Atlantic Lithium (LSE:ALL) — Quarterly Update

0:01 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the ATLANTIC LIFHIUM LIMITED Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time via the Q and A tab that's just situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Please 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 we'll publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so on the Investor Meet company platform. Before we begin, I would like to submit

0:33 the following poll. And as usual, if you could give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. And I would now like to hand you over to executive chairman, Neil Herbert. Neil, good morning, sir. Good morning to you, and many thanks for the introduction. So today, as you can see, we have more on the call. We have a a new face in terms of these courses, Aaron, who's gonna be talking to you later. But we also have Keith, and we have Lynn. And ourselves, we're in Accra, and the rest of the team is in Australia today. So sat next to me is Amanda, as always. And if any of you wondering, yes, Amanda and I are wearing the new ATLANTIC LITHIUM shirts, and you will see that LEN there is actually it may seem a little bit bright, but that is that is a MIFF shirt in celebration of our recent investment by MIFF. We're very happy to see that shirt being worn today.

1:20 Okay. So we're gonna take you through the presentation, and then we're gonna do the questions. We will try and answer as many questions as possible. There are actually quite a few. I think we've got quite a wide audience from around the world today, and I think we may even have a few Ghanaians as well in that in act anticipation of our future GSE listing, which should be coming up shortly. So welcome to the call. Let's flip the slides. That was a disclaimer. I'm sure you'll read it very quickly at this point in time. So this is a nice summary of what we did in the quarter and where we're going. And we are in a very busy time because, obviously, we're now in the ramp up to to breaking ground and everything that needs to be done from that. Obviously, we got the mining lease granted. It seems like a long time ago, but actually, it was only the end of October.

2:06 Obviously, a very important event for us, and we will be moving up to the ratification stage shortly, which we'll talk about a little bit later. Key local stakeholders secured, and we can refer back to the shirt that Len's wearing there. So that was MIF. So they have recently secured their first investment in us in the topco level, and we're looking forward to them to complete the second stage investment, which is nearly $28,000,000 and then continuous funding thereafter into the project level. So key for us because it it adds to our Ghanaian credentials. They're a very important part. We sat down with them yesterday. They're very pleased with the investment and looking forward to working with us. So a very important step for us. In terms of the the offtake process, which obviously provides us additional financing options, that's gone very well. We have the first stage.

2:53 Quite a few parties came back with proposals, and now we're focusing on the most interesting of those proposals. We've actually just started that yesterday as well, talking to each of those parties individually, and we're looking forward to taking that forward. And Amanda's gonna talk a little bit about that later. And in terms of the the permitting, there are many different permits in addition to the ratification, and if everything from water to everything you can imagine that needs to be done. And indeed, we're working through all of those steps as we go now with the intention of being able to get to the midyear stage and have everything in place so that we can move forward and break ground in the second half of the year. And finally, managing the lithium market backdrop. Obviously, the lithium price has fallen away, so it's now sitting around the $8,900 level depending on which industry you you use. And this is causing a lot of problems in the industry, and I've spoken a little bit about this in the past, and I'll speak a little bit about that now. But, obviously, we are a low cost operation.

3:46 And if a project like ours can't survive, very few others will be either. So let's look the slide. Thank you. So in terms of the project, just a little bit of a reminder of where we are and where we sit. So with that offtake process, we have interest from all around the world. The project sits very well. So, obviously, we we're a project that sits on the coast anyway, but it's on a very good location with a port available to us nearby. And we can serve China, Asia. We can serve Europe. We can serve The US. Obviously, we have an existing agreement with Piedmont in respect of The US, and we've had interest through the process from both Europe and China. You'll be unsurprised to hear.

4:27 As I mentioned earlier, you see, I think this is a very important point of where we sit on the cash curve. We have a low cost project. We're not the lowest cost project in the world, but as you can see, a lot of projects have higher costs. Over the last couple of years, because the lithium price rose so quickly, a lot of projects were rushed to production, which today are now suffering because they they have relatively high costs over a thousand dollars. Some of those projects have already announced that they're going to shut down, and in fact, we think a few more of them will be coming out. We're obviously not in production

4:58 today, so there's actually an opportunity here for us in many ways to see the shakeout of the industry from the sidelines before we actually start production next year. And there's a little of a snapshot about where we are. We've seen this before. We ended the quarter with nearly $10,000,000 in the bank Australian. Obviously, we subsequently received money from, from NIF the next week. So we've actually got quite a strong cash balance at the moment. We have the expectation also of completing the the deal with MIF and funding into into the project level, which provides us additional funding coming up. We're going through the offtake process as we sit today, and indeed, we have the people funding arrangements. So we're actually in a very robust situation. And I think the the thing I always say is that in our industry, our CapEx is actually quite low. So it's an attractive project in that respect.

5:46 Obviously, there will, there has been some change in the shareholding. So as we mentioned before, the sovereign wealth fund of Ghana, we welcomed as an investor very recently, and you'll see them there in our chart as a significant investment. Piedmont have been managing their own cash position, and so they've been managing their priorities during this phase of the quarter. So they sold some of their shares to our largest shareholder, Assort, which has been on the board for for nine years of representation and a major shareholder for all that time. They very much like the project, always been a big supporter of us, and so they increased their stake to, I think it's now 27.6%, which is a considerable investment and a considerable trust from a a major mining group. So we really appreciate their continued support. They actually bought them up. They had those shares, I think, at a a substantial premium to the market at the time they did it. So, again, a significant indication of of their faith in the project.

6:42 I'm gonna pass over to Amanda. Thanks for joining. So you'll see, that we recently, completed this TopCo, strategic investment by MIF. So we had 5,000,000 coming, the door, and we've, issued the shares. And that helps, our cash balance through, January. And we're in the final stages of doing the due diligence around the, contributing 6% interest into the Ghanaian subsidiaries. I've been here this week doing some of that, and I'll be back the week after next doing more of that. So we're expecting that this will be done in the coming months and be finalized, and that will be a 28,000,000 US direct investment into the actual project level in Ghana. So I'm really looking forward to finalizing that deal and, yeah, moving on and kind of completing our arrangement. As Neil said, we, visited their offices. We sat around the table. We talked about what we enjoyed over the last kind of year and a half of negotiations and discussions. And it's really exciting having them as a strategic partner.

7:52 We all have, you know, they will be joining the board. It kind of they really want to see ATLANTIC succeed. And in turn, that, you know, makes a warrior succeed as well. Okay. Next one. So the mining lease, so we had the mining lease granted, as Neil said, in October. What we've been doing as a team is working through the different kind of extra components of the mining lease that, you know, is kind of not part of, you know, a standard one, I suppose. You will see those the FELTSPA study and downstream conversion study, which were nearly complete

8:27 and kind of agreement to do a community development fund, which is 1% of revenue. The thing I want to talk about really is the GSE listing. So again, I've been here working with our brokers. It's in its final stages. We're completing the prospectus. It will be it's just going through the kind of questioning of the SEC and GSE at the moment. So it'll be completing in the next few weeks, and we'll lodge that prospectus. We will do an announcement on that once it's lodged. And then we expect to be listed in maybe by the end of February or early March. It just depends on regulator timelines here. I one of the important things to understand, so I think there has been some questions around it, is it's a listing by introduction. So we won't be issuing shares in Ghana as part of that listing.

9:13 It is you know, we're working with the brokers on how local Ghanaians can then buy shares and kind of move those shares from our existing, you know, A market and ASX market to Ghana. So excited that, you know, we are getting a lot of interest from Ghana in terms of becoming shareholders. So excited for that and to meet the requirements that's been asked of us.

9:41 And the other thing that's been kind of taking up probably a lot of my time is, and Keith's time, is our offtake process that we're running at the moment with Macquarie. We've completed stage one. The majority of the bidders, especially the ones going to stage two, have met kind of requirements, which is, as I've said 70 to 100,000,000 of a prepayment facility.

10:05 There may be some strategic investment as well as part of that. The pricing mechanism is a calculation based on market prices at the time that you that you deliver the product. So there's no real even in this kind of downturn, there's no real impact on kind of the deal that you do. There may be a impact on the ability of some of the parties, and they're not even in the process, to actually take part because, obviously, they've got conditions that they can't take part in. But we have a good number of parties in stage two, and we're expecting to get through that stage by March and then go into the final negotiations with our kind of chosen partner. So it'll be announced kind of late March, or into April, depending on those negotiations and discussion.

10:53 But no, it's going really well at the moment and a lot of interest. What's interesting and what's good for us is that we're getting parties say to us that they've identified a warrior as one of the top, you know, three projects in the world, a long time ago, and now they've got the ability to, you know, take that spodumene from there. Okay. I think hand it over to Keith. Thanks, Amanda. Good day to everyone and thank you very much for joining us. It's a pleasure to talk you through the quarterly. I think what I want to highlight from this slide is probably the most important. There's no change. You would have seen this slide being presented probably over the last six months from us, and we're still sticking to this timeline. So to remind those that might be joining us for the first time today, just exactly what these timelines are and what the milestones look like.

11:52 So we've completed our flotation study, and it's exactly as we were expected. It's a proposition that we want to look further into in the future. And we're currently underway with our Felspond downstream conversion study. We're still looking to break ground later this calendar year, so somewhere around October mark. We've achieved our ML grant, so that's done. Ratification, slightly difficult one to predict. Parliament is sitting now the February 8. We think that our ratification process will be high on the agenda. Neil and Amanda is currently in Accra speaking to to the right people. I'm heading there the week after next with with Aaron and LIMITED to follow through on that conversation, And Amanda will be joining us as well heading back to Ghana after Cape Town.

12:49 Then in terms of breaking ground, October next year, modular unit, we're looking to place those orders towards the end of this financial year, so around June 2024. Those modular units will be on-site in February next year and first production through those modular units still as planned in the second quarter of twenty twenty five. And then the main plant commissioning in the first quarter twenty twenty six, still about a 14 construction period. So probably most important, nothing has changed here. We're still on track. And the reason I want to keep on highlighting that is some of the investment from MIRF has probably slipped from what our expectations were last year, but these things don't happen in series.

13:38 We don't need to wait for one activity to take place before we can step on to the next one. A lot of the activities we're doing in parallel. So at this stage, our timeline hasn't moved. I'll hand over to Aaron now. So perhaps, Aaron, before you talk to the environmental and social permitting perspective, maybe just make a quick introduction of yourself, please, and and tell the investors where you're from and what you're doing for us. Sure. Thanks, Keith. Yeah. It's a real real privilege to to be part of this project. So I'm I'm the head of operational readiness. I've been been with ATLANTIC for for seven months now. It it's it's gone very quick for me.

14:20 I've enjoyed enjoyed going into Ghana at least every every six weeks. My background is I'm a mining engineer, but I've worked in multiple commodities around around the world. It's my first time in Ghana, but I'll get to that in a minute. The I guess the the best thing and what and what I, I guess, I offer offer with the team I I have have been working with is, last seven years before joining, ATLANTIC. I was running hard rock lithium sites, two two of the biggest hard rock lithium sites in Australia. So had had a lot of hands on experience, and I I look forward to to sharing that experience with with

14:54 Gartner and and helping helping from a learning experience with the already great capability in Gartner. But helping me do that, you know, I do have to call out my my GM that that I've recently been able to employ, He's he's everything I'll I'll go through shortly is a is a credit to him and his team. PSO, quick introduction. I'll get on to my environmental slide. And I'll sorry. I should've done that. Back one. Yep. Thanks. So so the I've got two slides. One one environmental and one on social. They're they're both at the right at the the pointy end of of what we need to achieve right now. I spend most of my time on this with the with the team.

15:42 And and to be honest, they're exceeding all expectations at the moment, so I split this up and completed and in progress because I really wanna celebrate the milestones that we with that the team have have achieved. So, firstly, the the the draft scope once we got a ML, so all these completed items have happened post post ML, they couldn't happen before that. So from from October to now, we were very, very ready to to submit our our draft scoping report to the to the EPA. So that that that went straight in, straight after our you know, we had we had to submit the the the mine operating, plan as well. Just and then the EPA came very quick to come to site and focus on on strategies to to seamlessly get these approvals. But I I think the thing I would share here is all all government agencies for us have really provided a coordinated and spirited approach to us, to me, and to the team.

16:40 You know, there's a very rich history of mining in Ghana, and I've I've learned that, of mining, not just mining, but approval of mines and and permitting, and then shared shared those lessons with us, which has been most of these milestones have been achieved ahead of schedule, our master schedule, which is which is fantastic.

16:59 We we have had to conduct a lot of stakeholder engagement, particularly around post the mining and processing environmental impact assessment on the tailings storage facility. So we we went around to every every community that was led by the environmental and social team on the ground, and they did a did a great job to to help them understand it because it's not a mining area. To help them understand mining and what we're going to doing around drill drilling and blasting, what what it means for a battery storage facility, that there's no there's nothing in that. It's it's very inert, what we're we're doing. It's not like gold mining. We need be more careful. We also had to complete a lot of specialist reports. You know, there'd be there'll see a few questions there on on water. So a lot of hydrology, a lot of community, a lot of, crop.

17:47 A lot a lot of, environmental studies had to be done on flora and fauna to make sure that we we were prepared in our in our submission. So what we're doing now, as of today so, yeah, last night, I got confirmation from Ahmed, our GM, that the EPA will will be coming out the site on the thirteenth, and I'm glad that I'll be there with with LIMITED to participate in in a public hearing. So we're we're busily preparing for that. Again, that's that's actually a little ahead ahead of schedule to what we thought, and that's because of what I previously talked about. The EIS stakeholder engagement, so we're currently drafting a stakeholder engagement and and socioeconomic survey report.

18:34 That, again, has been supported really heavily by the EPA to the point where they come out to sites and visit the community and understand

18:43 what's important to them and and and come back and help us submit our final final reports. Water supply water supply is is important for every mine. So we've got a consultant's key consultant engaged right now just to look at the the the pipeline from our water storage facility and the designs on that that corridor to bring our our water to the site from a processing point of view, and it's important to to know that we don't have enough enough groundwater. We're not going to impact any sort of water tables. We we will be bringing bringing water. It's about seven seven seven kilometers away, maybe a little bit more. The tailing storage facility, that is now in in scoping stage. That we've done that after the mining and processing. This is the final issue document to be to be submitted to and this one gets submitted to the Minerals Commission, and that that currently is ahead of schedule.

19:42 We're looking to I'm looking at the drafts of that now to to submit sometime next month. So very proud of the team, and this is this is key to us

19:52 from an environmental point of view to to get our mine operating permit. So I'll just move on to the social activities. This has been been really exciting, and and I you might be able to see, but I'm in a picture up there with the whole team on the top right in in Ghana. Was they're really proud of of what they're doing out there and to meet everyone in in the community. So

20:15 what we completed since the ML, like the environment team, we've submitted and the pre resettlement action plan. We have a lot of communities around us. That was submitted and endorsed by the municipality chief executive. I met met with him for the first time in person on my last trip, and I know everyone else on this call has met the MCA there, which is and and really sat down and spoke to me about about his community and why why they why they support this

20:47 and why they were very quick in returning our our pre resettlement action plan, which will support the full relocation action plan, our crop surveys, resettlement, our land acquisition, all that process. We are very tapped into to the community and what what the needs are and expectations are there. So that was a very, very big endorsement. There's engagement with the regional house of chiefs and and the the traditional authorities.

21:15 And the, you know, the paramount chiefs and on our EPA permitting process. And I think that might be a picture down the bottom. We tend to use lots of pitch pictures in our social social team, which is great. And and we did get overwhelming endorsement. In fact, we received a letter,

21:34 an official letter from from the house of chiefs providing their their support for for

21:42 our project and what we're doing around our our wrap and our permitting and and, in fact, asking us, can we do it quicker? We we we really want this done. So just we we can do what we can do, but that was a really, really nice endorsement to get for the team and the work they've done. The initiatives and the the initiated compensation negotiation committee, the process, and and for and also for the relocation resettlement committee. So we it's a cross section of people in the community, the chiefs to to be to participate in this and make sure that we we can, you know, engage on a on on a very open, transparent

22:23 process with them. And so that's been very well supported. We following the the ML, we actually did a rapid assessment survey. We we we flew drones around, and we we we looked at what we had inside our mining license. And and now we're actually doing the full built asset survey. So now we have people on the ground supported by the government. They are they are side by side with us

22:49 to to go into looking at structures and and happy to be able to have on their land so we can actually fully value that accordingly. From a negotiation point of view, we're defining the compensation negotiation committee, as I've before, mentioned the crops and land surveys. Most of our engagement, right, is with the community, and and, you know, we we put down regularly because it is regular. It's it's two, three. Maybe every day a week, there there is a a community engagement from the social team that are heavily involved in the in the community and and to provide updates on the project. Lots of questions like our shareholders. Our community has has lots of questions, and we go out there and provide those answers for them, including notice boards up on up and around each of the communities. And just for a call of management systems, but this was really important for us to implement, you know, complaints and grievance management system.

23:41 It's a supportive system. It's it's got a it sounds negative when you talk about grievance, but the it's a way for people to come in and engage with us and talk about what we're doing well and not so well. And that gets escalated up to to us and the board, and we get to to adjust what we're doing and how we're engaging the community. So, again, a good a good system to have, good policy to have, and procedures on. So if you keep going on and on, but I'll probably take enough of the floor, and I appreciate being able to give that environmental social impact activities update today. Great. Thanks very much, Aaron, and and welcome everyone. It's fantastic to be here on the investor meet platform and meet you all again with our enhanced team. Before I jump into my slides, just, you know, like to point out what Aaron and his team are working on is really important for this project.

24:35 It's a culture

24:37 and ethos that we put in right from the beginning that working within our communities and with all of our our Ghanaian staff is incredibly important and notwithstanding the environmental and social aspects. So it it is currently the fastest growing team within the business in terms of people on the brand, and, there's a lot of activity going into that space. And it's really pleasing from my perspective to see that team fostering and enhancing our environmental and social license to operate, which is critical.

25:11 So great stuff and well done. Good to have you on board, Aaron. So but don't worry. I haven't forgotten about the exploration, and that's my piece of the business, which I love doing as you all know. So I'm gonna give you a quick update of what we're doing, and we are continuing to try and grow up or growing our resource, I should say, and then expanding our understanding

25:36 and looking for more mineralization within our portfolio. So what have we been focusing on? So you would have seen in our quarterly, we've increased our drilling meters to 29 and a half thousand meters. That's with the addition of 3,000 meters of sterilization drilling. So that's what's just kicking off now. Rigs will be coming to site shortly as the teams have all returned post Christmas break to get, that sterilization program underway, which is below the proposed plant site. That's really important to get ready and ahead of the mine build stage.

26:09 But we will then continue with our resource growth project, which is now really focusing on on those extensions along strike and that depth to increase our resource. So that's gonna be a lot of news flow coming into this year, notwithstanding remaining assays that we're waiting for from the lab from last year's drilling.

26:29 You would have seen we announced some exciting drilling results through the back end of last year, and our last release was the the visual observations from our longest pegmatite intersection to date of a 106 meters from the 2023 drilling program. So we're we're waiting with excitement for those results to come in, which would be the first from the lab for this year as they start to to wind up their act or to to switch on their activities post Christmas and new year's slowdown.

27:04 Out of that drilling, we're really seeing some exciting things that that what we call the dogleg target. It's a new area where we're seeing two of our main pegmatite trends intersecting and coming to each other. And, we're starting to see some strong indications of what we call, shallow dipping pegmatite mineralization, which is really encouraging because it it provides a a quick

27:29 tonnage addition close to surface. So you get a lot of additional tons per vertical meter. So we're pretty excited about the drilling results once we get get receive those and continue to understand the dogleg targets in more detail. But we have also been busy on our regional portfolios. So we've completed our soil sampling program over the Cape Coast license, and we're analyzing all of those soils now, which will then lead to follow-up targets on

28:01 the ground in the Cape Coast area. And in addition to that, we've drilled over 20,000 meters of auger in our salt pond license and some areas around the current Auir resource footprint. So that's been done, and we're reviewing the results visually from that and putting those samples in in house laboratories. That's all underway. And finally, you would have seen the grant of two new licenses in our Eastern block. So that's the license and the senior Barakoo license. So these were granted late last year, and we're pretty excited to get on the ground to start work there. And they are, in the eastern area, roughly 40 kilometers,

28:49 east of of, a WIA portfolio and adjacent to a known historic, lithium occurrence called Edges Manku Hill. So there, we've got visual spodumene pegmatites outcropping its surface, and we'll be exploring a long strike from those in those two areas. So an exciting, year ahead for us, with some solid news flow from the last, few 100 meters of drilling from 2023. And as the rig commences drilling again this year and our regional exploration programs in the auger and soils and what we see on the ground in the Wadsi and Senebraku. So I'm pretty excited and looking forward to keeping you all updated.

29:32 And with that, I'll hand back over to Keith. Thank you. Thank you, Linn, and and thanks, Aaron. It's it's great having you on board, and it's really pleasing to see the progress you're making with the team in Ghana, mate. It's It's going really well. Look, we're about thirty minutes in at the moment. So I want to wrap up with this slide. We've got an hour today. We want to spend the last thirty minutes, if we can, answering questions. I think it's much more valuable

29:59 for investors to have an opportunity to ask and for us to answer questions. So just in a quick wrap up, from a targeting shovel readiness perspective, we're in the final phases of our EPA permit. I'd probably suggest we're ahead of schedule. Things are moving much faster than we anticipated last year when we engaged in this process. From operational readiness perspective, we've now narrowed down mining contractors to top two. So there's two now in the running for the tender process. And our modular DMS units, we've now narrowed down to a single contractor. We're now in the final phases of going over TCCs before we engage formally.

30:45 From a team building perspective, this is something we highlighted last year. We recognized that we can't build this mine by ourselves, so we've rapidly expanded our team. There's four new key positions we appointed in recent times, four general managers that came on board. As Aaron mentioned, there's a General Manager of Operations, Ahmed Selim, that joined us and really extremely impressed with what he's been doing. Amanda has also had three General Managers join her team, looking off commercial, looking after people and then looking after the corporate aspects in reporting. So really, we're growing the bench strength to allow us to be ready when the time comes. Then from a study perspective, but I want to highlight this that we're not in study mode anymore. We've now really switched gears and we are preparing to break ground and to build this mine. There's some study ground in the background that's going on, but our focus is well and truly now centered around how do we bring this project into production.

31:45 That brings me to the project build perspective. We've completed a lot of the studies around the relocation of the power line. We're conserving capital at the moment. So as soon as we have our permitting, that will allow us to accelerate that power line relocation. From a criticality perspective, the power line only needs to be in place once we turn the power on to the plant, which is early twenty twenty six. Our modular unit and during the construction phase, we're running all generators. So we still have a good two years to do that power relocation. And then finally, as LIMITED just mentioned, we had two new tenements granted to us. And I think the very important thing to recognize out of this is we're well and truly a partner of choice for the Ghanaian government.

32:36 These two new tenements that's been issued to us allows us to grow the portfolio, and it allows us to prolong the life of mine that we currently have. That's all from my side. I'll hand over to Neil now, and we'll take Q and A. So we've got about twenty five to thirty minutes to run through all the questions. Hopefully, we get to everyone's queries. Thank you, Keith, and thank you all the guys to preparing. And as Keith said, the the the biggest asset we have is our people. That's here in Ghana. That's in Australia. That's wherever we operate. And indeed, you as shareholders, we also consider part of the team, and many of you have been with us for many, many years. So I really appreciate that. Anyway, we have a lot of questions coming in. We will do our best to answer as many as possible.

33:23 So the starting, some questions we received previously. As a board, what value would you put on the company at this point to seriously consider any possible bids? I'm gonna answer that one myself. So, just to recap, as, many of you are aware, in the months of November and October last year, we see received a proposal to acquire the company at 33p per share from ASL International Holdings, which is our biggest shareholder. It's a very long standing shareholder, very well respected privately owned group. They like the asset a lot. You know, we fit their their their operating mentality. So in many ways, I I take that as an endorsement. The way we approach these things if we we receive a proposal of this nature is we sit down as a board, together with the independent advisers and consider the bid at the time that which it's made as to whether we feel we could recommend it to shareholders or not.

34:18 On those occasions, we couldn't feel that we could we could actually recommend those bids to shareholders. So, you know, that was a decision at that moment in time. Would people come forward with other bids? They may well. They may not. We will always consider a bid in the interest of shareholders. To also point out, and some people have asked about this as well, is there was some speculation regarding there might be a a hostile takeover bid. Obviously, we wouldn't know about that until the day that it's delivered. But, yeah, at the end of the day, we it'd be a question whether we can recommend it, but you as shareholders will have the ultimate decision as to whether you want to accept it should we recommend one or indeed one be made without a recommendation from us. So just to reassure you on that, we will always consider a proposal if it is received. But the way we take the company forward is to create value by taking the mine to production, and I think this is a very significant opportunity that we've outlined in this presentation.

35:10 Okay. Next one. With the restricting of new products in the lithium space due to lower price of spodumene, do you see scope to reduce the CapEx due to suppliers maybe being less busy than before, so needing to be more competitive? Keith? Sure, Neil. I'll take that one. Look. The you know, spodumene is spodumene. So in terms of reducing the CapEx to to change the quality of spodumene we're producing. I don't think that's a feasible proposition. I think the question probably leads more to would we perhaps consider changing the throughput of the operation to preserve capital perhaps in the short term. When you look at the sensitivity analysis we published during the DFS, CapEx is an extremely insensitive component to the project's economics. So by even if we were to and if you think about our payback period, payback period is nine months for the main plant.

36:13 If we were to change CapEx and throughput as a result of perhaps toning down the volume that we put through. You're probably going to save three or four months at most, maybe even not that much in terms of payback period. So I just can't see us toning down the CapEx to preserve. What we probably could consider is if we start up at the current capacity of 2,700,000 tonnes per annum and there is still a suppressed market, Maybe we don't put 2,700,000 tonnes through the plant and we throttle it back like many of the producers are doing at the moment. We've seen core lithium do it. We've seen green bushes do it. So throttling back is probably something what we will do, but changing the throughput capacity, I don't believe will have a significant impact on the economics at the moment.

37:07 Okay. Thank you, Keith. So further question, can the company please advise time frames for parliamentary ratification of the mining lease and what appeal process, if any, the company can follow if the mining lease is not ratified? I'll pass it to Amanda, but I will quickly answer and say, as I'm here in Accra at the moment, talking to everybody involved and the stakeholders and indeed, government administration, etcetera. Seeing wide support now for the project, there was a big national debate, following issue at the mining lease. But there seems to be very strong endorsement, if you like, for taking the project forward to production now in country. The parliament is currently on recess. I believe it it comes back from recess on the February 6. We expect it to be dealt with relatively quickly in the timetable. Obviously, it's always very difficult to predict when you're going to be in the parliamentary schedule until you know you're actually in it. So we very much hope to see that in the the near future.

38:01 Amanda, would you like to add anything to that? No. Look. You know, we're similar. So we've kind of met with a lot of stakeholders while we've been here. There's there's a process underway. There's a lot of discussions, senate committees, a lot of and they already had a lot of back and forth in terms of questioning. So I think rather than the appeal process, it's more that the education continues and the Minerals Commission here, the minister, our advisers, and, you know, we are always willing to help as well. And the education process continues and that, you know, will get us ratified in in the next few months, I believe. Thank you, Amanda. One for you, Aaron, I think. Can the company please advise who will approve the environmental permit and when this is expected to be approved?

38:48 Yeah. Thanks. That question, it's so the EPA will approve the environmental permit for the the mining and processing environmental impact assessments. And as mentioned before, the the tailings storage facility gets it gets approved by the Minerals Commission to different different organizations. And I sit forward coordinating, working together very well with us. So we have we have a master schedule, and I'm kind of celebrating that we're we're a little bit ahead of schedule, but to to make sure that we we give ourselves enough time because because these things can can we had a lot we may get a lot of questions back, and I have to adjust things. So, you know, it'll be it'll be sort of July that we will be looking to get that that permit.

39:36 Okay. Thank you very much, Aaron. There's a question here regarding the near and medium term market prices, spodumene, and where we think it's going. Obviously, it's been a very difficult market to predict in recent times because it's a relatively mature market. As a result, it's been huge, huge fluctuations. Maybe, Keith, do you wanna make a comment? Look, Neil. I you know, I've always said from the start, what what it's not a race here. It's who can get to the end. The lowest cost producers are gonna survive. If you look at the cost curve, there's an incentive pricing whereby which the demand just can't be met. So where we're sitting on a from a C1 perspective at $370 a tonne, there's very few producers that can claim that.

40:30 And I almost would suggest that we're a price taker. Right? We don't set the price. So what we need to do as a as a business is set ourselves up to run an operation that can sustain prices where they are today. Well, at today's prices, we remain profitable. But should I dip even further? Some of the scenario planning Aaron and myself has been running through is what would we do if spodumene was $600 a tonne? Both Aaron and myself has worked in the spodumene space when spodumene was $320 a tonne. And and in our respective operations, we had to do some drastic things to to keep afloat. And and those plans are already in place. We know what we're gonna do at certain price points. So instead of fixating on what the price price may or may not be, we're working from the other angle, you know, from a perspective we're a price taker, we need to be able to sustain the cycles that will inevitably be in front of us.

41:31 Good answer. Thank you. And and and if they are not, we'll bang the upside. Very much our intention. Thank you. We have quite a detailed question, regarding the finances of ATLANTIC LITHIUM GHANA. I won't read you all out, but I'm gonna let Amanda try and try and address it because it's quite a long quite a long question. Look. I think the the question is around, how much cash is in ATLANTIC LIFIUM Ghana, effectively the joint venture company. Now I suppose I just wanna explain the way this works. So we own AWAYR and we own Ghana. So ATLANTIC LIFIUM is the owner. We're the operator. What Piedmont has is an earning agreement into that. So it's not a traditional joint venture as such as in terms of two companies came together, created a joint venture company. What Piedmont is doing is earning into that, to that joint venture. So what that means is all of the bills are in at the name of ATLANTIC LITHIUM. We do a cash call on Piedmont.

42:36 They then fund their contribution in accordance with their earning agreement. There's no kind of, you know, cash in the joint venture cash in us. We kind of effectively hold our funds at the ATLANTIC LITHIUM level. The earning agreement has Piedmont to earn their right, they need to sole fund the first 70,000,000 of development expenditure. And that then they then kind of get their $50.50 component with us on the completion of the earning agreement. So, you know, it comes later as well around there's a bit of questioning around the amount that Piedmont owes us. If you can imagine development expenditure is defined terms. It's very complex in the agreement. It was done two and a half years ago.

43:22 We are incurring some costs at the moment where it probably wasn't defined or it wasn't because it wasn't anticipated. We didn't anticipate this lengthy ML process. We didn't anticipate that we'd have to do a GSE listing before we're in production because the mining regulations here are within five years of production. So there are some costs that we are discussing and, you know, we're agreeing to pay $50.50 because we do have a joint venture in the end. But the majority of costs were like regarding development of a warrior, you know, is defined, and those amounts are self funded by Piedmont. Thank you, Amanda. I it's just worth adding, obviously, there's two stages to the MIF investment. One, which is into the topco, which is ourselves, ATLANTIC LITHIUM. We also have an investment to the project level coming up, which is 27,900,000.

44:09 Obviously, the intention of that is that goes into the project, that goes into the company. And all those costs obviously are shared, and that includes exploration work, etcetera. Those are shared costs. There is obviously, we get to the point when we come down to the the capital drawdown, which is the first 70,000,000, which is entirely responsibility of Piedmont, but that's that's for another day. And and the offtake process and the things we're doing around that then provide ATLANTIC with effectively their funding for, you know, what we need to fund for the project. Thank you. Okay. So we we're asked about geographical and political risk. To be frank, I mean, obviously, the project is situated in Ghana, and and that's the reality of it. It is in Southern Ghana. Obviously, there's been some changing politics elsewhere in Africa, and, obviously, we've seen in in Niger and Burkina Faso and indeed Mali leading ECOWAS recently.

45:03 Those are slightly distant from us. I mean, it it doesn't have any direct impact on us at all, and we are a long way from the the northern border of the country. We'll add more than that is that that Ghana has been a long term prosperous and stable nation. It's been a democracy, I think, since the nineteen fifties. There have been many transitions of power without any violence. So I don't think that there there's any real concern for us at this time. But like any country, Australia or The UK, you know, you are subject to political processes and then maybe changes to law. Having said that, mining is a very significant contributor to the economy in Ghana. So I think regardless of who's in power, everybody wants to see the mining industry prosper. So, I don't have enormous concerns at this time.

45:50 Somebody asks, how do I become a shareholder in your lithium mining business? And very simply, you can do it two ways currently, but soon three. So you can invest via the London Stock Exchange, AIM market. You could invest in Australia via the ASX. And soon, by the end of the month, I hope, you'll be able to invest in Ghana via the GSE. So we're looking forward to that by the end of the month, I think. Yeah. K. Good. Alright. What are your options if your predictions of rising spodumene price is not realized? I think Keith addressed this earlier. We really come down to the fact that we are a lower cost producer or will be a lower cost producer. And to be to be honest, we can survive in just about most circumstances, a lot more mines. And as people have seen, mines have been announcing that they're mothballing operations.

46:44 Some of those mines perhaps were were too high cost to have been bought production in the first place, and we do expect some others to come off stream this year, which will help put the market instability. But underlying that, you you you do have growing demand. I mean, there's no two ways about this. Lithium demand is growing consistently. I think we're looking at a a 27% increase predicted in demand this year. So very strong position, we think. A lot of mines would have to close before we would, and we can enjoy the upside, as Keith pointed out before, and we can wear the the downward part of the cycle. Has the company ordered the equipment needed? And this is on the time frame plan for delivery, or is this now delayed? K. I'll I'll I'll take that question, Neil.

47:31 Look. Ideally, I would have wanted to have ordered equipment by now, but that's because I am stickler on on meeting schedules. So I probably had too much fat building there. Drop date date for us on the main plant is probably around July or August. So so when we get to August and we haven't placed orders, that's when it will start impacting schedule. At the moment, it's it's not impacting schedule. The modular unit, probably July, is we wanna place the order there to ensure we have it on-site and operational by April next year. So as things stand at the moment, the the long lead items are are not today on the critical path.

48:17 Okay. Thank you. Link one for you, Aaron here. How is the local water reserve affected by the production process? Okay. This this could be a lengthy lengthy discussion on that one, but probably just because I'm in in in the detail of it. So we need You can can you provide a a short summary because we don't have that much time? It's so we were bringing water in. You know? So that's that I guess that shows that we we don't have have a lot of water. So we continuously monitor groundwater. So we're looking at at recharge rates. So we've got got that happening every day, and and that's to to check against how we how we vertically progress the mine. And we have a hydrology study. And all that and this is all telling us that we are not having an impact on local communities.

49:04 That's my short answer of of a lot of work that's been done in this this area. Thank you, Aaron. Much appreciated. I think I'll try and pick up the pace a little bit with some short questions so that people can get answered. Someone asked what's the difference between the c one cash cost and asset. Could you describe that quickly, Keith? Yeah. Sure. Very simply, ASIC is your is what every single dollar that gets spent in operation. Tax, royalties, free carry, tips at the airport, every single thing that gets paid for the project. That's the all in sustaining cost. And then the c one cash cost is what is the the physical cost expended from mining the pit to the gate of the mine. So it's all the operating cost.

49:49 So it essentially excludes mainly royalties, taxes, and free carry, doesn't sit in the c one cash cost. Okay. Thank you very much. When will the MIF complete their funding? So this is the second stage of funding into the project level. We met with them yesterday. I'm gonna pass it to Amanda. Yeah. Look. I think it's gonna be in the coming months. We're doing the detailed agreements now and finalizing new due diligence. You can understand that it's a significant amount of money for me if this is a new investment for them and a new investment for us because we're this will be now under Ghanaian law. So there is, some work to be done, but we do anticipate it happening probably in the coming, you know, two to three months given the, how long it's taken so far. I'm not going to say it's gonna be weeks, but, you know, we get we work through it and we get there.

50:42 Okay. A little bit a technical question on the costs again for you, Keith. With the current lithium price being so low, the secondary pricing formula indicates ASIC around $75,800. Does this affect your ability to finance? I I wouldn't suggest so. So from a financing perspective, the the free streams of cash flow we have is from from Piedmont and from our offtake process. MIF's funding is secured, so I'd suggest that MIF is not influenced. Piedmont's contribution is known, so that's an agreement that's already in place. And then from an offtake perspective, which is the first stream of funding, we've been very clear with the offtakers, and we're now going forward with half a dozen or so serious parties. We are asking for 75,000,000 to $100,000,000 in prepayment.

51:39 So irrespective of the lithium price, that is our ask. In terms of pricing formulas, we've been very deliberate in the way that we've proposed the pricing formula to work so that it's advantageous both for us as the owner of the feedstock as well as the off taker as the consumer that we both benefit equally and we share on conversion margins. So I think from a off take or from a financing perspective, pricing in the short term doesn't affect it. And you can see that in the seriousness and the nature of the nonbinding offers we've received to date, they all have a long term outlook on spodumene and the lithium market as a whole.

52:27 So no, I don't think current prices affects our ability to finance in the long term. K. Thank you. There's a couple of questions around Piedmont here. In the recent quarterly report, there was reference to a late payment of 1,200,000 from Piedmont. Can you please advise the reasons for the dispute and delayed payment and comment from generally from with Piedmont. So I'll probably say first and foremost, it's always been a very good relationship with Piedmont. Obviously, there is, you know, press regarding them, which I'm not gonna comment regarding. They have a number of projects and probably feeling a bit stretched financially at the moment. However, it's always been a good relationship, and we will look to resolve any disagreements that we have amicably. But I'll ask Amanda to talk a little bit more to that. Yeah. So so, again, I talked a little bit about the, you know, different categories of development expenditure.

53:17 So like any partnership, we're in discussion with that. We kind of, you know, then discuss the amount and, you know, the different parts and what we think who should pay and what we should pay. I will say from our side, we've been very conscious in our budgeting and forecasting for for the coming six months given the current market. You know, we did a small raise in December giving the ability for and we understand when our funding is coming in. So we're very conscious of that. We're ensuring that we can meet all of our strategic goals this year, especially around permitting because that is our main focus. Whilst we then, you know, work with Piedmont. You know, this is a very small amount, but, you know, we need to ensure that we both understand, you know, who pays what. So it's yeah. It it will be resolved.

54:10 Okay. Thank you very much, Amanda. I mean, I'll add to that as well is that some people are saying, you know, what if they they couldn't fund? I mean, the reality is is that we continue to work with them, and we hope that we'll be continuing to work with them in the future. In the case they were unable to fund, we will put in place other arrangements. And as as demonstrated through the offtake process and the strong interest that we have received, you wouldn't be short of other parties for a project of this profile, low cost profile, the nature of the project, its simplicity, to find other people to stand in. But first and foremost, you know, we would love to work with Piedmont. And if we can do, we will continue to do so. So I will say that they continue to make payments. While they didn't make that particular payment, they have paid us money this year. So So at this point in time, we continue to work together.

54:57 Pick up another question. Something a little different perhaps because the time's getting on. Negative. Me see here. So will there be an opportunity for shareholders to attend the groundbreaking of the site later this year? Well, I haven't even thought about it. I'm I'm looking forward to that. We'll certainly give it consideration. There's a lot of questions about price. I think we we we've about the price of lithium. I think we've addressed those, quite successfully. So can we expand these sessions in future to allow for more question times? We will try.

55:42 Okay. Can you shed light on why the share price is as low as 20 p currently? I mean, in in fairness, I have to say that, while the share price may be considered low, it's all relative to the performance of the sector. And I'll I'll open that to either Keith Keith or Amanda. Who would like to talk about the rest of the sector, obviously, being affected by by low prices? Anything at all? Well, I I, you know, obviously, follow our share price quite closely on a minute by minute basis. But, you know, if you what we need to do and what I do, because I've got a little portfolio going of my own, is you, you know, you look at relative to other lithium companies. And, you know, what you'll have seen is many other lithium explorers and developers kind of where we are have declined by a significant percentage more than what we have. Some of them 60 to 70%. We're sitting in the six months around 20%.

56:44 It is not, you know, anything that anyone wants, but, you know, it is a, you know, negative sentiment sentiment lithium market and, you know, we are in a in a kind of almost ideal position where we're not producing. So we're not experiencing this low low price market, but we're not so far away that we need a significant amount of money to kind of progress the project forward. And we know what we need to do. We have the funds available we need for this year, and we continue to work on that. So, you know, you know, don't look. But, yeah, we kind of what anything, Keith? Yeah. Look. So I guess to end that question off is and and perhaps what the investor more particularly wants to know is what are we doing to move that?

57:31 How do we get back to where we were? We were significantly higher twelve months ago. We just got to keep on delivering on our commitments. I think we're a robust team. We're not slippery. We talk about our commitments and we highlight when we make it and we highlight when we don't and why not. So at the moment, all we can do in a current suppressed market is just keep on delivering as we have been. Thanks to both of you on that. Miguel, one observation. And if you actually look at the price performance recently of some other stocks, we don't come out too badly. And one of the reason for this is, will say, when the price of lithium was very high, and I said this before, projects came to production, and people weren't really focused on on what the cash costs were, what were the costs of taking it forward.

58:26 Now everybody's focused on that. And when you start looking at that, this is actually, a very good project. And this is why, relatively speaking, we've held up well. Also, I believe, you know, as a management team and, you know, has changed over the years. Every headwind that we have faced, you know, we have sought to resolve, and I am very impressed with the team and what they have done and what we have done together to keep the project on track on this time despite everything that comes with us. You know, we keep delivering. It looks as though we aren't now on the hour, so I'm going to wrap it up with just a couple of observations for you. I think we got a very exciting quarter ahead of us. A lot of things going on. Do expect to see the parliamentary ratification. Do expect to see in the not too distant future the second round of investment from MIF and indeed the permitting to be completed so that we can move forward with the project.

59:21 I'm gonna hand back to Perfect. Thank you. Perfect, Neil. Thank you very much indeed, for being so generous of your time there and addressing all of those, questions that came. And, of course, given the significant attendance on today's call, we'll be able to give you back all of the questions that were submitted just for you to review to then add any additional responses, of course, where it's appropriate to do so, and we'll publish those on the platform. But, guys, thank you very much once again for updating investors this morning. So if I if I may, what I'll do now is I'll redirect those on the call for their feedback, which I know is particularly important to all of you. So could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the management team can really better understand your views and expectations?

1:00:06 This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of ATLANTIC LIFHIUM LIMITED, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. So good morning to you all. Thank you. So long.