GUC 2026 - Redefining Project Readiness in the Next Era of Uranium Development | Leigh Curyer, CEO - NEXGEN ENERGY LTD

Good afternoon everyone. It's always a pleasure for me to present in Adelaide. This is where I grew up, I was educated, got my first job as well in mining and then off to Canada where I incorporated NextGen and in the room today are two very very important people who I'd be remiss in not mentioning is Richard Patricio the founding director of next-gen energy and all who has been absolutely instrumental in what you're about to see in today's presentation but also the world's greatest uranium geologist Andy Brown who Andy and I worked with work with each other over the space of about eight years and and And it culminated in the discovery of Arrow at Rook One, on the other side of the basin to where all the operating mines were at the time. Common consensus at the was you couldn't find mineralisation over there, and if you did find it, it would be uneconomic, and well, through looking at the facts, objectively assessing them, and basically saying why not, and having the confidence to be bold, we ended up discovering what is currently the world's best uranium deposit. And it's best from an economic perspective. It's best for an environmental perspective, which is on account of its natural technical characteristics, but also our design. But also the way we've gone about optimising that opportunity. We don't judge ourselves on the strength of the ore body. we judge ourselves on the way we optimize it. And anyone who's had the time to look at our social program, the collaboration that we've had with our local indigenous communities, we are making every shareholder of NextGen extremely proud that it's just not about the economic ore body. It's about positively impacting not only those in the local community, the great province of Saskatchewan, Canada, but also worldwide. this project is going to positively impact millions of people through the provision of this key energy fuel in producing power which is environmentally friendly, the lowest cost and the most reliable. And so what an opportunity that is and I just wanted to mention those two gentlemen in the room because their contributions to what I'm about to present have been enormous and need to be recognised. With that, good energy for generations to come. NextGen, we are in construction of the Rook One project. We successfully received our final federal permit on March the 5th of this year after an extensive rigorous review. I've been through a permitting process in Australia here. Very, very good. And I think it's recognised as one of the world's best. I would say personally though, based on our experience, the rigor from the Ministry of Environment in Saskatchewan, plus the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, was the most extensive that I've ever experienced or understand anywhere in the world. And so what has been permitted is extremely well understood. It's the culmination of over 12 years of studies, both from a geological, environmental, social perspective and the design of our project is very, very simple from a mining context. As I said, that's a function of its natural favourable technical characteristics but also the design parameters that were put into it is. We will be producing approximately 20% of the world's mine supply from 2030 onwards. That's an incredible number when you consider Saudi Arabia produce around nine percent of the world's oil. We are producing what is going to be the key energy fuel for this planet going forward for generations to come. When you consider the current profile of mine production worldwide, it'll be over 50 percent of the western world's production. Currently around 70 percent of the world mine supply is under what is assessed as a very high sovereign risk, basically coming from countries like Russia, Niger, and also Russian influenced countries such as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Kazakhstan have been an incredible contributor to the world's mine supply, but the fact is there is a sovereign risk around it. And so becoming 50% of the Western world's supply, as the United States, and there There was another announcement overnight between Constellation Energy and Google for the 20-year provision of nuclear power for one of their data centres. That news is coming out regularly, by the way. When you consider they currently consume around 50 million pounds in the US annually and yet consume less than one, the opportunity for a Western world supplier or from a supplier in a country that has a sound sovereign jurisdiction to it, is incredible. And everyone presenting in this room today, that opportunity exists for all of us. And so it's an incredibly exciting era that we're about to come into. I started in the sector in 2002, I've never seen such an incredibly robust demand outlook and when I say robust, that doesn't actually need announcements like last night to actually occur, it's just based on providing the current nuclear capacity. The result is supply hasn't been triggered early enough for long enough and so there's going to be a gap, and the consequence of that gap is going to considerably higher prices in uranium going forward. That's indisputable. We also, having discovered Rook One, sorry, the Arrow project at Rook 1, we have the most dominant land position in the southwestern section of the mighty Athabasca Basin, the future of the world's uranium supply. From what we learnt at Arrow, we took that forward and made an excellent discovery in Paterson Corridor East, PCE. And it's on an entirely separate conductor, or crack in the ground, which hosts the mineralisation. And really, truth be told, we have been finding these deposits way too quickly. They are really hard to find. But I think what that says is that we clearly have the best uranium geologists in the sector, or up there at the top, But the endowment of our portfolio in the southwestern Athabasca Basin is clearly prospective for future discoveries. We have what is currently defined as the world's best. We already have what's up there in PCE as shaping up with all the same technical characteristics, grade and profile as Arrow. So, incredibly exciting time, and as a consequence, we've added an additional rig, five-rig program to that drilling, with the aim of having an initial resource, and I stress initial, by about mid-2027. now i'm just rolling some video here which shows the infrastructure that is already present at site and the level of activity that is occurring out at rook one we currently have just under 300 personnel at site that there is a video of the water diffuser the pipe going into the lake we had a 45 day window to achieve that it was done on time to scope and to budget and it was actually whilst it sounds a little simple putting a pipe into the late it's actually highly complex with many many different consultants all working together under our stewardship I might just mentioned one aspect of next gen that we we are differentiated by is that we don't delegate any decision making to any engineering companies outside of of next and there's someone within next gen responsible for every aspect of what we do not just from a construction perspective geological legal financial everything we own everything we do we don'T delegate decision making to anyone and I think the water diffuser going in is a great example of us working very effectively with the various consultants and contractors in delivering exceptional outcomes leverage to future uranium prices I mentioned it earlier that the price of uranium is going higher I Andrew Hines has got it $200 out there. I don't disagree with it. We don't put a lot of effort into saying how high it's going to be by a certain time, but we know through our technical analysis of the industry from a geological, geotechnical, metallurgical perspective of all the operating mines and their cost structures, which are validated through audited reports, that currently at $90 spot that there's barely breaking even, any operations around the world are barely breaking even when you take into account the expected return on capital, which is reasonable. So I'm very technical and financial based and focused in terms of forming our strategy and when you see the current price of production worldwide, at or near the current spot price, the only consequence is that prices are going higher, particularly as those ore bodies are going into the latter parts of their mine lives and that is what is happening. Fortunately for NextGen, we have a very sound technical profile of our project. We are in extremely competent ground conditions, have an exceptionally clean metallurgy and we're actually a very tiny footprint as well. And as a consequence, our contracting strategy reflects those characteristics. We have a natural floor ahead of us with what the current producers are producing at, which is near spot, all said and done between operating costs and also sustaining capex. And so we have a national floor because our cost when we will be in production will be at least one fifth of what that floor is or the current cost of production worldwide. So we have natural floor head of us. So it's our responsibility to optimise the return on every single pound we sell and that is what you get with NextGen, ultimate leverage to the price of uranium which is rising. We're the world leaders in that today because we have 11.7 million pounds already under contract with the world's or the US leading utilities that are heavily tied to the spot price at the time of delivery. Why are we doing that? Because we are certain prices are going higher based on our technical and financial analysis of the current cost of production. So it's our job to keep levered to that, and we've had no difficulty at all obtaining contracts with major US utilities that are tied to the spot price at the time of delivery. So every investor out there, you want exposure to uranium, the price of uranium going up, Well NextGen has that. It actually has the world's levering leverage to the future price of uranium and we will always maintain that as NextGen. Now that's different to what the practices have been done in the past, but we're not about looking in the pass, we're about looking the future and with NextGen we are creating good energy for generations to come and exceptional returns for those who choose to invest in us going forward. We have plenty of cash on board, currently have $970 million at the last reporting date. We have a capital requirement to complete this project of 2.5 billion Canadian and we are well advanced on answering that delta in the very near term with respect to financing all of the way through to the completion of CapEx. Raising capital has never been a significant challenge for us. The project speaks for itself. The company's approach has been demonstrated clearly over the last 12 years now. Day in, day out, meeting expectation of investors, being bold but delivering against it every single time. We have £2.7 million. currently on hand as well, which have been incredibly important in obtaining those contracts with exposure to the spot price at the time of delivery. And again, we will maintain that position as NextGen. We also have a 30% interest in ISO Energy, a company that we incorporated back in 2016, and the CEO, Phil Williams, is here today with also probably the second most exciting project in the Athabasca Basin with the Hurricane Project on the eastern side. Phil and his team are doing incredible work in Canada but also in the US as well and here in Australia with the recent acquisition of Toro Energy. Major construction's underway. We are advancing earthworks. That's what you're going to see for the balance of 2026. We are also putting in the foundations for both the exhaust shaft and the freeze plant to support the freezing of the top 100 metres of the sand and till above the exhaust shelf. That is temporary freezing. Once the hydrodynamic sleeve is incorporated into the top hundred metres, freezing will be removed forever with respect to the shafts and with respect the operations of the Rook One Arrow project. The airstrip, recently completed, the 3,000 feet long airstrips, we are landing planes on it as we speak, ferrying in staff and the team to site in and out efficiently and very, very safely. That airstip is about to be extended to 5,840 feet by the end of this year. Here's an overview of the completion of Q3 2026. The airstrip, you can see the camp in the top right-hand corner, that houses over 700 people. That was established during 2025-26. It was about a $100 million program, everything you're seeing here, which was done, importantly, to scope. compromise on scope ever. A lot of projects when they get caught with respect to budget and time will typically compromise scope. We will not ever compromise the scope of this project. The time and the cost will be a consequence of that but I will guarantee you this as I've guaranteed everyone since 2011. Under our stewardship everything we have done has been the most efficient, we're drilling at about two-thirds of the cost of what other explorers do in the Athabasca Basin through our focus on costs and delivery and holding contractors accountable. No project is going to get built to scope within the most sufficient time and cost otherwise under our stewardship and we've demonstrated that over the last 12 years so what we're going into now is just an extension of what we've done over the past 12 years which has actually totaled $756 million. I've purposely built a team that is fit for purpose, have demonstrated exceptional skill and experience at hard rock mining projects around the world and I've purposely selected the processing engineering expertise for once the ore is at surface. Again we have a tiny mine 1300 tons a day that's about one sixth of this room in terms of ore body of ore that we're moving up to surface once a day. So it's an incredibly small mine in incredibly competent ground conditions with an expert team that I've hand-picked over the last 10 years to come together. And importantly, it's got operational perspective that has informed the design. A lot of projects, and there's lots commentated in mining going over budget and over scope. When you actually look at the facts, Very few projects where they've been discovered by a management team have gone all the way through definition, design, permitting, construction and operation. Very few of them have. But the ones that have, have uniformly derived returns over 500% from the start of construction to the startof production. Those ones had the common characteristic that it's been the same management team from discovery right throughout. And I can tell you the element that's key to that is that with the same Management Team they've done every study, they've owned it, they're released it. They haven't bought someone else's engineering study where it's being glossed up to sell it because they've had no interest in building it. Anyone who met me in 2011 when I started NextGen will know right from that day I said we are building the world's next best uranium company. The world's best. And we are clearly on that path. We're actually 75% through that journey as we speak. And we've actually gotten over the biggest hurdle, which was permitting. Permitting is highly complex. You've got lots of different stakeholders, all with competing objectives. And the key to permitting success is early education, knowing what you're talking about by doing the research before you do it, presenting it in an efficient manner for the regulators and then inviting the contestability. And when you do that, as we did, we've been very, very successful in mitigating the largest risk you're ever going to face from discovery through to operation. We've been planning this project for seven years. That's the benefit of a long permitting process. You get plenty of time to plan and get the people in place. We're not chasing a commodity price. We're going into production under any scenario and generating phenomenal terms. So we're not tracing. Everything we're doing has been about putting this project in place for generations to come. And that's what you're seeing here. this is what it will look like when it's completed again a very small surface footprint huge respect we have a minimalistic approach at next gen we don't in cringe on the environment at unless we have to and where we do we proactively reclimate and that people have been up to site and I know many of you in this room have the common takeaway is that they've never seen a more clean professional and environmentally respectful site we are setting new standards in mining in everything we do because I said before at the beginning it's not just about producing phenomenal economic returns we want people to be proud of the investment that they have on an environmental and social basis as well and that's what you get with NextGen. Thank you.