Lifezone Metals Limited H1 2026 Earnings Call

Welcome to the Lifezone Metals webcast. Please give us a few minutes while we await other attendees joining in. Hi, all. We're just giving it another two minutes before we start allowing more attendees to join in. Welcome to the Lifezone Metals webcast to discuss the H1 2026 interim financial results and to provide an operational update. We'll finish today's event with a question 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 July 29th news release on our website at www.lifezonemetals.com.

Please see additional disclaimers, which I'd encourage you to read in your own time. Joining me today is Lifezone Metals Chief Executive Officer, Chris Showalter, and Chief Financial Officer, Ingo Hofmaier. Without any further ado, I would like to turn things over to Ingo for the presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Catherine, and thank you everyone for joining us to our H1 interim results news release.

As in the last webcast, we would like to speak a little bit about the nickel market. The nickel market has undergone a noticeable fundamental reversal since late 2025. This fundamental shift is still intact, and it's the new base case. The main reasons for the shifts are, number 1, primary cost drivers. Firstly, higher royalty rates, and secondly, in April this year, Indonesia adjusted the nickel ore benchmark price formula by including common byproducts. Secondly, there are supply factors, and this is Indonesia restricting their RKEF and flipping the ore supply outlook from a significant growth to a likely year-on-year decline.

On the price chart on the right, you also see that there was some uncertainty in the last couple of weeks about how big this reduction actually is, but it becomes increasingly clear that there is in fact a reduction in these ore quotas. All of this means that the market is shifting towards a potential 2026 deficit, that's the new base case. Further near-term uncertainty is added by the war in the Middle East, where negotiations seem to progress constructively, at least at times. There's also a risk of prolonged reduction in traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and even geographical expansion of hostilities combined with a total China sulfuric acid ban, which is likely to last until the end of 2026, which is a risk to any nickel leaching operations in the Asia-Pac region.

In the long run, China's sentiment in Indonesia has turned negative, which is likely a sign of peak China's investment in Indonesia being a thing of the past. Still, we expect and we concede that consumers remain concerned about the increasing concentration of supply in Indonesia. Given that we still see more supply in Indones- And non-Indonesian investments, that could mean that Indonesia, from I believe 65% number, goes up to 75% of world supply by the end of 2030. That at the backdrop of still very sound demand growth in the nickel space from EV batteries, as well as stainless steel. With this, I would like to hand over to Chris to give us more update on the strategic funding and Framework Agreement discussions.

Good. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for attending. Importantly, I'll kick off here updating on our strategic initiatives and milestones. I think if we highlight where we've been focused, obviously with the acquisition of BHP's stake last year, we have been engaged in a process. Really, we started by securing the bridge facility with Taurus. That was very important. That $60 million we secured allowed us to commence with all the important pre-FID activities. We'll give an operational update on where that money's being deployed right now. But really important for us to keep momentum and show that the project is marching forward. Now, importantly, regarding Standard Chartered process, we have disclosed previously that we have had a very competitive process. We have had multiple binding offers that we have been evaluating.

What I'd like to do, importantly, on this call today, is really give some clarity as to where we are. Right now, as management, we have presented a recommendation to our board of directors and the company has selected a preferred partner, and these discussions are in the final phase. Now, this investment will involve a strategic equity investment into the project, and that's going to be in parallel to the project finance processes being run by SOCGen. This new equity investment is going to be a combination of both public and private, and we are at a point now as a company where we are very excited and we expect to make an announcement in the very near term. As I said, this has been a very competitive process.

It has taken time, but this is all running in parallel with negotiations with the Government of Tanzania. I think if we go back to some of the social media we had put out over the past month, you would have seen meetings with President of Tanzania, President Hassan. It's important to read through that meeting because those meetings, those high-level engagements with the President are more of a courtesy call to inform the President of what we've agreed in terms of this investment consortium, the investment structure, and how that ties into all our final negotiations with the Government. All these multiple discussions, meetings are all very much linked. That is the announcement we're going to be making in the very near term. Very close. It's been a long process, but I think when the market sees the caliber and the credentials of the investment group that we are going to be bringing in, I think everyone's going to be very impressed.

Really looking forward to getting this news out there. As I mentioned, the most important focus of the company right now, outside of the strategic initiative of the funding, is really deploying the capital from the Taurus facility to maintain momentum and progress the project. Our Chief Operating Officer, Gerick Mouton, has been incredibly busy building out a really phenomenal owners team. I think with his experience historically with Ivanhoe, he's been able to assemble a team of people that have tremendous experience in this part of the world. A lot of those new organizational readiness work streams and everything are fully underway.

A big part of what we're doing right now is the expression of interest for all the work packages. That involves a lot of engagement with the Mining Commission, approximately $850 million of work packages have been out for tender. Those are the core functions for the construction process that's going to be commencing. Really, the bulk earthworks, EPCM, all those are in the market right now. A lot of the stuff on site, working very closely with TANESCO and the railway. The camp is being upgraded to accommodate all the construction personnel that are going to be on site. All the permitting activities and then all the geotechnical drilling as we prepare the box cut. A lot of activity on site.

This is something we're going to want to get out a little bit more frequently so people can see the progress on site. We will be putting forward some investor visits so people can visit the site, and we'll communicate that through our website. In terms of our sustainability initiatives, I always emphasize the amount of time and effort we put in to engaging the local community. This is really paramount to how we conduct ourselves. The amount of time focused on the resettlement program, engaging with the local community, really demonstrating that social contract with us and the local people is critically important. A lot of this activity has been underway. The resettlement program, the important part to update there is we are pretty much 100% complete for all the compensation payments.

We have brought in a new team led by Michelle Raptis, who has a lot of experience. We worked with her at BHP, that work stream is underway. Really this is an ongoing engagement with the community. I can't emphasize how important this is. A lot of time and effort has gone into this and will continue to do so. Another highlight I want to emphasize, we announced earlier this year that we have engaged with the Government of Burundi. This is something that was facilitated by the U.S. Department of State, just given bilateral relationships between Burundi and the U.S. That's an important context because The bilateral relationships are really opening up Burundi to U.S. companies. You saw a signing ceremony with us and Cobalt Metals jointly engaging with commercial agreements with the Burundi Government.

The Musongati deposit was discovered at the same time as Kabanga, this is a very large laterite deposit in Burundi. Remember, we are right on the border of Burundi, essentially, with the Kabanga project. We are looking at the opportunity to really scale up a long-term nickel region by linking Musongati and Kabanga. We've identified a number of synergies where the shared infrastructure between the two projects could unlock a larger project like Musongati. Right now we're working on technical studies. We're engaged with the government of Burundi and the mines minister there, looking at work programs and studies that we're going to be commencing in the near term. Really a lot of future upside optionality if we can demonstrate that we can link Musongati and Kabanga through a synergistic proposal.

This is just an additional blue sky for Lifezone to be able to unlock such a large nickel region. Okay, next. In parallel, we have our team working on the recycling project with Glencore. This we have gotten through all the piloting, lock cycle piloting and testing. Where we are right now is going into the commencing towards FID. There is additional piloting work that's underway right now. There's also site identification, I've emphasized this before, that this is a very exciting project for us. We have a very strong relationship with Glencore. We've worked with them to identify a site. We'll be announcing that in the near term. This is something that really is going to be the core first demonstration of our hydrometallurgical technical capabilities.

This does include our patented knowhow in terms of the hydromet, this is something that is also very crucial to the U.S. government. We've been applying for DOE grants to be able to beneficiate and refine platinum, palladium, rhodium domestically in the U.S. Ticks a lot of boxes for the U.S. policy right now and the current administration. This is something that is going to get a lot of support from the government it's something that we are progressing with Glencore. It fits very well into Glencore's strategy, specifically on recycling. This is again, a very exciting project. It's commencing, once we identify a site and finalize the next piloting, we're going to be progressing to FID with a goal of really building the first hydromet recycling facility for autocats in the United States. A lot of progress on this front.

Okay. I want to touch base on the Simulus Group. A lot of what we focus on is the flagship project of Kabanga, the Simulus Group, this is really the heart of the whole organization where a lot of projects are being studied. I think we probably don't emphasize enough how much activity takes place at Simulus. There's about 30 different projects and contracts underway right now where when you look at the supply chain security initiatives of a lot of countries, there has to be a strong emphasis on the downstream. A lot of the processing and refining is where a lot of these choke points exist. What we're doing with Simulus is really identifying and studying all sorts of alternative flow sheets, engineering to look at different ways we can provide solutions not only to our projects but to other projects.

Again, there's a tremendous amount of work going on here right now, the way we work with Simulus is we have the opportunity to really prioritize our projects. The amount of projects we see produces a pipeline of additional projects that we can also look at. We can decide to work with various clients if we have a strong view of one of the projects. It's a really important part of our organization and a lot of really important work is going on there right now. Okay, I'm going to turn it back over to Ingo.

Thank you, Chris. In terms of our H1 2026 financial results, this year will be characterized by pre-FID activities around the Kabanga Nickel project. Q2 was very much a continuation of Q1. We also strengthened our balance sheet. We had $37.3 million of cash in the bank at the end of June 2026 compared to $21.1 million in December last year. Liquidity was $56 million because this includes $18.3 million of undrawn amounts from Troilus. As you saw yesterday, we have extended the availability period by three months until November 29th. In terms of operating cash flows, two things really. Number one, they are significantly better than last year in the comparative period. There's two reasons for this. As Chris just mentioned, there is a stronger focus on Simulus. They've done fantastic work for external clients and have a strong pipeline.

Last year we were mainly focused on our internal projects, they've generated $1.3 million more in revenues. As we announced last year, we have streamlined our corporate function. This has resulted in reduction in overhead costs. In terms of investing cash flows, they have gone up quite significantly. This is characterized by an increase in the owner's team, increase of workers on sites. There is more geotech and hydrotech investigations including drilling work, that's what you see in these numbers here. The difference between the $15 million investing cash flow in the $15.4 million, which is a higher number, is actually around $400,000 of interest received in investing cash flows. The strengthening of the cash balance was achieved by two activities.

On the one side, we had a $23.3 million net proceeds equity raise with U.S. investors in April. We drew down $21.7 million out of the $60 million that we had agreed with Taurus around this year, last year. The loss before tax was $7 million. This includes high-interest charges. Also, we had significant interest expense payments. They relate to the convertible, where we had, I would call it one-off expenses at the end of March, because for the first two years of this four-year facility, we picked two-thirds of the interest, that became payable after two years, and that was the end of March this year. There were more than $3 million that went out for that. Now it's kind of normalized. Every quarter we pay SOFR plus 4% in cash.

The team size has gone up, and this includes a significant amount of contractors in Tanzania is now 268. The large majority, of course, work in Tanzania. With a loss of around $7 million, this translates in around a $0.08 per share loss for the first half. Next page, please. We would just like to highlight a group of entries that are non-cash, and these are fair value changes. There is no various fair valued instrument on our balance sheet. On the one side, it is the embedded derivative, which is a derivative by definition needs to be fair valued every time we report. A fair value gain on warrants, and then a gain on remeasurement of the deferred consideration. The deferred consideration is, Chris mentioned this before, we bought BHP out, which was a deferred consideration.

$10 million is payable 12 months after FID, and then indexed to a share price is $28 million, 12 months after first commercial production. When the share price, so there are various assumptions, but the biggest influencer for all of them is the share price. Unfortunately, the share price reduced, and that then ultimately means over the period from start of the year until June 30. What this then means is that you have a fair value gain on all the instruments that have the share price as an assumption. Next page, please. In terms of capital markets, our main project partners, of course, the Government of Tanzania, they own 16%, and then Glencore own the U.S.-based recycling project.

In terms of financing, the big pieces in the recent past were the $60 million bridge loan facility secured last year, then $15 million registered direct in November, and then $25 million as gross proceeds in April. We have around 90 million shares outstanding and a significant amount of potentially dilutive shares or RSUs and options. The current market cap is around $300 million. We work in close cooperation with the U.S. DFC, but also what was the MSP and Forge Partners, which spans North American partners, European partners, and Japanese partners. From a project finance perspective, we have also seen strong interest from African DFIs and ECAs. With that, I conclude the official part of the H1 interim press release, and would like to hand over to Catherine for Q&A.

Thank you, Ingo and Chris. To everyone in the room, a reminder, if you have a question, please raise this via the Q&A box located at the top of your screen. We will be taking written questions today, and we have a few minutes for those. We have our first question, which is, can you please speak a little bit more about the remaining issues preventing execution of the amended Framework Agreement, and do you expect signing in 2026? Chris, over to you for this one.

Yeah, thanks. Yes, we absolutely expect signing. The way I would categorize this is that the Framework Agreement is intimately linked with the strategic process with Standard Chartered. Again, I'll emphasize that I would look at that meeting with the President of Tanzania as kind of a final courtesy call. Part of that meeting is to inform her exactly what's taking place in the negotiations with the Tanzanian team, but also introducing the equity consortium. When you see a meeting like that with our Chair going to meet with the President, you can read through that that is towards the very end of a process. We have had multiple engagements with the Tanzanians on the Framework Agreement. Really the last key modifications to the Framework Agreement are to align it with the strategic consortium. Again, this is all tied together.

I would ideally like to see a closing of the strategic process with the equity investors and a simultaneous closing of the Framework Agreement. That is what we intend. Again, this is something that we have packaged as one pretty substantive process. As we are very near to making an announcement on the strategic equity investment, we are also in the final phase of closing up the Framework Agreement. All this is intimately tied.

Thank you, Chris. I see there are two hands up. Would you mind writing your questions in the Q&A button to the left? It's right at the top of the screen, and we'll get to those. In the meantime, another question I think for you, Chris, is outside of the Framework Agreement, are all other infrastructure elements in place allowing for the project build to kick off once funding is in place?

Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the benefits of this project is the amount of spend the government of Tanzania has committed to infrastructure. With the announcement that Standard Chartered has come in on the next stage of the funding for the rail, that was very important. That is going to be the next extension that'll go to the Osaka location, the Osaka siting, and that's where we'll do the onboarding for the materials. That right now in the current forecasted schedule should be complete before we commence production of the mine. If that ties up, then that's another key piece of infrastructure that's been committed. Now they've announced there's funding in place, so that's a very positive development. In parallel to that, obviously the large Julius Nyerere Hydropower Station has been commissioned.

Tanzania essentially is a net exporter of power, which is a uniquely privileged position for an African country to be in. When it comes to power, rail, infrastructure, everything's in place. With the new upgraded 440 kVA line, we're going to be about 80 kilometers to tap into the grid. Really, in terms of infrastructure, we are in a very fortunate position, and now it's on us to just start commencing the full-scale construction. What I can indicate, and what our chairman's indicated recently in some of his interviews, we are pretty much there. We are going to build this mine. We are going forward, and as I emphasized earlier, we are very keen to make this announcement, and really demonstrate to the Tanzanians that we're going to get out there and start building ASAP.

Thank you. The next question on Musongati. How should we be thinking about the 14-month exclusivity, and what should we expect to see in terms of the event path and the potential capital spend as this project moves forward later this year and into 2027?

Yeah. I think the way we're looking at Musongati, this is a very complementary asset that really enhances the overall potential for this nickel region. When you look at the scale of a combined Kabanga and Musongati, you are essentially for the Western markets replacing an entire supply chain away from Indonesia and China. That is a material scale for these two projects conceptually. I think it's something we're going to put in a lot of time and effort looking at technical evaluations. With Kabanga being a sulfide and Musongati being a laterite, we have identified certain synergies where we think we can lower operating costs, but a lot of this work has to be done. The important thing for us right now is working with the Burundian government. They are getting a lot of support from DFIs.

They have very strong support from the World Bank, the IMF. This is a very large project for the country, so it gets enormous support from the president, and this is something that we will put the time and effort in, but we have to do the work. There's going to be additional drilling to identify whether there's additional sulfide material below the laterite lens. We're going to be looking at alternative flow sheets to see if we can lower the operating cost of a traditional laterite project. Really, I think that's where we are right now. This is a lot of exciting upside in the future, but a lot of work has to be done. That's where we are right now.

Thank you. The next question is, can you expand on the experience of the expanded Kabanga owners team?

Yeah. Ingo, you want to take a turn on that one?

Yeah. What we want to do is, there's a whole host of people, some we have announced already on social media. Some are not personally announced yet, but we will, in the next couple of weeks and months, introduce individuals that work for Gerick Mouton to the public. We want to also introduce them through webinars. Yeah. They include people who moved over from BHP, they include people from Ivanhoe and other organizations in Africa who have really extensive experience building, I would call them similar operations. In some cases, more complex than our operations in neighboring countries in Africa.

Thank you. We have another one. For the ones with their hands up, if you could please type a question, that would be appreciated. What's required for the Framework Agreement to be amended?

Yeah. I would categorize it as this is a concluding of one of the outstanding schedules with the Framework Agreement. When we sign the Framework Agreement, the final schedule is the joint financial model. The joint financial model is linked to the feasibility study. What we've done is really, you can't finalize that last schedule until you finalize really what the investment is going to look like. There's a number of additional tax incentives that we have negotiated. I think it's more closing out one of the outstanding schedules, and aligning some of the components of the agreement with the incoming investment group, and just making sure that all ties together. We've essentially closed off and finalized all the key discussions with government.

This is now in a very advanced stage where it's going through the approval process on the government side. More finishing off that schedule is how I'd categorize it.

Thank you. The next question's on Musongati, and the question is: Have you had to staff up to incorporate the Musongati project work in the mix, or does your existing team have capacity as you await progress at Kabanga?

Yeah. I think we've been able to dedicate some of our current resources and team to go in-country. Importantly, on the geology side, we've deployed Ray Cole Smith, who has a lot of experience on Musongati, having been a geologist for a number of the previous corporates that were active in the region. We had, fortunately, that in-house knowledge of the actual ore body through Ray's background. There will be a small team built up in-country, but we've been able to utilize some of our business development team. Simon Walsh specifically has been focused on this. Then some of the other team has been pulled in as needed.

Going carefully and in small steps, we've been able to deploy people's time and effort so far, and then we'll build out a team as required once we identify really what the work program's going to look like. I think the next step will really be getting some drilling program underway. We're also working very closely with Cobalt Metals. They are in the phase of digitizing. The MOU they signed with the government of Burundi is to digitize a lot of the mineral information. The first set we would like them to digitize is the Musongati material. It's a good shared relationship with Cobalt, and what they're going to be focused on is going to benefit us. Once that information's digitized, that can accelerate some of our technical work.

Thank you. For the hands that are up, are you able to publish a question? I'm going to allow verbal questions. Gregory, your hand was first, so I'm going to unmute you. One second. Oh, I think you can unmute yourself to ask your question. Apologies. It's not letting me unmute you. If you could please rather type your questions, and I think there is one in the Q&A box. I see it's not letting you. I'm going to give it one more minute. If you could please try type, that would be appreciated because we're unable to unmute. There we go. "Just given the U.S. government looks to have helped the initial steps at Musongati, and an update on potential U.S. DOE funding opportunities." Chris, I think that one would be for you.

I think in terms of Burundi, there's a strong, as indicated, bilateral effort underway between the U.S. and Burundi. I think we will see involvement from the U.S. to support initiatives, whether that's through the U.S. Development Finance Corporation or some of the other trade organizations. That's something we will definitely encourage, and we're in negotiations and constant contact with the U.S. side. I think to emphasize on the Kabanga side, we have disclosed previously the relationship with the U.S. Development Finance Corporation. We have concluded all the due diligence required as a potential partner with them. That was for the political risk insurance. That process, all the qualifications, all the due diligence has been completed. I think we'll be making further comments on that in the near term.

We had another question come in asking on the investment consortium, if there's any more details that can be provided. I think what I would like to kind of add, as I said, there's a combination of public and private investors. I think you can go back and look at the announcements we've made, the government entities we've engaged with. I think that's a good indication of a Western consortium that we have been putting together. This consortium of investors, it's going to be a combination of, as we said, public and private. This is going to be best-in-class when we make the announcement. We're very, very excited. I think the credentials of this investment consortium is going to be a big demonstration of the importance of Kabanga as a project, specifically as a key strategic metal that's being focused on by Western governments.

I think when we make the announcement, it's going to be very evident that this is a very, very high-priority project within this Western focus to secure supply chain security.

Thanks, Chris. We have covered all questions within the Q&A today, we're going to wrap up the webcast. A quick reminder that if you do have any further questions, please feel free to follow up with us directly or via email at info@lifezonemetals.com. This concludes our webcast. I'd like to thank everyone for attending today's event, and we look forward to speaking with you soon. Thank you. Great. Okay. Thanks, everyone.

Thank you. Speak soon. Bye-bye.