Lifezone Metals Limited 2026 Q3 Earnings Call

Welcome. Please give us a minute for all our attendees to arrive. Welcome to the Lifezone Metals webcast. Please give us a few more minutes for more attendees to arrive. Welcome to the Lifezone Metals webcast to discuss the Q3 2026 interim financial results and to provide an operational update. We will finish today's event with a question and answer session. You can submit a question using the Q&A box at the top of the page. Please feel free to contact us directly for any questions not addressed in this webcast. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that today's event will contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that can cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Details of the forward-looking statements are contained in our October 29th news release on our website at www.lifezonemetals.com.

Please see additional disclaimers, which I would encourage you to read in your own time. Joining me today is Lifezone's Chief Executive Officer, Chris Showalter, and Chief Financial Officer, Ingo Hofmaier. Without any further ado, I would like to turn things over to Ingo to start the presentation.

Thank you. Thank you, Catherine, and welcome to our Q3 financial results presentation.

As in the past, we want to speak about the nickel market first, which is topical after last week's LME week. After a strong first half, the second half has so far seen a mixed nickel market with many contradictory signals. Sulfur peaked mid-year at around $1,100 per ton, which was a historical high. Indonesian imports of sulfur fell in volume but rose in value as Middle Eastern suppliers retreated sharply. But starting in Q3, improved shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and supplementary imports such as Canadian sulfur, significantly improved Indonesian sulfur supply compared to Q2. Sulfur is now reported to be trading at around $800 per ton, which is still eight times last year's price.

Our friend Jim Lennon reported that every $100 increase in sulfur prices adds around $1,000 per ton of HPAL production costs in Indonesia. Therefore, Indonesian HPAL producers have moved from the bottom to the top of the cost curve, with some cutting outputs by up to 50%, and there are rumors that more cuts are going to follow. Also, some of the analysts noted recently that ore grades in the limonite ore falling below 1.5% to 1.4% raises acid consumption per unit of nickel recovered, which compounds the sulfur cost pressure. But on the other hand, Class 1 stocks have risen, seemingly keeping LME prices in check, and more importantly, ore prices have fallen in the last couple of months as extra RKAB quotas came onto the market, with downstream operations complaining about not having enough ore and a delayed rainy season extending the mining window in Indonesia.

With well over 65% of market share and still growing, Indonesia holds the key to nickel prices and has publicly maintained in recent weeks that its target price is $19,000-$20,000 per ton. With that, I would like to hand over to Chris for a more operational update before I return with the financials.

Okay. Thank you, Ingo. Welcome, everyone. I am very excited to dive right in here. I think from our last quarterly, we do have some material updates to talk about, and I will jump right into the key elements on the financing. First and foremost, on the short-term financing, this is really important liquidity for us to bridge from the DFS to FID. We have drawn down a total of $41 million, and we had the last tranche draw down. This is really empowering our owners team and I will talk on another slide, really the activities that have been undertaken and what the owners team is focused on because there is a lot of activity on the ground. It is very important in really keeping us on these timelines to march toward FID, and really get all the preparation in place for the full scale of construction. Okay. Next, we did issue a press release on Friday.

It was publicly announced that Lifezone Metals is in advanced negotiations with the Orion Critical Mineral Consortium. This was disclosed on Friday, so this gives me the latitude to really discuss how we are positioned as a company and what this really means going forward. The Orion CMC, by introduction, I mean this is a multi-billion dollar critical minerals consortium involving the U.S. government, Orion, which is really the preeminent private investor in the mining space, as well as the sovereign investment fund, L'IMAD from the U.A.E. What this really does is bring together some of the world's leading metals and mining investors' pools of capital, in addition to the projects and operators to create this. Really, this is all driven for the creation of competitiveness and national security, really led by the U.S. government.

For us, what I am excited to convey here is for a tier 1 project like Kabanga, this is a demonstration of the types of capital we are able to attract and the strategic importance of Kabanga as a project, just given its size and scale. These are the pools of capital driven by the United States and its Western allies that are absolutely best in class for us to demonstrate the competitiveness for us moving forward as a project. This is something we will be able to announce more details in the near term.

We cannot give a lot of details, but I think the fact that this is now public, what I can outline a little bit more is the U.S. nexus that we are capitalizing on, the amount of support we are getting from all of the various departments and agencies, and this is really a Western aligned investment consortium that we are marching forward with. I think that really translates into the project finance process as well. What you are going to see as we get into more detail on the project financing is a construct of a number of Western best-in-class banks, DFIs, ECAs that will be complementary to the equity piece, which is obviously a very Western U.S.-centric driven equity group. Something we are really excited about, and there will be more detail to disclose as we go forward.

But for our board of directors, the process we have gone through, we couldn't have really designed a better investment group to come in and support this project. This news should be very, very positively taken and a demonstration of the work and support we have been undertaking in D.C. and overall with the U.S.-led initiative. Just in addition, I think I would like to highlight on the Tanzanian side, we continue to advance and get into final closing on the framework agreement. We have worked very intently in parallel to getting the equity in place and getting towards closing to finalize our agreements with the Tanzanian government. A credit to Honorable Mavunde, the Minister of Mines, for his support getting us to this point. He has been very active on the road.

The Tanzanian delegations have been on a number of different circuits across really the globe focusing on Tanzania being open for business. What we are very excited to do is, once we get into our final announcements, to really demonstrate this as the hallmark project supported by this Western Allied consortium. For Tanzania to be unlocking one of their most strategic sovereign resources with the help of this Western-aligned network, this is going to be something very powerful. Really, really excited to get to that point. But a credit to the Tanzanians and their excitement as well to see us close this deal. Okay, next. Okay. As we indicated, the Taurus bridge funding has been very critical. The owners team that has been assembled, a credit to Gerick Mouton, our Chief Operating Officer, and the team he has put in place.

Gerick brings a tremendous amount of expertise on the ground in Africa, building and developing projects, and he has really put together the team that he envisions is going to be the one to bring this to fruition. The team has been very busy working with our partners at DRA Global. There have been a number of workshops down in Johannesburg over the past several weeks and all the work streams that are being deployed right now and undertaken as part of this interim bridge funding to get us from DFS to FID. There has been a tremendous amount of progress on the ground. I mean, everything from camp upgrades to the procurement process. We have gone out now with over 600 plus packages for procurement, and that is a very intensive process.

For us to be able to be working on this right now is critically important because the timelines we want to meet, and especially as we march towards FID, these are critical work streams. The team's been incredibly busy on the ground. This is obviously all in advance of getting to the final closing and full FID. As I always mention, sustainability and community engagement is going to be a hallmark of how we conduct ourselves on the ground. This is something that we put an enormous amount of time and effort into the social performance and resettlement program.