Niobium, Scandium and Rare Earths in the US, But Can They Fund The Capex? | NioCorp CEO Interview

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This video is sponsored by Terrahutton, who makes the invisible, investible. Today on the CEO BBQ, Critical Minerals and Rare Earths Exploration and Development in Nebraska, together with NioCorp Developments. But if you're short on time, subscribe to our free newsletter, and once a week, we'll send you a five-minute summary of all interviews we put out, theresourcetalks.com for a free weekly newsletter. Now, although this company has not paid us for the production of this video, you should still understand that we are not financial advisors, and this is not intended as financial advice. It is a broad, general, and in-personal piece of information intended only for those who know and understand the risks of junior mining, of which there are many. Before moving on, read the company's official filings on SitterPlus.ca and do your own due diligence. Pause the screen and read all the disclaimers I've shown you because your capital is at risk. If this isn't clear, go to the last section of this video for a longer explanation of the risks and biases, and do not consume this content if you don't agree with everything said therein. Moving on, the flagship project for NioCorp is the Elk Creek Critical Minerals Project in southeast Nebraska, specifically. It's about 100 kilometers southeast of Lincoln, 130 kilometers south of Omaha, and it's roughly five kilometers west of the village of Elk Creek itself. The project is a buried, carbon and tine-hosted, polymetallic deposit.

It's critical minerals and rare earths, yes, but as they often are, it is polymetallic, so what they've got here is niobium, scandium, and titanium, as well as of course, rare earth elements, which we'll talk about with the current development plan built around an underground mine feeding and integrated processing complex, which of course, will break down in the conversation as well. The latest resource estimate is from January of this year, and there's a bunch of numbers that I'm going to run through, but they do matter, so it contained about 21.7 million short tons in a measured category, grading 0.6% niobium, 2.5% titanium, 69 ppm scandium, and about 0.35 trio. It was another 187.4 million tons of indicated, grading about 0.5% niobium, 2.36 titanium, call it 60 ppm scandium, and 0.36% trio. Then there's another 170 million tons that sits in the inferred category, and that's at 0.4% niobium, 2.14 titanium, 51 ppm scandium, and about 0.4% trio, all of which calculated using a 218 US dollar NSR cutoff. Then the Associated Reserves then said, you can call it 46 million tons, proven and probable, grading 0.76% niobium, 2.7% titanium, 69 ppm scandium, and 3,500 ppm trio. Now, I'm telling you all those numbers because that's what they used for their feasibility study, which they did in August of this year, and which outlines a 40-year operation with an almost $2 billion of upfront CAPEX and an after-tax FBV8 of just under $3.5 billion and 23% IRR. On the ground right now, NioCorp has started construction of the Underground Mine Porto while detailed engineering continues as well, and the company works through project financing requirements, which kind of the entire story really depends on when you're developing something, all of which, therefore, I'm hoping we can cover later on today. Now for some of the numbers and a bit of the details, NioCorp is listed as NB on the NASDAQ now. So this is a NASDAQ GM where the average daily volume over the last three months has been about 3 million units. 52 week high, $12.58, and a 52 week low here is $3.40.

With 146 million shares outstanding and today, a $500 million market cap. This is now a $3.44 stock, so it's right close to that 52 week high. There are close to 18.7 million warrants outstanding, 5 million options and 3.5 million invested ECRC shares. So the diluted securities represent about 16% of the 173 million shares on a fully diluted basis.

Last time they raised capital was in February of this year, they're raising 100 million US dollars. So I checked a couple of times to see that it's not a type of, it was not a type of that raised 100 million bucks at $5 per share. There was no conventional warrants in there. They did issue 2.6 million pre-funded warrants. So the total raise was getting 20 million share equivalents of five bucks for a hundred million.

How much money have they got left right now? How far does it get them? How are they going to finance this thing in the end? All kinds of money questions are of course something that'll be asking later on in the conversation. But for this to actually become a conversation though, I will have to shut up already. Mark, I'll give you the word here, but first of all, thank you for sitting down with me today.