Grok-Prognosis for IBC Advanced Alloys (TSX-V: IB; OTCQB: IAALF) Q4 / Grok(quarter and year ended June 30, 2026), expected around late October 2026 (estimates point to ~October 28).

This is an informed forecast based on management’s public comments through late September 2026, prior quarterly trends, and the company’s stated drivers (defense/Navy demand, copper alloys, and operational improvements). It is not formal guidance—actual results can differ due to timing of shipments, input costs, one-time items, or capacity constraints. No sell-side consensus estimates appear available for this small-cap name.

Key context from recent management commentary

• Fiscal year ends June 30.
• In the July 2026 investor presentation, CEO Mark Smith stated that monthly sales reached CAD $2 million or more in the quarter ended June 30, 2026 (i.e., Q4), after earlier periods of ~CAD $1–1.2 million/month amid tariff-related softness. He also noted early fiscal 2027 (starting July 1, 2026) was already showing additional 30–40% monthly growth. investing.com
• At the September 29, 2026 Lytham Partners conference, management said current revenues were running 50–60% above first- and second-quarter 2026 levels, with a growing backlog and improving visibility. Defense/government work was cited at ~40% of production capacity. za.investing.com
• Prior quarters (continuing operations, approx. USD):
  • Q1 (ended Sep 2025): ~$4.2M revenue
  • Q2 (ended Dec 2025): ~$4.9M (+36.6% YoY)
  • Q3 (ended Mar 2026): ~$4.8M (+5.7% YoY); YTD nine months ~$13.8M (+6.4%)
• Gross margins have been expanding on a product-mix shift toward higher-value near-net-shape castings and forgings (management has cited ranges of 25–55% on certain products, versus company-wide ~17–20% recently). Adjusted EBITDA turned positive on a YTD basis by Q3. The company remains net-loss making but has narrowed losses and emphasized cost control plus debt reduction.

Expected Q4 (ended June 30, 2026) highlights

• Revenue: Likely the strongest quarter of the year—possibly in the $5.5–7.0+ million range (USD equivalent), reflecting the jump to CAD ~$2M+/month. This would represent solid sequential growth from Q3’s ~$4.8M and meaningful YoY improvement. Full-year FY2026 revenue could land in the high teens to low $20s of millions (continuing operations), an improvement over the soft patches earlier in the cycle.
• Gross profit / margins: Sequential and YoY expansion expected as higher-value defense/Navy work (aluminum-nickel-bronze, copper-nickel, etc.) mixes higher. Company-wide gross margin could move into the low-to-mid 20% range or better for the quarter if product mix cooperates.
• Profitability: Adjusted EBITDA expected to be positive and stronger than recent quarters. Operating results should improve; net loss (or a small profit) will depend on interest, non-cash items, any residual discontinued-operations effects, and one-time costs. Management has highlighted progress toward cash-flow generation and debt paydown (significant reduction targeted into calendar 2027).
• Balance sheet / other: Look for commentary on backlog growth, any progress on the planned Vacuum Cap Furnace (~$5M investment for domestic copper-nickel capacity), aluminum-scandium sample success, and working-capital trends. Capacity utilization and supply-chain constraints (noted as resolved after a one-time hit in Q3) will be key.

Full-year FY2026 outlook and qualitative tone

Expect management to describe FY2026 as a turnaround/inflection year driven by naval defense demand (U.S. Navy shipbuilding plans remain a multi-year tailwind), recovery from 2025 tariff uncertainty, and the early stages of their four-pillar growth plan (near-net-shape castings → vacuum-cap furnace for Cu-Ni → Al-Sc alloys → longer-term radial forge). The narrative should remain constructive on the copper “supercycle,” domestic supply-chain advantages ( >90% of certain Cu-Ni alloys still imported), and customer relationships with major defense/electronics names.

Risks to the upside case: Execution delays on higher-margin work, copper price volatility or input-cost spikes, limited production capacity constraining the backlog, or higher-than-expected financing/interest costs.

Risks to the downside case: Weaker-than-signaled June-quarter shipments or one-time charges that keep the full year more loss-making than sequential trends imply.

Bottom line prognosis: Q4 and full-year results are likely to show clear sequential acceleration in revenue and improving margins/EBITDA versus the first three quarters, validating the demand recovery and defense exposure management has been describing since mid-2026. The report should support a constructive multi-year story if capacity expansion and debt reduction progress as outlined, but the company is still in the early scaling phase and remains unprofitable on a trailing net basis.

DoW Secretary Hegseth at the State of the Force Address in Quantico

"...We’re bringing our critical supply chains home, the rare earths, the specialty metals,…mined in America, refined in America, built in America, by American workers...”

https://x.com/Teo_Sinamin/status/2105645154090545241?s=20

IBC Advanced Alloys Corp. (OTCQB: IAALF; TSX-V: IB) recent news centers on a September 29, 2026 presentation at the Lytham Partners Fall 2026 Investor Conference

IBC Advanced Alloys at Lytham Partners: betting on copper super cycle - Summary and Transcript at the link below.

https://ca.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/ibc-advanced-alloys-at-lytham-partners-betting-on-copper-super-cycle-93CH-4858916

Greg McCabe, CEO of Next Bridge Hydrocarbons, says the evidence points to potentially more than a billion counterfeit shares tied to his company.

On Going Rogue with Lara Logan, McCabe explains why he believes what happened to Next Bridge is not an isolated case.

“We are not an outlier. We are the tip of the iceberg.”

McCabe argues that similar practices extend across the financial markets, pointing to concerns raised around GameStop, AMC, President Trump’s Truth Social and Elon Musk’s Tesla.

Lara Logan asks the central question: If this can happen on this scale, what does it say about the regulators charged with protecting investors and the integrity of the markets?

https://x.com/comstockroyalty/status/2105061740610490716?s=61

Project Vault machinery is being installed

“That concept-to-execution transformation began with Export-Import Bank of the United States Chairman John Jovanovic reintroducing Project Vault as the "shock absorber" designed to help ensure American manufacturers have the critical minerals they need in a world where the old "just-in-time" supply chains are no longer enough.“

https://www.metaltechnews.com/story/2026/09/30/tech-metals/project-vault-machinery-is-being-installed/2965.html

Grok-NioCorp (formerly Quantum Rare Earth Developments) acquired the Elk Creek property around 2010–2011 and formally rebranded/began aggressive advancement in 2013 under CEO Mark A. Smith. Smith’s background was heavily niobium-oriented (prior roles at Molycorp, Largo, Chevron Mining, and as a director of CBMM, the world’s dominant niobium producer). The company name itself (“NioCorp”) and early messaging centered on ferroniobium as the primary product. Scandium (and titanium) were known to be present in the carbonatite from the earlier Molycorp drilling in the 1970s–80s. They appeared in early resource estimates and PEAs, but the economic case, offtake strategy, and processing flowsheet were still evolving. Early technical reports treated scandium more as a co-product/by-product rather than a strategic vertical-integration opportunity.

Evolution of the Scandium strategy

Over time, especially from the mid-to-late 2010s onward:

• Scandium’s potential value became clearer as global interest in aluminum-scandium (Al-Sc) alloys grew for aerospace, defense, and lightweighting applications.
• NioCorp began highlighting scandium more prominently in feasibility studies (2017, 2019, 2022).
• By the early 2020s, the company was actively exploring downstream steps: converting scandium oxide to metal and then to Al-Sc master alloy. They licensed technology, produced trial metal and ingots (around 2023), and later acquired FEA Materials’ assets/IP (December 2025) specifically to enable U.S. Al-Sc master alloy production.

This vertical integration (mine → oxide → master alloy, with potential further steps toward finished parts) was not the clear, central strategy in 2013. It developed as market awareness, metallurgical understanding, and U.S. policy priorities around critical minerals advanced.

Role of the Department of War / DoD $10 million funding

The up-to-$10 million Title III Defense Production Act award (announced August 2025 to subsidiary Elk Creek Resources Corp.) is explicitly tied to scandium. Official language focuses on:

• Establishing a domestic “scandium mine-to-master-alloy” supply chain.
• Supporting feasibility-level engineering, additional drilling, and cost updates.
• Advancing Al-Sc alloy component development/qualification with a defense prime contractor (Lockheed Martin Skunk Works partnership).

This funding, along with the related Lockheed MOU and the FEA acquisition, has clearly accelerated and sharpened the vertical-integration narrative. The DoD/DoW interest in lightweight, high-strength Al-Sc alloys for aerospace and hypersonic systems has given NioCorp both capital and strategic validation to push further downstream than a pure mining company typically would.

Overall assessment

• Niobium was the original primary focus.
• Scandium was always in the deposit and gradually rose in importance as a high-value co-product.
• The full “Scandium Vertical Integration” vision (oxide → master alloy → potential parts, with strong defense linkage) is a more recent strategic evolution, significantly boosted by the 2025 DoW funding and partnerships.
• The DoW did not invent the scandium opportunity, but it has helped crystallize and fund the niche that NioCorp is now emphasizing.

In short, the project has matured from a niobium-centric critical-minerals development into a multi-product (now eight products in the 2026 study) platform with a deliberate downstream scandium strategy that aligns closely with U.S. defense priorities.

Grok-NioCorp is deliberately pursuing vertical integration across the aluminum-scandium (Al-Sc) value chain—from mine to oxide to master alloy (and potentially finished parts)—in a strategy that echoes Standard Oil’s focus on controlling the full supply chain rather than just one stage.Standard Oil ParallelStandard Oil’s power did not rest solely on refining capacity. Rockefeller’s group secured advantages through control of transportation, distribution, storage, and downstream outlets, combined with aggressive scale, cost efficiencies, and strategic partnerships/rebates. This allowed it to dominate pricing, margins, and market access while reducing reliance on intermediate players. NioCorp’s public messaging and actions frame a similar logic for scandium: owning multiple steps in a currently fragmented, China-dependent, tiny market creates pricing power, security of supply for strategic customers, and the ability to unlock latent demand that pure miners cannot capture. NioCorp’s Al-Sc Integration StepsNioCorp’s Elk Creek Critical Minerals Project (southeast Nebraska) is designed to produce ~100 tonnes per year of scandium oxide once financed and built (alongside ferroniobium, titanium dioxide, and magnetic rare earths). This volume would represent a large share of current non-Chinese global supply (global consumption recently estimated around 60 tonnes/year). Key downstream moves include:

• Acquisition of FEA Materials assets and IP (~$8.4 million): Enables direct conversion of scandium oxide into 2–4% Al-Sc master alloy in the U.S., bypassing intermediate metal production in many cases. NioCorp (via subsidiary NioCorp Advanced Metals and Alloys) already produces 4% master alloy using market-sourced oxide. 
• Partnerships for alloy and parts development: Collaboration with IBC Advanced Alloys has produced commercial-purity 0.2% Al-Sc alloy. Joint work with Lockheed Martin Skunk Works (backed by a $10 million Pentagon Title III/Defense Production Act award) focuses on prototype Al-Sc components for next-generation fighter aircraft and other defense systems. 
• Offtake and demand signals: Non-binding MOU with Lockheed Martin for potential purchase of up to 15 tonnes/year of scandium oxide (or Al-Sc alloy products) over 10 years. Separate binding offtake for ~12 tonnes/year of scandium with Traxys. NioCorp is evaluating further downstream steps into finished Al-Sc alloy parts (casting, forging, machining, powder for additive manufacturing) for defense and commercial OEMs.

 

Company materials explicitly describe this as building “America’s first-ever integrated scandium-to-warfighter supply chain” (mine → oxide → metal/master alloy → final alloy/parts → OEMs). This reduces exposure to Chinese supply/export controls and captures higher-value product margins. Broader Context and Status (as of late September 2026)

• Project economics: Updated 2026 feasibility study outlines an eight-product operation, ~40-year mine life, and ~$4.1 billion pre-tax NPV (8% discount). Upfront capex is substantial (~$1.85 billion range in recent materials); financing is advancing (EXIM Bank processing a large debt application; significant equity raised; strong cash position reported earlier in 2026). Early site work (mine portal) has begun; production targeted around 2028–2029 subject to full financing. 
• Strategic tailwinds: U.S. government focus on domestic critical minerals (scandium has had no commercial U.S. mining since 1969), defense demand for lightweight, high-strength, weldable Al-Sc alloys (improved range, payload, corrosion resistance, electronics performance), and offtakes covering large portions of planned output. Niobium remains the primary revenue driver initially, with scandium offering high-margin upside if demand scales.
• Stock/market position: Trading as NASDAQ: NB; market cap roughly $500–550 million range recently; development-stage (pre-revenue from production); analyst targets vary but often imply substantial upside if financing and construction proceed.

Opportunities vs. RisksBull case alignment with the Standard Oil analogy: In a supply-constrained, strategically vital market, controlling mine-to-alloy steps can create durable advantages—secure domestic supply for Lockheed and other primes, higher margins, ability to stimulate new applications (aerospace, defense, automotive, solid-oxide fuel cells, electronics), and insulation from geopolitical risk. Government support and offtakes de-risk demand.Key risks and limitations:

• Financing and construction execution remain the critical path (large capital needs; timeline risk).
• Scandium market is tiny and historically supply-constrained; rapid new supply (NioCorp + others like Rio Tinto) could pressure prices unless demand grows commensurately. NioCorp argues latent demand is large once reliable Western supply exists.
• Vertical integration adds operational complexity and capital beyond pure mining; success depends on metallurgical performance, customer qualification (especially aerospace/defense), and not competing directly with offtake partners in ways that alienate them.
• Commodity and equity market volatility, dilution risk, and competition for offtake/customers.
• The analogy is imperfect: Standard Oil operated in a rapidly growing mass-market commodity with network effects in logistics; scandium is a specialty/critical mineral with national-security overlay and much smaller scale.

Bottom line: NioCorp’s stated and executed strategy is explicitly vertical for the Al-Sc chain, aiming to capture value and strategic position that a pure oxide producer would miss. Progress on alloy capabilities, Lockheed collaboration, and Pentagon funding supports the narrative. Realization depends primarily on securing remaining project financing and successful ramp-up of Elk Creek. This is a high-conviction critical-minerals development story with clear supply-chain ambition, not a mature integrated producer. 

NioCorp Elk Creek Mine in the batters box?

https://www.mining.com/us-department-of-war-commits-450-million-to-tungsten-supply-chain/

https://preview.redd.it/xyk19vn68ynh1.jpg?width=572&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1ef32b040cafcff6fecea87b3a9a7c9bbbd4118c

Gemini-Having Jim Sims manage Chief Communications/Public Affairs for both NioCorp Developments Ltd. (as CCO) and IBC Advanced Alloys (as Director of Investor and Public Relations)—alongside CEO Mark Smith heading both boards—leads to clear operational, strategic, and political conclusions regarding the Scandium-Aluminum (Sc-Al) supply chain:

1. Unified Messaging and Government Relations

• Defense & Policy Alignment: Sims has significant government affairs experience, including time as a White House staffer and U.S. Senate Chief of Staff. Having a single communications strategist ensures both companies present a unified narrative to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), Congressional committees, and federal funding bodies (such as the Title III Defense Production Act office and Ex-Im Bank).
• Single Domestic Value Chain Story: Rather than pitching NioCorp as a standalone mining venture and IBC as an isolated foundry, Sims presents a cohesive story to Washington: a complete, mine-to-defense-component domestic supply chain.

2. Streamlined Investor Relations and Capital Allocation

• Shared Investor Ecosystem: Sims manages investor and public relations across both entities, allowing cross-pollination between institutional and retail shareholders. Investors in NioCorp are naturally exposed to IBC’s down-stream manufacturing capabilities, and vice versa.
• Coordinated Corporate Announcements: Key milestones—such as joint master alloy trials, offtake updates, or technical breakthroughs—are coordinated to maximize news flow impact for both tickers without mixed messages.

3. Preparation for Strategic Integration

• Reduced Friction for Corporate Transactions: Operating with the same top executive suite (Mark Smith as CEO/Chairman, Jim Sims as Communications Director) means both teams operate from the same strategic playbook. If formal joint ventures, exclusive licensing agreements, or asset transfers are executed, integration friction is minimal.
• Pre-Engineered Commercial Partnerships: Shared public affairs functions allow both firms to sign joint MOUs, present united at defense expos, and negotiate with tier-1 contractors (like Lockheed Martin) as a single operational team.

Strategic Takeaway

The dual role indicates that NioCorp and IBC operate as an informal "extended enterprise" for scandium commercialization. While they remain separate corporate entities with independent boards to maintain governance standards, their strategic, marketing, and lobbying efforts are tightly aligned to secure federal backing and commercial adoption.

"The global rare earth market is now bifurcating—and perhaps trifurcating"

• Core Shift: As deglobalization fractures critical mineral supply chains, the global rare earths market is bifurcating away from unified Chinese spot pricing toward distinct domestic, export, and regional market tiers.
• Strategic Implication: The definition of "price" itself has changed—material is no longer valued purely on lowest unit cost, but on local physical availability, legal transportability, and compliance with Western security-of-supply mandates.

RedChip Companies, Inc. 00:33:25 Thank you very much, Scott. We're now going to open the webcast to your questions. To submit a question, click the Q&A button at the bottom of your Zoom window. Our first question comes from Neal Dingman of William Blair.

Neal, I've enabled you to speak.

If you just hit unmute, you should be able to ask your question.

neal dingmann 00:34:01 There we go. Can you hear me now?

RedChip Companies, Inc. 00:34:03 Certainly can.

Mark Smith 00:34:03 your deal.

neal dingmann 00:34:04 Hi, good, thanks for the time, guys. Mark, I know, could you talk a little bit about, you know, you mentioned the timing, again, I think, and Jim and I talked about this a little bit, key data now is, you know, the timing between now and the, now and the financing, of course, again, is it just the EXIM? Seems like now, having the definitive feasibility study, you'd have most, but is it just now crossing the t's, dotting the I's? I mean, how much more details, will EXIM be looking for between now and then?

Mark Smith 00:34:37 It's a good question, Neal, and we continue to learn more in every discussion we have with EXIM. They're no different than a commercial bank in many ways. They kind of have an idea as to what they'd like to see, and then we talk about that, and we provide it to them, and then they have another idea.

So, we'll continue to go through that process, but we know what the main

pieces are that are remaining. We've got to finish the TRAXYS offtake agreement.

We need to get an almost final, if not final, EPC contract in front of them, and we're gonna be… we're gonna be ready to go. So, I don't… I just don't see any reason why we can't get a lot of that work done in the very near future, and get this in front of the board of directors for EXIM in short order.

neal dingmann 00:35:22 Very good, and then, love to see and, you know, was hoping to see the, you know, now, as Scott, you know, walked through, having the 8 distinct, you know, critical minerals that are in there. I guess my question is, is pricing, you know, once, once that starts, once Elk Hill (Creek) starts producing.

you know, how flexible, I guess, is the best way to ask it. Will you all be? I mean, if, again, scandium prices take off, or dysprosium, you name it, you know, there's going to be a lot of, obviously, upside potential for the mine. How much flexibility will you have to sort of lean into, you know, one or the other? So I guess… I guess my question may be for Scott, just on, operational flexibility, how he sees it once the,

You know, once Elk Hills (Creek) is producing commercially.

Scott Honan 00:36:12 Yeah, I think, Neal, that we have a production process that's built around a mine plan that is intended to deliver a fairly steady, you know, head grade to the operating plant.

That's not to say, though, that that can't be optimized. We have some very good and clever mining engineers, and while you're a little bit constrained in an underground environment as to how you approach the mining, there's a certain sequence you have to have. We certainly have enough information about the ore body that we could… we could target, say, higher-grade zones of Niobium, if… if the Niobium market got… got really hot.

I think the other thing that we've certainly talked about internally is the fact that, you know, our production process is pretty versatile as far as what kind of feedstocks, it could… it could, incorporate and process successfully. So… so there's… there's probably a number of flavors of… of rare earth, concentrates, for instance that might be available in the market that we could buy, and supplement, you know, to the feed coming from our own mine, to prospectively increase our production of rare earths. That might require some capital investment on the back end of the process to ensure we have adequate separations capability to make additional rare products, but it certainly could be done.

neal dingmann 00:37:35 If I could sneak one more in, Mark, just on further off, should we expect those in the, coming months, coming quarters?

Mark Smith 00:37:43 You broke up a little bit there, Neal.

neal dingmann 00:37:46 Further offtake agreements expect, you, you've got, you guys have done a tremendous job already, obviously, locking some things in. Should we expect more in the coming months, coming quarters?

Mark Smith 00:37:56 Yeah, let me… let me discuss that just a little bit, Neal. Kind of, at a very high level, we're going to have two commercial agreements for 100% of the offtake for this mine. You know, 50% of our ferroniobium will go to Thiessen Krroup.

And then everything else will go to TRAXYS once that commercial agreement is, is, finalized.

Within that TRAXYS agreement, and a lot of this is built around the long-term relationship and trust that we have between TRAXYS and NioCorp, is our ability as NioCorp

Or to continue to go out and market those products on our own.

And we may find customers or uses, applications, different strategies that we want to employ because of a growing market or strategic implications for the country, that we want to, you know, really focus our sales on certain customers.

versus others, we will have the right in the TRAXYS agreement to undertake those sales efforts and then sit down with TRAXYS and discuss which party would be better overall for NioCorp and its shareholders. And TRAXYS will be fine, one way or the other, because they'll get the economics regardless of whether they make the sale or whether we make the sale.

So we, we can really kind of lean in on a lot of different areas that we think may have a better future, a better margin, you know, maybe working with a customer that's a better credit risk. So, lots of things that we can use there to optimize our commercial situation.

The other thing that we're doing, and this is based on… after a while, you do learn how not to do things in the business, and so we try to keep those in top of mind as well.

One of the things we're doing with our commercial agreements is we're turning them into volumetric take or pay agreements, rather than price-based take or pay agreements with floor prices.

And one of the big reasons behind that is our confidence, extreme confidence, I might add, in where all of these markets are headed for the products that we're going to be selling. The supply and demand fundamentals are all in our favor and what I don't want to do is to end up with a commercial arrangement where we may get a floor price, which really helps our debt provider get comfort.

But then we also end up having a ceiling price as well. We're going to avoid ceiling prices wherever possible, and make sure that the company can take full advantage of the confidence that we have in where these markets are going. So, we are trying to apply some deeper thinking to how we're conducting our business, and I think we'll end up being very protective, very good markets going forward, and be able to, like you say, lean in where that possibility opens up.

neal dingmann 00:40:59 Fantastic. Congrats on the great announcement.

Mark Smith 00:41:01 Thanks, Neal.

RedChip Companies, Inc. 00:41:07 Our next question will come from Tate Sullivan of Maxim Group.

Tate Sullivan 00:41:12 Great, thank you for presenting the study and all the details, and can you talk about the planned construction timeline? I think in the study, it indicates 35 months. Back in 2022 is 45 months, I believe.

Is that due to the ramp access, and also is it due to the portal starting construction in February?

Mark Smith 00:41:35 Scott, you want to do that?

Scott Honan 00:41:37 Yeah, certainly, Tate. As I mentioned, you know, we've always recognized the critical path for this project goes through the development of the mine and getting the mine into production, so it's a combination of two things. One is getting that mine portal

started and established. If we can get that behind us, then, you know, the remaining work to get down to the ore body and get the ore body producing goes quicker. I think the other thing here is that, when we had put together various mine plans, including the one in the last study, looking at shaft access, the shaft access and the development from the shaft to the ore body introduced some constraints on our ability to get to the ore body quickly and to ramp up that production. And if you look at our last study, there was a fairly long period, about 8 months or so, where the mine started producing at an initial rate, and then it ramped up fairly slowly to full production.

I think the design we have now gets us there just a lot more quicker, so we get down to the ore body quicker, and, you know, with the ramp access and the advantages it provides, it allows us to get the stoops that we need, into production quicker, and get to that full production threshold just as quick as you could hope.

Tate Sullivan 00:42:57 Thank you, Scott, and one more for me. Mark, can you talk about, I mean, from looking at potential timelines, do you think there's more variability in the mine construction aspect of the work, or in the processing plant construction aspect?

Mark Smith 00:43:11 I think that's a great question, and I don't have a perfect answer, but I'll provide you with some thinking along those lines. You know, the engineering associated with the above-ground project will be a little more straightforward and a little more black and white from an engineering standpoint. But it is a… it is a big project, and it's a complicated project to build, multiple floors in the buildings and whatnot, so it has its challenges. Having said that, though, as confident as we are in our underground mine plan, those of us that have been in the mining industry for a couple of years know that, you know, you never know what Mother Nature's gonna hand you until you open up the ground.

And so there's always those concerns, but I will say that the extra work that Scott and his team have done on the geotechnical, the geotechnical,hydrological, the paste tailings, designs, where we're going to backfill the underground mine. All of that extra work has made us even more confident that, you know, surprises in an underground mine are really not going to happen in our case. But we've all been in the business a long time, we know it can happen.

But I think we've taken every effort possible to minimize, you know, any surprises at the end of the day. And that may, you know, require us to put a little more grout down there, or to add a little…

a little bit more, you know, cement to the paste tailings, but that's what we'll do. Safety will be job number one for our employees. So, not a precise answer, Tate, but hopefully you understand the complexities of both.

Tate Sullivan 00:44:52 Yeah, thank you, and thank you for including the report, the ex-China pricing, and the other sources, current sources of supply, and thank you for taking my questions.

Mark Smith 00:45:01 You bet, Tate. Good to hear from you.

RedChip Companies, Inc. 00:45:05 Our next question will come from Sandara Iyer from B. Reilly Securities.

Soundarya, if you hit unmute, we should be able to hear your question. Thank you.

Soundarya Iyer 00:45:24 Can you hear me now?

Mark Smith 00:45:26 Yes.

Soundarya Iyer 00:45:27 Yeah.

Thank you. Thanks for taking my question.

Mark Smith 00:45:31 Yes.

Soundarya Iyer 00:45:31 So… It's mostly around investor skepticism around scandium demand.

just given the size of the market today, I wanted to ask if you're able to share anything on the commercial process with prospective off-takers, specifically that would help investors get better sense of how much Western demand could inflict once a reliable non-Chinese source like Elk Creek actually starts producing.

Mark Smith 00:46:04 Yeah, Soundarya, great, great question, and one that I love to answer, because we're really studying this Scandium market as deeply as we can, and I will be the first to say that this is a product line that has my excitement level just exceptionally high.

Let me start out with just kind of a couple of foundational data points. First one being, up until very, very recently we all understood the Scandium market to be about a 30 to 35 ton per year market. You know, maybe 3 tons a year being produced out of Canada, 7 tons being produced out of the Philippines, and basically the remainder being produced out of China. For some reason now, the USGS has published a report that suggests that the market may be upwards of 60 to 65 tons per year. We're still trying to do the math to figure that out, because we don't know where the extra production may be coming from.

But it is interesting to note that the USGS has identified sources that they think exist, which has almost doubled what the market was in terms of supply prior to this year.

Now, the reason why I spent just a little bit of time on that is that that's all kind of interesting and fun to think about, but when we think about just one application of Scandium in the world today, and it's a real application that's being used today, and it's in the solid oxide fuel cell business. In order to support the growth that the solid oxide fuel cell business is suggesting is going to occur in power generation, and they certainly have good reason to believe that with all the AI and data center power generation requirements.

Just one application there, those solid oxide fuel cells will then need about 400 tons of scandium per year to meet their production requirements for those solid oxide fuel cells.

So that alone, you know, is going to create just a tremendous amount of demand for this… for this new product, that… that we're all pretty excited about. Now, we've kind of got that baseline figure, which is… far exceeds anything that's produced today. Then you start talking about things like, defense applications. You know, we just had announced the, the MOU with Lockheed Martin for 15 tons per year. We know that there's going to be more demand from Lockheed and other prime defense contractors as they continue with their lightweighting, as they continue to figure out that scandium aluminum alloys are cheaper, they're easier to work with and perform many additional duties over what they're using in the fighter jets today, which would be composites. So, we know that that demand is going to grow.

We're looking at various automotive uses. We've got Project Pivot that Scott mentioned over in the UK. We're actually working with Aston Martin and Jaguar Land Rover. We've actually made the first Scandium-aluminum part for the front suspension of their DBX model, and they're doing destructive testing on that now, and then the next part that we make will actually go into one of the Aston Martin DBXs in the automobile industry, just based on the market reports that we have you know, could consume upwards of 3,000 tons of scandium per year. So when I take a look at the demand side of this scandium.

business, and then I think about, you know, literally the win-win-win-win that the automobile manufacturers get by utilizing Scandium-aluminum alloys. They get lighter weight, they get better corrosion resistance, you can weld it. It's cheaper when you use it with recycled aluminum than just using aluminum by itself.

You got all of these things, including a CO2 emission reduction that they get on that part, so they get to lower their overall CO2 emissions for their corporate reporting purposes. Every single one of those things is a very positive outcome.

And we think the automobile industry is likely going to become a huge user of Scandium. So, we're really excited about the Scandium business, and we want to make sure that we show everyone that we can be a reliable producer, and I think we differentiate ourselves in that method, or that way as well, because by virtue of the fact that we're underground mining, you know, a single ore body, bringing everything up to the surface and running it through a metallurgical plant, and we're there primarily for Niobium, which is a fabulous market all to itself. By virtue of the fact that we're producing niobium, by definition, we'll be producing scandium.

And I think a lot of the end-use applications look at that as a reliability improvement over a primary scandium production facility, because, you know, we have these multiple products, and by virtue of producing Niobium, all the other products come out. So, I threw a lot out there, Soundarya, I hope I didn't confuse the situation too much.

But hopefully you can hear just a little bit of excitement in my voice about this Scandium market and where it's going to go. It's really an exciting place to be right now, and I'll finish it by saying that the United States Department of War understands the importance of scandium, and it's high, very high on their radar right now, in terms of importance to the security of our country.

Soundarya Iyer 00:52:07 No, thank you, Mark, for that comprehensive answer. It makes a lot of things very clear for me.

Just one more, on the sequencing between EXIM facility and the potential equity component. Will exam require any evidence of committed equity before the loan closes, or?

Mark Smith 00:52:33 I think it's going to be an interesting situation. We have talked with EXIM significantly over the last 3 years and 1 month now, and they have come around in a big way

to this idea of loan authorization with conditions precedent. And one of the areas that they are… they certainly seem to be very open to, is the idea of loan authorization with a conditioned precedent to raise any remaining equity after the announcement of the EXIM loan authorization. So, we'll continue to work with EXIM along those lines. That is not something that they have historically done, but under the leadership of John Jovanovich and Brian Greeley, they are very commercially astute.

They understand how these markets work, and when it's a good time to raise equity and when it's not. And I think we have a much better sound box to bounce things off of with the new administration than what we have seen historically. So, I think that that possibility is certainly there.

Having said that, I also know that capital pools form when they're ready to form, not when I want them to form. And so, if the capital is available, you know, the company will always take a hard look and try to make the best decision possible on behalf of our shareholders when it's the right time to raise any equity. So, lots of optionality there.

Soundarya Iyer 00:54:07 That's very helpful, so congratulations on getting this through. I'll pass it over.

Mark Smith 00:54:13 Thank you, Soundarya. Good to hear from you again. It's been a while.

RedChip Companies, Inc. 00:54:18 Our next question will come from Iiko Ele from H.C. Wainwright.

heiko ihle 00:54:26 I assume you can hear me okay?

Mark Smith 00:54:28 Yep, we can hear you, Heiko.

heiko ihle 00:54:30 Mark, Jim, Scott, team, thanks for taking my questions. Is there a way to expand into more products and diversify just a little bit more? I mean, obviously you've, you know, you've gone from 3 to 8. Is there a way to go further downstream, and just conceptually, how much more can Elk Creek even grow? I mean, you're looking at a 40-year mine life here. How much more can Elk Creek grow before you oversaturate your own production, or at least start moving down your own pricing?

Mark Smith 00:55:00 Yeah, good, good, good consideration, good thinking, heiko. Scott, I'll have you kind of go over some of those extra rare earth products, which we know are there, they'll be in the concentrates that we're going to be making anyway, and we just need to separate them. Do you want to cover those?

First, and then I can start talking about some of the downstream activities that we're engaging in.

Scott Honan 00:55:23 Certainly, Mark.

I think, when you look at what we've presented here in this webinar, the product mix when it comes to rare earths is a… it represents a bit of a trade-off, so we've targeted specifically the magnetic rare earths, which is where about 80% of the value lies. And, we produce… we have to separate those from the balance of the rare earths.

And we make specific decisions about that to make the best use of capital on the project. So, for instance, we have lanthanum and cerium. We don't do anything to try and recover those. They're very low-value products. They'll cost more to recover than what their value would be.

The samarium, europium, gadolinium sit in between neodymium, prasodymium, and terbium dysrosium on the periodic table, so we have to separate them out. We recover them together because we didn't want to put the additional capital into the project to have two more solvent extraction circuits to make those three as individual products.

But it would certainly be not a difficult exercise to do that engineering, to have that solvent extraction capacity and make those products if we were able to get the right pricing for those products.

For the heavy rare earths and yttrium. the, you know, the Holmium and everything heavier than Holmium, it's really quite small quantities. It would be, you know, a challenge for us to try and make any kind of business out of those heavy rare earths, but the yttrium is certainly interesting. There's a couple hundred tons of yttrium, prospectively.

We'll make all those together right now as part of the project and send them to someone else to separate. But again, at the right price, we would probably need one additional solvent extraction circuit to separate out the yttrium and turn it into a product.

But, but, you know, just aside from those rare earth products, I think once we get the plant up and running, we have a mineral resource and a reserve here that could certainly support a higher production rate than what we have in this current study. Now, that would require, again, some capital to expand mine production and some capital to expand production in the surface plant, but it's fairly easy to see how that could be done, to say, you know go 2X from the current plant and double the production output.

Last thing I'll mention is that, and, you know, this goes to almost more of an environmental matter than a production matter, but, some of the products that come out of the plant, calcium carbonate, for instance, iron oxide are actually fairly high purity products in their own… in their own right.

Now, we use those, to make the paste backfill material that goes underground and fills the voids that we create by mining and supports the structure of the underground mine.

But we certainly are in discussions with some folks that could potentially take those products off our hands. And the advantage would be then that, you know, we need to keep enough on-site to sustain the PACE backfill activity.

But it would be a situation where it might generate some extra revenue, and it certainly could defer or delay the cost of surface tailings and impoundment facilities.

Mark Smith 00:58:50 But then I…

I would just add to that, heiko, that, you know, we really were looking at the SEG con and the Heavy Rare Earth Con as leaving them there, and that was largely driven by the prices of, you know, the samarium, the europium, and the gadolinium.

At the time, and then on the heavy rare earth concentrate, you know, leaving that as is and not separating it because things like yttrium, which were in there as well, just didn't have prices that would support any capital expenditure for that. That has changed, just like all the other rare earth elements right now, and we're seeing a very strong bifurcation of pricing for things like samarium and Yttrium, which, as you know, our Department of War needs in a big way, and Yttrium is becoming a lot more important, right up there in terms of importance along with Scandium right now. With the right situation and the right price supports we can easily take the samarium out of that SEG con, we can easily take the yttrium out of that heavy rare earth con, and we can have two more products, but we're not going to do those at a losing proposition. We'll only do that as a profitable proposition, but that would add more products to our list. And then, the other way that we can expand the product horizon a little bit is to just you know, take the existing products, like Niobium is a very good example to start with here. We plan to make ferro niobium, which, you know, 90-92% of all the Niobium sold in the world today is sold in that form.

It's basically sold to the steel industry, it's an alloying agent, and it strengthens regular steel into high-strength, low-alloy steel.

But there are many other markets out there for niobium that we are aware of and we're pretty excited about. You can make Niobium pentoxide in NB205, and that can be in different purity levels, so it has different applications, and the margins on the high-purity NB205 are significantly greater than ferro niobium. You can also get into Niobium metal, where your margins are probably the highest in the Niobium industry.

But what we wanted to start out with was a simple product that has pretty broad ranges for the specifications, that's the ferro-Niobium, and we want to make sure that we get good at that to start with and generate revenue as fast as possible. So, we'll start out with ferroniobium, but we have every intention, once we get good at that, at looking at some of these NB205 and Niobium metal downstream applications. And in Scandium, we're already into the downstream markets there. We're doing some testing of scandium metal production right now.

Scott and I just witnessed that last week at the contractor's facility where they're doing that. That looks very, very promising, because there are customers for Scandium Metal right now. I mean, they will place a contract with us right now for Scandium Metal, because you can't find Scandium Metal outside of China, and China's being very selective on who gets any of their Scandium metal on an export basis. And then, of course, the Scandium aluminum master alloy.

We bought that business and intellectual property last year. We've relocated the business to a more suitable manufacturing facility, and now we're purchasing Scandium feedstocks so we can start making Scandium-Aluminum Master Alloy, and we have customers waiting for that product to be produced. So, yeah, there are many, many ways yet that we as a company can continue to take the foundational elements that we have and pursue these downstream activities where margins generally increase, and we find that to be quite exciting.

heiko ihle 01:02:49 In 23 years in this industry, this might be the longest, in a good way, answer to a single question on a conference call I've ever gotten.

Mark Smith 01:02:59 You know me, huh?

heiko ihle 01:03:00 So, by longest, but I really mean most comprehensive, so thank you for that. One thing, I'd be lying to you if I told you I've read through the whole study, but I did sort of skim through a couple of pages, and one thing that popped out was the gas line. It was 18.4 in the study, I think it was page 379.

You said you expect to connect this to a distribution pipeline 30 miles away. Are all arrangements to actually get this done related to terms, pricing, you know, how much you can get already done?

Or can you give maybe a bit more color on power generations and the factors that may sway you into a certain direction of how to do it?

Mark Smith 01:03:41 Sure. Scott, you want to start that one?

Scott Honan 01:03:44 Yeah, certainly, heiko. We're in a unique position where our project is located, in that we're, we're close to actually 3 natural gas, you know, transportation pipelines.

There's one to the east that's only about 5 miles away. There's not a lot of capacity on that line, but we'll access it to provide power during the construction period.

The two larger lines are one that's about 28 miles to the south in Kansas, the Rockies Express Pipeline, and then there's a Northern Natural Gas/Black Hills alternative forest about 30 miles to the west.

We went through a competitive process with those two larger pipelines to see… really to get the best deal we could on gas delivered to the site, understanding that in today's environment, we're going to be responsible for the capital cost of those pipelines.

And as part of the competitive process, we established terms around the cost of the pipelines, as well as the subsequent transportation fee we would pay to have the gas transported from a main pipeline to our site.

You know, going through that process has resulted in what you see in the study, where we're focusing on this opportunity to the west, bringing in a 12-inch diameter pipeline to our site to provide gas for both the process and for power generation. And just to put a point on the power generation, that's about 15% of our natural gas need is going to be dedicated to generating power for the site.

So, you know, I don't think it's… I don't think we're at the point, heiko, where we have definitive contracts in place. That takes a little bit of time, but we are pretty far down the process with a particular provider and supplier of gas, and there's a contract to finish there, but we don't expect that that will take much long, and certainly we would expect that to be in place here later this year.

heiko ihle 01:05:50 Awesome, I think I've, taken up my spice in the, time of the question queue. I'll get back at you. Thank you, guys.

Mark Smith 01:05:55 Thanks, heiko.

RedChip Companies, Inc. 01:06:01 Thank you to our many participants today. If there are any further questions, please direct them to NioCorp at

jim.sims@NioCorp.com, or aguthery@NioCorp.com. Once again, that's jim.sims at NioCorp.com, or aguthery at NioCorp.com. Once again, thank you for attending, and thank you, Mark, Scott, Jim, and Alex for presenting.

Mark Smith 01:06:29 Thank you, Barrett. Thanks. Thanks, everybody.

Scott Honan 01:06:32 Cheers.

 

 

Good day, and welcome to today's webcast with NioCorp Developments. This is Barrett Boone with RedChip Companies. Today's webcast will cover NioCorp's recently published 2026 technical report for its Elk Creek Critical Minerals project in Nebraska.

All participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the prepared remarks, we will open the webcast to your questions.

You may submit a question at any time by clicking the Q&A button on the bottom of your Zoom window and typing in it. I will now hand the webcast over to Jim Sims, NioCorp's Chief Communications Officer. Jim, please go ahead.

Jim Sims 00:00:43 Thank you, Barrett, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. It's a big day for the company. The team today, we're going to walk through a supplemental presentation during today's webcast to accompany our overall discussion in the Q&A session. NioCorp's news releases, presentations, SEC filings, including the technical report supporting the updated Feasibility study, are all available now on our website at NioCorp.com and on CDAR.

On the webcast today, we have Mark Smith, Executive Chairman, President and CEO of NioCorp, and Scott Honan, Chief Operating Officer of NioCorp, and President of Elk Creek Resources Company.

Before we begin today, please note that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements, including those regarding NioCorp's future financial and operating results, expectations, plans, and prospects.

Any statement that is not a historical fact should be considered a forward-looking statement. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that can cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed.

For a description of these risks, please refer to the cautionary notes in today's presentation and to the risk factors in NioCorp's filings with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission and on CDAR+.

Today's discussion may also reference market and industry data drawn from third-party sources which the company has not independently verified, and which are subject to uncertainty. Lastly, all dollar figures today are in US dollars, unless otherwise stated. Following today's prepared remarks, we will open the webcast to your questions.

Let me now turn the webcast over to Mark Smith. Mark, please go ahead.

Mark Smith 00:02:20 Thank you, Jim, and much like Jim just alluded to, this is a very, very important time in the company's history. This is quite the effort that the company has undertaken here, and along those lines, I'd like to start out by thanking Scott Honan, our COO, the entire NioCorp team, including our board of directors, who have all been just phenomenally supportive in this effort. I want to thank the literally hundreds of consultants that we have used to put this entire independent study together, and in particular, the 15 qualified professionals who have signed their name and certified the technical competency and accuracy of this report. Very, very important, and it's just a huge responsibility that those QPs undertake when they do that. And then certainly, last but not least, I want to thank our shareholders for their patience as we worked our way through this process. As Jim noted, we did file this report on CDAR yesterday.

If the report is not on our website yet, it will be up there today, and I encourage you to take a look at that 500-plus page document. One of the things that's very important to me personally in every one of these efforts I've ever undertaken is that… and my entire NioCorp team can attest to the fact that I'm always pushing to get things done. Let's get things done, let's get things done.

But when it comes to a feasibility study, a technical report like this, quality needs to be paramount. And we will always choose quality over speed when it comes to doing a feasibility study.

And so, you know, again, thank you all for your patience while we undertook this effort. It did take a little more time than what any of us had anticipated, but I know after all of the years I've been working in project financing and fundraising, that that short amount of extra time, in this case, is going to pay very good dividends for us as we move into the full project financing, including EXIM and additional equity fundraising. So, thank you for that. I think it will pay dividends now with this high-quality study. You know, we basically, you know, undertook the feasibility study update for two reasons.

To start with, and that was to do some additional drilling out on site, we wanted to have tighter hole spacing so that we had better definition of what the ore body contained in between all the other drill hole samples that we had. We undertook that effort. The results were outstanding. Once again, every time we put a drill bit in the ground, we find out something even better about this ore body, and that just continues to be the case.

This is an outstanding ore body.

Second, we had a new process flow diagram for our metallurgy and, we needed to have the process flow diagram converted into an actual feasibility study level engineering design. So, after 12 years now of working on this metallurgy, and really optimizing it, I think, you know, to almost the highest extent possible, where we're getting, you know, high 80s, low 90% recoveries of all of the elements that we're going to be pulling out of this ore body and selling.

We're now in good shape because not only do we have a demonstrated metallurgical process, we now have the engineering designed to support that effort as well. And then, just because, again, quality is paramount, we undertook, during the feasibility study engineering effort and the drilling effort, we undertook some other additional studies just to make our technical program that much more robust. So we did some extra geotechnical studies, some geo-hydrologic studies. We did a lot of work on pace tailings and a lot of work on grouting. which will make for a better mine plan, a safer mine for our employees, and a longer-lasting mine over the long run. So, again, really, really a solid effort here, and I want to make sure we send out that thank you to everybody.

So, Alex, let's go to slide 4.

And we'll start out with one of the main drivers here in terms of improvements to the feasibility study for 2026 versus 2022.

We will now have 8 different products that we'll be selling as a result of underground mining and surface processing activities.

You can see that we will be producing niobium, scandium, and titanium.

Which, of course, was in the 2022 Feasibility study, but will also now be producing the neodymium, prasodymium high purity oxide, dysprosium high purity oxide, terbium high purity oxide, and then, as a result of how one goes about processing rare earths and what comes out first in solvent extraction, we'll also be producing two different concentrate products. One is called an SEG, or samarium europium gadolinium carbonate concentrate, and the other one is all the other heavy rare earth elements in a carbonate form, again, concentrate style. What you can see on the right here is the life of mine gross revenue. The circle on the left shows the 2022 feasibility study where we had Niobium, scandium, and titanium as part of the overall revenue, just a little under $22 billion for that Life of Mine gross revenue.

And then the figure to the right, which, by the way, is to scale, so that you could actually visually see what the additional revenue means in terms of a to-scale picture here.

We'll have life of mine gross revenue as a result of the 2026 Feasibility study of a little over $37 billion with multiple products here, Niobium, scandium, the, the, rare earths, and, and the titanium.

And that $37.4 billion is about 1.7 times greater than the $21.9 billion, so a huge impact on the revenue side of the equation, given the additional products that we'll be able to produce from this ore body.

Next slide, Alex.

If we start heading into the overall economic highlights and some of the numbers associated with our economic model.

I'll start out over on the left here, and this is a life of mine margin of $560 per ton. That is one of the highest that I've certainly seen in my career in the mining industry.

And we get that by simply taking the $815 gross revenue per ton figure and subtracting the $255 OPEX per ton and keep in mind that that $560 per ton margin is 41% greater than the margin we showed in the 2022 feasibility study.

So again, really, you know, getting those extra products in, getting the extra revenue in, really bolsters the economics here quite significantly.

Then we can focus on some of the numbers to the right. I know I like to focus on the $4.1 billion pre-tax NPV, utilizing an 8% discount rate. We've got $519 million per year, average annual cash flow over the life of the mine. If we head over to the right, you can see the $608 million, EBITDA over the, annually over the life of the mine. We've got a 40-year mine life and, we've got a total upfront capex estimated at $1.85 billion. So clearly, the capex number has gone up, as has the NPV, as has the margin, as has the revenue, as has the EBITDA, as has the cash flow. But that capex number, I think we were all concerned about what inflation would do, and this is largely driven by inflation more than anything else.

But we do need to remember that we've added some additional processing to what we had before as well. We've got the solvent extraction for the rare earths, we have the chlorination for the Niobium and the titanium.

And again, can't forget about that horrible thing called inflation. But a $1.85 billion CAPEX number, and we still end up with a less than 3-year after-tax payback with these numbers as a whole. So, very, very strong, economics, very robust economics, I would say.

Next slide.

So one of the things that is really starting to catch people's attention in the market right now is an absolute bifurcation of pricing between things that are coming out of China and things that are not being produced outside of China. And this is quite a compelling number, and it appears to have very good traction, and we think it's going to last for quite some period of time.

If we take a look at Scandium as an example.

Scandium being sold… being produced and sold within China is actually upwards of $800 to $850 per kilogram right now. NioCorp is actually out purchasing scandium on the open market today, because we are demonstrating the ability to produce scandium metal.

And we, of course, own a business that can make the master alloy, Scandium aluminum master alloy, and we're actually out on the market purchasing Scandium to feed those businesses.

We're seeing prices for Scandium range anywhere from $3,000 to as high as $6,500 per kilogram right now, and it's a very good example of this bifurcation of what is being made and sold in China versus what is being made and sold outside of China.

Turbium is another very good example. Turbium inside China goes for about $1,000 a kilogram. Outside of China, it goes for about $4,500 to $5,000 per kilogram.

And dysprosium goes for about $250 a kilogram inside China, and it goes for about $1,250 to $1,500 outside of China. So there's an absolute bifurcation, very clear and evident, and we do, as I mentioned feel like this bifurcation could last for quite a while, because it takes a while to get these projects that everybody is supporting. It takes a while to get these projects built, up, and operating. We think that, in combination with the Section 232 duties which are available to the President right now, tariffs, which are available to the president right now, Project Vault, as well as the G7 support pricing discussions that are occurring and gaining a lot of traction, are all going to help support this bifurcated pricing structure that we're seeing between China and the rest of the world.

Next slide.

So, what do we have going forward here, now that we've got the Feasibility study done? Well, that feasibility study was a huge piece of what EXIM was looking for as part of the loan program that we're undertaking with them. We met with EXIM for about 2 hours yesterday, going over as much of the feasibility study that you can in a 2-hour period.

They will be looking at that document now EXIM for the next week or two, and we'll set up another, probably, all-day workshop with EXIM and all of their consultants to go over the feasibility study in detail and answer any questions that they have.

But a huge, huge step forward in the right direction here.

As everyone knows, we continue to work on our off-take agreement with TRAXYS. That is all continuing to move forward, albeit a lot slower than what I think anybody anticipated, especially me.

But I had a couple of very good phone calls with TRAXYS just this last weekend, and we hope to have that agreement finalized. There's just 2 or 3 points that are still in discussion between the two companies, and I don't see any reason why those can't be cleared up and finalized in short order here.

The next item, though, is quite an undertaking, and this is where we have to continue with our engineering effort. We have to go from feasibility study to detailed engineering, and we have to put the company and our EPC contractor in a position that we can actually write an EPC contract and have something that both parties are willing to sign, and something that EXIM is willing to agree to as part of their loan undertaking for this project. So this will be quite an effort. We're already… we have draft contracts that are already written.  We're sharing those with the EPC contractors. We hope to have a lot of that effort behind us by the end of August or so, and then we plan to sit down with EXIM, the EPC contractor, as well as NioCorp with EXIM, and make sure that EXIM is as comfortable as we are with those agreements. So you can see we're on a very fast track moving forward now that that feasibility study is there, and we can use that information to support a lot of the efforts, including off-take agreements and EPC agreements. And then finally, the EXIM Bank loan and any remaining equity that's required. Let's talk about that for a minute. We all are aware of the fact that we have written documents from EXIM saying that they would loan up to about $800 million.

And they specifically said a 65% debt-to-equity ratio in that correspondence. So we are, with the new feasibility study, the new economics associated with that study, and the new CAPEX estimate.

EXIM will be making another evaluation to determine what level of debt-to-equity they are willing to support for this project.

And I don't have any reason to believe that that, amount of loan figure will not increase accordingly. Again, final evaluations have to be made by XM, but the robust economics here clearly will support greater than $800 million in loans from, from XM, so we're anxious for that process to get going.

Again, we met with XM for about 2 hours yesterday, talked to them about their next steps and timing for those next steps. They are very, very energized about all of this. They're as excited as all of, all of us are about this feasibility study being done, because now they can really start to move on several fronts, and we're going to have more meetings with them in the next couple of weeks.

And the comment that was made by the highest-ranking EXIM employee there at the meeting yesterday was that NioCorp remains the highest priority for EXIM right now, in terms of critical, strategic mineral projects. So, we have their attention, they have the data that they need.

We'll go through this additional, you know, due diligence process with them, and they will make a final determination in short order on how much that loan can be, and what percent debt to equity that we'll end up with at the end of the day.

Once those decisions are made, then we'll know what additional fundraising, if any, we need to do on the equity side. So, that's kind of a short description as to where we are now and that the Feasibility study is done.

And with that, I'll hand it over to Scott to get into some of the more technical parts of the feasibility study, changes and whatnot. Scott, the floor is yours.

Scott Honan 00:18:53 Thank you, Mark, and I'd like to start just by echoing something that you said at the top of the webinar. I'd just like to thank our NioCorp Nebraska team, the local community around Elk Creek and Tecumseh, Nebraska, the good folks at Kruger Farms and the 15 QPs that certified our Feasibility study report, I'm really grateful to have a strong team like this that has worked so hard to make today possible.

When we look at our project as it stands today, we have definitely built on the 9 previous technical reports we've done on the Elk Creek project and all of the engineering and testing and mine design that have gone along with that. But we have, we've continued through this design process to de-risk the project, both from a technical perspective as well as from economic perspective, and I wanted to highlight a few areas where we've made some changes to the better for the project.

The first area is just in terms of mine access. In our previous study, we'd presumed that we would access the mine with a twin shaft arrangement. We've now replaced that with a twin ramp from surface.

The twin shaft idea was certainly technically viable, economically reasonable approach. It did require us to use a freezing approach to freeze the ground so that we could sink the shafts through the ground safely.

However, putting in shafts is an exacting science. A vertical shaft in a mine has to be perfectly vertical, there can't be any deviation, and shaft access does require some specialized equipment, both in the shaft and on surface, that's only made by a few manufacturers around the world.

So, we're now moving from that to a ramp access from surface. We started that work here in February, establishing the mine portal, where our twin ramps will originate from.

And putting in the ramps is definitely an improvement in that the ramps can tolerate some up and down and back and forth as you advance, and they are a quicker way to get to the ore body than the shaft approach.

Kind of building on that, in terms of project schedule, I'd like to thank the folks at Amplify Mine Planning and Dumas, who put together the new mine design and mine plan. And again, just building on the access question, we now have a design that gets us down to the ore body and into full production in 35 months. That's… that's definitely an improvement over our previous study.

And I think we've always recognized that in looking at this project, that the critical scheduling path runs through the mine. You have to get that mine established, up and running to get the entire project producing and making products.

So it's been really gratifying to see that taking this approach gets us there faster, and when we get there faster, we start generating revenue and getting a return for our shareholders.

Inside the mine, we've changed our approach to material movement. So, previously, everything would have been moved around underground using diesel equipment, and then hoisted to surface through the vertical shafts in a thing called a skip.

With the Ramp approach, we've also changed our design, our philosophy around material movement, and we've embraced the idea of the RAILVEYOR for moving material from the mine to the surface plant.

The RailVER is a… is a… it's a very nice piece of technology. I had the opportunity to visit a RAILVEYOR installation down in Missouri, and I was struck by how simple it is, both mechanically and operationally, how easy it is to operate and maintain.

And, you know, one of the questions I ask myself when evaluating a new technology is, you know, if this thing breaks, can I go to Elk Creek Welding and have it repaired? And the answer with the RAILVEYOR is certainly yes.

So I think we have here certainly a lower cost, more efficient way to move material out of the mine that'll serve us well as we put the mine into production.

Sure. Energy supply has been… has been a difficult proposition, particularly in Nebraska. Like a lot of places, we've seen a situation where a lot of big data centers have gone in, power supplies are stretched a bit, and the situation with the local utilities is a little bit tougher than it was a few years back.

And we were in a situation where getting connected to the local power grid was going to be an expensive proposition, both in terms of the capital cost to bring in a power line, as well as the capital cost to put in a large substation at the site.

We really did evaluate a number of options here.

And I think, you know, where we have landed now is that our best proposition is an on-site microgrid. So, what that means is we'll have a series of small natural gas-fired generators that will power the site, both during the construction period and during operations.

And a third-party company will own, operate, install, and maintain this equipment. We just get power through the fence to power our activities. And the third party can do this at a cost that's really right at the same benchmark as we would get from the utility.

So, we have a good solution there. We will certainly still need a natural gas connection from a local pipeline to the site. That's underway. But that part of it has been certainly a design change, but I think certainly one for the better.

And when I say that, I'm very focused on the reliability of our power supply. Certainly, when you have people in an underground mine, you need to have power, and it has to be there all the time.

I was fortunate enough to visit a very similar type of microgrid system that powers the Pittsburgh airport, and has been doing so for 5 years. And really, I felt that if you can have one of these systems to power a big airport like that, we can certainly use it to our advantage at the Elk Creek Project.

The other big change is on the processing side. So, certainly we've added equipment to the production process to produce rare earth products, but we've also changed our approach to the front end of processing the ore.

In the prior project design, we had a couple of upfront steps. The first was leaching with hydrochloric acid, the second was leaching with sulfuric acid.

And the acid demand, you know, in that approach was quite high. It required us to have an on-site acid plant, which, again, was both technically and economically feasible, although acid plants are a very particular technology and do come with some considerable maintenance considerations.

Stepping back, we had, we ran a demonstration plant and evaluated different ways to get at the pay metal and the ore.

And what we came up with is a much better front end to the project. So, what we have now is a calcining step and a step to remove calcium and magnesium. This reduces the mass of the ore that the rest of the plant sees by about half, and it takes out all of the acid consumers in the ore, or at least most of them.

After those first two steps, we then return to the idea of hydrochloric acid and sulfuric acid leaching to get at our pay metals, but we can do that at a much lower acid consumption than we had previously.

And as a result, we no longer need an acid plant on site. We will recycle our hydrochloric acid and simply neutralize sulfuric acid. So it's definitely a change to the better on the process side of things, reducing our acid consumption and simplifying our production process.

Finally, as I mentioned, we've added or expanded our product suite to include the rare earth products that Mark mentioned at the top of the webinar.

We're really leveraging our expertise around rare earths as a company, and we're taking advantage of all the good work that we did at our demonstration plant, where we built a small-scale version of our production process, we ran it continuously, and we're able to take all of the data generated from that plant and incorporate it into the current design.

What distinguishes us on the rare earth side of things, you know, as separate from a lot of other development stage companies, is that we are actually going to produce fully separated, high-purity, rare earth products that can go directly into the supply chain for making rare earth permanent magnets.

And in addition to that, because we have all the rare earths present in our ore body, like any rare earth ore body we have the upside ability to take samarium, europium, gadolinium, perhaps yttrium, and separate those out and make those products as well. That could be a future capital project at the site, again, to deliver some more revenue and value to our shareholders.

At the end of the day, folks, we have a better project here. It's a better revenue distribution across a broader product portfolio, and we have a project that's not reliant on a single element or product to sustain our economics.

We've made improvements to the mine and the surface plant, and those have resulted…

resulted in higher efficiencies in the operation and higher yields to the product. And now we also have a shorter time to commercial production.

Next slide.

One thing I like to talk about is what's happened to our resource and reserve as a result of all the good work that we did last year at the site with an extensive drilling program.

So now we have 45.9 million tons of proven and probable reserves, 40-year operational life.

And in the process of doing the drilling last year, we have established a proven reserve, which is the highest category of reserve that you can have on a mining project.

This is a very important step for us, and it was important because not only does it increase confidence in that underground mineral reserve, but it's something that the EXIM Bank was looking for us to do.

I think it's important for folks to understand that the drilling we did last year was what's known as an infill drilling program. So, we certainly knew where the ore body was, and we had a certain level of confidence in it. Really, that program was intended to put holes in between holes that we already knew a lot about.

When you tighten up hole spacing that way, you increase your confidence, and you get to these higher level of resource and reserve categories.

A nice side benefit of the drilling that we did is we did get a substantial increase in our inferred resources category. That wasn't part of the initial plan, but it's always good when it happens. And it just points to the fact that we have a tremendous ore body at Elk Creek that remains open in a number of directions, and certainly has the potential to become bigger with more technical work.

In terms of the resource now, we have 21.7 million tons of measured resources, 187.4 million tons of indicated, and 169.2 million tons of inferred.

And I think what you can read into those numbers is, you know, we've talked about a 40-year mine life, but again, with some additional work, we could certainly convert more of those resources into reserves and certainly extend the mine life beyond the 40 years that we're talking about here.

Our product portfolio remains the same, and I'll just highlight to everyone that we're now reporting everything in imperial units.

We did that because at the end of the day, we're building a project in the United States, and the people that are going to be using the tools are going to be used to doing everything in Imperial, so we've made that unit conversion to make it easier for the eventual construction of the project.

We'll make a little over 8,000 tons a year of ferroniobium. That's our backbone product. That's what our entire production process is built and based around.

We'll make 118 tons a year of scandium, and just a lot of exciting things happening in the scandium world these days. I'm sure everyone has seen our recent announcement with Lockheed. We now have NioCorp Advanced Metals and Alloys (NAMA) with the ability of producing scandium aluminum master alloy, and we've got some great things happening over in the UK with Project Pivot, looking at incorporating scandium into aluminum that's used in automotive platforms.

We have our, our, 3 magnetic rare earth products that, certainly are in high demand, here in the United States right now.

We're making a samarium europium gadolinium carbonate, or SEG carbonate.

That'll have a market for it, certainly, but that again goes back to what I said about some upside here, and that with some additional capital and testing work, we could separate those rare earth products into individual oxides as well, and get some more economic benefit from our ore body.

We'll make a heavy rare earth carbonate, which is all of the rare earth elements heavier than chromium on the periodic table, including yttrium. Interesting things happening in the yttrium market these days. Again, an element that certainly the federal government here in the U.S. has some interest in. And again, something we could do in the future as an expansion or improvement project to target that element and recover it as a separated product.

And rounding out our product portfolio is just a little over 59,000 tons a year of titanium tetrachloride, a higher value version of the titanium product that we've made previously, and a feedstock that's used to make titanium pigments and titanium metal.

Bottom line here is we have a strong project with a long life and the potential for an even longer life with more technical work. Lots of upside here, and certainly I can't wait to get underground and see how big it really is.

With that, I'll turn it back over to Barrett.

NioCorp to Host Webcast on Aug. 11 to Discuss Elk Creek Feasibility Study Results
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https://niocorp.com/niocorp-to-host-webcast-on-aug-11-to-discuss-elk-creek-feasibility-study-results/