Good morning, and welcome to the Ferro-Alloy Resources Limited Interim Results Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time by the Q&A tab situated in the right-hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself, however, the company will review all the questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to note the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Nick Bridgen, CEO. Good morning to you, sir.
Good morning. Good morning, everybody. Yes, this presentation, let me run through it fairly quickly, because a lot of you have seen it before, and there's a more full version on our website. Anyway, let me go through. First of all, if we turn to the overview, very quick summary. We're listed on the London Stock Exchange and the Astana International Exchange, AIX. All our operations are in Kazakhstan. Our head office is in Guernsey. We have an existing operation which extracts vanadium, molybdenum, and nickel from purchased concentrates. The main reason we exist, the main driver of our value is the Balasausqandiq project, which we're completing a feasibility study on.
Target production is 22,400 tons a year in addition to our existing operation, which would make us produce about 10% of world supply. We're a very significant addition to the vanadium story. Vanadium, I'm gonna say a little bit more in a minute, is a green metal. It's a critical metal on almost all countries' lists, certainly U.S., Europe, and the U.K. It's essential for the move to net zero, but it's essential anyway for the continuation of the world economy. Now the Balasausqandiq deposit first, because that's the most important. 96% of our future NPV is this project. Turning again to the advantages. Sorry, I should be turning the pages after I'm just doing it.
Now really this deposit is it ticks every box that the mining people like. The most important one is the second one down of this. This deposit is not a typical vanadium deposit. The problem with vanadium is very common in the Earth's crust. The difficulty of extracting it is all about cost. The usual source of magnetite accounting for more than 90% of the world's vanadium supply is magnetite. Sorry, source of vanadium is magnetite. To liberate it, the normal process is to high temperature roast it. That's very energy intensive. Our deposit is sedimentary. This is the single most important difference between us and everyone else, and that's what makes us far cheaper, economically far more attractive.
We don't have to concentrate the ore, and we don't have to roast it. Two big savings in capital and operating costs. Very quickly, the other advantage is, it's outcrops to surface, open pit, very easy mining. It's very large. Ore body number one is already 34 million tons of reserve, but we've got seven altogether, I think, at the last count. Very, very large. Visible geological cutoff, low stripping ratio. Very good transport links already there. We have a surfaced road already to site. Shieli, our nearest town, is on the motorway that connects Western Europe to China. We already have a high voltage, high capacity power line connected.
Last but not least, from an environmental and social point of view, this is a very clean, easy project. First of all, we aim, both in our existing operation and the main operation, to use all the constituents of the ore. There should be no long-term storage of waste products. There's no arable land being disturbed. The area is rocky outcropping terrain, useless for agriculture. We're 16 km from the nearest habitation, so no people are being disturbed. As I already indicated, our process uses much less energy than others because we're not concentrating and because we're not roasting. We expect our vanadium to be very low on emissions compared with everybody else's. Moving on again. Yeah. Now, just a word of warning.
These figures are now out of date because they're all going to be updated by the feasibility study, and they're all five years old. I'm putting them here because I want everyone to know why we think this is such a good project. Our cash cost of production is much lower than everybody else's. Expected at that time was $1.54 per pound. Now, I think the others that I've seen published are up between $5 and $6 per pound. And because we've got very interesting byproducts, actually if you offset the byproducts against costs, we have a negative production cost. In other words, this project would make money even if the vanadium price went down to zero. That translates into very exceptional financial statistics.
NPV five years ago, remember, was forecast to be $2 billion, 79% operating margin, an absolutely incredible 89% IRR, and huge cash flows, $430 million from phase I and II combined. Now, saying a little bit about the vanadium market, again, let's move on one. This shows the steady growth. Obviously, there's been a hiccup in 2022 for reasons everyone knows, China's slowdown mainly. You can see the long term, very steady and very significant growth rate. That yellow bit at the top, which is quite hard to see on my screen, is the growing energy use. That's expected to grow to become a very significant component of demand. Putting this on the next slide another way.
Now this excludes energy storage because energy storage is very hard to predict. This is more reliable drivers. The traditional demand for vanadium is as an alloy of steel. You add a tiny bit of vanadium, roughly 1 kilogram per ton, and it greatly improves the strength. What's happening in the world is that, first of all, vanadium is in lockstep with steel demand, and steel demand tends to follow GDP, world GDP. There's a growth rate built into it already. Then the orange part is the expansion because a greater use of vanadium per ton of steel. We call it the increasing intensity. You can see back in history, that's been up and down, but the growth rate is quite strong, and that's expected to continue.
That will continue all the more so because steel, making steel is a very significant source of CO2 emissions. Roughly 10% of the world's CO2 emissions come from making steel. Anything which reduces the quantity of steel that you need because of the greater strength is gonna be good for the world. It's a significant way of making a significant reduction in the world's CO2 output. Even without any energy storage, net zero requires more use of vanadium. That's why vanadium is a critical metal on everybody's lists. Next slide. This is just drilling down into the non-steel applications. The interesting one here is the yellow, which is for most of the period, the bottom line. You can see how it went up in 2017.
That was when the vanadium price was low. Came to a rather abrupt halt when the vanadium price went up from a low of just over $3 to almost $30 per pound. That rather reduced the demand for batteries. With vanadium from 2020 onwards reaching a fairly average steady state, that demand has started to grow strongly and is expected to grow a lot more. Again, another critical application. The last slide that I want to talk about today is the financial results, but I think Will will answer that much better than me.
Thanks, Nick. Yes, this slide here just summarizes the headline figures for our interim results that we put out a few weeks ago and also reflects some of the commentary in the trading update that we issued last month as well. The results for H1 2023 were down compared to 2022, mainly due to the lack of concentrates available for processing. That automatically really feeds through into our turnover. We have a level of fixed cost that we incur by having the plant in place. Any reduction in turnover feeds straight through to our gross profit and gross loss line.
I suppose one point to note is that during the period where we had sales contracts, they've been on a spot basis rather than price on delivery basis. We've had less adjustments for fair value when the product's been delivered and a revaluation has or hasn't been needed. In respect to other costs, they've been in line with expectations. That's to really sort of summarize where we've got to. Not much else to say. Hopefully that covers the position. Now I think we'll move on to the Q&A.
Perfect. Nick, William, thank you very much for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q&A tab, which is situated on the top right-hand corner of your screen. Just while the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via your investor dashboard. As you can see, we received a number of questions, both pre-submitted and throughout today's live event. William, if I could just hand over to you just to read out those questions where appropriate to do so. I'll pick up from you at the end.
Great. Thanks, Alessandro. As with previous presentations, we've tried to group the questions into categories, those generally being related to finance, the existing operation and the ongoing feasibility study. We'll start off with the finance section, and I should be able to deal with most of those. The first question, can the company confirm whether the $4.2 million Vision Blue loan notes are going to be converted into shares and whether there's an intention by Vision Blue to inject capital this year? Yes, the intention is that the loan note will be converted into shares at some point in the future, under the terms of the loan note agreement between us and Vision Blue.
It's important to point out that following the recent bond issues that we've announced, we're not planning raising any further money at the moment, and that, you know, Vision Blue doesn't control that aspect for us. We don't have any sight over Vision Blue's funding plans other with respect to us anyhow, with respect to the investment agreement, other than the three options that we're currently aware of. The second question is, are the bonds funded in U.S. dollars or Kazakh tenge? To date, all the tranches for the bonds that have been issued have been in U.S. dollars. However, under the terms of the bond program, we can offer and issue bonds in either U.S. dollars or Kazakh tenge.
Third question is, assuming the company raises $3 million for working capital, $5 million for a feasibility study, what might the other potential $12 million bond financing be used for? Just to start off, we don't have any other plans to issue further tranches above and beyond the two tranches that we've already issued, so there's no plans to raise any further money at the moment from bond issue. I think the second important point is we're not committed to issuing bonds for the entire facility. We may issue further tranches in due course to fund elements of the big project as and when required, but the $20 million is just the capacity for this facility. It's not a guaranteed draw down by the company. The next question.
With the share price near to all-time lows, what do you see as the catalyst for a re-rate in the price? I think there's two points to this. I think as the feasibility study continues, and elements of that are completed, we'll announce those, as for example, metallurgy is one of those. I think we'd expect as the elements of the feasibility study are announced, that would have a positive effect on our share price. Obviously, when the feasibility is published as a whole, I think we're expecting that will also be a catalyst for the re-rate for a change in the share price as well. The last question with respect to finance is, what is the share price on the AIX?
Is it higher or lower than the LSE listing? I think it's just important to point out at the outset that we're obviously dual-listed. Our main listing is in London on the LSE main market. The other listing is actually on the AIX in Astana, not the ASX. The company shares are fully fungible between the two exchanges, albeit to date, none of the company's shares have been traded on the AIX. In the event that they were traded concurrently, the share price would be the same between the exchanges. Otherwise you'd end up with a sort of potential arbitrary situation.
As and when the company shares are traded on the AIX, we'd expect the AIX share price to be published on the company's page on the AIX website. The next area of questions around vanadium market, so Nick, I think this one's for you. The question is: What do you think is causing the current slump in vanadium prices compared to a rise in iron ore prices?
It's a very interesting question. First thing to say is I'm not sure that you can say the vanadium price has slumped. It's sort of fallen off a little bit over the last few months, but it's actually a pretty solid average price for the vanadium market. Likewise, iron ore prices, they bucket around quite a lot, just as much as vanadium does. If you look back five years, it's also a pretty average price. Although the recent movement of vanadium was down and iron ore up, I don't think you can read too much into that both of them are fairly average.
The interest in the question comes from the fact that vanadium is both a by-product of making steel from magnetite, as well as going into steel. The correlation that you'd expect of increasing demand for steel leading to increase in demand for vanadium isn't as obvious as it sounds, because the more steel that's demanded, the more vanadium is made as well as used. This is a subject of great debate among all of us in the industry. Is rising demand for steel good for vanadium or bad? It's not entirely clear.
Okay. Thanks, Nick. The next area of questions are with respect to the existing operation, and Andrey's going to help us with those. The first question is: With concentrate supplies, what is the profit margin of the existing operation, and how does this compare with other operations?
Hello, everyone. Thanks, Will. I will refer to the gross profit margin before the salaries and the average based on the existing operation, the number jumps between 40%-45%, in, say, the normal circumstances. Of course it was impacted recently by the increase in the logistics costs, but on average it's between 40%-45%. In relation to the second part of the question, how does this compare with other operations? In the , we do not know. Reason being that there are no public information of these operations that are running across the globe.
Okay, thanks. The next question: Assuming forward purchase of concentrate, how long does it take from purchasing concentrate to sales of product? And are any supply prices linked to sales prices to hedge vanadium price volatility?
Well, it's a good question. The first note that I would like to make is that it very much depends from where the concentrate is coming from. On average, it takes between one to three months as a lead time for the logistics. Of course, the processing takes, I would say, a full lot is run about one month. Anything between two to four months is the lead time that we're working with today. In relation to the hedging, of course, all of our purchase contracts are linked to the Metal Bulletin prices as well as the sales contracts. It's the percentage of either the latest world average for the month world, so they're all linked.
Great. The next question: with continued supply issues of concentrates since the Ukraine invasion, do you foresee a scenario where the plant is generating free cash flow?
Yes. The plan today is after investment program from last year is in full operation. All parts have been finalized and ready. We are working today with several different supply contracts of concentrates. As soon as this area is resolved, the plant is ready and fully in operation and will be generating free cash flow as we're expecting.
Okay. The next question: assuming the supply problem has been solved, will the existing plant operate close to capacity from now on?
Yeah, that's very much linked to the previous question that the plant is operating and existing plant and with supply problems are also solved. We will be operating. We're expecting to operate at the full capacity.
Thanks, Andrey. The final question: does the company have any binding contracts with buyers to supply fixed amount of metals? Will the company have to make up shortfall of supply?
No. Today, all of our commercial contracts, sales contracts, they're not binding, so we're working very closely with our partners, both on the sales and the purchase price to ensure that there are no shortfalls. In case if that's happening, there are no legal binding in the commercial contracts as of today.
Perfect. Thanks, Andrey. Moving on to the next group of questions that relate to the feasibility study and the Balasausqandiq deposit. Nick, you're gonna field these for us. The first question is. How is the future mine planning study being progressed in relation to sanctions on Russia?
There's very little direct effect of the sanctions on Russia on us. In terms of the feasibility study, I'll interpret the question as the feasibility study in general. Obviously, on the mining, there's very little. I would guess when we come to equipment selection, it's unlikely that we'll be choosing Russian suppliers for any of the major equipment. That was not so likely anyway. I can say very little impact.
Okay. The next question: is early Q2 the final revision to the publishing of the phase I feasibility study? When will phase II of the study be published?
Yes, the feasibility study for phase I is scheduled for April now. Phase II, we haven't got a direct timeline on it, but the big job is done, the drilling of ore bodies two, three, and four, which will provide the feed for the expanded plant, which is the subject of phase II. It should be relatively fast obviously an awful lot of the work done for phase I will apply to phase II too. Sometime next year, for sure.
Okay. Next question: what is the reason for the further delay in the feasibility study completion date? Is it to do with carbon product marketing, capital constraints, or delays in testing processes?
The last of those. It's testing processes. The 100% of the delay is just caused by the time it's taking for our test laboratory in Canada to complete the work. There's been quite a few steps added. The variability testing indicated a bit more variability in the ore than we expected, which required a little bit more work to be done. All of that is just taking an awful long time. Unfortunately, our consultants seem to take the best part of a month off for Christmas, which means that any delay past Christmas adds on another month automatically. I'm afraid that's where it's coming out. It's nothing to do with the carbon. The carbon testing is progressing well.
We've got a bit more testing actually ongoing as we speak. There's interest in the product, so that will go well. We're not going to hold up the study to wait for the carbon. The carbon will be at the point that it's reached when the rest of the study is ready, and possibly if we need to get offtake agreements for the carbon, they may follow after the study. No, it's just the length of time it's taking to go through the metallurgical test work.
Okay. The next question. Is there any market interest in Ferro-Alloy's Carbon among tyre manufacturers yet, or will this only appear when the project is close to production?
Yes. We've held exploratory meetings with several tyre manufacturers, and there's definite interest. Tyre manufacturers are extremely motivated to reduce the CO2 emissions and other emissions of the tyres, both in the manufacture and in use. They're extremely interested to review our product. Now, they are waiting for this further test work, so those expressions of interest are just that so far. We need to get more test work out and then explore the market and see where that process leads us.
Okay. Thank you. The final question for this section. Now the completion of the feasibility study is in sight, are you now beginning to negotiate the price and delivery of long lead items for the new mine?
Sort of, but really not yet. The part of the feasibility study process is to get quotations for the equipment that we need to build the mine. Obviously some of those initial discussions will lead eventually to purchase orders and potentially early orders of long lead time items. We're not in the business of ordering the long lead time items yet. We need to substantially have finished the study at least. Not yet.
Okay. Well, that was the end of the questions. I think we can hand back over to Alessandro.
Yep. Perfect. Nick, William, Andrey, thank you very much for addressing all those questions from investors. Of course, the company will review any further questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to the company, Nick, could I just ask you for a few closing comments?
Yes. Just thanking everyone for attending. This format I think is a very useful one, and I'd encourage everybody to submit their questions and we'll do our best to answer them. I hope we have today.
Nick, William, Andrey, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close the session, as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Ferro-Alloy Resources Limited, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.