Nouveau Monde Graphite Inc. Small Cap Growth Hybrid Investor Conference

Thank you, everyone. Thank you to OTC Markets for setting up this presentation. Nouveau Monde Graphite is a graphite company listed on the New York Stock Exchange big board, ticker NMG, in Toronto, NOU. We trade, as at last August 13th, about 1 million shares a day on both markets, and about 60% of our volume is actually in the U.S. What we're building is a fully integrated graphite to anode material business in Quebec. I want to put in context maybe before I start the presentation that there are forward-looking information in the presentation. One should look at these factors considering the risk factors in our filings with regulators. This being said, all the presentation is what we believe are the best assumptions as we speak today.

Getting back to the presentation, just want to mention that our plan is to be fully integrated. We are building about 2 hours north of the Montreal Airport, a 106,000 ton metric mining project, which is under construction since the month of May. Of this, we will be taking about 25% of the production and sending it to Bécancour, Quebec, which is about 2 and a half hours east of Montreal, to transform it into battery anode material, which is earmarked to support Panasonic Energy's De Soto, Kansas plant, and perhaps as well, the plant they have with Tesla into Nevada. A few years ago, we also bought another project, which we called Uatnan. It was bought from Mason Graphite. We paid $21 million US on an enterprise value basis for a company that had put $100 million in the ground. We bought this for two reasons, basically.

If we go back 5 years ago, Panasonic wanted to build five battery plants in the U.S. They're now down to two. The EV market was booming in the U.S., so our customers were asking us if we can grow with them if the EV scenario were to go forward. Basically by buying this asset, we answered, "Yes, we will be able to grow with you." Perhaps more important, this was also a defensive move. We wanted to protect our fully integrated vertical model, and we knew that companies such as POSCO out of Korea, as an example, wanted to come to North America. Would love to be fully integrated from mine to anode material under our own nose, go see our customers and say, "Why Nouveau Monde Graphite?

POSCO can do it as well. Uatnan was the only other project that had been permitted in recent past, and basically, we figured we sort of cornered the market and blocked important market players from entering the North American market while protecting our vertically integrated model. Both offensive, defensive, but very strategic. The potential of Uatnan, it could be up to five times larger than the Matawinie mine. It was initially designed as 50,000 tons for 240 years by Mason Graphite, and we switched that around for a project of 500,000 tons for 24 years, which could provide the economies of scale and keep the OPEX profile quite low. One thing that we've done very differently is that we've built, since 2018, demonstration plants.

At a high level, these demonstration plants allowed us to provide for the samples to qualify with our customers and basically sign the offtakes. Without this long game, long vision, we never would have signed the offtakes because the customer always says, "Show me your product made on commercial scale equipment." It's over CAD 125 million that was invested since 2018 with the purpose of qualifying samples and signing the offtakes. This is now behind us, and we are now in the execution phase. Basically, the mine construction has started in May. It is going on track, on budget. It's progressing well. We try to update relatively frequently with pictures so the market is able to follow that progression. It's underpinned by offtake, and I'll get into that in a few slides, with Panasonic, with Traxys, and with the government of Canada.

If everything goes well, and we expect this project to be up and running by the end of 2028 before getting into a ramp-up period, then we copy-paste, we move on to the Uatnan project and basically, repeat and move forward from there on. If we look at the basic shares outstanding, we're talking about 329 million shares. Right today, this morning, that translates into about a $350 million US market cap. If we add the only funded debt that we have of 12.5 million, it gives you a 365. If I subtract the cash position, which you see there, that was CAD 461 million, June 31st, it would bring a current enterprise value of about $40 million. I'll get into the financials a little bit later, but please keep that number in mind.

I did mention the trading pattern. We are currently covered by eight analysts. The average target price is $3.19 US. On the right-hand side, you see our current shareholders, which can be split into three big categories. At the bottom, starting with Eni and moving left, the strategics hold about a 28% stake. Eni, large oil and gas company out of Italy, bought into a financing in May at a $1.84 US. They have a 12% stake of the company and will likely be, in the near term, joining the board of Nouveau Monde. You have the governments, which act arm's length, but still an important block with about 39% of the shares outstanding, about equally split between the Quebec government and Investissement Québec and Canada Growth Fund. In the case of Canada Growth Fund, they invested the $25 million check in 2024.

They did participate in the latest round at $1.84 for $90 million U.S., but we were the first investment that they've done into a mining venture. If you look, for example, at Panasonic, which holds a 4% stake, it was the first investment they actually directly made into their supply chain. So a lot of envy from many investors with the current shareholders and a very comfortable mix, if I can say, between government, strategics, and other shareholders, which was important for governments to show that real investors looking for real returns were willing to support this project. So very important for us to strike the right balance with the investor mix. If I move on to the next slide, maybe a little bit of details about this private placement that was done, part of the financing finished, closed in May, should I say.

I'll bring your attention to Eni, who wrote a $70 million check at $1.84. Some investors have definitely let us know that they did not like the pricing, which was a 22% discount to VWAP. On the other hand, the value of having an Eni with vision, money, active themselves into battery cell manufacturing plants through joint ventures in Europe, they can bring us places we never even dreamed of. We figured over the long term, having an Eni on board was worth it to make a financing at $1.84. I'll remind you that the private investors or those that are 13F filers, tagged along, made their due diligence, and basically we did the financing at $1.84 with extremely strong strategics, including one very strong one that can also help us on the business development side as we move forward.

The offtakes that we have, there are three of them basically that are important. The overall market for graphite is about 1.2 million tons per year as we speak, and it's about split 50% anode material, 30% with refractory bricks, and about 20% for higher margin specialty products. I'll start with the Canadian government. People may ask, why the hell did they sign an offtake? The market may not realize this, but Canada has been supplying the G7 for the last 36 years or so with high-quality graphite for specific niche applications. There is only one producing mine as we speak in the whole G7. It's Northern Graphite's Lac des Îles mine, which is known to be end of life, high strip ratio, high cost.

The Canadian government wanted to keep that pole position, and instead of us going to each and every one of the customers throughout the G7 for very small volumes, asking them to invest, which would have taken forever, the Canadian government said, "Let's do this buyers club. Let's make a deal with Nouveau Monde." It will allow it to be bankable quickly, and then we can go market with them on a profit-sharing formula to all of these smaller but very attractive, in terms of margin, customers. Panasonic Energy is for anode material. Anode material is not necessarily the best market in the sense that you compete heads-on with the Chinese on a worldwide basis. On the other hand, that's where the higher volumes are. If you're not into anode material, it's very difficult to justify 100,000 ton mine as we're building.

This allows us to keep our OPEX low because we get the right efficiency size with 106,000 catering to Panasonic Energy, keeping OPEX that will benefit all of the sectors, also getting into chemical processing, which we think may define us more as a critical minerals company than a mining company with associated multiples when you look at each side of the business. As we know, critical minerals companies are much better valued than typical mining companies. Finally, Traxys, which is a refractory brick business, about 30% of the market. These act as protection for steel foundries. Basically, you make the bricks and the walls, and the steel industry is actually doing pretty well right now in the U.S. because of tariffs. This equilibrium between all three sectors, we believe, acts in the best interest of diversifying our customer mix, sales mix, and so on.

Finally, Eni, which I've mentioned, we've signed an LOI when they invested. We are looking to see how we could supply some of their joint ventures in Italy with product as well, and this should be seen as being part of our growth path as we move forward. I did discuss the Canadian government rapidly. I did explain the rationale. I think the key word here to remember is bankability, and they were very instrumental helping us getting that bankability. Also, keep in mind that we were named a major project of national interest by the Canadian government last November, and the PMO, Prime Minister's Office, and Major Projects Office were instrumental accelerating things for us because much of the heavy lifting we had done on our own for the last five years or so.