Investor update

Jun 16, 2025

Slides

Good morning and welcome to the Metals Exploration Plc post-AGM investor presentation. Throughout the quarter presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. I'd now like to hand you to CEO, Darren Bowden. Good morning to you, sir. Thank you very much. Good morning, everybody, and good morning to the people in the room. I've put together just a brief presentation. I want to give everybody a live update for the first time in a while. A lot of these slides everybody's seen before, so I'm not going to go through them all. I'm going to stop at the ones that I think are important and talk to the business generally, and where we want to take the business and what's going on, so you get a good feel for our thoughts and our future. Again, a lot of these slides are in here for people who don't know the company very well. So they're just to keep everybody updated as we go. I think Metals Exploration for the last five years have grown and grown. We've improved the business. We've increased the size of the business by buying into Nicaragua. I think, the standard that we've achieved in the Philippines, we will be generating that standard again in Nicaragua. That includes ESG, that includes operations, that includes all facets of operations in the developing country. One of the key issues you've got in developing countries is relationships. We'll see some of that. Some of that'll come out in the presentation because there's some questions around regulatory authorities. Regulatory authorities are probably, especially in the Philippines, one of the biggest things we have to deal with. One of the slowest-moving things that are out there as well. A couple of highlights. I suppose we updated this slide with a couple of guidance. We're still looking, the guidance for our ounces are still 70,000-75,000. We're well within that range. We'll probably be at top end or close to the top end of that. The benefit of the gold price at the moment we're currently looking at. We've got a revenue guidance out there now of $226 million. We're going to be about $226 million versus last year of $191 million. Our overall cost structure is about the same. You can make your own decisions around where that ends up, in terms of our cash generation for the year. It should be a good year for us and the half yearly will be out in August, I think Mike was saying. The results are looking very good for the half year. Everything's going in the right direction for us. It sets us up well for the La India construction, which we'll talk through in a little more detail. I think this is a slide I put into every one of my presentations because I want everybody to know where we want to take this company. Right now, we've got stepping stones, which are all internal to the company, that is a growth path to take us past $1 billion. That's what we want to do. That's where the board wants us to take it. It's about execution. It isn't about going to an M&A anymore. It isn't about dilution. It's about us executing on our plan to deliver a much larger company for the existing shareholders. That's where we're headed. The 2- to 4-year plan. Within 2 years, construction finished, production started in Nicaragua. There's some other opportunities we're looking at there, and we're looking to grow the business both in the Philippines and Nicaragua in the short term. The Philippines, I think all of the projects that we have on our books at the moment are the ones we want to develop. We're looking to grow those projects in Nicaragua as well. We've been working with the government over the last four months, and I'll talk you through a little bit of that to what we've seen. On top of that, once we do that, our Runruno operation runs down from where it is right now. We already have Dupax. People have heard about it, they've seen it, and I'll talk you through some of the mapping and some of the work that's been done there over the last four months to give you an idea. I will talk you through where we are with the licensing, because that's a critical issue. It's the licensing of the exploration permit so we can start the drilling. Because it is drill ready, and we are ready to start that drilling. We will talk through that. 3-5 years, because that Dupax would be online. If it proves economic, it'll be online by 2028. We'll have two operating mines in 2028. Then it's just looking at those growth targets within our existing portfolio, bringing those on 5-10 years from now. That's our target. If we go to Nicaragua. You've all seen this slide. I won't talk to it too much. Our target is 140,000-150,000 ounces a year. There's 2.2-2.4 million already in resource. We know that can grow, and we know there's a lot of opportunity to do more in Nicaragua. The benefit of us being at forefront of mining in both Nicaragua and the Philippines is we are the ones leading the way to growing their resource sector within those countries. We're the ones talking to the government. We're the ones in front of the government. Majors won't come in. Majors see the geopolitical risk. We take that on. We manage it by being there with the right team, delivering the right results. We see Nicaragua as the upside there is like the Philippines, forefront of one of the biggest gold industries that could be in the world. I think, we very much like it. Our plan. We're looking at, I think 2027 is going to be a little bit more of a slower growth year than we're showing here. The mine planning's being done now. We're probably looking at about 100,000-110,000 ounces in 2027. We grow to the 140,000 ounces in 2028. That's basically the target at this stage. The numbers in the Philippines, we're running down. Last year's a little bit under due to head grade than this year. We do have a bit of a tail in 2027, as we ramp up Nicaragua. Currently, looking at a $2,500 gold price. Nicaragua has an NPV sitting around $880 million. Okay. There is a question here. Where do you see a valuation of the stock price? The stock price based on these numbers is 20.25p. That's where we will be. We've got to build credibility. We've got to get production online. Once that production comes online, we're going from 80,000 ounces to 140,000 to 150,000 ounces at an all-in sustaining cost that's less than what we're currently doing. Okay. You can do the numbers yourself. That's where that puts us. We're really hoping the gold price stays at $3,500 or even more. Even if you look at a $2,500 gold price in the medium term, this company should still be well within the 20s as a peak, as a share price. How are we going with the project? We purchased a second-hand plant out of Alaska. There's currently a crew up there breaking that plant down now it's summer. That plant will be on the water on the 20th of July. We've broken ground in Nicaragua. The bulk earthworks is 20% done. We'll be finished bulk earthworks by the end of August. Once we get the bulk earthworks finished, the foundation work will start. Batch plant's on-site. Fuel's on-site. The mobilization of the equipment already happened. All of the major equipment items have already been purchased, including the plant in Nicaragua, the SAG mill. The only thing we're outstanding is a transformer for the substation, and that's about a 9-12-month delivery timeframe, and that's being ordered within the next 4 weeks. We're well on the way to mechanical construction. Everything will be on-site ready to go by the time the foundation's poured, and foundation will start pouring in Q3. The target right now is to have first pour somewhere in Q4 2026, but if we can get it underway, we will, and production ramp up last quarter 2026. That's our target. I think we're well on the way to doing that, and the team is already fully invested in Nicaragua at La India. We have the project director, project manager, the ops general manager. Their teams are pretty well filled out right now, and they're ready to go. The teams are going and everybody on-site who we need to be on-site is there. Things are going very well. It's exciting building stuff. It's something I love doing. I was getting bored, so this is great for me. Keeps me active and interested. I really do enjoy it. My biggest project was something in Colombia. I did a $2 billion build for Glencore, and so this is something I do enjoy, and it's something I've done in South America before. The team who were there are the ones who were with me in Colombia. I do know that they can do that job. We've already started groundbreaking, as I said. The bulk earthworks is well underway. The camp construction started. The laboratory's next, because all the equipment coming out of Nome will go into the laboratory immediately, so we can actually start doing our own analysis in-country, because right now, all samples are going to Canada for analysis. We're looking forward to doing our own laboratory, setting our laboratory up and doing our own analysis in-country, so we can turn the results around quicker, and our exploration program can move forward quicker. We already have a drill rig on-site. Exploration has already started on the next phase within the La India tenements. We are looking at expanding the business in Nicaragua, and over the last four months, we've done a lot of work on looking at all historical results in the country, looking at other areas that make a lot of sense to us, and looking at things that we could work and partner with the government to grow with the government as we go forward. Building that relationship has been key for us to move all of those things forward, and we're working very hard with that relationship with Nicaragua. We're close to, we've already submitted an application for new tenements there, and those tenements are actually an extension of the existing areas that we have, because we see some huge potential in those areas. Some of the new areas are actually ground that was held by majors who were in the country but left when there was political instability in 2018. We know the ground's good. We got some results and some historical results, which once we get the ground, we'll start publishing those so you can see what we see. Why do we do that? We're holding already 540 sq km. Why do we go out and do that? Because right now, the exploration that's been done over the last 12 years has been limited to La India. If we go and look around Nicaragua in general, there's more advanced programs and more advanced projects than what we have on our books there. If we can pick them up for nothing, and we can advance exploration by 3-5 years, why wouldn't we? That's our target, to make sure that that pipeline in Nicaragua is the same type of pipeline that we have in the Philippines. If the Philippines Regulatory Authority slows down, we move here. It gives us flexibility in the two countries we want to operate. It diversifies our risk, and it ensures our growth plan. If our growth plan is slow in one country, we push it in the other. This type of opportunity for us ensures that that growth plan can be met as we go forward. That's our focus. Groundbreaking ceremony gave us a lot of credibility in the country. The government has been looking at this project, thinking it's not going to start, hearing that it was and it never did. We have shown the government that we are going to execute on this project, and that has given us the credence and the credibility to actually start talking to them about these other areas that we see as very valuable for the company to move forward. Rock Creek plant, as I said, we've got a full team up there right now. Most of the plant was already apart and in storage. We're pulling the rest of it apart, and we're starting to move that to a stockpile area right beside the port. The ship arrives on the 10th of July and leaves on the 20th. It'll be in country, in Nicaragua, around about the third week of August, and that's basically when the plant lands. The SAG mill's already in country. The rest of the plant, the majority turns up in August. We've got, as I said, all the major long-lead items are already purchased and in place. There's some risks around that second-hand plant, of course, especially the ball mill. It's an older ball mill. It's only ever run for five years, and these things last for 40. It's older technology, older motors, older gearboxes. We're looking at some of the risks around that and looking at building in risk controls to manage those risks as we go forward, i.e., we'll have a new motor on-site. We'll have new gearboxes on-site. We'll do those things to ensure that ball mill operates at the performance we need it to operate when we start. The interesting thing is that ball mill has a sister ball mill, and it's actually operating in the Philippines. It's operating at Masbate. We've got good friends at Masbate, so our maintenance team in the Philippines has been spending a lot of time in Masbate talking to those guys, understanding the risks around that mill. That's why we know what we need to replace and what we need to put into critical spares to make sure we can actually make that work. The plant site, the layout, everything's complete, and really now we're just down to starting the engineering in full swing. A lot of the engineering was already complete from the Rock Creek plant, and we're just reusing that engineering. It's just the new areas of the plant, the SAG and ball mill integration, the CIL circuit. Those things are what we're upgrading with the engineering. We're using the existing engineering from Rock Creek for the majority of the other works. Everything's going very well there. Engineering should be, in the majority, done by end of August, early September. It matches that time frame when we'll start pouring, start looking to form and pour concrete footings for the plant. I like La India for a simple reason. It is a significantly simple flow sheet compared to what we've got now. Runruno was a very complex, and is a very complex plant because it's refractory gold ore, so it has to be oxidized before it can be leached. There's a whole range of secondary processes, which is why it was so difficult for the management to get it up and running first time around. We did that over time and we made it work. We don't have that issue here. We basically crush it, we grind it, and we put it in a leach tank, and you're 92% recovery before you start. This is a very simple plant. It's a very simple ore. The flow sheet's very simple. It's things that everybody can work with, and this works around the world. We're very lucky that the ore there is something that doesn't have much complexity about it. Runruno turnaround, I won't go through this in too much detail. As I've said, 2025's going to be another good year for us. That's been supported by the gold price. Thank you. We do have hedges out to September. It's about 1,300 ounces a month, so it's not significant. That hedge is at about $2,200, so we are losing a little bit on the hedge, but the majority of our gold's still being sold into the open market, so we're still doing very well. You'll see that from the free cash that's been generated that'll be shown in the quarterly. Just to give you a look at the numbers, the growth profiles. The all-in sustaining cost, the only reason it's going up is not because our costs are going up, it's because our gold production's down a little bit, and that's where that's moving. Our absolute costs basically have been the same for the last five years, and we're moving 1%-2% a year rather than the 10 or 15 you're seeing growth in costs in other operations. We aren't seeing that. We've been able to manage that to a straight flat line for the last five years pretty much. As I said, the revenue is just climbing on the back of keeping the costs where they should be and that gold price story, which I think in the medium term, everybody's seeing. It's not going down. I think with the instability and the geopolitical situation we all see in the world, there's not an analyst calling for gold going below $3,000. They're all calling $3,500-$4,000 now. I think we'll see it above that. Got one sitting in the room over here, so you could probably attribute to that. I'm very bullish around gold, especially in the medium term, and I'm bullish around the projects that we've got going into that. We are the best operator in the Philippines. We've been requested again by the Philippine government to represent them at the ASEAN Awards. Last year in the ASEAN Awards, we got a second and a third in the two categories we represented them in. We've been asked to do that again. We've won President's Award 3 years in a row. We have people, when ambassadors come into the country or they're looking to show, they send them to our mine. If they want to promote the mining industry, we get visitors. This helps us. Why does it help us? Because we take the communities we're going to go into to our mine. We talk about Abra. On the 23rd of this month, we're finally going to start generating community engagement again. There's been a big delay due to the political situation and the elections that happened in May, and all the political people who were reelected are starting up again. We're basically back up in Abra the minute that starts. The NCIP are now with us, and they'll be starting those meetings on the 23rd of July in Abra. The 24th of July. Sorry, of June. This month. 24th of June, we've got two busloads of the community coming down to the mine to see it, so that when they have the meeting, they see the mine, they see the potential, and they see the opportunity that they have. They're the things that generate that momentum for us to move forward in Abra. Just to give you an idea of the political situation that we were dealing with. For the election period, the most dangerous province in the Philippines for that election period was Abra. 38 people lost their lives during elections in Abra alone. Okay. There was a hiatus. We had no choice. We did not want to put our people or the community who might've been supporting us at risk in any way, shape, or form. Us moving out of Abra, being requested by the mayors, them asking us listening, us moving out, waiting for the elections to finish, was the right thing to do. Now we can go back. Once we're there, and we have the impetus, and we have our set of people on the ground, and we're generating that economy and that wealth, things will change. Right now, we're working with the community to try and build that relationship and build that trust. Once we've got that, we can move forward there. Yes, we did have a license to drill. We weren't able to act on that. We'll work through those community issues, and we'll be able to deal with that on the back end. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. It's just time. We've all got to understand that the political situation and the community situations in the developing countries is not the same as what you see in Australia or Canada, where those situations are sorted out and they're regulated with an authority that has the control and the opportunity to manage it. We don't have that. We work with the people on the ground every day to make those things happen, and it is happening. Our exploration targets. We know about the Abra tenements. We've got three key targets up there. My favorite, Manicouagan. I think this is one of the best copper deposits I've ever seen. I'm really looking forward to drilling more of it. We've got Domingue. There's two key targets in Domingue already. One is a caldera with a magnetic high that has an arsenic profile on surface. Arsenic is one of the layers that sits above a porphyry. If you look at a porphyry, the layers within porphyry, you've got a lithocap, you've got arsenic, bismuth, arsenic, all the way down to copper. We're basically in that sequence. It's 10 times the normal anomaly that you'll see on surface. It's a very high arsenic anomaly, and it sits right on top of a magnetic high. We really like that target as well. Boliden is something we've picked up recently. We're going through the process of getting the EP issued there. That's an old tenement that has some drilling on it. It's moved forward. It was drilled by a Canadian company, and also has a very strong copper-gold signature. Three very nice tenements there. The one everybody wants to talk about, the one I will go into a little bit more detail is Dupax. We've done a lot more sampling across Dupax. Just to give you an idea, the little box down the bottom here, that's about a kilometer long. Okay? If you can see my pointer, can everybody see my pointer behind me? It's not showing up. You're talking about the blue box. Yeah, the little blue box down on the bottom. I'm going to say bottom right, where you can see all the analysis that's been done down there. We've been mapping a lot of work down there. I don't know if you can see the numbers on that chart, but just to give you an idea, the copper numbers are between 3%-8%. The zinc numbers are between 15%-50%. The gold number's around 3 grams a ton. That's on all the veins that we're seeing within the alteration. The alteration is about 100-200 meters wide, and we've mapped it for about a kilometer long. It used to be an old mine. It was a zinc mine. Why? Because it was DSO. That's direct ship ore. They direct-shipped zinc from that property without processing. Zinc at that grade is pretty crazy, and that's what they were doing. It's a very nice target to have. It's about 20 km from the Runruno plant. We'd have to repurpose the plant to be a concentrate plant. We'd produce a copper concentrate, we'd produce a zinc concentrate, and then we'd float off the pyrite and put it through the leach circuit, which we already have to produce a gold doré as well. We're seeing crazy grades in the vein systems within the alteration. We still have to drill the alteration. We need volume. We don't need veins. We need to be able to do 2-2.5 million tons a year. We need volume, and that alteration is large. It has size. We've got to determine if it's economic on grade over the complete width. It is at surface. You can view it the whole way across the top of the surface. It's over a ridge line. It's just work that's got to be done. That whole ore body is seen 9 km away. This is a 10-km lease. 9 km further away, we see it again at surface. In between, there's an andesite, which there's basically a cap over the VMS. It's a VMS ore body. We're expecting to see this all the way through. We do see signatures of zinc all the way through. It's at surface here. It's at surface 9 km away. It could be big. We only need it to be 10 million tons before we'll repurpose the plant. Actually, if I get 3 years out of it, I'd repurpose the plant. We're looking at about $20 million, depending on whether we have to build a filter plant as well, $20 million without a filter plant, $40-$50 million with a filter plant to filter the tails so we can dry stack tails. We can use the existing tailings facility for about a year to a year and a half. We can push that filter plant out a little bit. Really it's just flotation lines with concentrate filters, and that's it. Very cheap start-up. The capital is cheap. The timeframe to purchase and deliver is also quick because it's only float cells. We already have the bunding and everything in place. We pull down the BIOX tanks and basically just reuse that area for flotation. A simple system, a simple upgrade. We're thinking 6 months to a year to do that upgrade, and then we're online with 2 operations running in 2028. I can't give you any idea around the economics of that until we've done the drilling. We're hoping to come out with at least a statement. We'll do all the work internally, which we always do. We have the team to do it internally, and we'll come out with some statements around that closer to the end of the year once we've done the initial drilling. Hopefully, drilling will start in July. We are at the point, the cusp of having that issued. The issuance of the clearance, which we're waiting for the forestry clearance for the area, is sitting now on the undersecretary's desk. His signature is the last signature we need. It's already been recommended. It's been approved. He's just requested that the issuance document, rather than a recommendation for issuance, is given to him so he can sign it. That's where we're at. It is happening. It is going to happen, and it is very soon. I was extremely hoping I could say it was done. Yeah, we're probably days away. It will be issued an RNS once it comes out, so everybody will know. If we say the next week, we're looking to be drilling there by July, and that's our target. Okay? Very soon we should have some results there. The guys right now are mapping the alterations, so we know the full width, and we can make sure we cover the full width of that alteration when we're drilling. That's Dupax. This presentation's on the website, so when you want to see more detail, just go and have a look. You'll be surprised at some of the stuff that's there. We're talking about all of these projects we're working on. I think drilling in Abra, I don't see it this year. I think Q1, Q2 next year. If we're doing well with the community liaison, the community work, the community engagement, we might be lucky to get in earlier than that. But if I can give everybody a heads-up, I think it's somewhere around there. It is in our 5-to-10-year plan anyway. It's not in our 2-to-3-year plan. It's not as big a deal. It would be nice to see if those targets are tier one. It would be nice to know what they really look like. We also, as I said, we're working on new tenements in Nicaragua, and if they come up, we'll be drilling those immediately because there's drill-ready targets on those tenements. Once we have those tenements, we'll be able to publish some of that information, so you'll see that as well. The company has everything in-house. We just need to execute. That execution is around the relationships we build in-country with the government and the community that we work with. That's our target and that's our aim. Those community relations are as critical as our government relations as we go forward. Really, the only other thing I do want to talk about is our ESG programs in both countries. The one thing I've got to say is that the previous management in Nicaragua did do a very good job with their community relations. We're growing that. One of the things we are focused on is how to manage small-scale miners. We probably will be looking at generating a small-scale plant for the small-scale miners while we're there. I was over there, I'd say two months ago now, and I drove up along where the small-scale miners are, and for 10 km, every house has a little ball mill in it. All they're doing is throwing all the waste into their own backyard. You look at it and you think, "We can do better." That's where we should do better. One, manage it for the government. Sure, the government gets taxes out of it. The government gets royalties. The government gets revenue. The environmental damage and the issues you see when people are using mercury and cyanide in their own backyard with families, with children, is something we need to be focused on to fix, and we are. We're working with the government for that. If we build that plant, we allocate areas within our tenement for those people to operate because they want to still operate as artisanal miners. The government will help us do that. That's our focus. It doesn't cost a lot of money, but it is money we will spend over the next 18 months to ensure that we can start funneling those people into areas outside of where we want to work. It helps us as well. Then being able to clean up those areas over the next few years with the revenue generated by the plant that we built for them. That revenue will go back into the community to fix those areas. You drive further up another 20 or 30 km and you come into a farming area. The towns are completely different. You don't see that type of environmental issues within the farming communities. We need to make sure that people don't see mining as a historical issue within countries like this that we're working with. Let's be at the forefront of doing these things right. Let's prove we can. I won't talk about our investment case. I think I've done enough of that. I just look forward to the next few years. It's going to be an exciting few years for the company. I think everybody's happy with where they've seen the share price go over the recent time. I think that's our stepping stone. I really do. We've had some large shareholders sell down recently, and the share price went up when they did. Why? Because there's so much retail out there waiting for a larger bunch of liquidity to be on the market. The share price actually went up. That just speaks volumes to where I think our share price is going and where I think our company's going. That's about all I had to say, ladies and gentlemen. Is there any questions? If there's not, I've got a couple here I can go through while we're going it. There was a delay to Dupax. I think I've explained where we're at. I think you'll see very soon that that's done. I'll go through these questions first. If there's anything on top of that that you want to ask, we can. What is the situation regarding Abra? Well, as I said, because of that political situation, because of the political risk to our people and the danger that created, we're back in there now. We haven't been in there for five or six months, and we're back in there now. We're starting to do that community engagement piece all over again. I do see, as I said, Q1, Q2, I think that's when we'd be doing. Hopefully, we're back working before then, but that's when I think we'll be drilling there. Do you see the chances of a bid for MTR in the near term? No, I don't. Even if I did, I don't see anyone or the major shareholders within this business now even contemplating selling. Me, myself. There's no way. Our business has got so much upside, and we've got all the steps to generate that upside. In 3-5 years, absolutely. Can I just say. Yeah. That question may be not what you think it is like. Help me. There are many people like me who've had other shareholdings in other companies. There was one particular one, Shanta, where you may not be aware of it, but I think most shareholders could. It was taken private. I think that question is more about, please don't take the share. Shanta was taken private by the- Major effectively. It's a long and involved story. It involved a multitude of characters, including Sir Ody, who was a major shareholder, and they took advantage of the hiatus that we had. Okay. They took it private, actually. I suspect, I can't speak for that question. But even- I suspect it's more. More to that case. The answer is no, we're not selling, and no, we're not looking to take it private, and yes, we're looking to generate value for everyone before any of that could ever be contemplated. I suppose I see this as a multibillion-dollar company. If you want to see where my goal is, that's where I want to be. Before we get there, I'm not looking to do anything with my shareholding, and I'll vote against anyone who tries to. Let's be very clear. That's how I feel about this as well. The question on everyone's mind, Dupax. I think I've answered that one. Where do you feel we should be valued at? Right now, if we just went forward with La India and the gold price stays where it was, or even drops down to $2,500, we should be a 25p share. You can do the numbers yourself. That's where they come out, and that's very clear. Once we prove the credibility that we can run that plant, it is operating, it's generating what we say, that's exactly where we'll be. That's without looking at Dupax. That's without looking at the other project potential we have in our portfolio. That's without any drilling anywhere else. We should be a 20-25p share. Where do I think we are with Dupax? I think double that, easy. Where do I want to be? I want to be well past that. Can I just ask a question about Dupax itself? Yeah. It's, I believe, a very large something. Basically, it came out of the hydrothermal vents. Is that correct? VMS. Tim, would you like to help? It's a volcanic massive sulfide. Yeah which is what VMS stands for. As long as they came out through hydrothermal vents. Google can get anything. Yeah. No, it is typical VMS deposit. They typically occur in clusters along a trend. Yeah. The nice thing about Dupax is half of it's covered with more recent andesite, so it's preserved. We believe it continues under that. We see it on either end. It weathers, can it? It's something. It's subject to whether it is exposed. Right. The capping, the andesite capping, gives us. First of all, it removes the ability for it to weather, so it's not. But also it removes the fact that there'll be a slide again. Right. If, potentially, it extends underneath all of that. Yeah ... if it does- Yeah It's as consistent as we hope it to be. Yeah It's a big system. These things are common around the world, these VMS systems. Yeah. In terms of depth, you've got the depth of the cap and then the depth of the deposit itself. Yeah. Any idea of what the total height is? Not until we drill it. Not yet. Yeah, no. That's why we Yeah. The previous mining didn't reveal any sort of insights? No, because they were very small. They're very small scale. Oh. Yeah. Well, trucks and shovels, but they weren't large in terms of the size we want to go. They were mining the higher grade veins within the overall alteration, not the total disseminated alteration. Why? They were chasing 40% zinc. Mm-hmm. It's there. They were throwing away 3% copper and 3 grams gold to do it, but that's what they were chasing. Which if we can get, and George will talk around numbers, I won't give them to you until we've drilled it. It seems like what Tim's saying is where the cap is, it's probably preserved. Where it's showing on surface, it's a kilometer long. We've got a large area to mine at surface before we even start to think about what's beyond that. Typical VMS systems, things like Bisha in Eritrea, Jabal Sayid, Barrick deposit in Saudi Arabia. These are systems that have made the companies involved in them a lot of money over time. They can be bust too. They can. Yes. They're normally one or the other. They're normally not in between. They're either small or very large. We won't know till we drill it, so that's the. Did they have tenements that you can use as well? No. It's got ships straight up. Yeah, it did. Actually, where they threw the waste, we're measuring that as well, because that's all ore for us. What they saw as waste, we see as ore. Right. That's basically what we're seeing. really it is literally sort of spinning the dice. We know some things. We know how wide it is. We know how long it is. Yeah. Given that, we know it will have enough size as long as it carries grade. If it carries grade, it's definitely big enough to start the plant up again. Right. It's just drilling to verify it carries grade. Because something that's 100-200 m wide and 1 km long, and we know it's been tilted up, so it's dipping down the ridge line, that has volume. There's no doubt. Even if it's shallow, it's still got volume. It's still got volume. It's just, does that whole alteration carry the grade you need to make it economic? That's the target, and that's the risk. Sure. Absolutely. How much drilling do you need to have to do it in order to- Not a lot. Our first program's only 10 holes. Okay. We'll drill 10 holes and we'll know. It's more of an efficiency problem. Yeah. Save the amount. Yeah. That'll give us a good idea of that disseminated grade through that alteration. Of course, we'll need a lot more than that to get to a resource state, but we'll know whether it's going to get there very quickly. Are those shallow? They're the shallow ones you've got. Absolutely. Yeah. Which is why I've got the guys mapping the back end of the alteration, because we know it dips like this. Yeah. We don't want to start the hole here when the alteration's there. We want to start on this side, so we drill the whole alteration and figure out the full width of that alteration and the full grade across it. Yeah, they're very shallow holes. Good. So. Hmm. Sorry. No, you're right. I've got more questions. I'm going to get chucked out at some point. Dominate the whole thing. That's okay. There's more questions coming in as we speak. Everybody's liking your questions by the look of it. For future potential acquisitions, are you concerned about major mining companies not willing to take the risk on Metals Exploration? No. They may not, but that doesn't mean I won't pay dividends to my shareholders if I'm generating $500 million free cash a year. Whether we do it ourselves or whether a major comes in and takes us over. Nicaragua used to have majors. Philippines used to have majors. They were there. They've all left. They've got to come back. The reason the majors aren't in the Philippines right now, and I know for a fact that Rio Tinto have been back in looking, is the jurisdiction's so difficult to get licensing. Takes too long. Majors are going to wait for people to do the licensing process, get the deposit ready, and then they'll come back into the Philippines guaranteed. They've just got to find the right target. It sounds like Nicaragua's a lot better place to get licensing. Much easier. Well, you're dealing with a lot less layers of government. The bureaucracy in the Philippines is built on the back of a Spanish bureaucracy and then an American or an English bureaucracy. You've got two different types, and that takes time. The wheels to turn there. Whereas in Nicaragua, with the relationships with the government, the way it's operating, you talk to the minister. If the minister thinks you've got credibility and will do what you say you're going to do. He talks to the next guy up. He says yes. He says yes. You get your license. You're not waiting for these layers and layers and layers of bureaucracy to all go through it and have their own say on it. It does make it easier. Build that relationship, be the partner and country that they want to work with, and doors will open for you. Talking of doors opening, you mentioned other targets, and intriguingly, you said there are other targets that have been explored, have been abandoned or let go, and you might go for them before you start doing in La India. Not in La India. Not in La India. The other existing tenement- Correct. You might prioritize those. Yep Could you give us an example of how that? I can't give you details, but the fact of the matter is, say you're on an exploration. We've got 500 sq km of tenement. We don't have much geophysics. We don't have geochemistry. We're starting from scratch. I go 20 km away, there's geophysics, there's geochemistry, there's mapping, there's everything, and I know it's there. Why would I go and walk 500 sq km of my ground where I don't know what's there? Even we've got ideas, you're starting from scratch. If I can move up that value tree, if I can take 3 years out of my process by picking something up that the government feels I'm credible enough to take over for nothing. Those would be close enough to be run by the existing. They'd just come back into the existing plan. When I say for nothing, no. I've got to make commitments to that government. I've got to do the right thing by that government. I've got to generate results for the government before they're willing to take those type of risks. We're already showing that we can do that. I think there's credibility being built on both sides, and we're hoping to move that forward. I like the opportunity there. It's more gold rich versus the Philippines, which is more copper rich. The Philippines is more copper gold. Some of the largest copper ore bodies in the world undeveloped right now sit in the Philippines. Tampakan, for example. Copper plays in the Philippines. Nicaragua is more gold. Would it be true to say, Darren, there's no any further dilution in the next couple of years? There won't be. Absolutely. We've got zero debt. If we ever had to do anything, our first port of call would be looking at debt. We may even start thinking about a standby facility next year, i.e., Dupax is exactly what we want it to be. We want to go and make the procurement of the equipment before we finish operations. We're constructing over here, we're procuring over here. We may need a standby facility to fund some of that type of growth, and we would just go to the banks and look for that standby facility. We won't go back to the market. We've got enough cash to do everything. Dividend policy. Sorry? Dividend policy. This is just my personal opinion. Until we get through 2027 and ensure that the projects are operating and generating the cash, I think we'll be looking at 2028 for first dividend. Okay? That's my projection right now. That's my thought process. Wait for the rest of the board too. We'll verify that and we'll analyze it as we go, but that's what I see right now. If we finish Nicaragua and we have to upgrade the Philippines, money from there will go to there. Will there be excess cash? Absolutely. Might the board put it back into the shareholders? Absolutely. Might they wait for 2028? That'll be questions that'll be asked when we're there. Look, I think it's just important, obviously, Jason, the lawyers in the room would want me to say this, that you can never say never. Obviously, circumstances change. We may have to review that. Thank you. Thank you for my lawyer on the board. It's easier to get money out for that deal. Very. There's three international companies operating in Nicaragua right now. Calibre, who did but didn't make a bid for Condor as well. Two others. Their money's coming in and out without a problem. They've never had an issue. Actually, the government actually functions very well. They want foreign direct investment. They are looking to grow their industry, especially the gold industry. That's why I think trying to partner with them as one of those growth vehicles for it is a good thing. No. No one's seen any problems with it. The tax regime's very stable so far. No one's seen many changes. I think the government's going to be stable in the near to medium term as well. We're seeing that the way that the government's structured itself, it's going to be there for a while. I think that, to an extent, helps. I think there's a lot of positive things coming out of Nicaragua right now for all of us. Looking at your accounts, there's clearly some frustration about the fact that you can't write that $50 million on the plant. I think the quote is an IAS 36 limited cap. Because you wrote back, I think you wrote back $130 million. I think there was effectively a provision and a write back that I think was $50 million that you weren't able to. I just looked at IAS 36. I couldn't see an obvious thing for that, but clearly, it's a frustration. You're saying it's artificially depressing the balance sheet. I wonder if you might just expand on that a bit. I just got a question from. I'm all right. No, you're right. I just got a note from someone here that they can't hear you guys speak, so I'll just try and give a little bit of color to them on what you've just asked, and Mike will answer the question. It's about the changes in the write-back of the depreciated asset and how that's come in and off the balance sheet is the question. Mike? Yeah. That didn't mean we wouldn't have this accounting issue. Okay. Yeah. The impact, it was a late frustration to come. It's more timing. Yeah. It was the timing. We're predicting that the net book value of these by year-end, third issue, it could be anywhere between $35 million. I'm saying that we insure $150 million. That was the thing, that was the frustration. Yeah. We've noted down to revalue those assets, but we're just saying that we fully appreciate it, the impact of this timing. The actual accounting issue has been resolved. Okay. Okay. The accounting issue was resolved and it's around timing of the $50 million that's being written back to the balance sheet. I've got a couple of questions here. What will be your top three priorities with free cash growth? I think we've talked through those. It's finalization of the construction in Nicaragua, it's the repurposing of the plant in the Philippines, and it's exploration and growth targets within the business. Do you have an estimated date for when the two events needed to trigger the Condor CVRs might happen? Q3 2026 for the first one, which is first gold. It's a six-month delay. We've got about a six-month period to generate cash to pay that down. It is Q3 when the first trigger will happen, and the second trigger is 4-5 years from now because the second trigger is based on the exploration potential within the existing tenements. This is probably just off my mind. Given that you just discussed other elements that may be more. Yep. Will that affect the original agreement? No. We will absolutely stand by our commitments within the original agreement. Anything outside of that is upside for everybody, not the CVR holders. We will be drilling the best targets we have within the existing tenements. That drill program's already been passed on. It's already been signed off. We know what it is, and we're drilling to it. Outside of that- There's nothing diversified. Yeah. No. We will be putting money elsewhere to grow the business. Yeah. It's one of those not sacrificing One for the other. Absolutely not. We're growing both. Very good. There was a question on any updates on health and safety. Yeah, there is. We had our first accident in eight years, about four months ago. It was an oxygen bottle that was in the oxygen rack. We'd actually built the oxygen rack the way it was supposed to for the insurers, but a manifold line to one of the oxygens broke. There was a fire on the back of that, and someone got burnt. That's our first LTI in eight years. We have to start again. We're up to nearly 24 million man-hours LTI-free, and now we've had one LTI. The gentleman's fine. He'll be back at work soon. Everything's okay there, but we have had a single accident. Since then, nothing. Yes, that's a good question and something I had to answer. There was a piece of land that was needed in order to move the tailings from the dual plant. Yep. Is there any progress on that? The question was, the tailings plant has been moved and there was land that needed to be purchased. It's all been purchased. Our program, there's about a $9 million spend, $8.6 million right now is the target, within the capital budget for all the land, not just for that, but we feel that the northern extension to the mine should have already been in there, so we're buying that land as well, and we're buying the northern dump. We've rejigged the schedule to reduce the haul profiles of the trucks, and we're basically going to sequence the mine north to south. That gives us a chance to put waste back in pit so we don't have to haul so much out of pit. That means we have to start at the northern end, and we're purchasing land for the northern dump as we speak. Yes, tailings dam's done. The northern dump, basically, we're signing documents for that as we speak. Then the final stuff is the northern area of the pit where there's a lot of illegal miners should've been in the pit, and that's once we buy it, we'll be able to hopefully do the drilling there, and that's one of our drill targets that we've got in our plan as well. The tailings are much better. Yeah, the first tailings location was only 3 years, the tailings location is now forever. It now meets guidelines, the Church of England guidelines for tailings, i.e., the previous tailings dam was failing into a town. We bought all the land behind the tailings, so if it did ever fail, it's just going to be onto open, vacant paddock. We're meeting all the design criteria as we speak, and we actually rejigged that more from a safety, environmental point of view just as much as longevity. You were talking about obviously all the options for miners having their own port and the miner client in the backyard. It was intriguing when you're obviously offering them their own small facility. You also mentioned that the profits from that will then go to the restoration. As I'm putting myself in the shoes of an artisanal miner, what's the deal on the gas? If you look at how these artisanal miners work, basically, they have a big flat pad, and in the middle, they have a post, and they have two arms coming off this post, and they have big rocks hanging from chains. It's really interesting. That goes round and round, and it crushes the ore, and then they put it in a pot somewhere beside there, and they leach it. Yeah. Okay? Yeah. Their recoveries are probably 30% or 40%. Yeah. We'll pay them more than they're recovering now. They'll get paid quicker. They'll get paid at nearly full value of the current gold price, not at half price because they're selling it illegally on the market. They're going to make twice as much money as they do now. They'll have a registered formal area that they're able to mine, which we will guarantee has the grades that they need to mine. There's only upside. Now, we've got to convince them of that. The structure is one where they will be better off. The mill itself makes some profit, which is then. Exactly. Basically, you normally end up paying 50%-60%, anywhere between 40%-60%, call it, of the recovered ore. What's in the ore, you pay about 40%-50% of that to the miners. Yep. The other pays to the plant and generates a little bit of profit. They end up with between 25-30 to say 50-60. Yep. There's a recovery of 90%, so the other 30% goes into community profits. Correct. It sounds good as said, but obviously, the slow work's yet to be done. The slow work's not building the plant. It's getting all the miners to engage and move to that single area. That's where the government becomes very, very important. The government outcomes wanting this to happen also become very important. Yeah, working and assistance from the government is critical to make any of that work. Okay. Okay. I have a couple more questions on this now. Again, I don't want to go over. Yep. You're probably better off just asking Mike afterwards. Yeah. Okay. That's all. I have one more question about the impacts and the tailings there. You said the existing Runruno tailings facility there would have years' worth with due process. We're considering that, yes. Is there any scope to use the Runruno pits for tailings with due process? Absolutely, but for the filtered tailings. Ah. We could turn it into a dump. Can you repeat the question, please? Oh, yeah, sorry. There was a question regarding the tailings at Runruno and how we could reuse those tailings or the old pit area as a tailings facility for the Dupax, and the answer is, it could be filtered tails in the old mine, and that's exactly where we'd. First, we use what's existing in the tailings facility. Build a filter plant, fill the old pit with filtered tailings, so it's a dump, and then what's left, we haul back to the dump in Dupax. We basically backhaul. We haul ore one way, tailings back, and they go into the dump in Dupax. You'll have a waste dump there. You co-mingle tails. Really, it's the forefront of technology of tails right now is being able to do exactly that. The co-mingle of dry tails versus wet tails is where, one, you get the biggest bang for your buck in terms of area. It does cost more, but you co-mingle it, and you stabilize it. It is actually the best solution for tails. That is at the forefront of tailings. If Dupax does drill under the lithocap Yeah. It turns out to be very high grade. At what point do we consider moving the plant? That's a good question. I don't think we ever would. We'd have to look at it. I really can't answer that question fully. A 20-kilometer haul costs you $3-$5 a ton. $3-$5 a ton, when we're actually going to save that on the processing because the plant costs are going to go down. You're basically at the same cost you are now. Do we move a plant for $200 million and lose a year? Because you'd probably all buy a new plant and build a new plant, or do we just do $3-$5? One of my investors with another company, and they were hoping to build another mine in Brazil, and they were hoping to build another mine at another tenement, but they've had all sorts of issues with licenses. They have an exploration license. What they're doing, thanks to, I think, Brazil subsidizing fuel, is that they're able to take advantage of a trade where the big agri businesses push the produce one way, and then they've got empty lorries the other way, and they're putting the ore in the lorries going the other way. They have no plans of doing other than what they're going to do. Yeah. That's much more than 230 km there, in fact. Yeah. 100 km. In Nicaragua, the Calibre mine's doing exactly the same thing. They're hauling back 150 km. If the areas we're talking about come into fruition, we're talking about a 30-km haul. Dupax is 25 km. We've got about a 5-km road to upgrade. 5 to 8. I didn't get an exact distance. I drove it the other day. The rest of the road's in perfect condition. Yeah. I don't see the point or the need to do so. Nothing's ever off the table, is it? If it makes sense, you do it. I don't know the majority of the existing mine, but with gold prices sky high, I don't know. Does the old gold run out completely, or does it fade away? Because if the gold price is sky high, there's a thought, well, what was uneconomic at $2,000 might be economic for a little bit longer. You're talking about Runruno? I know nothing about Runruno. Yes. I'm a Condor shareholder, so I don't know the original drop. Yeah. Okay. No. The ore runs out. Okay. Yeah. Pretty well mining every drop of ore there. There's a question here. When do you know if Dupax's is commercial? I'm going to give you an answer six months, but I think we'll know before that. I'm going to say we'll hopefully be putting out statements around commerciality within the first quarter next year. Okay. To answer that question. I think that's about it, though. I thank you, everybody online, for your time and everybody in the room. Lots of questions this time around. It's all good. Well, Darren, thank you very much for updating investors today. On behalf of the management team of Metals Exploration Plc, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.