Cleantech Lithium (LSE:CTL) — Investor Update

0:00 Good morning. Thank you very much, Mark, as always. So, Gordon, we thought it would be best, to just give a very, very succinct update on what the drivers are. Obviously, we've had a great fundraising that was well received by the institutional market. We have been suffering on the share price over the last week. We put out an announcement regarding our CEO designate, and there's been to be a little bit of confusion about just timings and the PFS. So, really, your idea, it was thought that we could just do a quick ten minutes to really explain what the key items are that are going forward. But before I let you launch in, so just on on Tony. I mean, Tony was looking at the company. I just wanted to confirm and clarify for the audience. My understanding was that that Tony had accepted. He was set to go, and then he asked the guy he's based in Cairn, on the Western Side Of Australia. Eastern Sorry.

0:50 On the Eastern Side on Cairn. And the company wanted to obviously, set up the office in Perth, which is the mining hub in Australia. It's where all the networking goes, all the potential investors are as well, a lot of them, the brokerage community. And Tony had asked whether he could run the company and fulfill his role from Ken, and the board felt that that wasn't gonna be in our long term interests. So we offered him the role from Perth, and he was sort of, I can do it if I'm in Cairn. And on that basis, he felt that because of his kids and their schooling on reflection, he decided not to go forward. Yeah. I mean, kids give an example. It's eleven hours between Cairns and and and and The UK and fourteen hours in Chile. So it was interesting having meetings at different times of the day, that sort of thing. Yeah. So I think it was a But my understanding is that we're we're already talking to a number of candidates and that we hope to be able to to update the market fairly soon.

1:41 Yeah. I I think that's a reasonable thing to say. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So let's let's focus on here. I mean, there there's been a lot of disappointment. Some of it's been outside the company's control. Some of it, you could probably say, okay.

1:53 We hold our hand up. You know, we could have done things maybe a little bit different with hindsight, but hindsight's a wonderful thing. But we are incredibly cheap now. So what is it from your side that we really wanna get over to shareholders about what's gonna drive the price over the next two to three months?

2:08 Yeah. Thanks, Daniel. I think it's useful just just bringing all this together about what's gonna happen over the next two or three months. There's gonna be a lot of information flowing into the market over the next two, three months, which I think is going to help and really drive our share price. And actually, be honest, it's a culmination of two or three years worth of work where it's really all coming together literally at the same time. So, I mean, if we look at, you know, what's going to happen, probably probably the biggest one is going be the CLEANTECH the Special Lifting LITHIUM Operating Contract. We've been talking about this for two years. But the government has confirmed it's going to announce the results of the first

2:38 six SALAs by the end of March, and they've confirmed they're going to do that. We've got very good signals. We've got very good content to government. We've got fantastic community support who are lobbying for us in Chile. We've put an amazing application, a 5,000 page application, about what we've been doing, how we've put the project forward. And we're very confident as a board that we're going get the nod at the end March, nearly this month, which allows us to move forward into the streamlined process. And what does that mean? That means we'll be negotiating with the government just on our own to drive forward on Laguna Verde, and we will get that seal. So our expectation is that this is it's a big announcement where and for us, it's a game changer. It's effectively the approval to exploit, extract, exploit, and sell lithium.

3:25 So we're expecting that end of March, and that's a big announcement. You can assume we'll be making a play on that. And it's not just us. They're doing that for all the six licenses, the government has committed to making that update on all the licenses public at the end of the March. That's correct. And and as I say, we're getting very, very warm signals. We we believe we've ticked all the boxes to set various criteria. We we're getting good signals that that's where we are. So we're we're pretty confident. We think this is an is it a and this will be a big one for strategics. They will look at I was gonna say, yeah. Yeah. So obviously, from the strategic side, they wanna see that you have the operating license, and then we move forward. Okay. So that's at the end of March, which is literally less than five weeks away, four and a half weeks as of this weekend.

4:07 Now what else is happening, sort of a news flow that we think we can give to investors in terms of I'll run through there's two or three other things that are gonna happen. We've we've talked about battery grade lithium before and and and so on. We've got lithium carbonate at 99.78%. That's really good. But again, there were some impurities in that. So what we need to do is refine and optimise that process. And that's pretty much going to start in the next couple of weeks.

4:29 Why is that important? Because we will have product probably around about May. We'll have product ready to send to strategic. So once you've got the CL and you've got the product, and then the next thing is the PFS, you're suddenly into serious conversations with strategic parties. We know we've got six under NDA, and we've had that for a while. They're watching and waiting and there's others that want to talk to us. So this is moving the needle. This is moving from concept to really driving forward on the funding of the whole development. So battery grade lithium, and this is international standard, and at a sufficient scale that we can send to whoever wants to see it. So that's coming, and we'll announce that probably in May. Before that, probably towards middle of April, towards the end of April PFS.

5:17 Just on the PFS, this the fundamental economics of the project. And it's a jigsaw puzzle of various studies led by Worley. And just so people clarify, Worley's name will be on this. And interestingly, I've got a press release here, which was announced by Whirley only two days ago. They've just been appointed as a lead integration delivery partner in South America for the Rincom project, Rio Tinto's Rincom project, 2,500,000,000 project. And they're responsible for coordinating all the contractors and all the consultants and so on-site. A big deal. And this is who are doing our PFS. So we've got a really good house and they're working with

5:56 fair for Kango. Yeah, There's there's been a bit of a confusion in some of the investor forums on on the PFS because, obviously, the company doesn't produce the PFS. So my understanding is there are four parties that contribute to the PFS. So we have Worley as the lead consultant. We have Montgomery who are doing a lot of the the hydrology work. We have Benchmark Minerals who are providing all of the forecasting and information around the lithium price and the economic modeling that you need to do from there. And then we have Langshen who are providing a lot of the technical input about the processing on the DLE, etcetera, with reviews

6:27 Engineering design. They've they've gone through engineering design. Yep. So where we were and I know people are frustrated in the low in the delays. But effectively, we had hoped to be doing a raise at the back end of last year on the ASX. That led us to be cash strapped. That's meant that we had to delay in terms of the payments. But everybody's now been been paid. We are up to date with all the consultants. They are going as fast as we can. They were hoping for back end of March, but, obviously, once you get behind, you fall down a little bit on on their lists. We are an interesting project, but we're not we're not their biggest client, to be honest. So they're but they're now working away. We're back up on the top of their list, and they are committed to getting it to us in early April. Yeah. That's correct. I mean, just probably middle of April. But yeah.

7:12 And and there there's a full team working in in Chile on this. There's a team probably working for income project in future. So it's all go, and we've got a project manager driving the thing in Chile. And, yeah, and we're pretty excited. We were looking at capital CapEx numbers and OpEx numbers this week. So there it's starting to come together. I'm aware the part part part of the the reports come in in sections for management and the board to review, and then we have to compare all the four reports together and then finally publish. But there is, there is no impediment now, and, in terms of timing or in terms of cash to be able to produce the PFS, which is a a cornerstone Absolutely. Yeah. To the company in terms of being able to take the project forward. And and strategic's been telling us for a year and a half now, come and talk to us when you got your PFS and you've got products and you've got And you're operating you've a line of sight to the seal. And

7:58 so that's all coming in the next month, month and a half. So Yeah. And then suddenly we we will be picking up the phone or maybe people will be contacting us. We we know who's gonna come to and talk to us. So that's then that leads nightly into ASX. So that does. So if I if I can jump in in there just a little bit if I if I may, Jordan. So, obviously, we're back and forth with all sorts of people in the Australian market and the brokers, and there's no point in coming if you can't get a successful way. So we had the administrative issues at the end of last year, and that led then to Australia. Just go on holiday for the month from middle of December to the middle of January. So that's why we did our our recent fundraising, which gives us sufficient headroom to move forward and finish the PFS and our other obligations. But then in talking to a wide group of other Australian brokers, their advice has been back to us is that if you've got an announcement from the government just around the corner on line of sight for your operating license, and you've got your PFS coming and your movie grid, you would be crazy to go out or you're likely to have a limited response from investors when you've got key information flow coming in the coming weeks to say, wait until you have that out, and that will be the cornerstone of helping to underpin the investment proposal that you're putting forward. So that's why that one has led into the other. It's not a question of management saying, we think we want to delay by and we're definitely here, we're talking like by by three, four weeks. Mhmm. The the sale application is standalone. That's the government. We can't

9:28 do anything about that. That's just the process that they did. They announced it last summer,

9:32 then they moved the dates, then they changed the prospect. We've did everything that we could in accordance with the government's instructions. We put the sale in. We're now at the behest of the government's timeline, which is the end of March. The PFS is a result of funding constraints, but that's now going ahead. But the sale application and the PFS is fundamental to cornerstoning or key key milestones and milestone to getting the strategic investors in or strategic partners. So the feedback has been in Australia is you want to have those in hand to get the best possible reaction that you're gonna have on the ASX market. And alongside that, we're then gonna be moving towards the battery grade lithium. And from that, that is also a key part of the route in terms of getting the offtake partners, which we would then hopefully be entering into a number of serious negotiations and being able to announce something later on this year. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think that we heard that loud and clear last time when we talked to investors is,

10:29 see all, let us know where you're going. Are you going to get that? And I think we'll be in a position to see, but yep, we're on the rail. We're we're doing it. And then last but not least, think one of the key things that, in our chat, you wanted to get a crossover to investors and we thought it's easier to do it in this forum, is that for the last six months, you know, the company's been focusing the cash onto the PFS, onto the ground, onto the technical studies. Obviously, we've fully paid up and ready to go on the ASX listing to the lawyers and the consultants. I think you need to go there. So that's given a limited resources to focus on After the use of funding, we're now engaging on a number of IR initiatives to reaching out in terms of telling the story and to new audiences. I've been working with Nick, who's part of the CLEANTECH team, in terms of reviewing a number of avenues. You would have seen a number of pieces that Steve and Gordon have been doing, but we've got a solid sort of four to six weeks of IR initiatives, both here in The US, in Europe, because a lot of The US investors are invested into the other ASX listed companies, lithium companies.

11:33 So we've been doing things there with RK Equities and their Mhmm.

11:39 Rockhopper. I couldn't remember the name of it, Gordon. Rocks Rockstocks. Rockstocks. Rockstocks. They they've been covering the lithium sector about fifteen years. They've got a really good following. And then we're working with a number of other, avenues in terms of reaching new parties. And at this price, I think we're incredibly cheap. I confess I have been saying that for a while, but I still believe it. So from that, that's a news flow. Gordon, is there anything else that we think we're missing out on? Well, just I'm just looking at some statistics that came overnight here from Australia, and it was an interesting one. It's a lithium demand. Just just facts. In twenty twenty twenty four, 25% increase worldwide in EV sales. People think it's not happening. It is happening. You know, and you've got 40% in China. Interestingly, 10% increase in The US and Canada, 10% increase year on year, and 27% rest of the

12:30 world. So lithium demand is coming. It's coming, and that doesn't include battery storage, which is gonna be AI and all that sort of thing that goes with it. So the timing of our project coming on stream '26 to '27 or whatever is just the time when every analyst is saying $20,000 a tonne plus. So the timing again for our project now, conversation with strategic is perfect. The next two or three months is the pivotal point for our company and because of all this news flow is coming, and then suddenly we'll be getting the knocks on the door. Yep. Well, listen. Lots of stuff happening. We I I know you're working very hard on the updating the admission document for the ASX, and we're talking around the timing. I know Steve is working very hard on both the process in CEO and in terms of also working on the requirements and last little bits on the PFS.

13:23 Nick and I are working very hard on the investor relations, and we have a lot of fun room from here. So hopefully we'll be able to update with further news in due course, and we'll continue to reach out whenever we can. Yeah. And we're always open to conversations with shareholders within, obviously, the constraints of what we can we can say. Yeah. I've got a couple of calls this afternoon. Okay. Great. Gordon, thank you very much as always.