Hello, welcome to Virtual Investor Conferences. On behalf of OTC Markets, we are very pleased you've joined us for our two-day Precious Metals and Critical Minerals Conference. The next presentation is from District Metals. Please note you may submit questions for the presenter at any time. You can also view a company's availability for one-on-one meetings by clicking "Book a Meeting." At this point, I am very pleased to welcome Garrett Ainsworth, President and Chief Executive Officer of District Metals, which trades on the OTCQX Best Market under the symbol DMXCF, TSXV under the symbol DMX, and on Nasdaq First North Growth under the symbol DMXSE SDB. Welcome back, Garrett.
Thanks very much, Lily. It's a pleasure to be back, especially during the summer doldrums, and to also talk a little bit about some exciting news we put out today with regards to our economic impact study on the Viken deposit that I'll get into. Here's just our cautionary statement. You can find this on our news releases, also on our website. I won't get into this slide. From very high level, for those of you that are not familiar with District Metals, we have a team at District that has a track record of success from mineral exploration, discovery, development through to production. Obviously, we're focused in Sweden. It is a metal powerhouse for the EU, especially considering all the geopolitical turmoil that's going on. Sweden becomes that much more important for the EU and the Western world.
Our flagship project is the Viken, and that contains the Viken deposit. It is the largest undeveloped uranium deposit in the world. It also contains significant quantities of vanadium, potash, and other important and critical raw materials. In June of 2026, so just last month, we put out our preliminary economic assessment on the Viken deposit that I'll get into with a couple of slides, and then I'll also talk to our economic impact study that we released today. The team here at District Metals, I'll just start with myself. I'm a geologist by training, a uranium geologist. I spent much of my career in the Athabasca Basin looking for and discovering high-grade uranium deposits. I was the Vice President of Exploration for Alpha Minerals, took a lead role in the discovery of the Triple R deposit, in 2012.
We were bought out by Fission Uranium in 2013 for CAD 189 million. Won an industry award for my discovery efforts there. In 2014, went on to NexGen Energy as Vice President, Exploration and Development. Had a lot of success with the Arrow deposit discovery from 2014 till 2018. Again, won some industry awards there. When I started NexGen, the market capitalization was about CAD 50 million. When I left in 2018, it was about CAD 3 billion. In more recent years, it's gone much, much higher than that. A very good success story with NexGen. Then I started my adventure in Sweden in 2020 with District Metals and I'll reveal what we've been up to the last few years.
Also on the executive team, we've got our all-star CFO, Marlis Yassin, who helps keep us on the right side of everything and getting listings such as our Nasdaq First North Growth in Sweden. We have a very solid technical team led by Hein Raat, who worked for Boliden, who's very well supported by Rodney Allen, who also worked for Boliden for a number of years. These gentlemen know the geology, the permitting in Sweden inside out, and have a lot of contacts of great importance. On the board, we have a very good skills matrix with Joanna Cameron being a lawyer that I worked with at NexGen. She was also at Osler, now she's with Fission. Doug Ramshaw is a well-known mining executive with a technical background, but great strategic and capital markets knowledge.
Jonathan Challis, again, was in the financial side of things, but also on the company side with heaps of experience with Barclays, Ivanhoe Capital, Gold Fields, and whatnot. To round out our team, on the advisory committee, some well-known people in the industry, Galen McNamara, who's the CEO of Silver47. Rob Chang has a deep knowledge of uranium when he was an analyst at Cantor, but he's also currently a director on a number of uranium companies. Sophia Shane, she was with the Lundin Group for 28 years. She knows Sweden inside out and has a great breadth of knowledge. Rita Bennett is the President of Discovery Group, and she helps us to navigate the world of marketing programs and investor communications. Our share structure is quite clean. We've got no debt. Our last financing was May of this year.
We raised about CAD 10 million at CAD 0.68. We're trading just a little bit below that. It's been a bit of a rough year for the uranium equities, especially over the last few months. But we currently have about CAD 17 million in the treasury. We're fully funded for all of the work that we're doing this year. We've got 6 million warrants coming due in, I believe, March of 2027. They're priced at CAD 0.30, so that'll bring in some more funds with the current share price where it's at. We have a very well-distributed share registry between institutional, high net worth, and retail, and management and insiders have a good chunk as well. For those of you that don't know Sweden, it has a long history of mining.
Goes back to 400 BC at the Garpenberg mine, which is located just north of Stockholm. Like I said, Sweden is a powerhouse for metals for the EU currently, especially for iron, for zinc, and for lead, and hopefully for uranium in the coming years. The big player in Sweden is Boliden. They run the Garpenberg and Zinkgruvan mine, but there's also BHP in country, Agnico Eagle, LKAB, and Alkane Resources. The tax rate for corporates is very competitive at 22%, and the government agencies are amazing in Sweden. They help guide companies through the process, and it's a very transparent process. It's been an absolute delight working in Sweden over the last six years. Let's get into our projects.
We made a big shift in 2022 from base metals into uranium, and that's because the government that came in said that they were pro-nuclear and they were going to remove the uranium ban from 2018, which they've now done. That was effective January 1st of 2026. What's also very important, though, is that the opposition government is now pro-nuclear. Everyone understands in Sweden, and for the most part in the EU, that renewables alone won't do it. We need nuclear to power this green energy future that is planned. Currently, Sweden has about 30% of its electricity coming from nuclear reactors, but they have plans to build 10 more reactors by 2045, and there's already been a lot of moves made by the current government to fund that and plans on how that build out is going to roll out.
We're sitting with our five projects in Sweden, Viken being our flagship, within a number of different uranium districts. Obviously, our main focus is Viken. Our alum shales are where we're looking for another Viken deposit. Sockjärn, Nyfors, and Arnövalla are lower tonnage type targets, but higher grade uranium, and they're more in basement type rocks. I won't talk too much about those, but I will talk about Viken and the alum shale properties. Let's jump into the Viken property right here. We own 100% of it. It's located in central Sweden and contains the Viken deposit. In about the 1970s, it was discovered by the Geological Survey of Sweden, but foreign companies weren't really allowed to come in and own 100% of mineral licenses in Sweden.
We didn't really see a uranium push in Sweden until the last uranium cycle where Continental Precious Minerals, they drilled a bunch of holes between 2006, 2012. They put out mineral resource estimates, preliminary economic assessments on the Viken deposit, reached a market cap of about CAD 330 million. Obviously, Fukushima hurt them, and then the moratorium coming on in 2018 was pretty tough for them. We packaged up the Viken property between 2024, 2025, to the point where we have no royalties on it. We own it straight out, 100%. We completed a mineral resource estimate in 2025, which I'll get into. We also flew a MobileMT survey, which has picked up the alum shales because they're conductive extremely well. I'll also show you that coming up. And then more recently, we've done our PEA and also our economic impact study.
Our next door neighbors are Aura Energy, an Australian company. They have the west extension of our Viken deposit, as you can see on the figure right there. So here's our 2025 mineral resource estimate of the Viken deposit. I'll just talk to the inferred category because it's very large. Has 4.3 billion tons of resource containing 1.5 billion pounds of uranium, 24.3 billion pounds of vanadium, and then billions upon billions of pounds of molybdenum, nickel, copper, zinc. Very importantly is the potash. It's quite strategic, 160 million tons, and with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, you can see that fertilizer is really being clamped down, and there's no significant source of fertilizer of SOP, sulfate of potash, within the EU. So having a source coming from Northern Europe, I think would be very strategic. Let's jump into the preliminary economic assessment numbers.
These were very strong. They're even stronger than a lot of high-grade uranium projects that I've seen in the Athabasca Basin. The reason being is not because of the uranium, it's because of the vanadium and the potash. Having uranium polymetallic is very powerful. It also is quite helpful if one of the metals is not doing so well, some of the other ones can pick up the slack. We have an after-tax NPV of $2.9 billion. After-tax IRR of 46%, payback of 2.1 years, and that's including a ramp up in the first year. After-tax free cash flow of $531 million p er year, which is very good. Operating margin 145%, it's actually got a negative OpEx on uranium per pound when you include all the byproducts of -$118 per pound. Metallurgical recoveries ranging from 70%-90%.
This is all done with an initial CapEx of just under $900 million . What we've actually done is we've taken the vanadium, not just to a vanadium flake product. We've taken it to a vanadium electrolyte and also to an iron or a ferrovanadium product, which actually are worth much more money. We've incorporated that in our CapEx and our OpEx. Very importantly, the production of uranium is 3.3 million pounds per year, which would currently cover Sweden's demand for uranium on its current nuclear reactors. A very solid strip ratio of 0.2 : 1. There's no blasting required. Alum shales are very soft rock, this saves on cost, but also having it so shallow is very important. A mine life of 13 years. I should say, this only incorporates 3% of the Viken deposit mineral resource estimate.
Technically, you could do this 33 more times, it's taking you 13 years. This is potential for a generational-type deposit. We think we have much more than the current mineral resource estimate on the Viken property right now, which I'll show you from on the airborne. Here's our cash flow, I should note this is pre-tax cash flow, but it just gives a good feel for how the consistency is. You've got two years of construction, a ramp-up in year one, then from years two to 13 is quite consistent cash flow. Also, just ramping up on the right figure right there, quite impressive and I think would bring a lot of benefit to not just locally but to Sweden as well, which is very important. That's one reason why we did this economic impact study.
We wanted to show all the details behind what can this actually do above and beyond just the mine economics. What can this do for Sweden? What can this do for the locals? What can this do for the landowners? These numbers say it can do a lot. A total economic contribution of $7.6 billion is very significant over a 13-year mine life. That's direct corporate income taxes of $1.6 billion, employment income taxes of $200 million, capital investment and operating spend $1.5 billion. I find it really interesting, the Swedish state tax here, it's 0.2%, a quarter of it goes to the state, but three-quarters of that goes to the landowners. The landowners would get $22 million over 13 years, which is very significant. I think it's more than any landowner could make growing hay. All right.
I have talked a couple of times about the potential upside on the Viken project here. We flew this MobileMT survey last year. It picked up the Viken deposit, which is in the blue outline as being conductive because it is full of graphite. It also picked up nine other target areas, with three of them being A, B, and C, looking to be larger and stronger in signature than the Viken deposit itself. This is telling us there is very good potential for there to be multiple Viken deposits within the Viken property. Target areas A and B have really not been drilled. There are a few on the outskirts of target area A. We will be drilling this later this year. I am really excited to do that. It does not take a lot of drill holes to come up with tonnage.
If you have an alum shale that is 150 m thick, 500 m by 500 m, that will give you about 130 million tons, which is the tonnage that was used in our PEA that we just released last month that returned that CAD 2.9 billion after-tax NPV. It is actually quite small in terms of the footprint, which is very good too. I will talk a bit to the alum shale projects that we have where we are trying to find another Viken deposit. Last year, we flew airborne survey, which is the color contouring. We are currently doing some drilling at Österkällen and Malmgruvan. We are also flying airborne, where you see these red horizontal lines. We doubled the land package late last year of these alum shales based it on publicly available information and field observations that we have made from our geologists. Österkällen is a very exciting target.
8 km long by up to 3.5 km wide, never been drilled. We will fly the western part of Österkällen as well to see what is there. We will have news releases out on drilling results as they become ready. Malmgruvan is also another area we will be drilling before September. That is big targets here, 20 km long, up to 5 km wide, never been drilled before ever. We are really excited to see what we come up with. We will drill probably till the end of August on these two projects, and then we will probably have to take September off because it is moose hunting season. Then we will probably start back up drilling. Maybe we will go to Viken after that. It has been a busy year. We are hitting all of our guidance on time, which has been great.
We obviously completed our PEA in June, just within Q2. We completed our economic impact study on Viken within Q3, and we started drilling at Alum Shale properties within Q2. We have been doing field work at our non-Alum Shale properties as we have time that becomes available. Then we started flying the airborne survey, MobileMT survey at the other Alum Shale projects. We should have some drill results coming in Q3, Q4, the MobileMT results coming in Q4, and then some information from our field work at Sockjärn, Nyfors and Arnövalla in Q4 as well. Just to bring this all together for District Metals, you have got a strong team with heaps of experience with uranium and base metals, and very importantly, within the jurisdiction of Sweden, which we consider to be a top jurisdiction.
It was rated a top jurisdiction by the Fraser Institute. We've put together an amazing portfolio that we got to handpick during a time when the uranium moratorium was in effect. There was a lot of open ground, and we were able to grab a lot of it for just staking costs. We have a very strong shareholder base that understands what we're doing, and we'd love to have others join. I think if there are any questions, then, yeah, I will be happy to answer. Maybe what I will do here, I'll just set this page to the PEA highlights, and then I will start answering some of the questions. What should investors watch first? Drilling results, permitting, or follow-up studies? This is a good question. We have a lot of upcoming potential catalysts here.
I think drilling results are definitely worth looking out for, but also the airborne MobileMT results as well. In August, I believe the Geological Survey of Sweden will be making a decision to potentially propose our Viken deposit as a deposit of national interest, which should be quite important. There is an election coming up in Sweden. It's national and local elections on September 13th, so I think a lot of people are going to be watching out for that. I think when we start drilling at the Viken property, that's going to be a very exciting time as well. How important is Sweden's permitting and policy backdrop to the long-term upside here? I would say based on the share price, it's been quite important. I think there's been some overreactions with the share price in both directions based on the permitting and policy.
I think it's very clear that the Swedish government wants uranium to be produced from Sweden. Obviously politics goes a few different ways. Overall, the government has made two massive legislative changes very recently. January 1st 2026, this year, they fully allowed uranium exploration and mining, and then as of July 15th, the Swedish government removed the municipal veto on processing of uranium. There is an inquiry that is currently underway on alum shales. That inquiry will determine if there's going to be more local influence or not, and that will be due on, I believe, in February of 2027. Yeah, the share price of District Metals definitely reacts quite significantly to political and regulatory news. All right. Viken is described as one of the largest undeveloped uranium and energy metals deposits globally. How do you see that scale translating into strategic interest from majors or utilities?
I think it's a good question. Whatever we do for our preliminary economic assessment is probably not what a major mining company is going to do. They might go larger, I would think, or maybe they go smaller, or they need to do what's best for them. From our perspective, we put out The tonnage being mined in a PEA in terms of what would be best to not have the CapEx get too high, but also keeping in mind social license. You don't want to go too big with an open pit, because in 2010, Continental Precious Minerals did an open pit that covered the entire deposit. It was about 4 km wide by 6 km long. That is too big. I don't think you could do that in most parts of the world and not have some pushback.
Whereas our preliminary economic assessment, the surface area of the mine covered an area of 500 m wide by 1.2 km long, quite a bit smaller. I think it's definitely worth noting that any economic study that you do on a deposit like the Viken deposit, you don't want to do it too big. Because the CapEx goes too high, it's not good for your social license, you would also oversupply the world with vanadium, and you would get so much discounting of the economics. It wouldn't really show the true value. That's why we've based our PEA on 130 million tons over a 13-year period with the knowledge that's a phase I mine operation, you could do that all over again right next to the same pit.
The thing is, phase II would be cheaper because you've already sunk the CapEx to build a lot of the infrastructure and the mineral processing, you actually capture even more value from a phase II mining operation. Again, these are all thoughts that even the majors are going to have different ideas about what should be done from themselves. All right. What are the biggest catalysts over the next 6 - 12 months that could re-rate the stock? Drilling results, I think definitely, and regulatory news that's positive, such as the Viken deposit getting catalyst, or, sorry, getting promoted as a deposit of national interest, I think would be very helpful. Drilling on the Viken property I think will be very interesting. That's things to look out for. The company's stock is still trading at a fraction of the PEA NPV.
What do you think the market is missing most about the Viken story? This is a good question. I think there's a few things at play. I think we really did have a sell in May and go away, when it comes to the commodity sector for the mining sector. Especially the uranium companies have not been doing so well over the last few months, and District Metals has definitely copped it on that front. I also believe that there's some investors that are waiting to see what happens with the election on September 13th. I'm not concerned about the election because no matter what party gets in, they're both sides. When I say both sides, the current government, I believe all the political parties within it are pro-nuclear.
On the opposition side, there are some parties that are against nuclear energy, they're small, and the largest opposition party has said they're pro-nuclear. I think that's very important. No matter which way it goes, you're going to have a government that's still pro-nuclear. The whole reason why they've removed the uranium ban, was because they've gone pro-nuclear, and they need to have a secure domestic supply of uranium, not just for Sweden, but for the EU in general. I think the politics side of it, and also we're having summer doldrums are two of the main factors that I think are creating this lower share price with regards to our PEA, the NPV. Not much time left now, given the CAD 7.6 billion economic impact number from the recent study, how are Swedish stakeholders and local communities reacting to the potential long-term benefits?
It's only been a day, so I have not had time to talk to. We're talking in Sweden. In Sweden, the month of July, everyone is at their cabin or on vacation, so we've basically put out the economic impact study so that we're ready come September. It's not just Sweden, a lot of the EU really do take holidays. We'll be fully ready later in August and September, and onwards to talk to municipalities, to landowners, to politicians, and we'll have a full presentation on these economic impact study questions. It's going to be great to have this third-party verification on what the economic and social benefits of a potential mine operation at the Viken deposit could look like. I think I will end it there. That's great questions. Thank you so much. I see there's still some more.
I believe those could come my way, and I can answer them at a later time. Yeah. Thanks very much.