Atalaya Mining Copper, S.A. (ATYM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Atalaya Mining Plc Q3 Results Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] I'd also like to remind you this presentation is being recorded. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Cesar Sanchez, CFO; and Alberto Lavandeira, CEO of Atalaya Mining Plc. Good morning.

Hi, good morning. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being here and taking your time. We'll be running through the results that we had in the third quarter, which have been very good. I have with me the CFO of the company, and we will be following the presentation that will be found on our web page. Going directly into the subject of the meeting, in general, I would be kind of running through the presentation and through the fast results, at the same time, trying to give a little bit of background where it's needed because we assume that there may be some investors that are right now -- potential investors that right now are not shareholders. So please, those of you that know the company very well and has followed us for a long time, excuse me, if we kind of repeat some of the things that are obvious. If I start with Page 5 of our presentation where we review what was the Q3, look, in two words, and everybody can read it, but it went very well. The mill continued to -- the mill expansion continue to work at full capacity, more in the nameplate. We are going to be in the range of the 54,000 to 56,000 tonnes of copper in the year, which is higher than the guidance and very likely in the high end. Due to the good productivity, the all-in costs are going to be low. And of course, due to the good copper prices and good operational performance, not only we are doing well but we are going to be doing well, we believe. And of course, the balance sheet is improving significantly. You will see that right now, at the end of the quarter, we had EUR 90 million. We are now, in mid-November, you can imagine that the situation has continued to improve. So then this delivery. We said in the last presentation that there was no intention to sit on the cash. And we have delivered again and again. We have approved -- the company has approved 30% to 50% free cash flow starting in 2022, but actually we had already a good year, and we started with our first maiden dividend of almost GBP 0.30 per share, which is, I think, a fantastic yield of over 7%, and still, the cash flow building up. In addition to that, we said, look, this is not a dividend company, this is a growth company, and we are starting to announce results of the drilling at Masa Valverde. It's a satellite deposit of around 25 kilometers from Rio Tinto and at Majadales, which is one of our discoveries. We'll continue to do that. Well, as a result of all this good news, people are starting to know us. Liquidity has been improving quite a lot. So I think we have been trading at an average of 0.5 million shares in the last few months, which is an excellent outcome, if you remember, when we only had less than 20% float. We have lots of institutions that our shareholders now. All this is important, but for us, health and safety of our employees and ESG initiatives are essential, like it should be. We continue to work well with the COVID situation. In Spain, as you know, things are well in our company. It has not really affected us. And we continue to -- we work in a mine that's sitting besides populated areas. So for us, dust control, water is essential, absolutely zero discharge to the environment in water, trying to reduce the historic footprint and historic problems here and now finally starting to build a solar plant at Rio Tinto to utilize our land and the fantastic sunshine that we enjoy here. What's the future? The future is we continue to prepare the 43-101 reports in our satellite deposits at Cerro, [ Herros ], San Dionisio, San Antonio, also Masa Valverde, so the lines I mentioned before. And those are complex copper and zinc, and one of the ways we believe we can get a better outcome of those deposits is to produce metal directly. This is our E-LIX system. For those of you that know it, it's something totally new in the world, which will produce metal directly. But most importantly, it gets a very high recovery of these complex ores. We do have another project in Galicia, it's called Touro. We continue with the permitting process. We are very careful. We are doing things the right way with lots of communication and stating the facts. We know that the people -- I don't think they are against us, I think people are not well informed, but we simply deliver, deliver and show what we are doing right and what we can do. And we will talk a little bit about that also. If I may go to Page 6 and going directly to the results, I mean, strong copper production. You will see in the graph how copper production has been going up steadily in the last years. Recovery picking up from the small downs that we had when we connected the 2 expansions. For those of you that do not know the company, this project has been built in a very short period of time with half of the CapEx that was expected and has been delivering since 2015 after being over almost 17 years it stopped. It has been built in 3 phases. And right now, we have already been operating in the last 3 quarters. We've expanded well over the nameplate capacity. And of course, this results in a steady copper production in the range of 50,000 to 55,000 tonnes annualized basis. In a moment, for the copper prices, we enjoy very good copper prices. As a result of all that, you will see in Slide 7 that, of course, our revenues have gone up to basically almost EUR 100 million per quarter. So we are talking about, annualized, EUR 400 million per quarter, which is a good sales. Importantly is the EBITDA. Now you can see our efforts of building this expansion that are becoming evident, and we have generated significant EBITDA in the last 3 quarters, which basically take us to an annualized number of around EUR 200 million EBITDA, which is a fantastic result. But the most important thing and most spectacular is the cash flow generation. I mean I know people were -- there is a question in the past about if this company was going to generate cash, well, it's becoming evident then since in the lower part of that graph, if you see what was our negative working capital position when we basically built the plant, built installations with using our own working capital and minimal dilution from the shareholders. Remember that back in 2019, we only raised less than half of the shares that we needed. Since then, we have been delivering. We constructed the installation and since then, even with lower copper prices, producing nice excess cash flows. As we sit right now, we sit in a fantastic cash position, which can be seen in the next Slide 8. So right now, our cash at the end of this quarter was almost EUR 145 million. Since we have some debt of EUR 52 million, which was used to pay the historic liability of Astor, which we also got rid of, we are sitting almost EUR 90 million. We were sitting in EUR 90 million in the last quarter 1.5 months ago. But as you can see, the working capital surplus, that was EUR 17 million last year and now EUR 126 million, it means that we have improved the work balance sheet in the last 9 months by EUR 100 million, which is a very significant outcome. And that's including the fact that we use a contractor. So the contractor has obviously a high cost of capital due to them replacing equipment but also the fact that we continue doing some investments in tailings thickening. As you can see in the lower part of the picture, some optimizations of the plant has given us better recoveries and expanded payments facility for the future and so on. Even so, we have been able to generate this excess cash. Well, this has resulted in announcing the dividend in the 27th of October, most of you that are shareholders will have seen the results. And it's our first dividend. So it has some hiccups and some issues of distribution list and so on, but we are overcoming all that. The time of payment is arriving, and Cesar and his team is doing a fantastic job to get all this thing done. And hopefully, in less than 15 days, you will be receiving those of you who are shareholders the money in the bank. Somebody asked me will this be the last one. Well, we don't know. We have said that we will issue between 30% and 50% of the free cash flow generated to our shareholders, leaving some room for expansion, for our future, for growth. Well, things are going well. If the prices of copper continue to be good, maybe the Board can decide to top-up a little bit. But as I say, we always deliver our promises. So certainly, we are not going to -- we have been very disciplined with the CapEx, in the past, with the cash, this thing is not going to change. So the cash is not going to be sitting on our balance sheet forever. So yes, we are a dividend player now, to the surprise of many. But this is not about dividends. This is about growth. We have ambition. First, get into production in Rio Tinto, then expand Rio Tinto. Then what's beyond that? Well, we have a very good land position, which is shown in colors in the screen. It's a quite significant land package where we have a centralized mill, and we are doing some exploration in the East. It's shown in green and in orange. And Southwest, we have another area called Valverde, 29 kilometers joined by a public road where we are doing significant exploration. In blue, you will see the land holdings of MATSA recently acquired by Sandfire. And I may compare it, what are the sources, based on public information of what they have and what we have. So we can start -- people can start seeing that actually, with the copper resources that we have at Cerro Colorado, our current mine, the one that's producing cash flow, are only the tip of the iceberg, and we are going to be growing. So if I may expand a little bit on what we have, for those of you that do not know the company, it's an open pit. It's shown in red, around 2.4 kilometers long. And East and West, which is right and left in the picture, we have 2 deposits, which are historic, are well known. One then is called San Antonio, it's underground, good grades, good combined grades, with lots of lead zinc also. And at the left, San Dionisio, where we have envisioned several scenarios of open pit, underground, it's a combination. There is already an open pit. We are thinking of expanding that and mine the remnant underground. It will all depend on the economics. It also contains copper and zinc. So those will be treated in the same plant that we have. Here is a picture where you can see the location of our installations in our plant, which is 15 million tonnes per year nameplate, but the reality, it's 16 million tonnes. At the left lower part is the Corta Atalaya pit, which we will plan to expand. And in the bottom right is our existing pit, where we have a mine life of over 10 years. But this is a very prolific belt. In Slide 14, you will see our mining rights with existing mines. You will see that there are several existing mines already. Las Cruces, our first quantum, the 3 mines of MATSA, Sandfire now. And further to the West, we'll have 2 older mines, Almina and Neves-Corvo, in Portugal. It's a very prolific belt. Because it's a very prolific belt, the first thing we did is we got, 2 years ago in Masa Valverde and where [ Herros ] was drilled, we had an option where, typically of us, we just worked and we didn't announce anything until we got it. But we did discover deposits called Majadales, which is shown in the right side of the picture. There, we have put a few holes and the last one we have announced has significant copper values with zinc and lead and silver. 1.5 kilometers to the west is the main Masa Valverde deposit where we have 2 rigs right now. Because the distance of between those holes is very wide, so it's quite open. And it's a significant deposit. We are preparing the 43-101, but at the same time, we're starting to release the fantastic outcomes of this deposit. It contains some zinc areas, but it also contains some copper-only areas. The copper-only areas could be sent by road directly through a ramp to our installations at Rio Tinto. So we wouldn't need any specific plant there. And that's exactly what MATSA does, trucking ore from the Sotiel mine, which is just 5 kilometers north of this one, trucks it to the mine north at Aguas Teñidas at MATSA. If you look in a flat view, this is a kind of -- imagine this is a kind of deposit of 1 kilometer long, think about 200 meters. It can be seen that there was -- it sits between 400 meters to 600 meters to 700 meters of depth, it's open in all those directions that are shown in arrows. It's a significant sized deposit and shows that the area has a lot of potential. In think or kind of purple, the zinc areas and the copper areas. You can see that there are some copper-only areas that are not polymetallic. We are very excited about that. And what can be the effect of this? Well, if somebody asks us what would the effect be if you could bring a little bit of this copper into your installation, can you produce more from Rio Tinto. Well, yes, we can. Of course, it depends on what you bring in. You can bring some areas from, let's say, 0.7% San Dionisio, which if you only added, let's say, 1 million tonnes, you would have 3,000 tonnes more of copper to our current production. If you added 4 million tonnes, you would add 11,000 tonnes of copper. Of course, you can also bring some underground, like add 2% from Masa Valverde. And you added, let's say, 1 million tonnes, which is a very small amount, that will bring 14,000 tonnes of copper additional. So we do have a good potential of growth, yes, in our satellites without making any significant amount of expansions at our site. That with Touro, on a 100% basis, we will get us basically close to 100,000 tonnes of copper produced in a stable country like Spain. So that's more or less our growth. And people ask us, I mean, we didn't know there was copper in Spain. Well, there's a lot of copper in Spain. It used to be a story. That's where Rio Tinto mining started. And MATSA, the deal of MATSA that has been bought by Sandfire for EUR 1.9 billion, I think, has helped to put the Pyrite Belt in context in the map. MATSA has, you will see that table in Slide 18, a plant of 4.7 million tonnes per year, a fantastic plant, and we have about 15 million tonnes, basically 16 million. They have an enterprise value of $1.8 million based on the purchase price, and we have about [ EUR 650 million ]. But when you start looking at production and figures and copper reserves and resources, and all this is based on the public disclosure of the transaction by Sandfire, you realize that actually we have probably higher resource life, we have higher reserves and we have higher copper equivalent resources, so it doesn't mean they are wrong. What it means is probably we are wrong, which is probably low. In addition to that, of course, we are trading at less than 3x enterprise value EBITDA versus a transaction of MATSA for almost 5x and also the much lower enterprise value per ton of reserves and resources. That means basically, how do you value company compared to the metal that you have in your inventory. So we are probably trading between 160% to 250% less than what they had. Of course, the MATSA deal is a fantastic deal, good grades, but also shows you that the potential of growth of our companies totally are not known in the market and is not well understood. So I want to emphasize that basically we are a growth company, not only dividend. Let me talk a little bit about ESG. I mean for us, this is essential. It's all about people. We have a fantastic team that has been able to do all this in the last few years. For us, governance is important. We have a Board that is independent. Even if we only had 2 persons representing the shareholders, but we have independent Board members charters and so on. We are a company, not shown there, but certified ISO 9000 in quality; 14000 in safety -- sorry, environmental; 18000 in environmental safety. We have also signed the protocol of the United Nations. We're one the few companies of the of the mining world that has signed up. And that means adhering and really being consistent and transparent with all our initiatives. All these initiatives are going to be recorded in an ESG report that's being prepared and it will be published certainly before the end of the year. And of course, since then, we are going to continue every year. For us, the pillars are environmental and climate change, try to reduce our carbon footprint. Essential on that is the E-LIX system. Essential on that is the recycling of water, tailings thickening, fuel discharge and so on. Keeping society, keeping -- we have to be a good neighbor. The place where we operate in is Rio Tinto. We are surrounded by 7 communities. Some of them villages always hitting a few hundred meters from the pit. And although we are probably not very well-known in the Touro project by some, let's say, communities, the reality is that we are very welcome and good neighbors at Atalaya, at Rio Tinto. Most of the suppliers are local, all of our employees are local. Good jobs long term with training of local people, the local workforce. We are a company that's 100% Spanish operators and employees, a few from outside of which are historic and Spanish residents for some time. That's something that we believe that we have to be good neighbors for the long term. In addition to that, we believe in the research and development. We believe in the future. And that's why we have been working with this E-LIX system, which sponsoring some people, some person that has discovered something, which is something that can change the world to produce directly metal. And we have been working with this already for 5 years, and we believe this is going to be something announced very soon. Besides that, it's incredible the amount of technology 1 mine has. If you're not familiar with mines, it's not really a quarry by itself. It's just an excavation. It's controlling where each truck goes, where each machine goes. There's over 800 motors working any time with 1,500 control points and around 20,000 signals at every given moment, all control from control rooms, almost and more actually that you would find in a passenger plane. That's the type of complexity. That's why sometimes we feel a little bit, how can I say, that we are not transmitting that because when people doubt that we are going to be doing things right in, for example, a Touro project, not being able to control tailings or control our discharge, well, we are doing it right now. We are using satellite controls to control any movement, including day and night. I mean being in the first class, why wouldn't we do it in these new projects? So eventually, it's a problem of transmission. It's a problem of education. We will get there. So those are the pillars that we have in ESG. So in conclusion, I used to say that we don't want to give surprises. I mean I'm very proud of the team. They tell us the wrong things soon, so we can correct them. We have always been guiding what we are going to be doing. First, a few years ago, was to reduce the capital costs, increase the production, expand and always, always, we have been delivering against the odds and lots of people. And so the targets that we had in '21, like increasing the production, safety, growth options, some sustainability disclosure and so on, everything has been done or is on track. So the last one was giving back dividends. Near term, we will continue with growth projects basically concentrated in our land, but we, we don't care to look at the future in other places. We continue to work with the increased liquidity of the shares, and I think that's improving a lot. And you have probably seen that 6 institutions, 6 brokers, are now covering our company. That's a signal of the interest to this company. All of them with very good, nice targets. And I think people are starting to realize that we are a serious company. One of the things we are doing and we said is how can we redomicile our parent company to the U.K. And there are a few questions that we will answer about this. We are working on that. Long term, what are we going to be doing? Well, I have a little bit -- not have all eggs in the same basket, become a multi-asset producer. Obviously, Touro is our first goal. But if that one gets delayed, well, we will continue, insist and be patient, but we have other growth options in the south part of Spain and even we are going to be looking at other parts of Spain and the rest of the world. We probably will be exposing ourselves to other commodities if it's an opportunity. And one important thing strategic is to move to the main market. I mean I know we inherited the situation with AIM, okay? We have gone, made a lot of changes, but the end game will be to move to the main market, which provides more liquidity, more visibility, and we are working on that. We say in the right time, but you all know that, when we say in the right time, it's not going to take long. So look, in the presentation, besides what I just mentioned, you will see the summary of the registers, the recommendations of shareholders, how are we compared with peers. I mean, compared in production ratios and so on, how are we in costs, in all-in sustaining costs, you will see that in Page 29. And you'll also see a summary of the reserves, and you will also see a little bit of Touro and E-LIX. But that's for any of you that want more details. In any case, I think the best thing is to get into answering the questions that have been submitted. We have had lots of questions, and they have been kindly summarized into groups so that we try not to leave any question unanswered. So with that, I will open it back to the moderator.

Fantastic. That's wonderful, but thank you so much. Thank you, Cesar as well for the presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, as Alberto said, we have had a number of questions. [Operator Instructions] I'd like to remind you the recording of the presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed via investor dashboard on the Investor Meet Company platform. I'd also like to remind you that your feedback is important to the company. And immediately, after the presentation has ended, you'll be redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the company can better understand your views and expectations. Cesar, Alberto, as you did state, we've had a number of questions, both pre-submitted and during today's live event. And perhaps if I could start the Q&A session off of the first question, which relates to E-LIX. And it comes in 4 parts, which I'll read out all 4. And if you want to repeat them as you go, do let me know. It reads as follows, how much will it cost to build a full-scale plant? How long do you expect it will take to build the full-scale plant? And have you applied for any EU environmental initiative grants to support the cost of building plants? If so, could that reduce the cost? How much could that reduce the cost by? And when will we hear if that application is successful? And the final part, does E-LIX technology help to increase asset large reserve and resources? If so, can you quantify that for us? Appreciate 4 parts of that, and if you want me to repeat any, just please say.

No, I have them printed. Thank you very much. It's a complex question and some of the numbers are difficult to respond. But in general, look, the cost of building depends a lot on what is the final end product, do you want cathodes of copper that are LME or do you want cathodes of copper that are not LME but you will get paid 100% but not with a premium, do you want pure cathodes of zinc or do you want just zinc 99.9%. The difference between the CapEx of one or the other is does it contain or not the SX section, the solvent extraction section. The E-LIX system is an electrochemical system where it dissolves the sulfides, in such a way that reduces the dissolution of some things that are not needed like iron, for example. And once you have that dissolved, you have several ways. We used to have a saying, an expression in Spain that problem dissolved, problem solved, which means that basically, once you put the sulfides into solution, you can recover the metals that are there. You can recover the metals in two ways: by precipitation and that can be followed by electrolytic metal disposal or directly with electrolytic. Depends on that, the cost of CapEx will be higher. The CapEx has been calculated around between $5,000 and $6,000 per tonne of copper produced, in general. I mean it depends on the -- well, it could go up to $7,000, depends on the place, that if it's built here in Rio Tinto where we have a big infrastructure. If it was in some other places, it will be higher or lower, depends on the electrical situation, the land and so on. How long does it take? Well, the first plant, and we are probably going to be going through 1 line, it will take us around 1 year, not much more. The main question here are the electrolytic part, which have some delivery times. The rest is the tanks and so on. Tanks, pipes and civil are not that complex. Of course, there's lots of pipes and controls. So basically, in 1 year from now, before the end of the next year, we will be having something very likely in operation that will show us how it works. Have you applied for any new environmental incentives? Well, not specifically ourselves, but we have been put within a group of an initiative that has been led by Atlantic Copper, which is a smelter owned by Freeport, where they put almost, I would say, couple of billion, I think it was, of initiatives that have to be initiatives that are multiregional, multi-companies. So we were a part of that. They were put in a refinery to recover scrap. We were putting part of the E-LIX, and we were putting other initiatives. So we have put a lump sum there for this, but not formally applied, nothing. This is basically to make sure that there is some money allocated when the European Union expressed this. Once this is in operation, and it's important to say that we are going to be doing something with E-LIX regardless of helps, we have been investing a significant amount of money in the last 6 years. We have done this with our cash flow, without any help at all. And normally, without the minimum public release, in secret, because it is so important. So we will do it regardless the grants. If the grants are there, fantastic. How much will it reduce the cost? Well, we don't know. If we get the grants, that would be fantastic. Does this technology help to increase the reserves and resources? Well, look, what this technology does is, because it's leaching, you don't need to separate the particles in pieces. Imagine a particle that is 2 millimeters and half of it is the zinc metal, the other half is iron, the other half is copper. Well, you don't need to grind that and separate each of the small particles to be able to float them, which is the conventional route. You can break them in such a way that you can dissolve them, this means that you get better recovery in what you have. I mean, it means that things that were probably before were not economic may become economic. So I think that's the way it will happen. A good example will be the Masa Valverde, Majadales deposit or the San Antonio deposit. All of these have copper, lead, zinc. If we went through the conventional route, which is the one, for example, applied by MATSA, you use flotation, and you may have a recovery, let's say, of around 75% of copper, around 75% of zinc. If you use the leaching system, what you do is you have a global recovery of 90% to produce a bulk concentrate, a global concentrate, a dirty concentrate. And once you have that, you leach it, you dissolve it. And basically, this is able to dissolve 95% of that solution. What does it mean? The added value is getting higher recovery of a single tonne that contains ex metals. This is important because then what matters is that you have to extract the tonne from the ground. You have to grind it anyway. You have to extract it anyway. So the more you get makes it more economic. And of course, it will increase the reserves by being able to treat tonnes that otherwise will be marginal unless the metals were higher. I hope this is understood, but it's a fantastic opportunity for us, we believe.

The second question, the theme around here is the solar plant. A couple of questions around it, really. How much overall it cost you to build? What is the latest approximation of when the solar part will be operational? Are there any grants that will support this green initiative? And how does the 30% electricity cost reduction impacts overall costs.

The plan, we are basically almost about to receive the final permit, which is in our ground, our land. It will cost between EUR 25 million and EUR 28 million. Those are the offers that we have right now. We will be building this. We're already doing some civil work. As soon as we're awarded, it will be less than 1 year, normally around 10 months to connect it. We have not requested for any grants because the grants are excluded from certain sizes. At least in Spain, you only get grants for up to x amount of kilowatts and we are over that. So I am not aware of any grants where we can apply this, but we will do it regardless because it's responsible and because it's also a good thing for us. The cost reduction of 30% comes basically as a matter of reducing the costs during the daytime. In our case right now, it's for you to make the numbers, obviously, the reduction depends on the price of electricity. The current price of electricity up to December is around [ EUR 0.06 ] per kilowatt hour. But you all know that in Europe and Spain, specifically, the prices of power are getting crazy due to the high prices of gas. And lots of other reasons. So we expect next year, the cost will be higher, so the savings will be higher. Right now, in our cost structure, around 15% of the costs are power. So if we can save a big amount of that, that's the amount where we can reduce it. So it won't be a huge thing. It will not be a deal breaker, but certainly will help to mitigate one of our higher cost initiatives.

Next question we've got, around dividend. Thank you very much for the dividend, very pleased. This question may have been asked, but going forward, can we look to simplify dividend payment in consideration of serial tax rules?

Maybe the person who has suffered this pain with the tax is Cesar. So maybe, Cesar, you can take this question. But yes, I hope we can simplify.

Thank you, Alberto. Hello, everyone. So for the inaugural dividend, we requested a tax form to be completed by all shareholders to avoid any withholding on the serial tax. I mean, unfortunately, that was the instruction that we have been given by the tax office in Cyprus. We're still in discussions with the tax computation. We don't have to withhold the dividend in the next payment that we're going to be doing on the 1st of March. So that's the situation now. We are currently having that sort of discussion with the tax office. So for 2022, so for next year, we have looked all the precedents in the country to ensure that we simplify the process as much as we can, and we are also providing the computation in advance to the tax office to ensure that they understand that we don't have any tax precedent in our register, and we hopefully can get some exemptions. So that's the idea. So we still need -- but that is something that still needs to be agreed, and that's something that we're going to be starting -- start to work on next year. Just taking the advantage, we are speaking about dividend. I can also say that if we have been -- we will be paying dividend for Q4 2021. So there is no plan to do it so for now. But obviously, it will depend on the cash generation of the company during the last quarter, which is actually quite good. I forgot to mention, it's continue building up. But this is also that we also need to look at the cash requirement that we will have for the growth project that we have in the pipeline. So that's the current situation now for the tax and for the dividend in Q4 2021.

The next question we've got here relates to domiciled in Cyprus. What advantages are there of being domiciled in Cyprus? This is the legacy of our former CEO. I seem to remember it may give us some anti-takeover protection, which does have value. Is it an alternative to Cyprus? Would it bring any advantage to change?

Yes. Well, it's certainly something that we intended. Probably, we would be establishing the company now, we would select another location to be the base or holding company. And we did have, for sure, several internal discussions to evaluate if Cyprus is the right place. I mean the country has offered many advantages to Atalaya historically such as the anti-takeover protection that was mentioned in the question. However, we have to look at Atalaya in the current context and how are we currently working. And we are currently working to migrate the holding company to the U.K. as we think that that's the best fit that we have for the current situation for Atalaya. So we currently have a company listed in the U.K. That needs to be obviously in compliance with the regulation within the financial markets in the U.K. We have an operation in Spain. And we have a holding company which is based in Cyprus and in fulfillment with companies act in Cyprus. So that requires a bit of complexity when we have AGMs or we have EGMs or when we transactions. So this is why we think that moving to the U.K. will fit better to the company as it is now as we don't need the protection that we used to have when we were a small company, a junior company.

Just an extension of the next question being is really how long is that process is expected to take? And what are the time scales around it, Cesar?

Yes. Well, we have started already the process. That takes a little bit of time. So we have analyzed what the steps that we need to take as is not possible as redomiciliation as such. We actually need to establish a newco in the U.K. and this newco will need to acquire all the shareholders sitting on the holding company in Cyprus. So this is something that actually means that we have to delist the company and then start the process to an IPO, the U.K. entity, and that will require some time and will also require the approval of the shareholder. In terms of timing, we have really worked on the tax, and we have completed some of the tax analysis, and that's good. We are also looking to all the legal implication of the newco in the U.K. and we are finalizing also all the accounting and the implication of the migration. But in terms of the timing for the process, we are working on it, and I believe I'm confident that we will be completing the process in 2022. But it takes a little bit of time to go through everything.

The next question read as follows, what's Atalaya doing to enhance trading liquidity? And I know Alberto, you did pick up on this as we went through the presentation, but if there's anything further to add, please?

Well, I think the main thing is getting on the road, doing lots of presentations and deducing as much as possible to as many shareholders as possible because we believe we are undervalued. But there have been shareholders that have come in earlier and they may want to take some profits out and they are more conservative or have different views in copper price or different views in the economy in the world. And that is what creates some happy sellers and some happy buyers. So right now, that's what we are doing. We have a significant float now. We have institutions except the 2 big shareholders that control 44.4% of the company, which I have to say that, at a certain time, they would also be sellers, who knows, but it's in the hands of institutions that are, in the right time, they will be taking their profits or not and bringing in new shareholders. We are quite happy how things are going, and we see volumes pick up every day and getting hundreds of thousands of shares every day, which means millions of pounds, which is good for everybody.

Next question is in Touro. Have you submitted revised environmental plan as you'd envisaged by the end of Q3? If revised plans have been submitted, what was the junta's initial reaction to the new plants?

We have not submitted an environmental plan. And really, what we will be submitting is a new project, a new design, which basically is almost finalized, but we want to make sure that everything is absolutely correct. It has not been submitted, and it's almost ready. So there's no reaction of the junta. But what we're doing is making sure that we tick all the boxes and has absolutely no possibility of failure from the technical and environmental point of view. The initiatives that we are taking have already been flagged by us, which is, first of all, is to increase this factor of safety of the tailings. Second is remove the water from the tailings, which means if there's no water, there is no possibility of having any catastrophic failure. Third is making sure there's no water discharge whatsoever in the rivers and the creeks. Another one we are doing is we will take care of the past liabilities, of the legacy liabilities, which are not our problem, but we are consistent. We know that we will have to do it, and make sure that we do it correctly because this is the way to have a long-term operation. And besides that, there are other initiatives of, for example, thickening the tailings, the recovery of water, not taking any water from the river, just using the water from the rain, which we believe is enough. So plastic line tailings, that was already designed. So basically increase safety, reduce the risk to basically zero and demonstrate that and also be transparent with our product and with all the groups, including the groups that are against it, which may be truly against the project or maybe sometimes we have to be careful if they are not political, using this as a political flag. But we don't want to get into politics. We want to do things right because we want to be a long-term neighbor that's going to be there for a long time. So it will be stupid to do it wrong and then have to stop because the rules in Spain, regardless of what people may think, are very strict and we do not want to fail. And we'll do whatever is needed from the technical point of view to make sure this is done in the right way. And this is a model of quality that we can mirror ourselves. I have to say, by the way, that I'm from that area, my father, my mother are from that area. I have uncles and cousins living in the place where I live. My sister lives there. By no means I'm going to allow any of my team to do things that are not perfect because this is beyond what's an investment. So we are sure we are going to do it right. And we are trying to transmit that to the whole team.

The next question reads, I hear that San Rafael has asked for authorization to build 2 water treatment plants at a cost of EUR 1.3 million. Has it been accepted by the citizens of Galicia as part of the targeted action by Atalaya and partners to bring older mining activity in line with current good practices? Or is it a separate noncontingent or part of the new EIA?

This is a very interesting company, which comes obviously for somebody that knows the place because these names, [ Ponxedo ] and Portapego are small creeks that's front to the property. I'm very happy to first explain what it is to the audience, to the general public, and also explain to the listeners of this, which I'm sure they come from local communities or the local authorities or whatever. First of all, there is a small problem. There is a problem, historic problem, a problem that is not part of Atalaya. Atalaya is part of San Rafael. San Rafael is the new company where we have the local partner, which is the owner of mining rights. And us, we are providing all the costs. We are providing all the technology and they are kind of passive shareholders. It's not even the responsibility of the old people that took that company and took that land. We are talking about water, rainwater, that infiltrates through the old tailings and comes out as slightly acidic, but not in a big amount. We are talking about 3 liters per second. Okay, this is historic and actually corresponds to the mine operators, which were closed in 1987, but it's there. So this fact that does not belong to us and does not belong to even the existing owners of the property has been used to attack us and to say, well, if this is wrong, look, we shouldn't allow the new thing. Why this is not correct? It's not correct because we are going to be using plastic lining. If the owners in '87 had used plastic lining, this would not be happening. This is clean water gets into contact and it acidifies. Let's quantify what's going to this rivers, [ Ponxedo ] and Portapego. It's around 3 liters per second, which I don't know exactly how much is in kiloliters per year, but not much. It does not contain specific metals. It contains iron. But to put it in context, when we are at the Rio Tinto, we had 1 pit was flooded with 4 million cubic meters of acid water much worse than this. We have treated 4 million cubic meters of water with its cost and use that water with absolutely zero discharge. We have done it in Rio Tinto. Why wouldn't we do it in this place? So going to the question, San Rafael, which is the local company, has asked for authorization to build water treatment plants. There is a problem there, and we say, "You know what, let's solve the problem regardless of the new project." So this problem, we want to resolve it. We, as a company, as a responsible neighbor, we want to resolve it. And if it cost us this million and later, we don't get the authorization of the new project, so be it. It will be irresponsible because we have shown that we can do it. We want to show that if things are done right, it can be sorted out. So it will be like somebody picking up garbage that's in the street and thrown it to the garbage can even if they have not thrown the garbage. We are a responsible neighbor, and we are going to do it. Has this been accepted by the junta? Not yet. And it's a funny situation because those that are opposing the project are also opposing us to fix that. And the reason is very simple. They want to use this as a flag. Because if there is a picture to be shown, there will always be something to show. If it's fixed, there won't be any problem. But we hope we can find a legal solution where basically a problem is sorted out and it can be shown for the future that the same way that cars have changed in 25 years, the same way that in the past, 25 years ago, all the villages and towns were throwing their sewage into the rivers, and this is not done anymore, I think we should understand that today technology allow us to do things in the right way, not only because we want to do it, which we want also because there is laws and laws that we are going to fulfill simply because we're responsible, simply because we are acting for our shareholders. And our shareholders are asking us to do things right. Otherwise, they wouldn't invest in this company started by me. So I know it's a long response. I hope my message is clear. Atalaya is a serious company formed by people from the local that want to do things right and want to do things in the long term, and they are not scared on spending money to do things right, like it have been done in Rio Tinto, and that's the way things are going to be done in Touro. I'm glad that this thing is asked to let it very clear, we want to do things right. Regardless of the outcome of the EIA. With EIA, for you, it's basically the environment impact assessment that's going to be again tested in the new process.

The next one reads ESG investing. The trend is to favor those listed companies who are meeting carbon footprint targets. Given you're investing in a solar electricity farm, combined with other efficiency measures, it will probably improve Atalaya's carbon footprint relative to those other miners and potentially attract investment. We've been investigating that, what agencies to work with, so you can join and get green credentials and communicate that to the investment community.

Yes, we're working on that already. And we're first working with somebody specialized in the world to provide us with a good ESG report, transparent report for our past activities. Very much like we have done in exploration, we do much more things that we announce and because we believe things have been done right, not so much of saying them, but we do them right. But yes, we are working on that, and we will be a foreign part, as an example, of a company of those initiatives. The solar plant, we started this already 2 years ago and when this ESG theme was not so much in fashion. And we did that because we believe it's the right way to do it. But yes, we are working with that, and we have had lots of people coming and asking us about the way we work because they may be interested in companies that are serious and do things in the right way.

I'm just conscious, we are coming up towards the hour, we have covered off a number of investors' questions. If I just may ask you both just to click on that Q&A tab and just have a final scan through, just if there are any other questions, you would like to respond to.

I can read them. E-LIX expected to be completed, I think we mentioned that in 1 year when we decide which would be quite soon. Interesting, this one. How optimistic are you in copper price impacting your business? Well, we are optimistic. We have been optimistic already for years, and the reason is very simple. Building products, as we have seen in Touro, as we have seen in Rio Tinto, is not easy. And it's not easy here. Imagine how easy it is to build them in places where there's lots of deposits like in the Andes, Indonesia, Africa. So building new copper is not easy. On the other hand, there is demand for the green wave, demand for the electrification, demand for meeting our carbon targets worldwide. So it's not only China, it's the whole world needing these green initiatives, which means new copper. So higher demand, low supply, we believe copper price is going to stay higher for longer. And besides more hiccups, the new norm will be in the 4 and upwards dollars per pound. And do you expect a little bit higher unit mining costs in Q3 to persist in Q4 and going to 2022? Unfortunately, yes. Diesel price has an influence and diesel price is high, as you know. Until the diesel goes down, we will see it. The truth is that this is being compensated by the copper price because also copper goes up. But yes, unfortunately, energy is important worldwide, and we'll have to bite the bullet, and this is what it is. We are trying to do as much as we can by reducing the consumptions. But unfortunately, the world is in a difficult situation. Another interesting one is how do you see copper demand and supply balance. I spoke a little bit Peruvian and Chile political situation. What can you expect in terms of production and all-in cost, M&A sizable opportunities in broad terms, the stock exchange? Look, yes, I mentioned about Peru and Chile. In general, situation is very complicated everywhere. Peru and Chile produced the first and second producer of the world. Chile alone produces more than 1/4 of the production of the world and things are not getting easy. With the copper prices high, also, there will be higher demand from unions, from people, from taxes. Things are not easy. Peru have Castillo there, which has his own view. It will not make it easy also to invest in new companies. So this thing is going to hurt supply. Production in 2022 and all-in sustaining cost, we have flagged already what's going to happen in the last quarter. Well, we believe 2022 will be similar in production. I think all-in sustaining cost will be higher because of the terms of inflation. I mean diesel will be higher. Price of steel will be higher. Explosives, very likely to be higher. So yes, it will be higher worldwide. And whoever says the contrary is probably lying because the reality is that we are seeing inflation all over the world. M&A opportunities and size, well, we are very, very focused, very concentrated in Spain and Europe, in sizes. We are not going to be behind the big billion that can kill our company. We look at things that make sense and carrying great value, like we have done in the past. Metals, in general, copper, but we were also happy with base metals, which will be in high supply. Liquidity has increased, that's another question, that's good. People asked us if the tax is going to be paid without deduction. In theory, we should deduct taxes for those that are residents in Cyprus. None of our shareholders have been identified as Cyprus residents. I think we are working with the tax authorities of Cyprus to prove that really, we don't need to do it because they are domiciled in the U.K. or in Spain or in Canada or whatever. So that's the way we are working. We will be the best in class if we do E-LIX and solar. I think I agree 100% with this comment. When does the market agreement end with Astor? Unfortunately, it still has to go for quite a while. It's capped at, I think, [ EUR 43 million ], and we are very close to that. You will probably see that we are paying less. So he's the happy receiver of this money, but it has an end like everything. We just consumed 1 hour and 3 minutes, thank you very much.

You have been fantastic, Alberto. Thank you, Cesar. Thank you so much for answering every single question we've had come through. I'm sure it's greatly appreciated by the attendees. Alberto, just before we redirect the attendees to give you some feedback, if I could just ask you just perhaps for a few closing comments before we end the call.

Yes. Look, I would just like, again, first of all, the existing shareholders to be patient. Those that have been with time with us, I mean we have delivered on our promises. We have worked hard. We have a very good team. Very proud of being in Atalaya, and we thank them a lot for their support. It has been hard times. For those in the future, think of this company. We are a serious company. We don't overpromise. We deliver. So think of it. We think we are a good company. That's all. I mean, I've said that before. Those who have jumped in the train are happy riders. There's still some time for the train to leave. And again, thank you very much.

Fantastic. Alberto, Cesar, thank you so much for updating investors today. So I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. It's going to take a few moments to complete and is greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the managed team of Atalaya Mining Plc we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. Thank you, and good morning.

Thank you very much.