East Star Resources (LSE:EST) — Shareholder Update

0:00 Good morning, and welcome to the ESTAR RESOURCES PLC Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and will be submitted at any time by the Q and A tab situated in the right corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received in the meeting itself. However, the company will review your questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll, and I'd now like to hand you over to Alex Walker, CEO. Good morning to you, sir. Good morning. Thank you very much for having me, and really thanks for everyone, joining us, today, this afternoon in The UK. Alex, over to you for the presentation. Thank you. Thanks. Okay. So I've got our standard presentation that well, our updated presentation, which was just released to the market today that I'd like to go through.

0:51 Before I do, you know, we haven't historically

0:56 talked too much about commodities and commodity prices and so on. We've been really focused on the quality of our exploration, the quality of our assets, and and, you know, the exploration success that we've had. But it's a really, important time at the moment to talk about copper and the copper market. Everyone's aware of of, obviously, this transition to, you know, to net zero and and and and a a non fossil fuel based energy system. And how much I think the vast majority of the world even today understands that copper makes up a huge part of that, that transition. Yeah. You know, we can all sort of quote numbers about an EV having, something like fifteen, twenty times more copper than a regular vehicle and and an electric bus is something like 50 times more copper.

1:43 But what is is really, really important as well is copper can't ramp up to to call it that, like lithium can, for example, to help meet that demand. There's not six hundred years worth of of of copper sitting in brines that's just waiting to be extracted, it's it's an infrastructure it's an exploration infrastructure driven play. These are assets that are have have significantly depleted mine life's falling grades. And until about a month ago, there was a prediction, you know, from most of the big banks and the big mining players, BHP and the like, that there there'll be a copper deficit by 2027, which, you know, is only only three years away. What's happened in the last month is actually some fairly significant events, that could well bring that forward to 2025, even 2024.

2:31 We've had Cobre Panama, essentially closed with First Quantum, which brings several 100,000 tons out of the market. We've had issues, or we've had downgrading from Anglo, by around 200,000 tons. Other production issues in in, with with Codelco in in Peru and and and Chile. And so we are very much staring down the barrel of a copper deficit in in, potentially in in 2024. And that's quite critical because, obviously, lots of these, assets, lots of these, you know, these potential production assets. If if they're sensible like us, they're using spot copper prices. But the sensitivity to a change in copper price can be really significant. So if you're valuing a project today at around 8,000, $8,500 a ton, you know, by the time someone like us, could be in production in a in a few years time, we could comfortably be looking staring down the barrel of of twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen thousand dollars a ton.

3:30 So there's quite significant leverage to to the copper price. And I think if you, don't already have, find a way to get copper exposure in in your portfolio even with the large caps and so on because, I think that's gonna be a real thematic for 2024, 2025. So on to EAST STAR and and why you should get that copper exposure via us. So we're a London listed company. EST is our code trading on the on the main board of the London Stock Exchange. We've been listed for just under two years. We are a Kazakhstan focused company. The reason we're in Kazakhstan is because, basically, I felt like this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. We did a top down thematic, you know, many years ago when we were looking at different jurisdictions, Kazakhstan is nearly 2,700,000 square kilometers, which is about the size of Western Australia.

4:21 It's bigger than Western Europe. It, had changed its mineral law in 2018 to match that of Western or to to, be modeled, I should say, off of Western Australia's. So it now applies first come, first served principles, and it's drastically underexplored. You know, there's been lots of mapping and so on during the Soviet era, but basically for fifty years, there's been almost no discoveries in Kazakhstan, and that's principally because there's been no real exploration. In particular, undercover using modern exploration techniques, you know, deep deep analytics on on, geophysics and so on. So we find that opportunity really, really exciting, and, and we hope that we, you know, we'll be at the forefront of of making those, those discoveries.

5:06 That's backed by other major players. Rio Tinto's been here for some time. Forsky Metals Group out of Australia has, came to Kazakhstan almost exactly the same time as we did. Also, at the same time, signing a joint venture with with the national mining company, Taukan Samrook. And very recently, we've seen groups like First Quantum Minerals and Barrick say that they will be starting, exploration in Kazakhstan as well. So it's starting to become a very, very exciting jurisdiction that's attracting, most of the majors who who aren't here already. I should add the EU and The UK have signed MOUs for critical mineral supply with Kazakhstan, which they've only done with a handful of countries. And, you know, outside of the geological potential to find these minerals and and produce them, principally, it's the political will to develop them.

5:54 And that's absolutely key because you are talking about very short refined permitting processes in Kazakhstan, whereas something in North America or in in in Europe, if it ever gets permitted, might take, you know, it might take a decade. And I think that's really critical and a huge selling point for the country. Today, and principally because this is what we've been doing this year, we're focusing on our assets in the Rudny Altai volcanogenic massive sulfide belt in the East Region of Kazakhstan. It's a hugely exciting mineral belt. It's the fourth biggest producing VMS belt in the world and certainly in our view probably one of the least, explored. It has produced it's got over a thousand million tons of ore, goes for 800 kilometers, about 300 of which is through Kazakhstan into Mongolia and in and into China.

6:45 And there's huge, huge gaps in where, theoretically, statistically, there should be additional discoveries having been made. And we've certainly pegged our licenses cover one of those significant gaps about 30 kilometers in between a small cluster of ore deposits. A very, very high grade, very exciting and profitable mines. There's three mines in, in our part of the belt that are producing today and and dozens of historical producing mines. One is just to the South East, of our license called Otiskoye, which you can see there, and one to the Northwest called Ardemyvsky, which you can see, in in the top left. Now they both produce ore and send it to the CAS Minerals Concentrator, the Niccol Koye Concentrator, which you can see marked on the map. And that concentrator is about 52 kilometers from our Vekuba deposit, which we have, an exploration target of 19 to 23,000,000 tonnes at 1.4 to 1.9% copper equivalent.

7:48 Most of which of that, by the way, is is copper. And we have recently been drilling that, which I I will get to shortly. Within our license package, we've got another another few high priority prospects, Teloscoy, which I'll touch on today, which we released some rock chip samples for previously. There are a few small past operating mines and and deposits which sit on the license, and and we need to look at the potential of. And, also, as I mentioned, there's over 30 kilometers of strike along this Irtyshir zone, which we believe has the potential to find another Ardemyvsky of 50,000,000 tonnes at four, you know, 46% copper equivalent. So it's a very, very exciting region. It's infrastructure rich. The CAS Minerals concentrator, today has spare capacity as does the CASINC concentrator, which is 70% owned by Glencore.

8:38 Both of those have spare capacity today to take additional ore, and that's why we're really excited about the potential for a quick low cost, development option.

8:51 A little bit about the deposit. So we pegged this deposit, in the middle of twenty twenty two. We then went into collecting a significant amount of data. It takes quite a lot of time, to collect all of the data and then digitize and analyze. So we did that for about eight to twelve months. And when we put all the whole thing together, we handed the data over to an independent contractor called AMC Consulting out of Perth, very, very highly respected, contractors. And they basically came up with, this this it was the exploration target and model pit shells. The whole concept of handing it to them was, is this worth spending money on drilling? And the answer came back with a a very resounding yes. More than 42,000 meters of drilling was digitized. They had copper, zinc, and lead grades. No silver or gold in the historical drill reports, but there was certainly some silver and gold that reported to concentrate with the metallurgical test work that was done in, in the nineteen fifties and nineteen seventies.

9:54 So all of that basically came up with the exploration target that you see there. As I said, 19 to 23,000,000 tons at 1.4 to 1.9% copper equivalent. So in the medium grade, that's around 300,000 tons of contained copper, which today is worth over $8,000 per ton. Now AMC also put a net present value based on an optimized pit shell on that. The the base case was $241,000,000. That's pre CapEx number. So, typically, you know, for for if you're if you're building a concentrator and building all of the facilities, you'd be looking at a number in excess of a 100,000,000. So that should be factored in. But points to note is that is the open pit only, which is only five to 6,000,000 tonnes of the, 20 19 to 23,000,000 tonnes.

10:45 So it's less than a third of the deposit. And, on top of that, we believe that the option for for toll trading or or mine gate sales of of crushed ore. And so you potentially aren't staring down the barrel of a $100,000,000 back CapEx. You're staring down the barrel of something much, much, much lower. So we find that all incredibly exciting and and incredibly compelling economics to to continue with this project. So we set about drilling it this year, and, obviously, the intent of that drilling was to test the historical work. You know, the first thing we do when we're assessing a project that someone's showing us is have you got any core? Can we have a look at it? And so, obviously, the same question is asked is asked of us and and the same question of ourselves. How accurate is this historic data? So we set about testing that this year. We drilled five holes into the Vekuba deposit proper, and you can see the results there today, which we absolutely over the moon about.

11:47 It confirmed very high grades of of copper, very shallow copper, and therefore the open pit potential that we've been talking about, which is within the the the optimized open pit shell that that were done by AMC previously. And it's got a a number of mineralized what we call mineralized lenses, which is sedimentary hosted lenses, which which, has now been traced over several 100 meters width, between, Drill Hole 1 and Drill Hole 3, which you can see there. And then Drill Hole 4 is interpreted to be on the other side of a fault, which is a little bit lower. I'm also very, very excited by Drill Hole 4 because the grades were very thick intersections and very, very good grades. So if you can think about this from the perspective of an open pit would finish at the end where where where the where that fault lies, well, then you're already most of the way down to to where you might look at at starting an underground operation.

12:46 So you don't have 300 or 200 or 300 meters of decline that you need to build. You might only have 60 or 70 meters. So that that does very much open up the potential of going underground at the end of at the end of an open pit mine life. So we're really excited by these grades. This very much demonstrates to us we have open pit potential, you know, underground potential as well to extend the mine life in due course and something now we intend on getting completely stuck into next year to to move through the process of of converting it to JWT resource and and feasibility. And something else I should note is is the resource envelopes were considerably wider than than what had been modeled previously. You know, we've used a very conservative cutoff grade of point 38% copper equivalent. And for our intersections, we also use very conservative recoveries on zinc, and lead and silver. As I said, more than 95% of the economics typically is has been copper.

13:43 But for some of the deeper ones, so for example, the the, drill hole two that just sits on the other side of this fault, you know, there's some very, very good zinc grades in there as well up to 6.6% zinc. And so with our copper equivalent grades, we've been very conservative with the zinc recoveries of only 70% of that. Again, the historical metallurgical test work gave better recoveries than 70% on zinc. So we believe that that our modeling has been incredibly conservative, and yet we are still very, very, very excited about the option the the potential to develop this project. A little bit on Teloskoye, which is another target within the 803 square kilometer package, which we released samples for recently. Historically mined, it's a hill that's sort of covered in what we call scree, which is is, you know, the the the extra material that gets taken out from a mine shaft.

14:39 Lots of of oxidized copper at surface and big chunks of massive sulfide as well that that are rare, but it's still there from from the pipes that have been mined previously, about six or seven very, very high grade pipes that have been mined previously. And you can see the sorts of grades that have been sampled both on those pipes, at the edges of those pipes, and also, the Gossam material which is what what we call disseminated ore which sits, on on the edges of the of this material. So we don't yet have a a a good concept, a good geological model of what this is. It's being put together at the moment with historical data. There has been some drilling showing, you know, one plus percent copper grades at depth, fairly fairly shallow, but obviously separate to to the mine shafts.

15:26 And so we think that this is a really, really exciting opportunity as well, which, which we'll look to drill as soon as possible early next year. The mine grades the the the the grades that you could see are absolutely mind boggling, and so, you know, I'm not I'm not expecting those exact grades in in drilling, but nonetheless, it shows the potential of this of this region. And it's also only 17 kilometers from from the CAS Minerals processing plant. So it would be a very, very low cost easy trucking option should should it get to that point. We're not just resting on those, and and really the the original reason we came to the Rudna Altai Belt was to find another Artemievsky, find find another twenty, thirty, 40,000,000 tonne deposit or 50,000,000 tonne deposit at three to 6% copper equivalent.

16:13 And we still vehemently believe that there's one of one or several of those, on our license package. In fact, we've had, a chap called doctor Bruce Gammel, who's probably the world's most preeminent VMS expert, geological expert, write a report and completely agree with us on on the prospectivity of our license package. And so that's incredibly exciting for us. We did a helly born EM survey, to and make those detections and and start to refine the license area and the target areas. And since that survey, came up with about 49 different targets, we've been refining those with geological field work, some IP work, and so on to make those drill ready as well. And so we're not gonna rest on Vancouver and rest on Taloskoye. We we very much intend on progressing these with with thorough methodical field work sampling to make these drill ready and and look to drill some very, very exciting targets hopefully towards the end of drill season.

17:10 One of those things we did was was an IP survey, and we've already got three very, very strong targets off the back of that. So once we confirm that they're in the correct mineral horizon, then they will audit become immediately drill ready. And and so that's something that we, again, we hope to do into next year.

17:30 Principally, why we focused on VMS. VMS, systems are very, very high grade, and that's one of the key things to to to recognize here. They're very high grade. The recoveries tend to be fairly simple. They're they're polymetallic, so there's lots of credits involved, which means your operating costs are very, very low on a per ton basis. And so it has an incredibly high return on invested capital. And that's why we're making the statement that global companies start with VMS. Rio Tinto started in 1873 by restarting the Rio Tinto VMS operation in Spain, which is in fact still operating today. Boleiden made a VMS discovery in 1924, which is the Boleiden deposit in Sweden. It is now a multibillion dollar behemoth.

18:17 Lundin Mining, exactly the same. In Sweden, a discovery in 1997, and it's it's a multibillion dollar empire today as well. And Sandfire is a big one from a listed company, Australia listed company perspective. And just looking at that share price return, which was absolutely phenomenal with the De Grasse discovery in 2009. Sandfire today is a is a multibillion dollar company. So we think that this is a really, really clever way to to start a junior company. It doesn't have a billion dollar CapEx. It's very, very achievable. And so global companies start start as VMS start with VMS deposits. So this is a summary of of of what we've done this year, you know, focusing in the last quarter. It's the exploration results from Vekuba.

19:04 We're still waiting on the gold results. I'm I'm not, you know, I'm not expecting multiple grams per ton. I'm expecting small credits to be added to help help punch out the the grades and and and and add that as an extra credit to to what we might be producing. So we'll be hopefully updating the market with with the all in grades at some point in time, potentially this this side of the new year. We've released the results, and we're looking at doing an updated resource model. Likely, that updated resource model will come, early in the new year rather than rather than towards the end of the year. And then as, we've already commenced planning for next year, so we'll be doing that more thoroughly through the winter break. But inherently, we wanna get on the ground, drilling for Cobra as quickly as possible, converting this to a resource, at inferred and and indicated status.

19:57 There is a potential that we'll be able to convert, the open pit to a jolt resource with the drilling we've already done, but we need to assess the geostatistics of of of the work we've done against the historical work to see if that is the case. Regardless, we would very much like to progress this to an inferred, or indicated resource status, which would then allow us to put a preliminary economic assessment on the deposit and look at applying for our mining license. So that'll be the focus for for 2024. All the while, we'll progress a lot of our other field targets to make those drill ready as well. So it would be fantastic if we can, on top of drilling for Kuba next year, we can be drilling Taloskoye and a couple of other targets, which have have demonstrated very, very high prospectivity. So that's what we hope to be doing throughout 2024.

20:46 Very, very exciting in terms of progressing a project, and putting economic, numbers on it, but also very, very exciting from a discovery perspective, which is, you know, which is which is what we're here to do in in addition to, to developing our brownfields projects. There we are. Our company well, we've used 1.33 p. It's a little bit variant at the moment. I think it's 1.2 p today. It's been up to 1.6 recently. But £2,900,000 market cap, which is, you know, saying a fraction. It would be a fraction of a fraction of the value of the deposit, on a developed basis in the ground. So we find that, you know, incredible leverage really exciting. As I say, not to mention the leverage to the copper price. If we're not using $8,000 a ton, but we're using 12,000, you know, by by 2025, 2026, then then those numbers can change very, very dramatically.

21:41 We're highly committed to making this work. I've participated in every capital raise for the company, including IPO at five p and the most recent round at one point five p. I live here in Kazakhstan with my family and and don't intend on changing that anytime soon, with with the potential that we're seeing in front of us. So we're really, really excited by the opportunity. We think that this remains Kazakhstan remains once in a lifetime, opportunity, and, we think that ESTAR is is probably the most fantastic way to, to get leverage to that. So there we are. Thank you all for your time. That was just over twenty minutes. Very happy to, to take questions now. Perfect. Alex, thank you very much for presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions by using the Q and A tab, which is situated on the top right hand corner of your screen.

22:27 But just while Alex takes a few moments to review these questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you that recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published Q and A can be accessed via your investor dashboard. Alex, as you can see, we received questions throughout today's presentation. If I could ask you just to read out those questions and provide a response, then I'll pick up from you at the end. Certainly. Okay. So question number one is CAML, which is Central Asia Metals, mentioned in their interims they're looking at early exploration investments, which also mentioned site visits. Have they approached EST? Okay. Good question. So EAST STAR have a few companies in the data room, in in the past, quite a few companies in the data room in the past and and presently.

23:15 What I see is two major hurdles to closing closing a deal with a Central Asia Metals or someone like like Central Asia Metals. The first in the past is technical due diligence. We have, I mentioned it during my presentation. You know, one of the first questions you ask when you're looking at a deposit is, can I see the core? And and we haven't had any. We've had detailed historical data. We now do have core, and so that that has been remedied. So we would expect to to, fix that as a hurdle as of as of today, in fact, yeah, or or as of this week. The second one, which is quite a major one, is valuation. So we have a market cap of, as I said, you know, £3,000,000, less than £3,000,000.

24:01 But our asset in Vekuba, just Vekuba, and none of the other assets in the portfolio or the exploration assets being valued in in Rudna Altai is worth at least potentially 40 to 80 times that just the open pit. And that's using the NPV numbers 40 times would be half the NPV number that AMC put out, in in their independent report. So when you have that disconnect between the value what we feel is the value of our asset and the value of our company and when we're having conversations with other parties, you know, we we don't think that the premium or certainly in the past, the premium hasn't been offered that deserves that potential change of well, not change of control, but but influence that gets exerted by third third parties.

24:50 I'm not trying to pretend that we should be a $100,000,000 company today, but certainly when you are looking at strategic investments, you need to be looking at a at a at a at a premium for that because of the value of the work that's been done, because of the value of the asset, because of the the influence that that that that can be exerted as a major shareholder. So that's ultimately why we haven't closed anything to date. And I'm not mentioning names on any front on that, but that's why we haven't closed anything to date, and that will still be, you know, our our focus going forward is ensuring that that shareholders get that value as as best as possible. I hope I've answered that question, albeit danced around it a little bit. Question number two, you've mentioned, recently CapEx for Vekuba would be $10,000,000 max.

25:37 Can you confirm if this can be done solely via nondilutive sources like debt trade financing? Well, to be absolutely clear, I've been providing very ballpark, CapEx numbers. So this is not based on any economic feasibility work that that we've done on this project because we're not there yet. I would love to be there by by the end of next year, and that that's certainly what we'll be targeting. So I just wanna be very clear on that that, you know, 10,000,000 max figure is is is a is a a ballpark number, and it's intended to demonstrate that toll treatment or Mindgate, Mindgate cell situation, which is a reasonable likelihood for ESTAR, the CapEx number would be a fraction of the CapEx required to build a standalone facility, which as I mentioned during the presentation, I give would would probably be comfortably in excess of a 100,000,000.

26:28 So so so that's the intention of of putting, you know, those ball very very ballpark numbers in place. We would have, as an operation based on these drill results, a very limited prestrip because the ore body starts within just just shy of 20 meters from surface. It potentially goes higher. You know, we're yet yet to drill that side of it. So very limited pre strip to to get to the initial ore. You know, little upgrade to infrastructure because of where we sit in for Cuba. We have, roads coming to site. We have power coming virtually to site. We have water, you know, less than a kilometer away.

27:07 So most of the infrastructure is very much in place. We're not building hundreds of kilometers or even tens or five fives of kilometers to, you know, to to run the facilities. So that's a huge amount of the pre CapEx that that gets taken away as well. And then what happens after that is we need to do the economic trade off studies for, you know, depending on what our offtake scenario is. You know, do do we sell run of mine, or whatever that grade comes out as, run of mine grade, by crushing it, putting it in a truck, and taking it straight to another facility? Do we try and upgrade it a little bit using maybe a dense media separator or an ore sorter to to send maybe four or 5% copper concentrate to a facility. Do we build a a more significant plant, a float circuit, and and spend tens of millions or, you know, into into the 100, to put together a copper concentrate, which ultimately would probably go straight down the road the other way to Uskamen and Gorsk only 70 kilometers away to the smelter. So we've got to do all of those trade off studies.

28:05 And and once we understand that, then, you know, then we'll get a, obviously, a better idea of of the intended CapEx. The second part of the question, that's all around the $10,000,000 answer. The second part of the question is about debt trade financing. Again, it's it's very early to talk about this, so I'll talk in in holistic terms, someone who who has a a master's in mineral economics and mine finance, I can talk very generally about how to finance mining operations. It's rarely done on completely non dilutionary basis. I would say that debt to equity ratios in in financial models for single asset development companies would be in the range of of sixty forty or seventy thirty debt to equity. The 40 of the equity the 30 or 40 of the equity, you can be partly bridged. You can use bridge financing facilities. You can use royalties, and you can use prepay.

28:59 So I think, ultimately, you need to have a look at what, you know, what what the options are on the table at the time and the cost of those options. So, I'm not saying it it would be a 100% nondilutionary finance, but but it might also not be 40% of the financing either. It could be something in between. The Tauken Samuruk, TKS JV was helpful with the initial licenses with Vekuba. Have there been any discussions or scope for them to get involved about the development route? That's a good question. Not yet. Would say is the answer. We've been putting everything off ultimately until we get our draw results in place. And as I as I mentioned before, people can literally come and inspect the core as well as the results and and start to make a decision for themselves.

29:46 You know, once we can demonstrate once we've been able to demonstrate, which we can now do, our suspicion that that we have the potential to develop a profitable open pit mine, now is the time to start all of these conversations. So thanks for the reminder. I'll add, I'll add to help Ken Samaruk of the list of of people to call, you know, to to commence those conversations. Okay. Given the positive recent results, can you expand on the plans for Rudney? Are there any factors which will influence the design? Well, I think I think thanks, Steven. I think I've, I've touched on that, so I'll just summarize it again. Yes. I mean, further drilling will influence the design. You know, the the the initial concept which AMC put forward was a five year mine life at 1,000,000 tonnes per annum.

30:38 You know, we need to see if you could sell and process 1,000,000 tonnes per annum if we're doing a mine gate sale. So CAS Minerals, which is the Nicoloskoye concentrator, has 600,000 tonnes of spare capacity today. So if we produce 1,000,000 tons, can we can we can we process the other 400,000 tons elsewhere? That's an example of of a consideration. Or or maybe they'll have a million tons per annum, you know, but in in a couple of years time and and we can can send the whole lot to one place. So the drill results will obviously dictate the mine plan, the pre strip. It'll dictate everything that'll give us give us those those that information. And, again, the design being the economic trade off studies of what can you do to upgrade that ore. Are you selling, you know, one to 2%, mine gate ore, or are you selling, you know, a higher higher percentage concentrate depending on the on the CapEx required to get there?

31:33 So good good question, but a little bit too early to give much more detail than that today. Simon c, how do you manage quality assurance of the assays? As you mentioned, the potential to re assay the high grade samples. So we're vehement on on QAQC, which is actually why, you you might all be aware why our recent assays took longer to release that to market. So we sent the first batch of assays to ALS, and and ALS are the global standard in in assay techniques. They're a certified lab. They're all over the world. And if you want to ensure the best quality results, ALS is unequivocally one of only probably two or three brand name labs in the world that you you ensure your results get sent to. So there's no better lab in in Kazakhstan for that purpose. To to that end, we sent the first batch which had top cuts or top top grades of of 1% for copper and zinc. We have more than 60 twos we had 62 samples that needed to be sent that were above those cutoff grades.

32:39 And when we send those, we send three sets of of standards, which is as a percentage, often, which I outlined in in our announcement. So there are what we call blanks, which is building material sub you know, not supposed to have any copper, lead, zinc, gold, silver in it. We send, duplicates. So that's the same piece of core crushed, blended, split, and sent, which which ultimately means it should have a very similar result. The two two samples should have a very similar result. And we send CRMs, is called, certified reference materials. So those, 62, when they came back, we had one certified reference material which came in 30% below the expected number. And this is quite a rare event, for labs, but nonetheless, when it happens, we need to pick up on that.

33:32 So I think it was incredibly good that our team did pick up on that. And then we go through a process of of, confirming the, assay results, with with another set of set of samples. So, from those 62, we sent 10 samples including that CRM back to the lab. Now of those 10 samples, the CRM came back correct within within the required limits. So, it was obviously an error in the first round. And nine of the, other samples came back slightly above their previous assay method. Not a hugely significant amount. We said in the announcement it was up to 10%. I believe the average was closer to 4% above those grades.

34:18 And so we are actually looking at reprocessing the whole 62. I don't think the number's gonna be completely game changing, but ultimately, we'll get more accurate data which will be used for resource modeling. So what I'm hoping for is a slight slight bump up in the grades, but not not, anything, you know, hugely significant. And then obviously we'd we'd look to be adding the gold as well because we're waiting for the gold assays to come back. So our QAQC, I think the fact that we've gone through this process, demonstrates that our QAQC, processes are absolutely on point world class and and can be expected to to meet any standards from anyone looking to do, due diligence on on us as a company. Good question.

35:06 Why do you think the market does not value the shares given the potential value within the company? Oh, Christopher, I I'm not sure. I I'm I'm genuinely not sure. I'm I'm consistently perplexed by the share price reaction, which might not be the answer you're you're really looking to hear. I'm very, very perplexed by by the share price reaction. For me, the risk reward scenario for ESTAR has dramatically, dramatically shifted in favor of the company on these results. And that is is a lot to be said, you know, when I mentioned before, you know, 40 to 80 times on on a net present value upside potential, which we could put those potentially put those numbers on. It's not without risk, you know, but but it's it's dramatically shifted in our favor.

35:57 What I what I will say is is that the board and the management, are consistently reviewing why this is the case. And I think that certainly over the, the Christmas period, we need to do a real strategic analysis of about about our messaging, about our communication to see if it's something that we're doing, which, again, we constantly revisit, but I think a real strategic review of of of our messaging and our communication to understand why that's the case. Because to me, it's mind boggling. So I need you know, while we're not drilling and we're we're we're doing a little bit less work operationally and and, you know, the geologists have their their longer term tasks in preparation for next drill season, I think that's a really good time to for me to to, do something with revision to see what we can fix to change that for next year.

36:49 Perfect. Alex, I think you've actually addressed all of the questions from investors, and, of course, the company will review all the questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses on the investor meet company platform. But just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, is which particularly important to yourself and the company, Alex, could I just ask you for a few closing comments? Certainly. Well, I mean, once again, I'll say, everyone, thank you very much for your time today. I really appreciate your your interest in ESTAR and and you taking, you know, forty minutes of your of your day and listening to me talk about the potential here. The the summary the summary here, I guess, is threefold. One is copper. Even if it's not ESTAR, make sure you get some exposure to copper, I believe in the in the next twelve twelve months, undoubtedly, that surplus that that sorry.

37:38 Surplus copper situation is is going to bring come forward from 2027, and it could come forward as early as next year. So you can be a little bit early in moving in these things, but when it does happen, it'll happen fast. And I think uranium and lithium in in the last sort of twenty four months with share prices of those stocks have have demonstrated that. This is not a supply, deficit that can be met easily. There is not big giant copper mines just waiting for a slightly higher price to come online. This is something that will be systemic and long lived, and and, you need to make sure that you've got exposure to that. The second thing will be the risk reward for ESTAR. As I said, very much now in favor of ESTAR. Their market cap is is is a fraction of a fraction of the value of of the potential value of the asset, and we intend on demonstrating that in 2024, with with drilling and with genuine economic studies.

38:32 You know, with that might come certain corporate events. You know, we'll have to see how that plays out. But nonetheless, you know, there is, copper in the ground. It's shallow. The grades are outstanding. So there's something very, very exciting to be chasing here. And then the third thing is is, you know, the potential upside. You know, we are still de risking or or advancing our, earlier stage exploration assets to drill ready. Any one of these, you know, could be another 30 to 50,000,000 ton at four to 5% copper mine, and, and that's, you know, in and of itself is a billion dollar, asset. So, you know, we're we're doing the low lower risk work in in assets like Vekuba, slightly higher risk in assets like Teloskoye, and then and then the the more greenfields exploration, which I'm calling the medium term targets, hopefully, drill ready, you know, towards, you know, the middle to the end of the drill season. So there's a lot a lot lot to be to be excited by for ESTAR for next year, and and I would love to have you all along for the ride. It would be great.

39:37 Perfect, Alex. Thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close the session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations? This will then 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 ESTAR RESOURCES PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all. Thanks.