun for the good of the community, for the good of the project, for the good of all stakeholders. We are, I suppose, while Ethiopia has yet to fully get cracking to the mining sector, we're doing some other work around the country, putting our foot on a few other things opportunistically. In Saudi Arabia, the work on Jibal Qutman is extremely intense. Lots of debating, lots of pressure internally resolving which way to take it, how big to build it before we trigger, and all that sort of stuff. Highly advanced feasibility work, leading to the sort of pressure cooker that we're blessed to have, to be honest.
Having made a discovery, having had excellent team doing all the work to get it to a stage where it warrants the pressure cooker of debate about when to trigger the development. I think by the middle of the year, that should be quite clear on Jibal Qutman. That's my prognosis. Hawiyah is coming along behind that. It's a more complex project with underground development as well, with polymetallic, so therefore, more complex metallurgical processes, and it has to be given some more time. It's perhaps a year behind today's pressure cooker at Jibal Qutman. Regional exploration. Well, you would be quite astounded to hear the ground holdings that a couple of major explorers, global explorers, have grabbed recently. But they've just landed in the country and tried to throw a blanket with government support over anything they could.
Whereas we've been there 15 years building a proprietary database, cherry-picking what we wanted to go after, and have made two discoveries. It's no surprise to you to learn that you couldn't get into our conference booth. In the conference last week called Future Minerals Forum, where Gold and Minerals Company, our joint venture company, had a booth. You couldn't get into it. It was so jam-packed of people wanting to get in there, wanting to talk about whether they could get involved with us. We are at the head of the pack, and we really wanna take advantage of that and grow as fast as possible. Board of directors. I won't go through them all now, but the head of a major African mining bank, Mark Tyler. Former head, that is, of the mining division. Richard Robinson, former operational head of Gold Fields.
Alistair Clark, Former Managing Director, Environment and Sustainability, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Myself and John have worked together for the best part of 30 years, have developed many projects across a number of commodities. I think it's a reasonable board for this juncture. Two of us stand down every year for re-election. I've noticed that we've been re-elected each time with 95%+, which I suppose means shareholders think we're doing not too bad a job, despite the difficulties and disappointments of getting to this stage in these countries. The board will be refreshed. There'll be younger people. There'll be people qualified better for the next stage. There'll be people from the regions. The board will refresh itself, continue to refresh itself regularly as we move forward. The executive committee in KEFI has grown.
Perhaps I haven't made much of a song and dance about it, but some very important appointments have been made. Eddie has been in organizational development in mining companies for decades, for many majors and some juniors. Rob has been overseeing project studies for the likes of large consulting firms and BHP, as well as my predecessor companies. Norman Green has his own or had his own. He's retired. He only works in situations which to him are worth the effort, where it's interesting and he can add value. He's a bit of a rock star in the game of building projects for the mining sector. He's quite a mentor for our people. David used to be MD of Billiton. He's basically waiting for us to start operational readiness and operations so he can make a contribution. I'll stop there.
Not sure how long I took there, master of ceremonies, but let's turn to the questions, please.
Perfect. Harry, thank you very much for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q&A tab, which is situated on the top right-hand corner of your screen. Harry, we did receive a number of pre-submitted questions, so I thought I'd start with those. The first one reads as follows: What is the probabilities of funding being acquired for one of the assets in SA in 2024, especially when you voiced how much easier this route is to Ethiopia? Although it seems to be taking the same timeframe. On SA, you keep saying that you want it to be fast-tracked and so keen to invest. What is going wrong?
Nothing's going wrong. I think if I gave the impression that you could get access we only got access to Jibal Qutman, I suppose, what we're referring to, because it's the first cap in the rank for development. We only got access to the site 13 months ago, after a seven-year absence for regulatory reasons. If I gave the impression to anybody that within 13 months we'd have drilled out the deposit, completed a DFS, done the financing, and started construction, then I apologize. That's simply completely unrealistic. I don't believe I would have given that guidance because it would have been wrong. The rest of the question is very pertinent, and that is, you know, is finance relatively easier? Yes. The country is very wealthy.
The sovereign fund has been mandated, instructed to prioritize mining, and we're very close to the Saudi Industrial Development Fund, who've been to our sites and are looking forward to receiving submissions. We haven't triggered those submissions because we're not ready to. Yes, I think if one looks at the RNS we put out only today, you'd see an outline and some narrative of the lines we're thinking along. Essentially, for KEFI, you know, instead of. I mean, if it combined Jibal Qutman, Hawiyah developments between them might be $500-$600 million. How does KEFI spend $500-$600 million? Shareholders want us to develop. The market had been weak and obviously KEFI would not be provided with $500-$600 million to develop these projects. How do we do it?
Well, we've accepted that we'll be a minority with a strong partner. That's a big step. We work very hard to maintain our relationship and mutual respect and support of the lending institution that I mentioned. On top of that, there's been a, you know, what I can only describe as a bit of a wave of interest for people wanting to deploy into Saudi Arabia. We may not do anything with any of them. It's there in a shape, in a form, and a quantity that I've never seen before in any country. We have the opportunity here as KEFI to participate in these ventures as long as we maintain, you know, doing a good job for the balance of all those stakeholders.
We have the opportunity here to put up a pretty small component of the total finance package. If you just work the numbers through, and I encourage you to look at today's RNS, which sort of sets it out step by step. Now what I said before about Saudi is simple, plain truth. If I gave you the impression that in 13 months we'd have knocked the whole thing over and been in construction, that's not correct.
Perfect, Harry. Thank you very much. Next question here. What's the status of the license areas near Tulu Kapi which were taken from KEFI?
I touched on that during the PowerPoint walkthrough that we believe we'll get them back. We are prepared to take administrative action, legal action if we need to, but we don't think that'll be necessary.
Perfect. Thank you very much. When does Saudi need to be financed, and how will KEFI's funds be raised?
That question I just touched on. I suppose just to elaborate a bit further, but I do encourage you to read the RNS today's. Just if you walk through the sequencing in the RNS, you've got you have to have a bankable project, number one, which means studies to a bankable standard with independent sign-offs and so on and so forth. Let's say 75% project financing debt, leaving 25% for equity. Of that equity portion, the partners 75, 25. ARTAR 75, KEFI 25 would do the rest. They can have a look at the other alternatives on offer if they choose to take any of them, such as mezzanine finance or anything else. We haven't got anywhere near that yet, and there's no need to do that yet.
They're just opportunities for us to evaluate as we move forward. I think that should make sense. Thank you.
Perfect. Thank you very much. What is the status of the SIDF application in Saudi?
We haven't formally applied until we finish the DFS and all those sign-offs, but we stay very close. I mean, I don't have much to do with the day-to-day in Saudi, but I actually bumped into the SIDF twice in meetings with their company in the last few days. I'm in Riyadh. We obviously have a very close dialogue and they're keeping a close eye on us. I think it's all going well, but you know, it's premature to actually lodge the formal application.
Perfect. Thank you very much. I think you have touched on this, but can you explain in simple terms what further steps are now required to get full project financing?
I suppose that means for Ethiopia, Tulu Kapi. Well, I think I did go through that in the slideshow. We've got the, you know, three concurrent sets of jobs going on. Preparing the community, going through all the conditions precedent like insurances and title and security sign-off, as I said, is the key. And the legal documents will be finished from there. 97% status, depending which agreement you look at, to the final ready-to-execute, you know, document. Yeah. You know, I think. The only comment I'd make to add to that is because it must seem pretty long-winded to anybody, and without dwelling on the fact that the country had a civil war a few years ago, that's all history.
You know, just Ethiopia was a top 10 growth country for 20 years running until it had those problems. I absolutely guarantee you, I'd be staggered if it wasn't in the top 10 growth countries in the world again within the next two years, because it really is determined to, and it actually has to repair its economy. We're on the rebound, if you like, in Ethiopia. In fact, the aftershocks of those conflicts are still settling down, but they are purely aftershocks, to be frank. You know, we've had a camp out there. This company has had a camp out there, I think, for 18 years since the first discovery hole. This is before KEFI got involved. I mean, we've never had an employee punched or whatever, you know.
You'd think that our people were being bludgeoned every day if you read some of the news. We you know we have people working out there every day, and no one's ever been punched or anything like that over 18 years. Mobilizing hundreds of people and hundreds of millions of dollars requires you know first-tier discipline systems, rigor, and that's what we're installing around this to make it you know watertight for everybody. I don't think people should get discouraged by the constant references to security by our company. We're just being honest. You know if this wasn't a frontier market, if this had been in Australia, we'd be probably rehabilitating a closed down site by now that has finished its production. It's not.
It's the first development of this nature ever, and the first development of a major mine for over 30 years. Being the first, you know, mover brings its challenges, let's say. We're doing things with great discipline, but I don't think it should perturb you if you like that we keep referring to these things because we're just being honest. Thank you.
Perfect. That's great. Can you guarantee that no money will ever need to be raised or aimed to develop any of the projects?
You know, superficially, with respect, it's a silly question. I'm not aware that anyone should invest in a pre-production company expecting never to have to give it any money to do anything. But I well understand the sentiment, and I respect the sentiment. The sentiment is this sector has been in the doldrums for a long, long time, since 2011, I believe. The index for this sector has gone down from 200+ to minus something, I believe. Our stock has done almost as bad. At the same time, we've been traversing geopolitical turbulence and frustration, and yet we have all this upside. You know, shareholders appear to fear anyone raising money more than lusting for the upside, if I could put it that way.
It's a risk-off market, I suppose in a one-liner. In a risk-on market, people will be looking at our GBP 54 million a year cash flow to our share from Tulu Kapi and saying, "By golly, look at that. It's even more than the market cap is today, and it doesn't even put anything onto the Saudi assets. This is a screaming buy," if it was a risk-on market. I can understand that frustration. Without making light of it, I do challenge anyone to find a company that has amassed more financial support from other parties for our shareholders, from banks, partners and others. I don't know of any. Now we have to close these deals for you to see it in reality.
All these parties are not doing their work with a view to closing on some sort of jolly. You know, they wanna get on with it and make money. These development banks in Tulu Kapi have been working with us for five years. They went through the troubles of the country. They stayed with us. They want to do this. It's their job to help develop the country. Where we should be, I suppose, when we close, we should be honored that they backed us and our shareholders. You know, I'd like to turn the question on its head and say, we are raising nearly everything from other parties, and therefore, we have a duty to those other parties to protect everybody, our shareholders as well as the people putting all that capital together.
You know, I hope I haven't sounded too much like a soapbox as on a soapbox, but it's important to stand back and see what we're trying to do. I mean, if you don't feel comfortable, you know, it's. This is a difficult high-risk, high-return game. You know, one should always stay in their comfort zone. I strongly recommend that. It would be ridiculous for a pre-production company to make a guarantee that it will never raise money from shareholders. Thank you.
Perfect. Thank you very much, Harry. What's the current cash burn rate in Tulu Kapi on the one hand and Saudi Arabia on the other?
Well, in Saudi, in our announcement today, in anticipation of this type of question, we made it clear that, in effect, we're being carried, you know, in terms of cash burn by the major partner. There are various quid pro quos which we described, and it's all for the greater good. There, the cash burn today is 0. Not forever, but for the moment and for the foreseeable future as we put these things together. In Tulu Kapi, it's GBP 200,000 or something like that per month. We have facilities. We've used them before. We're up at about a bit over GBP 1 million, I think, drawn as we speak. So there's capacity there to carry us. That's what we're doing. You know, we're blessed. We're blessed. We really are.
All shareholders should know that some particular shareholders are particularly supportive and provide advances as working capital on the way through because they believe in us and they back us and support us. We pay them interest, but they deserve it. That's what we're doing, you know, to do what we're doing. Thank you.
Perfect. The next question here: Ethiopia seems to be running into another military confrontation. There's been serious developments emerging between Ethiopia and Somalia. As this development has a bearing on the overall security situation, please can you comment on how KEFI and the government plans to develop Tulu Kapi into a mine while security forces have to deal with issues on multiple fronts at once?
I think it's stretching a long bow to link negotiations with Somaliland to have access to the Red Sea with security around the site of Tulu Kapi. You know, there's no real direct connection. The security we need at Tulu Kapi will have private security. We have people working there every day today in the camp. Going forward, when it's a fully established camp, with facilities in construction, production, and so on, there'll be a private security force inside the mining license area, unarmed. They won't need to be armed. There'll be, you know, regional police and security and federal, more broadly, out and about in the region. That's it. You know, it's sort of built embracing it.
It's not like there's attacks or anything like that on us. Even you know, none of the actors, none of the conflicting parties in Ethiopia have ever attacked us. Quite the contrary, it's evident in their behavior. Just seeing is believing that all of them want this project to go forward because the community wants it to go forward. If the community wants something, nobody stands in the way, ultimately, of the community. I know it sounds a bit ridiculous to say that to some, but it is the truth that the community ultimately will command the authority over who does what to anybody. If we maintain our goodwill. We've built a school. We've provided water supply. We've been transparent. Any number of things we've done.
You know, we're good guys, and nobody wants to hurt us. I wouldn't worry too much about the Somaliland negotiations over a port on the Red Sea.
Perfect. Thank you very much, Harry. What will the KEFI board do to increase its alignment with shareholders?
Well, that's a good question. At the end of this webinar, I know you, the organizers usually conduct a poll and ask for suggestions, so I'd really like to see some suggestions. You know, obviously, we comply with the law with regulatory announcements, and we comply with the law with stepping down from the board regularly and putting ourselves up for re-election if shareholders want. We have webinars. Now, there's no law about having to have a webinar and answer questions. Please tell us what else we can do, that you think we should do. We spend a lot of time managing stakeholder relationships that you don't see because most of the money is coming from other stakeholders. You know, I'd be talking to the lead banker, like, at least 3x a week, for example.
Now, a lead banker who's organizing $190 million loan package, you'd have to say, should get a higher priority of time allocation of an executive chairman than a small shareholder. I'm not being disrespectful. I'm just obviously that's the case. You know, we spend an enormous amount of time on stakeholder management. If there's something we can do to improve shareholder relations or alignment, we take it very seriously and we welcome any suggestions.
Perfect. Just turning to the next question. How long will moving people living around Tulu Kapi take?
Well, it's a 90-day statutory period. You only start the statutory period on financial close when the money hits the bank account, so to speak. You issue the notices and the people have 90 days. Now we might have them ready to do it a bit quicker, but that's the statutory period. The 24-month schedule has that three-month schedule built into it, if you like. All we're doing now is making sure they're ready to receive that notice. You know, we don't wanna be accused ever of walking up to a household and handing them a notice without them knowing exactly what's gonna happen, where they're going, and all that sort of stuff. What we're doing now is preparing them to receive such a notice. That's a 90-day statutory period.
Perfect. Please comment on recent tantalum exploration applications by KEFI in Ethiopia and this roster.
Well, I think, you know, it's open. What do you call it? You know, the website of the Ministry of Mines is open to see who has registered applications over things, and one can see that we've done that. It's not that we're about to go into the lithium business, to be honest, but in the world of looking around at a country that's way underexplored, only 25% of the country has been mapped, and nothing in a modern sense, geologically. Because of the troubles of the last few years, the industry has been in disarray, and it's only starting to emerge from that now.
We've had a team in place which knows the country extremely well, and we've been doing quite a bit of research and pegging and talking to provide greater, you know, more opportunities for shareholders in the long term or more opportunities to form joint ventures with others in the longer term. That particular initiative, that's the question I asked, is a property along strike of an existing operation where there's some corporate mess there. There's litigation, and we just pegged a clean 100% of the same geology along strike. We wish our neighbors the best. We want them to get cracking, get going. What we'll do is, as everybody knows, the battery metals industry is booming.
We'd look at introducing more people into the market in Ethiopia who are specialists to follow suit on our property. In the meantime, we can shape it up geologically. A bit of opportunism, you know, sort of while the cat's away type of thing. The rest of the world is looking elsewhere. We're positioning ourselves for the surge in Ethiopia as we have been in Saudi Arabia.
Perfect. Does the community resettlement needs to be completed before the definitive documentation can be signed? And if not, what stage of the resettlement must be reached before definitive documentation can be signed? And when is this likely to be achieved? A few parts to that.
No, they're not connected. Only the estimate of the compensation is part of our documentation. The implementation of resettlement is not to do with the documentation. We'd be signing documentation, triggering drawdowns, and then triggering resettlement.
Thank you very much. How and when is the community reassessment to be funded? Does the company need to fund this even in part prior to signing the definitive documentation?
It's part of the $220 million funding package. It's just part of that.
Perfect. This investor would like to know how many families you have identified so far that are unwilling to relocate regardless of any compensation the company has offered.
None.
Perfect. Harry, we are approaching the hour. I don't know if you wanted to take the time now to address some live questions or if you want me to continue the pre-submitted questions.
How many more are there, pre-submitted?
I'd say around 10.
Oh. Well, can you skip over any that look like I've answered them already? You judge and just ask me something that you don't think we've touched on.
Yeah. Okay. This is an assumption. The senior lender banks are either Africa Finance Corporation and Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank. Is this still correct?
Yes.
Perfect. What is the immediate plan for getting the outstanding approval from the second bank?
It's happening.
Perfect. Are there any known blockers currently stopping the second bank from confirming approvals ASAP?
No.
I think the rest are repetitions. Harry, at this point, if I could just ask you to open up the Q&A tab, read out those questions, and then provide a response. I'll pick up from you, at the end.
Scroll to the top of them. First one is there a chance for selling royalties to raise finance? A lot of people who will do this. Not really on the Tulu Kapi one because the government royalty is 7%, and it would be onerous to load up. It wouldn't be safe for KEFI and its shareholders. But in Saudi, royalties are very low and that could be a possibility, you know, if the joint venture thinks, you know, it makes sense. Next one is, one way of improving shareholder sentiment would be when making placings, giving rights to existing shareholders. Why is this not done?
Well, it's a really good question, and I've always failed to give an answer other than the following, because no one has ever shown me what else we could do that would be any better. We honestly can't remember making a placing more than about 10% below market. I could be wrong, but I don't remember. Anyone could buy in the market at any time. The problem with placing to small shareholders is it takes a hell of a long time to organize. Well, first of all, you're not allowed. Regulatory wise, you're not allowed to approach. Oh, I've forgotten the regulatory expression, but there's a term for professional investors or sophisticated investors. You know, they're registered.
You're simply not allowed to approach the retail public for placing. Simply not allowed. Rights issues simply don't work on AIM. I have never seen a rights issue on AIM, and I've always been advised against it. If anyone's ever seen one, please show me one. We've always wished we could, but we're stymied from knowing how you could possibly do it on AIM. Last time we were advised to offer through something called PrimaryBid, and we, you know, we did what's normally done, and I think it raised GBP 200,000.
You know, a company isn't gonna develop these multi-hundreds of millions of dollars projects going around raising GBP 200,000 through, after great effort, through an organized platform. I don't know. If the asker of the question could recommend something that's practical or feasible, maybe it could come in through the poll, because we wish we could do better on that. We just don't know how, to be blunt, and I don't think it's through our stupidity or ignorance, but I don't think the system frankly facilitates it. What's the cash burn? I've already said that. Have you explored many different choices of financing? Yes. I guarantee you, we've always got, I would say, at least 6 proposals in front of us, which we work through methodically. Oops, sorry.
I think I've pressed a button. Can you turn that off? How do you turn that thing off?
Sorry, Harry. What can you see in front of you? Harry?
Yeah. What I'm saying is that the questions are being asked orally by the machine, so to speak. Maybe we can chat this way on organizer. I don't know how to-
Hi, Harry. What I might do is just refresh your browser, pull you, bring you back in, and then.
Okay.
Hopefully, that flushes the issue out. Ladies and gentlemen, do bear with us just while we bring Harry back through. Hi, Harry. If you could just open up the Q&A tab again, that'd be great. I'm just-
Yeah. I've got it open, yeah.
Perfect. Over to you, sir.
Thank you. Sorry about that. I obviously. It's not the system. It's obviously me pressing something that activated a voiceover. There were questions here that were covered in the RNS, which I'll just keep skipping over because it seems to be quite a lot. More about resettlement. When does the second bank approve? What needs to be signed off as security? Well, let me explain that. We do our job at on the project, in the transport routes at the site, and we're monitored as to if there's any incidents and we're monitored as to what our plans are for stepping up the activities. We're reported against to the outside parties. It's as simple as it is. It's not a matter of a security expert turning up and watching us for one day.
It's a matter of monitoring the country, monitoring the incidents in the district, monitoring how people handle themselves and what our plans are and how we modify them, which is why we've had Constellis monitoring us for years. Because obviously if there was no publicity about any conflict in Ethiopia, I think the topic would be far less sensitive. Because there is publicity about security in Ethiopia, albeit you know no problems like there were a few years ago. You know, I think you'd have to say you should understand and sympathize with the banks wanting to be extremely conservative. Albeit that their mandate is to help a developing country develop, particularly new sectors like mining in Ethiopia.
They're understandably extremely concerned to ensure that they're not taking unrecognized risk or ill-considered risk, and therefore they have to monitor for some time. You know, what we're doing now, I think we've explained, and they're monitoring us. Then if they see everything's gone well for the few months and we've had no problems of any significance, and our plans are still intact or been modified accordingly, then they will approve. I honestly think it's what anyone would do. Safety first. We would never risk a life. You have to ask yourself, as a shareholder, or as an executive, or as a banker, or as a contractor, would I send my children out there to work? Is it safe enough for my children?
If you think that through, you would say, "Well, give me a proper report on it. Not just a one-day exercise. Monitor for some months and give me a proper report." That's all that it is. It's nothing more than that. I'm not petrified about it, but that's all it is. I think it's very frustrating that Ethiopia misbehaved for all of us for some years. Very frustrating. I certainly didn't plan to spend most of my time dealing with what I've been dealing with for the last few years. I'm not complaining, but it's very frustrating. We're professionals and we'll do what's required to make sure we start up safe, and that's what we're doing. That's all it is. Cash burn, working capital in Saudi and so on. I think we've answered that.
What do you expect the next announcement to be? I've been in Saudi for a week or so and for another little while, and we had lots of reports and discussions over the last week as shareholders and board and management. It's quite a lot that's been reported and tabled on exploration that we're now getting pulled together into an RNS to put out for our shareholders, so that as soon as that's ready, we'll put that out. That'll be our next announcement. If you don't achieve your financing by set dates, will you stand down? Well, I don't think anybody's more impatient to get on with this than the management team.
I think trying to shoot bullets at an individual who's taking questions is not really the game here. The issue is here that nobody's more dedicated than the team. We're on the ground, feeling it day- to- day. The country has made it clear, if I may be so bold, as to quote the new Minister for Mines. He used to be the Chief Executive of the Roads Authority, and so he's like, he's used to project management and Gantt charts and having to make projects happen. He's that kind of person. You know, when I first met him, and from time to time, he reminds me that he's the Project Manager on his side of the desk with for the government side.
You're the project manager, Harry, on your side of the desk. If we don't jointly deliver this project very quickly, none of us will have our jobs any longer. That's his attitude, and it's my attitude. You know, I'm not interested in hanging around spinning wheels forever, frankly. You won't have to worry about me hanging around. I'll finish this job. We'll get this into production. We'll have succession built into the company fairly rapidly. There's no point appointing people ahead of triggering the thing and, you know, making sure that we're on the way. When will the definitive agreements be signed? I think we've gone through that stuff. We lost 5% of TK today, challenging whether we own 75% or 70% of TK.
Please don't be so. I know this sounds silly to say this perhaps, but it isn't intended to be. I don't think it is. We haven't closed the financing. We are putting up a fraction of the development capital, and we're hanging on to 65%, 70%, 75%, 80% of the project. We'll see how smart we are and how hungry others are to back us. The question here about why did you go from 75%- 70%? Well, we haven't even closed the thing yet. You know, I've been very open that. If you look at the slide, it says very clearly the final percentages will be based on the final deals done. The final pushing and shoving and refining which of the deals between us all. You know, we get the second credit approval.
We then get into a huddle and, you know, beat each other up in the equity side of things, structure it up. We got a pretty good plan, pretty well-agreed principles. But don't get so obsessed about, you know, whether it's 70% or 75%. Is Jeff Rayner still involved? Yeah. On the Ethiopian side, he's got a conflict of interest in Saudi now. Where would you dual list? You know, open competition, I wish it could be in Saudi or even Ethiopia. It's a long story. Time doesn't permit today, I don't think. You'd be surprised. Both Saudi and Ethiopia, but they're not deep markets. That's the problem. You know, in the Western markets, there's thousands of investors looking at them every day, and most of those investors don't look at Saudi or Ethiopian markets.
Ethiopia is gonna launch its stock exchange in June, they told me. They want us to launch one or two or three offshoots in that market to develop a stock market for mining. You know, we've got any number of ideas, but the stock market is playing such a small role in our funding. We just don't have time to focus on stock market listings. Our time is spent on closing any deals and getting going. I feel that we should dual list somewhere. To be honest, last week it changed again. The Saudis put some more enticements on the table to look at Saudi. I think we'll just keep playing it, you know, just keep playing it whilst we don't have to make a decision. Play it out whilst we focus on the main game.
Okay, Harry, when are you looking to retire? I feel like I'm gonna retire in 20 years. You know, I don't know. Making cheeky comments about the me having to retire or something. Have you overpromised in the past on financial closure? Are your current timescales realistic? Are there likely to be further delays? Well, we never publish any timescales or guidance if we think they're wrong. Yes, in hindsight, you'd say that in the past we were wrong. Were we wrong because we intended to be wrong? No. We were wrong in the last. Since 2018, the situation in Ethiopia kept surprising us, and that's the truth. It blew our timetables. That's the truth. If we were more fickle people, we would've folded our tent and left the country.
Would that have been in the best interest of shareholders? I don't believe so. Did we earn the sort of loyalty and respect of the syndicate to stay together? Yes. Do we believe they'll close in the timescales we're now working towards? Yes, because that's what we've been discussing together. You know, I really see no point in crying over spilled milk. The country had a civil war. If you think that this company and its management were capable of doing everything despite a civil war, then, you know, you're just expecting too much of any company.
I think that the fact that we're here as proof, you know, really. I don't know any other. There has been no other project go forward, let alone internationally financed one to those standards in Ethiopia in the mining space. We're doing something, you know, for the first time. I know I've said all that before, but I keep getting asked the same question. Because you're asking me whether we go to the market to raise money again. You know, I think these are ill-founded, repetitive questions. I think that's the end of it as far as I can tell.
Yeah. Harry, that is right. Thank you for answering all those questions from investors. Of course, the company can review all the questions submitted today and we'll publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Just before redirecting investors provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company, Harry, could I just ask you for a few closing comments?
Well, I'd really like to express appreciation for people, you know, riding the turbulence of the stock markets and the sovereign risk issues that we've had to ride. You know, words can't express the appreciation of the support we've received from shareholders who've been long-standing, as well as the other people involved from the other organizations I've mentioned. I think that, you know, the climax of blockages in Saudi is now publicly obvious, ended a couple of years ago. Anyone who's following the mining space would know the crowd has rushed into Saudi from international quarters. It's obvious to anyone that the climax of turbulence and distress within Ethiopia climaxed a couple of years ago, coincidentally.
I think it's obvious that we've not only hung in there, but we've kept improving our projects, strengthening our team and preparing ourselves to launch. It's been a torrid affair, but the leverage is huge. The upside is imminent and you know, the appreciation of support will, in my view, be matched in short order by the demonstration of results because the two countries are allowing us to get on with it at last. It's fantastic. It's not that the company didn't wanna get on with it, but it's only really the last couple of years we've been able to get on with it. We've rounded up our capital, rounded up our people, our contractors, and now we're ready to go.
I do appreciate the support and the patience, and I look forward to celebrating with everybody at appropriate function in the not-too-distant future. Thank you very much.
Harry, thank you very much for updating us today and being so generous with your time. Could I please ask investors not to close this session, as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This won't take a few moments to complete. Your participation will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of KEFI Gold and Copper plc, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation and good afternoon to you all.