Chalice Mining

Thank you, Andrew, and thanks to the Denver Mining Forum for having us back here once again. We’ve been coming to this conference for a number of years now, and it’s fast becoming one of the leading events on the mining calendar. I’m gonna take you through the latest at Chalice, most specifically what we’ve been up to on the Gonneville Project, and also some pretty exciting exploration targets which we’ve just started drilling. That’s our cautionary statement, which I encourage you to read at your leisure.

So there’s two pillars to the Chalice business. There’s Gonneville, that’s the big one. That was the major discovery made by the Chalice team in 2020. It has a resource of 17 million ounces of PGMs, one million tons of nickel, and half a million tons of copper. It is Australia’s next big critical minerals project, and we are rapidly advancing it towards FID in 2028. The second pillar is our discovery business. That’s how we found Gonneville, and we have eight new targets spread across Western Australia, South Australia, Northern Territory, which we have just started drilling.

We’re financially strong. We have $59 million in cash and listed investments and zero debt, and that will see us through to FID. We have a proven, passionate, and invested team. We’ve just brought on a project director, Paul Dupont; a GM corporate affairs, Tim Langmead; and Odin Partnership as strategic advisors. Odin is headlined by Mark Cutifani and Tony O’Neil. Most of you would know Mark as one of the biggest and best names in PGMs and base metals. He was the managing director of Anglo American and has just been recently appointed to the board of Northern Star. Together with Tony, they’ve built some of the biggest and best open-pit operations around the world. They like what they see with Gonneville, particularly the leverage it has to the next uptick in prices, and bringing them on was great validation for the project.

We are trading at a steep discount to our NAV. This is a great investment for those countercyclical types who like to see things early and see outsized returns. Chalice trades on the ASX. The founder and major shareholder is Tim Goyder. He has 6%. He’s a well-known entrepreneur in Western Australia, and he’s well-supported with nearly half of the share register made up of strong long-term institutions, largely across Australia, but also in the US, UK, and Europe. We have a market cap of 500 million. We trade about two million shares a day, and we are well-covered by the sell side.

So what’s the headline with Gonneville? This is a tier-one generational asset. We released a pre-feasibility study in December of last year, and that outlined a 23-year mine life, which will produce 220,000 ounces of PGMs, 7,000 tons of nickel, 8,000 tons of copper, and 700 tons of cobalt per year. It has compelling financial metrics: pre-tax NPV of $1.4 billion, an IRR of 23%, and a payback of less than three years. And that is all at very conservative long-term base case assumptions. The all-in sustaining cost is $370 an ounce. That puts it at the bottom end of the cost curve. This really is a project that is designed to survive all price cycles.

It has strategic project status from the state government of WA. It has major project status from the federal government of Australia, and that strong government support will see it attract a high level of funding from Western governments. It does have a unique metals mix. At these current spot prices, it’s about 55% precious metals and 45% base metals. Most of you would be pretty comfortable with exposure to copper, gold, platinum, and even cobalt. Most of the questions I get are, “Ben, one of your biggest pieces of the pie is palladium. Why should I be excited by an exposure to palladium?” And again, palladium is one of those exposures that those early countercyclical types are finding most exciting. I’m gonna take you through what they’re seeing and what most of the market is not.

Palladium is a niche market. It trades about nine million ounces per annum. That is an order of magnitude less than gold. Being a niche market, it is very susceptible to shocks on the supply side and shocks on the demand side. Due to the low prices over the last few years, it has been systematically underinvested, and that has led to supply deficits in nine of the last ten years. It was about two years ago that we started seeing the first mine closures and curtailments, and as is typical with commodities, as soon as supply starts coming out of the market, that’s when you start seeing an uptick in the price. And just as supply was coming out of the market, the Chinese started importing and consuming palladium at record levels.

Now, that is a point worth emphasizing. China, which is the biggest market for battery electric vehicles... Battery electric vehicles don’t have a catalytic converter, don’t require palladium. Why are the Chinese importing and consuming palladium at record levels? I’m gonna tell you why in a minute. The reason for that is, yes, there’s been strong sales in battery electric vehicles in the domestic market in China, but outside of China, consumers are still preferencing hybrid electric vehicles and internal combustion engine vehicles. So the palladium demand that are going into Chinese vehicles that are getting exported outside of China, that demand is outpacing domestic market. China are now 30% of the total global market for palladium. That is more than any other country and more than they’ve been importing in the history of their time. UBS recently did a survey. They did a global survey, and 70% of respondents preferred a powertrain with a combustion engine.

But the auto side of palladium demand is the old side of the story. There’s actually a new side of the story that’s starting to grow. That story is palladium demand within AI, data centers, and energy. RCF recently put out some research estimating that by 2030, there’s going to be another 0.5 to 1.5 million ounces of new palladium demand in the market. Nornickel, one of the biggest producers of palladium, are investing $100 million in these new demand areas. They’re estimating that they could target another 1.7 million ounces of palladium demand in new areas. These are very compelling numbers when you compare that to a backdrop of a market of only 9 million ounces.

If we look at the supply side, 90% of supply comes from Russia and South Africa, and the supply out of these countries is from old, deep, aging mines, and most of them have shrinking production profiles. Just looking at the two biggest producers from last year to this year, Nornickel and Valterra, they had a 10% decline year on year. Valterra have signaled that they won’t be investing in new supply until the PGM price goes well above $2,500 an ounce. So no new supply is coming on until it is well and truly incentivized. So you’ve got supply decreasing, you’ve got cost rising, and you’ve got new demand areas coming online. A reminder, this is a niche market. It doesn’t take much to move the price. The last time palladium went on a run, it went north of 3,000 an ounce, and we think we’re just at the start of another run just like that.

So what does Gonneville give you? It is leverage, leverage to that palladium price. A large, long life, low cost asset, the key feature of that is leverage. At long-term base case assumptions, your NPV is $1.4 billion and an IRR of 23%. But if I was standing here earlier this year when palladium was 2,000 an ounce, we’d have a project that was valued north of $3 billion and an IRR of 40%. For every $100 an ounce you add to the palladium price, you add another $250 million of NPV to the Gonneville project. You also add cumulative cash flow of $630 million. We currently trade at about 0.3 of our NAV, which is a significant discount considering this project has strong government support and is working through its permitting and funding process. That discount will reduce as we tick off those milestones on the way to FID in the first half of 2028.

So what can that re-rate look like? There are a lot of savvy investors in this room who have seen this pattern all too often. It most certainly is not a new one. Single asset developers have a strong history of re-rating from PFS to FID or buyout. Recent examples of that in base metal is Foran Mining, which is somewhat of an outlier, and also Rex Minerals. In precious metals, we’ve had Capricorn and De Grey. Gonneville has both precious metals and base metals and is certainly trading at the start of this pattern. The next milestones for Gonneville are permitting and funding. This really is an easy one for investors if you just follow the playbook. This stock will re-rate as we tick off these milestones of funding and permitting.

So where are we at with permitting? Well, we’re on track, and it’s on the critical path. Gonneville sits on 100% owned Chalice farmland. It’s not in the state forest, and native title has been settled in 2021. It has strategic project status from the WA state government. It has major project status from the Commonwealth government, and the WA government is openly pro-development for projects with critical minerals. Five of six Gonneville’s minerals are on Australia’s list of critical minerals. This is a project that all levels of government want to go ahead. We’re preparing our environmental review documents for submission at the end of this year, and we’re expecting a ministerial decision in the first half of 2028.

Now, of course, I’m gonna say permitting’s on track and it’s all going swimmingly, but maybe it’s best to go and ask an expert in the field, an independent expert. A former WA EPA chair, Tom Hatton, recently conducted an independent review. He did a review into the approvals process for Gonneville and gave a glowing endorsement for the pathway to approval. What that indicated was that the question of Gonneville’s approval is not a matter of if, it is just a matter of when. So when you’re thinking about confidence levels around the milestones needed to see that re-rate that we were just talking about, you can give a big tick to this one.

And what about funding? How are we gonna fund this giant project? Well, after the pre-feasibility study was released in December of 2025, we had inbounds from a whole range of parties. They were from export credit agencies, from metals traders, from off-takers, and also from strategics. They could all see that this project was going ahead, and they wanted to get involved and help us fund it. Unsurprisingly, we’re gonna target the lowest cost of capital, and that will most likely come from these export credit agencies, from governments which are looking to back critical minerals project. We’re in contact with all these ECAs, and the most likely outcome is Export Finance Australia, the Australian ECA, will take the lead on funding Gonneville, and then these other ones will fall in behind. Indications suggest that 60 to 70% of the funding will come from those ECAs, and then the balance will come from some form of strategic investment, a stream or some sort of prepay on offtake. There really is a world where Gonneville doesn’t need to go back to equity markets to be developed.

So where are we at, in summary? Well, we’ve drilled out the resource. We own the land. The flow sheet’s been proven. The infrastructure’s been identified, and the PFS has been delivered. Next up, we’ve got three key milestones, starting with offtake and financing, our mining approval, and delivering the bankable feasibility study. That’s all on the way to an FID in the first half of 2028.

Now on to the discovery side of the business, and we are one of the most active copper explorers in Australia right now. We’ve just finished a program of drilling at our Gumaling project, which is about 120 kilometers from Perth and 60 kilometers from Gonneville. It’s just south of Caravel’s copper project, and we own about 30 kilometers of strike length, which prior to this year has been completely undrilled. The first round of drilling uncovered a copper-gold-silver system with broad copper zones. The geology and mineralization was very similar to Caravel’s project, and that gives us the indication that we’re in the same system. What we need to do next is go and target those high-grade areas, and those high-grade areas will be associated with these folded structural positions.

During reconnaissance for Gumaling, we came across some very high-grade rare earth rock chips that were grading at 15%, 19% TREO. The drilling that we first did didn’t explain where those rock chips came from, but we’re certainly gonna keep hunting that source because at those grades, you don’t need a lot of volume to have a company-making deposit. Next step for Gumaling is some more soil sampling, IP, and some targeted drilling before the year is out.

On to our Warrego North project in Northern Territory. So this is in the Tennant Creek mineral field, not far from the old Warrego mine. The Warrego mine produced 1.4 million ounces and 130,000 tons of copper at some pretty juicy grades. We’re not far from there. We’ve got some coincident gravity magnetic anomalies which just need to be tested. These are the sorts of anomalies which are very typical to ICG systems. This project, this target, has been in the Chalice portfolio and has been the top priority for about eight years. We just have not been able to get access to go and drill it. We finally got that access earlier this year, and drilling started late last week. So there’s a big watch this space to see what results come out over the next couple of months.

So in summary, what’s the investment case for Chalice? We own the largest PGM base metal project in the Western world. It sits at the bottom of the cost curve with compelling financial metrics. It’s trading at a significant discount and is ready to re-rate just as single-asset developers typically do. On top of this, we’ve just started drilling some of the most exciting targets in the Chalice portfolio since the discovery of Gonneville. Thanks for listening in. If you’d like to learn a little more, I’ll be around all week. Please come and see me.

Thank you, Ben. [applause] Is there any questions for Ben? We’ve got a couple minutes for some questions. Any questions from the floor? If not, I’ve got a couple for you, Ben. So targeting FID end of 2028, what are the key work streams you now need to complete to achieve FID?

So the bankable feasibility, that’s number one. We need to get a short bit of offtake confirmed for the project. But really the critical path for FID is permitting. Once we get that mining approval, at that point, then we can take the final investment decision.

And on the permitting side, I think that’s probably the question you get a lot with this project being so close to farmland, being so close to Perth. Are there any outstanding issues that you think are potentially to delay that permitting process?

Yeah, look, there’s always issues when you go through the permitting process, but this is a tried and tested pathway. From the date of discovery in 2020, we knew this was gonna be a high-profile project. It was a high-profile discovery. It’s not too far from Perth. So the strategy that we’ve taken is that we’ve heavily front-end loaded the process for approvals. We’ve spent a lot of money in baseline monitoring, in the impact that’s gonna happen to the community, not only for the adversarial impacts, but also for the positive impacts. And up until now, we’ve had really good community support. So we think that we very much just need to step through the process step by step, and we’ll get to the end game that we need to.

Yeah. Obviously with polymetallic ore bodies, processing is a big part of the getting the project right. How confident are you in the flow sheet around the recoveries you need for this project to work?

Yeah, yeah. If you go back to 2023, we did have challenges with the flow sheet. We weren’t able to produce a saleable nickel concentrate. But our metallurgy team just stuck at it. We spent about $15 million on that flow sheet across 1,400 flotation tests. We finally cracked the code. We’re now able to produce an 8% nickel concentrate, which can be sold to just any base metal smelter around the world. We now have a very tried and tested simple flow sheet, which is made up of mineral processing technology 101. It’s just crush, grind, sequential float, and then a leach circuit. So we’re pretty confident that once we turn on that flow sheet, it’s gonna work. And just to prove that up, we’ve got a pilot plant which is about to kick off in the next couple of weeks. And so at the end of that eight-week pilot plant, we’ll have three tons of material that goes through, and the proof will be in the results of what that shows.

Perfect. Well, good luck with that. Hope that all goes extremely well, and good luck through the study phase, and hopefully see FID in a couple of years’ time. Thank you.

All right. Thanks for having me.

Thanks, Ben.