Premier African Minerals Limited (PREM.L) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the General Meeting of Premier Africa Minerals Limited. I'd just like to introduce myself to those who don't know me, haven't seen me, haven't met me before. My name is Graham Hill. I took over from the beginning of September as the new Managing Director of Premier. Right. Before proceeding with the formal business of the meeting, are there any questions concerning the proposed resolutions? Anybody present, if they are representing -- if they are a proxy, you would need to name the people you are representing. There's no proxies present, then with the consent of the meeting, I will take the notice of the General Meeting as read. Is that agreed? Yes, I have. Yes, the people present in the meeting agree to that. Before I put each resolution formally to the votes, you will have an opportunity to raise questions in relation to the resolutions. I will now formally propose the resolutions to the meeting. Full text of each of the resolutions is set out in the notice of meeting, a copy of which was available for download on the company's web page. It's the same as the notice that went out for the meeting that was originally intended for the 30th of October. Resolution 1 to 2 is proposed as a special resolution. This means that in order to have those resolutions passed, in excess of 3/4 of the votes cast must be in favor of the resolution. To start with resolution 1, to approve for the period commencing 24 months following the date of this general meeting, the period, the disapplication of the preemption provisions set out in Regulation 1.5 of the company's Articles of Association in relation to the issue of or the grant of any right to subscribe for or convert any security into -- shares in accordance with the provisions of this resolution so that the company may make offers and enter into agreements during the period, which would or might require shares to be allotted or rights to subscribe for or convert other securities into shares to be granted after the period ends. Are there any questions in relation to the resolution? Not present. Then I will now propose Resolution 1. Please raise your hand to vote those present in the meeting. [Voting]

All those in favor? All those against? Thank you. As Chairman, I hold 2 proxies totaling 2,192,323 that sorry -- 2,192,323,810 votes in favor of this resolution. So people are complaining that my mic is muted. It's not. I've maybe got a little bit more volume. I can increase on my mic. I hope that helps. Okay. Well, thank you. The mic is at full volume. So nothing more I can do about that. My apologies to anybody who's having difficulty. I will try and speak later and more clearly. Okay. Good. Thanks very much. And some people now can hear me perfectly well. So I'll go back again. I hold 2 proxies totaling 2,192,323,810 votes in favor of this resolution, 31,057,724 against, and 10,809,272 votes withheld. I declare resolution 1 passed as a special resolution of the company. Resolution 2, conditional on the approval of Resolution 1. The approval for a period commencing 12 months following the date of this general meeting, the conversion period. This application of the preemption provisions set out in Regulation 1.5 of the company's Articles of Association in relation to the issue of or the grant of any right to subscribe for or convert into security -- any security into up to a further 1 billion ordinary shares and to authorize the directors of the company to issue such number of shares in favor of Canmax in accordance with their conversion rights as notified on the 24th of December 2024. I now propose resolution 2. Please raise your hand vote. [Voting]

Those in favor? Okay. Noted. Those against? None. Okay. As Chairman, again, I hold 2 proxies totaling 2,192,323,810 in favor of this resolution, 31,057,724 against and 10,819,217 votes woithheld. On the basis that Resolution 1 has passed, I declare resolution has now also passed as a special resolution of the company. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's formal business. On behalf of the Board, I would like to thank you all for your attendance, and I declare this Annual General Meeting closed. I will be available to take -- to answer some questions. So I'll just open up the questions and answers that I have in front of me.

Okay. I'm not seeing anything here. My apologies, I was looking in the wrong place for the questions and -- for the questions. I won't answer all the questions individually. There's obviously interest in the second plant? How soon it could be operational? How much it will cost and throughput? I think in the notice or in the RNS that went out today, the throughput of the plant is mentioned. 15 to 20 tons an hour. Cost, it's a matter of final commercial discussions between ourselves and the supplier, which should be finalized during the course of this week, I hope. And regarding, it is available within Zimbabwe. It will be delivered within 1 month to site. Within 1 month, it was making a payment for it. Thereafter, there is a period for erection, which is somewhere between 1 to 2 months and then another month commissioning work and final optimization. So difficult to be exact. We're going to be working on the exact planning with the suppliers. But within 4 months, we believe it could be up and erected but that's take -- trying to take -- we have to try and take into account what may or may not happen over the Christmas and New Year period. Generally that is the target, and we'll be announcing, as I mentioned in earlier RNS, what exactly the timing is expected to be as soon as we finalize that with the supplier. Just scrolling down. I hope everybody can still hear me, okay. I know some of you struggle a little bit. So the current status of the new flotation plant, there's question here have from Jason. It is disassembled. It is new. It's disassembled outside of Harare in Zimbabwe. So like I said, as soon as we've made payment, it will be delivered to site as quickly as possible. The next question from Nitin Sharma, and very similar to the 1 we just answered regarding how long before it's fully functional? The raising of the money, this is what's obviously, as you're aware, this general meeting is in order to be able to raise money for the ongoing working capital and operational requirements of Zulu Lithium. And part of that is in terms of providing funding for the new flotation plant. And I think the further questions relate to more or less the same thing from [indiscernible]. We definitely leave to part end of the day, Andy, thank you very much. That's always been my intention from day 1 to find the best way forward for the company to the benefit of all the shareholders. We'll see about raising the money. Obviously, we're not intending to raise all the money at one time. Excuse me. I've got [indiscernible]. Nothing we've made mention of it regarding the -- to Chris Buckley. The large trading house, yes, they're still interested, and we've had ongoing letters of interest from them, which are being shared with Canmax as well. Generation of cash, well following the conclusion of this meeting. between Brendan and myself and Tomas Apetauer, the CFO, will be putting together the budget to look at what we need to raise immediately. And then we'll be in the market, we have a lot of interest available in the market to pick up some of these shares, which we've agreed now to make available. Regarding Norman [indiscernible], we have a question there. So that's going on again, okay. So the questions are flickering around a bit. Regarding the status of the float plant funding, we have already constructed the civil works for the new float plant, and that has been fully paid for. That was completed in July, August. So that part of the construction has been fully completed and paid for. So it's just a balance of the supply, the extra bits of cabling and piping. Some extra bits of steel that are required to provide walkways around the flotation cells, and the cabling to the new -- from new MCC. Discussions both with Canmax and Glencore, obviously Glencore, the same as Canmax, subject to us being able to produce to grade and consistently. Regarding items such as share buyback, I can understand the question, that I would have to actually refer to the Board and our advisers and see if there's something on that in the future. But primary target right now is exactly what you say in your opening questions, when the plant is working and profitable. I think that puts us in a very different position to where we are now to be able to look at what our future plans are going to be. Right now, the plant is on stop. So we are not actually operating the plant at the moment with the current status of things and being the need to raise money, we decided to just put the plant on to care and maintenance for now until we make some definitive plans with what we're actually going to do to make this plant work finally. So that's what we're doing right now. So we brought in these people to do a technical audit. It's going very well, raise a lot of suggestions and a lot of positive thoughts. As I say, the positivity that came out of it is that the technology we're using is appropriate, just that some of the equipment we have installed is not correctly adapted to use in a spodumene flotation. And so that's what we're looking at doing is putting in a more conventional flotation plant now to help us overcome the problems we've had there. We've also got some very useful suggestions regarding modifications to other parts of the plant to try and simplify it as much as possible and make a whole plant more reliable, more stable and give us complete control over it. And this is really my objective. We've got to take control of this processing plant and get it working. So I'm glad I brought in these people. There is some discussion with the existing OEMs as to what they think, which is going to be a healthy way forward. I want people working on this together. I don't want it to turn into any kind of bun fight. So that's what we're managing at the moment. Yes, obviously, the spodumene price that is increasing, which is very healthy for us. And running at lower grade [ and auction ] to generate finance. What we're looking at, we've got quite a lot of bags of spodumene which are below grade. But we know there are people out there who will actually buy it. So we believe that we can generate some additional cash by moving some of that below grade material. There is actually a market for it. Obviously, it's not the full price for an SC6, but we have plans around that. I know there's a question about me personally investing in Premier and buying shares. I have answered this previously to other people. Unfortunately, in my position here and with all the activities we've been going through recently, we tend to be in a permanent close period for me to actually trading any shares. I am taking advice from our [ Nomads ] regarding any open periods and I'll certainly be considering that at the right time because I believe in the future of the company. Yes, [indiscernible] relationship with the current offtake? Well, I mean, I spent the weekend is talking to Canmax, it was a very -- it was my first real conversation with Canmax directly. And it was a very open discussion we had between us, enabling us really to go ahead with things today. So okay. I'm not going to go into details right now about the issues with the existing plants. Spodumene flotation, it's a little bit different to other types of flotation and the team on sites and people at Prem have been learning about spodumene flotation, and we've been taking very good advice from people around the world, and I will continue to do so. Because one thing that there isn't a plethora of people who are spodumene floatation experts. So you have to push around a bit in order to be able to get this. Yes, we do have updates on RHA and other assets. We're not going to discuss that here and now. At the right time, we will be making announcements in regard to the other assets and what's happening. There is ongoing progress in terms of discussions. Yes. So I think gentlemen, ladies, thank you very much for your attendance. And I will hereby end this meeting on this call. I hope I've been able to answer a lot of your questions, if not all of them. So thank you very, very much. It's been a great pleasure to be able to talk to you and share with you the good news of today is, resolutions being passed. Thank you.