Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the First Tin PLC investor presentation. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab that's just situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Please 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 will publish our responses where it's appropriate to do so on the Investor Meet Company platform. Before we begin, as usual, we would just like to submit the following poll. If you could give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. I would now like to hand you over to the executive management team from First Tin PLC. Bill, good morning, sir.
Thank you, Jake. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to this presentation of our interim results for the six months to December 2025. As usual, I'm joined from Brisbane, Australia, by Tony Truelove, who's our Chief Technical Officer and Chief Geologist. This page is the usual disclaimer, which I draw your attention to. On page two, we have the agenda for this morning. We'll start with highlights for the period and an overview of the macro outlook as it relates to tin, followed by an update on the significant progress we are making at our two key assets. We'll finish with a simple update of the finances and our current areas of focus before opening for questions. The period under review has been one of significant progress at First Tin, with major milestones achieved at both our assets.
Importantly, there were no accidents or environmental incidents reported over the period. At Taronga, the submission of the EIS in September, followed by the successful completion of the public exhibition period in November, is a major step forward towards securing development approval. With only four objectors from the public exhibition, the project avoids the additional time and expense of a referral to the Independent Planning Commission in New South Wales. The successful completion of the infill extension drilling program was another major milestone. The assay results are very encouraging and point towards potentially significant value enhancement from an increase in the life of mine. Tony will shortly provide more detail on this. As we get ever closer to development approval, we progress project financing discussions.
The receipt of a letter of interest from EXIM Bank in the US for up to $120 million support is significant and underlines the strategic importance of our project to the global tin market. Such financing, which is still subject to due diligence and a term sheet, is attractive for its long tenor of up to 12 years and expected competitive interest rates. The team in Germany has also made a significant step towards permitting, with the mine plan for Tellerhäuser being submitted to the mines authority. The team also completed the mineral resource estimate update for Gottesberg, with a significant increase in the resource base to 90,900 tons of contained tin.
Very importantly, given the imperative for the EU to build security in its critical mineral supply chain, our exploration work has identified potential for multiple critical minerals across our tenure. We previously mentioned our indium resource, but we also identified germanium and gallium, among others. With prices for these critical minerals also increasing, the value to our portfolio also benefits. As a junior miner undertaking exploration and development, there is not much to report on the financial side. The results reflect the continued investment by the company in progressing our assets through their permitting and development. The loss after tax for the period was GBP 9.71 million. After exchange rate differences, the loss attributable to shareholders was GBP 13,758 for the period.
Shareholders once again supported us with a capital raise of GBP 6.3 million in December, and we finished the period debt-free with a cash balance of GBP 9.03 million. Turning to page four. Quite simply, First Tin provides exceptional exposure to secure OECD tin supply. The blue circles on the map show the regions where the majority of tin is consumed, so North America, Europe and East Asia. Notably, except for China, which is itself an importer, the key consuming countries of the U.S., Japan, South Korea and Germany are reliant on tin imports to feed their advanced manufacturing industries. As you can see, the key supply regions in the developing countries of South America, Asia and Africa are experiencing disruptions due to conflict, environmental, social or regulatory issues. Australia is today the main source of OECD tin.
First Tin's projects in Australia and Germany line historic mining districts and will offer traceable, conflict-free and secure tin supply to industrial tin consumers. The world clearly needs more tin and new tin projects. Following the increase in the Gottesberg MRE, First Tin now has the largest undeveloped tin resource base in the OECD, one of the largest globally, a combined 367,600 tons of contained tin. This is incredibly important for security of supply in a world facing increased geopolitical conflict and trade disruptions. At Taronga in northern New South Wales, our resources include 52,000 tons of proven and probable reserves. In Saxony in Germany, we have another 138,600 tons of contained tin resources at Tellerhäuser. That's a polymetallic resource that also contains magnetite, zinc, silver, and indium credits, as well as germanium.
At the nearby Gottesberg deposit, we have a further 90,900 tons of contained tin resources with exploration targets for a range of other critical minerals, including copper, tungsten, bismuth, silver, and gallium also identified. As with tin, these elements are essential for various advanced manufacturing industries, and their presence as byproducts further enhances the strategic importance of our projects within the EU. Our exploration tenure provides significant potential to grow this resource base. A brief corporate overview. We were listed on the stock exchange in 2022. The market cap today is around GBP 90 million following some good progress, announcements, and momentum over recent months. Nevertheless, I'd say it still looks undervalued for our resource base. Top right, you see the key shareholders. Metals X is Australian-listed and is one of the few major tin producers, so understands the sector well.
The other funds shown there have been long-standing supportive shareholders. While supply-side developments, sentiment, the impact of the evolving tariff policies, all these things will continue to drive tin prices in the short term, but the longer-term structural need for new tin supply remains. Tin has previously been identified as the metal most impacted by the energy transition and digital transformation, and this is playing out. The fundamentals for tin demand remain very strong with record semiconductor sales, China driving growth in solar and growing global EV sales. AI and data centers are now adding to the growing tin requirement. Tin is the glue in electronics. The electrons won't flow without it. It connects all the electronics, and that's why it's classed as a critical mineral across numerous geographies. While the demand outlook remains positive, the tin supply has not been growing.
Primary production was estimated to have fallen around 8% in 2024, the last year with full numbers. This is due to historical factors with a long-term lack of new exploration and development, as well as continued supply chain disruptions in key tin exporting regions. Regulatory changes continue to create monthly volatility for exports from Indonesia, with the government cracking down on illegal mining. Although the ban on mining in Wa State in Myanmar has been lifted, output remains constrained following the earthquake last year and flooding. The reduction in Chinese imports from Myanmar was offset by higher imports from the DRC. However, despite the peace agreement, conflict continues in the region. With supply-side uncertainty, the demand growth, low inventory levels, tin price markedly strengthened over the period, as can be seen here.
From around $33,000 in mid-year, it moved to about $40,000 in December. Post-year-end, it further accelerated, reaching a historic high of over $56,000 per ton at the end of January before falling back a little ahead of Chinese New Year. Today it's increased again. It's just under $53,000 this morning. As the chart on the right-hand side illustrates, the pricing reflects the tight supply situation. Pricing typically follows the 90th percentile on the cash cost curve, but with the tight balance, with stagnant supply, higher prices beyond the cash curve are required to induce new capital for new capacity, which given the thin pipeline, will take time to come on. In the meantime, there will continue to be risk of price fly ups.
While primary tin production continues to stagnate, the pipeline for new tin projects appears slim, as you can see here. Only a couple of projects have a DFS at this stage, with a few at concept, PEA or PFS study level, and there are more at early exploration stages. As mentioned earlier, we believe First Tin has the largest undeveloped tin resource base in the OECD. Our projects, as shown at the top, are also competitive on cost. Our scale, location, competitiveness, all these well-position us to be a long-term, sustainable, and reliable supplier of tin into the main consuming regions of Europe, North America, and East Asia. Our Taronga project has been referred to as the world's next new tin mine for good reasons. It's a low-risk asset, a low-risk jurisdiction.
We further de-risked it with our water rights allocation, with the native title clearance, the compensation agreement with Crown Lands and our mine camp agreement. The completion and submission of the EIS last September represents a major step forward towards securing development approval. We have since received the submissions report from the DPE, and we provide our responses to that in coming weeks. The expectation remains of project approval sometime towards the end of Q2 this year. As previously mentioned, we have the letter of intent from EXIM for project financing. All in all, Taronga is progressing well. This slide we first presented when we published the DFS back in May 2024. It showed a pre-tax NPV of AUD 243 million when the tin price was $30,000.
At that time, we identified a number of potential value enhancement opportunities and processing improvements and the conversion of inferred resources to extend the life of mine, and that would bring the NPV closer to AUD 400 million. On top of which, there was recognized a substantial upside from any increase in the tin price. Proving up those opportunities has been the focus of efforts over the past year, and Tony will provide an update on this. The increased tin price beyond 40,000 provides another marked uplift for the project, which, as you can see here, Taronga is highly leveraged to higher tin prices. At last week's spot price, the NPV is around AUD 600 million before adding the uplift from the processing improvement and the increase in the life of mine.
You add that in, we're approaching $1 billion, and certainly as the tin price moves above $50,000, there's more value. As I said today, the tin price has moved back above $50,000 again. On that note, I'll hand it over to Tony.
Thanks, Bill. As a geologist, Taronga is probably the simplest tin ore body I've ever seen. It's got two unique geological characteristics. It's a wide, simple. In fact, you could say it's geologist-proof mineralization and a very low strip ratio of about one-to-one. To compare that with our peers, there aren't too many, but anybody else looking at an open pit is looking in the order of between 3.5 and eight to one. To put that in context, for every ton of ore we mine, we also need to mine one ton of waste. Our total mining cost is two times the unit mining rate. Let's say that's AUD 4 per ton. It will actually cost us AUD 8 per ton in total mining costs.
In comparison, if you look at the peers, their mining costs will be between 4.5, nine times the unit rate. That increases it to $18-$36 per ton. That's a very big bonus that we've got with this ore body. The footprint's also very small, and that results in low haulage distances from mine to waste dump and processing plant, and that enables low cost, low risk, bulk open pit mining with easy grade control. Taronga is also unique in its mineral processing characteristics. The photo on the upper left shows the mineralization. It's coarse cassiterite, which is the black crystals, hosted in a very hard hornfels host rock. Veins have a much lower rock strength than the hornfels.
You can see there's preferential breakage along those veins during crushing. That exposes the softer cassiterite-containing material, which then upgrades easily through simple gravity processing, and that's indicative of the flow sheets shown on the right. It's all basic low-tech kit, which is low on CapEx, low operational risk, and inexpensive to run. You might note that there are no ore sorters in this circuit. Nearly every tin project you will see has ore sorters. We actually looked at them, but we don't need them. That will simplify complexity and reduce CapEx and OpEx. On the left, you can see our costs were very competitive.
All-in sustaining costs, including C1 cash costs, sustaining CapEx, royalties, and offsite costs is around $16,000 per ton, which implies a margin of around 65% of the current spot prices. As Bill just said, our spot prices are actually significantly higher again today. As an open pit mine with simple geology mineralogy, Taronga is very competitive on CapEx, OpEx, and lower risk compared to the more typical underground tin mines. I'd like to think of this graph showing what I call the rule of ten. We may be ten times lower grade, but we're also ten times lower cost. Overall, the cost per ton of tin produced is the same as an average much higher grade underground mine and much lower risk.
In an underground mine, you need to know exactly where your ore is or else you will miss it or dilute it during mining. Tin deposits are notorious for pinching and swelling over short distances. Open pit mining is a geologist's delight, as you've got a large margin for error and can detail exact ore positions using grade control drilling. The risk is very much reduced. CapEx is much lower with zero pre-stripping, no development, i.e. shaft or decline costs, simple mine development, and a low-tech plant. Taronga will have about 150 people in full production, compared with over 300 at the average underground mine. We also don't carry the energy cost for underground ventilation, lighting, water pumping, etc. During the period, we completed about 8,000 meters of infill and extension drilling.
We mainly targeting conversion of inferred resources to measured and indicated status. It's expected that about 3.6 million tons of inferred resources within the pit outline that we currently class as waste rock because you can't do economics on inferred resources. We'll be, we think that will be largely converted to measured and indicated status by this drilling. That will have the effect of essentially converting waste rock to mineralization, which within the current pit outlines, which will also reduce the already excellent one-to-one strip ratio, probably to less than one-to-one. Our results have also confirmed an extended mineralization to the northeast, southwest and in between the pits, showing potential for wider and deeper pits, a longer Life of Mine and stronger project economics.
The mineralization encountered between the pits appears to be higher than average grade. These assays are all currently with our external consultant and they're currently updating the mineral resource estimate. Drilling program also identified silver and copper mineralization. Intercepts have shown silver and copper as a moderate-grade by-product associated with the tin mineralization, which is very consistent across the deposit, as well as in discrete zones of high-grade cross-cutting silver-rich mineralization, which we previously hadn't known about. In our processing flow sheet, the silver and copper are partially concentrated into the sulfide flotation residues generated during tin concentration, dressing and cleanup. Assays from recent test work has shown that those sulfide residues average about 137 grams per ton silver and 1.74% copper. These represent low-hanging fruit for monetization.
Given current pricing for silver and copper, further economic and technical assessments for future retreatment and recovering is currently in progress. Taronga is a large-scale deposit with 138,000 tons of contained tin. Exploration work has confirmed it lies at the center of a much broader tin district, offering long-term development options. We also have significant exploration tenure in the Tingha District, about 70 km southwest of Taronga. While our immediate focus is on getting Taronga into production, we are committed to building a robust pipeline of future development options for the longer term. Turning to Germany, as with Taronga, we've made great progress progressing Tellerhäuser's permitting activities, extending the mineral resource estimate at Gottesberg, and confirming the critical minerals potential in Germany.
In contrast to Taronga, Tellerhäuser, which is shown on the left, will be an underground mine, but the zinc, indium and magnetite by-products help offset the high cost and complexity of underground mining. As shown on the right, with the neighboring exploration licenses at nearby Gottesberg and Auersberg, it's also part of a historic tin district. While there's been insufficient assay data to quantify the by-product elements at Gottesberg into resource status, we have defined exploration targets for copper, tungsten, bismuth, arsenic, silver and gallium, as shown on the left. At Tellerhäuser, we have 18.7 tons of germanium classified as inferred resources. We're currently undertaking some mineralogical work to better understand how that germanium might be processed, for example, as a by-product of the zinc concentrate. With germanium primarily supplied by China, prices are currently over $8,000 per kilogram.
That the mineral is required for infrared optics, fiber optics, integrated circuits, et cetera. Hence, there's significant interest in the potential as this by-product. Back to you, Bill.
Great. Thanks very much, Tony. Look, Germany, just to continue the story on Germany. Germany's long been recognized as an advanced manufacturing powerhouse. In the current volatile geopolitical and trade environment, increased supply chain security and a reduced reliance on long-distance supply chains is important. Our Tellerhäuser project is located very near to the Silicon Saxony semiconductor belt, which is the EU's largest hub. It's also close to Germany's largest EV auto hub, which has a significant OEM supplier base. With our Tellerhäuser project, we have the opportunity to provide a secure mine to OEM supply chain for various critical minerals essential for Germany's advanced manufacturing sector. It's therefore pleasing to see the progress the team are making in Germany that Tony alluded to, and particularly the submission of the Life of Mine plan application into the mining authority.
We're hoping for a decision on that in the coming months. Turning very briefly to the financial statements. As you'll be aware, as a junior mining company, we currently have no income, and the company meets its working capital requirements through raising developmental finance. Therefore, the support of our shareholders for the GBP 6 million equity raise in December was very important. The results for the six months to the end of December reflect the continued investment by the company in progressing the assets through permitting, the value enhancement program of drilling and met testing at Taronga, as well as our exploration work. First Tin posted a loss after tax for the period of 0.71 million GBP, and the positive exchange rate variance meant the comprehensive loss for the period was only GBP 13,758.
We ended the period with a cash balance of GBP 9 million. That cash funds our current work plan. While awaiting the permitting outcome, the focus at Taronga is directed towards confirming the very compelling value enhancement opportunities identified during the DFS, preparing an updated DFS with those included, as well as preparing for the future development and construction phases by commencement of some early engineering and site works. With most funds allocated in Australia, the funding journey will be used to support internal activities, related to liaison with the mines authority on the permitting and some exploration field work, and also the germanium mineralogy test work Tony mentioned. In parallel, we continue the various discussions on project financing. To conclude, we've made significant progress at our assets over the period under review.
The outlook for tin remains very positive due to the structural shifts underway, with tin recognized as a critical and strategic metal and the tin price climbing as supply constraints are becoming more and more apparent. These conditions present significant opportunities for us to offer secure and sustainable tin supply from our strategic locations in the safe, compliant jurisdictions of Australia and Germany. Taronga is well advanced with a DFS, and with the EIS now submitted, development approval is materially closer. With the value enhancement following the drilling program coming on site and with the higher tin price, the project's prospective NPV is much, much greater. The graph on the right-hand side illustrates the value we are building in our portfolio. First Tin has the largest undeveloped tin resource base in the OECD. Beyond Taronga, there's potential to come from Tellerhäuser and the satellite deposits.
In the longer term, we build the resource foundations at Tingha and Gottesberg. As we progress, receive permits, build and enter production, there is substantial potential for share price re-rating. With that, thank you for your attention and we have some time for questions.
Perfect. Bill, Tony, if I may just jump back in there. Thank you very much indeed for your presentation this morning. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q&A tab that's situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Just while the team take a few moments to review those questions that have been submitted already, I'd just like to remind you that a recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can all be accessed via your investor dashboards. Guys, as you can see there, we have received a number of questions, and thank you to all of those on the call for taking the time to submit their questions.
Bill, Tony, at this point, if I may just hand back to you to read out those questions and give your responses where it's appropriate to do so. If I pick up from you at the end, that'd be great. Thank you.
Thank you, Jake. So, we have a question here, which was pre-submitted, and it is, in a scenario where the price of tin would collapse for any geopolitical reason, what are the prospects for valuation? Look, yeah, you can never say prices will never go down. At the moment, they're very much going the other way, and I believe structurally, that's the way they would go. I think as Tony mentioned, going through the cost base for our project, Taronga is a very low-cost project. So, you know, with an all-in sustaining cost of AUD 16,000-AUD 17,000, the tin price has to go down a long, long way before that becomes problematic.
Similarly, if you think of it from a valuation point of view, the slide that we had in the deck there, you know, the DFS, the break even from a valuation of a project was $20,000. With the tin price above $50,000, that would have to be a serious reversal. I think that's all we can say there. Neil, thank you for your question. Are silver and copper best viewed as upside optionality, or do you expect them to be core contributors to project economics over time? Look, Neil, I think they're best viewed as upside optionality. We have, as Tony explained, the assays are showing us they're in our tin flow sheet, it gets concentrated into the sulfide residues.
We don't have huge amount of sulfide residues coming out of our processing, but we believe that, you know, over time there'll be a material amount of tin, silver and copper there. You look at the prices of those, over the Life of Mine, that's going to be a very nice potential contributor. As Tony said, we have to do further economic analysis and evaluation on how you recover it. I think of it as nice upside potential. Related to silver and copper, the question is here for you, Tony. Would the additional silver and copper alter the flow sheet of the tin processing? It's from Ian.
Yep. Good question. At this stage, no. We really will be focusing on, as I mentioned, the low-hanging fruit, which is the silver and copper that we're already concentrating into the sulfide tailings facility. At some stage in the future, we could potentially look at changing the back end to float the different type of sulfides. At this stage, we will not be looking at that as part of the DFS. That'll be something for optimization once we're up and running.
Yeah. That's a good point, Tony, that, you know, with this project, one of the key things about it is its simplicity. It's simple geology, simple mineralogy. The processing plant is designed to be simple, low-tech, low-risk. The focus is on tin, getting that developed, commissioned, producing, and then we can start to address some of these upside potential down the road. There's a question here from Christoph. Please discuss in more detail your current thinking on funding and timing towards first production at Taronga, debt equity, third parties, et cetera. Yeah, it's a good question, Christoph. We have been and continue to have ongoing discussions with various potential providers of project financing. I believe the project financing will ultimately be majority debt funded with some equity requirement in there.
In terms of timing, it's hard to put a date on that. We expect the permit and the DFS update to be finalized around the end of Q2 this year. It would be nice if we progress the financing discussions in parallel to perhaps sometime around the middle of the year, potentially a final investment decision. That really depends on the work of the third parties involved in that. It's a combination of potential providers. I mentioned EXIM, which is clearly a very positive one. One, it reflects the strategic drive of the U.S. for the critical minerals and the money they're putting in securing their supply chain, and shows the strategic importance of Taronga.
There are other potential providers of project financing that we also talk to. Question from Trevor: When do you expect the Taronga updated DFS to be completed? I think I just actually answered that, Trevor. We're targeting Q2 this year to publish an update of that work, which is ongoing. A question from Ghislaine: What issue could you encounter that would give you headwinds, and how your financing can accommodate? Now, that's a really good question, Ghislaine. You're always challenging yourself to think about the issues. Look, the unknowns, there's clearly an unknown on permitting. We submitted the EIS. We have very strong local support. The project is a State Significant Development in New South Wales.
We see nothing and have heard nothing to date which would imply there should be a problem. At the end of the day, you're dealing with regulatory authorities, and you can't necessarily put a timing on when they make their decision. Having said that, we still expect the decision in Q2. The other things, the DFS was quite robust. As Tony alluded to, the geology, the mineralogy is quite well understood, so we're fine-tuning the processing circuit as part of that update. We await the MRE update on the drilling. There's a little bit of uncertainty in there, but it's more about the scale of the upside. The tin price is a market-related factor that's always external. We believe strongly in the structural outlook for tin.
It's clearly in tight supply. The pricing tells you the answer to that. You look at the project pipeline, it's very slim. You look at the demand growth. You've got to ask yourself what would change that. Tin has very few substitutes in a lot of applications. It's more around macro events. Does the world GDP go into real reverse? That would create a delay. Then, of course, there's the timing for project financing. However, with the capital raise we did in December, we've got good cash, GBP 9 million, and that fully funds the program we've got for this year. That's covered at this point in time. Another question from Christoph. Are the silver and copper credits included in the financials previously released?
The answer to that is no, Christoph, they're not. That is new information that's come out of the drilling, come out of the assays. As Tony said, we'll do the economic and technical analysis of that, and in due course, they will be added to the financials if appropriate. Another question from Christoph: Do you have concerns about the regulator approving the permitting? What would they be? Look, quite simply, as I said before, we don't have any concerns. The process has gone well so far. Coming out of the public exhibition with only four objections was a very strong indicator of the local support. We have the support of the council as is a State Significant Development.
There was nothing in the environmental impact study that was submitted, which would indicate there would be a problem with permitting. The regulators provided back their report on the submission. The team are doing the work to answer the questions that are raised. We'll submit that in the next few weeks, and then we'll see. There's nothing that would indicate this is a problematic project in any way, shape, or form. Jake, I think that's all the questions, Jake.
Absolutely, guys. Thank you very much indeed for being so generous with your time and addressing all of those questions that came in from investors. Of course, if there are any further questions that do come through, we'll make these available to you after the presentation. Bill, perhaps before, really now, just looking to redirect those on the call to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company. If I could please just ask you for a few closing comments just to wrap up with, that'd be great.
Yeah. Look, I think a couple of things. One, it was a very strong half year for the company in terms of the progress we made, particularly on the permitting and the drilling in Taronga, the value enhancement. So that was great to see, and we've got a program set out to the middle of this year on the enhancement to the DFS. The other thing I'd say is you know, the tin macro is very strong. It's doing what we anticipated, and we've said for the last two years. The tin price is reflecting, in my view, the supply-demand constraints. And you know, there are very few projects there.
We believe we've got great projects, safe jurisdictions, and we'll be able to supply secure, compliant tin to the industrial tin consumers in those advanced manufacturing sectors, and that tin is required. Thank you.
That's great. Bill, Tony, thank you once again for updating investors this morning. Could I please ask investors not to close this session, as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback. On behalf of the management team of First Tin PLC, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. Good morning to you all.
Thank you.