NioCorp Developments Ltd. Common Stock Investor update

Welcome to the Elk Creek Mine and Processing Facility site, everyone. Thanks for coming today. Just a couple quick administrative notes before we get started. I am Jim Sims, I am with NioCorp. You all have your PPE on, your personal protective gear. Please keep that on for your entire visit today. We are a mining construction, and we are regulated by MSHA, so we are very careful about safety. That is job number one. We have a short ceremony, then we are going to transfer our folks up to the mine overlook site, so you will be able to see the construction. We gave the guys the day off today down there. Normally, there would be a lot of construction, big trucks going. For safety reasons, you will not have any of that. Please, everyone, keep your eyes peeled for moving vehicles at all times.

After the program, I will announce we are going to move to the signing ceremony, which we will do here, then we are going to do another one down at the overlook. For our elected officials, we have three vans here. We are going to load you in those vans and drive you down. It is about a 60-second drive. For members of the news media, we will help you go down in the van as well so you can get set up. For the rest of us, you can walk down. It is about a five-minute walk, and since we do not have rain today, it should be actually a pleasant walk. Other than that, we are not going to have the media availability for members of the press will be done down at the mine overlook, not here. We will do the program quickly, move down, then have fun down there.

With that, let me introduce our master of ceremonies, Mark Smith, Chairman and CEO of NioCorp.

Thank you, Jim. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart for being here today. It has been a long time, but we are getting there. Anyway, welcome to the Elk Creek Critical Minerals Mine, and I am going to tell you a little bit about that, but we have some pretty important guests here that we want to introduce first. As Jim mentioned, this is an active mine and construction site, so sorry for the inconvenience of hard hats and safety glasses and reflective gear and steel-toed boots. That is our life, and that is how we live it here, and safety is a value for our company. It is not a goal. It is a value for our company. It is the number one thing on our mind at all times.

In fact, I have a card here that anytime I see anything I do not like safety-wise on this site, I put that card down, all the work stops, and we get it sorted out. That is how important safety is out here, and we need everybody to keep their eyes open on that at all times. We do have some very important guests here today. I cannot believe the turnout that we have had for that, and let me introduce a few of them. What I will ask for you to do is to hold your applause, because I will give each of them a chance to say a few words as well, and then we can give them a proper applause, and it will not be competitive at that point.

First of all, we are very proud to have our host, in the best sense of the word, and one of our strongest supporters, and that is Governor Jim Pillen. Thank you, Governor, for being here today. We also have Nebraska Senior Senator Deb Fischer, a steady voice for a strong national defense and a steadfast supporter of our project. Thank you, Senator. Senator Pete Ricketts, a tireless advocate for American supply chain security and another ardent supporter of our mine, both as senator and as a former two-term governor. We have met many times. Congressman Adrian Smith, who represents this district and the people of Johnson County. For the record, while we share the last name, we are not related, but I would welcome him into my family at any time, Adrian. From Washington, we have our U.S. Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, an extraordinarily effective member of President Trump's cabinet.

Thank you, Secretary, for being here. We also have Chairman of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, John Jovanovic. John, thank you for being here. Without whose support and commitment to help bringing this project into reality, we would not be here today. Thank you and your team for what you do. We are also grateful to our local state senator, Bob Hallstrom. Bob, can you raise your hand? There he is. Bob has been a tremendous advocate for the project as well, and we have a number of other local and county officials here today. But I would also like to call out just a couple of other individuals who I think are very worthy of being called out. Mark Kristoff with Traxys. Traxys, as we announced yesterday, is our partner in this effort.

Traxys will be buying what we make here and selling it to the rest of the world. We have Jim Smith. Jim, can you raise your hand? Jim Smith is with us. Doug Garocki. Where is Doug? There he is, and I got it right this time. Doug instead of Greg. Lavon Heidemann, can we raise your hand? There he is back there. We have Greg and Joyce Krueger as well. Raise your hands, Greg and Joyce. There they are. I would be remiss if I did not note Tony Fulton, who is a prior state senator, tax commissioner, and is on the NioCorp board of directors today. Finally, last but not least, we have Michael Johnson from JPMorgan, Vice Chairman, and has been a real good friend for our project as well. JPMorgan does a great job helping us through the EXIM process and other ways as well.

That's who we have. I'm going to make a few minor comments, and then we'll let the really important people speak here. Right beneath our feet here is one of the most remarkable critical mineral deposits in North America. From this single source, we will be producing eight different critical mineral products. First of all is niobium. It makes steel stronger and lighter. It's used in bridges, pipelines, vehicles, and innumerable defense systems. However, we import 100% of the niobium that we need in this country today. Second is scandium, which makes aluminum alloys lighter and stronger for aerospace and defense. It's an emerging material for the advanced electronics behind artificial, or perhaps more appropriately stated today, super intelligence, and we also import 100% of that critical mineral into the U.S. today.

Titanium is the backbone of modern aircraft, as we all know, and military hardware, and we import more than 85% of what we need for that mineral today. The rarest we plan to produce are essential to magnets inside the electric motors, drones, guided munitions, and it's a supply chain that China overwhelmingly dominates today. We import virtually 100% of the many different rarest we need, including dysprosium and terbium, which we plan to make right here in Nebraska. Elk Creek is designed to produce all of these from mine to finished product. We're not sending it off to China to be processed. We're processing it right here, and that's rare anywhere in the world, and it's exactly what America needs today. For Nebraska, this means creating and supporting about 1,200 construction jobs and approximately 500 permanent, high-skilled, permanent jobs over the 40-year mine life of this project.

I'd like to say it's really not a project just anymore. It's a generational job-creating powerhouse is what it's going to be, and it's going to make Johnson County a different place, a better place. It means new opportunity for Johnson County and the communities across the state with billions of dollars of investment coming to Nebraska over this mine's long life. For the nation, it means a reliable domestic source of material. Our economy and our military simply cannot do without, and it's going to be produced to American standards by American workers on American soil, and that feels really good to say. None of this happens alone. It takes partners at every level of government who understand that critical mineral security is national security. Let me introduce our first partner in this journey.

It's fitting that we begin with a man who knows what it means to build something from the ground up in Nebraska. He's a veterinarian, a farmer, and an entrepreneur who grew a family business into one of the state's leading agricultural enterprises. He served on the University of Nebraska as a regent, and some years ago, I understand, actually patrolled the secondary for the Cornhuskers. That was a new one for me, Jim. Since taking office, he's worked relentlessly to make Nebraska a place where people want to invest and build, where they want to raise their families. He's been a strong supporter of what we're doing here at Elk Creek. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming the Governor of the great state of Nebraska, Jim Pillen.