Thank you very much. Thank you everybody for dialing in to Lucara's Q1 2026 results call.

On the call with me I have Glenn Kondo, our CFO, and Hannah Reynish, who looks after and is the manager of our investor relations. As we go through this presentation, there will be customary forward-looking statements.

If you haven't read this, please take a look at it on our website. Jumping into it, in terms of Q1 2026, it was for us a transitional quarter specifically from a financial perspective, really strengthening our capital structure and our liquidity.

We'll go through that a little bit later in detail. Glenn will take that through.

On the underground project, which is the future, we have advanced significantly there. We've now spent more than $472 million of the expected 779, and that 779 comes from an updated feasibility study 43-101 document which we put out during the quarter.

As we go through the UGP, one of the key aspects which we continue to focus on is safety. With more than 2,249 days without a lost-time injury, that is in excess of six years, we can see the dividends starting to be paid in terms of the safe operations at the UGP.

One of the things that makes Lucara special is obviously the ongoing recovery of the large and high-value stones. Through the quarter, 100 specials, of which six of them were larger than 100 carats that included a 300-carat stone.

That is the same as what we had in terms of 100-carat stones recovered for Q1 2025. We'll touch on one of the very very nice stones, not plus 300 carats, a little bit later in the presentation.

Then I think from a financial perspective, $21.8 million revenue, lower than what we had in Q1 2025, and that's obviously a function of some of the changes and more shifting around in terms of where we're mining. We still expect the tonnage mined and processed through the year to be consistent with what we have in the mine plan.

As William mentioned, a very good first quarter in terms of financing. We did recapitalize our balance sheet.

We raised $120 million of equity, and this slide covers the bond financing of 350 million with a coupon rate of 12.5%. We used 220 million of that to repay our previous lender group, so that's been done.

Based on the remaining cash flows of the bond and the equity and operating cash flows, that is sufficient for us to complete the underground project with roughly 300 million left of capital to spend. One interesting part of the bond is it does allow us to increase our liquidity if needed.

We can tap for an additional 50 million of bond plus a revolving credit facility of 50 million. In terms of that, it gives us we believe strong financing for the project.

In terms of an operations update, and this is specific to the ongoing operations mining in the open pit and processing. I think before I start here, what we have come to realize is that when we talk about processing of stockpile material, there does seem to be a fairly wide belief that it is reprocessing of material.

I just wanted to make it clear that when we talk about processing of stockpile material between now and the start of the underground, this is material which was mined during a period from 2013 through to last year which has been put on stockpile. It has not yet been processed.

This is run-of-mine material which we are seeing go through the mill. When we talk about six stones over 100 carats recovered from the processing of stockpile, it is fresh mined material, but not as in fresh mined.

It was mined, but hasn't yet been processed. We did have one or two challenges with weather through the first quarter.

It did however not change the throughput through the mill. We did continue processing all the way through every single day.

There was an excess amount of rain and you can imagine how much rain is actually collected as we get down to the bottom of the open pit, and we're in a very confined space. We do have this collection funnel of 800 by 900 m on surface.

We do have sufficient pumping capacity within the pit. When we would have expected the rain to come to an end seasonally at the back end of January into February, we would have pumped the pit empty, but the rains continued.

We kept moving the goalposts as to when we were going to get back into the pit. We did get back into the pit in March and we have started to see material flow from the pit back into the process plant now.

That material we expect to continue to process the full volume of the 2026 expected to the end of the life of the open pit before the end of the year. As we will see and Glenn will touch on this in the next slide, we did see softer revenues because of the processing of the stockpile material, but we are looking at that as just more of a shift in terms of what we process in each of the quarters this year.

As William mentioned, revenue is 20 million compared to 30 million the previous year. You can see the lower tonnages in terms of ore mined.

We did process stockpile during the Q1 phase. It's also important to note that stockpiles are inherently variable in value, and what we saw through the Q1 period was probably the lower end of our valuations.

What was interesting and what was some excellent news for us is the recovery of the 37-carat blue stone, and that was from stockpile. In terms of our feasibility study, we had not forecasted to recover diamonds such as that of that quality and color.

As William said, we're back into the open pit. Our forecast for this year is to have 75,000 tonnes coming from EMPKS, our high-quality material, and then MPKS of 500,000 with other material following roughly between 200,000 to 300,000 of material.

A good finish to the year going back into the open pit, and we expect revenue and EBITDA to increase. Just one point on the blue stone as well.

That has not featured in our revenue. It will be in our revenue and EBITDA as we monetize the stone.

That's something for us to look forward to in terms of future cash flows. In terms of guidance, we're very much maintaining at the 100 to $300 million level.

If I turn to operating costs, if you see there, it's 21 million versus 14 million last year. We did have a couple one-off costs that we had planned: demobilization of some of the equipment from the open pit, as we start to wind down, was planned in the feasibility study in May.

We've just advanced that, 2 million came through in Q1. In terms of accounting, one thing we do have is previously stockpiled material.

We did have capitalized cost to that, so that's added 4.4 million in terms of the operating expenses coming through. If you exclude those costs, we're really in line with the 14 million last year, and that's reflected in the slightly marginal higher dollar per ton ore processed.

Again, in terms of guidance, we're very much expecting to be within that. I guess looking forward for us, the open pit commenced and expecting to improve revenue and inventory.

As William said, it's just a shift in time between stockpile and going back to fresh ore. All revenue and cost guidance we're maintaining.

All production metrics are within guidance. We're starting to look at opportunities to maximize the sale of the blue stone, so that's going to be coming news going forward.

Thanks. Glenn has already touched on the blue stone, and that is a magnificent stone.

We have historically recovered a couple blue stones. There was a 9.46-carat blue stone that came from the North Lobe back in 2012.

We do see them on a regular basis, but not of this size and color saturation. Very excited.

That stone is currently in Antwerp being analyzed. We have an idea of what it will produce, but in terms of value, it's going to take a couple of weeks before we understand the true potential of the stone and then we'll look at the marketing processes around that one.

Through the quarter, as I mentioned, the six stones over 100 carats, one of them being 300, also from stockpile, those six diamonds. We had 4.3% of the stones recovered during the quarter were above 10.8 carats or characterized as specials, slightly below what we had in Q1 last year.

In total, 72,000 carats recovered, also slightly lower, but this as Glenn mentioned, a function of the stockpile material that we went through in Q1. If I make a statement on the overall what we've seen from the stockpiles, I think this has been a very valuable quarter for us, understanding what the stockpiles hold, where we potentially could see significant upside value from those as well.

I think that there's been an intangible gain in knowledge from the processing of stockpile material in Q1. I have already touched on the safety record for the UGP.

Actually, when we look at the last 3 months for both the operations and for the UGP, the total reportable injury frequency rate was actually 0 for the first quarter, which is very very good. That number that you see there, 0.54, is actually the project to date.

Very, very good safety record, and you can see that in the leading and lagging indicators. Lucara's actually received a number of awards over the past year and again in Q1 of 2026, with three awards coming from the Chamber of Mines, those specifically related to safety, winning the safest mining company of the year for a second year in a row, and very recently being awarded safety, health, and environment awards through [Onkgopotse Tiro Mining?]

Botswana, and that is facilitated through government agencies. A very strong track record.

As I go through some of the pictures on the UGP, I'll specifically point to the housekeeping and you can see the link between housekeeping and the safety record which we're seeing. On the project, we had that updated feasibility study or the 43-101 document that confirmed the updated capital number of $779 million, which includes the contingency.

At the end of Q1, we had spent $472 million and committed a further 117. Total committed on the project to date is more than 75% of the expected capital number.

A lot of the work now is really starting to see dividends as we get into the lateral development. With a lot of what we're doing underground now, there's been a lot of focus on advancing the lateral development.

This is really so that when our lateral development contractor comes on board, there's a lot more working headings, which allows us to actually ramp up to a much higher rate of development from underground much, much quicker. As we've been going through that, we did spend $19 million on the underground in Q1 2026.

As I mentioned, a lot of that on lateral development. The shaft equipping, the 127 bunton sets and guides from the bottom of the shaft at 767 m below surface, all of those are now installed.

The stage which is used for the shaft sinking has now been removed. The real focus is now on the structural steel.

I'm going to jump to this slide. The structural steel that you see under the headframe in the picture on the right, most of that is now removed and it gets replaced with specific guides, cage areas, all of your crash steel for the conveyances, and that's really where the focus is through the back end of Q1 and into Q2.

When I talk about the underground development, we have now done more than 1.2 km of lateral development from both the 285 and the 310 level above sea level. Actually, as of today, they blasted in the ramp and this opens up access, we can now walk from the 285 to the 310 level.

You can imagine, if you didn't have that, you would have to have equipment on each of the levels to be able to advance development. Just adding in these certain areas of flexibility where we can start to accelerate the lateral development when the contractor mobilizes.

There's a point on that a bit later. We are also running it's called a Kempe drill.

We use this to test for water prior to mining into any specific area. There were a couple of isolated pockets of water which we encountered.

This is not the same as what we had when they were doing the shaft sinking where you're in the sandstones and the water came in from everywhere. These are isolated structural features which brings water in within the granite basement.

I think that the water's been very, very effectively managed by being proactive and understanding where there is potential for us to hit water, that in conjunction with the updating of the geological models, which happens on an ongoing basis. I specifically wanted to mention this as well.

We are very constrained at this point as they are doing the equipping of the production shaft, and this is your main conveyances. It's the big man-and-materials winder, it's counterweight, the auxiliary winder, and then the two 21-tonne skips.

All the material that comes out from underground has to be excavated and moved up through the vent shaft, and the kibble or the container that we use there can only do a maximum of 500 tonnes a day. The advancing of 100 or 1,245 m of lateral development does show the quality of the work being done in the pictures, as well as the work that the guys are actually doing in a very positive manner.

Our lateral development contract has actually started to mobilize people to site. We are now on a regular basis sitting down with them, updating them on what's actually happening so that they know exactly what the status is going to be of the underground when we do hand over to them.

That's a very, very strong collaboration there. Then in terms of the surface infrastructure, a lot of work, big civil structures for the ventilation fans, and all these long-lead items which are now already on site and prepping for installation.

A couple of pictures. The one on the left there is the evaporation pond.

This was taken when we were on site, what, a week and a half ago. It looks like there's a lot of water in there.

Most of that is rain and it's only about knee-deep. We still don't have enough water in there to actually run the evaporators, but we're talking that dam is more than 300 m long, lots of capacity in there.

That's more of the contingency if we do start to see water from underground. Then, as I mentioned, that central column underneath the production shaft, a lot of that has now been removed, all of the chutework, etc., which was used for shaft sinking, and we're now installing screens, conveyances, and the guides for your main conveyances and the skips.

As I mentioned earlier, the image on the right is at the 310 level. I'm standing with my back towards the kimberlite looking straight down what is called VDR 1.

This is the main access drive which we're pushing to get to the kimberlite so we can actually get to the contact and start to put dewatering processes in. The key thing that you'll notice here in both that one and the 310 ramp that goes down to the 285, and as I mentioned, that was holed this morning, is the housekeeping.

The quality of the work underground, the cleanliness is exceptionally high. I think that is also what's contributing to this fabulous safety record which we're seeing being recorded quarter on quarter.

On the 285 level, picture on the left is the conveyor structure. This is for a side-loading conveyor.

This feeds into the production shaft, the 21-tonne skips. As soon as the conveyances and the skips are commissioned, this will be ready and we'll start to have much more capacity than that 500 tonnes a day which I mentioned through the vent shaft.

That's really what gives us the opportunity to accelerate the lateral development underground. Those two things, getting the skips up and running and the mobilization of the lateral development, are critical to really starting to push the timeline forward.

Then just again, the bulkheads or the ventilation doors at the 285 level. Again, I just want to point out the cleanliness and the excellent housekeeping which we are seeing underground.

Looking ahead, as we've mentioned, very very happy with the updated capital structure, our ability to now move forward and develop the project without having the continuous concern about the financing hanging over us. We are maintaining our guidance, as Glenn mentioned, for revenue, processing, etc.

through the year. We have again, even though we're processing stockpile, we have seen the ongoing recovery of large and when we look at that blue stone, potentially very high-value stones.

I think that is the history of this asset. We've actually added in there a lot of people are asking us specifically how geopolitical challenges are actually affecting the diamond industry.

We have seen for the smaller sales, a lot of the smaller diamonds that flow through the Middle East into India. When we start to look at the product, again, the one thing that makes Lucara special is these large, high-quality stones.

They have remained resilient when we look at the impact of both the geopolitical, lab-grown stones, and the general market environment. I think when we look at what we have, it is far more appealing as a hard luxury asset than what we are seeing being affected within the diamond sector itself.

Won't touch too much on this. We are maintaining this.

This is the same as the guidance which we put out at the back end of 2025. Overall, I think Q1 was a very good quarter, and it has put Lucara back into a very, very strong position to complete the underground and really start to see the dividend from what we know Lucara has seen in the past when mining EMPKS material.

We're really looking forward to touching the kimberlite so we can actually start to see that go through the process plant and see the true value of what this asset has to offer. I will hand it back at this point to the operator for Q&A, please.

I'd just like to again reiterate thank you to everybody for dialing in to our Q1 2026 results call. Hannah will be available if there are any questions, please feed them through the [email protected] email address and we'll be happy to get hold of you and arrange a separate call if there are any.

Thank you very much, and have a good weekend.