Lifezone Metals 2025 Full Year Earnings Call - Kabanga on the cusp of FID as strategic funding and project finance paths converge

Catherine, Webcast Moderator, Lifezone Metals: Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Lifezone Metals webcast to discuss the 2025 full year results and 20-F as filed this morning. We’ll finish today’s event with a question and answer session. Please can you submit a question using the Q&A box at the top of the page. Please feel free to contact us directly for any questions not addressed in this webcast. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that today’s event may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that can cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Details of the forward-looking statements are contained in our March 19, 2026 news release on our website at www.lifezonemetals.com. Please see additional disclaimers which I’d encourage you to read in your own time.

Joining me today are Lifezone Metals Chief Executive Officer, Chris Showalter, and Chief Financial Officer, Ingo Hofmaier. Without further ado, I’d like to turn this over to Chris and Ingo for their introductions and the presentation.

Ingo Hofmaier, Chief Financial Officer, Lifezone Metals: Thank you, Catherine.

Chris Showalter, Chief Executive Officer, Lifezone Metals: Excellent. Thank you, Catherine, and welcome everyone here today to Lifezone Metals 2025 results and webcast. To reinforce and just remind everyone, Lifezone Metals, we are a critical metals company and our real focus is centered around our flagship asset, which is the Kabanga Nickel Project. This is one of the largest, highest grade nickel sulfide deposits. This is a development-ready, critically important source of nickel and cobalt, and importantly, it is an alternative to what is a very tightly controlled nickel market, controlled by Indonesia specifically. That puts Lifezone Metals and this flagship asset in a very important part of the discussion for alternative supply chains throughout the globe.

The other important part of Lifezone Metals is the Kabanga Project has demonstrated over the past year, the release of our feasibility study has demonstrated that we are at the lower end of the cost curve, which is a competitively positioned point for us to be able to compete specifically with the Indonesian market. We’ve demonstrated that through the results of the studies and the hard work the team has done over the past year. Additionally, we have been undertaking several different funding processes to get to conclusive FID. What we’ve been able to do is really bring in some of the top-tier potential funders throughout the world, specifically when it comes to ECAs, DFIs.

A project like Kabanga that demonstrates the ability to be at the low end of the cost curve, we’re fortunate to be able to attract a lot of potential sources of funding, specifically for the project finance side. It’s a very attractive project for specifically that pool of capital. When it comes to Lifezone, we also blend in the technological advantage of our hydromet expertise and I think where we’re very well-positioned and once we commence the Kabanga Nickel Project formally, post-FID, we are gonna be demonstrating that our core strategic focus will be on unlocking the processing and refining bottlenecks that exist around the globe on these specific supply chains.

I think people have understood in the advent of a tremendous amount of focus on the supply chains that it’s actually the downstream processing and refining that has to be solved. We are uniquely positioned, given our technological expertise in hydrometallurgy, to provide these solutions across the supply chain, and that’ll be a big focus for us going forward. We will be updating on one of the exciting new projects we have in the pipeline with in a partnership with Glencore on the catalytic converter recycling, and we’ll go into that a little bit later. Okay, next. I wanted to touch base on just the milestones over the past year. This is really a result of a tremendous amount of work and effort from our project team led by our COO, Gerick Mouton.

The real important updates are, you know, where we progressed in terms of the development readiness, you know, really getting up to this execution readiness. The completion of the resettlement plan is a big milestone for us, so we have advanced the project further than any other prior owner has. We have provided compensation to the local people, so a tremendous amount of engagement with the local community, and that’s really the starting point to really earn that social license to operate on the mine site. We take a lot of pride on how far we’ve advanced that part of the process. That has really led into the conclusion of the S-K 1300. This is the first U.S. regulatory publishing of an S-K 1300 initial assessment, and that has advanced all the way into the DFS study that we released in July.

Importantly, the opportunity for us to acquire back the shareholding from BHP was concluded in July. That was a very, in our view, very accretive, very attractive transaction because we were able to do that on a highly deferred basis, which is valuable to shareholders to be able to do that on that deferred basis. I think that’s something that we were very happy we were able to close and that was able to give us 100% of the project. That has now led into engagement on several other processes that we’ll touch on in terms of bringing in new strategic partners into the project. The feasibility study was published in July 2025, and then we transitioned into kind of the project, you know, pre-FID execution readiness and preparation for the FID process.

As part of that, post-DFS, we were able to engage with the team from Taurus, who are very well-known, established, financiers in the mining space, and the $60 million bridge facility we secured. Really what that’s doing is bringing us from the exiting of BHP and the conclusion of the DFS, which was bankable. Really getting us now to that FID process. This is a traditional segment of the development timeline to bring in bridge financing for that period, and we were very successful, very happy with the Taurus team that’s in there as partners right now. In November 2025, we did do a placement.

I think the only thing I want to mention here is we were able to place this with existing shareholders, which is a demonstration of consistent support from some of our core anchor shareholders. Very happy to be able to provide that conclusive $50 million underwriting in December. Okay, Catherine, next. Okay, just very quickly, I’ll touch on Kabanga. I think everyone hopefully on this call is very familiar with Kabanga. What we really were able to demonstrate is in the feasibility study you know everything we really anticipated, which was the superior quality of this asset. This is a development-ready asset. The partnership with Tanzania is very strong right now.

I think when we are able to provide more information on the processes we have underway in terms of bringing in new strategic partners, the quality of the asset will be demonstrated by the quality of the additional investors and partners we’re looking to bring into this project. Importantly, this is, we have all the special mining licenses in hand. This is as development-ready as a project is gonna get. Really now it’s on us to progress the project through to FID and commence with the additional FID activities, pre-FID activities. Kabanga sits firmly within the lower quartile. That’s really seen in the feasibility study where we have a $1.58 billion after-tax NPV with a very strong 23.3% IRR.

That competes very well against other alternative nickel projects that you’ll see in the pipeline around the world. We are very uniquely positioned to be the next large source of nickel and cobalt coming online to compete with Indonesia. We’ve heralded that throughout our entire process, and I think we’ve been able to to firmly demonstrate that through the results of the study. Then the next step of the process, we will be progressing towards FID. Another thing, as I mentioned, we’re pretty excited about is the ESG qualifications, especially the standards we’ve reached and some of the qualifications with some of the project financiers we’ve hit. It’s very hard to hit some of these qualifications, especially some of the IFC performance standards.

To be able to have progressed through that process to get those qualifications, it’s a critical milestone for the project financiers. We’ve been able to hit those qualifications, and that’s a very important part of how we’re gonna be progressing on the project finance side, which Ingo will touch on a little bit. Okay, next.

Ingo Hofmaier, Chief Financial Officer, Lifezone Metals: Yeah. Thank you, Chris. I would like to speak about and give an update on the strategic financing initiatives. We are currently progressing two main pillars, and that’s underpinned and financed by the bridge facility that Chris talked about. The $60 million from Taurus Mining Finance is ring-fenced for Kabanga and finances all the activities in there, which means pre-FID activities, FEEDs, operational readiness, and also the project financing activities at Kabanga. The two pillars that we are currently progressing is on the one side, finding a long-term strategic partner, that’s led by Standard Chartered Bank.

This process started ahead of the official exit of BHP, the writing that was on the wall when a year before we announced that BHP would leave the project. BHP announced that it has mothballed its Nickel West operations. Therefore, this process is well progressed. We have received multiple offers, and term sheet negotiations are essentially complete. We have seen interest from multiple geographies and various different types of investors. We have cast the net relatively tight because it’s a big project and it’s a significant project with interest from miners from sovereign entities and private equity funds. The due diligence is also more or less concluded for most of these parties or at least the ones that are really in the final round.

We are considering all options. That also means we have received offers for transactions that would be considered a change of control, where we would then ultimately exit the project and sell the project to a new owner. The second pillar is the pre-FID activities and the project financing workstream. We are continuing to work with DRA, who have also been the lead engineering consultant for our feasibility study. As we announced, I think in late 2024, that we had appointed Société Générale for the project financing process. This process has extremely well progressed. I think it’s a reflection of the high grades and high quality of the project or a lack of comparative projects in the current market.

There’s also not many project financings in the market at the moment globally, which is a benefit. As most of you will have seen, also the nickel market backdrop has significantly improved since late 2025. Nickel prices are up $2,500 per ton since then, which really has also boosted this process. Lenders that come in obviously see this as anyway a long-term project. I mean, we really need two and a half years for the construction and then, the reserve and mine plan in the feasibility studies for 18 years. There is a significant amount of resource outside of the reserve.

The expectations of us and BHP in the past, as well as other partners, potentially other potential partners, is always that there will be a significant longer mine life than 18 years. The project finance pathfinders, which is a good mix of African, European, and North American DFIs and ECAs, is essentially complete. Also the key lenders’ due diligence advisors have been appointed, and the draft reports have been received. They will, of course, be updated before the lenders go to their own credit committees. We have also appointed Sullivan & Cromwell as our counsel. The long-term concentrate offtake term sheets are well advanced. They underpin the financing in roughly let’s say in 10 years.

We have also completed an ISO compliant life cycle assessment, which is important because it really shows the advantages of having a project that is high grades, hard rock, and predominantly powered by hydroelectricity. Also in this environment of increasing energy prices as a short term, hopefully, but it just brings back that hydroelectricity particularly has not just the green credentials, but also economic benefits. As we have outlined in the past, Tanzania has built three hydropower stations in the last couple of years. The closest is 80 kilometers from our site. It’s not the biggest. The biggest, the Julius Nyerere Dam, has in fact doubled the capacity of Tanzania to produce electricity and made Tanzania a net exporter of electricity to neighboring countries.

A massive achievement, which reflects also in the positive view of investors in Tanzania. We have appointed critical technical consultants, DRA for engineering, PCC for all the procurement processes. Epoch is doing an update on the tailings storage facility, and then we work with SLR on hydro and environmental aspects. We have in the meantime, in full compliance with local content rules in Tanzania, issued expressions of interest as part of the procurement process for a combined value of around $380 million. That’s quite a significant amount. It’s big packages. The $380 million in relationship to $930 million, which is the total CapEx.

The value engineering has commenced and will ultimately support detailed layouts and front-end engineering as the feed processes. I think important to say in this context that we did the feasibility study and invested $140 million in the confirmation drilling, further drilling to upgrade the resource to a reserve, but then obviously also in the study. Far more than 90% of everything was bottom-up priced as we were really in the market and have estimated CapEx assumptions from first principles. Next page, please. In terms of path to final investment decision, we are currently working through this. We’re a couple of months away. We are largely permitted, and we currently don’t see any permits that can stop construction.

We have a special mining license in place. We have prospecting licenses in place, the special mining licenses for the life of mine. We have a lot of ancillary permits. We have an environmental management plan. We have the ESIAs in place. As Chris mentioned, we have a resettlement action plan that was signed off more than two years ago. Pretty much all the compensation payments have been paid. The payments that we couldn’t make, they’re in escrow, and they relate to parties where in most of the cases, and there is just a handful, we really don’t know who actually owns the land. But we have an agreement with the government, and there’s a solid valuation process that there’s no holdouts with regards to land parcels.

All the land parcels that are relevant to us have been valued and signed off by a government authority called the Chief Valuer, which gives us a lot of certainty to move forward. We have water abstraction licenses, we can build an airstrip and so on. There is, of course, a couple of permits that we still need to get or update. One example, the government of Tanzania laid power to our site more than 1.5 years ago, so we currently don’t rely on diesel generators. That’s also the assumption in the feasibility study and a major improvement to earlier studies undertaken by Klinkco and Barrick. We need an upgrade to this power line that is the layout and where it should run that is already in progress.

We’ll need to update, for instance, our environmental social impact assessment because of that. That’s an example of the permits that our team is currently working on. Once we are at FID, as you can see here in the slides, the project execution and most of the senior members are already in place for this. We have a project COO, GMs, technical engineers, electrical engineers, et cetera. From an execution readiness, we’re investing heavily in filling out gaps. We have also signed off the labor plan. You have also seen we have issued procurement orders to the market. Once we are at FID, it’s around a 2.5-year to ultimately get to first ore and concentrate sales.

Next page, please. I think I hand back to Chris with regards to the next two slides, which talk about our PGM recycling project and our recent announcement with regards to Musongati.

Chris Showalter, Chief Executive Officer, Lifezone Metals: Yeah. Thanks, Ingo. These next two slides I’m actually quite excited to talk about because what it does, it shows kind of the, you know, the extent to where we will migrate as a company and really kind of the next kind of growth opportunities for us. We have, you know, we have discussed on the AutoCat recycling, this is something where we’re producing a solution for a domestic closed loop, processing and refining of critical metals within a host country, as we indicated. For this, when you look at the U.S. list of critical metals, obviously rhodium, platinum are very high on there, and a lot of this material gets recycled out of junkyards. It’s a very fragmented series of events that eventually result in most of the material being sent overseas.

What we’ve done is we’ve been able to produce a much quicker domestic refining solution utilizing our hydromet expertise. This is something that we’ve actually really pioneered through the R&D process. This is something that we and the teams at Simulus undertook an enormous amount of time to get this progressed to the point where we are now closing off the piloting program. We are in the process of drafting up the feasibility study, and then we’re going to be progressing very quickly to FID. Again, this is a partnership we have with Glencore. To give you an idea, just as an example. Rhodium, you can see on the right, very high on the list of critical metals.

Only about 4,000 ounces of rhodium are produced domestically in the U.S., and that is from the Stillwater operations in Montana. That’s the only domestically mined source of rhodium. This current scale of this first facility that we would build in the U.S. would produce about 20,000 ounces of rhodium. A material solution to what is a very high priority initiative within the government currently, which is to basically go through this list of critical metals and identify solutions as to how security of those supply chains can be produced.

This is another example of how we look forward to our growth strategy, which is really focusing on that downstream, the processing and refining, because that’s going to be the area that if we unlock those, we’re providing the solutions that governments around the world are looking for, and that’s our competitive positioning. You hear me say it a lot, but I’m very excited about projects like this, and we’ve got a pipeline of about 10 other projects that we can focus on once we’ve progressed and gotten Kabanga into FID and main construction. This is the type of project you’re going to see Lifezone deliver as essentially these solutions. Next chapter. This is another example of how we’re well-positioned to unlock additional opportunities.

We announced several weeks ago that we had signed an exclusivity agreement with the government of Burundi. Now, why is this important? This is important because the same time that Kabanga was discovered in the 1970s by the United Nations Development Programme, they also discovered another very high, highly prospective nickel deposit in Burundi called Musongati. This is a different deposit. This is a laterite deposit, but it’s right next door to Kabanga. Kabanga as we’re geographically positioned, is right on the border of Burundi. Very similar to Kabanga, what has prevented Musongati is the establishment of infrastructure to access a landlocked deposit the size and scale of Musongati.

Now, the same unlocking variables that have allowed us to progress the Kabanga project, the advent of power in Tanzania, the infrastructure development through the standard gauge rail, all those infrastructure developments extending to the Kabanga project are now going to be extending into Burundi. There’s a railway that’s going to be the fifth, I think, extension of the current standard gauge rail in Tanzania. It’s going to go under and go directly through the Musongati deposit. So what we’re doing is capitalizing on a growth extension of our current operations. We have identified a number of synergies that we believe also materially impact the economic potential of Musongati. We see these two deposits as really the advent of a giant nickel province. Again, that’s going to compete on size and scale versus really the tightly controlled Indonesian market.

That’s the size and scale of this larger nickel opportunity that is critically important to the overall supply chain security of certain governments around the world. Okay, next.

Ingo Hofmaier, Chief Financial Officer, Lifezone Metals: Yeah. Thank you, Chris. Turning to our financial results of 2025. Important for junior companies, that means pre-cash flows is, of course, the cash balance. We closed the year with $20.1 million. We secured funding of $30.9 million in terms of net proceeds. In terms of additional liquidity, the Taurus facility is for $60 million, and we had drawn down $20 million last year. We have, in the meantime, this week, drawn down another $5 million from Taurus, which is presented as a subsequent event in our accounts. This was an advance to the second larger draw down of $21.7 million that currently is going through CPs.

In terms of our cash usage, we invested $21.3 million into investing activities and $21.8 million went into the Kabanga project. The difference here in terms of cash inflows is $700,000 of interest earned. We went through at the start of the year, which completed in Q2, a cost optimization that regrettably also led to the departure of employees at the corporate level, but in particular also in Tanzania, where we kind of right-sized but also reoriented the organization away from an exploration organization into a development organization. There were just under $1 million of kind of reorganization and compensation payments included in here. The team size at the end of the year was still 93 employees. Of course, a lot of people in Tanzania, which is good.

These 93 employees include also long-term contractors. We had a net loss of $14.1 million and basically diluted loss per share of $0.17. In terms of if you look at the upside, in terms of the operating activities, they increased, but because of cost controls, we managed more or less to keep the cash outflows at the same level. Investment activities reduced from $52 million to $21 million because last year was really a year of tidying up and then ultimately publishing the feasibility study. While in 2024, there were, of course, the study activities itself were at a higher intensity, and we were also drilling at the start of the year.

From a financing perspective, that reduced, and also the financing activities offset by lease payments, interest payment, the stamp duty payment, and transaction costs. Next page, please. We will just look into the accounting treatment of two transactions that happened during the year. One is the $60 million senior secured bridge loan facility from Taurus. It carries an interest rate of 9.25%. The maturity is in July 31, 2027. We also issued 2.5 million warrants at an exercise price of $5.42, which was 125% of the share price roughly at that point of time. The fair value at the end of the year was $5.65 million of that.

The total financing costs, including the 5.65%, were 8.66%. That included also arrangement fees. 3.44% are offset and amortized against the first tranche, and the remaining 5.22% are recorded as a deferred asset and will be offset against future drawdowns, so they currently sit on the balance sheet. The amortization uses the effective interest rate method over the term of the facility. As mentioned before, the funds here are ring-fenced to the borrower, which is Kabanga Nickel and of course the subsidiaries, which is the project company. We loan the funds down to Tanzania at 0% interest at the moment. It covers as the scope and uses of funds is early stage pre-FID project financing and so on.

Anything that we need to raise at the corporate level, so that was the 2025 offering and future offerings happens then at the Lifezone level covers what is our IP segment, which is the Simulus laboratory but also the PGM project, which is coming to a really mature situation now where possibly we will have to carve that out as a segment in itself as we go into FID also for that. We will probably have some exciting announcement about the pilot test results in the next couple of weeks. Next page, please. Which also brings me to the final one in this presentation before we go to Q&A. This is the accounting treatment of the acquisition of the 17% from BHP.

We acquired it on the eighteenth of July, which was the same date as the announcement of the feasibility study. This transaction also terminated all the other BHP agreements, including the T2 option agreement, and we assumed 100% of the offtake that we’re currently marketing. In terms of consideration structure, we will pay $10 million. It’s a fixed payment 12 months after post-FID upon raising $250 million in aggregate. There’s a final deferred payment of $28 million that will be paid 12 months after first commercial production. BHP, which I think had an overall positive experience with us and also especially Tanzania as a host country, I think we didn’t wanna stand in the way of the development.

It gives them an opportunity to earn back their investment, but it is kept at $83 million, and the $28 million is indexed by $4.16 per share. It’s a scale that runs up to 83. There is an opportunity to reduce the 83 to 75 if we can demonstrate the rep alignment that we are very comfortable and confident in. In terms of valuation, currently this deferred consideration is obvious from the above. It’s fair valued at every reporting date, and is probability weighted. Currently this liability sits at $25.7 million, and there’s 3 probability scenarios about an FID date in the middle of this year, a first commercial production date of March 1 or 20, 2029, and a change of control event.

The discount rate reflects the risk and the costs of debts as we have currently outstanding. This is going to be remeasured every time we release results and therefore has also an impact on the comprehensive loss. The strategic impact was that we have now at KNL full control over the project direction and the economic upsides and enhanced financing flexibility. I think this concludes my part. I hand over to Chris for the upcoming catalysts this year. Oh, there’s one more page. Sorry about that. In terms of our current shareholder structure and partner structure, the Kabanga Nickel Project has a 16% free carried interest from the government of Tanzania. It’s a very fruitful and helpful relationship.

I think many of the permits and many of the smaller holdups we had would not have been overcome as easily as if the government was not a partner of us, especially in terms of the resettlement activities. For our project, we have Glencore as a partner. Of course, we consider Taurus and our existing shareholders as key to our success. We also have a convertible debenture and the investors here, Harry Lundin, Rigel, and three other related investors or close investors to them.

We have had in the past a lot of interest from various jurisdictions and of course also significant project support from entities like the DFC via the Minerals Security Partnership, and also a strategic partnership with JOGMEC, which might crystallize in offtake going to Japan. Currently our market capitalization is $325 million. On the right side, you can see our basic shares outstanding going to the fully diluted share count. Thank you, and I hope there will be some questions at the end. I hand over to Chris for the final page.

Chris Showalter, Chief Executive Officer, Lifezone Metals: Hey, thanks Ingo. Really, what are we looking forward to in 2026? As I alluded to, the flagship project, Kabanga, really it’s getting this through to FID, and it’s bringing in the strategic partner capital and really, a conclusion of that process, which was, as we said, is meaningfully progressed and we’ll be informing the market on the conclusion of that in due course. For the project itself, we are updating the framework agreement. That’s part of the staging concept that we presented to the government of Tanzania, and that really materially focuses on the mine and concentrator as the step one process.

All the major processes as part of the pre-FID that the team are working on, really the, you know, the core activities including, you know, going out for tender for the EPCM contract, major, bulk earthworks, roads, getting some of the geotechnical drilling, commenced. On the actual mine site, there’s a lot of activity as we ramp up, these pre-development works ahead of FID. In parallel to that, there’s a lot of commercial negotiations in the offtake. The offtake’s really interesting because there’s a tremendous amount of interest in the offtake for Kabanga. We have not committed the offtake to anyone at this point.

These are some of the most intense and important negotiations we’re having right now because where the nickel, copper, and cobalt goes is a very, very competitive process, and it’s in our interest as Lifezone to ensure that we’re maximizing the value of these contracts, you know, for shareholders. This is taking a lot of management’s time to make sure that we, you know, we provide a creative result to the offtake negotiations. The additional stuff in the back half of 2026, you’re gonna see some more permanent infrastructure commitments to really the power supply. You’re gonna see, you know, more advanced opening up of box cuts, and you’re gonna see really us progressing on the commercial side to the FID process, in conclusion.

It’s gonna be a very busy period once we announce the process of the strategic partner and/or funding or other alternative, and that progresses us firmly to the FID process. In terms of sustainability milestones, I think what’s gonna be very exciting is when we do release this lifecycle analysis. This is something that’s gonna demonstrate to the market that we are, you know, just incredibly differentiated from the nickel coming out of Indonesia. This is something that is a hallmark of how we’re looking at this project. You know, really putting ourselves in a much lower CO2 category than the alternative. That is still incredibly important to a number of downstream consumers and markets.

We are gonna be able to really differentiate this product as being a cleaner alternative, and a lot of that is the power in Tanzania. You know, almost you know, 52% of that’s hydro and gas. Tanzania has really put projects like Kabanga in a very, very strong position to maximize the credentials of being clean sources of new metals coming online. As I indicated on the recycling side, I’ll be very thrilled to make the announcements of the results of the pilot study and next steps because I think this is again, this is how Lifezone’s gonna demonstrate additional solutions to solving, you know, really these bottlenecks that exist in the industry, in the supply chain overall, and that’s gonna be really our growth strategy going forward.

I think when you see how we pull that project together, the attractiveness in terms of the capital intensity, the low CapEx, and how we do this closed loop solution, mitigating a lot of the, you know, the margin that’s lost in a very, very segmented and fragmented process, it involves a lot of shipment around the world, that’s gonna be a demonstration of what we’re gonna be focused on in the future. With that, I’d like to thank everyone, and I think we will hand it back to Catherine, in case we have any questions coming through.

Catherine, Webcast Moderator, Lifezone Metals: Thank you, Chris and Ingo. As a reminder to everyone, if you have a question, please raise it via the Q&A box located at the top of your screen. The first question that we have is from Stan Ackermans. Will the nickel refinery from the Kabanga Project still be implemented in Tanzania after five years of mine operations?

Chris Showalter, Chief Executive Officer, Lifezone Metals: Yep, I’ll take that. Thanks, Stan. Yeah. What we’ve basically done is we’ve gone to the Tanzanian government, and when we had the conclusion of the feasibility study, we went with a very, you know, pragmatic and also, you know, realistic assessment of, you know, the current nickel market. When we dissected the economics coming out of the feasibility study, we presented a scenario where we basically do a stage approach. The upfront capital intensity and the economic result of doing all these downstream processes in parallel to the mine build-out, they did present a less attractive alternative versus doing a staging process. This is a very natural series of, you know, progressive steps. You wanna get these mines built first.

Downstream naturally comes as an extension of an existing mining mine or mines existing in the country. This is just, you know, smart economic rationale where we showed we will commence with the additional, updated studies for the downstream beneficiation. We are committed to that, and what we’ll be doing is, updating the refinery study, and also we have, presented to the Tanzanian government the option of doing a demonstration plant in country to, advance, you know, the demonstration of producing metal in country. That’s been very well-received. To answer the question, yes, the plan is to have a fully vertically integrated, project in Tanzania, but we’re gonna be smart about this. We wanna do this in a way that is, you know, in the best interest of shareholders and in the host government.

That, in our view, is doing a staged process with the mine and concentrator up front.

Catherine, Webcast Moderator, Lifezone Metals: Thanks, Chris. Second question: The potential partner that you’re searching for, will they join at a premium, or are you happy with today’s prices? Also, what will be the cost to own Musongati? Has the government of Burundi discussed this, or will they hand over the 84% and keep their share?

Chris Showalter, Chief Executive Officer, Lifezone Metals: Ingo, you wanna take the first one, and I’ll take Musongati?

Ingo Hofmaier, Chief Financial Officer, Lifezone Metals: Yeah, I think the simple answer is our current share price is in our view and also in the view of most of the long-term partners not reflective of the real value of the asset. When we will present it to the shareholders, if it’s either a change of control or the strategic partnership, yeah, this will definitely be at a more reflective of the long-term value of the asset. Which route we go is ultimately a question for shareholders. This is to be decided in the near term.

Chris Showalter, Chief Executive Officer, Lifezone Metals: Mm-hmm. Thanks, Ingo. I think what our shareholders and, you know, what the market can rely on is that management is, you know, absolutely focused on shareholder value. That really drives our strategic assessment of the alternatives. We are, you know, 100% aligned with our shareholders to see what is gonna be the route that allows us to unlock the most potential return to our shareholders. The second part of that question on Musongati, this is very early days for Musongati. We are in a process now where we’ve committed to doing a very rapid kind of in-country reconnaissance scoping study, getting on the ground, assessing what information exists, where is all the, you know, historic drill data, where is the core.

It’s a bit of a quick sprint to go get into Burundi and really do a critical assessment of what information there is, and then we can start incorporating that into a conceptual plan of what work we would intend to do. As of right now, on the Burundi side, there’s no capital committed right now until we’ve put forward over the next 60 days a proposal of what our assessment is of what is the next step in the process that would lead to either a pre-feasibility study or feasibility study. Right now we’re kind of in that exciting investigative period where the teams are busy looking at, number one, where is the information? What do they have?

Number two, how can we potentially unlock some of these synergies and operational efficiencies between the two projects? I think that’s where our team is most excited, is really can we demonstrate that and some of the synergies between a nickel laterite and a nickel sulfide, is gonna be one of the key kernels of what we’re trying to establish from a technical viability standpoint. Early days in Burundi, a lot of work to do, but this natural bolt-on is very exciting in terms of upside potential, for not only us, but for shareholders and for the larger potential of this new emerging nickel province as I alluded to in East Africa.

Catherine, Webcast Moderator, Lifezone Metals: Thank you, Chris.

Chris Showalter, Chief Executive Officer, Lifezone Metals: Catherine, probably time for one more.

Catherine, Webcast Moderator, Lifezone Metals: We are at time, but let’s quickly answer one more. This, the starting question I’d go with is it’s a combination of a few. What’s your opinion on the recent continuous decline in the nickel prices? I think linked to that will be on FID, what plans do we have? There are two options for final investment of Kabanga Nickel Project. The first is to sell the project, the second is to secure bank loans.

Chris Showalter, Chief Executive Officer, Lifezone Metals: Mm-hmm.

Ingo Hofmaier, Chief Financial Officer, Lifezone Metals: Maybe on the nickel prices, currently, I can’t answer the question what exactly is meant with that. If it’s the recent, meaning the last couple of days or this week, I think that’s probably more influenced by political events in the Middle East. Of course what we have seen over the last two years was sliding nickel prices up to the end of 2025 influenced by an increase in market share in Indonesia. That then turned around, and it turned around from around mid-December and was driven by changes to the regulations in Tanzania, in Indonesia.

Indonesia basically if it wants can make the nickel price, and Indonesia benefits from higher nickel prices, and particularly benefits from higher ore prices, which most of the royalties in Tanzania attach to, and that’s what we have seen in the last three months, that Indonesia has started to play around with its own resources, trying to preserve them, but also to increase their take and via a royalty structure, for instance at 18,000, the royalties today are 50% higher than they were a year ago, before regulations have changed. There’s quite a few different things that have changed. The royalties went up, but also the whole quota system has changed to a yearly system, and the amount has come down.

This is an ore quota, it’s not a nickel contained quota, so with falling prices even if you would leave this more or less the same, you will produce less and less nickel. There’s also some changes, so there is some individual cases where licenses have not been given and there is also some cases where it seems in the, in the last couple of days they will increase the licenses again. It will have to be seen how the whole situation in the Middle East settles down. There is of course one thing that people look very, very carefully, which is sulfur prices and sulfur availability. Indonesia has all laterite nickel. Everything that gets leached in Indonesia needs sulfuric acid, and 78% of Indonesian sulfur source comes from the Middle East and there are.

Indonesia has around 1 to maximum 2 months of storage. That could go on the one side that there is simply not enough sulfur, but it’s very clear that the sulfur prices are going up. Also coming back to the valuation question, our project has a $1.6 billion valuation. We used conservative, or we used consensus prices, and this consensus prices means that our valuation of $1.6 billion was for most of this year significantly higher. Also coming back to the point at what price do you want to ultimately delay it, but our current share price doesn’t reflect that at all. I stop here. Chris, do you want to add anything around that?

Chris Showalter, Chief Executive Officer, Lifezone Metals: No, I think just last comment is, you know, the management worked very hard in terms of this process, and we probably would have liked to have concluded this, end of last year, but I think the continual interest we had coming in, I think with some of the geopolitical events, with some of the developments in the nickel industry, we had, we continued to get a number of interested parties that came in relatively late in the process, but was in the best interest of us to allow them to progress to a point just given the, you know, the quality of these potential partners. It was in shareholders’ best interest to allow us to extend the process and take a little bit longer.

I think when we do make announcements, I think shareholders will be pleased that we are really acting in their best interests to deliver a result that’s gonna be positive for Tanzania, positive for Lifezone, positive for shareholders. We’ll look forward to that announcement in the near term.

Catherine, Webcast Moderator, Lifezone Metals: Thank you, Chris and Ingo. We are past time, so I’m going to wrap up this webcast. A quick reminder that if you do have any further questions or where we haven’t addressed your question on this Q&A, please feel free to follow up directly via email at [email protected]. This concludes our webcast. I’d like to thank everyone for attending today’s event, and we look forward to speaking with you soon. Thank you.

Chris Showalter, Chief Executive Officer, Lifezone Metals: Thank you, everyone.

Ingo Hofmaier, Chief Financial Officer, Lifezone Metals: Thank you. Thank you, everyone.

Chris Showalter, Chief Executive Officer, Lifezone Metals: Thank you.