Ann: December 2024 Quarterly Webcast, page-52

Hi Fooca,

The H2 guidance figures (which are relevant for final months for 2024) have already made a prevision for the tantalum credits and therefore I am not required to attribute an amount for it since it is already factored in. I do not see any need at this point to deviate away from those cost guidances as I am trusting of the figures LTR management have utilised in deriving their tantalum credits.

As I had previously stated, I would only take out the tantalum credits and add into revenue (also making the adjacent increase to costs) if there was a significant change in tantalum pricing. To my knowledge there has not been, so there is no reason to do so at this moment. I had only made adjustments to variances in royalty payments because of the guidance provided by LTR in the footnotes...

I would say the reason why your deviations from guidance have not been looked upon kindly is because you base your estimates on things that are often unrealistic or worst-case scenario rather than probable or most likely outcomes.

For instance, you have used the incorrect pricing instrument at the lower general SMM Spodumene Index (which includes pricing from Zimbabwe and others) rather than the relevant Australian specific spodumene instrument by SMM. The production cost figures that you have also utilised are based on the initial ramp up and commissioning volumes and have not really changed all too much over the quarter, I just do not see how that is feasible given that management has already given us new guidance figures and a revised mine plan. To base your production costs at a perpetual ramp up / commissioning amount would effectively mean the KV plant is restarting itself without any new efficiencies... it just cant be.

Asides from cashflow from the operational activities, management indicated in the previous webinar there would be about $52m in production costs for December quarter which is way lower than I've estimated and perhaps more inline with @anatol estimates given a lot of the mining has already been done. If this is the case, I will be very happy tomorrow morning. It very well could be because there is a large component of fixed costs which do not increase much at all with ramped up production. The open pit already has the waste rock removed and it is full floor of 100% ore body with very little waste. The underground operations are already achieving pure ore. Reagent consumption is also lower than expected which points to a good lithia recovery rate.

The largest cash spend is going to be things we already know about. In the last webinar, we were advised that there was about $65 million to go which is broken into 2 components, i.e. $50 million in cash payments to get to first production (finalising invoicing for already completed work) and about $13 million to $15 million for the paste plant (not required for first production).

There would be far too much guess work involved for estimating the closing cash and cash equivalents for December 24, but I do not think we will be as low as A$140 million. But in the spirit of guessing, I would say we might land somewhere between the below scenarios:

• High Scenario = $239 million cash (already mined a good amount of ore with great amount of fixed costs, and jaguar proceeds received).
• Med Scenario = $190 million cash (most likely estimate, assuming proceeds from jaguar shipment not received, adjustments from accruals to cash).
• Low Scenario = $175 million cash (assuming higher costs than expected, lower portion of fixed costs, revenue from jaguar shipment not received).

After this quarter, I would expect to see cash increase significantly because all the big spending is done. If the cash balance can cook up a bit more, spot prices continue to recover, and we get good output volumes to our takeoff partners (any maybe auction sales), I would say we can be in a position for dividends towards the end of this year (yes I still hold to my view).

Regards,
CK