Communicating From the Rollercoaster: IR for Explorers

0:08 Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where you're signing in from the world today. I'm really pleased to introduce today's panel discussion, Communicating from the rollercoaster, discussing the unique communication challenges of exploration stories in mural extraction. I got a bit of housekeeping, so bear with me before I let my guests here introduce themselves. Today's event is being recorded and will be available for replay later this afternoon. And importantly, this event is interactive. So if you'd like to, please ask the speaker's questions in the chat panel on the bottom right of your screen. We'll try to get to as many as we can during today's session.

0:38 That is enough out of me. I'm going to let both of our panelists introduce themselves today and the companies they represent. Paul, go ahead and start with you. Sure. Good morning, everybody. Thanks, Romeo. Thank you, 6, for this. And it's great to be on a panel with Terry. We were just discussing how much we have in common, and friends, and investors, and the like. My name is Paul Pint.

1:00 I spent 25 years of my career in capital markets, raising money for companies globally, mostly in the North American market though, as an institutional equity salesperson. I moved off from there to found Troilus Gold about 6 or 7 years ago, and I left Troilus about 3 years ago and looking for other good companies to help out and and hang my hat on and I found White Gold through a mutual friend Pat DiCapo and just fell in love with the story and was lucky enough to be able to come on board. I'll get into the pitch on the company, but it's Canadian-based,

1:38 the Yukon, with a great future ahead of it. I'll turn it back to you, Romeo, so Terry can go. Go for it, Terry. Hi. Yeah, My name is Terry Lynch. I'm the CEO of Power Nickel and we are advancing the NISQ

1:52 deposit, which is a high-grade Nickel sulphide and PGM and making some really amazing progress there. We've been focused on that for the last few years. And the other thing that I've note that I've been active in is, of course, Save Canadian Mining, where I'm founder of Save Canadian Mining, where its focus is on stopping the very harmful process of predatory short selling.

2:22 Thanks both of you. So let's get into the meat of the discussion. So first thing I want to talk about is that exploration companies can have major jumps on exciting news, but not always, especially in this market. So I questioned you both, and Terry, I'll start with you, is how do you make sure the market appreciates when you actually do have a strong result? You know what, I mean, I think if I actually knew the answer to that, I'd be like the world's wealthiest guy.

2:50 Because you look at some results and you say, well, they look spectacular to me, stock doesn't move. And then you look at some results that are spectacular and it does move And you think, well, what's different? A lot of times, it's got to do, like how we try and frame it is,

3:11 if it's spectacular news, you can't use the word spectacular, but You basically try and be much more aggressive in your news copy so that you make sure that they know it's material. If not all news releases are material,

3:27 you know, I issued options, not material. You know, I raised money. Well, that can be material, I guess, but you know, what's material, you know, is when you do something that in management's mind as a fiduciary responsibility, you feel it's impacting value in a material way.

3:46 I think you have to tell people it's material, and then of course the evidence has to be in the body of the release. Paul, I'm curious to hear your perspective. Yeah, I mean, I would agree with everything Terry just said. I also, I thought you were one of the richest guys in the world, Terry. I wish, but that's not far from it.

4:06 No, listen, in this environment, Terry hit on the head. I mean, news releases, I got a stat from a friend of mine just recently that there's over 2,500 news releases per day that go out on the TSX and the venture. And so how do you differentiate what you're putting out? I think, you know, Terry made some good, very, very good points there that you want to make sure it is material news. You want to make sure you're not. I think repetitive news is also something that doesn't work, but you want to get news out there enough when it is something new, right?

4:36 So, for example, let's say you have like 9 or 10 derailleurs all, so maybe you want to group those together and get them out instead of doing 1 derailleur all after another because the market will get tired of hearing the kind of the same repeated story. And you wanna make sure that you're transparent with the market, but I agree, putting out something on WeissuedOptions just doesn't make sense. It's a tougher environment right now. Again, with all those releases going out, I think using other sources of release. So you want to use social media and all the things that didn't exist when

5:07 I got into the business. But I know at White Gold we're trying to utilize whatever we can as far as the Facebook or X or whatever these things are now. We're just going all out. You just want to make sure you get to the broadest audience possible. And again, because the investor community is shifting and changing all the time, and the next generation is coming around, you have to adapt to their sources of news, which is likely not the business section of the globe on a daily basis.

5:36 As the ecosystems change, there's just so many avenues people get information from now. I know a number of people who only get their mining news from X. That's the only place that they'll read press releases. So if you're not posting stuff there, you've missed that investor completely. So the ecosystem has changed. You just need to use every avenue that folks have. But one thing I also wanted to talk about is people say mining investing, but I think especially exploration, comes down to trust. And I'm curious both of your perspectives, and Paul, I'll start with you. How do you build that trust with

6:08 an investor base over time with an exploration story? Well, I think the key thing you'd said right now is over time. It does take a long time to build that investor base, the confidence in the investor. I'll start right away with you want to make sure that you're transparent, you want to make sure that you're not, God forbid, you over promise, under deliver. Even in this market, if you promise and deliver, it doesn't seem to fall on to very positive ears. So you really have to make sure that you

6:39 do, come out there and be open and transparent with your investor base. You have to be in touch with your investor base. And that's not just sending out, you know, as we just talked about news releases, you want to make sure that you have a proper investor relations focus. You have a team, including the CEO. I've been the president of a gold company where I was literally doing my capital markets role on a daily basis, where I was on the phone talking to not only our largest investors, but there'd be groups of smaller investors. I think that what can really differentiate

7:12 you and what I think does for White Gold is for sure is that our management team, right from Sean Ryan, who found all the properties, to David D'Onofrio, to the whole team, we are available for as much as possible for in-person and group meetings. And I think that's a way to build that relationship with your investor, where they're not just a receiver of some mass produced press release.

7:39 Yeah, I would echo Paul's comments. I mean, that's, you know, what we certainly try and do at, you know, Power Nickel. I think we try and have, we've been using 6 to use, I would say probably once a month, we're having a conversation where we invite our shareholder base, our contact list base to get an update on the story about what we're doing, how we're advancing.

8:08 And obviously within that, this environment, there's always the interactivity where people can ask you the questions and you can answer them online. Plus we have a, basically, I think it's every second Friday, we have a calendarly approach where you can actually book a meeting with either, in some cases me, but usually Duncan Roy or a very capable investor relations head.

8:36 And, you know, because sometimes you have direct questions you just want to get answered and I think you know we're not Barrick at this point or Inco or Valley I guess in my case. So you know we've got to be approachable and reachable because at the end of the day, people do business with people they know, like and trust. And that's part of the communication thing to be accessible, to be as Paul said, transparent, to over deliver and under promise.

9:08 I think if you take all these steps, you'll build a solid base, you know what I mean? And, and, you know, it's, it's not, you know, in a world of instant gratification, it's not something you can manufacture instantly. That's just the reality of it. But if you don't do it this way, it will come back to haunt you.

9:30 And of course, we'll still use, you know, at times we'll engage promotional campaigns around events or whatever we think that are particularly important that we want to make sure gets to the broadest possible audience. But generally, those are incremental. And we have this sustained, you know, communication process 2 way between our investor base and ourselves. And we're proactive, both in, as Paul said,

9:59 us, me talking to my major shareholders almost on a daily basis. They're my friends and they've been my supporters for many years, mostly tirelessly and mostly thanklessly.

10:13 We hope to change that soon. But yeah, you've got to keep on communicating. Never can stop.

10:21 I'll sometimes hear from IR professionals and CEOs sometimes, they worry about, are we over communicating? I'm like, the opposite is a much bigger problem. Like you really gotta worry a lot more about being silent, especially when markets are kind of tough. But one thing I did want to ask, and Terry, this is directed at you, but Paul, I'm curious from your perspective as well. Exploration obviously has a lot of surprises, you know, it's a part of the game. And sometimes you come across a great hole, but with a metal that's different from the one you're focusing on. So I'm curious, obviously, throw on this Terry, because power nickel, you got nickel in the name, but you just hit a big PGM hole. I'm curious how you communicate that to investors who are following as part of a nickel story? Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, right? I mean, obviously, we've hit this huge PGM discovery. I think it's now almost on value, comparatively, what our nickel thing is. I think our nickel thing is going to be huge. So it tells you what I think about the PGNs. But

11:18 the good part about nickel and PGNs is that they, you know, we always, PGNs were part of it. We always had about 10% of our value was PGNs in power nickel. Now it probably is going to be closer to 50-50s, my guess. So, you know, So we're transitioning that. So we've been telling the market, hey, we've made this massive discovery. We've got, we had the 1 Bonanza first hole where we had almost 8 meters of 1 ounce PGMs over that. So that was super exciting.

11:50 And now we haven't got the assays back, but we've drilled, I think, 10 holes, 9 of which have hit, 6 of which visibly in my mind are better than the discovery hole. So, when we get those assays out, I mean, rockets should fly, you know, but, but, you know, it's, it's the boat, you know, again, just being honest, telling it, you know, so I mean, even though we've, you know, we, we've said it's material, obviously, it hasn't impacted the stock at this point, but I feel my conscience is clear

12:24 as my CEO job of being full, plain and true that I've told people this is ridiculous and you should notice this event. And so at some point when the assays come out, you know, it'll be what it'll be. But you just have to be, recognize this material, get the information out there, communicate it, and you know, the market will do what the market does.

12:48 I appreciate that. Paul, looking to you for when you get a surprise, how do you communicate it and how do you make sure that your investors understand what's going on? Okay, I'm gonna assume that's a positive surprise. We'll go positive. Yeah, let's go with positive surprise right now. There's enough against us right now with the headwinds, but you know, tides are turning.

13:10 Again, I mean, I'll just reiterate what I said before. You know, you get a positive surprise, That's great. You want to make sure that you get the information out there. You talk about finding a different commodity as well, perhaps. Again, we're poking holes into rocks that are billions of years old. If anybody says they know what's down there, they really don't. Right. These rocks have been around a lot more before us and There's all sorts of ways to kind of figure out what might be there. But just an example of white gold, we just had some interesting copper

13:37 showings right near where Casino is in the Yukon. And I'm not saying it's a shift of gears, but I think It's a wonderful thing if you find something else down there. Obviously, the gold grades are great, but all of a sudden you have another byproduct, let's call it, or something that can lower the cost or something you can monetize. So these are all positive changing events in a company. And again, you just want to make sure you get that news out there through the sources that we talked about. Awesome.

14:08 Now, there's in exploration, there's periods where there's a large amount of sometimes positive material news, And there's often lulls, you know, where you just won't have a major news release for a while. So I'm curious, and I'll start with you, Paul, on this one. How should a company's approach to communication change during those lulls? How do you approach communication when, let's say, you don't have material news for a month?

14:33 So let me, this is actually a great question and one that you shouldn't change. Basically, when you have information or not information, and White Gold is an example because our drilling is seasonal, given where it is in the Yukon. And so obviously there's lots of news during drilling season, there's just before it when you have your budget and your campaign that's gonna happen and then obviously post post drilling as results are coming in. But in those lulls, you wanna make sure that you are as much, even more sometimes in touch with your investor base because you're not having

15:05 constant news flow coming out there. I'll give you another example. When I was in capital markets, and I'll be quick on this, but when you see this often, or you hear this from companies, when does the investment banker call you? When will they think you need a financing?

15:19 The best time to call somebody in a CEO position like Terry or David D'Onofrio was our CEO, or when I was president of a company was call when there is not a need for financing. Call when there is no news, stay in touch with your investor so that you're keeping a constant flow of information. Even if it's, again, like Terry said, some of these investors become your friends. How do they become your friends? You call them, you meet with them, you're honest with them. Hopefully you make them some money over time. And so

15:48 I would say there's the answer to the question. In the lulls or peaks or valleys, you just stay steady and just make sure that you don't hide. That's the worst thing a company or a CEO could do is, you know, if there is something that's not great or you discover something that is unfortunate,

16:05 you hide your debt. So you've got to make sure that you keep flow with your investor base. And Terry, looking at your perspective on this, just... Yeah, I mean, I think Paul hit it on the head. I mean, we've been lucky in Power Nickel in that we basically can drill all but for 1 month in spring break. So it doesn't really materially impact our news flow. It pretty much is consistent. We've got fairly heavy news year round, which is great. But I've been involved in situations when we,

16:40 like Paul here, you have seasonal drilling issues and you just can't drill around the year. And that happens quite often in our business. And as Paul says, you just got to try and stretch it out as much as you can both before and after so that you can keep some wampum.

17:02 Re-assay that piece again so it's not quite ready for prime time and you get it out there. So there's some tactics you can use legally that can allow you to defer timing on some of these things and, you know, so that you can continue to sort of build your story. But if it's really material, you really can't mess around much with that. If you have some whopper like those guys in Ivory Coast the other day that had that insane hole, you get an insane hole like that after you confirm it's actually been tested a couple of times and it's not some

17:36 lab error, then you put that out immediately because it just can't be denied. But generally, I think, as Paul said, you got to keep on communicating, never stop. Yeah, I do think it's the consistency that is important because if people see you're only putting out, you're only communicating effectively when things are good, then they have different expectations when suddenly you're quiet. I think like Paul said, if you hide, you're toast. But I'll know the other side of the kind of same question, which is, does it make sense to spend more on marketing and communications during a bearish market or during a bull market? Or how should the spending on communication change when you are trying to conserve cash?

18:22 I'll throw it to Terry first. You know what, I mean, personally, We probably have kept spending. We haven't been aggressive with our digital marketing budget the last while, just because when we've done some tests, the test results have been poor, i.e. The engagement has not been there, and so you know that that's not working. So I think you have to be, because we only have a limited amount of capital that we're working with at any point in time, you have to be careful when you press on the gas. But my perspective is I don't have an IR budget as a particular number.

19:09 I'm always ready to spend an IR if I believe it's gonna drive value. And for me, that's got to be, I believe it's gonna impact our share price in a positive way and reduce my cost of capital. You know, cause that's what I'm working for. I'm working for my shareholders to reduce their cost of capital so I can give them the biggest lift in shares. Cause that's why people buy public companies. They're buying it to make more money. So, you know, we're trying to invest our budget to obtain that goal. You know, doing it for a short term bump that's gonna come back and haunt you because you just pushed it. That's just like a fool's game. We've probably all made that mistake as rookie people in this business, but I don't make that mistake anymore. We just know that that's just ridiculous. But if you've got some major news that you think is world beating and you want the world to know it, Well, spend on it, get it out there, transform your company's valuation. That's what your job is. You're supposed to do that. So I think that's that's sort of how we view it at Power Nickel.

20:10 Makes sense. Paul, looking forward to your perspective. Yeah, I mean, you know, again, echoing some of Terry's things in this in this world as a the world where we've been in, let's say, the last decade as a mining executive, you're getting bombarded every day and every week with, I'm not gonna name any names or conferences, Like if there's a conference every week somewhere on this globe, right? There's letter writers, there's promoters, there's other ways to get news out. And you really have to sift through because you want to be a good steward of capital for your investors. And experience is one of the best ways to figure out what works and what doesn't. Because on paper, so many things sound good, right? And I remember getting and I still get, you know, all sorts of, again, email saying, hey, you know, for X amount per month, we can do this or that or the other and here's the impact we've had and you have to sift through, you know, who has an impact in any given market and who has an impact in a bull market, right? Because a rising tidal raise all ships, right? So, you know, you can show great returns from certain campaigns in a good market, but how do you get that information? Where do you wanna spend those investor dollars, right? They're not our dollars, they're our investor dollars to go to the right conference, to do the right media shows like this one, for example, where you're trying to get the best bang for your buck.

21:33 And it's a real challenge and it's an ongoing challenge because again, I've made a bunch of mistakes over the last 8 years when I was an executive. You go somewhere and you're like, oh my God, and you realize that, for lack of a better term, you do lunch for 30 people and at the end of the lunch, you realize they're all plate fillers, right? By that I mean they're there for a glass of wine and a nice, right, they're there for lunch and a nice glass of wine and you don't get a contact list and You might as well just take your buddies out to a canoe or something and go spend the money. So it really, you learn over time and again, you have to be a good steward of capital and find where you get your best bang for your buck. That makes sense. This is related to the question I was about to ask. At 6 we work across webinars, email, social, ads. I'm curious, and obviously this will be dependent, I think it's possible at different times you have different answers, but which activity or communication channel do you feel like is the biggest value add to your marketing and investor relations?

22:33 Like across all the ways you can communicate with folks, which activity do you find is the most effective? We'll throw it to whoever's got an answer first. Go for it, Terry. I mean, for us, I would say in this last 2 years of the darkness of the junior money market, what's been most effective for us has been one-to-one high net worth meetings, you know, and, you know, family offices, whatever. And because those people, it's all about relationships and about trust and really getting to know the story. And so, it's been the one-to-one. So we've spent money on trying to explore, get into other people's networks because how do I get to meet some of the people I get to meet? Well, I meet them through some access provider that's opened the door for me. And I found that, so I've paid people, I've paid them some monthly stipend or whatever, like CEM is an example, Capital Events Market.

23:39 I feel are a good provider, honest provider, and they access and introduce us to a number of great brokers and investors, And that's one of the, we continue to use that service because I find that it's got ROI for us. But we probably have spent less money on digital promotions because we didn't feel that that worked. You know, the market is not working. People are not buying off a hot story and it's just hard to connect. In a bull market, that's very beneficial. In a bear market, I think it's just wasted money. And Go for it, Paul. Yeah, so, you know, I agree. The one-on-ones are absolutely the best. And the question that always comes up is, you know, given the investor has changed, we all know funds that have disappeared.

24:29 We know precious metals funds that no longer exist. We know that there's investors that either retired or they're no longer around. So you've got to find those new sources of potential investors. And how do you find that? You find it through other conduits, right? So as Terry said, you go through somewhere where you can get one-on-ones, those speed dating, right? We've all been to some of those where you got 30 minutes and go, and then something like this event, right? I'm gonna guess there's maybe a hundred people that are listening in on this. And what's really important, I find, is the follow-up. So whether you're going to a conference or whether you're doing a one-on-one or you're doing a group event like this and getting that contact list, right? I mentioned that, you know, the 2 lunches I did for a bazillion dollars and never got a contact list and all they did was eat food and drink wine. So that doesn't help with the follow up, right? But, you know, someone like 6, I know that after this, we're gonna need a list of who was on, and we can then use that list to target some follow-up and make sure that they're on our news mailings and et cetera and that's how you broaden your network through campaigns like that and what you're doing.

25:32 But yeah, I mean, making sure that you can find those new pockets. And again, it requires, yeah, you have to spend, right? You have to spend and sometimes you spend less to get more. The other avenue that I still use because I came from the capital markets world is the brokers. You can do marketing campaigns with brokers, with their sales desk, get their analysts involved. Up front, it certainly doesn't cost you anything. Of course it will because you're going to include them in on your financings right down the road And that's what they hope to do and maybe some M&A. But that's another great channel to access for, I think, next to no dollars spent up front to get into new investors. That makes sense. And usually I wait till the end for audience questions, but there's 1 that's really right on topic and we just kind of touched on it a bit. So I'll get into it. Mike asks, what are the necessary expenditures that all companies should use for IR marketing? Like they're always on, all companies should always use versus what's a discretionary expenditure that's really only appropriate during bull market.

26:33 Jerry, you already kind of touched on this and like there's some promos that only work during a bull, but what do you think are the things that should always be on? Like what should you always be trying to use? Well, I think, you know, the first thing you gotta do is you need to have content, right? You need to have content that's readily accessible across multiple platforms that makes it easy because we don't know how people are consuming it. We certainly know our younger investors consume differently than Paul or I would. So we have to have content. So the first cornerstone, I think, of any IR program is you need a content manufacturing process. Okay, so 6 is sort of that for us, right? So we do lots of stuff, you know, probably once a month, we do an event, we tape it, we record it, it's available for our YouTube channel. We can take snippets of it for our ads and for other sports stuff that we use. So I think that's the first cornerstone is to have a content manufacturing strategy, whether it's 6 or some other provider, you need to do that. And then depending on the market, you then you play your cards a little differently. You know, in a bear market, I'm focusing mostly on, you know, the ultra high net worth and high net worth family office focus, because we have them broken through the institutional range. We've got some institutional investors, but that's market cap size is a deterrent.

27:59 So yeah, that's, and then in a bull market, you would look more towards the digital spending and stuff like that. Go for it, Paul. Yeah, I think we've talked on this on a few topics, right? That essential spend needs to be, to make sure that you have like the care set the content and it's getting out to your your key investors through through good times or bad times bear markets or bull markets. Yes, when there's more money in the kitty right there when the financing window is open and markets are better. Certainly you can then try out some different campaigns, but essential marketing is just communication, I think, with your existing investor base and try to utilize the most cost-effective ways to find those potential new sources of investments, which again, Terry mentioned, like 6, there's other guys out there that we won't mention, but that's how you keep it. And make sure your webpage is fresh. There's another thing, because there are various sources where you can get an investor that gets tracked to your website.

29:01 If your presentation says, you know, September, 2022, right, you just want to make sure, and luckily at Power 1 that supports White Gold, they have an internal presence that is exceptional and just make sure that, you know, if you go to the website, you have a good presentation, all the news releases are there, you have contact information that you can go to. So these are essential. If nobody knows who to call at the company, then how are they gonna get information, right? So I think that's one of the most important things during any type of market. I appreciate that. As from my perspective, somebody who runs a lot of ad campaigns, sets them up, it changes a lot in different markets. You can make 250 bucks go a lot farther in a bear. You'd be surprised how many people at the moment of an investment decision are Googling what gold stock should I invest in? Nobody's, nobody's bidding for those search terms, right? And a bear. So you can, you can get away with a lot for a little in different markets. So it really, it really does depend. Whenever I'm doing an ad strategy, I look at what keywords are hot this week. What are people searching on what platform is lithium hot on Twitter this week? It really changes a lot from week to week.

30:08 I got one question, this is kind of directly for Paul. Curious with your experience, largely on the capital market side for it sounds like most of your career. What trends have you noticed change in Canadian capital markets over the last, let's say, 10 or 20 years? Oh, wow. Sure. And I'm sure Terry will have lots to add too. And we've seen this. Yeah, when I was in equity sales and we were out there, certainly there were less public companies at the time. So right away, one comment I'll make right now, I think that there are so many companies out there. If I didn't mention it before, there's about 1,700 companies, TSX, TSXV. Two-thirds of those are in the junior mining, let's call it, or material space.

30:58 How does 1 differentiate that? How do you find out what to invest in, right? There's too many companies chasing too few dollars, right? So that, and we all knew who they were, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago. You can make that phone call, you're doing a financing, you know, you can get 2 million here, 3 million there, 5 million there, and you build your book around that core source of those investors. And a lot of those investors have disappeared for various reasons. And you have a new investor community. And then you've got the whole new generation, which has had, you know, not just mining and oil and gas, if you're a Canadian investor, you have mining, oil and gas, and you've got financials, and outside of that, you don't have a whole lot, maybe a bit of tech. They have so much to choose from globally now, right? Like we can go into this for hours, but you have crypto, obviously, right? You had cannabis, which is now making a resurgence. You've had psychedelics. You have all these other areas where that next generation has been putting their dollars.

31:52 And let's face it, in some of these larger tech names, they're winning. And so how do you attract that investor back to the material space, right? And again, the environment's changed, so your communication has to change, your message has to change. And we should get into this discussion too, is what's going to skate those investors back into our sector? Because right now, Terry and I got a stat from a friend yesterday, right? Less than 2% of S&P is in the material space. Virtually 0 of the NASDAQ is, right? You're talking almost $80 trillion that is not in the space. And so even if a finite amount of that gets back into the space, the space will move. So from the investor standpoint, I think it's much more difficult. As you said, someone's going to Google what material or gold company shall I invest in, and you're going to get a few hundred companies come up. Walk down the aisles of PDAC, you're walking down the aisle and you're like, oh my God, all these companies, they're all very similar.

32:56 How do you differentiate? And we should get into that a little bit too, because Power Nickel's 1, Weichel's 1 that I think will come out the other side, both of these companies, along with obviously there's a few others. But there's a number of these companies that aren't going to make it or are going to have to merge in with others. And that will, again, provide the investor with you want to make sure you're finding the right company to invest in as this sector starts to come around again. And this is a perfect time right now as gold's breaking through 2200 and other commodities are moving. The equities are at their furthest point gap right now between the commodity and where the stocks are. So Once this thing starts to move, there should be a very big move, but you want to make sure that you're in the right companies that have the right shareholder base, the right communication, the right CEO, the right asset, the right jurisdiction, all these things that matter that because that's where you're going to make your money off this next move. And hopefully I didn't blabber on too long, but I'll leave some for Terry to talk about. Oh, that's perfect. And yeah, Terry, on the same topic on trends and capital markets. Yeah, you know, I think, I mean, I've been pretty public about one of the trends that we've focused on and that's been the naked short problem.

34:03 And I feel like, you know, one of my lessons over the 3 or 4 years I've been working on that issue is that naked shorting is such a bad term. I mean, it brings lots of different things to people's minds. If you've never heard of naked shorting, you're thinking somebody's getting naked. I don't know, you're thinking something. But really it's counterfeit shares. That's what happens on a naked short. And we've learned some things in the last while. Next week, tomorrow we'll actually be posting an interview I just did before I came on here for Save Canadian Mining. It's about focusing on 1 thing. It's about banning the bots because I think a fundamental principle of life where you just, all people are created equal.

34:51 And it should be the same in investing, you know, like my investment rights should be the same as Paul's, same as Romeo's, should be the same as AGF, or, you know, pick a fund, you know, or a pension fund. But that's not the way it works in Canada today. There are people with rights and benefits that we don't have, and that's gotta stop. It's people with short-exempt status, And we'll get into that more tomorrow when you watch this video. But the principle is that one of the big problems about, the reason why investors have fled our market is because they're not making money. You know what I mean? But for some very, very exceptional companies with exceptional discoveries, that even despite all the barriers to resistance, they're so amazing that they've made money. But there's a lot of great companies there who've done a lot of great work that ordinarily would have transformed their valuations several times, okay? Power Nickel's one of them, White Coal's another.

36:01 But they have not moved in these markets because of the regulatory issues of the very poor structure of the Canadian capital markets. Now that's scary as an investor to hear that because he thinks, well, Why would I want to be involved with that situation? And that's why many of them have left. But the reason why they want to wake up and listen, and why I've been telling people since Vancouver to get off half your wallet now, and they'll be buying the white golds and the power nickels and the ones you've identified, Or at worst, buy good mining funds. Buy BT Global, buy Palace Capital, buy McKinsey, buy CI. These are great fund managers. They will invest your money well. What I've said to people in Vancouver, and I said it again at PDAC, is that, you know what happens? The best time to invest in a market is when it's bad and going to less bad. That's your best move.

37:00 You're gonna get a double overnight, a triple in 45 days. I've seen this many, many times. And I've watched this company, I'm sure Paul has watched many companies where you know you like the management team, you like the boss, you like everything, but you think, yeah, but it might get cheaper. You know? And you're thinking the chart looks like crap, you know, I'm not gonna get into this bad chart. And so you don't buy, because you're smarter than these guys, right? And then all of a sudden you wake up, boom, this thing's doubled. And you took your eye off the ball for a while. And you know what happens? Because I've done this. I never can get into a deal after it's doubled. I just don't have that in my mentality, something wrong with me. But I just, and that thing will run and be a 10 bagger because that was the potential that drew you to in the first place.

37:45 But once you've missed that first double when you're aware of it, psychologically you can't get in. So what I'm saying to people because I know the people are listening in 6 are serious investors they're watching a lot of companies okay and they're sitting on the sidelines and you're sitting on your wallet and I'm telling you we're gonna change the world with this ban the bots program that's gonna happen and and and this thing is so egregious this markets are so oversold it's so disgusting it's gonna go from bad which it is today to less bad and you're gonna miss that move. And you're gonna compound that error by not getting involved in, okay? So I'm telling you, listen to me. Get into the market now, find the deals you like if you've got the courage to invest in the bad charts, okay?

38:33 But of course, do your due diligence, like the management teams, like the deposit, like the commodity, find the right ones that are right for you. And if you can't do that, if that's still too much, then invest in the mining funds, because they will win, okay? And you will win too. And I really think it's that's just fundamental right now, because that's the big macro trend we got to deal with first, it's capital access, capital access has to come back for the stocks to, to really rocket. And I believe those days are going to come because it's so oversold right now. You know, the old Rick rule, the cure for all prices is low prices. It's about to happen. I appreciate that. And while we're on sort of the same topic, Paul, As you mentioned, you walk through the halls of P-DECK, there's hundreds and hundreds of exploration stories.

39:20 Terry, like you said, people are making their bets, looking at the companies that they like. What should a shrewd investor be looking for in an exploration story? What are the aspects that investors should do their due diligence on and make sure they know before they start making those bets on which of these hundreds and hundreds of companies make sense. Paul, I'll throw it to you first, if you don't mind. Sure, and I guess maybe during this we can give our pitch because I'm looking at the clock, we're probably getting tied up. So look, and I'm sure Terry will say the same thing, what investors should look for when they're looking. 1, he mentioned commodities. So you want to pick your commodity or pick a couple of commodities, okay? Jurisdiction, which has always mattered. Jurisdiction is going to matter more and more and more as we go forward. And we all saw what's gone on in the world over the last few years. You want to make sure you're in a country that has a rule of law.

40:06 Then you want to find the right asset. And the asset, whatever commodity that is, you want to make sure that it's in the right location be it from infrastructure standpoint or from where they found the same commodity before, right? So for white gold, for example, in the Yukon, well, they've been mining for gold in the Yukon for 125 years, right? And the placer miners pulled this out. Well, the gold came from somewhere, it didn't fall out of the sky. So Sean Ryan developed a way of finding it in the ground. And he discovered, obviously, gold and sado, which is part of white gold and coffee, which is Dumont currently, and the like. So you look for jurisdiction, commodity, the asset, management team. Have they made money before? Have they been transparent? All the things we talked about over the last half hour, right? Find those teams that, you know, don't lie, don't promote for no reason.

40:56 They over deliver and under promise. They are, again, honest, open, where you can buy in knowing that you're not getting bamboozled for something. Those for me would be the number 1 things. Again, jurisdiction management asset. You want to make sure there are good shareholders. Back to Terry's point now, where these naked shorts and these bots, they're not even shareholders, right? They're just detrimental to every company, right? White Gold's lucky enough to have Ignico as a 19.9 holder, Kinross just under 15, and of course the Power 1 group at just under 20% or so. So when you have a supportive shareholder base, financings are much easier because you just, you know, half your financing is done before you've even started, right? So that's a great way to make sure the company is financeable and that their balance sheet is good and they're good stewards of capital.

41:52 And I'll pass this to Terry and I'll just talk about that and then maybe we can do our company pitch after unless you want me to do 30 seconds right now. No, no, we'll do the straight pitches right after. So yeah, go for it, Terry. So I'd like to echo everything Paul said. A couple of other things, I would say alignment. One of the key things I look at when I'm investing in companies is is management aligned with my interests? Do they have skin in the game? Have they evidenced that recently? I've seen deals where one of the questions I ask is, who owns the royalty? Because if the management team owns the royalty, that gets a bit dodgy. It's not 100% dodgy all the time, but 90% of the time, I'd say. So look for alignment. You know, you want to make sure they have skin in the game and it's being evidenced in recent fashion that they're committed to the cause.

42:45 The other thing I think is, you know, it touches somewhat on the jurisdiction thing. I really believe that's so key these days. It's also community support. So, you know, have they done the right things ESG wise? Do they have a good relationship with the first nations if you're working in Canada, you know, because there's certain jurisdictions and certain issuers that, you know, have not done that, you know, and they may have great assets, but they may never get produced because of that approach. So you have to be careful about that. So that's just one of those things that hey, ask that question. See what management is saying about that. It's a big, it's an important issue. And then finally, I'm a big believer in grade. You know what I mean?

43:34 It doesn't matter what commodity it is, whatever commodity you're in, generally speaking, as a rule of thumb, I'm investing in better grade versus worse grade. I don't care how much you got bulk. Everyone say, yeah, it can get done. And it's like, but the capital costs are, you know, and we all know the capital costs and these things, if it starts at X ends at 1 and a half X, you know, and that's a lot worse than these big CapEx projects. And if great can't bring you on side, it's trouble. So again, you know, all the things Paul said, I think alignment, the ESG, where you're at on that side, to make sure that you can go forward the thing, and then great. I appreciate that. I hope the investors in the room are taking notes. But now I'll give you both an opportunity really to just tell the folks in the room why they should take a look at the security you're representing.

44:26 Paul, I'll give you a start here. Sure. I'll be brief. Again, I was attracted to White Gold because of so many factors. So for those of you who don't know the White Gold story, it's about a 60 million market cap company. The asset is one of the, it is the largest land package in that whole area, south of Dawson, in the White Gold area of the Yukon, where you have Newmont right now with coffee and Western Copper's there with casino. So a lot of the big wheels are there. I mentioned Agnico being a shareholder as well as Kinross. There's just over 2 million ounces there. And as Terry just talked about grade, Open Pit at 2 grams plus. Now you're talking good grades, good jurisdiction, great economics when the economics come out, great shareholder base.

45:16 It's an amazing story of collaboration. The company was formed in 2016 and again, Sean Ryan, who's a legendary prospector out in the Yukon, he found all of these deposits, and they ended up in various other companies, and then a lot of them rolled right back in together, and that's what formed white gold, which is why there's 350,000 hectares. There are numerous deposits on this property. So from an investment standpoint, why I'm really attracted to the story and why I think the investors should is for all the things I mentioned before, the management's done it before, made money for investors before, but you have here a 2 million plus ounce resource already. You have expiration upside in multiple locations where grade is exceptional. I mentioned the existing resource has 2 grams plus of 2 million ounces. The recent discovery at Betty Ford, just down to the southeast of us a little bit, the first drill hole plunged 50m at 3.5g.

46:09 There's another drill hole of 20m at 3.5g. These are real grades and this is from surface. What you have here is an opportunity to invest in a story where I think they'll over time, there'll be monetization of certain assets within the portfolio because it's massive again, 350,000 hectares with an opportunity to have ExploreCo continue on. So there's a way to make money and continue on in the exploration side of what is an amazing gold district that is very young still. It's only been about 25 years of a new age or current exploration after all the plaster guys did it in the Klondike. So I'll leave it there. It's a great story and I'll pass it now over to Terry. Paul, I guess I gotta get out and buy some more stocks.

46:56 The, you know, obviously that White Gold's, you know, a really interesting play because you've got the core asset and obviously all that land package and people that have done it time and time again. So that's a trifecta, so that's really good. For Power Nickel, market cap Today is around 30 million. Obviously with the name Power Nickel, we're about nickel, but nickel in a lot of people's minds is sort of, There's a lot of negative nickel news out there. And so people think, oh, you know, you've missed your window, but they don't understand that the nickel market nor do they understand power nickel. So before I get into the why nickel story, which I will, I'm going to tell you that we've made an important PGM discovery.

47:49 Paul was talking about 2 grams a ton for 2 million ounces. We're gonna be like, our discovery hole was probably closer to 35 grams, over 8 meters. I suspect we're gonna have, and this is obviously a PGM, so it's maybe half it. So think about 17 and a half, but still that's huge. And I, you know, what's neat about that is you can, If you get that type of grade, you can block off a resource very quickly. And that's what we're doing. So this is gonna be, think of what happened at Red Lake when they hit the high grade stuff. That's what's happening for us right now. That's gonna come out. So to me, that would be the reason to buy today because we've told people this is material that's coming. That would be the number 1 reason. Second is, all nickel is not created equal, okay? North American nickel is gonna be worth a boatload more than nickel anywhere else in the world.

48:47 As evidence for that, I point to Samsung's investment in Canada Nickel, okay? Canada Nickel just got like a $20 million-ish US investment from Samsung, plus they have an option to invest another 110 million, I think, to get 10% in the project, which would value the thing 5 times more than what the price is today. And they're going to buy a billion dollars worth of nickel a year for them. I know this because I've talked to Samsung. I was in Korea just a few weeks ago. And that's just 20% of what they need in North America. And there's POSCO, and there's LG, and there's like, just the Koreans need equal amounts to what Samsung needs, those 2 companies, plus other companies.

49:33 And then you've got the Indian companies. I mean, if you're a vehicle manufacturer in the United States, you need to source North American nickel, or processed, either found here or processed here. So there's extreme shortages on this. So not all nickels created equal. Plus in our case, we have a company called CVMR that's doing a feasibility study on us right now with a full intention, you know, as we prove this out, that to build a refinery In North America to process our nickel and to turn it into nickel powder So nickel powder sells between 60 and 80 thousand dollars a ton London nickel 16,000 dollars a ton. You want to be a refiner not a minor? Okay power nickel is going to become Refiner, okay, that's going to happen, and I predict that to happen.

50:27 But as a partner with our partner CVMR. So, you know, we've got this transformative PGM discovery. We're trading at 10 cents on the dollar, I believe on what we've already discovered and posted 43-101 on Nickel. And now we've got the business development of moving into the refinery business. I mean, it's a no brainer, but do your due diligence. But to me, people are going to wake up on the nickel space, especially North American nickels, say, because I said, you're where were you in uranium in 2020 when it started. Okay. And now, wouldn't you all like to be in those uranium stocks today? That's where Nickel's at. Wake up. Appreciate it very much. Now, we've got time for a couple of audience questions. One quick 1 and then 1 political 1 that might get us cancelled. So I'll start with the first one.

51:20 Gerbert asks, do you get more investor calls during bull or bear markets? And I know what time those calls are probably more fun, but curious, Terry, when are you getting more inflow of communication from investors? Yeah, I think you get more calls in a bull market. You know, I'd have to say bear market. You look at the phone, it's not ringing. That'd be my perspective. That's what I felt. Fair enough. Go for it, Paul. Yeah, I would agree. Not only do you get more phone calls in a bull market, you get more lunch invites and hockey game requests and things like that. And in a bear market, you still get the calls, and some of them are supportive from the shareholders that know that you're doing the right thing. And then the others are, you know, why on earth is your stock down on the back of such a good news release?

52:13 And I think Terry and I touched on several reasons why that is the case in this current environment. But yeah, I'd say you certainly get a lot better calls during bull market, but you get more of them too. But that's where you should be making more outbound calls during the bear market as a management team to make sure that you are talking to those investors so they're not just running away from your story and you're not being quiet. I do think that's key. Broader question. Now, feel free to answer this to whatever degree you'd like. This is on the macro. CJG asks, how do you think the American election this November, we can talk about Congress or the presidential election, will influence gold markets, but we can talk about metals markets generally. I can start with you, Terry.

53:00 You know what, I mean, again, who can predict elections these days, it just doesn't seem possible. But I look at 1 thing we know, governments are addicted to spending. Doesn't matter if the Republicans are in or the Democrats are in, they're spending more money. So it's gotta be good for gold, okay? I mean, I don't see any scenario where gold is not worth a lot more money. Okay, that's just me. And I think all precious metals and all commodities, you know, really. And then you get into the, I guess, the greening of the economy, the carbon thing, and the whole electric thing. And I believe if there's a Republican thing, There'll be less of an emphasis on that.

53:47 And if there's a democratic win, there'll be more of an emphasis on that. But under no conditions do I see it being completely removed. You know, so what I see and honestly, I never like, you know, for power nickel. We invested in this before the EV was really a big thing because nickel was always a desirable commodity to discover. The world's most valuable mine is a nickel mine. It's called Norilsk, it's in Russia. It's the only trillion dollar deposit in the world. So big nickels always paid off, didn't it? So, you know, what we're finding in nickel, especially, you know, when you look at nickel powders, it's going into, obviously, unfortunately, to defense, you know, in the missile sectors, and it goes into 3D printing, which is growing like mad.

54:35 That sector is growing 29% a year, nickel powder dust. So there's sectors within sectors. So I think that's important. And I think the commodities overall are going to do well. Like we can't, you know, we can't make an art. Our electric system is so old that there's no way we could, deliver on these promises of being, you know, no combustion engines in 2030 or 2035 or whatever their dates are, it's just not possible. So I've always thought that, look, right now, I think on the greening side, the EVs, on nickel is maybe 10%. They're talking for it to go up to 50. Hey, we got to 20, it would be ridiculously powerful for nickel and we'll need a lot of nickel mines. And copper, copper is gonna do great. I mean, it's hard not to look at the sector and this is why the macro sector is rarely looked this good. I think for commodities. Yeah, if there's a recession, you know, things will come down for a little bit. But at the end of the day, these things have such a long lead time to make a discovery and turn it into a mine. You know, You can't suppress this for long. It's really going to come.

55:49 Appreciate that. Paul's last question before we'll wrap up today. What do you think November is going to mean for gold markets? So definitely what Terry said, right? They're going to spend. Governments spend. The other thing that we're coming off of, hopefully for all of us sooner rather than later, is an interest rate environment that is at least flattened and will likely come down. And with that, you're going to see weakness in the US dollar, which again should be great for gold. I've heard gold anywhere this year from 23, 2400 all the way up to 3000. Right. So again, who knows where it's going to go. But I think in that environment, there will be an inflection point that will bring the investor dollars back into the materials commodity square. And as Terry said, I think most of them missed the first 100%.

56:35 And if you're smart, you're going to get in now. So you can catch the next 900 and 1000% that will happen on the back of that turn. And the other is, I think, you know, regardless of November, I think that, you know, jurisdiction, I'll come back to that for a second, because look at what's going on globally right now. And I'm sure both sides, be it Biden or Trump or hopefully someone else, but it doesn't look like it's going to happen, that America is going to come first. And they will make sure that whatever they say right now, that Made in America, and they'll support the countries that support America and all this around. And again, look at the EV spender, look at the spend right now that they're focused on for, you know, Lithium and the like. Right. So I think the commodity square in general will have a better environment, regardless of which way the election goes south of the border.

57:28 And again, it's up in the air, you know, and people can like 1 character or the other, white 1 party or the other, but I think the outcome at the end of the day won't be that much different. No, appreciate that. I know election guessing these days feels like advanced crystal ball gazing. So I appreciate you guys peering into the crystal ball with me. Thanks everyone for joining today. I think this was a great chat. If you think of a perfect question right after the event ends, as I often do, please do respond directly to the invite to the event. I'll make sure that the relevant team gets back to you. But Paul, Terry, this was a great chat. Thanks so much for joining me today. Thanks, Jess. All of you