Good morning and welcome to the Atomic Eagle Investor Webinar. All attendees are in a listen-only mode. If you would like to ask a question to the company, please enter it into the Q&A panel within Zoom. I'll now hand over to Strategic Advisor Grant Davey and Corporate Development Manager Phil Hoskins. Thank you, Grant.
Thanks, Nathan. Just as a start, introducing myself, I've been a uranium investor for many years and of late been the founder of Boss Energy, which is in the ASX 300, as well as Lotus Resources, both uranium mines, one in South Australia and one in Africa, in Malawi and Africa. Before I continue on, Phil Hoskins joins me. He's the Corporate Development Manager for this company, and he will be giving the presentation. Prior to the presentation, I'd just like to tell you what I really like about this opportunity. I think the opportunity presents itself because of where uranium is at the moment and because of how uranium is so strategic. With all the geopolitical pressure on resources, this opportunity has presented itself. Why I say that is really, as far as uranium goes, a third of the uranium resources worldwide is here in Australia.
Australia has only got four mining licenses, and we do not see that sort of changing in the short term. In the medium and long term, very possibly. For now, when you look at things, that uranium is really not going to be mined. If you look worldwide and you look at where we stand worldwide, the U.S. is the biggest user of uranium worldwide with 95 reactors, and only 2% of the U.S. needs are met in the U.S. Only 2% of their demand is mined in the U.S. It is not as if the reason for that is because they have not got the uranium resources required. When you turn yourself to Canada, yes, they have really good uranium resources, most of which still really need to be developed.
Cameco, as we all know, is a big uranium company, and the product from Cameco and Canada would go into feeding the U.S. and possibly France, being the second biggest uranium user worldwide with 58 uranium reactors. The other big producer worldwide is Kazakhstan, with about 40% of the world's uranium supply coming out of that country. However, those resources are on decline, and over the next 10 years, will be about 60% of what they are today. All of this is telling us that, and we're seeing it in the uranium industry, the demand far outweighs the supply. Currently, there's a deficit, yearly deficit of about 20%, and that's that we see increasing as production is under pressure and the world expands with its uranium reactors. For instance, China, where in 2012, only had two uranium reactors, they've got over 40 uranium reactors now.
You're seeing increases in India with uranium reactors. The Middle East and even the U.K. has made announcements of building uranium reactors. The demand is increasing, supply is very stagnant, and in decline with current producers. New production and new resources are required. What makes Africa so special in the uranium industry is that Africa is the only continent in the world that all countries can deal in. The Russians, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Americans, the French can all deal in Africa. Locking up resources becomes very strategic, uranium resources in Africa. We've seen the potential of the Zambian asset. It's an asset that the team, the Matador Capital team, has had on the radar for the last three to four years. We, luckily enough, have been able to list this on the ASX and get behind it and promote it.
Very good opportunity for us, very strategic opportunity. The whole strategy, as Phil's going to explain to you, is about growth. Growth of resources, our best comparisons on the ASX are Deep Yellow and Bannerman, both market caps 5x-10 x more than what the market cap is of this opportunity. That's why we're involved. Handing over to you, Phil, just to get on with the presentation.
Yeah, thanks, Grant. I'm very pleased to present the Atomic Eagle story to everyone today. It is an exciting new strategy for the asset. It's had a lot of work done over the last decade plus. Yeah, a new exploration-focused strategy, growing a major resource in a known uranium belt. Just the standard disclaimer there. What we have is a platform for growth that's been set over that plus decade of drilling. There's an existing resource of 47 million lbs of uranium, and all the technical studies around that resource have been completed. What we know from what's there already is there's a mine that can be built. What we also have, and we're very excited about, is a district-scale growth opportunity within the Karoo Basin, which is known to host a hell of a lot of uranium mineralization.
Obviously, being in the right sector is important for any investment, and there's a major imbalance at the moment between uranium supply and demand, and we think that that's going to point to higher prices in the future. Following a successful listing on the ASX on Monday, the company's now fully funded for the largest exploration program on this project in 17 years since the last uranium boom in 2008. As you can see there, we're roughly AUD 120 million market capitalization, AUD 20 million in the bank, which will see us well funded for a couple of years to really grow this resource and grow this company.
First, setting the scene about the commodity, nuclear energy, I think most of the people on this call will understand the thematic and the growing gap between supply and demand, obviously driven by everyone moving towards nuclear energy, and it is a clean baseload energy for a clean energy future. A hell of a lot of nuclear reactors being built and nuclear is going mainstream, as you can see by the adoption of nuclear by a lot of the companies there in the bottom left. This is quite an interesting slide and an important one for people to understand about the last sort of 20 years in the uranium space. What we're sort of setting out here is the uranium spot price on the top, and then inflation adjusting that back to circa 2005.
In that last uranium boom, there were only two projects greater than 1 million lbs per annum that were developed, and they were Langer Heinrich and Kayelekera. You can see the dates that they were brought into production, but they needed AUD +60 a pound to finance those greenfield assets. Post Fukushima, everybody knows prices came off, and there were no new greenfield projects developed outside of Kazakhstan through that period. A very long lull, and you can see when both the Langer Heinrich and Kayelekera mines were placed onto care and maintenance during that time. We are now into uranium's awakening. We have seen those same assets be restarted over the last little period, but there still has not been, even in this last little period, a greenfields project. The reason those restarts were able to occur was because there was already existing infrastructure and plants there.
They were very low CapEx restarts. To finance a greenfields project, the uranium prices need to be sufficient to justify the returns to get those projects funded. If you take the inflation adjustment from that previous boom through to now, you're pointing to AUD +100 a pound being required to finance a similar sort of quality project. We believe those prices will be coming. While those prices are working their way through the market, we've got a lot of exploration and a lot of lbs to add to our resource so that when we are ready to develop, it will not be the size and the scale that was contemplated before. It will be a much larger scale project with better economies of scale and lower costs. We will be ploughing away at that while all this is working through in the market.
Into the project and where we are, and firstly in Zambia. Zambia is a very stable political environment from a mining point of view. It is a very large copper producer and a lot of very large companies operating within the country. You can see the investment attractiveness on the Fraser Institute there, ranking as high as it gets in Africa. A really good place if you want to be looking to develop a mine over the next little period. The fiscal regime there that, again, within Africa is fantastic. There is no government precarried interest there. As you can see there, we have already got 47 million lbs at a high grade for African projects. We have highlighted there the Karoo Basin. The Karoo Basin is a highly prospective basin, and it is even larger than the very well-known Western basins in the U.S.
If you were to sum up, I think it's one, two, three, four, eight, and nine, the different deposits in that basin, there's already 500 million lbs of uranium within that basin. To have 1,100 sq km of tenements within that basin, it's largely underexplored, but we'll be coming at it with a lot of work and Radiometrics and other things to help support our exploration program, which we'll go into. Just zooming in a little bit further on the Muntanga project. As we mentioned at the outset, it is a change in strategy for the company that's focused on resource growth moving forward. We've got the feasibility studies in the back pocket. We know we've got a mine that makes money at the right price, but we want to really grow it, and we've got a fantastic opportunity to do that.
First, within the image, you can see what makes up the existing 47 million pound resource. The entire project area is over about 140 km of strike and covers over 1,100 sq km of tenure. We have four granted mining licenses. All of those resources actually sit on mining licenses. From a permitting point of view, a lot of that is already sorted out. We have two other exploration licenses there as well. We are also in discussions with groups around growing that tenure, and we really want to put a foothold within this region. You can see the overlay there of the Karoo Sandstone Basin. It is a fantastic place to be exploring. Historically, there has been a focus on development.
The previous company, GoviEx, that was listed on the TSX has laid a very solid platform for the project with the feasibility studies and exploration to date. The focus of Atomic Eagle is to grow the resource so that, as I mentioned, we can increase the production scale and proposed mine life. The exploration program was already funded and commenced five months ago. We have a hell of a lot of news flow to come. Rolling into 2026, we will be announcing the largest exploration program that this project has seen in 17 years. Very exciting. A little bit more about the exploration potential. There will be an exploration target, JORC exploration target, released to the market in early December, so in the next week or so. The model is very simple.
There are wide outlines on this image here showing where those exploration target areas are going to be. There's an area up in the top right there, Muntanga North, that covers over 80 sq km. These aren't just greenfields targets. The exploration model is tried and tested. Radiometric and radon anomalies were on existing structures within geological formations that are known to host uranium. These are also at times extensions of existing deposits. We are highly confident of being able to add a material amount to this resource. I think the exploration target, when we come out with it, will show you what the size of the prize is. Just a little bit on the previous technical studies. Whilst we might call ourselves advanced exploration, we have DFS-level feasibility studies that have been completed.
What they show is that the project has very low technical risk and will be a low-cost producer once we get there. It is shallow open pit mining. We've had excellent recovery rates demonstrated through the MET test work, + 90%. One of the things that sets this project apart is its very low acid consumption. From an infrastructure point of view, we're very blessed there. It's a sealed road the majority of the way to site. There's power nearby and water within the mining license. A lot of those things are in place. As Grant alluded to before, well-established export routes. We'd be going out through the port in Namibia, which is already known to export uranium. We're not breaking new ground there. Equally, you're able to service both Western and Eastern markets from Africa.
All of those places are very happy to buy from African countries. All of that is in place. As I mentioned, exploration is the focus moving forward. Just from a peer comparison point of view, we have a couple of images here that I think will talk to how undervalued we are. I guess, firstly, the image on the top shows that within a lot of those projects, we are comparing ourselves to, and we are really just comparing against other late-stage African projects. We are very high grade compared to the others, which obviously goes to lower cost. From an enterprise value compared to resource, we are also very low. Now, when you can look to the exploration target and the lbs that we expect to add to the resource, then that will be cheaper again.
We know if we keep adding lbs, the market has already said that the big resources that Bannerman and Deep Yellow have been rewarded by very high market capitalizations. We know that we can add a material amount to the resource within the funding that we have. Very low cost of discovery. We know that is going to add significant value to the company. Just from an upcoming milestone point of view, we do have a hell of a lot of news coming. Unlike many IPOs, this is a going concern of a company. There have been drill programs going on. Next week, we intend to publish the JORC exploration target for that entire Muntanga project area. As I said, over 1,100 sq km. Through those six targets, you will be able to see what we believe the upside for this project is.
We've got the drill results coming from Muntanga East and Chisabuka, so they'll be coming through December as well. In the first quarter of next year, we expect to receive the ESIA or Environmental and Social Impact Assessment approval, which is essentially your environmental approvals. That also goes to how advanced the project is on the permitting and those sorts of things as well. We'll be progressively upgrading the mineral resource estimate as we move through the drilling. These are separate discrete zones. Once you get down to that circa 100 by 100 meters spacing, you can update your mineral resource. We expect that that will be happening progressively over the next 12 months. The commencement of the largest exploration campaign the project has seen in 17 years will probably come out.
We're going into a bit of a wet season over the next few weeks. I'd imagine in the first quarter of next year, we'll come out with what that's likely to be. We expect that to be more than 50,000 m of drilling and around 500 holes. These are all very shallow holes, sub 100 m, so high impact and covering a lot of ground. There's a review going on of the previous technical feasibility studies done by GoviEx. When that's complete, we'll be able to sort of repeat those numbers publicly. There was, I think, a AUD 240 million MPV. As I said, the project makes sense as it stands, but we're looking to double or triple this resource over the next 12-24 months. We really think that's an exciting time to be a shareholder of Atomic Eagle.
We have seen what that has done to our peer group. That is the end of the presentation. There are some appendices there, which I will leave to everyone on the website. This presentation has been uploaded to the website this morning. The mineral resource estimate, as well as some of that peer comp data as well. Thanks, everyone, for your attendance this morning. Yeah, happy to take any questions.
Thanks, Phil. Just a reminder, if you would like to ask a question to the company, please enter it into the Q&A panel within Zoom. We have had a few come through, so we will just work through these. The company has a cash balance of more than AUD 20 million. How much runway does this provide?
I think the board was sitting down only a couple of nights ago talking about the budgets for the next calendar year. Yeah, on the basis of that budget, I'd expect that there'd be at least 24- months runway to have a serious crack. I mentioned over 50,000 m of drilling in the next calendar year. I'd say at least two years with that cash balance.
Thank you. There's been a series of questions regarding the company's asset in Niger. I was just wondering if you could give an update on what's happening with that asset.
Yes, feel free to fill in with the gaps. That asset, great asset, by the way, it's over 100 million pounds of measured and indicated at 1,400 ppm. It's probably the highest grade undeveloped asset in Africa and possibly in the world. It was taken away because of military coup back two and a half years ago.
Hence why GoviEx focused on the Zambian asset and the growth in Zambia. We, recognizing this asset as an option, what happened was arbitration was kicked off just about 18 months ago. The government's come back asking to drop the arbitration and to start the negotiations. Over the next three months or so, we are planning to give that a lot of attention. We are silently confident we'll get the asset back. The fact that the government has approached and asked to stop the arbitration is a good sign. Now it's negotiating the right terms on which the asset gets regranted. Over the next three to six months, there should be some news flow on that fantastic asset. It would create a hell of a lot more resource for our company.
Yeah, I might just add to that that there's been over AUD 100 million spent on that asset. As Grant said, it's a world-class asset. Given we're undervalued just based on the Zambian project and well funded to double or triple that resource over the next little period, to have an asset like that up your sleeve as an option, I guess we can't talk to having tenure today, but clearly we did going back. As Grant said, silently confident that we can work through and find a solution, which if we can, would be a massive windfall for all Atomic Eagle shareholders.
Thank you. We've had a couple of questions regarding the listing. Can you confirm that the ASX listing will be the only listing for the company?
The ASX is the only primary listing.
However, we've got OTC listing, which is over the counter listing in America. It's common that Australian ASX stocks carry those sort of listings. It's not a primary listing. You have what's called a market maker in the U.S. It's for the American shareholders, people who want to trade shares out of America. That's the reason for that platform.
Thank you. We've just had some questions come in about Zambia. If you could just give some, what is exploration and operating like in Zambia in comparison to other African countries that you've both dealt in?
Yeah, Zambia is a mining country. They've got some big copper mines. It's one of the largest copper-producing countries in the world, certainly the largest in Africa, or possibly the second largest now, but it's on the copper belt.
Republic of Congo, which is just north of Zambia, and Zambia, that's where the copper belt goes through. There are some very, very large mines in there. First Quantum Minerals is 250,000 tons of copper a year there. It's a big copper mining area because they understand mining. The mining laws are well developed. They're based on the English system. It's a very mining-friendly regime. One of their strategic items is to diversify. We see ourselves as being the first uranium producer. We're certainly one of the only uranium developers in Zambia. We don't know of any other—well, there is no other that's listed. We certainly want to fit into their strategy of helping them diversify away from copper. Great mining jurisdiction. My meetings with government have been great. As far as Africa goes, it's one of the better mining jurisdictions.
I think it's in the Fraser Institute. It's ranked fairly highly, Botswana being the best in Africa. Between Southwest Africa and Zambia, I would think that they're very up there as far as mining jurisdictions in Africa.
I'll just add to that. I spent 10 years running a company in Tanzania. Whilst I haven't been to Zambia yet, and Grant and I are intending to head there potentially this weekend or certainly over the next week or two, the interactions I've had with the team on the ground there, it's a fantastic team on the ground there. They ask incredibly intelligent questions. Clearly the quality of the technical resources available in the country because it is such a mining jurisdiction is very good.
Yeah, we both look forward to—Grant already has met the team, but I look forward to meeting the team when we're there. From all reports, doing business there and the access to site from the major towns is fantastic.
Thank you. There are no further questions. I'll now hand back to Grant and Phil for closing remarks.
Would you like to just close up?
Yeah, sure. Yeah, thank everyone for your attendance today. We're only a few days into the Atomic Eagle journey, but I hope that we've been able to give you a color on how that journey is going to look. We think it's going to be very exciting and well funded to add pounds.
We are highly confident of doing that with a great platform of a mine that we already know makes money with an option there on the Niger asset. As I said, thanks everyone for your attendance. At any time, please reach out to the company. We are happy to answer any questions.