AEE aura energy limited

Ann: Chair's Address to Shareholders, page-4

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    Welcome to the 2024 Annual General Meeting for Aura Energy.
    I’m your Chair, Phil Mitchell.
    To say this past year has been transformative for Aura Energy would be an understatement – it has
    been a critical year for our Company, in more ways than one.
    Beyond the terriÞc progress made across our project portfolio, centred on the near-term development
    at our flagship Tiris Uranium Project in Mauritania, we’ve enhanced our team locally and globally to
    deliver on our clean energy goals.
    Importantly, we welcomed Aura’s new leader to the team, with Andrew Grove joining Aura as
    Managing Director and CEO. It’s been impressive to watch Andrew and his team advance our key
    projects these past 11 months, displaying the leadership skills, and the technical and Þnancial
    expertise to drive Aura through this exciting phase of our development.
    Personally, I’ve been delighted with what we’ve achieved in 2024 and am very pleased to have Andrew
    on board to continue taking us forward towards development and into production.
    The capacity of the team to develop Tiris has been further strengthened with a number of other key
    appointments.
    These include Mark Somlyay, a talented CFO with extensive experience in West Africa. Jan Booyse,
    and his Project EQ team, who will undertake the pre-development planning and the Owner’s Team
    function for the Tiris development. And most recently, Moctar Mohamed El Hacene was appointed to
    the newly established role of Country Manager, Mauritania.
    This is a critical appointment for our Tiris project.
    Moctar is a highly qualiÞed Mauritanian national with exceptional experience in mining and
    international affairs. He previously served as Mauritania's Petroleum and Mines Minister from 2007 to
    2008, during which time uranium was Þrst discovered at Tiris. In addition to his role as Country
    Manager Mauritania, Moctar has also been appointed as Tiris Resources’ Director-General; that’s our
    85%-owned Mauritanian subsidiary and holder of the Tiris uranium project.
    Moctar’s tenure at Aura began on November 1 after a decade with the United Nations’ serving as
    Director for the Economic Development and Integration Division’s economic and social commission
    for Western Asia – during which time he was based in Lebanon.
    His appointment reflects the exciting progress being made at Tiris.
    Further appointments are underway to ensure the team has the capacity to successfully bring Tiris
    into production in late 2026 to capitalise on the new wave of clean energy demand worldwide.

    Our company is now uniquely positioned with a near-term, low-cost, high-margin uranium
    development at Tiris.
    Not forgetting our Tier One polymetallic resource at the Häggån Project in Europe’s leading mining
    jurisdiction in Sweden.
    And in a market that is increasingly hungry for cleaner energy solutions – the future is bright for Aura.
    This year we made substantial progress at both Tiris and Häggån, and we are focused on moving
    Tiris into construction and production by the end of 2026.
    Tiris Uranium Project
    As you would be aware, the Tiris Uranium Project is now fully permitted and construction ready
    following the Mauritanian Government’s granting of its final material permit for the construction and
    operation of the project. The Front-End Engineering and Design or FEED1 study for Tiris was
    completed and our production target updated in September 20242, demonstrating the outstanding
    economics of Tiris with:
    A NPV8% of US$499 million
    An internal rate of return (or IRR) of 39 per cent
    A 2¼ year payback period
    This year, we also conducted a successful exploration campaign which led to a 55% increase in Tiris’
    global Mineral Resources: Tiris Mineral Resources are now 91.3 Mlbs U3O8, from 58.9 Mlbs U3O83.
    We remain conÞdent that there is room for signiÞcant further growth in Tiris’ resource base. As with
    the rest of our business, exploration efforts in Mauritania are very cost effective. The increased
    Mineral Resources for Tiris driven by our exploration campaign was delivered at a discovery cost of
    only US$0.14 per pound U3O8.
    Importantly, we have also been investigating options to expand the annual production base from
    2Mlbspa U3O8 to 3Mlbspa U3O8 or greater after year three of operations with any expansion capital
    potentially funded from cashflow, the results of which will be released in the near future but should
    demonstrate the signiÞcant value achievable at Tiris through additional capital investment and future
    exploration success.
    Furthermore, we were very happy with the result of our negotiations and discussions with our offtake
    partners at Curzon Uranium Ltd (Curzon).
    As we announced a few months ago, Curzon agreed to restructure4 the historical uranium offtake
    agreement, materially increasing the price receivable for planned uranium production and releasing
    signiÞcant value for Tiris.
    Essentially, our average Þxed contract price pursuant to the Curzon offtake arrangements has
    increased 70% to US$74.75/lb U3O8 up from US$44.09 per pound – subject to FID by early 2025,
    which we’re conÞdent of achieving.
    Total contracted volumes reduce from 2.6Mlbs to 2.1Mlbs over the same seven-year term, delivering
    US$41 million of additional potential revenue to Tiris at a uranium price of US$80 per pound.

    As part of the restructure Curzon took a US$3.5 million placement into Aura and was also paid a
    US$3.5 million fee paid in Aura shares and we welcome Curzon as a partner in the Project and
    signiÞcant shareholder in Aura.
    Tiris funding
    In June, Aura appointed Orimco to arrange debt funding for Tiris. Orimco has vast experience
    supporting projects throughout Africa and at the same time, Macquarie Capital was appointed in
    Australia to identify and engage with strategic investors for a potential equity investment in Tiris
    and/or Aura.
    While this process is ongoing, I can offer a high-level update:We have received confidential,
    non-binding proposals from a number of investors and debt providers and other parties
    continue to contact us expressing willingness to co-invest
    Both funding processes are on-going, with advisors continuing to progress conversations with
    a number of parties proposed to be engaged in both the debt and strategic investment
    opportunities
    At this time, discussions in respect of the proposals have not sufficiently progressed to be
    announced to the market and there is no binding agreement in place with respect to any
    funding arrangement. Aura confirms that no assurance can be given that the ongoing
    confidential discussions will result in any binding agreement between the parties, and Aura
    will continue to maintain its policy of keeping the market fully informed with its continuous
    disclosure obligations
    Independent engineers have commenced due diligence on all aspects of the project on behalf
    of the lenders and investors
    We are working with potential funding parties and hope to be in a position to make a Final
    Investment Decision (‘FID’) on Tiris in Q1 2025 following which there is an 18-month final
    design and construction program with production aimed at commencing in late 2026
    We are pleased with the progress to date and the level of interest we’ve received from a strong mix
    of potential funding partners.
    Häggån Project
    I’m pleased to report that this morning, I am in Stockholm where we have meetings scheduled with
    key ministerial and governmental ofÞcials as we liaise with the Swedish Government, working through
    the legislative policy changes that are required to implement its commitment to the further
    development of nuclear power including its policy to roll back the ban on uranium mining.
    While here in Sweden I’d like to remind you of Ebba Buisch, Sweden’s Deputy Prime Minister quote
    “That the most beautiful word I know is baseload. Let’s take politics out of energy policy and put
    physics back in”. In highlighting the importance of baseload, the Deputy Prime Minister observed
    “There’s a difference between terawatts and terawatt hours and there’s a lot of politicians and
    Þnanciers who need to learn.” The Deputy Prime Minister also observed “By the way, for the
    Þnanciers who are learning and looking for nuclear projects to fund...Sweden is open for business”5
    While this potential policy change is still in the works, we continue to advance the project across
    multiple fronts. Sweden, like the rest of Europe, sees nuclear energy as critical to providing energy
    security with zero carbon emissions.

    At our Häggån Project in Sweden, we continue to make good progress. Haggan represents a
    substantial tier one polymetallic resource in Häggån comprised of vast resources of future-facing
    metals such as vanadium, potassium, nickel, zinc, molybdenum, and uranium.
    In particular, during this past year we have continued our engagement with local communities.
    As we announced in September 2023, our Haggan scoping study6 was based on less than 3% of
    Häggån’s two billion tonnes of Mineral Resources and it excluded uranium – which underlines why
    we are so excited about Häggån’s long-term potential.
    In August this year, we lodged an Exploitation Permit Application for Häggån, and we expect our
    applications to be considered favourably due to the amount of work undertaken to date. Once granted
    we can also renew the larger Häggån exploration permit. Our exploitation permit application for
    Häggån K number 1, lodged with the Swedish Mining Inspectorate, includes a preliminary assessment
    of the project that spells out its economics and its environmental and community impact.
    Once granted, the permit will provide Aura with a 25-year tenure– and paves the way for us to carry
    out further environmental and social impact studies, with the ultimate goal of developing a proÞtable
    mine that operates sustainably, responsibly and in full compliance with Swedish regulations.
    The progress we’re making at Häggån and the very real near-term development of Tiris are perfectly
    positioned to capitalise on global demand for uranium, which continues to grow.
    Global Demand
    As we highlighted in our recently released annual report, there are around 155 nuclear reactors
    around the world that are either under construction right now, or that are planned to be constructed
    in the very near future7.
    During the past year, some key government decisions were announced in support of the production
    of nuclear energy, uranium mining and uranium conversion.
    These include the developments in Sweden that I mentioned earlier, as well as the United Kingdom’s
    plans to quadruple its nuclear energy capacity by 2050, and the US, Canada, Japan and France
    collectively investing in new uranium enrichment and conversion capacity.
    And just a couple of weeks ago, the outgoing Biden administration in the US unveiled the US
    Government’s plans to triple nuclear power amid increasing demand. This follows announcements
    from major companies such as Microsoft which plans to leverage nuclear power to support the rapid
    growth in artiÞcial intelligence.
    Meanwhile, China’s development of its nuclear energy capacity continues at pace despite economic
    challenges that the country is facing.
    These developments have underpinned uranium prices, which have stabilised at around US$80 per
    pound.
    We are not alone in our optimism and excitement about the long-term direction of uranium markets.
    The World Nuclear Association’s Nuclear Fuel Report 20238 projects a 28% increase in demand for
    uranium by 2030 and a further 51% increase in demand between 2031 and 2040.
    Our Future
    The team at Aura are excited at the prospects of our business and we hope you, our shareholders,
    are equally excited.
    We want to thank our shareholders for their ongoing support – including those shareholders that
    joined us on this journey as part of our A$16 million placement and oversubscribed share purchase
    plan during the year.
    This funding is helping us accelerate Tiris towards FID, whilst unlocking future expansion
    opportunities in both the resource potential and project scale.
    There has been plenty of good news in 2024 but 2025 will be a truly deÞning year for Aura as we
    ready ourselves for a Þnal investment decision for the Tiris Project.
    With compelling economics, a terriÞc team in place, and a stable and supportive Government and
    local community in Mauritania, Tiris is poised to be a near-term, low-cost, high-margin producer
    coming into a glowing uranium market driven by growing global energy demand and the global push
    to meet Net Zero targets to mitigate climate change.
    Our focus for the coming months will be to Þnalise Tiris’ funding requirements as we approach FID.
    In Sweden, we are building and nurturing relationships with key stakeholders as we move through
    the required approval processes to continue the development of the Häggån Project.
    At the same time, we are we are closely watching and waiting as the Swedish Government moves
    through its legislative processes to rescind the country’s ban on uranium mining.
    I would like to thank Andrew and his executive team, and our people in Australia, Mauritania and
    Sweden for their continued professionalism and commitment to improving and delivering our
    projects.
    To conclude, on behalf of my fellow Board members at Aura, thank you again for your support of Aura
    in 2024 and we look forward to providing further exciting updates in the new year and beyond, as we
    move from planning and developing, to building of the world’s next major uranium projects.

    Thank you
    Phillip Mitchell, Chair Aure Energy Ltd
 
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