Wildcat Resources Ltd

Thank you, Andrew. And thank you Mining Americas Forum for having us here today. As Andrew said, my name’s AJ Saverimutto. I’m the Managing Director for Wildcat Resources. If you haven’t heard of Wildcat Resources, we’ve got the largest undeveloped lithium resource in Australia. We’re going through the process from discovery to development and finally to producer, and the slides today will take you through that journey.

A brief history of Wildcat Resources and the deal history. There was a company called Sons of Gwalia in 2003 that had four projects. They had Greenbushes, they had Wodgina, they had Pilgangoora, and they had Tabba Tabba. Three out of the four have become the largest hard rock mines in the world. Our geology team and our mining team thought Tabba Tabba had the same potential. It had large pegmatites on site. It had similar mapping. There were tantalum resources on site and small pits, and there were favorable mineral resources. So we did the deal in 2023 and this story now goes through what we’ve done.

We’ve got about 1.6 billion shares on issue, market cap of roughly about 500 million and $77 million in the bank. We initially had Mount Adra, a gold resource of 770,000 ounces at 1.1 grams. We still have that in our portfolio. And we’ve got the white gold at Tabba Tabba, next to Port Hedland, the largest bulk port in the world. There’s a lot of research coverage there, all available on our website.

Investor snapshot and why you should own Wildcat Resources. We’re on a mining lease, so very rarely do you have a large resource found on a mining lease. That fast-tracks your production profile by about three years. We’re also only 80 kilometers from port. If you know lithium, lithium’s a 5.5% concentrate, so a large amount of waste is transported with your ore. Being close to port, it has you down in the lowest quartile for operating costs. For us, it’s about $20 US to take to port. If you’re in Canada, it’s about 300. In Africa, a lot more. That takes you down to where we are in the lowest quartile for operating costs.

Our PFS study had us at about C1 costs of 541 and all-in sustaining costs of 658. So at today’s price of $2,000 spodumene, there’s a large profit margin that the financials show. It’s also a large, high-confidence maiden resource. We’ve got 74 million tons at 0.45% cutoff. At today’s cutoff grades that I used is about 0.3. That’s a 90 million tons, and we’ve drilled it at 94% indicated. Why did the board elect to drill it to a 94% indicated resource? So that we can go through the gears of pre-feasibility study, feasibility study, bankable feasibility study, funding, and then eventually production.

Hundred percent of our offtake is unencumbered, so we haven’t given away any of our offtake. Different to gold, where it’s just debt and equity, there are a large number of options for prepays to help us with the funding, which I’ll take you through in a couple of slides’ time. We also have the exploration upside. There’s nearly 2,000 square kilometers of tenure that we own. Most recently, we found Bolt Cutter. That’s only 10 kilometers away, and I’ll take you through those slides. Also, the PFS financials are excellent. At today’s price, it produces a great NPV and a payback period.

Tabba Tabba is thick and continuous. So you’ve got the Luke deposit, nearly 40 to 60 meters wide. Layer, 100 to 180 meters wide, so a large, wide pegmatite. And then you’ve got your Chewy, Hahn, and Hutt in the hanging wall. 74.1 million tons at 0.45 cutoff grade, like I said, and 90 million tons at 0.3, and recoveries of over 70%. So it’s large tons per vertical meter. In the PFS study, we only used Luke and Layer because Chewy, Hahn, and Hutt, we didn’t have the metallurgical test work. We now have the metallurgical test work, and Chewy, Hahn, and Hutt all come into the mix. Chewy is part of an open pit that is for Layer and Chewy and Tabba. So what does that do? It drops your stripping ratio down because now it’s ore instead of waste, and it brings early cash flow.

Next what we have is a video that takes you through Tabba Tabba and the DFS conceptual designs and what that project is going to look like in the future. So where are we? We’re in Australia. We’re in Port Hedland in Western Australia, the largest bulk port in the world. We’re right next to highways, only 20 kilometers from the major highway and only 45 minutes from Port Hedland. We’re next to two of the largest bulk mines in the world for lithium. You’ve got Pilgangoora, only 47 Ks away, and you’ve got Wodgina, 87 kilometers away. We also have a large exploration portfolio, nearly 2,000 square kilometers, which we intend to explore.

Going to Tabba Tabba itself is a granted mining lease. We have a number of leases around us that we own, and we have miscellaneous licenses over. There’s a ball field. There’s a water licenses. There’s an existing tantalum pit and existing tantalum license, and then you have the new deposits of Hahn, Hutt, Tabba, Chewy, Layer, and Luke. We also have a camp on site with nearly 80-person accommodation potential.

Going through the DFS design, we already have a haul road that we can use now, but there will be a new haul road that comes into effect once we start construction. And looking at that design, it takes us to the Tabba Tabba open pit and underground. You see the haul road there, and then you have the village. You can see there 600 person village, solar farm, processing plant, underground access, as well as your Layer open pit and your shared infrastructure. Going through the key items of the design, you’ve got your major processing plant there for spodumene, and you’ve got optional petlite and tantalum plants that come out of free cash flow.

Looking at the mine itself, it’s an open pit and underground mine working together. The pit is a large open pit, nearly a kilometer by 1.2 kilometers, and then you’ve got your leach underground. Both starting at the same time. You might say why? That gives you the flexibility of open pit and underground. Nearly 80% of the ore will come from an open pit. And then you’ve got the options of Hahn Hut, and in the future, Bowl Cutta, which is just up the road.

Moving to the infrastructure design here, you see the admin buildings, and then you’ve got the shared infrastructure for maintenance that is shared between the open pit and underground. And that is part of how we keep our operating costs in the lowest quartile, because you’ve got shared management and shared infrastructure.

Moving to the plant itself, you can see the detailed design there. It’s a whole ore flotation, two-stage crushing, 180 micron, and with a regrind circuit of 150 micron. Mill capacity of 4.5 million tonnes a year, and then looking at spodumene, 565,000 in year three. I’ll fly you through the mill now. You can see the crushing circuit there and a small ore sorter on the right-hand side. You’ve got your transfer belts to your spodumene stockpile. And then you’ve got the two sister ball mills, stage one and stage two, nearly 18 months apart. And then you move into your flotation circuits there for stage one and stage two. Again, nearly 12 months apart there.

You’ve got your concentrator thickeners there and your float cells, and then onto your concentrate thickener, which then goes onto your conveyor belt, and into your spodumene stockpile, which then gets loaded and goes to your current infrastructure in Port Hedland to ship spodumene to your markets out of Asia, Europe, and the Middle East if required. So hopefully that gave you an idea of what this project is gonna look like in future.

We’ve been very busy, and we’ve got a track record. We’ve had three discoveries in three years. We’ve had Leir, Luke, and Bowl Cutta. We had a Tabba Tabba maiden resource in November 2024. We had a PFS study last year in July 2025, and then we have a native title agreement with our First Nations, the Ngammal, in place so that we can start mining.

Where to from here? We’ll finish the DFS or the definitive feasibility study in the next couple of months. We’ll have a Bowl Cutta resource out. We’re working on that now. And then we’ve got our financing and funding options over the next six to nine months. We’ll finalize our long lead items. We’ve got $77 million in the bank. We can commit to our long lead items and the engineering so that we don’t waste time, and then execution towards the second half of next year.

Bowl Cutta, this is our newest discovery. We’ve been exploring all the way through the last two to three years. It’s only 10 kilometers away. It’s nearly a kilometer, 2.1 kilometers by a kilometer. It’s more your typical lithium deposit. It’s ribbon-like pegmatites compared to Tabba Tabba. So the future here is get a resource and then bring it into the mining plan. That could have another source of ore, but also extend mine life or go to a stage three of production. So we’re excited about Bowl Cutta, and the next phases is a resource and then a mine plan around it.

Going through the PFS economics. The PFS economics were done at a broker consensus price of 1,384. Using today’s price of about $2,000, it gives you a post-tax NPV of 2.9 billion, a free cash flow of 6.5 billion, and an IRR of over 40%. Most importantly, on a CapEx of A$687 million, it’s a payback period of 1.7 years, so some compelling economics there.

Touching on how we sit in the Australian spodumene market, you look in terms of production, you’ve got Greenbushes, you’ve got Pilgangoora and Wodgina, and there’ll be Tabba Tabba after that. Interestingly, those four were the GAM assets that Sons of Gwalia had. And they all started like Tabba Tabba and then increased their production rates through the cycles, and that’s what we intend on doing.

One of the key aspects of Tabba Tabba is its C1 operating cost. It’s $541. And given today’s price is nearly $2,000, that’s how you get those free cash flow numbers and PFS numbers. So it’s about $541, and Pilgangoora is about $380 per tonne of spodumene. Why is it 541? Again, it’s close to port, it floats very well, and it’s a large open pit.

In terms of global supply and demand, you look at the supply-demand gap is gonna increase significantly. There’s a lot of newsworthy reports out there. But looking at the Fastmarkets report, it’s about 2.1 million tonnes. So you need a number of mines like Tabba Tabba to fill that demand. And we see EVs, data centers, battery storage, humanoid robots, all of that feeding into the demand that we see coming up. And we’re looking at bringing it into production late 2028, 2029, as soon as that gap starts to increase significantly.

In terms of our funding options, we’ve got a number of funding options. Like I said, unlike gold, which is just debt and equity, we’ve got a number of funding options. We’ve got the government finance. We’ve got a number of government organizations who are helping critical minerals to fund projects and get them into production. And then you’ve got your commercial banks. You’ve got your offtakers who are trying to get Australian spodumene, and the only way they can do that is by having prepay commitments, where they give you money as a prepay loan, or they’re coming in at the asset level to take a percentage of the company. And then post-DFS, we’ll look at JV options, where there are a number of companies looking at getting, say, 20% of the offtake by putting money into the project at a slight discount to NPV. So there are a number of options there. We’re furthering all the options, and we’ll give our board the final options within six to nine months to make a decision at FID.

So what’s our plan for the next year? It’s certainly discovery. We’re looking at discovering more in our 2,000 square kilometers at Tenya. We’ll come up with a bulk cutter resource. And in terms of the development, we’re looking at completing the DFS study, finalizing our offtake and funding solutions, complete our approvals process. We already have a tantalum approval. We’re changing it to lithium. We will have that very soon. And then we’ll look at our long lead items, which is our construction of the road camp, and then find good people to build this project. Good people are attracted to good projects. We see that upcoming.

So why Wildcat and why you should own Wildcat? We’re in the right location, we’ve got the right asset, and we’ve got the right team. We’re in the right location. We’re tier one in the Pilbara. We’ve got a camp. We’ve got a whole road in place. We’ve got a commanding land position. We’re known as regional discoverers. We’ve had three discoveries in three years. We’re looking for more. We’ve got the right asset. Tabba Tabba is impressive in size, scale, and quality. Bulk Cut is an emerging discovery. We’ve got $77 million in the bank. That lets us go ahead and progress Tabba Tabba. And then we’ve got the right team. We’ve got now people on board who have built a lot of mines. We’ve got a discovery team. And we are the next lithium asset to come into production. So I really appreciate your time here today, and happy to take any questions you may have. Thank you.

Thank you, AJ. Are there any questions from the floor here? Yeah, we have...

Thanks for the presentation, AJ, and thanks for taking the question. Long lead items? Firstly, what are you thinking? And also just timing. When do you need to start ordering those items?

So we’ve already started doing a lot of detailed design. We started three months ago. We had money in the bank, so we’ve commenced that detailed design. Currently, what’s identified is your crusher, your ball mills, and parts of your thickener. So we want to commit to that in the next three to four months, and then commence part of our road and camp construction. So those are long lead items. The design is done to a high level of integrity, so we’re quite comfortable to start moving on those aspects of the project.

Any other questions from the floor? We have one.

Thanks, AJ, for the presentation. Just talking lithium market and your cost curve position, how would you fare in a low-cost environment relative to your peers in the Pilbara and against the bronze as well?

Yeah, I get asked that question a lot on what I think of the lithium market. To be honest, there’s a lot smarter people out there that talk about the lithium market, so I would Google that. We control what we can control, which is our operating costs. Our operating cost is sitting at 541 C1 costs, all-in sustaining at 658. So at a $2,000 price, there’s large margins to be made at 600,000 tonnes of spodumene. So we focus on what we can. We’ve got contingencies in place. If the price does come down, we’re looking at stockpiling ore so that if the price does come down, we can stop mining and just do a processing operation. But also with offtakes, we’re looking at doing a floor price like some other groups have done so that we’re protected against the downside.

Any other questions from the floor? If not, I’ve got a follow-up question to that one, AJ. Look, lithium has obviously been a very volatile commodity in the last few years.

Sure.

Lots of extreme cycles. Feels like it is maturing a bit now as a sector and perhaps a little less volatility going forward hopefully. But that does make it tricky to negotiate offtake agreements when you’ve got that level of volatility. Can you talk us through the conversations you’re having with the offtake partners and how you navigate that volatility?

Yeah. So just touching on that, I think if you look at the last 10 years, lithium has been the worst performing commodity for four years and the best performing commodity for four years. So yes, you do see that volatility, but with the offtakers, I would think the price is red hot at the moment because we are getting a lot of inbound. And why wouldn’t you? It’s low iron. It’s a mine life of nearly 20 years, and it’s a very good product that floats and refines really well. We’ve actually had more test work with refineries and it works really well. So I don’t think it’s an issue getting offtake. It’s getting the right offtake...

Yeah.

...that you want to get put in place.

Very good. All right. Thank you, AJ.

Thank you for your time.

Great presentation. Well done. [applause]