Automated transcript · Written by software from the replay's audio. It can mishear names and figures; the replay is the record.
15:13 6 coming in behind that, soon to be drill-ready and 8 projects that are still advancing trying to prove that they have some merit to warrant more investment. Yeah, let me switch now to over the last, since May, June, July, August, so 4 months, we've had 13 press releases, and these have been telling the story about some of our projects that have, you know, we've generated the results and we're moving them along. There's some very interesting graphics that go with that. I encourage you to look at the website and check in on those.
16:14 Those are Projects that are available to, well, any of our projects are available to people that would like to acquire them or partners for joint ventures. And each project has a budget of about $100,000 to get it to drill ready stage. So we would be at various stages of completion on those budgets. And if someone took 1 on, we would guide them on what we know so far and make suggestions for the scope going forward. Yeah, the land position that we've accumulated while doing this work and securing our tenure is over 2,300 claims in Nevada across these 17 projects.
17:09 So we have a very significant land position in Nevada, which is unusual for a junior. I don't have the exact numbers. It's a little difficult to trace the changing tenure in Nevada. Their system isn't the best in terms of public information. They don't have an assessment system where you file your data and reports on your progress. So, you know, databases are proprietary and they take a while to update their tenure as well. It's a little bit archaic, but we see that as an advantage. We think with our position that we are somewhere like the second largest land position.
18:07 I can't confirm that with certainty, but that's our guesstimate. It's very significant for a junior. So someone who would take on a project, if they were taking on one of the 3 most advanced ones, they would be committing to a 2 to 4,000 meter drill program there, which would cost them in the order of 1 to $2 million. And if they had their own capacity, they could work on that themselves. We'd like to be involved in pointing out what we know there and helping, advising. Or alternatively, some companies, if they're private, thinking of taking a project public, or they're a junior that needs to pivot to a new project or just have one that's a property of merit to make a transaction, we are happy to run the exploration projects as well.
19:06 So, we're very flexible on the terms for any deals going forward. One of the benefits of our approach is that we have a proprietary digital data system that helps us manage our tenure in the field and in comparison to the state information. State information. So when we're dealing with partners or eventually dealing with senior producers, the data would be organized and the tenure management would be professional so that we can answer their questions and provide information at a level that they would hope for, and is, I think, unusually good for a junior group.
20:04 So what this slide is showing here, if you've had a chance to look at it while I'm chatting, is the Nevada loves mining slide. You know, this is why, the main reason we're there. We've been doing this for 20 years. We've worked in many jurisdictions around the world. You know, some of the more expensive ones are Australia. You know, there are other places that are not as expensive, but they're less secure, like Equatorial Guinea. We've learned a lot of lessons in being those places. And we saw Nevada as an area that we'd like to apply what we've learned. It's a very secure jurisdiction that supports mining.
20:54 They're dependent on mining. The rural economy is almost entirely mining. And the tax rates are favorable there as well. Very stable, it's been the same mining law since 1872. Yeah, so The other thing this slide points out is that we don't have the northern trends labeled there in that pale colored in the north central. But, you know, Carlin, Cortez, Battle Mountain, Eureka, Gatchel, Long Canyon, these are all very well known names for the trends and producers.
21:42 And this area has the famous Carlin type deposits, which if you're not familiar with that, during the gold rush, people went right past Nevada when it came to gold, it was known as a silver state. They went right past it because they didn't see visible gold for the most part. And so they headed out to California where there was placer. Then in the 60s, it was Newmont that discovered the invisible disseminated Carlin type, which they're very large deposits. So they're lower grade, but there's a plethora of Gold there.
22:36 It's invisible, microscopic, you have to do the work to know where it is. But Our projects are the larger black dots spread around this part of the world. And many of them are close to known deposits and mines, which gives us advantage in finding partners and buyers, but also in cost structures. Yeah, that's, cover that. It's very significant. This, just for perspective, I think that this northern area is something that a concentration of like 65,000 square kilometres for Carlin type production.
23:26 And I read somewhere that that is thought to be about 15% of the potential. And that region would be about the size of Ireland. So, it's quite a large area. You get these large deposits and that's the kind of thing that we are looking for. Carlin type, but also epithermal, which is some consider Carlin to be a type of epithermal, but those are the things that we're focused on. Catalysts. The primary catalyst that we will have for our stock price is finding partners.
24:16 We're focused on that now. We've spent the first year getting our portfolio sorted out. Now we've identified several candidates for partnerships and we'll negotiate terms and move forward with those deals. So I would hope to see, or the intent is to see announcements here in the fall showing that our ideas have merit and we're drawing in third parties who believe in it as well and are interested in the same things as we are, which is large-scale discovery at a reasonable cost.
25:06 And the terms of deals that we would look for might include a cash component for the work that we've done, but also In Nevada, you see advanced royalties or option payments that get made on projects, which helps us with our cash flow and reimburses us for some of the work that we've done, pays for the product. But you also get, negotiate generally shares in the new co, the partner co, and retain an NSR for any production scenario that would come along. So there's several ways that Nevada Deals can pay the owners.
25:53 We currently have 100% ownership of all of these projects and that will change going forward. That's the primary catalyst to accelerate as many of these projects as we can within the 2 to 5 year timeline. And we are seeing some senior companies switch to that mode. A couple of them are doing it early because they've had trouble in other jurisdictions and they recognize Nevada as being stable and secure as well as having continuous or continuing massive potential. So going forward, you know, we've seen the government's debasing the dollar and gold continues to be an important asset for a diversified portfolio.
26:57 A recent statistic that I heard was the market cap of gold is something like 10 trillion and The the figure for Bitcoin and cryptocurrency is somewhere in the order of 8 to 900 billion, so, you know gold is still a bigger asset class when it comes to diversified portfolio and risk management, like 10 or 11 times more than crypto, which is very volatile at the moment with current events. So the threat of other jurisdictions nationalizing assets or some of the current events on contagion and people are turning more to gold.
28:00 This is something though that If you look at I think there's a recent article in mining calm that showed that the 25-year history since the mid 90s There's been some fairly obvious trends as comparing the price of gold to gold stocks. And it's talking about being undervalued. So This is something that fits nicely with our 2 to 5 year timeline. In the last, since 2015, there have been 2 or 3 cycles where Gold stocks have gone from just under double the relative to gold. They compare the price of gold to gold stocks and it goes from a factor of 1.9 up to about 4.
29:02 So this range is unusual historically. It kind of reflects the changing world economy and asset classes that are emerging. But you know, within that range, you're seeing that we are currently at a factor of 1.9 for gold stocks and producers versus the price of gold. So it's undervalued. And that ratio has been cycling up to 4.0. So there's a lot of room for gold stocks to go up and we're at near a historic low. So this factor can actually go as high as 16 and seen that twice in the last 25 years.
29:57 Right now it's moving within a smaller range, But even that smaller range offers significant returns. For that reason, we also see senior producers as kind of waiting for their stock price to be higher and that soon as you see that, you might see more transactions happening. In Nevada you can have a low-grade like we said a Carlin style deposit with 100,000 ounces initially and that will still be highly marketable. I don't have the numbers right now for what that would mean in terms of a market cap, but it's significant.
30:45 Our current market cap is about 6 million. And, you know, so trading at 15 cents, we've had a couple of financings at that level. And it's early days, I think, as we move into the drilling phase and start to see our work pay off in drill results, you may see a revaluation of our portfolio that would catch the eye of funds. Right now it's retail customers that are following our stock and investing in it. And the basic model there is they see it as being 20 lottery tickets instead of 1, all within 1 company. You've got a shot at those big discoveries. And even 1 significant discovery would mean substantial returns.
31:39 If you translate that to, you know, just a thumbnail of valuation for market cap, you know, 5 to 10 times what we're worth currently. But, you know, those are hard to predict. And so all we know is that there's a long way to go on the upside and not so far on the downside for where we are. Just wanted to finish with just mentioning that Carlin type deposits are seen and referred to in some articles as being the true elephants. They're massive deposits.
32:27 Virtually all of the US production comes from Carlin type deposits currently. And Nevada ranks, if it was its own country, it would rank something like fifth in the world. It's got the most production per square kilometer of any jurisdiction. And the Fraser Institute ranked it as number 1. I know that Quebec is also a favorite jurisdiction. Nevada is certainly one of the top. So, we're very excited about what we have here. We're trying to do it a little bit on a shoestring in the beginning, and we will see some results coming from drilling when we establish our partnerships here in the fall.
33:23 That's where I'd like to leave it for now and just see if there are any questions. Great, thanks, Sean. And yeah, with that, I'd like to remind everyone in the audience, if you do have questions, please use the Q&A chat found on the right-hand side of your screen. We have received a few questions, Sean, in advance that we'll go over, but first we have had a question come in from Graham Giles Live. Just wondering how many meters beneath cover are your targets? Well, it varies, but we're looking at a number, we do gravity surveys. So this is a low cost way to get an idea of the depth of the bedrock and where we've done those, we are focusing on areas that are say 200, 2 to 500 meters is what we would consider viable.
34:18 So, you know, these are on the edges of the basins, the foot of the mountains, referred to as the pediment. There are very few companies focusing on the pediment. That's something that we feel we're a leader in doing this and that we have a systematic approach to doing it. So you know, certainly we are aware, or alive to the idea of economics. It influences everything that we do, the decisions that we make. So we're not keeping projects in the mix that don't have the potential to become economic. Right, okay, thank you. When you say 20 plus projects, each with potential for greater than 1 million ounces of gold, are you exaggerating or are you being overly promotional?
35:12 Yeah. OK, so this we We don't get that question very often, but it has come up. And I think that we're trying to be conservative in the way we describe what we have or what we're targeting. We are careful with our language. We're not overstating. We're telling people specifically that we have the potential for discovery, that that's our intent. We've taken a systematic approach to deal with the risk and the data and advance these projects. Our intent is to find these larger deposits.
36:01 The fallback is that Nevada projects, small projects, 100,000 ounces are still marketable. So, you know, your downside on each project, if you get it to the stage where you can interest third party, there's a wide range of economic scale. But we're not in this for the 100,000oz deposits or even the 400,000oz deposits, unless that's an early stage that still has room for expansion. If it's open in all directions and it's sitting at that level, then that's fine for us. But we're serious that the intent and the modelling or the concept here was developed with the intent of finding large-scale deposits.
36:51 That's our target and we're looking at upstream acquisitions eventually. The initial plan is to attract these private groups or junior companies that are looking for what is effectively a de-risked or pre-qualified project of merit that has upside in it that would be reflected in their stock price. And of course that fits with us, we're investors as well. And we wouldn't be, these projects wouldn't be in our portfolio, we wouldn't have taken it on if we didn't believe in the upside of it. So, and as far as our messaging goes, we are being as clear as we can be. We're not claiming to have 1 million ounces on any of these yet.
37:40 But you have to chase certain criteria in order to come up with those. And we are doing that. Right. Thank you. Another question that's come in live from Barry. With Overburden, are you planning to sample similar to Sean Ryan style or are you using another approach? Sorry, I missed the early, are we planning to? Are you planning to sample similar to Sean Ryan style or are you using another approach? Yeah, no, the sampling that we're doing in the overburden is, it's geochemical.
38:31 I am, I'm not, when I think about Sean Ryan and the Yukon, I think it's a different scenario. So we're using the sampling methods that are suited to the Carlin type projects, and we're working with the labs to prepare the samples, and that's helping us guide our decisions as we interpret those results. So that's, I'm not, yeah, I'm not gonna, I guess, get into the details of the sampling approach there, but it's all industry standard.
39:18 QA, QC is an important part of what we do. And our intent is for everything to be verifiable for any partners or upstream suitors. Great. Okay. The next question that's come in in advance is how do you see the Evergrande playing out for mining, the price of gold and prospects for your strategy? Yeah, okay, So Evergrande is a big example at its current events, but it's worth mentioning. Evergrande is, the fear is that this is another Lehman Brother meltdown where, you know, people, it's risk off and all stocks go down, including crypto.
40:15 And This is a difficult application to mining, which I think what we're seeing in the last 2 days is that the price of gold has moved up a little bit and then come back a little bit. This is just an immediate reaction because of uncertainty. It's a large scale threat. But as people get to see what's happening, I think today we're seeing in the news that China has made some commitments to individual, to support individuals or they're monitoring the situation.
41:02 And the speculation worldwide is that they can't let this happen for their own benefit. But one way we look at it is, this is a very small Chinese exposure in portfolios, if you could quantify it, at least the direct, a diversified balance portfolio is less than 5% Chinese stock likely. So, for a diversified investor, that risk and downside should be mitigated. And in times of panic, this risk is inherent in the market. You know, as you go along day to day, these Evergrandes are out there.
41:48 That's That risk is just part of the game. As these things happen, people look 2 to 5 years out to try and be rational about their portfolio and where they see it. So the immediate issue is for day traders, I suppose. But you know, I don't think, I think Evergrande is, well, you know, I'm speculating myself, what do I know, but this is something that the world recovers from and I think people are saying that it's somewhat overblown and comparing it to Lehman. I guess time will tell and if that 2 to 5 year focus and diversification is part of the formula, then that fits with our 2 to 5 year timeline that we've been looking at. So, the industry itself is happy with the price of Gold, even though it fluctuates a little bit.
42:49 And mining stocks are undervalued relative to the price of Gold now. And we've seen that Gold moved up a little bit on Monday in reaction to the increased risk or the risk off behavior. So I think that bodes well for gold and gold stocks in the timeframe that we're focused on. Great, thank you for that. What deal terms are you looking for on your projects? Well, there's some cost recovery involved. And so that is the, you know, there are costs for us acquiring the land positions and making the initial deal. So there is that as a component and the project budgets themselves, like I say, it's about $100,000 to get it to drill stage.
43:46 And then the drill projects are 1 to 2 million. So depending on where we are in the cycle, you know, a buyer has to address that, the cost put into getting it to drill ready and it's either at the drill ready stage and they're addressing that with us or there remains a scope of work to get it to drill ready which they take on themselves. So you know those costs are inherent in the deals, as is the drill program. And really we're talking about some advanced royalty payments and share in NSR are the main component.
44:32 So the benefit to them, we get a bit of a premium for our work and potentially for our advice going forward. But the main component for us is to share in the outcomes with the people that take on the projects. Right, okay. Has the Biden administration affected mining in Nevada? Not to date. So he appointed an interior minister that people were worried would jump all over mining. And I don't think that we're seeing that happen. My view of that is that the U.S. Needs its economy to be firing on all cylinders.
45:23 And so I don't think they're going to shoot themselves in the foot by clamping down on mining except where there's been a historic dispute. So you'll see that in Alaska, perhaps, that type of thing continuing where you've got sensitive fisheries and First Nations issues. You know, there are lobby groups that are all over that. Nevada on the other hand has very little of that. It's very stable and it seems to be, I mean, they tested nuclear weapons there, right? So they don't seem to care about Nevada that much. And maybe that's changing, but we haven't seen much on that. I think there was a movement a few years ago for some pheasants or grouse or something like that, that was brought up and set aside or defeated, however you want to put that.
46:31 So, we are sensitive to the environmental impacts. We've been working in jurisdictions where that is a huge factor. And we've taken those lessons and we apply them here. It's just that It's a much easier environment to work in when it comes to mining. There's less disturbance and less impact from what we're doing. So we're very fortunate to have these land positions in this jurisdiction. Right, thank you. And the last question we have currently, how's your current financing going and what are your capital needs going forwards? Okay, this is, we are currently engaged in, I think we announced 1 million dollar placement and we had price protection up to 1 million and a half dollars.
47:33 We initiated that during the summer and we had a first closing or first tranche closed at the end of August for about 600,000 of that. That was primarily to insiders and close associates. It was an important number. It helped us make our annual payments. So we've secured our claims for the coming year and the remainder we are looking to place over the next few weeks. We are getting some good interest from funds who are starting to look at us, but it's primarily a retail driven placement. So one thing we did recently is we received our approval at the end of August for our OTCQB listing with DTC eligibility. So all those letters mean that American brokers and investors can use their investment platforms to buy our stock and settle electronically.
48:50 And so in the fall, part of what we're doing is some of the money we raise here will be invested in marketing in the US and we'll look toward Europe and form a strategy there as well. But we think by spreading the word beyond Canada into the US that there will be some appeal considering that Nevada is our focus and it's well known to the Americans. So the current status is that we are still seeking a total of 6 to $900,000 to finish our placement. And we have allocations and commitments on those things. And it is coming from retail people, brokers, family offices, those types of investors, people who manage their own portfolios for the most part.
49:54 Funds like I said have taken a look. They have thresholds for market cap and daily volumes and so on, which we're an early company, so we're working on that proactively. And we expect to meet those criteria eventually. So that will be another catalyst is when you see our company profile appealing to large-scale investors and they start taking a position. For now, anyone buying into this placement is getting in at a level that's comparable to insiders and associates. It's ground floor opportunity on something that has a large upside. So thanks for the question. We'd welcome any interest in that.
50:42 The hitch is that in order to participate and complete a subscription, you have to be an accredited investor in your jurisdiction. So generally that means you have to meet a threshold for income and or assets. And assuming you do, then you can fill out a subscription. You don't need to receive a full prospectus from us and you're welcome to buy in. Great, thanks a lot Sean. Well I think we're out of questions for now and as we come close to time as well I'd like to thank first and foremost you for coming on today and delivering this presentation and answering all these great questions. I'd also like to thank everyone in the attendance for coming in today. We'll be sending out a short survey and you can leave your contact information or take the opportunity to get in direct contact with Cordis Metals and continue the conversation at your leisure should you choose to do so. You can also of course find more information at coresmetals.com.
51:50 And with that, Sean, I'm gonna hand it back to you for a final word. Well, just thanks for having me and thanks everybody for joining us. We seem to have attracted people to the few summits that we've done here with 6. If you like what you hear, tell your friends and we'll continue to talk about what we're doing. So thanks for your time and let me know if you're interested in investing. Exactly, well with that, we'll wrap things up. Thanks again, Sean. Thank you everyone for attending and I hope You