Earnings call transcript: Bannerman Energy Q1 2025 shows loss amid project progress

Bannerman Energy Ltd reported a loss in its first-quarter earnings, with an EPS of -0.01. Despite this, the company made significant strides in its Tango uranium project, boosting investor confidence. According to InvestingPro, the company maintains a GOOD financial health score of 2.73, suggesting operational stability. The stock saw a slight decline of 1.87% post-earnings, trading at 3.68, near its 52-week high of 26.09 USD.

Key Takeaways

• Bannerman Energy reported a negative EPS of -0.01, indicating a loss for the quarter.
• The Tango uranium project is progressing well, with key infrastructure developments completed.
• Uranium term contract prices increased, reflecting a positive market outlook.
• The stock price declined by 1.87% after the earnings release but remains near its 52-week high.

Company Performance

Bannerman Energy’s performance in Q1 2025 was marked by a negative EPS of -0.01, signaling a loss. InvestingPro data reveals the company holds more cash than debt on its balance sheet, with liquid assets exceeding short-term obligations. The company demonstrated strong cash discipline, retaining A$112 million in cash and investing in liquid assets and project developments. The Tango uranium project made notable progress, with infrastructure and construction milestones achieved.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: 13,000 currency units (no forecast provided for comparison)
• Earnings per share: -0.01 (indicating a loss)
• Cash retention: A$112 million, with investments in project and asset development

Market Reaction

Following the earnings release, Bannerman Energy’s stock price declined by 1.87%, closing at 3.68. Despite the negative EPS, the stock remains close to its 52-week high, showing impressive gains with a 7.65% return over the past six months. InvestingPro subscribers have access to 12+ additional exclusive tips and comprehensive analysis for Bannerman Energy, including detailed valuation metrics and peer comparisons.

Outlook & Guidance

Bannerman Energy is targeting its first yellowcake production between 2028 and 2029. The company remains flexible in its final investment decision and aims to contract the majority of its initial production. Future expansion plans are also in place, potentially increasing production capacity.

Executive Commentary

Brandon Monroe, Executive Chairman, emphasized the company’s long-term view on the uranium market, stating, "We were an absolute outlier on our view on this uranium market, for many years, and we’ve stuck to our guns." He also highlighted the market’s failure to incentivize sufficient supply for existing and future demand.

Risks and Challenges

• Negative EPS and potential financial instability.
• Uncertainty in the timeline for production and investment decisions.
• Market speculation about government ownership and contracting strategies.
• Potential supply chain disruptions and market saturation.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the implications of the US Defense Production Act and the Namibian government’s potential ownership stake. The strategic approach to uranium market contracting and pricing discrepancies were also discussed. For deeper insights into Bannerman Energy’s market position and future prospects, investors can access the comprehensive Pro Research Report, available exclusively on InvestingPro, which transforms complex financial data into actionable intelligence.

Full transcript - Bannerman Energy Ltd (BMN) Q1 2026:

Emma Colver, Investor Relations Manager, Bannerman Energy: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Bannerman Energy quarterly webinar update for the September. For those of you that don’t know me, I’m Emma Colver, investor relations manager at Bannerman Energy. And I’m pleased that many of you were able to join us today for for the update. We’re joined today by our executive chairman, Brandon Monroe, who many of you, know or would have seen online. And Brandon will provide a short update on Bannerman, the progress out of Tango in this last quarter.

And following that, we will have some time for q and a. At the bottom of your screen, for those of you that aren’t familiar with Zoom, there is a a tab that says q and a. Please write your questions in there, and at the end, we will, we’ll be able to get through them, yeah, just just in a timely manner. So if you can pop them in there, that would be greatly appreciated. Before I bring Brandon on, I will just bring up our slides for the presentation.

Just bear with me for one moment as I get these loaded up. K. Here we go. Right. Just gonna share these here.

Alright. So, Brandon, welcome to the webinar. Thank you for joining us. There has been a lot happening at Atango in the last quarter. You were on-site this quarter.

You got back to Namibia, so I’m sure you were pleased with the progress that you saw. And and then there’s been a lot happened in the sector as well. So I, I’m sure everyone is is excited to hear from you, especially as I’ve had a bit of a run this week in equities. Thanks, Brandon.

Brandon Monroe, Executive Chairman, Bannerman Energy: Thanks, Sam. And look, thanks very much to everyone for joining us. Another exciting quarter for Banham and End. Yes. I was on-site in August, and it was just fantastic to see the progress with my own eyes.

So it’s been an excellent quarter. If we just touch on the highlights for this quarter as we put out in the quarterly update. We start as mining companies often do with safety, but I just wanna put a line under this. Sixteen years lost time injury free at a tango. That’s an extraordinary achievement.

So the people who are on this call who’ve got a background in mining, you’ll understand quite readily the exceptional amount of discipline and crafting of a safety culture that’s required to ensure that you can, as a company and as a project and a team, actually achieve such a long standing record. And sure, we weren’t hard at it all of that time. There were periods of time where there wasn’t a lot of activity, but we do have a lot of activity at the moment. So we just notched up a million man hours lost time injury free. That’s a big achievement.

But for the investors on the call who perhaps haven’t don’t have their own operational background in mining, what you need to take away from that is Bannerman has a very sophisticated approach to risk management. Now health and safety is a very important part of risk in its own right, but it also goes to how we manage a whole variety of risks in this company. And the team is absolutely outstanding in Namibia. And, as the chairman of the company, I feel enormously proud to be able to talk to you about that milestone that we’ve achieved, clocked over yet another year lost time injury free and now a million man hours lost time injury free. Now we’re also pleased to say that the early works construction is proceeding on time, on budget, those two magic words that every project developer and investor wants to hear.

And, again, in terms of confidence in what we’re set out to do here, we’re managing with Gavin Chamberlain’s leadership the execution risk very, very well. We’ve got the benefit of having these early works construction activities where we can, if you like, really get match fit ahead of the much more extensive work that will be on-site shortly. So we’ve had about a 120 contractors on-site. That’s shortly about to grow to 400 contractors. And so it’s so pleasing as a board member and as a shareholder to see that the team is functioning very, very well.

We’ve got that management of risk, budget, and schedule all under control before we start expanding this on-site contractor workforce. We’ve also detailed in the quarterly how the progress on detailed design is going. We’ve got 70 or so engineers in Joburg, an entire floor of Wood PLC’s office there working away on a full time basis on this detailed design, as well as our own owners team, people sitting in that office on that floor keeping an eye on them. A lot of our corporate strategy has been optimizing corporate flexibility as we wait for this uranium market to improve. And this approach is consistent with that.

There’s maybe a couple of dozen employees in the company against moving to 400 contractors on-site and 70 or so engineers in Johannesburg. So there’s a lot of activity going on, but we’ve taken the sensible corporate decision of ensuring that that’s mainly a contractor workforce at this point. Big announcement for us during the quarter was signing our initial offtake agreements. We can talk some more about that, I’m sure, in question time. But the key point here is this is a small proportion of our product.

It’s between five and six percent of our planned production. But what it does is it establishes our credibility and gives us very strong external validation in the broader nuclear sector, in particular with our future customers. This is a conservative industry. This is an industry that tends to wanna see things in front of them with their own eyes before they make decisions. And the fact that we’ve got two of the very largest, very most important, and most respected U US utilities, and for that matter, private utilities in the world, who’ve contracted with us, who’ve proceeded through all of the external consultant due diligence, who’ve had site visits, who’ve been through the whole process from initially agreeing basic terms to working through all of the nitty gritty and legalities required to be able to sign one of these final form contracts.

That positions this company and our project exceptionally well. So I think as a shareholder, they would I I know that some shareholders have got concerns about that it’s early in the cycle, and that’s true. It is early in the cycle, but it’s only five or so percent of our production that is locked in at these prices. And that becomes such an enabler for us in so many other ways with this project, including what I mentioned as well as making additional contracting as we see the market conditions improve so much easier and putting us in such a much stronger negotiating position by virtue of the fact that we have signed some initial contracts. Now really strong cash balance.

So I hope as an investors, what you’re taking from this is our fiscal discipline. So we started the quarter with about a 140,000,000 Australian in cash. We’ve got a 112,000,000 of that still in our cash. And, of course, we deployed 13,000,000 towards buying split units, which we now disclose as liquid assets. So really strong discipline.

We’re not letting that big cash balance burn a hole in our pocket. The almost the entirety of that is going into productive use in the company, going into the ground, going into these early works activities. So we’re being very disciplined about that and the way that we deploy our cash and maintaining a very, very strong balance sheet to optimize that corporate flexibility that I talked about. Now of that 111,000,000 in cash, we’ve now progressed commitments in the early works construction to the tune of about 50,000,000. So we’re committed to that work.

We’re happy with that work. It’s enabled us to lock in attractive prices and get the right contractors and ensure that the construction is moving the early works construction is moving forward. But as you can see, that still gives us a very large cash buffer, and that is what gives us the level of corporate flexibility that’s so important as this market starts to really turn and improve. Then finally, talking of the market, we’ve now seen two changes to the term contract price in the last several months. So it’s now moved from $80 a pound to $84 a pound.

That might not sound like a lot, but if you plug that number into our NPV, we’re talking about a plus 15% increase in our NPV across the different Tango a to Tango XT and a Tango XP scenarios. So even because of the extraordinary leverage that Bannerman delivers, that 4% growth in the term contract price has now increased our NPV by more than 15%. But that’s not, in our opinion, the end of the term contract price growth. We were expecting this market to really improve over the coming months. And by signing a couple of small commitments by top tier one utilities, we’re really well positioned to take advantage as we see that term contracting price and other market conditions continue to improve.

So let’s show you what we have been doing on-site. What you’re looking at there is the heap leach ponds. It’s hard to give a full appreciation of the scale of this project. So let me explain it to you in the way that I experienced this when I was on-site in August. So the heap leach pads, there’s 10 pads that are each roughly 300 meters long by a 100 meters wide.

So this is a area that needs to be very, very flat, very carefully engineered that is 300 meters by a kilometer. And the gradient from one end of that 300 meter side to the other falls by only several percent. And that’s just to get a very gentle drainage from one end to the other. So the civil works and the civil engineering that’s going on at the moment on-site is actually very precise. It’s all done with lasers, and the contractors are doing an excellent job.

I share that with you just because of the pure scale of what is being undertaken at the moment. So moving on to the next slide. We’ve now got full power on-site. The power infrastructure on-site will also serve us for, obviously, construction, but also into operations. When we move from construction to operation, we will need to upgrade the off-site power, but everything that we’ve got now is going to service for decades to come.

And that puts us in a really strong position. And with the site power now being fully operational, that’s the completion of all of the preconstruction infrastructure that we needed to do. What you’re looking at here is a primary crusher box cut. So we decided during the feed process, front engineering and design, that we could optimize the crusher by semi sinking it. Now what I mean by that is we looked at having a crusher on surface, and it would stand roughly 10 meters high.

We looked at submerging it, which has extra civil works, but means that there’s less of a gradient for all of the haul trucks to drive. And we optimize the NPV by deciding to submerge it by five meters. So half sinking it and less days or less turnaround time, and the point where the CapEx associated with what you can see on the screen demonstrably improved the OpEx and was a very effective trade off. We’ve now awarded the phase one concrete works, And you can see from that three d design that that’s what it will look like. You can see big retaining walls there as well as the concrete works that will install the primary crusher when we’re ready for that phase.

Now the expensive part of this is the kit. We don’t need to order the kit yet. We don’t need to order that primary crusher. They’re readily available. They’re a very standard size.

But it is quite time consuming to get the concrete work and all of these civils done. And so hence why we’ve moved this aspect of the project forward, and we continue with these less capital intensive civil bulk earthworks to ensure that when we’re ready to place the order on the primary and secondary crusher, everything’s ready for the delivery of those pieces of equipment. Now this is where the tertiary crusher will be installed. And you can see from the inset, that’s the three d design. And that photograph is a real live example of the HPGR that is currently being packaged for delivery to Namibia.

When we looked at the long lead items, we undertook a risk assessment to understand what do we need to lock in now to reduce the risk that supply might not be available or we could head into some huge mining bubble or there could be a huge amount of activity or lack of constraint in lack of supply availability in Southern Africa. Fairly standard when it comes to construction, but for investors out there, we wanted to know what we needed to lock down now so that we wouldn’t get bitten later by supply constraints. As I said, the primary and secondary crusher are relatively off the shelf. They’re a very standard size. They’re readily available at at short notice.

The tertiary crusher that you can see there is a more sophisticated piece of kit. And so we took the decision that in some circumstances, we might have to wait for that, and we don’t want that to become a bottleneck. So we placed that order last year, and Gavin and the team went up to the factory in Germany to do all of the factory acceptance testing and make sure that everything was perfect as we needed it. And that is now being on its way to being put on the sea to be delivered to Wolfish Bay. And then you can just see a yet another shot of some of the bulk of works.

And, hopefully, you’ll stick around for the flyover or access it via YouTube to get a full appreciation of what’s happening on-site. So Emma, let’s go to q and a. We’ve got plenty of time for the various questions that are coming up.

Emma Colver, Investor Relations Manager, Bannerman Energy: Yeah. Thanks, Brandon. So we’ll jump straight into it. The timing of the spend for the early works commitments of 49,200,000.0, what is that? And does the 31.5 mil on the early works and the 49.2 of commitments come off the total CapEx, or is this in addition?

Brandon Monroe, Executive Chairman, Bannerman Energy: Thank you. So this question refers to in our quarterly, we stated that we’ve already constructed roughly 30,000,000 Australian dollars worth of early works construction. And we’ve now, as I said before, given commitments for another 50,000,000 of that. So, yes, they do. They are part of the preproduction capital that we stated in our CBE estimate, which is 353,000,000 US.

We’ve been at this project with this early works construction for almost a year now. And part of our philosophy and part of our corporate strategy was to do this work because it was time consumptive, but not particularly capital consumptive. And as you can see, we’ve achieved a huge amount on the ground, both in terms of impact on the project, but in particular, impact on the project timeline in return for that $30,000,000. It’s starting to ramp up a little bit more. That $50,000,000 includes more expensive items such as the concrete and so on.

And that will still be delivered over the next eighteen months. Part of that 50,000,000, for example, is the balance of the bulk earthworks contract, which was a 24 month contract when we first awarded it. Go on mute, Anne.

Emma Colver, Investor Relations Manager, Bannerman Energy: Brandon. And is there gonna be much exploration spend in f y twenty six? What’s the expectation on that?

Brandon Monroe, Executive Chairman, Bannerman Energy: We’re not spending any money on exploration at the moment. So perhaps what that question’s driving at is the exploration and development expenditure, and that relates to the $50,000,000. So we don’t need to do any exploration at current in Itango, and all of the work that we’re doing relates to the early works and preconstruction activities of the Itango mine.

Emma Colver, Investor Relations Manager, Bannerman Energy: Great. And we have a question in regards to the initial offtakes here, and, and I think that there’s gonna be a few people, curious in regards to the thought process around those initial off take agreements. And, we just have someone here sharing with us that, you know, they believe that most of us believe that the price is going higher in uranium. And how can investors be assured that we will sign contracts at at at higher market market levels going forward? So look, I think that’s a broader question, and and I’ll leave you to to to input on that.

Yeah.

Brandon Monroe, Executive Chairman, Bannerman Energy: Look, I certainly agree with you. I think that prices are going up from here. The the offtake strategy and the concept of portfolio optimization is not a simple concept. But I’ll try and break it down in a way that investors can appreciate where our strategy is coming from. So first principle is there’s roughly a dozen contracts, perhaps even more, that will make up the total portfolio for Tango’s initial production of 3 and a half million pounds.

Those contracts aren’t signed as a singular event. They’re signed over time and negotiated over time. As I said at the outset, there’s a great deal of value for us as a company and as a project to get those first couple of initial contracts and all of the external validation and credibility that comes with that signed and into the public domain. We certainly think that they will look cheap over time, but that is worth it because it’s only a small volume. It’s only a small product a proportion of our production.

And we believe that as part of our contract portfolio optimization, the enhanced credibility and the fact that we’ve now got those contracts into the public domain, will get that value back through our negotiating strength on the balance of the portfolio. It’s not as simple as saying waiting until the uranium price reaches x, you know, call it a $100 a pound if if that’s what you’ve got in your mind and suddenly saying, right. Now’s the time. Now we’re ready to contract three and a half million pounds. Everyone make an orderly queue.

It doesn’t work like that in this sector. You need to be layering contracts in over time. In these cases, they’re very, very large utilities who we’ve contracted with on very small volumes. But if because we’ve now got a contract in place with them, if those utilities choose to come back to the market in a higher price environment, for example, it’s gonna be a lot easier for us to double down or triple down or even more on that volume. So that’s an example of how these become an enabler.

And we’re in a position to write those the balance of these contracts over the next twelve, twenty four months, even beyond that as we see the market strengthen. So as an investor, you know, the crux of that question, how can you feel assured that we’re going to sufficiently optimize this market? Well, there’s a number of things that we’ve done. Unlike many in the sector, we waited until we saw this type of pricing before we were prepared to make initial commitments. We, of course, could have done that at $65, and many people were surprised that we didn’t do it at $65.

But we wanted to ensure that our starting point was already locking in and delivering attractive economics for our project. And we’ve demonstrated over a long period of time that we’ve been prepared to make decisions based on a market outlook that, by and large and in general, has proved to be correct. We were an absolute outlier on our view on this uranium market, for many years, and we’ve stuck to our guns. And so far, our forecasting has, stood the the test of recalibration over a long period of time. So we do have an in house view on where we think the uranium market’s going.

It’s not something I’m able to disclose publicly, but we will be layering in contracts and steadily, we believe, improving the contract portfolio, both the the ultimate received price, the balance of fixed price and market related contracts, where those floors are set, where those ceilings need to be given, and the overall exposure to an increasing uranium market. There’s one final point that I’d make on this. That’s our initial production of three and a half million pounds. And by the time we’re in production, we would expect to have the large majority of that contracted. As I say, we expect that it’ll be at different steps up as the term price increases and as market conditions improve for us.

At about that time, we will then have the opportunity to start looking at our expansion where we can expand Itango from initial three and a half million pounds to 6,700,000 pounds. And if, as I expect and many of the people on this call expect, we’re in quite a different triple digit uranium market by then. We will be able to capture all of that value through contracting and locking in minimum returns in respect of that expansion. So it presents as a very attractive opportunity to lock in minimum returns as well as exposure to increasing uranium price activity over the next five to ten to fifteen, even twenty years of project. And those initial contracts were a very important start to that, but I wouldn’t want investors to get too distracted by trying to impute an overall incentivization philosophy on us because of what we were prepared to do for only five or 6% of our production.

Emma Colver, Investor Relations Manager, Bannerman Energy: And and to stay on the topic of of offtakes and and the the market, before we head into a couple of other topics, have you heard anything on current floors and ceilings? Are they being what’s been discussed in the current market? And are we actively responding to RFPs that are out there? And probably more broadly on that, are we seeing RFPs come in to the market at the moment?

Brandon Monroe, Executive Chairman, Bannerman Energy: So first of all, on floors and ceilings, there isn’t a lot of data points on floors and ceilings. And for anyone out there who is reading market commentary, I just wanna put a warning out there for you to better interpret what you’re reading. I’m seeing floors being thrown around as the market conditions. However, when we see those numbers and we try and understand where the commentators are deriving those numbers from, they are not numbers or they are not floors that are being contracted. They’re floors where utilities are saying we’re prepared to offer a floor at that.

And in most cases, the producers are coming back and saying, well, sorry. That doesn’t work for us. So as we would all know from trading shares and the the buy sell spread, If someone says they’re prepared to buy a share for that, that does not mean that that is the market price. So a little bit of caution on some of the lower numbers that are being cited as being flawed over the last six months in this sector. In terms of our market activity, yes, we’re we’re active in the market at the moment.

In most cases, we’re not successful because we’re sticking to our guns and we’re being very disciplined about the producer opportunity that’s reflected in the price of our uranium. But we’re receiving and engaging with a very pleasing amount of utility interest in our project at the moment. And as we said in the quarterly, the fact that we’ve now announced our initial contracts and they’ve been through the rigor of tier one utility due diligence has increased the interest that we’re getting from various utilities and other market participants around the world.

Emma Colver, Investor Relations Manager, Bannerman Energy: Great. Thanks, Brandon. And, this was announced a couple quarters ago, but the the the split units, the the the the holdings that we’ve got, can you just share a little bit in regards to the strategic thinking around that for those that that aren’t up to speed on on that transaction?

Brandon Monroe, Executive Chairman, Bannerman Energy: Yeah. I’d love to actually because this gives you an insight into the level of sophistication that we approach this market with. We described those that split holding when we first acquired those units as synthetic exposure to physical uranium. In other words, we sized that holding to be the equivalent of a 100,000 pounds of physical uranium. Now there’s two ways that we could try and own a 100,000 pounds of physical uranium.

We could open a converter account. We could buy a 100,000 pounds, and we could store it there. And there’s a lot of drag. There’s a lot of friction associated with owning physical uranium, particularly for such a small amount. And it’s not particularly liquid.

You can’t just go and sell 15,000 pounds because you, you know, because you would rather be holding 85,000 pounds rather than a 100,000 pounds. Or you can obtain synthetic exposure in the way that we have with the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust. And we for our purposes, we believe that that is the superior physical exposure and superior synthetic exposure for our requirements. Now what does that do for us? Having synthetic exposure to a 100,000 pounds becomes a very useful mechanism or a useful tool when we are getting close to production and when we are deciding how to market and sell and liquidate the noncommitted or non contracted portion of our production.

So So in this sector, you don’t go and contract a 100% of your planned production because that can make you vulnerable. It means if there’s a delay, you’ve got financial obligations. And in many cases, we’d be looking to debottleneck our process and perhaps even do better than our expected production. And there’s also quite a bit of flex from one quarter to another as we’ve seen with one of our peers releasing a quarterly report just with the delivery timing and and sales timing. So you need to maintain a fair bit of flexibility.

By having a 100,000 pounds of synthetic exposure, that gives us a hedge so that we can be trading 100,000 pound lots of uranium even if we haven’t yet put it on a ship, knowing that we can then get optimal pricing on that. It’s a big topic. I could probably spend a webinar explaining the mechanics behind that, But it’s not some punt that we’ve made. It it it will be a good investment. We’re confident of that.

It has been already, but that wasn’t the intention behind it. We don’t accept money from investors and then try and do a better job reinvesting it than that. This is a investment into a unit into a series of units that provide an enabler for our marketing activities later down the track. And the whole time, it’s highly liquid, unlike holding a 100,000 pounds of uranium, as I said. So it enhances our flexibility if if we ever need to draw on that source of available cash.

Emma Colver, Investor Relations Manager, Bannerman Energy: Great. And probably a quick one here, Brandon. Still expecting to ship the first yellow cake 2829. And how’s the timeline on that?

Brandon Monroe, Executive Chairman, Bannerman Energy: The timeline’s fine for now. But as I’ve said many, many times, this is not a deadline that we are putting on ourselves at this point. The flexibility as we approach FID is very important to us, and it’s very important to our capacity to optimize the improvement in the market itself. So when we get to FID, we will republish a timeline, and then we’re very happy to be held accountable to that timeline. In the meantime, it’s indicative.

It’s indicative of what’s achievable. But whether that’s in the best interest of the project and best interest of shareholders will really depend on how this market and the terms and conditions and pricing in this market continue to develop ahead of our FID.

Emma Colver, Investor Relations Manager, Bannerman Energy: Right now, I’m conscious of time, and aware that some of you may need to jump off. We will spend, another five minutes or so just getting trying to get through most of these questions. Brandon, can you comment or talk on the Defense Protection Act, the consortium that’s happening in October? I mean, we’re seeing a lot of news out of The US at the moment on critical minerals and rare earths are having their day, and and is that gonna flow over to uranium? And and what are your thoughts around the what what we’re seeing over there in The US at the moment?

Brandon Monroe, Executive Chairman, Bannerman Energy: Yeah. I think if I try and keep this one high level because there are just so many announcements coming out, including overnight as highlighted from that question. What that illustrates is the value and potency of the series of four executive orders that the Trump administration released a couple of months back. One of the overlooked but very, very significant aspects of that integrated suite of orders was that the White House has basically given full permitting jurisdiction to the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense if they want to or choose to develop reactors on their own land. So an example of where that has been very important for developing both conventional and SMR reactors is the plans that Fermi America have to develop data centers on Department of Defense land at the Pentax Military Nuclear Facility.

Because that’s geared for military nuclear requirements, as you can well imagine, the risks and the safety are an order of magnitude greater than what’s required for civilian nuclear applications. And so they will be able to meet the requirements there very, very quickly and years ahead of if you were permitting a new civilian nuclear power station where there wasn’t already one. Many examples of that are coming out of these executive orders, including that announcement last night about the Department of Defense wanting to roll out dozens of microreactors both inside The US and to military bases around the world. The final point that I’d make is one of the factors that’s dragged on the nuclear sector and the development of nuclear technology over the last few decades, but in particular since Fukushima has been availability of capital. That’s not a feature when it comes to military spending by The US.

Last time I looked, The US military budget was $978,000,000,000,000. And powering that defense machine is strategically vital. It’s very, very important. So carving out a proportion of that 978 should not be a difficult ask given the importance of and the value that nuclear power can add to powering bases. And just to be clear, we’re not talking about weaponry here.

We’re talking about providing the infrastructure to power conventional defense and military facilities.

Emma Colver, Investor Relations Manager, Bannerman Energy: Thanks, Ryan. And we have a couple questions here on the royalties in Namibia. Obviously, we’ve had a few comments in the media around 51% ownership from the Namibian government. We we have our mining license at a tango, but can you just comment on on where that sits in country and what that could mean for us, if anything?

Brandon Monroe, Executive Chairman, Bannerman Energy: Yeah. So there’s been a a fair bit of speculation. It’s in the media, it’s been drawn directly from comments made by the Ministry of Industry, Mines, and Energy. However, those comments are not a statement of government policy. It’s more like a statement of his opinion as to what he believes, should be the future policy settings in the country.

And at 51%, it’s obviously drawn a lot of controversy, including from politicians of his own party in Namibia and, of course, the opposition. I think it’s well accepted in Africa that large amounts of government ownership just doesn’t work. Now putting all of that to one side, the one consistent spread throughout all of this speculation and all of this sort of thought bubble exploration of this debate is that existing licenses are sacrosanct. So there is it has never been suggested that existing licenses would be subjected to these types of ownership provisions. So we feel entirely comfortable that it won’t affect Tango given that we have a mining license already issued.

The discussion now with government is, well, is there a need for greater Namibian participation in the mining sector given that there’s a good balance between the royalty rate at 3.25%, the corporate tax rate at 37.5%, and the expectation on return that investors need to receive for that risk. But if there was to be a change, the chamber of minds has been very assertive with government in saying, well, if you’re going to tinker or change or adjust, it needs to be licenses that are granted into the future as in exploration licenses so that anyone putting risk capital into the exploration sector knows what the new rules of the game are. That’s an ongoing discussion. It’s been had all the way at the top with the president. I’ll be in Namibia in two weeks’ time to further some of those discussions on not on behalf of Bannermann because we’re comfortable, but on behalf of the Namibian mining sector.

And, you know, I’m I’m not losing any sleep over this issue at the moment. One final point, we’re in an election year in Namibia. There’s we’ve had a federal election with the new government coming in in March. Is regional and municipal elections. So for anyone who’s dealt in Africa and, you know, you can say the same thing even in Australia, election years produce a lot of publicity and profile grabbing debates, and I would put this in that category.

Emma Colver, Investor Relations Manager, Bannerman Energy: Great. And any m and a discussions in Namibia? You know, I see these conversations on on Twitter a lot of the and the the, you know, the the the John Borschoffs and the all of us coming together. And any any thoughts on that, Brandon?

Brandon Monroe, Executive Chairman, Bannerman Energy: Yeah. Well, I mean, I I think everyone on the call would realize that whilst it’s great fun to read everyone’s theories on x or social media, it’s no company executives gonna comment on an m and a activity. What I can say and what I’m quite happy to say is our strategy is very focused at the moment on delivering a Tango, initially delivering the financing and FID for a Tango and then ensuring that the transition into construction is undertaken with an appropriate focus on execution risk. So we certainly don’t wanna see ourselves getting distracted. And I’ll I’ll leave all of the armchair investment bankers to continue with their theories on x.

Emma Colver, Investor Relations Manager, Bannerman Energy: Great. And, Brandon, I’m gonna call the last question here. There’s a there seems to be a big discrepancy between spot price of what the utilities are expecting of 75, 80 in the ’20 thirties versus the producers who are saying a 110, a 150. What’s your comments on that?

Brandon Monroe, Executive Chairman, Bannerman Energy: Look. I don’t know if there’s a data point that says what utilities are expecting. There’s I’ve got a few guesses on what utilities are hoping that prices will do, which is not run away like crazy from where they are now. But bear in mind that utilities are or utility fuel buyers are very sophisticated, very clever, very experienced industry professionals. And they’re not gonna wander around a conference saying, I’ve been chewing my nails down because I think uranium’s going to a $150 a pound.

Of course, they’re gonna be telling anyone that’ll listen that, you know, this this market’s gonna grow in a very orderly way. What I can tell you from the mining perspective is that this market is not incentivizing enough supply for the current nuclear fleet, let alone the anticipated demand across any scenario that you choose. When you look at the World Nuclear Association’s recent fuel report, even under the low case scenario. So under the most pessimistic scenario that that conservative project is able to project, there is a growth in uranium demand out to 2040 that will more than double the well, let me put in different figures. That growth is more than a 100,000 per annum out to 2040 in the context where supply will drop by about a 100,000 in the absence of new projects.

So a vast gap opening up that can be addressed, but it needs some very strong market incentivization. And so and that predominantly comes in the form of market signals and price signals. So utilities who do the work themselves or who are open to understanding that data point, whilst they need to maintain a a particular poker face in the way that they’re playing, I’m finding that increasingly, they realize that that is a very plausible risk that they’re gonna need to manage in their businesses.

Emma Colver, Investor Relations Manager, Bannerman Energy: Alright. Thanks, Brandon. And I’m just conscious of time. There are a couple questions there that we will get in touch with you, I think, personally, unless you’ve got any quick answers to those, Brandon. I think that we’ll reach out to those people directly and just conscious of time here today.

So thank you everyone for joining us. Up on our YouTube channel, there is the latest construction video where you can see all the progress from this quarter. And if you do have any questions at any point, please feel free to reach out to me, and I can and come back to you on those answers.

Brandon Monroe, Executive Chairman, Bannerman Energy: Great. Well, thank you very much, Emma, for hosting and coordinating another, I hope, informative webinar. And thank you very much to all of our shareholders and potential investors who joined us today and your ongoing support. We look forward to continuing to deliver as we’ve said that we would. And next quarter, I’m expecting to again be able to tell you that we’re on time on budget with the early works activities.

Emma Colver, Investor Relations Manager, Bannerman Energy: Right. Thanks, Brandon.

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