Ero Copper Corp. (ERO) September 2026 Capital Markets Day Transcript

Bienvenido. Welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining us this afternoon. I'm very excited to be hosting what is our first official Capital Markets Day here in Sao Paulo. We have an exciting week ahead. We're starting here in Sao Paulo with this event, our Capital Markets Day, and then throughout the week, many of you will be joining us across our operations to see the transformation that's taking place at Arrow Copper. I think just to start quickly on what I see is the four main themes from today's presentation, and as we transition the week at operations, number one, transformation. I have a lot of our leadership team here from around the world to talk about the transformation that's happening in people, culture, and our operations, and something that we call one arrow, and we'll talk a little bit about what that means all throughout this week. The second is the performance against our stated objectives back in 2025. I'm incredibly proud of the work that our teams are doing, particularly around deleveraging, and Wayne will speak to that in more detail. The third thing is the quality of our operating portfolio and some of the technology that we're implementing across all of our assets to improve safety and improve performance. And Jelson will speak to that in more detail. And last, but certainly not least, and I don't want to steal too much of Mike's thunder, we'll be talking about the portfolio that we've put together at Arrow that includes development asset, producing mines, development assets, and a variety of early stage exploration opportunities that complements what I think is a portfolio that's going to continue to create shareholder value for a long period of time to come. Just quickly, you know, we're here in Sao Paulo. We had the option as a company to host this event anywhere in the world, and we chose Sao Paulo for a couple different reasons. Number one, our Brazilian heritage, clearly. It's convenient for starting an analyst tour here. But more fundamentally, I think there's few places in the world today where you have such a strong intersection of public equity markets, venture capital, particularly around technology, and also in Brazil, a big push on critical minerals. And all those things are important to Arrow, and we'll explain why that is as we go forward here. Some of these statistics might be more familiar to those in this room, but for those of you who are dialing in, a couple of quick interesting facts about Sao Paulo. Sao Paulo features Latin America's largest exchange, over $1 trillion of combined market cap. It's home to more than 12,000 startup companies that last year raised over $5 billion in venture capital, primarily in forward-facing technologies like artificial intelligence and automation. And last but not least, talking about critical minerals, IBRAM, the National Mining Agency of Brazil, anticipates that over the next five years, there'll be $80 billion invested in Brazil in mining projects, $20 billion of which will be critical minerals projects. So you have all these things happening in Sao Paulo, and that's why you're here today. So again, thank you for joining. Very excited about today and this week. Starting quickly here with disclaimer language. We, everyone on the stage will for sure be making forward-looking statements. So please, this is posted on our website. Please read those forward-looking statements when you have the opportunity. The agenda for today, again, starting with myself to provide some context on today's events. We'll continue with Jelson, who walked through some of the operations. We'll talk a little bit about Furnas as well. Jelson will speak to Furnas and some of the progress we're making there. Mike will talk about some of the exciting things that are happening in the exploration side of our portfolio, as I said, building out a really strong portfolio of assets all throughout Brazil. Wayne will talk about our financial performance. And then myself, Eduardo, and Courtney will talk a little bit about Brazil and what's happening here. A very topical time to be talking about critical minerals and obviously politics as well. In addition to the speakers, I just want to acknowledge that we have quite a few members of our global leadership team here today. Their names are listed here. You have the opportunity to meet them. They're in the front row. So please, after or during the coffee break, introduce. We've been able to attract some incredible talent to organization, really build out what I see as the future building blocks for our company. And you'll have the opportunity to talk to them in more detail. So getting going here, I think what makes Aero particularly unique in today's environment, we have a history of unlocking value. If you go back to 2016, I was the first employee at Aero Copper in those days, when it was just a few of us. And we've been able to build out a portfolio of operating mines, development projects, executing on our organic growth strategy. And we also put in place an action plan to really accelerate the growth of our company. These are conversations that started back in 2020 and 2021 about working with Valet, at that time now Valet-Based Metals, to start on a combined work on a project we call Furnas. And really, when you look at our performance since 2017 in terms of copper growth, we see a very clear pathway today to grow the company to more than 150,000 tons of copper equivalent production. And so we're very excited about that. I think today's presentation this week is about showcasing the work that we've done and the work that we are doing to realize that value for our shareholders and for our stakeholders. I think one of the things that's also important to keep in mind, again, one of the things that I'm extremely proud of and that we've worked really hard to do, is throughout the execution of that organic growth strategy, is really protect our share count and the shares outstanding. And what that's translated to is obviously a lot of production growth, but also revenue growth and resource growth on a relatively stable share count outstanding. So we've really protected our shareholders and created value while doing that. And obviously, that's reflected in the value that you see in the company today. When I think about culture, and this is something that we will talk a lot about, and we talked a little bit about on our Q2 conference call, is the around one arrow. So aligning standards, processes, people, operating philosophy across all of our sites, all of our offices. And this comes down to behaviors, processes and capabilities fundamentally driven by a focus on a relentless commitment to safety and a relentless commitment to continuous improvement. I'm going to show a video here that we produced internally back in 2025 when we talked about One Arrow for the first time so that all of you can see the work that went into the transformation that you'll see throughout this week.

A Aero is one of the main producers of copper and gold in Brazil. We are part of a global group, with sede in Canada and with operations in Brazil. Our two operations of copper include Caraiba, located in the state of Bahia, and Tucumán, in the state of Pará. Our third active operation is the Mina of Ouro of Chavantina, located in Mato Grosso. A part of our growth strategy is to take advantage of our expertise in exploration vising the extension of the useful life of the mines already existent and the advance of projects in exploration in Brazil, including the project Furnas, in the state of Pará. In Aero, we are moved by a common commitment that connects and inspires the vision One Aero. Ela nos guia a agir com cuidado e absoluto respeito à segurança individual e coletiva. Em todas as nossas operações, a missão é clara. Produzir de forma responsável os minerais essenciais para um futuro melhor. Na Aero, a segurança da nossa força de trabalho e das comunidades é a nossa maior prioridade. Para nós, produção e resultados operacionais só são satisfatórios quando todos voltam para casa em segurança ao fim do dia. It's more than a protocol, it's a commitment with life. We are very important with the well-being of people and communities, because we know that care of each other is one of our biggest values. Além of care, we value and courage we have courage. We have courage to innovate, evolve and face challenges that are coming. We have courage to challenge status quo, Abraçar a inovação e buscar a melhoria contínua em todas as áreas do nosso negócio No coração do One Aero está a honestidade E esse é um compromisso que vivemos todos os dias Acolhemos feedbacks oportunos, diretos e construtivos Valorizamos conversas corajosas que colocam a empresa acima do indivíduo Fortalecemos a confiança e encorajamos o diálogo aberto e respeitoso In Aero, we have the commitment to share information in a transparent way and true. We also value the collaboration, because we know that we are stronger than a team. The true progress happens when our units work together, integrating forces to transform the way we operate. Through the Vision One Aero, a cooperation with our partners and communities has enabled us to go further away every day. With care, courage, honesty and collaboration, we seek excellence in everything we do. Our mission is to deliver high performance, becoming more competitive and efficient. We base our decisions in data, not in assumptions, protecting the reputation of the company and building a responsible legacy that creates a positive impact for future generations. We are Aero, a company that une our operations in Brazil with global expertise. Together, we are growing stronger every day, building a legacy that brings us daily to our goal of becoming the best mining company of the country.

A company, a vision, a hero. across our organization the last 18 months, two years, culminating in 2025, one of the lowest LTIFRs that we've had at Arrow. More recently, approximately $10 to $15 million in savings in an integrated procurement strategy led by our One Arrow procurement team and philosophy, as well as more than $20 million in savings through renegotiated concentrate contracts all throughout our operations. Again, I think the main theme here being focus on leadership, focus on health and safety, focus on procurement, as well as technology and innovation, and fundamentally underpinned by this culture I spoke to, and you saw the video of One Arrow. Just to touch briefly on, again, coming back to 2025 in January, I made three commitments to all of you and to all of our stakeholders. That was number one, to achieve commercial production at Tucumac. We did that on July 1st. It was to deleverage our balance sheet, which clearly we have done. And it was to advance the Furnace Copper Gold Project as the cornerstone of our future growth strategy, and we've clearly achieved that with the PEA that came out in Q1. In addition, we also added some few creative value drivers that have accelerated some of that deleveraging and really resulted in strong financial performance. Obviously, the Gold Concentrate Program at Javancina, a creative way to add value to our business, and that will benefit us not only this year, but also through a good part of next year. We completed the mine mechanization at Javancina. For those of you that are coming to Javancina this week, you'll see that in action, and the potential that that provides that operation, as Jelson will speak to. And also, the plant debottlenecking that we achieved at Cariba, the last three quarters have been all-time record throughput levels at that operation. Again, three big value drivers as we think about the future and what our operations are capable of doing. And just to touch on the deleveraging component, something that I'm very proud of is that 90 cents, roughly 90 cents of every dollar that was available for deleveraging in our company over the last 18 months has gone to deleveraging, really emphasizing the commitment, the performance against that commitment and the focus that we have on positioning the company for future growth. That future growth is coming in the form of a large project. Obviously, we have organic opportunities around our operations, which Jelson and Mike will speak to. But at Furnas, when I take a big step back and I think about our future, Furnas offers a long-duration mine life, significant production potential, outstanding geologic opportunities in terms of the exploration programs that we have going there. and we'll talk about that a little bit as well, and very, very compelling economics. So you're looking here at the sensitivity that was produced in the PA. Obviously, metal prices have improved a lot since then, and it's part of the reason that we're so focused on this project, again, as the cornerstone of our future growth. Our commitment for NAS goes beyond just the execution of the earning requirements. Today, September 14th, very proud of our team. 1,000 days of working on site without a single lost time injury, and I think that's a milestone worth celebrating. In addition to the fact that in August we completed our 90,000 meters of drilling that was required under the earn-in, that happened about two years ahead of schedule, and so congratulations to our team there. We have 11 drill rigs that are operating on site now at Fernos, and those are continuing to test resource extensions, confirm mineralization, for future studies, including the pre-feasibility study that we expect to be out in 2027. So what does that mean for Arrow? I think fundamentally, as you'll see in this presentation, and as those of you who are joining us on site this week will see, is that we have effectively two main pillars to our value creation strategy that is set on a foundation of deleveraging and de-risking. So that's coming in two places. Number one, focus on balance sheet deleveraging, which clearly, as I indicated, we've done, and Wayne will speak to that in a little bit more detail here. But to improve our financial strength and flexibility going forward, that's one of the foundational pillars that we have. Also, our continued execution ahead of schedule on Furnas to accelerate that project as much as possible, enabling investments in technology and innovation. Marcelo is here. He's our technology and innovation head here in Brazil, doing some very exciting things across our portfolio, as Jelson will speak to and you will see this week. And then we also have, as I said, something that I'm very excited about is the exploration portfolio that we've been able to put together in Brazil. across every stage of development. So from near mine opportunities to new regional opportunities in this environment, we've been working quietly for the last several years to put this land package together and do some initial work. And I think you'll see today why we're excited about the work that we're doing on that side. And finally, for NAS, really creating that bridge to the future state for us with a target FID in 2029. With that, I'll turn the mic over to Jelson. Thank you very much for being here today.

Thank you, Marco, for your introductory remarks. Thank everyone for being here today. I also want to thank our team from Mero, which have been working very hard for us here today. This preparation is fantastic. Thank you very much. Before I move to the slides, I'd like to sort of in the next 25 years, just to explain the common themes that we're going to hear today on this 25 minutes number one is safety my commission about this is how we operate also the technical depth we know these assets very well and in what makes our plans robust we're also going to be talking about discipline and execution this is common across all assets and projects and of course we got to talk about people this is our main asset in the company the people that actually work for error this is what makes everything possible here we also extend about the application of technology innovation in our projects and how we are benefiting from this today and of course how we're going to make our assets more efficient and how we're doing this as to speak everything on this safety transformation here leads to a very simple point we want to make our operations safer and we are doing this as we speak our track record my commission about 2025 which was our best year so far last time injury frequency rate the lowest we had an uptick in 2026 also in the same process we also have the lowest rate in terms of how the angels occur so it's actually half of what happened before this is a great thing for us and some of the common themes that we mentioned here is the focus on people, the connection with the people on site, the entire leadership. We've got our directors of operations, our managers, our supervisors and coordinators. They're actually in the front line and this gets the peer-to-peer connection with our operators and makes a big difference in the group. And also we get the feedback from our operations to us. One of the key areas that we focus in the last 18 months with the support with DSS plus and I'll talk about this in a few minutes is about focus on critical risks these are the areas that we focus the most because we want to reduce the harm every accident that I can can cause harm and that's why we're focusing on the critical areas we build controls for this we increase our audits internal and external we also increase communication between our teams if i look at on the left side of the presentation here you're going to see several themes which relates to how we got to one arrow safety management a system and it goes from something simple like 5s housekeeping programs this is done across the entire organization from mining operation exploration and our projects it's a company-wide the site is better organized therefore is safer and more productive we've seen before in in other places and there is no different the safer we are the more productive we are we go to projects and aspects like a bright mine is a safe mine and we started this in the underground mines and we went through other areas within the surface as well where we know the difference between having lit minds across the entire set of underground actually improve safety but also improve productivity. This is all linked together. On the site leadership renewal, that is clear accountability with, as I said, the directors, the managers operating and working side by side with our teams on the side. That actually makes a difference for us as well. We're sharing best practice, of course, the entire organization. that one arrow that Marco mentioned here it is just not a title this has been embedded here not only safety but in productivity and procurement and technology everything and I would just want to open up a little bit about the DSS program that we had we finished this program after 18 months but the company to help us in leadership development, also processes, governance, and management programs across the entire organization, also identifying for teams in the ground all the critical risks. So there's a big focus on fatality and serious injury prevention. And then finally, after we train all the managers and directors on site we extended that training we call the train the trainer so DSS helped us to create the environment such that we continue this process on our own so the training now is with the supervisors and with the operations there are all the operators on site this is across the entire organization and it's been going very well Michael mentioned about technology, and I want to make a big parenthesis here for this. When we talk about technology in Arrow, there's a big focus on people, right? And I'll talk about the three pillars, but big focus on people. Reduction of exposure, and we'll see some examples on this when I talk about the sites. and give the best information for our teams to take decision on site in the moment. And what it means, I'll give an example related, for instance, to Tukuman with the AI-driven mill, is that all the programs that we put in place in technology, they are very focused. We identify the need with the operations. So the discussions they run from the mine directors to the managers, all the people doing the work, we create the programs, the technology application, and then we have a team under Marcelo, you see in the room, which elaborates the processes, what kind of equipment we're going to use, the timing for the implementation, and what benefits we're going to bring, plus the training, and so forth. So that is going very well. I'll give an example today. when you visit Caraiba this week we'll see some of the operations now in drilling area we actually can do the drilling from the surface this actually reduce not only the exposure of our operators on site but also removes the induced error while they're doing their work some of these work you see is come on by laser and the full process in there on the screen is going very well We also have the same process in southern China. We've got in Tucumán something that we started there a few months ago. It's running, it's implementing. I can take my phone and show you guys if you have a time later on where we have AI basically implemented with the meal and the crushing circuits, which means that it's not a situation. is not about talking about if the equipment has got an issue during the operation, but the entire value chain is linked. So we give information for the operators so they can take a better decision process. So if the system detects that water or a density or even the feed needs to be changed, all of that is done as we progress during the day and the shift so they can see that and take the appropriate decision that actually is happening right now and and it's making a big difference for our operations as we speak digital twin it's something that we're doing it to come on as well and we look at furnace in the future we'll be talking about it we want furnace to start with the right technology from the beginning not only equipment side but also how we simulate fullness on the study phase of the implementation about the construction that's going to be used in there. You see firsthand the blasting in Chavancina that we're doing this remotely from the surface. It removes people from the line of danger as well, and it's controlled with the team. All of these that I'm mentioning here, it's running on site, and we'll be able to see it there. Some of you are familiar with Caraíba, but if you're not, Caraíba is in the Bahia state and has been operating for more than 50 years. It's a reference in Brazil in terms of mining operations, not only because of the scale, but also everything that actually runs at Caraíba, the history, many professionals in Brazil, mining, engineering, geology, all areas are actually professionals form in Caraiba. We're very proud of it. Some people that actually work in Caraiba 20 years ago, they work for us at the moment, and we are very proud of it. We are running the 4.8 million ton per annum capacity in the mill. Marco mentioned about the achievements that we've done in changing the mill set up, The investments that actually have been done in the past and also the deep bottleneck, I'll be able to speak about it shortly. But the major aspect for Caraiba is the largest investment that we have done there, which is the shaft. And the shaft will change how we operate in Caraiba. I'll give an example today. If you are an operator, after you do the shift change to get to the mining phase, which is about 1,500 meters deep area, it may take you an hour and a half driving on a ramp, and this is going to change for a few minutes once the shaft is up and running, and that's going to change the productivity and the cost, of course, for Caraiba. On the plant side, the message here is that every increment that actually has been done on this plant since 2020 with the HIG mule installed, additional bone mule installed, and the large piece of work that actually was done also with the Jameson cells, increasing in recovery on the But last year, which was the entire debottlenecking completed by the end of the year, taking us to 4.8. That's about 1.6 million tons per an additional capacity than it was provided. And you can see on the graph on the right side, a self-explanatory, how we are using that capacity. And I think this is a key message here, not only for Caraiba, but what we're going to see soon. And also, I will talk about Tucumán and then Chavanchina. Our Caraiba operation actually is composed by three main ore sources. In the past, most of the ore was coming from Pilar, more than 95% of the ore source was coming from Pilar. And today, what we see is a combination of Pilar, underground mine, we've got Vermelius, which is also underground mine, and Suruby. And Suruby is an old mine, and it's going to be running all the way to the end of this year with some stockpiles mined in 2027. And to feed the plant and continue feeding the plant with different ore sources, we've got N8, which is an open pit mine, closer to Vermilious, which we start next year. Work is in progress already. Feed grade, about 0.9% to 1.1%, as we show in the graph there, plus the total capacity in the plant, which we try to maximize and use the total aspect in there. And that's sort of a projection for us for the next three years. As I mentioned before, our single largest investment at Caraíba is the shaft. And it opens up many benefits for us. The shaft is in progress. We are about 1,170 meters, give or take. As we speak, we plan to be finishing the excavation of the shaft for the next year. and then continues on in the progression of the equipment shaft and getting the shaft ready in 2028. The entire capacity of that shaft is going to give us on the hoisted system and people. We're talking about 3 million tons additional that can open up a different area for us. You can imagine today operating at 1,500 meters deep. There are different areas that we want to explore, develop, and the shaft is going to make that possible and increasing the life of this operation, Pilar, for decades to come. This, of course, will translate to lower operating costs and more efficiency at the mine. This is a current picture of the setup that we have. All of these infrastructure, these are permanent infrastructure where we've got the rock winder, the areas where we have the shot frame. This is close to the operations. There's a massive integration of operation and the project, as we speak. And every meter, basically, that we're seeing today gets us closer to the highest grades in the development area of Pilar, the deeper areas. I'd like to make some comments and a presentation here on Tucumán. It's our newest operation. Okay, good. Thank you. So, Tucumán, located in the Karajas area, if you're familiar with the areas on the east side of Karajas, has designed a 4 million ton per annum operation processing with the mine life all the way to 2035. We've reached commercial capacity last year. And now the progress is on basically delivering additional filtering capacity, which we'll talk in a few minutes. Important here is that the whole Orbit knowledge and all the technical aspects for Tucumán is incredible. When I joined Arrow, I remember talking to Marco about this, that once you turn the mill, the recovery that actually came from out of the concentrator was the exact recovery that actually was in the design phase of this project, which illustrates how well the studies were done, but also the implementation and also the quality of the ore combined to the processing design. So it's very positive for us, and we see that on a daily basis. We are adding additional filtration, and that filtration is on the tailing side, this additional filtration capacity will take us to 4 million tons per annan processing. This is basically the story that I was mentioning here. Sorry, I should have put this slide before. You can see the steps that we're moving on from the day that we started the operation all the way now. The filters are in the port in Bahia and delivered on site. For those that actually visit the site as well, we'll be able to see the construction ongoing, all the silvers and materials in there. And it's on plan to deliver what we designed for the remaining of the year. And they will be able to see that with me during the week. Now, when I moved to Chavanchina, Chavanchina is located in the Mato Grocery State. It's high-grade underground operation. And this operation, we've made a huge change recently on that, which I'll talk about it, which is where we see the major growth due to the changes. So you can picture at the beginning of the operation many years ago, narrow veins, very narrow, the mining method had to adapt to the geology. And of course, as we move and progress deeper, there was the need for us to reevaluate the entire operation, and that actually was done. We completed the mechanization, and with this mechanization, we can add mining development, and we can increase the mining rates, but also remove people from the line of danger. Our plant at Chavanchina is capable of processing 300,000 tons a year, and that's where we're moving towards with the increment in production this is basically a summary of the work related to the mechanization important when when you think about mechanization we got to remember that we are changing a lot of things around there we're changing people we're changing processes we bring in new equipment and have to be training people oh everything supporting that process needs to be implemented and then I'm very happy and proud of our team that we We achieved that in less than a year since the beginning. So it's a fantastic work that actually be done there and you see by yourselves. With that mechanization, we accelerated also bringing technology to the table and you'll be able to see some of these equipment being guided by laser, which reduce variability on the drilling, improving meters that we are able to do on our development. And that's in progress right now, we'll be able to see. So it's scalable, and it's very important for anything that we look at the capability to expand Chavancina in the future and to achieve the production rates that we're talking about, the mine is prepared for, and we will continue in that process. This is the infrastructure support. It's a very simple slide, but I think it makes it important that we bring it here. We're always looking at an opportunity to be more efficient, reduce OPEX across the organization. And this was a very important step that we took when we look at the Chavanchino operation. As we did not have the need for larger capacity in terms of power, we used a 35K volt. And then when we moved to mechanization and bringing additional ventilation, and additional cooling, we felt the need to work with our partner there, which supplies power for us, and increase capacity using a different line. There's 138k volts. That's going to help us across the additional power that is required for Chavancina, but also brings a lot of savings in the packs for the next few years. Marco mentioned about the opportunities that we take within the company, and this was one of the best opportunities for Chavantina in the last while, which related for us looking at what we had in stockpile, this material we're seeing there. We tested the material, we identified it, we quantified as we reported last year in terms of inferred resources. Due to the nature of the department, we've been operating that since very successfully. We had to bring additional equipment on site to support us, especially in the rainy season. And that graph illustrates very well the challenge that we had in there. But you'll be able to see this by yourself and how the entire setup for running concentrate and creating concentrate from that stockpile is in progress with the dryer and also the filter press. We'll be able to see that. And that also, of course, when you look at the cost that is basically translated, the entire operation that you see there is about $700 per ounce, and then that brings a significant margin for Chalantina. I would like to have a coffee break, and we continue with Furnaz. 20 minutes. Thank you. I think we can start Furnaz. we will see a video about the project it's a great video when I look at this ticket it kind of represents everything that actually is in our minds that represent the not just the setting of the project but the idea behind the project visually speaking and also we're gonna see a couple of slides just to finalize Marco mentioned at the beginning there some of the highlights of the the furnace project I won't bring them up but I'll make comments about how the project is progressing okay the furnace copper gold project cornerstone

of Eero's future growth strategy furnace strengthens arrows differentiated copper gold growth story complementing an established portfolio of operations across Brazil. The project spans nearly 2,400 hectares, less than 15 kilometers from rail, power, roads, and established regional services. Supported by regional infrastructure, Foranis sits among established mines and significant deposits across Carajás. From above, the scale becomes clear. Foranis is a large, highly prospective iron oxide copper gold system below surface mineralization stretches across a nine kilometer footprint and remains open with significant potential for continued growth that opportunity is grounded in more than 90,000 meters of historic drilling completed by Valle arrow confirms high-grade continuity across both zones with over 90,000 meters of drilling. The 24-year PEA mine plan integrates selective open pit and underground mining, feeding a centralized 13.5 million ton per year processing plant. The scale and continuity of the deposits support large stopes and efficient high-volume underground production. Across a compact 5-kilometer corridor, proposed plants and infrastructure connect the northwest and southeast zones into one integrated operation among the project's infrastructure a conventional processing plant is designed for efficient large-scale recovery of copper and gold the project's proposed flow sheet incorporates proven technologies including high-intensity grinding mills and Jameson cells already successfully deployed across ERA's operations the preliminary economic assessment brings it all together a long mine life robust economics and a clear pathway from resource to production furnace offers substantial upside remaining open at depth and a long strike with over 200 000 meters of drilling completed and 11 drill rigs currently operating When I first visited the Furnas project, I was not only impressed by the setting

and the work which was already done by our teams, gathering all the knowledge that actually was acquired with the work done by Vali in our core shed and seeing all the geologists, environmental work and community work in progress. But when you start, you know, putting in the list of what it makes a project successful, I saw all the elements in there, not only in terms of the geology and the knowledge that we have acquired for the mineralization, structural controls, grade distribution, how the teams located the drilling program, not only to define resources, but also to test the boundaries of the mineralization. I've seen the team testing holes at 800 meters deep, which is way far from what is in that project right now as we speak, and testing the mineralization and finding the same mineralization, same thickness, high-grade in there, largely speaking. So in terms of what it makes a big project, we start with the geology and then move on. How can we mine this? And then the large-scale mining, when we compare Furnas with our Caraiba operation, just for sense of engineering here. When we planned the furnas during the PEA, we brought not only specialists from outside of the company, but our own team to test and challenge the assumptions that actually were in the PEA. Today, we mined Caraiba from 400 meters from the surface all the way to 1,500 meters. And even at this scale of furnas, the entire production on the underground can come from a single level in a year. And even when we get to the end of the 20, 25 years of my life, we will not have reached 500 meters deep. So that is very impressive. We have areas where the ore body crosses 100 meters. Large stopes can be applied. We're looking at the base filling or rock filling, the setup with the open pit mine as well, the geotech in progress. So everything points out for a very robust, in terms of infrastructure, the video points out the area of the infrastructure is beautiful because everything can be concentrated and minimized, minimally impact. So with that, we continue this year with the pre-feasibility study. Some of the accomplishments so far in 25 and 26 there. But the most important aspect is that we continue to work on site with additional drilling test work, engineering work as well in progress with the firms working on the project for the PFS level, but also on the environmental impairments with the IAHIMA already being prepared by our teams, collecting of data, great relationship with the local community. So these are the phases that we see for the Furnas project. Of course, we plan to deliver this pre-feasibility study next year. We work very close. We follow. Some of you asked me how we interact. It's a great interaction. We have quarterly meetings where we share not only what we do in a project, but also we get to understand how they are doing their own projects because everything is the same setting there in the same area. So there's quite a lot of learning among the two companies and then exchange of information. And also our target for investment decision looking at to 2029 with the completion of the feasibility study. As we progress drilling, the more we learn about the deposit, the more we learn about the mineralization, we adjust the mine plan, we adjust the mine design, and everything continues in the confirmation of the PA so far. Currently, we have 11 rigs, and we will basically, as we progress towards the end of the year may reduce some of the drilling because we've completed and then there's going to be more specialized drilling across the site and the focus mostly on the items which make impact on the pre-feasibility study to give us certainty and reduce risk for the project being aspects related to reserve definition. Our teams have defined many areas for resource growth actually is in progress as well. Very importantly, not only for the open pit areas, but also to the underground is a very deep understanding on the geotech that what it makes us design and make sure that we will perform as we say in the design for these mines, for slope angles and water inside the areas and how much pumping will be required. So these are the processes and work in progress, as we speak, today at the Furnace. And with that said, I want to finish here and then ask Mike to come in and help us to understand more about all the exploration and potential that we see in Aero.

Thank you, Gelson. Jelson touched on, and the video touched on, the expiration at Furness. I'm going to talk about the rest of the portfolio. We have a fairly simple and deliberately simple strategy that really hasn't changed. One, we replace reserves and extend the mine life at the mines. This is where the bulk of our drilling dollars go because it's the highest return on invested capital. It's where we're going to make the cheapest discoveries, and those discoveries are going to be near the plant, near our people, and with permits. And then regional and greenfields projects provide us opportunities for organic growth in the future, in the medium and long term. And this slide really from left to right shows that progression. So our foundational assets at Cariba, Tucumac, Javancina, and now Furnas. I'm going to touch on some of the updates at those mines, as well as some of the new regional opportunities. So Cariba, we have a new copper nickel discovery near the Vermeos mine. At Tucumac, I'm not going to go into great detail, but I will say that we do have an exploration project within 30 kilometers of the mine that we're drilling on right now. And then we have a new Greenfields project, very large, 220,000 hectare project with an emerging copper-nickel district. Starting with Pilar, you can see the reserve growth here from 2017 when the company started through to the discovery of the deepening. So we're really focused on the deeper portion of the mine and the area where we're developing the shaft to. By 2021, we had 10 million tons indicated, 6 million tons inferred. By 2025, 3 million tons measured, almost 10 million tons indicated, and 11 million tons inferred. So big resource growth in that area. And you also notice the grades are quite high relative to the reserve grade at Cariba in general. In the long section on the right, you can see the distribution of the measured and indicated resources in gray, and then that sort of mustardy yellow is the inferred resources. You can see in the inset the shaft, which is 1,500 meters from surface, and then the bottom of that shaft in the top in the larger image right there, you can see the bottom of that shaft 1,500 meters below surface. There hasn't been a lot of drilling here in recent years because of infrastructure requirements and just development needs, but you can see a couple holes that we've drilled here relatively recently and some of the results. I think the one that's really worth highlighting is the two at the bottom from hole 217. We had 27 meters at 3.2% copper, We're including a very high-grade interval within that, and then 18 meters at 3.4% copper. These holes are hitting at a relatively shallow angle because of the orientation that they're drilled, so those aren't true thicknesses. The point is that the zone is open, and at the bottom of the inferred resources, we're seeing very high-grade mineralization, so it's very encouraging. At Tucuma, the question here is around the continuity of the geology at depth and what sort of grades we're seeing below the pit. There is an existing underground resource of about 1.35 million tons at 2.24% copper. So that's from the 2021 resource updated for depletion. So obviously it hasn't really changed, but that sits below the pit design. We had an 8,000 meter program from surface to test for the geological continuity of that high grade mineralization and to test to see what the grades are below the pit. In the section that we see here of Tucuma, you can see the distribution of blocks above 2% copper and some of the intercepts that we drilled below the pit with some very high grades, so 11 meters at 4.4% copper, 5.9 meters at 4.1% copper. There's also an intercept at the bottom there of 11.7 meters at 1.8% copper. So very strong sort of underground grades drilled below the pit. We know that it's open. We know it's continuous. And there's a very continuous plunge line to that mineralization, which is quite encouraging. Javancina, it's one of the operations where exploration is most clearly paid for itself. You can see the change in resources from 2017 before the Santo Antonio discovery to 2021, where we had about a million tons in indicated and 700,000 tons inferred. To the end of 2025, when we put out the technical report, we had 300,000 tons in measured, 2 million tons indicated, and 1.1 million tons inferred. So very strong resource growth. And we have very consistent mineralization and tracking that to the north and drilling those extensions of that mineralization is really added to that resource. In the plan map on the right, you can see there's three zones within the lower portion of San Antonio. This is a plan map. The mineralization is dipping shallowly to the north, northeast. San Antonio, Maine has been the area that we've mostly focused on. You can see the extension of that mineralization. It remains open. We continue to drill this portion. This is the mineral resource envelope from the end of 2025. And then the black pierce points are drilling from the end of 2025 and through 2026. And you can see there's been a big focus in this area, which we refer to as Santa Antonio East, with some very, very strong grades. So holes 60, 65, 70, you can see intercepts six meters at 15 and a half grams, 15.7 meters at almost 12 grams, 10.3 meters at over 20 grams, very, very strong intercepts. But I'd also point out that you can see a fair bit of natural variability within this deposit with lower grades that are relatively close to high grades, so 1.9 meters at under 5, 2.3 at 2. So there is variability within the system, which is important when I touch on the next slide. And then it's also worth pointing out this area here over at San Antonio West. So the grades and thicknesses are generally lower than what we see at San Antonio, Maine and San Antonio East. But what we're encouraged by is that this is within the main mine sequence. So we see laminated veins hosted by carbonaceous phylites and the sulfides galenous phylarite and pyrite are very diagnostic of oriferous zones within the main mine. And so we see all of that here. And we have gold-bearing mineralization within those veins, and we're going to continue to chase that mineralization in that direction to see if it thickens and gets better grade like we see at San Antonio, Maine, and San Antonio East. So this is quite a different slide. With San Antonio, we've consistently drilled and extended the plunge line of that mineralization, and we wanted to see how far that zone went. So we drilled a hole to the north of the Maine mine. This is the 2025 mineral resource envelope in dark gray. We drilled SPL03A. It's an almost 1,700-meter deep hole from surface, which intersected a three-meter vein interval at about 1,570 meters vertical depth within a larger 11-meter package of carbonaceous phylites with smaller laminated veins, galenous, phalarite, pyrite, so those diagnostic sulfide minerals that we see within the San Antonio mine. So we interpret this as very similar to the mine sequence, which we see up here, and we effectively believe we've extended the mineralization by about a kilometer from the 2025 mineral resource envelope down to SPL-03A. We have internal lab assays for this, and we're waiting on the accredited lab assays. But in general, I would say that they're fairly low-grade anomalous, but very encouraging that we see that mine sequence very thick and a fairly thick three-meter package with concentrated veining, as you can see here in this core photo. So to follow up on this, we're drilling a number of wedges from the parent hole. So SPL-03B is the first one. It's targeting 1,500 meters as a wedge out of the parent hole, and a number of other holes will be drilled to test the lateral continuity, the grade, and then the up-and-down plunge continuity of the mineralization. Back to Kariba, this is an emerging nickel-copper discovery. I think three key points to start. It's within 10 kilometers of Vermeos, so very close to infrastructure and power. We've drilled 4,200 meters on this project, which have defined a strike length of about 400 meters north to south. The mineralization is shallowly plunging, which is quite encouraging for the deposits that we tend to see in the Vermeos district. We've intersected a number of hits of semi-massive and massive sulfides with pyrotite, pentlandite, chalcopyrite, so the nickel and copper bearing minerals. I won't read these out, but you can see some very encouraging intercepts with widths from 7 to 16 meters, some considerably elevated nickel and copper grades with some cobalt. We consistently explore for this mineralization using borehole EM. So if you're not familiar with that electromagnetic technique, it's a geophysical method. We put a probe down the hole and we look for conductors off hole. And usually those are associated with accumulations of sulfides and nickel copper mineralization. We have two untested plates here at the southern end, at the lower plunge of the known mineralization. And those Those are being drilled now, and we will continue to follow that up with more borehole EM and drilling. And lastly, this is a new district. At Kariba, we've spent 10 years working on it. Obviously, there was a lot of work that happened before we got there. There's been over 428,000 meters of drilling in the mines and regionally. There's six current and past-producing mines in that district. We targeted this area at Odin in a similar environment in Bahia. It was originally mapped as an area of ophiolites, and ophiolites are a sequence. Basically, it's a slice of oceanic crust which has been thrust onto continental crust through tectonic processes. And those weren't prospective, wouldn't be prospective for copper-nickel mineralization. But our team had a hypothesis that this was mismapped, and what we were really looking at was intrusive ultramafic and mafic rocks that had the potential to host magmatic nickel copper sulfites like we see at Cariba. So we did a fair bit of mapping and soil geochemistry and identified a zone that's about 100 meters wide by 90 or 100 kilometers east-west by 90 kilometers north-south. You can see the soil sample, or these are stream sediment samples that identified the zone, we did further mapping and soil geochemistry to identify 13 mineral systems. We find nickel-copper mineralization hosted by Ultramathics at surface, numerous Gossens. There's been no work here, no drilling in this entire district, so it's brand new. With those six advanced target areas, we've drilled 3,100 meters from Q2 up until the end of August. I can say that we've hit a number of intervals of disseminated mineralization, similar sulfide minerals that we would see at N30. So pyrotite, pentlandite, chalcopyrite, disseminated with some zones of net textured mineralization. So the point is not that we've made an economic discovery, but the point is really that we've proven a concept that we have a magmatic nickel copper system here and that we've discovered an emerging district. So the next steps here are to take that information, understand the distribution of sulfides, understand the geometry of the system, go back and refine our targeting and have a second phase of drilling to understand what the potential is and hopefully make an economic discovery. So I guess to sum up, with Pilar, we have a system that continues to be open at depth with high grades. We have an emerging copper nickel sulfide discovery in that district near Vermeos. At Tucuma, we've shown that the mineralization continues at very good grades below the pit, and we're going to continue to drill that starting at the end of this year. At Vermeos, the mine continues to add ounces as we drill down the plunge, and we've shown that it continues at least a kilometer down with that deep regional hole. And now we have a new emerging nickel-copper discovery at Odin. And obviously, I think, as Jelson mentioned, we have 11 rigs turning at Furness. And with that, I'll turn it over to Wayne.

Good?

Okay.

All right, good afternoon, everyone. And welcome to the most exciting part of the presentation, finance. and what could be more exciting than risk management but seriously when we think about our business obviously you've heard a lot from the team around what we do to to grow our business protect our business a lot of things that we can control but there's also a lot of things that we cannot control and and as we think about how we protect our business through the cycle I just want We wanted to highlight sort of five pillars here that really help us protect and grow and continue to deliver value to shareholders. And so what are those? Obviously, we are a Brazilian-based business, so heavily exposed and reliant on the BRL. Metal prices, that's pretty obvious. when we think about our balance sheet we're coming out of a very interesting phase as a company, out of a very heavy capital phase but having a balance sheet that is robust and allows us to do the things we want to do in the future is very important commercial terms, obviously we talk a lot about copper and when people talk about selling copper concentrate it's a little bit more complicated than just putting you know putting a loading up a vessel and sending it halfway around the world and I'll touch on that and then Michael talked about the one-year a program and how that's really helped us on the procurement side so I will go through each of these in a little bit more detail so this is a very interesting slide and I think for those of you've followed the story and known us for a long time we've talked a lot about our foreign exchange hedge program it's as I mentioned earlier before, we're heavily exposed to the currency. We have all of our assets in Brazil. And as most of you in this room know, the real is a very volatile currency, but on the other side is a very liquid currency. So together with the Mexican peso, it's probably the most liquid of the Latin American currencies. And that gives us an opportunity to put in place structures to protect our margins. And how do we think about that? We're not trying to bet on the currency, but what we are trying to do is when we put together a budget for the next 12 to 18 months, we have a very good understanding of what we think the metal price will be. We have a very good understanding of what input costs will be. Where we find ourselves exposed is potentially a strong move in the real and and I think we saw that we saw that happen obviously um very wildly in 2020 when COVID hit and we saw the the the currency move from wow low threes to to high fours which had a hugely positive impact for us at that point but then similarly when we moved into a heavy capital phase with Tukima we saw what that could do to us if it went the other way and and and i think this slide really puts it summarizes it quite nicely in terms of how the way we think about it obviously we're not looking to to get the exact number it's about putting in a range we use we use costless collars to do that and i think this demonstrates quite nicely how yep there are the swings and roundabouts they're days where and months and quarters where we will lose against the spot rates but ultimately from our perspective and when we think about our budget, we're still very comfortable because we're at a level that we can support. And then there are quarters, as you've seen in the last two quarters, particularly, where that program has delivered quite significant gains to us. And we will continue to try and be opportunistic. Obviously, you have to be a bit opportunistic. The real has a very interesting relationship with the U.S. dollar because of the interest rate differential. And so the ability to capture that differential when you see opportunistic moves in the currency, whether it be local geopolitical news or whether you see some international turmoil drive currency markets, we try to use that to the best of our ability, obviously, to capture a range that we feel comfortable with rolling forward into the budget. So Marco touched on the procurement. This is obviously one very happy outcome of the one-euro program that's been in place. I think context is important here. We obviously had a very decentralized approach to procurement up until a few years ago, and we really solidified a centralized approach last year with the one-euro program. And I think that's given us, as you see, stronger governance, standardized contracts, but also given us a much better view of what all three assets are consuming, where the exposure is in terms of certain supplies or reagents. And through that and through being able to negotiate now with bigger volumes, of course, bringing Tucumar into that mix has meant that we have a lot more volumes to negotiate against. we've been able to generate fairly significant savings, which is a great testament to the team down here. Obviously, I think when you look at the balance sheet over the last few quarters, you've seen the inventories grow, but I think that's twofold. One of that is the point we make about adjusting inventories for disruption. Certainly the beginning part of this year, we saw significant global turmoil, shall we say, which created significant logistical bottlenecks, logistical challenges. It was something that we were very proactively trying to manage, and we did that by building up certain inventories in certain reagents or supplies that we felt would be difficult to source if we saw a full-blown freeze in the global seaborne freight market. But obviously, as that settles down, we'll work to bring that down. Of course, having a bigger asset base, as we do, naturally requires us to carry greater inventories. So I thought this was a slide worth putting on the table because we get a lot of commentary, and I get a lot of noise about TCRCs. Everyone's like, oh, look at the spot TCRCs. They're minus 300 and minus 3, and every week it's about the TCRC. And I think what I wanted people to sort of understand is that the selling of concentrate, the TC and the RC, and for those of you in the room, I hope you know, there's a treatment charge and a refining charge, treatment charge for a smelter, refining charge for a refinery. But it is a cost that we pay, ultimately, because we are delivering, although we don't deliver a final metal, The historical pricing of the metal is the delivery of a final metal. And that cost is borne by us as the producer. So when you think about it, there's so much more that goes into TCRCs because there's the payables and deductions, which nobody really focuses on. And a lot of people today sort of say, well, with these negative TCRCs running in the market right now, how is smelters still surviving? Well, they're still surviving because the deductibles and the payables that they've historically had in their contracts are allowing them to have huge wins on gold, silver, other materials they might have. Similarly, when you look at the freight and the freight to different markets, obviously, focus has very much been on China and China freight. But for us, for example, moving material into Europe versus China is a significant saving. Now, it's not easy to do that because obviously there's not an amount of smelters in Western Europe or in Europe compared to the smelting capacity that's been built out in Asia. But if we're able to cap some of that benefit for ourselves, that can have a very big impact. right now as well the mix the counterparty mix is proving to be very interesting so again for context we when we acquired Kariba it was a domestic supplier to Paranapanema and we went about changing that and introducing export sales but our volumes are actually quite small when you think about it in the context of the global concentrate market. And so for us, it made sense to deal with traders because they gave us a lot of flexibility around timing. So what do I mean by that? Well, if you're supplying to a smelter, they plan out their production and their inputs 12 to 18 to 24 months ahead. And they are very particular about their deliveries. And so if we, for example, put together a lot, 10,000 tons is a lot, and we miss a shipment by a couple of weeks. Let's say a ship and that's also driven by the ships moving around the world. We would potentially be up for significant penalties if we did not hit a delivery window into that smelter. Obviously the traders have a very different approach. They have a huge book of material that they buy from lots of producers around the world. They're able to absorb that clearly there's a cost that comes with that but but that cost is built into the TCRC that they offer you and so for the longest time we were very happy with that relationship and we continue to be very happy with that relationship particularly amongst the very large trading houses but what we've now able to do which is really exciting is this year is the first year and in fact we shipped and delivered our first direct smelter material in in late Q2 and that's really exciting because it allows us to create a bit of a mix between direct smelter business and trading business we're able to do that because now we have the volumes so having the two assets gives us enough volume to be able to offset any risk of delivery or timing of you know slipping it sets a slight slip in the shipment schedule so that's that again kind of changes the way we think about how how we sell the material and all the overall value proposition so So this is a slide that makes me very happy as CFO. It's self-explanatory. Obviously, tremendous performance over the last six quarters from a peak leverage of 2.8 times on a gross basis when we were right at the end of, I guess, the Tucuma CapEx and the commissioning had just begun. And as Marco said, this was a key part of our strategy over the last few quarters. When we think about what we want to do with this business was to get ourselves below one-times. We're there, and obviously the numbers on the right really give testament to that. When you take your adjusted EBITDA from $216 million to $533 million over two years, over 18 months actually, that drives incredible performance in terms of your deleveraging. And I think that then flows into this slide, which is how do we think about the balance sheet? How do we think about returns to shareholders? And certainly there's a lot of questions and thoughts around what are we doing in respect of returns to shareholders? Well, the first thing I would say is in paying down debt, we are actually making returns to shareholders we're lowering the debt burden we're lowering the interest charge and so that in essence is a return to shareholders or stakeholders in this business but as you can see we are we're reaching a point where we feel over the next say two to three quarters we we will be in a position to pay down all that remains on our credit facility on our revolver, which is $95 million. Finish up the copper prepay, which we did just shy of two years ago. And that really will allow us to be more thoughtful and probably a bit more directed around how we want to begin to make returns to shareholders. We do that in the context of both thinking about Furnace. Furnace is, as you just saw, an incredibly exciting project for this business but we want to be really thoughtful about how we fund that I think when we thought of I mean you look at tucuma and we talk about the debt here we we were very thoughtful about putting in place a high-yield bond when we funded tucuma obviously our timing was was tremendously advantageous we're given the the current interest rate cycle at that point in time but today we We have a lot more levers to pull, not least of which is the tremendous cash generation that we have from this business. And so we will continue to think about that. Obviously, Furnas is progressing very quickly. But certainly, I think you are going to see us come back to our shareholders and stakeholders here in the next short while around what we think we're going to do in terms of shareholder And that is me. Thank you.

Perfect. So we thought we'd do something a little bit different here. Courtney and Eduardo have prepared a couple slides to talk a little bit about the current climate in Brazil. And then I thought what I would do is ask all the controversial questions ahead of our Q&A about Brazilian politics. So over to you, Eduardo, and Courtney.

So I'm going to take a step back before we jump into why Brazil is destined to be a partner of choice around critical minerals. And I want to talk about some of the historical context around why governments today are so focused on critical minerals. So if you think back to the 1970s and the oil markets back in the 1970s, OPEC at its height controlled or supplied 55% of the world's crude oil production. Today across critical minerals, the top supplier of refined production supplies an average of 70% of the market. For copper, it's about 50 percent. And for rare earths, at the opposite, at the highest end, is about 95 percent. So back in the days of the oil embargoes and oil crises of the 1970s, OPEC's control of the market influenced everything from energy and foreign policy to industrial strategy. So that's why you're seeing a proliferation of government policies around critical and strategic minerals. The other important point is that it's not as simple as building processing capacity domestically in any country. What's happening now is there's also been a race to secure the feed for those smelters and refiners. And the pool of concentrate available and the concentrate coming into the market that's uncommitted is shrinking. So last week, Japan announced a transaction with Codelco, where they provided, I think, $666 million of financing. And in exchange, they secured long-term concentrate offtake. And this is happening across the market. So what Brazil has done and what Brazil recognizes today, is that it's in a position of strength around critical minerals. You have strong policy momentum in Brazil. It's a great jurisdiction, a great mining jurisdiction. In fact, the Fraser Institute named it the most attractive jurisdiction for investment in the region around mining. And you have a strong workforce, you have the infrastructure, And so it's really well positioned to take advantage of its place in the world and to become a critical mineral supplier of choice. Last week, Brazil also announced the national policy on critical and strategic minerals. Edu will talk more about this. But, you know, this is part of a continuum that's been going on for five years for Brazil to create some clarity around the regulatory and legal framework and to also provide some support and tax incentives to help build out the critical minerals capabilities in country.

Here we'll talk a little about why Brazil at this time has a very unique opportunity when you talk about minerals, mainly about critical minerals. Probably what I'm showing there is not new for anyone, but I think it's important we review again. The first, the guys used to say that Brazil has in our geological deposits all the periodical table, all the chemical elements. We have a very rich deposit, and then with the new technologies that you can see now in the global market for different technologies, it's a very unique opportunity for Brazil to take a position as a leader of this process. The other is because most of our territory is not yet totally explored by a geological point of view. We have a lot of areas, mainly in the north of the country, that you don't have any exploration or any data about our deposits. So we are open to discover large deposits in many areas that is totally open at this moment. And although, as Brazilian guys, we used to talk about some deficiencies in our market, in our regulatory jurisdiction, But when you compare with other countries and other potential producers of different minerals, Brazil has a very good position. We have a labor prepared to do the work that you need. We have agencies that can control the process. And in some way, we have a stable jurisdiction process, what may create for the investors a stable scenario for making investments to develop the Brazilian industry in the mining sector. And the last one is about the kind of energy that Brazil can support for all the mining producers. Brazil is one of the countries in the world that have the most renewed power generation supply. We have hydroelectric supply, we have solar supply, and then all the biofuels that we are using right now, and give us in these discussions about green energy transitions, a very special position when you compare with other countries that needs different sources of energy to supply the industries that is acting in this sector. And now, when you talk about what Brazil is developing to try to make this position more clear for the investors and for the companies, as Courtney mentioned, we just approve a new policy to try to incentivize and make a regulation for the critical mineral markets. It is expected that next Wednesday, the president should sign the final regulation that was approved by the Congress, by the Senate. And then we have here some main points that we can see in the law. If you go for the other, please. This focus on trying to develop a better environment for critical minerals is not new. When you come back in this timeline, you can see that in 2021, the Brazil government created what they called at that time, Câmara de Minerais Críticos. It was a specific agency to try to incentivize process and projects for developed critical minerals. Copper at that time was one of these critical minerals. And in the end of 2021, we had just approved internally the start of Tucumbo project. And then we applied for this camera to include our project in this set of minerals, set of projects, and it was approved. Tucumán Project, it was one of the projects that was included in the critical minerals camera. But what's happened? We had the change of the government, and nothing happened with our project. We don't receive any different incentive to develop our project, some indications about a fast project to get the permits or some incentives to import equipments. Unfortunately, this project didn't have a continuity, and then you follow the normal project and we deliver the project according to the laws that you had that time. now this thing this discussion come back with this new policy we have here a timeline that i mentioned and then we should have the final process process next week with the president signing and the what you are expecting at this moment from this policy i believe all of you are looking what's happening and know that now you need more time, maybe months, maybe year to have all the points including the policy regulated because you have a lot of definitions that need to be let's say defined by the government, by the council that will be created to fully implement this regulation but what's the main points? Number one we should have more facility to get financing this is really important mainly for junior companies that are starting to develop developing projects for critical minerals because you have a fund to offer guarantees we should have specific funds for this kind of project and then this can make easier the development of some projects. Tax incentives, you know that in Brazil this is a very controversial point because all the time you have but it's not applied or you can take time you can use this but mainly for projects that is included since the upstream into the downstream of the chain should receive more incentives and then try to match the strategic goals that the government has about control or at least assure the supply of the total the full chain of some critical minerals and the one point that is really important and then you believe that this policy can help a lot is about the priority of permitting is not making easy the process but the idea is have a better coordination in the different levels of the government federal level state level municipal level what can make the permit process easier and then unlock some projects that with the current prices is very attractive in terms of economic economic results. And what's important is that we are now creating not just a government policy, but a state policy. What for a sector like our sector, where the projects take 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, we have a policy supporting this and have a better regulatory certainty can help the companies invest and bring more resources to develop this kind of sector that is very clear is economically important for Brazil the mining sector has weight in our trade balancing very significant and strategically Brazil has very good reserves in strategic minerals and if you can assure this regulatory certainty, for sure you can be an important player in this dual market that you have for the critical minerals.

Perfect. Thank you, Eduardo. So I wrote down four questions for both of you, and if you could just give a brief answer before we move into the broader Q&A. Eduardo, this first one is for you. Even in the cocktail hour last night, there was a lot of discussion about the presidential election that's happening in October. It's obviously a controversial time in Brazil, but in your opinion, what is at stake for the mining industry in Brazil as it relates to the presidential election?

Marco, we have now very different candidates, different policies, but what I think that's important is clear that Brazil has a very unique opportunity. And the point is how unlock this potential. And I believe what you listen from both is that they are committed to try unlock this potential doing what they mention things like about regulatory stability I think is important you have now this law that again becomes a state policy instead a government policy number one and the the importance in the trade balance is another point when you look the fiscal situation of brazil continuing generating fiscal uh super habits will be really important to at least stabilize the economic situation and the the other point it's about how we can make the the inflation under control trying to bring some materials for our producer. I believe that for the mining, both of the candidates should not impact directly and I believe that by what they have been talking for both mining sector will be very important for all the government that you have.

Okay, thank you Eduardo. Courtney, this question is for you. Taking a step back from Brazil for a minute, you've been working closely outside of Brazil with the Canadian and U.S. government, among others, on broader critical minerals policies outside Brazil. My question for you is, and we have this discussion a lot, what will it take to turn white papers into action?

First of all, I want to say when I joined the company five and a half years ago, I never would have believed that I'd be sitting at a table with representatives from governments around the world to talk about critical minerals. So the fact that we're having these conversations is mind-blowing. The other thing that's important to recognize is that there's a ton at stake. We are in the midst of a new industrial era that's shaped by electrification, digital infrastructure, AI. And what's at stake is technological leadership. So there's a tremendous sense of urgency across governments around the world. The U.S. and Canada in particular have slightly different approaches. The United States over the last year has announced about 30 billion US dollars in funds that are dedicated just to critical minerals the United States approach is slightly more short-term focus you know they're very much looking for deals dare I say huge deals and the the Canadian government is much more policy and partnership focus and also more long-term focus so they've set aside about two billion Canadian dollars for a sovereign critical minerals fund. And their focus has been more around broadly South America with entering into different partnerships with like Chile and Argentina. They are working on something in Brazil. I'm not exactly sure when that's going to be announced. The United States, again, much more transaction focused. I'm sure a lot of people have heard about the Cerro Verde transaction. It's a rarest company that was announced, I think, last last year. And that provides about five hundred and sixty five million dollars of financing for an expansion of production there. So there's a tremendous sense of urgency and there is a recognition that it goes beyond just policy. Fortunately, there are deep pockets and there are a lot of money behind these commitments that they're making. But ultimately, it's more than just financing. They're also going to have to provide other mechanisms like long-term offtake, price floors, basically guarantees of sales of the product. And they're going to have to have strong partnerships with the countries that they're working with around ensuring that licensing and permitting is organized and streamlined.

Okay. Thanks, Courtney. I mean, zooming back into the slide that we have here, Eduardo, maybe start with you and Courtney, jump in if there's anything here that you want to touch on from the outside Brazil perspective.

But this national policy on critical and strategic minerals that has been signed by Congress and the Senate has received both praise and criticism in equal measure. in your opinion what do you think the biggest pros and cons are for this policy marco i believe that you have three main points uh number one again is because i think for the first time we have for the mining sector a state policy instead a government policy what should make more stable the rules for the sector number one the second i believe that one One of the points of the policy is to try to have a better coordination among all the levels that a mining company needs to act to get permits, federal level, state level, city level, because this is a real problem that you have today. Sometimes you receive priority for one level, but the other, many other reasons, is not fully aligned with this what make the process moving slowly to get the permits so I think this coordination you'll be very important and number three that for Brazil is a point that all the time you discuss is what you have here that's the regulatory certainty we have yet some points everybody here knows the the situation that you are facing in Pará-State with the TIFRM, some changes in tax and other points that sometimes change the rules, change the assumptions that you use in your feasibility study and then have this in a better way. I think you'll be another positive point for the policy. By now, we need to wait the full regulation, but what I think that can be a negative point is because one of the points of the policies are creating of a council to have definitions about many different aspects of the policy, and it depends on the size, the red tape issues that you can have for the the working of this console the projects can suffer in some way it's not fully clear yet but the situation that you have right now most of the federal agencies suffer with a lack of resources human resources technology resources and then with this power in this new agency, in this new council. If you don't have enough resources, this can make it more difficult. Although good indications in a positive way, I believe that this concentration in this council can be a concern, in my opinion, for the project.

What I would add is, I mean, generally speaking, when a government announces new policies and regulations, it's generally not met with excitement. And I can understand, I can absolutely understand why there would be skepticism and concerns around added bureaucracy. However, I very strongly believe that the country of Brazil has a tremendous opportunity before it. And they absolutely understand this. This is a bipartisan opportunity. And the intent behind this new policy is to accelerate the expansion and capabilities around critical minerals. So on one hand, while if they get too prescriptive, that's certainly a risk. The intent behind it is to streamline and accelerate and expand. And so I'm actually quite hopeful that, you know, again, the devil will be in the details. but I'm quite hopeful that this is going to be a positive for the mining industry.

Perfect. Thanks, Courtney. And maybe just one last question for you, Eduardo, before we get to the broader Q&A. Something that's been a topic for a few years here, and I know it's near and dear to your heart because I ask you every week about it. You know, labor productivity in Brazil, particularly for underground mining, compared to the rest of the global mining market, is low. You've been working at the federal and state levels, as well as the broader mining industry here in Brazil. What are you hearing around labor productivity in underground mining? And do you think that 2027 is the year that we might see a change in underground work hours for mining in Brazil?

Well, in Brazil, Marco, as you know, the labor legislation is an old one. It's from the 40s, and that time for the mining sector, the way that you used to mining, that time when you look what you have right now, it's totally different. And the risk is, the safety is a totally different scenario. Ibrahim did a study, and among the 10 majors economy, Brazil is the only that don't have 12-hour shifts underground. Fortunately, now with the new technologies, smart mining, remote operations, the shaft that you can do in a very deep areas, this allows to continue producing. The change in the shift is you'll be very welcome, but it is a totally different scenario than if you look for 10 years, 20 years ago that you don't have this kind of technology. Most of the deposits that you have, not just in Brazil, but in the world, become deep. Because the easy deposit, the underground with high grades, is disappearing around the So every time you need to go deeper to get better grades. And in Brazil, we already started this process, Ibra have been supporting this discussion. We have now a congresswoman in Brazil, Grace Elias, that presented two bills to change the regulation. One is about the woman working in underground mining, about the maximum wage to work underground, and another one is about to increase the time in the work of underground, 12-hour shift. This was filled in the Congress, but now stopped probably the EU come back with these discussions after the election. We saw it's a very positive way, you'll be very welcome for all the mining sector, all the sector that you operate underground is asking for this change. In our operations, we changed the surface work. We started using the 12-hour shift, as you know, and the result is very positive, both in productivity and both in the approval from the employees. They can have more free time, they not spend too much time going and come back six days in a week. Ibrahim tried to put this change in the discussions about the scales six by one that you have now in Brazil that should come back after the, maybe between the first and the second shift in the elections, we need, probably you'll have a discussion in the Senate to approve this, but unfortunately the 12-year shift will not include. I believe that after you have a new Congress, maybe the same, or a new president, this matter, you come back to discussion, and you have very robust arguments to these new technologies, improving safety, to approve a change in the regulations. It's my opinion.

Okay, perfect. Thank you, Eduardo. So we're going to take just a quick five-minute break. So don't go too far. We're going to put chairs up here. I'll ask all the speakers to come up. We're going to do a monitored Q&A session, both here in the room and with participants live. My ask for all of you is that if you have a question, please wait until a microphone is passed to you so those that are dialed in online can hear the question that you're asking. Okay, so quick five-minute break. We'll be back here in just five minutes. Thank you. okay perfect thank you everyone again thanks everyone for sticking around with us this afternoon as we walked through our business and some of the things that we're very excited about hopefully hopefully you found it exciting as well as i said we're going to go ahead and open up both the virtual q a and the in-room q a for those of you that are here with us in person My only request is that if you have a question, just raise your hand. One of our partners here that's supporting us in this event will bring you a microphone so that you can ask the question on the microphone. That way, the people who are dialed in can hear your question. So with that, we will open the floor and the line for questions. Farouk will help and Bruno will help us moderate the questions from the online Q&A. Thank you.

Hi, guys. Ricardo Monagaria from Safra. I have a couple of questions. I'll try to be brief. The first one is on Furnas. We received a lot of questions on how you could advance the project. You have Vale as a partner. The company, as you probably saw recently, is advancing the copper projects. so when we see the drilling phase is already concluded and we understand there's a timeline that has to be respected till you reach the FID but I wonder if in any sort we could take Valix example to believe that you guys could anticipate for us and what are the required conditions for you guys to do that so that's my first question my second question to me at least it was the first time I saw Odin district and as you discussed it has pretty similar characteristics as Caraiba so I wonder if you could give us some color on exploration how much you plan to spend on exploration that at that district and when do you think we could see some initial results on drilling and and eventually the project becoming more feasible, or any other detail that you can share, thank you.

Okay, perfect, thank you. I'll address the first question with Jelson, then we'll pass the microphone to Mike. In fact, if I could just have one now, we'll pass it to Mike to answer the Odin question. So from my perspective on Ferdas and Jelson, please support me if you see it differently. I think, as you saw, we're two years ahead on drilling. That's something two years ahead of the original schedule that we envisioned under the earning agreement. I would say that from an engineering perspective, we've been moving things very rapidly in parallel. So when you think about the stage gate from PEA to PFS and FS, we see that much as a continuum in our organization rather than defined stage gates. So there's certain areas that we're well advanced on. Other areas that we just simply need the hours and the personnel to do the detail engineering to get us to that feasibility stage. But it's something that we're working very aggressively. So I would say that on the things that are directly in our control, so drilling, obviously we're well out of schedule. Engineering, we're putting maximum effort and resources allocated to doing that as fast as possible. And then there's the things that we need to do in partnership with the environmental agencies, with our local stakeholders. those are the things that are gonna take time. And so when we look at that 2029 FID decision, that's taking into account the external factors that we see in front of us. Certainly, you know, in many conversations and we have this incredible partnership and relationship with Valley, obviously we're all incentivized to move things forward, but we have quite a bit of engineering and man hours to do. And then we also have all the work to do on the environmental and permitting side as well. So, I don't know if, Chelsea, you've got anything to add there, but that's the way that I see it.

Marco explained most of the topics, and I agree with you, Marco. As we discussed previously here, we at Arrow, we do work in parallel. So, there are many aspects for this project that it's in parallel work. on the engineering and the task work, confirmation of the processing routes has been very different, what I'm saying different in terms of what we have added in the last few months, the amount of task work completed and confirmation in what we discussed. So this is very positive, which feeds into the PFS. So I would say there are some elements of the project today which are already in the PFS level and some areas that we will expedite such that when we get to the end of the BFS, I would say a portion of the work will be in the feasibility study. So that's the parallel work that we're talking about, especially for the risking, right? Collecting data in terms of geotech and hydro, that influences the engineering aspect and mine planning and design. But also looking at the infrastructure, decision points related to location, drilling for combination, you know, where the plant is going to be located, where the maintenance facility will be located. So all of that we can expedite, right, in terms of power as well, with studies, logistics. We've been in contact with Vali in various aspects in there. But as Marco said, there are a few areas which are beyond our direct control, and we keep working with stakeholders, and license is one of them. We have a very good relationship with SEMAS, not only for Furnas, but everything that actually happened before at Tucumán, we've taken that relationship to Furnas as well. So I think the target continues the same, 2029, and we have to stay tuned on the advancements that we do as we progress this year and next year.

And then, Mike, over to you on Odin.

Yeah, on Odin, I think the things that are really encouraging there are the rocks are basically the same. So the Ultramavics are very, very similar to what we see at Kariba. And what we see at Kariba, the ultra-million-fuck rocks are the same. The ages are the same, so we're very confident that we're looking at the same kind of mineral system. And the wall rocks are very similar. There's a lot of research that's been done on how discoveries progress. And often, you'll hear numbers about a decade. So you'll see a decade that it takes to go from discovery or working in a district to making a significant discovery because you need to have people that understand those You need to put in enough work to really make something, to understand those rocks and understand those systems to make a discovery. The fortunate thing here is because this system is so similar to Kariba, we have 10 years of experience and a lot of drilling and a lot of personnel experience within the group to understand what makes an anomaly that's worth drilling and what makes an anomaly that's not worth drilling. I think it's very hard to predict the pace of a discovery, but I do think that we've learned a lot about those systems and I think the first phase of the drilling to me what was very encouraging was we were drilling ultramafic rocks with sulfides, with nickel, with copper probably with PGEs, maybe cobalt so that's a very early sign to be drilling sulfides in your first few holes of a program we're 3,100 meters in We have about 7,400 meters budgeted to go to the balance of this year. We're going to be reassessing the targeting, so understanding the geometry of those zones is really, really important. And then the next phase of drilling is how do we take what we've learned so far and then apply that knowledge to the next phase.

Good afternoon, you all. I'm Rodrigo Gotardo from BTG Pactual. Firstly, I'd like to thank you for having us here on this great event. Thank you all for having us here. My first question goes towards the encouraging the leveraging the company has delivered over the last quarters. And of course it will continue towards the year end, right? Apart from fullness, developments, and possibly repaying these senior notes, Agos team today has told us about the shareholder remuneration, possibly this program right so i'd like to ask you to give us a little bit of more details on this possible remuneration so when you plan to announce it in what magnitude can we think about this program which you could view in a very positive note and if i may a second question right For sure, we have many brownfield, many nice brownfield initiatives in Eero's current operations. And we have Furnas providing this long-term growth to the company. But as of now, we see Tucuman and Xaventina with shorter life of mines. And so, how is appetite for M&A in Eero's company for the next couple years? How is this appetite? You have some preference for some commodity in specific terms and some preferences for the local of this possible transaction. Thank you.

Yeah, both great questions. I'll let Wayne handle the shareholder returns, I think, and then I'll come back on the M&A question. But I think one of the things that Wayne said that is really important to keep in mind is that, number one, we made a commitment to deliver the balance sheet. I think we're delivering on that. Number two, paying down principal is a form of return to equity. I think that's also important to keep in mind. And then before Wayne jumps in, I just want to say that one experience that we have this year, and I'm sure all of you will appreciate this, is that volatility is the new norm.

So it's very difficult to predict an exact date but i'll maybe let wayne talk to the uh to the thinking there well you kind of stole my thunder there um i was i was going to i'll pick up the point that uh marco made we we are on certainly on the journey to achieve the the the um the three pillars of what we set out to do which was get the leverage ratio below one, repay what I would call the variable senior debt, which is the revolver, and then think about shareholder returns. So, you know, one of that, one's gone, two is probably likely here in the next quarter or two, but that is very much dependent on the mental price environment. And, you know, I was talking to somebody that, you know, before we started today, last week we're at 660 and now we're at 620 you know copper price per pound it's it's an incredibly volatile environment driven by a single tweet or a single comment coming out so we bear that in mind now having said that the business is in a very strong cash flow generation phase regardless of of what the the metal price might do around a certain a certain point and so that that point is going to come um is it is it by the end of the year perhaps is it early is it so is it in 2027 most likely and i and i think for you will probably hear from us once we're through the the third quarter and we have a little bit more visibility um on on when and how we're planned to to return that capital yeah perfect and then just circling back on the m a piece i would say that you know, I think one of the things that we, you know, I think that you saw today and we hope to get across is the breadth of the portfolio that we have.

So for sure, we look at opportunities to continue to grow our business. We've been very active and looking at opportunities. We take those reviews very seriously, but we also do that in the context of our own portfolio. And when you just take a big step back and you look at what we've built over the last several years, we have three operating mines. We have a very advanced development project in front of us, all the way through to a new greenfield area that we've been working on for the last several years to put together. Obviously, it's the first time that we've talked about it. So when we think about looking outside of our business at new opportunities, as I said, we do look at that. But we are, you know, doing that through the lens of the quality of our own portfolio. On your point on Javanchina and I would say that, you know, I always take that comment in stride. If you just take a step back to Javanchino, when we started in 2017, there was no reserves and resources. So today, you know, combined total aggregate resource, you know, 600,000 ton, 600,000 ounces in reserves, 400,000 ounces more or less in inferred resource, you know, a million ounces of potential. We need to go drill that, as Mike showed today, a kilometer step out still hitting the same mineralization. So, and similarly at Tucumã, right, hitting very high-grade mineralization at depth, working areas that are within our portfolio today, within 30 kilometers to try and, you know, extend that operating footprint that we have in Tucumã. So I would say, for sure we think about it, for sure we take those reviews very seriously. Fundamentally, we're a copper gold business. If you look at for an asset's copper gold, all of our assets are copper gold. And we do look very seriously in the Americas. But as I said, we do that through the lens of the breadth of the portfolio that we've been able to build and hopefully showcase today with some of the exploration success that we're having across the group.

Hi. Question from Matt Murphy at BMO. question on Caraba. So the range on throughput is 4.5 to 4.7 million tons grade, 0.9 to 1.1%. How do you get to 50,000 tons? Because I think if you take the upper estimate of each of those, you don't get there. And I'm wondering what you see as the upside for that operation once you're, you know, you have the shaft at full capability and you've got SuraBeam transitioning into N8 at Vermeos, which I think should be higher grade. So can you possibly paint a bit of a picture where this goes maybe beyond the three-year outlook as well?

Yeah, maybe I'll start and then Jelson can jump in here. Look, I mean, you know, those are long-term averages. Obviously, you know, if you look at the results that Mike put out in the deepening, We do have very high-grade zones within that ore body, so we're talking about large averages. I think that where I see the greatest opportunity at Cariba, and we do see modest growth in terms of production output over the next three years, but really around what the shaft is going to unlock for us is greater productivity, obviously a little bit better grades in the deepening, but really driving margin out of that business when you think about, okay, what does a 30% incremental improvement in productivity do in terms of costs? We expect that to be a pretty significant savings over the outlook period when that shaft is operational. And then looking at the portfolio of options that we have, right? So, you know, I always like to say that when you take a big step back and you think about the mix of grades in our portfolio, right, from open pit, lower grade, but also lower cost, right? So grade tells one side of the story. Our open pit mining cost is roughly 10% of our underground mining costs, more or less, 10%, 15%. So you don't need very high grades from open pit to generate equal or better margins from underground. And when I look at the overall portfolio, we're going to continue to have open pit contributions from our mines, as well as lower cost production once the deepening is online. So, look, I think if you look at the deepening project today, as I said in our Q3 conference call, sorry, Q2 conference call a few months ago, the last shaft that was built at Cariba was built in 1986. And so we see that investment as being able to support the stability of the complex in Pillar for the next several decades. and I think our our operating plan you know certainly that's that's out in the market in our tech room board shows that you know it will vary year-to-year depending on the the mix of grades no I think you covered well there Marco I just want to add that when you look at the the deepening area the development will open new areas for exploration and that actually can accelerate some of the areas for mining.

That's a work in progress as we speak. That's why Mike was showing up some of the results in there. There are all the areas around the surface or close to the surface within Pilar as well, which are in exploration. We don't mention it here, but it's part of everything that we do, what we call the brownfields, near mine exploration. There's a lot of potential there. And just to finalize, it's not just about the grade, but also the capacity to deliver that tonnage and a very competitive price and in cost, right? So I think that's what it brings out to the pillar in terms of advantage. But then looking ahead, what we call the district of Vermelius, that's what we're calling now, especially with N8. N8, it starts as an open pit operation, but it's a lot of potential for underground, so there's a lot of growth capacity in there, which is part of our plan. So I think that continuity in the drilling and the modeling and also looking at the opportunities to basically take every advantage that we've got on that processing plant at 4.8 million tons. I think that's what's going to drive the growth that I think you're referring to.

Marcio from Goldman Sachs. Thanks for the time, for being here with us today. A couple of questions on my side. The first one on Tucumán. Some great numbers you have shown in the last couple of quarters. You mentioned the bottlenecking that was concluded, I think, in mid-year. So I think the question is how have the meal performed over the last few months considering what the work you have been done and as you go into next year you install the filters at the end of the year what is the sort of ramp up we should expect going into 2027 when you should achieve close to you know 100 throughput capacity at the meal in tucuman and then the second question on on chavantina you haven't obviously the the grades on the concentrate are definitely remarkable. We've only seen mostly one quarter of it because of the rainy season, but just trying to understand the level of confidence that you have for the reminding of the concentrate in terms of grades as well. If it's fair enough to extrapolate what we have seen in the first round, I think above or close to 30 grams per ton.

Yeah, a few things to unpack there and just keep your microphone in case I call back on you to go through those again. But starting with tucuma, yeah, look, the mill has continued to perform well. We saw that, right? You saw that on the chart, the continued improvement in performance. Jelson spoke to some of the technologies that have driven that performance, and he also mentioned that that filtration capacity with the filters in Brazil now. We expect to exit 2026 at that full run rate. I would say in our chasing down opportunities to continue to de-bottleneck the plant, as we did at Cariba this year. So stay tuned on that. Things are progressing well. We'll obviously have the opportunity to talk about, in greater detail, about plant throughput on the back of our Q3 call and how that project is progressing. But I would say, you know, the mill continues to perform well in line with our expectations. Javanchina concentrates. I might have missed the middle one, but we can come back to that. Javanchina concentrate grades. Yeah, look, we came out with initial resource. First, it was based, it was 29,000 ounces based on what we were able to sample at that time, which is about 20% of the available volume, and I believe that that had a grade of about 37 grams per ton for that initial 20%. If you look at what we've shipped to date, we've been around 35 grams per ton. That obviously includes that initial material as well as some residual material, and we'll talk about the total volumes in arrears on our Q3 conference call. But I would say that we've got a lot of confidence in the grades that we're seeing coming out of the concentrates for what we have so far, right? So to extrapolate that out in the future, we obviously don't have sample data to do that. So we don't know with 100% certainty. But if you look at that original estimate versus what we achieved and you look at what we've shipped to date, those grades reconcile pretty well. And so we're feeling good about the performance, particularly on the back of Q2. We saw, you know, a nice increase in production volumes, right? That came with the installation of that filter press and dryer. And I'd say that we're, you know, mentioned this on the Q2 conference call, but we're feeling good about how that operation is performing in terms of the gold concentrate operation. And, again, all that will be reported in arrears in our Q3 call. Did I miss one? I missed one of your questions.

There was three. um no i mean two months current run rate and expectations of ramp up and also that's great thank you okay perfect thank you uh maybe we'll take a minute here and take some questions from the the webcast as well and then we'll go back into the room um so this coming from one of our investors on the webcast and the question is about technology um their question is that you've touched on technology through your presentation. Can you give us some details about some of the benefits that you're already seeing from implementing that technology or the different technologies across the operations? Can you repeat just the last part of the...

The actual benefit that we're seeing across our operations from technology?

The application of the technology, as I mentioned during the presentation, have been very focused on key aspects across the organization in Caraíba, Tucumán, and Chavantina. So these gains that we're getting in terms of productivity or in safety and also reduction costs, they actually have been built into our plans. So we can see that on a monthly basis and then as we progress further. Definitely some of the examples that I used here before, for instance, where you have human error in terms of drilling, especially in the face that actually has been removed, which means that we're drilling more effectively. We're taking less time. The blasting becomes more effective as well with less over-break or under-break. So that's also part of the game as we speak, and the same as in Tucumán, when we get replies from the models that we've got in AI, which is guiding our teams on-site in decision-making and spot. So that exercise has been built, and we're quantifying that as we speak and put into our future plans as well.

Thanks, Jelson. I'll do one more question here from the webcast and then pass it back into the room. This question is regarding Zavantina, and the question is, now that you've converted the mining to mechanized mining, what are the opportunities for growth at Zavantina?

Yeah, maybe I'll touch on this, and then Jelson can jump in here. I think the most obvious place to look for growth at Jev and Sheena is in the excess mill capacity we have, right? We showed that we've got 300,000 tons of mill capacity, you know, over the three years. Average, we don't use that. And so we see the largest opportunity of being able to better match the mine output with our mill capacity. That obviously takes additional development, additional info drilling, which we are doing now, it also takes the things that we've already done, which is putting equipment, getting the workforce trained, putting in ventilation and cooling to be able to access larger volumes from that operation. And I think the results that Mike showed today kind of give a clear indication of why we're heading down that path, right? We see an ore body that is continuing to remain open in almost every direction. And so we have a lot of excitement about what we're doing there in terms of being able to get, you know, higher mine volumes. I think some of those intercepts also showed that, you know, particularly as we get deeper in Santo Antonio, we do see increased ore thickness. And so that will also have a net result on driving volume eventually when we get development and access to those levels. I don't know if you've got anything to add there.

Marco, I would just add that on top of what you said, in terms of the mineralization thickness, it opens up a new area for us in terms of how fast we develop. Of course, with the mechanization, we've got support being done by the machine today, and that expedites everything, right, and expedites the development rate. It opens up new areas for mining, and that's what we're targeting now. So similarly to what we've done in Cariba, when you've got the meal capacity there, we want to fill out that meal, and then opening up new areas for the development, increasing mining rates, I think that's the biggest opportunity within Servantina today.

Hey, everyone. Guilherme Rosita from Bank of America. Over here.

It's impossible to tell. Maybe just raise your hand so we can tell, so we can look at you when you're asking a question. Thank you.

Yeah, no worries. So I have two questions. My first one is on Tucumán. I think there was some very exciting news on Mike's slides and potential underground resources. So just wondering if you could comment a bit on that and what you guys have done in terms of explorations. It's been a while since you declared reserves on Tucumãs, if there's any potential for extension there. What are you guys seeing in more median terms and a possibility to extend life of mine, maybe move to underground? And then my second question is more open-ended, Marcos. How do you see Arrow's equity story up until 2029 when it would be 100% Furnas and delivering on that. But now we have a phase in which there's Tukumas is ramped up, almost there, and you're the leverage. So how are you guys seeing the equity story and strategy up until 2029 from here on?

Yeah, those are good questions, particularly the longer-dated one. You know, I think when you look at what we're doing at Tukumon, I think Mike touched on this a little bit. obviously we're ramping up capacity there. Everyone knows that. And so we're excited about that potential. As I said in our Q2 conference call, we are coming out with an updated resource and reserve on Tukuma this year before year end. And we do see opportunities for sure to increase the resources and reserves. That drill program, that 8,000 meters that Mike spoke to, it's an inferred resource so that won't be reflected clearly in the reserves. But as Mike spoke to, we'll start drilling that here at the end of this year into early next year to really prove out. And you might ask, well, with those kinds of grades, why didn't you guys drill there? Like it's copper prices, 650. What are you guys thinking? Which is a fair question, but I would just, I would just comment that, you know, it's really about you're drilling underneath the pit bottom in a pretty confined space of operation. So we're, this year we had quite a big pushback to do to, to, to get ready for the later phases of my life is we just physically did not have the space in the pit to be able to drill those, to access the angles that we needed to drill that. And so that's something that we're looking at in Q4 of this year into early next year to restart that program, maybe take some of that inferred and upgrade it into higher categories so that for 2027 and beyond, we can start looking at underground opportunities. And then I would just say, although Mike didn't get into it, You know, we do have an exploration project, advanced stage exploration project that we're drilling now that's been 30 kilometers of Tucumán and, you know, stay tuned on that, I would say. That's something that we still need to do a lot more work on, but it's an area that we're encouraged because of its proximity and because of, you know, because of the apparent mineralization, at least on surface, but we need to do more work. Um, fast forwarding to 2029, what does the company look like at those, that stage, you know, as I think I mentioned this on stage earlier as the first employee of, of Arrow, I think one of the things that we've been able to do consistently over time is put options in place, um, that have crystallized into real shareholder value over time, right? One of those being Furnas, right? That was a four-year, four years of effectively discussion until we started drilling there and thinking about how to do that with our partners in Valley-based metals. And when I look at the portfolio that we have today, in particular around Odin and some of the regional work that we're doing around Kariba, I think that we've got enough in place in our portfolio to continue to create a lot of shareholder value organically. what that exactly looks like over the next five years, three to four years, very difficult to say exactly, but Mike and the team are putting the effort and the work in place to be able to position the company for a future growth. As I said, we continue to look externally for options as well. You know, it was, I'm reminded of the discussion we had back in 2021 when we updated the feasibility study of Tucumaw and we sat as a leadership team and we looked at each other and we said, okay, what's going to be next after Tucumán? And obviously, Fernas came about, and you see the value that that brings to all of our stakeholders today, including our partners at Valley Base Metals. I would say those same discussions are happening today, right? Okay, what's after Fernas? And I think the work that we've been doing over the last few years to build that pipeline of project across all stages is really reflective of that question, right? Which is, what are you going to do after Fernas? And today, we're working pretty hard at developing enough organically in our portfolio to make sure that we can continue to deliver growth for our shareholders and deliver value for our shareholders with what we have today.

Hello. Rafael Barcelos from Bradesco BBI. Thanks for the opportunity. So on the capital location, so I think, Wayne, if I'm not wrong, you mentioned that depending on market conditions and considering that the company will head into a net cash position by year by year, and you could analyze a shareholder remuneration policy, right, in the next, like, two quarters or so. But that said, and then I want to, you know, to bring Mako to this discussion, maybe if you could elaborate a bit further on how do you see M&A as also another strategy here in the long term, which sort of initiatives you could analyze jurisdictions and also type of assets, exploration assets or more developed assets. So it could be interesting to hear as the company heads into this net cash phase. And as a second question for Furnas, of the 11 drill rigs that you mentioned, I mean, how many are currently resource growth and how many are reserve definition? and if the geotech comes back worse than expectations would you slow the resource growth or would you delay the PFS just you know wondering how do you balance those two things thank you yeah thanks a few things done back there just the one thing I want to I don't think Wayne said net cash by your end I don't think he said that just so we're just so we're 100%

I said net senior I mean, obviously, we still have the bond, so it would be net senior debt cash, right, if we pay off the revolver. But we understand the point. I mean, the senior bond is a longer-dated part of the capital structure, so we would be in a very advantageous position once we have the revolver, the senior debt revolver paid off.

Yeah, and I think, as Wayne and I mentioned, when it comes to shareholder returns, obviously volatility is the new normal. And so let's see how the next several quarters progress and go from there. On the M&A side, as I said, you asked a couple of specific questions and I typically give the same response to shareholders. But as I mentioned, we do take reviews very seriously. We're pretty disciplined in a couple of different things. Number one is time zone. So Vancouver time zone to Sao Paulo time zone, that's 100% a hard limit in anything that we look at. I think all of us have worked for enough businesses with joint offices in Australia that know that that's just a different regime and we don't want to do that. Obviously, copper gold. And when it comes to specific stages of opportunities, we do that, again, through the lens of our own portfolio, right? We've got, as I said, these incredible advanced projects. We've got incredible option value that we're building in Caribou. And I think if you take a step back and you look at the first slide of our presentation, Aero fundamentally, we're a deep value company, right? And so in this market, finding deep value is pretty hard. I think it's much more opportunistic than to say a blanket statement at what stage. But as I said, we have a corporate development team. They have a job to do, and they do look at opportunities, and we take those reviews very seriously. But we're very happy with our portfolio. I think we have an incredible story in terms of, you know, Furnas and the options that we're putting on the table again, which I think are going to deliver shareholder value for many, many years to come.

I think there's a question about the furnace as well. Yeah, you want to go on that one? Yeah, so I'll have to get back to you specifically on where the drill rigs are exactly in terms of, you know, which ones are reserve definition and so forth. But what I can share with you that you made a specific question about geotech, right? So everything so far since we published the PEA, not only in the geotech, but also in metallurgy and the processing side, all the test work that we have done so far for the pre-feasibility study have confirmed everything that we've discussed before. So there's nothing out there that in terms of knowledge from the geotech side, which shows a more challenging environment, actually is actually confirming everything that we said for the underground. the geotech aspect also for the open pit and the underground. So there is no major change in there. Similarly to metallurgy, as a matter of fact, we're actually closing in the circuit, that additional test work we've completed, including for the free go there, for the concentration. So everything so far has been confirmed. I need just to get back to you on the exact numbers and where the drill rigs are located.

And I would say maybe just in the question of georoid allocation, Maybe just a strategy point here is that, you know, we decided as a leadership team with Jelson, you know, Mike and Raphael and our broader technical team on site, that the real objective in resource growth was not to add years 25 and beyond, right? Like clearly we have a robust project with good economics, good cash costs. What we really sought to do with our resource growth program was target specific areas around planned infrastructure where we could augment the mine plan in that drop-off that you see in the PA, which is, I think, years 16 through 24, right? And so that was the objective, right? So I think to maybe answer it from a strategy perspective, well, that was our objective. It still is our objective. We'll discuss the phase three results when we get all those assays back. Obviously, for the PFS, our idea is to stabilize that production profile for as long as possible. And I would say stay tuned for when that comes out. But that was the objective. So to the extent that drill rigs, we start, you know, slowing down the drill rigs to focus on definition drilling and some of the more detailed technical aspects to really de-risk the project for the first few years. The drill rigs that are going away, it's not as if we're leaving. We don't believe the extension of mineralization. It's just that 20, 24 years of stable mine life, it doesn't really make that much sense to continue beyond that from a pure economic perspective in the same way that we did last year. Does that make sense?

Stephan Ioano from ATB Cormark. Just during the panel discussion, you mentioned one of the government initiatives was to streamline permitting. and just wondering if that's something that may actually benefit for NASS going forward or if it's something that's a longer-dated sort of thing.

Yeah, I'll maybe turn it to Eduardo. I would just put that, you know, yeah, I would just maybe comment that, you know, Tucumawa was one of five projects back on Q421 that was announced as a strategic minerals project. I would say it's certainly, maybe not expectation, but hope that Furnas would get similar treatment under this regime. It is a critical in this project. I'll maybe let Eduardo talk about the specifics again. Lots of details to iron out. I would say right now there's, as we discussed, as Eduardo and Courtney discussed in the panel, you've got some targets out there without the framework in place, so there's lots of details to come over the months and years. But maybe, Eduardo, if you want to comment.

In general, what you have in the policy should happen, should help us to speed up the process. The problem is that to become effective, the policy needs a lot of regulation. That's not clear if you make it in months or years. And once in place, what you have in the policy will help us. but when this will be in place is a question that you don't have the answer yet and then you need to wait probably what the guy said, that you wait the new government, can be the same or can be the other to start to make the council that take the decisions and put in place all the regulamentation if this make happen in a fast way, maybe we can use it for fullness, is our expectation But in this moment, you can say with certainty.

Is this on? Dalton Moreto from Canaccord. I'll try and squeeze in three quick ones here, two on Furnace and then one on Odin. So on Furnace, touching on that line of questioning earlier, 24 years of mine life, a drop-off sort of midway. It's open in all directions. As you design the PFS going into the FS, are you contemplating an expansion at some point in time? Are you sizing certain infrastructure? Is that going to change at all from the PEA?

I'll answer this one. And, Jel, you know, we talked about a number of value generative options in the PEA. I think at a PE stage, it's always really important to have those options because you know things are going to change as you do detail engineering and your assumptions will change. So I look at those as a really strong way to protect value and protect the investment as we move through advanced stages. And so I would say fundamentally to your answer, no, we don't see fundamental changes. We see incorporation of some really exciting value drivers that we talked about in the PA and a few other ones that we're looking at. But again, those are really important to have in the back pocket to protect value to the extent that things change, including metal price and other things. So I would say stay tuned for some of those value drivers. We're working on those pretty aggressively now. That has the ability to, again, to create some internal value for the project.

Okay. And then a second one on Furness was that 40% stub that Valle is going to have, it's pretty subscale for them. Is there a prescribed pathway for you to buy that piece of those conversations happening at all? It seems to me like that's probably the best M&A you can do.

Yeah, look, I would say that, you know, without, obviously, our partner's Valley-Based Metals is not in the room, and we have a great relationship, so we haven't asked that question because we're working in a true partnership, right, to create value. I think if you look at other partnerships out in the mining sector where you're sharing best practices, sharing knowledge, sharing some risk, I think this meets all those objectives. What I would say is that, you know, from a pure copper growth perspective, I don't think necessarily that Furnas is subscale, right? You look at the objective that Valley-Based Metals put out in the market for growth, and it's a very significant growth trajectory. And I would say that every ton goes a long ways to meeting those objectives. And so I think Furnas is an important part of that. Obviously, I can't speak for them, but we're very, very happy with the partnership we have. And as Jelson mentioned earlier, there's a lot of shared learning that happens between all of our teams in developing this project, as well as thinking about the region more broadly in terms of opportunities. So I would say that we value that partnership a lot, and we will continue working alongside Valley-Based Metals to deliver this project to create value for our stakeholders, their stakeholders, and all the regional stakeholders as well.

Great. Thanks. And then just on Odin, when I think back to the early days of this company and the focus on the Kariba Valley. The airborne geophysics, I think it was IP at the time, was really, really useful. I mean, the mines lit up like a Christmas tree. And is there a plan to do the same thing over Odin?

Yeah, so at this point, if capital was unconstrained, you'd probably fly the entire district with drone mag and EM, and EM was the tool that I think you're referring to. So looking at those conductors, picking out the mines, but also it was very helpful from an exploration standpoint. So as we go into the 2027 budget season, we are considering that. At this point, we've mostly focused on geochemistry and mapping to highlight those mineral systems. And then once we found them using ground geophysics, so it's very cost-effective to use our own teams for ground EM and also ground mag, and so we've used those to go from initial target to sort of a drill-ready target once we've got that detailed mag and then EM conductors to target the drilling on. But as we progress the project, that's certainly something that we'll consider is doing more extensive airborne geophysics.

I think it's an important question to ask again, right, because I think it ties back to our strategy you know 89 90 cents of every dollar that we made has gone back to paying down debt so obviously big priority we committed to that we're achieving those objectives and so and i also think it's one of capital allocation because you know to me when i think about our portfolio and tying this all the way back to kind of where we are in sao paulo and some of the venture capital that exists here you know there's a part of our portfolio which is which is venture capital, right? Potential huge returns, you know, lots of value to be created, but very early stage. And so when we think about allocating capital across all the priorities we have, including paying down debt, advancing our own operations, advancing for an OS, I would say that that part of our portfolio is really the venture capital piece where, you know, you want to keep expenditures low and really focus on the rest of your portfolio. And I think what Mike and the team have done there on a very, very small budget is pretty incredible. Across our entire portfolio, our regional exploration program is sub $5 million. And I think if you look at what we've done at ODIN over the last couple of years, it's a tiny, tiny fraction of that total spend. And we have drill rigs operating there now, so obviously the spending will increase. But I think the benefit of having many years to work that belt, to think about the geology, to do the stream sampling, I think has really put us in a position where we feel that now's the time to start putting a little bit more capital. But as I said, Mike and the team have done an incredible job ground truthing that entire area, that entire belt.

Yeah, I would just add, Dalton, if you think about the timing of expiration. So when the company came into the Kurosaw Valley, we already recognized that we had mines nickel copper style mineralization really with Odin the stage we're at is proving that concept and so that concept is now proven and then we can step back and think about how do we want to assess the entire district so taking you know is sort of steps to go from a very hypothesis to a kind of a concept to prove that concept and now we we assess the next steps from here a couple of questions about Javentina please for Orris walking out of Scotiabank.

Your slides still show that the gold concentrate sales will continue to H-127. Should they not continue well into 28, assuming that the grade is the same? I know you've only sampled 20%, but why the H-127 target?

Well, I think it depends on how much we sell between now and year end is the real direct answer to that. Obviously, you've seen sort of the cadence that we've had talked a little about in the conference call about some of the monthly performance that we've had since we put in the filter in the dryer and so we expect to to have very strong sales in the second half of the year at javancina that help sort of inform that thinking on h127 what i can tell you is that we um you know could extend through the entirety of 2027 and for sure that's a potential. All I can tell you is the volume that remains, not the ounces, right? So the volume that we see in front of us is something that we're trying to sell as much as we can right now. So it's difficult to put an exact date on that AORIST. I would say that if you think about the average run rate that we've done over the last three quarters, I would say yes, but we're pushing pretty hard right now to sell concentrate volumes in the second half of the year that could probably reduce that timeline, but maybe increase the sales volumes relative to what you're thinking.

Is there any kind of physical constraint to those volumes, say, on a quarterly basis? Or is it pretty much you can ship unlimited from a drawing perspective?

Yeah, it's space and weather conditions would be the two prevailing factors, right? So you think about, we don't have infinite space, So, you know, if you put everything in a centimeter layer in infinite space and you had perfect sunny conditions, obviously you dry that material as fast as possible. And so the physical limitations, which we'll see on site this week, are space available to dry. And then also just the weather conditions. And so you can imagine right now we're in the dry season as we were last quarter. We're pushing very hard to get sales volumes out the door. The reason we installed the filter press and the dryer was to make sure that we could continue sales through the rainy season. But for sure, it's not going to be as easy as it is in the dry season, right?

And then just a quick one for Mike on the same asset. Just you're mining below your installed throughput rates. your capacity at Chaventina, you've got a less than a 10-year mine life, how long do you think you need to really prove up that reserve to show that maybe you can produce at higher rates for much longer than the current mine life?

I mean, I'll comment on it and I'll pass the microphone to Jelson because he's thought a lot about this question as well. I mean, I would say that the exploration opportunities at Chaventina are not constrained by ideas or by geology. It's more been constrained by by capital capital allocation and infrastructure for placing rigs so we see opportunities in in San Antonio there are opportunities in the upper part of the mine that can be evaluated there there's other ore bodies laterally that we will evaluate we've been consistently drilling at about the same pace you know so the expiration budget in mine has been fairly consistent year on year there's been an increase in drilling for definition drilling as we've mechanized the mine because it requires more drill definition more pierced points to understand the resource and I think you know having an

understanding about the scale of the ore body and then how we allocate capital that will certainly be a discussion going into 2027 no I just to add what Mike said as well is the development rates because some of the areas to access and do drilling requires additional development and you're competing that against opening up new areas for mining. So we've got to balance that out. It's actually something that we are progressing very well as we speak. So stay tuned. We're actually doing further studies on Chavantina, especially now with the results that we're getting, the performance that we've seen on mechanization across the mining operations and planning for next year as well.

So I think that there's some possibilities that but this study is ongoing thank you so in the interest of time I just want to we're gonna we're gonna wrap things up here I think we're right on target for our Q&A session I first of all want to express my gratitude to all of you for joining us today especially locally here in Sao Paulo and those you dialing in Thank you all so much, really appreciate it, it's been a wonderful discussion, hopefully you learned a lot. Our team's available here, as always, and virtually, so if you have a follow-up question, please don't hesitate to reach out to our team. We're deeply thankful for the opportunity to talk to you today, and looking forward to a really fantastic site visit, site visits on the back of our Capital Markets Day. So thank you all very much. Also, thank you. The one person I want to thank specifically, Bruna in the back of the room has done an unbelievable job organizing this event. Thank you, Bruna. Very deeply grateful for the work that you do and all of our partners here. Thank you very much.