Altona Rare Earths Plc (REE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the Altona Rare Earths Plc investor presentation. Throughout the recorder presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] The company may not be in a position to answer every question it received in the meeting itself. However, the company will review all questions sent today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, we would like to submit the following poll. And I'd now like to hand you over to Cedric Simonet, CEO. Good morning.

Good morning. My name is Cedric Simonet. I am the Chief Executive Officer of Altona Rare Earths since the 9th of June 2023. Before that, I have been the Chief Operating Officer of the company. I've been with the company for about 3 years. I'm a geologist by training. I have about 25 years experience in many different jurisdictions in Africa, not only doing exploration, but also developing and operating mineral and mining projects. I'm going to take you through this presentation. So Altona Rare Earths is an exploration and resource development company. We are specialized in rare earths and we are focused on Africa. We completed our listing on the main market of the London Stock Exchange on the 9th of June under a new ticker called REE, which is very suitable for rare earth elements. Previously, we were listed on the Aquis Stock Exchange. We started implementing our rare earths strategy back in 2020. We looked at a lot of products with a very critical eye. We entered into different memorandum of understanding. And when we were not satisfied, we just dropped these projects. We settled on the Monte Muambe project, which is located in Mozambique. We acquired it in June 2021 and it is now our flagship project. We have this disclaimer slide. I will not take you through it right now, but please do download the investor presentation on the website and have a look at this slide, too. So when we acquired the Monte Muambe project back in 2021, there was very little data about rare earths. Monte Muambe had been the site of fluorspar exploration, including between 2010 and 2012. At that time, another company did a lot of exploration for fluorspar. They came up with a reserve statement, which was relatively small and relatively low grade, so not very interesting for fluorspar. But in the course of this exploration, that company intersected some rare earth mineralization. And that rare earth mineralization was quite interesting because it showed relatively long intercepts with good grades. But the company dropped the project at that time. They were reviewing their portfolio. So as part of our acquisition program back in 2020, we started looking at Monte Muambe, we felt was very interesting. And since we started exploration back in August 2021, we've been very successful. And we've turned these few rare earth occurrences into significant targets. We've identified 2 targets, which we call Target 1 and Target 4 to significant ore bodies. And back in July last year, we were able to publish a first JORC exploration target estimate. That exploration target estimate ranges -- it's expressed as a range, not as a single figure. So it ranges between 21.7 million tonnes at 1.78% TREO to 56.6 million tonnes at 1.65% TREO. TREO stands for total rare earth oxide. So it is a sum of all the rare earth elements contained in the rock, expressed in oxide form. This figure I've just given you is a total figure. And for us, it's not the most important. The most important is that within this figure, we've got what we call a high-grade zone, and that high-grade zone exists both on Target 1 and Target 4. So for the exploration target estimate, the range for the high-grade zone was between 6.5 million and 11.5 million tonnes with grades between 2.4% and 2.5% TREO. And this for us is very, very important because we have seen on other projects in Africa that this sort of grade can be valued. So after we published the exploration target estimate last year, we continued drilling. The drilling season was not over. So after July, we continued drilling. And we focused exclusively on that high-grade zone of Target 1, which is the largest. We continued drilling along strike and we continued drilling down deep into the high-grade ore. So the data we have collected during this resource drilling in 2022 is now being used to prepare a first Maiden JORC Mineral Resource Estimate and Scoping Study, which will be published during this quarter. And because we drilled further on Target 1, we expect that the grade of that maiden estimate is going to be in the same order of magnitude as that of the high-grade zone. So 2.4%, 2.5% TREO. We also expect that the tonnage is going to be higher. We can't tell the figure right now, but the tonnage is going to be higher. I will go back to tonnages and grades in another slide a little bit later. So as I said, we've completed our listing on the London Stock Exchange main market in early June. We raised at the same time 2 million tonnes and these 2 million tonnes will be used mostly to complete the mineral resource estimate and the scoping study. We are in an earning agreement with our local partners, the original owners of the license. So by completing these 2 deliverables, our ownership of the project will move to 51%. And this will also happen during the third quarter of 2023. We will also be able to start processing a mining concession application. Currently, we are on a prospecting license and also to start the process of securing land rights for that concession. The funds we have raised do not cover the whole prefeasibility study. That was not part of the fund raise, but we will be able to start some of the prefeasibility activities. And if you have read our last RNS, we are starting some drilling next week, and this is going to be part of the prefeasibility study activities. Our key objective is to move Monte Muambe into production by 2027. This is very ambitious. I will explain a little bit how we can achieve this. But while we are focusing on Monte Muambe, we have a very unique position in Africa. We are based in Africa. I am based in Africa. I spend over half of my time in Mozambique. And this opens for us a number of opportunities. We have the knowledge. We have the networks. We know the geology of the continent. So we are in a very good position to find other possible interesting opportunities in the rare earth sector, and we constantly do target generation and review opportunities. Right. Before we get to the technical aspects, let me tell you a little bit about the market for rare earth elements for those who are not familiar with rare earth elements. So rare earth elements are actually 17 different chemical elements. Each has got its own characteristics, its own properties, its own uses and its own price. You might have heard about rare earth minerals and rare earth elements being compared or included into battery minerals. So rare earths are not battery minerals. Battery minerals are used to make batteries to store electricity. Rare earth minerals, the most important are neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium and these elements are used to make permanent magnets. A permanent magnet in turn are used to produce wind turbines and to produce motors, drivetrains for electric vehicles. So basically, you need rare earths to produce electricity, especially green electricity using wind turbines and you need rare earths to transform electricity into motion in electric vehicles. In the middle, you need battery minerals to store electricity. The long-term market for rare earth is driven by these applications, wind turbines and electric vehicles. Because of the transition from carbon-based energy to green energy, there is a long-term deficit for all these 4 elements; neodymium, praseodymium, terbium and dysprosium. They are also collectively known as a magnet metals and they are present at Monte Muambe. Analysts forecast that this deficit will reach 90,000 tonnes for neodymium, praseodymium oxide by 2040. So a chronic long-term deficit. 90% of the processing and refining of the supply chain basically for rare earth is currently in China. The West is playing catching up with China. We will talk a little bit about this, I think, later on in the presentation. So these 4 magnet metals are present at Monte Muambe. If you look at the information we have on concentrations, on grades and if you look at the current prices, basically 90% of the contained value of metal at Monte Muambe is contained in these 4 elements: neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium. All are used in permanent magnets in different proportions, and permanent magnets represent about 50% of the rare consumption by volume and 95% of the rare earth consumption worldwide by value. So they are very, very important. Neodymium and praseodymium are the most important in terms of quantity. To construct 1 megawatt of wind power, you need about 200 kilos of neodymium for the magnet, which will be the alternator of the wind turbine. And the largest wind turbines nowadays have a capacity of 17 to 18 megawatts. Besides being used in permanent magnets, these elements have other uses like other rare earth elements. They are used in a wide range of uses for high-tech industries. Terbium is a key component of cell phones and TV screen. The screen that you are watching right now as you are listening to this presentation contains rare earths. It doesn't work without rare earth elements, in particular, European terbium and yttrium. All right. Now we are going to go a little bit more into details on Monte Muambe. But before we start, I would like to show you a short fly-through of Monte Muambe. So this is going to be a video. All right. So Monte Muambe is a mountain, but it has a little bit shape of a volcanic crater. It's like a basin at a high altitude. So as you come to Monte Muambe, you have to climb up, but nobody lives there, except us. These small houses that you can see here are our camp. So you climb up to the camp and then you just drive down. We have trucks, obviously, through the forest. You drive down to the different targets. So this basin is about 4 kilometers in diameter. Rare earths are not everywhere. And the small hill that you can see with trucks and drilling pads, that's Target 1. That's the most important right now. It forms part of the base of the exploration target estimate, and it will be part of the mineral resource estimate that we are going to publish later during the quarter. And then as you keep going towards the South, towards the center of this basin, you get to Target 4, which is a small field, which is a little bit smaller, but which also has high grade ore, which is very important for us. The drilling that we are going to do next week will be on target 4. We are going to do some infill drilling on this field. And as you fly -- as you continue flying towards the South, you get to another target, which is Target 9. We have not yet worked a lot on this target. There is a very interesting soil anomaly on it. We need to do some more drilling on this target, and we will do that either later this year or early next year. All right. I hope you enjoyed this. So let's talk a little bit about Monte Muambe. Monte Muambe is located in the Tete Province in Mozambique. This is a safe and mature mining region, which is a little bit like a hub between Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. And this region has a lot of mining activity within about 50 kilometers radius of where we are. There are 4 large coal mines. There is a large iron and steel project. And also in this province, there are many gold mines, gemstone mines. So there is a lot of mineral-related activity. To give you an example, when we started drilling and we sent a request for quotations for drilling services, we didn't have to go very far to find a driller. Actually just there in Tete, few kilometers from the site, we had 5 different drilling companies to choose from. So really a very, very good region for mining with a lot of qualified human resources, equipment and service suppliers. So the project is held under a prospecting license. The prospecting license covers the entire maintain. The number is 7573L. It was renewed up to May 2025, and it has been transferred to Monte Muambe Mining Lda, which is our special purpose vehicle for this project, which holds the license. We have an earning agreement with the original owners of the license, one Mozambican businessmen. Currently, we hold 20% upon completion of our mineral resource estimate and scoping study. We will get to 51%. This is going to happen within a few months. And upon completion of the prefeasibility study thereafter, which will take about 1 year -- sorry, 2 years, we will get to 70% ownership. Since August, we've drilled over 100 holes for a total of more than 7,000 meters, which is quite good for a project like this. And we have a very high drilling success rate because we have on site an equipment that's called a portable x-ray fluorescence analyzer, pXRF analyzer, which can analyze some of the rare earths. So this equipment, the results are not accurate enough to use to prepare our reserve statement. However, they are sufficiently good, and I will show you a slide about this a little bit later so that we can have an estimate of the contents in a very, very short term, almost real time. If I drill a hole today, by tomorrow, I have preliminary pXRF results. And that enables me to decide where I'm going to put the next hole if I need to continue drilling a certain hole. And this way, on last year's drilling, about 63% of the meterage drilled was in high-grade ore. As I said, we did a JORC exploration target estimate last year that was very good. Now we are focusing on our maiden mineral resource estimate, JORC Mineral Resource Estimate. We have received already assessed results for half for the samples from Intertek Laboratories in Australia from the drilling we did last year. We will get the other half within the next week or so. And we have already contracted Snowden Optiro to prepare the resource estimate and they are currently working on it. Their competent person site visit is to take place in the second week of August. So once we have finished the resource estimate on the scoping study, again, we will embark on the prefeasibility study. So I've added in this presentation, a few slides to show you a bit more about our activities on the ground. This is RC drilling. RC stands for reverse circulation. You can see the rig in the middle. The staff with the orange shirts are the drilling contractor staff and the guys with the blue and green shirts are our personnel. So contractor does a drilling. We collect the sample at the exit of a device called Cyclone, and we prepare and store and label the samples. One thing you can see is that we are working in an area which is not a nature reserve, but it's a very beautiful environment, with forest [indiscernible]. So we take a lot of care to do as little disturbance as we can while we drill, especially we try not to cut trees. If we have to move the rigs for a few meters because of the tree, we just moved the rig. The samples that come out are split. Roughly for 1 meter of drilling, we get 30 kilos of samples. So we need to split this into a smaller quantity before we analyze it and before we send it to the laboratory. So this device that you can see on the left-hand side picture is called a riffle splitter. And our crew is trained and follows very strict standard operating procedures to make sure that the data we produce can be used in a JORC-compliant mineral resource estimate. On the right-hand side picture, you can see one of our technicians who is taking gamma spectrometry readings on RC samples -- reverse circulation samples. A little bit more about the portable XRF. So the picture on the right shows you what the device looks like. We prepare the samples. Again, we follow very strict standard operating procedures. So samples are prepared in some small capsules, which are placed on the top of the XRF, and we have a protection that comes on top. It's all controlled by a computer with a qualified technician and we get -- from this particular model, which is a Hitachi, we get results on 4 rare earth elements: Lanthanum, cerium, neodymium and yttrium. When we look at the sum of these 4 elements, we get proxy for the total of content, the TREO percent of the sample. And we have a database of over 1,000 samples, which were assessed both by the pXRF and by the laboratory, which shows that we have a very good correlation between the results from the TREO estimate from the pXRF and the actual TREO from the laboratory results. So again, when we say that for us, pXRF is a very good decision tool, this is backed by a very strong QA/QC system by very strong orientation experimentation, and we are very sure about our results. Although, of course, once we have drilled, the final step is to send the samples to the laboratory in Australia, which takes some time to get certified results, and these are the certified results that we use in the mineral resource estimate. All right. Just a few words about the training and the development of our Mozambican staff. It's very important for us. We want to build up our human resources as much as possible. The left-hand side photo shows 2 interns from the Eduardo Mondlane University of Maputo being shown how to do a ground geophysical survey. And the right-hand side photo shows all our staff being trained in first aid, which is very important for us. As you can see, the trainer is handling a baby. So the skills that the employees learn at the workplace can also be used at home. Right. Let's look at the map. So you can see that circular structure, which is the rim of that crater like basin. And this rim is about 4 kilometers in diameter and inside the carbonatite outcrops -- so the carbonatite is a rock that contains the rare earth, they extend over a diameter of about 2.5 to 3 kilometers. You can see the target numbers. So you can see, for example, Target 1 which is here; target 4, which is here. We went to target 9 in the fly-through and 1 of the other targets, we will start drilling further this month is target 3 here. So they have been drilling in different places. But so far, the most important ore bodies for us are target 1 and Target 4. Target 1 is about 600 meters in length and 100 meters in width. And target 4 is about 300 meters in length and 170 meters in width. We've done a soil sampling survey over the whole area. So we've identified other targets, some for rare earths, some other targets for neodymium. We still need to look at all of this. We also know that some rare earth ore bodies are not outcropping at the surface. So they would not have been picked by the soil sampling survey. This is the case, for example, with target 6 here. So we will also use geophysical methods to identify further possible ore bodies, which would be somewhere 10, 20 meters below the surface and which would still be potentially viable. The main mineral containing the rare earths at Monte Muambe is a mineral called bastnäsite. It's a carbonate of rare earths and it's mineral, which is relatively easy to turn into another product source such as mixed rare earth carbonates. One thing we are currently doing is metallurgical test work. As you probably know, every single rare earth deposit is different technically and especially in terms of metallurgy. So metallurgical studies are extremely important to understand how we can extract the rare earths from the ore and what sort of product we can produce. Right. So let's look a little bit closer at the Target 1. The first thing I mentioned already, we have 2 types of ore basically at Monte Muambe. We have what we call high-grade ore, which has an average of about 2.5% TREO and we have low grade ore, which has between 0.5% and 1% TREO and which also has some neodymium. The high-grade ore -- the high-grade ore bodies are very, very consistent, very well defined, and this is very important. When you look at this cross-section here, you can see first, this brown line here is a surface, all right? So it's a cross section. The high-grade ore is in pink and you can see the logs with the TREO percent shown as a bar chart. And you can see how, for some holes, I mean it's high-grade ores all the way -- once you get into the high grade ore, it's high-grade ore all the way -- very, very, very consistent. On some holes, we have some small intercepts with waste or low-grade ore, but they are very limited. So in general, the high-grade ore bodies are very consistent, very well defined, along strike and at deep. In addition, the deep angle of the high-grade ore of this ore body is relatively low. So the amount of waste, which is located on top of the ore body is very limited. And if you just look at this cross-section, you can easily see that we have here a very good case for open pit mining with a low strip ratio. I used to be the open pit manager on a fluorspar mine in France. And of course, it was not rare earth, but the ore body -- sorry, yes, the ore body had the same sort of shape and geometry and relationship with the topography. And when I see what I see nowadays at Monte Muambe, I can exactly see how we can mine this very easily. When you look at rare earth projects, sometimes one of the concerns can be the presence of radioactive elements such as uranium and thorium. The grades that they have put on this slide are ore grades. So the first thing is that for a carbonatite project, they are slightly below average. They are not very high. The second thing that you have to remember is that, ultimately, what's important is what will be the concentration of radionuclides in the product that we will export from the site. So these grades are for the ore. That's not very important. The metallurgy is going to tell us really how we need to address this when we start to see what sort of products we can have at Monte Muambe and that's when we will see how we deal with the radionuclides. In terms of potential revenue contribution, I've talked about that. Neodymium and praseodymium represent roughly 70% to 80% of the value contained at Monte Muambe and terbium and dysprosium 10% to 20%. The other rare earths represent about 10%. Okay. This slide is quite important. It's a peer comparison, but it focuses on the difference between resource and reserves for different projects. So if you look at the top chart, you can see a comparison of resources in blue with reserves in orange for different projects. One of these projects is Ngualla in Tanzania, the one in the center is Longonjo in Angola, and the one on the right is Songwe which is located in Malawi. Just to remind you, the resource of a project is the quantity and the grade of minerals contained in the ground. That's the geology. That's what is there in the ground. The reserves are defined after you've done a feasibility study. And the reserves are the tonnage and the grade of the minerals that are variably extractable what you can actually mine in real life and what you can put in your definitive feasibility study. So usually, the resource statement is larger and the reserve statement is smaller. And what you can see is that for many of our peers, they started with very, very big resource statements, 200 million, 300 million tonnes, even 50 million tonnes for Songwe. But the reserve statements, what is actually mineable is much smaller. It's more closer to 20 million to 30 million tonnes. And the grades like for Longonjo is 2.6%. For Songwe, it's much less, 1.16% for the reserve statements. So what that means is that as we look at Monte Muambe, remember the sort of figures we spoke about for the high-grade ore from the exploration target and what we expect for the mineral resource estimate, which will be published shortly. We are not going to chase hundreds of millions of tonnes of ore at a low grade because we already know we benefit from the experience of our peers. We already know that this will not be viable. We know that what will be available will be the small quantity, 20 million to 30 million tonnes with a good grade, 2.5% more if we can. And this is what we are very, very, very focused on. And this is one way that we are not going to spend a lot of time and resources, drilling and drilling and drilling for several years. And this is one way we are going to short -- fast track this project. The financial statements are as at 31st of December of 2022. So they've been a little bit overtaken by events. We don't have a more recent set that we can present today. A few things you can see, the total assets have been increasing steadily year after year. This is because they represent the capitalization of exploration expenses at Monte Muambe. The cash situation, cash position, the bottom line of the table, obviously, has changed a lot because we've just done a fundraise for GBP 2 million as we were listing on the LSE. So we are now in a much more comfortable position after the fundraise and also our liabilities have been reduced. So as far as financials are concerned, we continue to focus on spending efficiency. And we ensure that the way we use the resources we have matches the short-term and long-term objectives. So as I said before, our focus right now is to deliver the JORC Mineral Resource Estimate and Scoping Study to move to 51% ownership of Monte Muambe. That's what we are focusing our resources on. Just to give you an estimate on cash used in operation for the quarter, the operation expenses from the listing date 9th of June to the end of Q3, we are expecting that's going to be about GBP 0.5 million. A quick look at our current shareholder information. The important thing you have to know is that the 3 top lines represent nominees and none of these nominee accounts has any individual shareholders who has more than 3% of the company. So we don't have any large -- any single large shareholder in the company. Currently, the directors and the key employees taking into consideration the press release, which was published just a few hours ago, hold slightly above 8% of the company. So the company is well supported by its Board and its key employees. All right. A slide about directors and management. We've had lots of changes in the Board on admission on the 9th of June. Christian-Taylor –Wilkinson is a former CEO. He stepped down from the Board on the 9th of June, but he remains with us in a business development capacity. Christian has been very instrumental in taking the company from where it was back in 2019, a company with all assets in Australia to where it is today, which is a company listed on the LSE with a very significant rare earth asset in Mozambique. But as we worked on the listing, we felt it was a time when the company needed someone who was more technical in terms of background and with more direct experience in Africa, and this is why I was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Altona. Louise Adrian, who was our Financial Controller, has been appointed Chief Financial Officer. Martin Wood remains our Nonexecutive Chairman. And Audrey Mothupi has been with the company for a while. She is a South African business lady. She's a Non-Executive Director. On admission, Simon Charles who is a senior partner at Marriott Harrison joined the Board to help strengthening its governance. So he's been with us for about a month now. Audrey, Louise, Martin and I have all been with the company for more than 2 years. So we have a very good experience of the company. If you look to the right-hand side, you can see our consultant metallurgist, Gavin Beer who is a world-leading expert in metallurgy. I've said that metallurgy is very important for our projects and Gavin is a top expert. We would like also to introduce Pedro Manjate who is the Non-Executive Chairman of Monte Muambe Mining Lda. I've not mentioned this, but Altona even though we have 20% of -- right now of ownership of Monte Muambe Mining Lda, we have control of the Board contractually. And we have -- Altona has 2 directors on the Board of Monte Muambe while the original shareholders represented by Pedro Manjate has one position on the Board. So we have control of the Board. Pedro is a very well-respected Mozambican businessman and has been very, very supportive since the beginning in all the aspects of the business. Our project manager is a very competent geologist -- Mozambican geologist called Luis Veloso Francisco, very well respected and a very good supporter of the Mozambique Mining Geology Association. And then you have a photo of our staff in at the site. Most of our staff comes from the communities living around the mountain. Nobody lives on the mountain itself. Actually, apart from us, nobody lives within the license. But there are villages around and that's where we get most of our stuff. All right. So I'm almost at the end of the presentation. I think it's a good time now to take some questions.

[Operator Instructions]. As you can see, we received a number of questions throughout today's presentation and Cedric, if I could just ask you to read out those questions and give response to where it's appropriate to do so. I'll pick up from you at the end.

All right. So we'll start with the first question. Is Altona interested in other projects at this stage. Or are we focusing only on Monte Muambe for the near future? So I've already partly answered this question. Altona's objective has always been to be a multi-asset company. We are currently focusing on Monte Muambe because we secured that project. And so far, it has given us a lot of confidence. But at the same time, because of our position in Africa, we also continue looking at other opportunities. As we do this, we have 2 objectives: One is to reduce the overall company risk. So what that means practically is that we are looking at different geological types of deposits -- of rare earth deposits which can be developed with different time lines, different CapEx, different exploration costs. And we are also looking potentially at different jurisdictions to spread the jurisdiction risk. The other objective is to acquire assets that may be smaller in terms of size than Monte Muambe, but that may be developed more rapidly than the large carbonatite projects like Monte Muambe. And this may shorten our time line to cash inflows. So this is an important objective for us. So that means as we look at new projects, we are focusing mostly on ionic clay deposits and on hydrothermal deposits. The next question is with China recently announcing its plans to limit the export of critical elements, gallium and germanium, what does Altona believe this means for rare earths? When you look at rare earths, the supply risk is twofold. First, we know that there is a long-term supply deficit for magnet metals. So the supply risk is already there with or without China. I was in June at the Rare Earth Industry Association Conference in Barcelona. And we heard the CEO of a large wind turbine manufacturer speaking. And he was saying that to be able to fulfill the orders he received, he would need 3 times more magnets, more permanent magnets, more NdPr magnets to be available than what is currently available. So clearly, One of the risk has to do with the deficit, and that happens with or without China. So the other risk is that China currently dominates the supply chain and it can and it has restricted the export of strategic elements of products and gallium and germanium are just the latest example. So this could happen with rare earths. To reduce both risks, several Western countries are currently developing their own supply chains. Some are using domestic of deposits and some are using rare earth deposits located in other countries, like in Africa. There is always a bit of a chicken and egg situation because someone who wants to develop a mine will want to know that there is a possible outlet for its products. So we will want to know there is a possible separation facility available. And someone who wants to develop a separation facility will want to know that there is a possible supplier available. So we want to know that there is a mine. But there is some progress clearly and that conference in June showed that there is a lot of progress. We wish to be part of the solution to derisk the rare earth supply on both aspects -- on both these aspects I've just mentioned. As we do this, our main focus, obviously, is going to be on the interest of our shareholders, but we will also be giving due consideration to the interest of our country of operation, Mozambique, for Monte Muambe. So one of the things we do is to closely assess the possibility of doing as much new country value addition as possible. Ultimately, this will depend on the technical and financial characteristics of the project, but we are looking into it. The metallurgy is going to be very important. Ultimately, the metallurgy will determine how far downstream we can go. And from that point, and -- at the time we will start production, we will be able to see what we can do with the products that we will have from Monte Muambe, what are the possible outlets in Europe or in the rest of the world. The next question. In your recent RNS published on the 5th of July, you provided preliminary data on the grades and concentrations of warehouse. Could you expand on these findings? So the table we presented in that RNS, which was published a few days ago, give partial results from the resource drilling we did in 2022. So these are results we received from the lab from Intertek in Australia recently. And these are results that form part of the database, which is being used to prepare the mineral resource estimate. There are 2 important things in this table. The first thing is that it confirms again that our preliminary pXRF results are reliable. If you compare the 2 columns, TREO percent for Altona, pXRF and TREO percent for Intertek laboratory, you can see the values are very close, not exactly, but close enough so that we have a good preliminary estimate from the pXRF. The other important information is individual grades of magnet metals, neodymium and praseodymium expressed together as NdPr oxide, which is the way it's normally done and also dysprosium and terbium. So this continues to confirm that we have very decent grades compared to our peers in terms of NdPr and also in terms of dysprosium and terbium. The next question. What can we expect to see as catalyst moving forward time lines? And are you seeing initial interest even at this stage from strategic purchases? So the deliverables I've been talking about, the mineral resource estimate, the scoping study, the application for the mining concession, the application for the land rights, the transition from 20% ownership to 51% ownership, this is all going to happen in 2023. So this is all going to translate into news flow. We are currently also working on acquiring some new projects. This may translate into news flow in 2023. We are working diligently on this, but it's not advanced enough for me to say anything about the time line on that. As I said, again, the next stage after the scoping study is the PFS. The PFS should take between 18 and 24 months. And once we finish the PFS, we will be at 70% ownership of the product. So we are expecting some great news flows from now to the end of this year and during the preparation of the PFS. There will be infill drilling. There will be metallurgical results. A lot of things are going to happen during the PFS. In terms of interest from strategic purchases, we have not seen that yet. We are a little bit too early stage, yet. You have to remember that we have not yet returned our first mineral resource statement. So we expect to have more -- when I was in Barcelona, at the Rare Earth Industry Association Conference, we did talk with possible purchasers. And there are -- even in Europe, there is a project in Norway. The manager of the company is looking for products to feed into his refinery. So the demand is starting to build up in Europe. But we are a little bit too early stage to talk directly things like supply agreements for purchasers. We expect that we will start making some progress on this once the scoping study is published, so that will be later this year. The next question is about mining licensing. Can you talk around the process for extensions and how you work with the government agencies in country? So as I said, currently, we hold a mining license -- sorry, a prospecting license. That prospecting license has been renewed up to May 2025, which is a time frame sufficient for us to apply for a mining concession, which is obviously a very different type of title with a validity of up to 25 years and which is suitable for mining. In Mozambique, we work very close with INAMI and the Ministry. INAMI is the regulatory agency for mining and the Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy. In Mozambique, if you look at the Mozambique Mining Cadastre, which is a public document, and you can access it online. Just Google Mozambique Mining Cadastre, you will see that in Mozambique, there are lots of mining concessions, which have been issued compared to other countries. And this is a good thing. In Mozambique, the government tends to issue mining concessions quite early in the life of projects. You don't have to wait until the last, last, last stage until you've done your DFS or BFS to apply for your mining concession. So it's very good because it helps to derisk further the project at an early stage. Once you have a mining concession, it's a very solid long-term title. Of course, the prospecting license is also solid title. So we fully intend to take advantage of this and to larger mining concession application as soon as we've completed the scoping study. The next question, main question is how to attract new investors. Everything sounds great, but no market at all? So the marketing has been quite tricky while we were on Aquis. And also as we were still a very early-stage exploration project, it looks all great, but it's still quite early stage. So part of our strategy to develop further the company was to move to the London Stock Exchange and to obviously develop further projects with the scoping studies and the PFS. We have hired a PR company called Yellow Jersey and the past few weeks since we've done the listing, we've been a lot more active in terms of marketing. I'm sure you watched or listened to different interviews, which were done recently. And we are very active in trying to getting the message out about Altona, not only in the specialized media, but also in general media. This is going to be a lot easier once we've got our mineral resource estimate out and that is still going to take a couple of months. As I've said, it will be published in Q3. But it will form a solid base for us to do even more marketing and get the message out to let people know about Altona and attract new investors. If there are other suggestions, we are totally open to them. I think that was the last question.

Yes. Cedric. I think you've addressed all those questions from investors. And of course, the company will review all the questions submitted today and publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. But just before we direct investors to provide you their feedback, which is particularly important to yourself, could I just ask you for a few closing comments?

Yes. That's the closing comments slide. So as you've understood, Monte Muambe is still an early stage project, but it's very rapidly and steadily taking shape as one of the few potentially viable magnet rare earth projects worldwide. Our exploration is very focused. We know exactly what we want to achieve technically. We want to get to a resource size, which is about medium-sized, 20 million to 30 million tonnes, high-grade, 2.5%, maybe more, and that will compare favorably with what we will have ultimately as a reserve statement. We are not going to waste time drilling holes that we don't need. And this is one of the ways we intend to fast track the project. So if I was to resume to summarize in 3 points, the first point is the market. You've understood all analysts forecast a long-term and chronic supply-demand gap for NdPr, which are the most important rare earths for the green energy transition and the main revenue drivers for Monte Muambe. So the rare earth market is not just flavor of the day. It's a very, very long-term solid market. The second point is the project itself. So far, as you've seen, Monte Muambe ticks all the boxes. It's in a good location, the potential resource size on grid compared to some of our peers' reserve statements. The geometry and the geology are very favorable to an open pit operation. The main factors that we still need to confirm is the metallurgy, but we are working on this right now as I speak. The further point is a company itself. Our market cap is currently about GBP 4.4 million. If you compare with our peers and our peers' market cap, obviously, they are at a more advanced stage. It's clear that Altona is very undervalued. So now it's a good time to get on board. I see another question that's come in. Maybe I can address it now. The question is how long will your current funds suffice still? The funds we have currently include the reserve statements, the scoping study, the applications for the mining concession, the land rights and some little prefeasibility work, but it does not cover the PFS. It does not cover the prefeasibility study. And because the project is progressing at a very fast pace, even though the funds we have can take us through to next year, we will want to raise more funds at some point in the future. To cover the prefeasibility study and to try to keep the project in that very, very fast lane towards getting the PFS done and then getting the project into production.

Perfect. Cedric, thank you for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close the session as you now be automatically redirect to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This is going to take a few moments to complete but I'm sure it will be greatly valued by the company. So on behalf of the management team of Altona Rare Earths Plc, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.

Thank you.