Contango Ore Intersects 60.22 g/t Gold over 5.92 meters At Lucky Shot

0:03 Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where you're signing in from today. I know we've got a big crowd, so I really appreciate all of your time today as we discuss some recent news for Contango. I've got with me today Dave Larimer with his fresh title at Contango War, Vice President of Exploration, and Rick Van Duyne, the company's CEO. Gentlemen, how are you today? Doing good. The gold's doing well, so we're happy. Well, that's all good news. And I know there was a Hawaiian shirt theme today. I tried my best with a t-shirt with a Hawaiian shirt, So I'm trying at least to fit in with you gentlemen for today's conversation. We do have quite a big crowd and some exciting geo news at Lucky Shot. So I wanna get through the housekeeping real quick so I can get into the good stuff. There is a chat button on the bottom right of the screen. Please use it at any time during today's event. I would love to hear from you. We'll try to get to as many questions as we can. Hopefully I'll cover a lot during the questions that I have. But anything I'm missing, please do bug me there. I'll try to get to as many questions as I can today.

0:58 Only other thing that I'll say is Today's event is being recorded. We'll be available for replay before the end of the day, Eastern time. We both in our YouTube channel, but also right in your inbox, especially for the folks in the room. But enough boring stuff, Rick, I wanna talk right away with the headline number, 60 grams over nearly 6 meters from LSU 25031

1:17 with a sub interval pushing almost 295 grams. So it's a bit of a wow number there for sure. Walk us through what you're seeing with this vein and why the orientation matters specifically. Yeah. So we've named this the KM vein after Keith Miles, one of our employees who's been having some surgery done. So we wanted to honor him with that. But it is a different orientation. And of course, this is the, you know, sort of the first series of drill results from this campaign. And so we're very excited about this is a new discovery, a legitimate new discovery. It's an orientation. It's at right angles to the Lucky Shot shear system. We could nerd out and have a discussion on why that's an important thing, but the fact is it's different.

2:10 And what excites me about it, besides the structural connotations of what this means, is that it's not something that any of the historic mining would have even known about, because it's down underneath them. Where they mined historically is above us, and they never drilled holes down below the system. They mined the system, it outcropped on the surface, they went in on the surface, they mined it and they just kept following it down. And of course, the government shut them down in 1942. So that's what's really exciting about this. It's a new orientation. We understand what it means geologically from a structural standpoint in a general sense. We've got to do a lot more drilling to really see if it goes anywhere and how extensive it is.

2:58 But when you've got grades like this, 1, it shows the strength of the system and 2, the fact that we've seen it in multiple holes now gives us some hope that this thing will continue. You don't see big strong veins like that just disappear generally. So now it is right next to the Lucky Shot Fault, which offsets it. And that makes it difficult to drill on the west side of the fault. And We're having some discussions on how to attack that. And Dave will probably maybe talk about that a little bit.

3:37 On the east side of the fault, Lucky Shot Faults, it's a relatively high angle fault structure. We know where it is, But what does it mean on the east side of the fault? Well, we got to figure out how much displacement there is on the Lucky Shot fault. So work to do, but a very exciting discovery. And that's separate from all the good results in the known part of the system, the Lucky Shot shear system, and Dave will talk more about that. But not only are we seeing what I used to call the hanging wall quartz vein, the main Lucky Shot vein, which we refer to now as the L2, We're also seeing an L1 and a number of other L1A, B, C, we'll have an alphabet of other veins that we're seeing there. So very positive, very, very positive for an initial release on what amounts to about 12% of the drilling plan for this year.

4:34 Awesome. No, I do find the numbers certainly exciting. And Dave, I want to get you in here because you now hit the campaign from 3 different drill stations. When you overlay those intercepts with the exposure you mapped in the West Drift last fall. The 139 grams per tonne Gold over 1.5 metres in channel sample. How's the structural picture coming together? Is this thing open?

4:57 Yep, yep, definitely. This definitely continues what Rick was saying. You know, I would like to back up briefly when we originally mapped and did those channel samples We were all scratching our heads It was totally contradictory to what we kind of the known kind of the structures that we're looking at So being able to map that to drill it and get these intercepts and having great coming back it's really starting to clear up that structural picture. It's starting to snap together in little pieces together like little Lego blocks. We understand this piece, we now understand the offset, so now we can start piecing the rest of this together. What I really like about the KM vane is it's really proven that it's not just a one single high grade pod. You know, it is discrete, it's shallowly dipping, it's mineralized, but it's showing us that these are more distinct veins within the L2 system together that we can target, that we can pull out. As far as openness, Yep, it is open. We consider it open until we've drilled it out, up dip, down dip, along strike. And what we're doing now is systematically getting our drill plans to see how we step off this vein, continue pulling those expansions, where we hit the fault, where we know that offset is, and drill it across the fault and offset it, and just basically keep expanding this out as we go.

6:03 Awesome. No, I appreciate that. One thing that jumps out on the table, Visible Gold, obviously always sexy, showing up across multiple veins and multiple holes. So, Dave, from a geo standpoint, What does that tell you about the plumbing system at Lucky Shot when you're seeing visible Gold in the L1C, the L2 and now the KM as well? Absolutely. I will caveat, these are definitely hydrothermal systems and plumbing is key. How are we pushing

6:29 fluids? How are we getting that dilated space? So what we're seeing with the visible Gold in the L1C, the L2, the L1 and the KN veins is that these are all linked. We have that connectivity of fluids that can be passed through and we have repeatability of fluids that's been able to generate our coarse Gold. They're just not isolated systems or a single fluid pulse that just might manage to hit 1 through there. It is a multi-vein stack network gold bearing system. This is very interesting and gets you really fired up because it gives you extra exploration potential now. When you're doing exploration, you generally find what you're looking for. If we were just trying to target the L2 vein system, we'd probably find that. But part of our mentality at Katango in drilling this is we've got to keep our eyes open geologically. We've got to look at those orientations of our veins. And this is what opens up these other variations in these other veins. They'll 1 be okay She's sitting right underneath it. And now we know the KM's a different one, but they're stacked together And it's all coming together. It's great to see the visible gold out there on this great stuff I do just want to caveat quickly that VG is qualitative.

7:34 You know, we systematically log the core, we log where it is, but it doesn't 100% guarantee, you know, rate, continuity, metallurgy, economics. We let the assay speak for those. But the VG is Great to see in the core and a great indicator for us geologists that we're on the right system, in the right plumbing, and we're in that system. No, awesome. And Rick, one thing I noticed you talk about, and I'm always curious about terms like this, so I'd love if you could just give us some more information. I noticed you talk about using photon assay. Can you explain what that is and how it's adding value?

8:06 Yeah, so photon assay is a relatively new type of an assay. It was developed in Australia by a group there. And it's a handheld XRF. It's basically a very, very large 1 that would fit in a typical living room size piece of equipment. It's a big piece of equipment. It is x-ray fluorescent, so it does have, you're using a lot of x-rays, so you have to have a safety thing around it. So it's shielded basically. And which was part of why it's so big. And it's so it is basically an XRF. And the advantage of this type of assay, as opposed to a typical gravimetric assay, is that you don't destroy the sample.

9:00 And so you have that sample forever as a reference. It's a much bigger sample. So we're drilling HQ core, which is about that size. We're sampling the entire core. So it's a large sample with the department. They're kind of the rule of thumb, the larger the sample, the more accurate it is. So if you split the core, that's half as accurate as a whole core.

9:27 And if you quarter the core, et cetera, you take half a core and then you take a 50 gram sample from that, you're not sampling a lot of the core. This samples the entire core. So it's a much more accurate sample, which is exactly what you want for a gold assay, particularly when you have lots of VG, like we've been talking about, the course, you know, relatively course-free gold. You wanna, you know, if you sampled only half the core, did you get that piece of VG or did you not get it? And what is the real number? Well, now you've got a better assay. So it's better quality, it's a bigger sample, so it's more representative of what you're drilling. And you get to have that, keep that sample. It's not, You haven't used it up in a fire assay.

10:18 It's, you can go back and look at it again and do more testing on metallurgical testing or crushed grinding testing, whatever you need to do. Great, no, I appreciate that. I always love those nerdy explanations, help me. So I appreciate it. And in the same vein, actually, Dave, I see that you noted that intercepts do not represent true widths. Can you just tell us what that means and how that's going to be addressed going forward? Absolutely. I mean, true widths are something we will define down in the future. It's actually the true width of that vein with respect to common morality and how we want to mine it. Right now, our program is to be able to tap the veins, find the veins, and basically it's a geometry fight. We want to increase our knowledge in that geometry. So right now we're actually just reporting true intercept lengths because we don't have 100% continuity of what that looks like. And what I mean is as we get increased drill hole density into our vein solids, these veins roll and they kind of

11:16 come up and down and they come around. So by being able to drill them with these tighter drill holes that we're doing now with repeated fans going down the drift, we're increasing our knowledge and confirming our geology through there. And as this program progresses, It's systematically designed to do this. As we progress through this system, we'll have the high enough confidence that when we come back and do our estimate, our resource estimate in our TRS, we'll be able to confirm what these true geometries are, these true thicknesses. Right now, drill hole lengths, some could be smaller, some could be bigger based on that orientation. But you want to put this all together with your highest confirmed knowledge, and that's going to be at the end of this program when we put out our next resource estimate for the main. Awesome, I appreciate that extra context. Rick, I got one for you.

12:01 I know I've heard you be called Mr. DSO at conferences before. I like it. And I know you've been pretty deliberate about framing Lucky Shot as a direct shipping or play for folks understand the economics of high grade underground gold. Can you talk about what DSO means in just practical terms for a project

12:19 like this, what it takes off the table from a CapEx perspective? Yeah, so for us, DSO really starts with grade. You have to have a good grade deposit. The really kind of 3 criteria is we look for in evaluating projects that fit the DSO. And certainly, obviously open pit versus underground is different. But For an underground mine, you know, something that we have a 14 and a half gram current resource for the 110,000 ounces of resource we have, that's good grade for an underground mine. Sure. And so that's first criteria. Second criteria is location relative to existing infrastructure. So road, rail,

13:06 and a port or access to tidewater, because that's how you move your product. And your transportation cost is the next most important thing if you're not going to build your own mill and tailings facility, which is the whole point of DSO. And then the third is proximity to infrastructure. Lucky shot, as an example, is 20 miles from the railroad. The railroad goes to the Port of Stewart down to the South, which is a Pacific Ocean port. It's all set up for exporting, or it can go up to Fairbanks and to the Fort Knox, close to the Fort Knox operation. So

13:45 that's the second criteria, the proximity to transportation. And then the third is how easy is it to permit the project? And by far the easiest land to permit on, I'd say anywhere in the United States is private land. And Lucky Shots on private property, it's fact it's already permitted for mining. We have a valid mining permit. And so long as we don't build a mill and a tailing facility and a big power plant, we don't really envision that we need any more permits to mine and put rocks in a box, literally, and put them on a truck, haul them down to the railroad. Railroad can go north or south.

14:32 And so we don't need additional permits to that. These are boxes, steel boxes. They're a little different geometry than a seed can, but they're roughly the size of the seed can. It's not quite as tall. They hold about 25 tons of ore. They have a lid that goes on them so you don't have fugitive dust issues. You're not forming stockpiles in different places so you don't have contamination issues related to forming stockpiles. They basically just load with a forklift or an overhead crane, just depending on your setup. So simple, and we like simple. Perfect. Simple is great. Now, Dave, I'll throw to you for a second. I know you're drilling from 4 stations along the West Drift, kind of working your way East. How are L1B and L1C vanes behaving relative to what was modeled in that 2023 technical report? Are you kind of seeing them where you expected and are they carrying grade?

15:27 Yep, we're definitely seeing what we expected. I'd almost say it's a little more than what I expected. And what I mean by that is we had a higher confidence in the L2 vein, that's our primary target in there. It's the larger one, it's the primary target. We designed our drilling program off of that. We knew the L1B, the L1C veins were there, but they were very, very under-drilled in the original model. So when we went through there, being able to target coming across through those, we were able to target not only the L2, but the L1B, and we continually got some good intercepts with it. And as we stepped through the stations, as I talked about, the geometry's really, really firming up on there, and being able to pull together through all those. And additionally, as we step across, now we're starting to get those continuity through further and further, and we're seeing those great continuities exist. And we're seeing that this is a multi-system that does connect all together. So it's actually a little better than my expectations and we're really excited about how we're going to progress with these sub-stack veins underneath the L2 there.

16:25 Awesome. Rick, I want to zoom out and talk about the whole exploration program for a second because I know you got 20 holes done and roughly 40 more, I think, planned through April. So when you think about what the second half of this program needs to accomplish to set up the feasibility study, which is on schedule, I think, for H1 2027, What boxes do you still need to tick? Yeah, so as I mentioned earlier, about 12% done with the overall program, roughly 18,000 meter program. Most of that will be underground, these relatively short holes that Dave and the team have been drilling in what we call sort of the fan shots, you know, starting from the underground drift and drilling near vertical, near horizontal.

17:10 So we've got, it's a four-step program plus we've got some drilling on the surface we want to do up on the Coleman and basically to down, drill down dip from the Coleman to sort of tag it into the level that we're working on from the Lucky Shot, or sorry, the NSERV's level where we're currently working. So those are the, you know, the different programs that we'll have going over the course of the summer. This next, the 40 holes that you mentioned, by April we should be wrapped up with that. Then Chris Kennedy, our mine manager, will get the underground mining team to build some new tunnels for us to continue to drill. And then in addition to the drilling and the assay, the photon assays that we're receiving and the modelling that goes on to develop a mineral resource estimate,

18:02 we will be collecting a lot of geotechnical information and a lot of metallurgical information. Now, the metallurgy here is relatively simple. I mean, in the range of complex metallurgy to simple metallurgy, This is definitely on the simple end of the spectrum because it's basically Quartz, Free Gold and a very small amount of Sulfide. I think the average Sulfide content is a percent or so. So That's a really simple ore to process. And there's lots of places it can go. But that's the other information. Of course, we're underground. So from a mining standpoint, we're actually mining. So we're gathering lots of geotechnical information as we're doing that. We know where the fault structures are, because that's in addition to, you know, worrying about where the veins are, we also want to know where the faults are. So we know where we have to do a little extra work from a safety standpoint.

19:02 The fault zones are what are broken up. And so you have to deal with that rock a little differently, just more bolting and some screening and things like that. So we're getting good hands-on experience as we're doing the development work to create the exploration tunnels.

19:19 And I think by this time next year, we'll be in the middle of doing our feasibility study. Awesome. Hey, great. Dave, I had one question that's just something that struck me. The intercepts in the L1C are interesting. You've got that 82 gram hit, an LSC 26041, 64 gram hit in 044, and a 28 gram hit in 045. Now they're narrow for sure, but they're also scorching. So is the L1C becoming a more significant part of the resource story than originally anticipated in your eyes? I would say, to initially answer your question, yes. I would tie in the L1C, the L1B, and the KM lanes. Again, targets of opportunity for us right now, how we can pull those off. You know, we specifically designed our program for the L2, and this is just the icing on the cake. You know, as the system evolves, as we step east through here.

20:15 With some of the skinnier ones, I'm not too concerned about the skinnier intercepts. You know, we've got screaming grade, you know, and grade has came through there. It is interesting to note, hey, how our plumbing system comes. A lot of these systems and this type of deposits,

20:27 pinch, swell, pinch, swell through there as the fluids pass through there. Sometimes your skinnier intercepts have higher grades, they've been concentrated through there, might not have been diluted out as much. But that 1 B and C are definitely very high on our priority list, and we'll have a very, very strong eye on looking at that, those intercepts, that variography, when we put our next technical report together on our mineral resource estimate of the Lucky Shot side. Yeah, awesome. I just want to jump in here a second. Dave was the chief mine geologist at Pogo Mine and Chris was the mine manager at Pogo Mine. So these guys have a lot of experience in these kinds of systems. So, and it's very practical experience of this is how you mine these things. And so obviously that's why they're working for us now.

21:17 Always helps to pick those guys up, that makes sense. Now I know the fact that you're drilling underground from established infrastructure rather than surface, I'd love if either of you can jump in on this. Talk about the advantage that gives you in terms of drill orientation and targeting those steeply dipping structures. How much more efficient is this compared to trying to hit them from surface? I'll definitely start off with this. It is extremely more efficient. Underground drilling is great because you're closer to your target. You actually have better orientations of how you can attack your target through that drift. Additionally, you have better control. Not only control of how tight you want to place your intercept pierce points through there, but also control on the deviation of the drill holes. You're not as long, you got better surveys, you got better control on your drilling to optimize where that intercept is. Additionally, it's not cheaper at the end of the

22:11 day, but you're not paying what we like to call that distance tax. We're not drilling 600 meters, you know, down to intercept it. We're drilling shorter holes to get what we want. What this also does for this is it also helps us speed up our program. With these shorter drill holes, we can turn around and crank out holes, you know, 1 per day, you know, 1 per shift. Our drillers, high tech, have done a great job being able to sustain this rate, drill these holes, get it to our geologists and our core shack, they can log it. And our logging technique right now is digital. So we log on our tablets, it goes right to our internet connectivity. So that gets uploaded and then I can refresh, our project geologists down there can refresh and we can see in near time, within a couple of hours of what we drill, how that model's behaving. And that data that we can look at can next influence those next drill holes. Hey, I need to shallow this drill hole up. Hey, we need to cock it over to the right 15 degrees or pushing another 15 meters. So that just all increases our efficiency.

23:06 While we have a similar program on the surface, they're longer holes, longer time, helicopter supported. It's definitely more efficient to drill these veins with this underground, with the development we have right now. Great, no, no, no, really appreciate that. I just wanted, I'll just add that, you know, in addition to when the surface drilling, you've got, you know, helicopter logistics and weather logistics and all the other things that can affect a surface program.

23:35 It's not warm underground, but it's not cold and it's not snowing and raining. And so that's a big thing. And all the thing I'll say is the back to the photon assay is It's a very efficient system because you're logging that night or the next day when you get your core, and then within a day or 2, it's going off to the assay lab. We don't have short turnarounds from the assay labs because I think everybody in the world is suffering from the same thing, that it takes a lot longer to get assays than you'd like. But it's pretty efficient. And as Dave said, it's all digital. So every day I look at what the results are and I can see them. I'm a geologist, so I can call Dave up and bug him and say, geez, hey, how come you didn't do this or whatever.

24:24 I'm sure he gets tired of hearing from you, but it's really an impressive system. Okay. One more comment on that. Drilling underground is great, like Rick said. I was worried about our drillers when I was 40 below, you know, so I went up there Hey, let's check on these guys. Make sure they're okay. I had no issues with those drillers. They're down there and t-shirts No, it's 55 degrees. There's sweat and They're doing a great job working I just turn around said not you boys are fine and walked out So underground drilling is really effective of you know And then in the summertime when it's 90 degrees outside and hot you go underground 55 degrees

25:01 nice and cool Actually sounds like perfect weather all year underground. So that's not so bad. Rick, I'm gonna ask you a question I've asked you probably 100,000 times, but every time you have news, I just wanna know how you're thinking about it. Cause you got Manchego generating cashflow, Johnson Trax hitting the portfolio, and now Lucky Shot with, in my opinion, great results advancing towards feasibility, not to mention the soon to be likely assimilated Dolly Varden Project Kitso. How the heck are we thinking about capital allocation across all these assets in the next year and a half? Yeah, obviously there's definitely a lot going on. I'd say it's very measured. And then I'll start with Moncho, where in addition to the cash flow we're getting from there, we're obviously also spending a little bit of money on exploration there. So on 100%, there's about a US$5M spend on exploration. That's actually included in our role in sustaining costs because the way that all gets accounted for is we just basically get a check from the joint venture, right?

26:02 That's the distribution that we talk about. So that pretty much running itself. At Lucky Shot or 18,000 metre program, that's roughly gonna take a year here. That's a $25 million programme. That includes the drilling that Dave's been talking about, and then the underground development work that Chris Kennedy and his team will provide the access for the drilling. And then next year, the feasibility study and the expectation that that will be a positive feasibility study, we'll develop, continue to develop the underground so that you can now start mining the resource, the reserve at that point. That's in rough numbers another $25 million. Obviously, we'll adjust these numbers as we gain more information and understand, you know, do we have a 250,000 ounce reserve or do we have a 400,000 ounce reserve? So that's a lucky shot. Johnson Tract is relatively simple in that we're, the main event there is permitting. And there's, as we've talked about before, it's the boring part of the Lausanne curve.

27:09 We are going to construct a road that goes between the campsite and the portal site. So that's something that's in the planning stages right now. And then we'll upgrade, look to upgrade camp for wintertime operations so that the following year we can operate year round when we're actually building our tunnel. This year's program is a $15 million program at Johnson Track. So, and then that leaves Kitsault, which, you know, with the acquisition of Dolly Varden, I think their cash position is in the neighborhood of 60, $70 million. So

27:49 the 50,000 metre drill program that we have planned there will largely be infill. And the first thing we're going to do in this year is complete a resource, excuse me, a resource estimate for the roughly 200,000 meters of drilling that's been done since the last resource that was done at Dali. I think Dave, your target is probably like May or sometime for wrapping that up and getting that out. And obviously that source estimate will dictate where a lot of the drilling is done. But as you know, as your heads up, a lot of it will be infill drilling to start thinking about doing an economic study. So, you know, where do we expand the resource? Where do we need some more information to infill it and, you know, get to a good quality indicated, measured indicated sort of category of resource? And, you know, these are main systems.

28:44 They're, you know, So great continuity is important. And that's a 50,000 meter program. I think it's about 20,000, sorry, 20 million. Those are Canadian. Yep, that makes sense. And this will not be the last time I ask you that question. So I appreciate you bearing with me every time. I got a second last one for Dave. I know you mentioned the geological model doesn't fully capture the structural complexity yet. With the KM vane sitting at roughly right angles to the main shear zone. Does that change how you're designing

29:20 the next phase of holes? Are you chasing this thing specifically now? What's up? Well, it definitely gives us an eye opener of what we want to look at for the future. This program was specifically designed to optimize our resource potential, you know, sticking in the lucky shot L2 vane systems as we sweep across. The discovery of the KM at that right angles and different orientations, we did our initial drilling, confirmed that, and what we're programming into our drilling now is as we step back, what are our targets of opportunities to reach down and target the down dip extensions of the KM as we continue east? We want to maintain that continuity, gear each down, tap it, maintain that we know exactly where it's at. Further, we're dividing our plan for our next phase of drilling of how we want to tack this on the up dip side to optimize the resource through there. So it is a combined approach, but we want to stay disciplined to the payoff of the program is to optimize our resource for that resource estimate next year.

30:14 Great. And Rick, what do you think are the implications for future exploration of the district from what's gone on here?

30:22 Yeah, so when we had the results from the campaign, I'm a bit of a nerd structural geologist. So Now you go back and you look at, okay, well, what's this whole system about? And this is a district that's produced a lot of alluvial Gold and a little bit of hard rock Gold, basically from 2 mines, Independence and the Lucky Shot. There's a bunch of other prospects, trenches and some short edits all over the place. I think one of the maps in the Lucky Shot section of the website has a bunch of stars on it that show, you know, somebody dug for gold here, somebody dug for gold there.

31:09 And it's significant because it's relatively accessible now. But when these guys were, When these people were digging the holes back in the day, this was a tough, you know, this was a hard slog to get to. Yeah. And, you know, we don't have, we didn't have the infrastructure, didn't exist that we do today. So when they're out there on the top of a mountain, digging a hole or digging a trench. It wasn't for nothing. They found some gold. And at the time, there were like 10,000 people all over the place out here. So there was a little town, just down from where the Lucky Shot mine is. So I'm very excited about the implications of finding multi-ounce vein orientations that none of those folks were focused on.

32:03 None of the people who are mining at Lucky Shot were focused on. I went back and looked at the Independence Mine, the other mine in the district, and they were actually mining some things in this orientation. So there's definitely a history here of discovery. And I'm excited because we, you know, we're basically controlling the district for the most part. There's a few bits and pieces here and there that we don't control, but for the most part, we have a whole district to explore long term. And we're going to start this thing out with, as I mentioned, targeting sort of a feasibility study to support a five-year underground mine plan producing 50,000 ounces of gold a year. That's not like, we're not trying to find 25 million ounces of Gold like a lot of other junior companies are going to go find.

32:56 That's not our plan. We want to make money and 50,000oz of production from high-grade veins that are running 10 to 15 grams per ton, will make a lot of money. So that's the plan. In the money game, I think that's a good game to be in, so I like that. Dave, I'm going to ask you one last question, might come up from the chat, but last one from me. And I love asking geologists this because people who aren't in the industry don't know, so you guys are adrenaline junkies, like jumpers, like Red Bull advocates. What has you most jacked up about Lucky Shot, the remaining exploration there? What has me the most jacked up is finding how these veining systems are coming together. Right, that KM vein, you know, is just a total, you know, icing on the cake. We're pulling together. That won't be the L1C, the L2s coming together through there. So I get jacked up pulling this system together. You know, I'm not as a structural nerd as Rick is.

33:56 I'm more of a geochemical nerd. But this is why, you know, this this team works well. But seeing this coming together, it gets jacked up. I'll tell you what the highlight of my day is being able to get up and go to the core shack. The drillers are pulling off the core from the night before and we're all just sitting there. All right, put it on the table, put it on the table. All right, get it down as a straight and we're running for that BG run for the mineralization. Boom, there's my intercept. All right, dive in there. Where's the goal? Okay, this is really cool. Okay, okay, we got that out of the way. All right, guys, let's get back. Okay, let's systematically log this, and then we come back, systematically log it, put it in the computers, look at the models, get all excited again, and then re-cock and do it again the next day. Awesome. Hey, lots to be excited about. That's why I like asking the question. Rick, I got one more for you, and then we'll get into the questions, both from the chat and that came in over email.

34:42 I'll ask, the market wants to know, I want to know, people texting me want to know, any updates on where you plan to send the DSO ore to be processed from like you said. Yeah, so no update at this time. So no drum roll or anything. But look, as I mentioned, we're 20 miles from the rail. The rail goes to Seward and the port of Seward goes to the world. We know there are opportunities to DSO process ores like this in Taiwan and in Mexico and in BC. We are looking at and evaluating those opportunities. We also respect our relationship with Ken Ross and the excess capacity that remains at the Fort Knox mill. So we'll definitely have a conversation there.

35:30 It doesn't make sense to have it now. It makes sense to have it when we have more of a resource defined. I guess we'll have to be a little bit patient on this, but we are working on a number of fronts and there are a number of opportunities out here. The old adage that great is king in our business, oftentimes gets forgotten because everybody wants 20 million ounces of gold. I love 20 million ounces of gold, but I actually want to get it mined while I'm still alive. We found Donlan 25 years ago and it still is in the mine. So that's the reality. We want to make money. We want to make money for our shareholders. And we think Lucky Shot's the next one to get into production.

36:16 Okay. Appreciate it very much. Now, I got 2 questions that came in over email, 1 that I know you can't answer quite as asked, but hopefully can give some clarity, and one that we've kind of gone over, but it's good to reiterate. The first one is somebody wants to know the best way, which you can't answer, on how to invest in the upcoming combined Contango, Dolly, Byrd and Silver. So if you could just speak to what that combination process will look like. Yeah, the SEC won't let me give financial advice, so I am not doing that. But just how it works, the proxy has gone out, the shareholder votes on March 17th. We should close the following week. I think 26 is the date that that's been chosen to close. And so in terms of buying shares, there's a set ratio that was fixed when we signed the agreement in December.

37:11 And it's a 0.16, was it 5, 2 shares of Contango for every share of Dolly Vartan. So, you know, there's an arbitrage that plays out always when you have an M&A transaction. Again, not giving advice, but I honestly don't think it matters which one you buy. Because they're tagged. Appreciate it. All the ratio and you can see that the ratio is, you know, plus or minus 5% every day. Yeah, appreciate it. Another question, we've kind of touched on it, but good to reiterate. Somebody just asked, when is most likely first ore produced at Lucky Shot?

37:58 So you do the drilling, And obviously it's an approximation because, hey, if Dave's and his team are, you know, the next 20 holes we drill are in the KM vein and it's sizzling again, You know, we may adjust our plan a little bit here, but the plan is a year's worth of drilling, 18,000 metres, take that drilling, do it in a mineral resource estimate, update, because it will update the 110,000 ounces that we have and we're targeting 4 to 500,000 ounces. And from there, with that mineral resource estimate, and along with metallurgy and geotech that we'll be doing, we then put a feasibility study together.

38:47 We kind of refer to it as feasibility light because it is a mine plan and a transportation plan. It's, and part of that transportation plan is where the hell is this going? Is it going up to Fort Knox? Is it going down to the sewer? Is it going over to Taiwan? Where's it going? That'll be part of that study. So obviously we'll be working in advance of that on looking at different opportunities, but it's feasibility light because it doesn't involve building a mill and a tailings facility and the big power plant to run all that. And that saves a lot of time, certainly saves a lot of time in completing a feasibility study, because as I said, it's a mine plan and a transportation plan. Perfect. Now, I've got a number of questions that all cover a similar topic. I encourage everyone in the chat, if you don't think I've covered your exact question perfectly, please let me know because I'm eager to get this clarified.

39:38 Because there are some people in the chat asking about share count generally. And I think to sum them up, there are concerns of increasing authorized shares from 14 million to 250 million. I think some people believe that there's going to be 250 million shares, you know, doled out. So I'd love if you could both explain where the equity accounts or the share counts going to be after the Dolly merger, but also why the increase in authorized shares and what that actually means, just so we can clear that up for everybody in the chat. Sure, no, good question, actually. And so today we have about 17 million shares, and I'll just use some rough numbers to make the math easy. 17 million shares issued. There's some warrants that are some of them are actually I think maybe slightly in the money.

40:28 So but just leave those aside for a second. They're not that many of them. When we combine with Dolly Varden, we'll have about a little less than 33 million shares outstanding, again, independent of any warrant exercise. And so the reason we asked shareholders to authorize increasing our share count to 250, it's not that we plan to issue 250 or up to 250 million shares. We just, it's, we had an abnormally small amount of share issuance that had been authorized before. And so we want to grow this company. And so this just gives us flexibility to do M&A, to do other things that will be accretive for shareholders. Everything I'm a major shareholder, you know, my own personal wealth standpoint, I'm a my a lot of my wealth is tied up in contagious.

41:23 I have absolutely no interest in diluting my own value in this company. But I do want to grow the company. And so having, you know, just a more real realistic number of shares out there that are available, we want to do things that will be accretive. That's why we have asked shareholders to approve that and authorize that. It's not that we have any plans to issue a bunch of shares anytime soon. As we've mentioned many times before, when we combine with Dolly Varden, we'll have well over 100 million dollars in cash in the bank. We'll have we'll be generating over 100 million dollars of free cash flow from Montreaux on an annual basis. And and we'll have 33 million shares outstanding.

42:09 Perfect. If anybody has additional questions or don't feel that covers what you wanted to know, please do let me know in the chat. Eager to get this one clarified. I know there were a couple there. Clash Kid from the chat asked, what's a ballpark on Lucky Shot Reserves total? Obviously forward-looking statements, yeti yada, but ballpark on Lucky Shot Reserves. Well, you know, stay tuned for the reserve number because we got to complete a Feasibility Study. And again, I don't look good in orange, so I'm not going to, I can make certain forward-looking statements, but that sounds like 1 I probably shouldn't make. So stay tuned for that. But what we're targeting for a resource is 4,000oz to 500,000oz. And what we're targeting as a subset of that resource is a mine plan that can deliver 50,000oz of Gold a year on average for 5-years.

42:59 And that's a fairly typical underground mine plan. You don't often see underground mines with 10, 15-year mine lives. You seem to have resources out there that can, you can envision a mine life that long. But in terms of reserves, typically the underground mine will have about a five-year reserve life. Great. The other big group of questions that I'll combine together, and again, bug me in the chat if I didn't quite answer, is the same question, to be honest, that I have. And I don't know if you have an answer for it or a guess. People want to know the disconnect because of their view of the Lucky Shot drill results obviously being great and the market seemingly staying about static or not being as excited as the results seem to speak to. Curious if you have a perception on why that's the case.

43:48 Yeah, I woke up this morning not in the best mood because I thought the drill results were awesome. Sure. And they are the first time we've had any sort of substantial release on LuckyShot for several years. And we're excited about the drill program and we're excited about what we're seeing in the drill program. So I'm disappointed, frankly. I gave up a long time ago trying to figure out what markets do day to day. Somebody decided they needed a new refrigerator or had to send their kid to get bracers or I don't know, wanted to go on vacation. And we had more sellers than we have buyers today apparently. So look, it's a healthy market. These are great results. I'm not going to say that they're not great results because they're awesome results.

44:40 We're excited. Dave and I are both ecstatic here. We're excited to get, we're talking about, do we get another drill? Do we, do we, you know, push the west drift forward and go drill on the other side of the, on the, from underneath, you know, drill up for the new KM vane and see if it's there, or do we focus on trying to drill deeper on the other side of the Lucky Shot fault and see the depth? So we got lots of options. I'm excited, look, sometimes it takes a while for people to sift through results and understand what does this really mean. Hopefully this form answers a bunch of questions on what does it really mean. Right now it means that Rick and Dave are really excited to get more drilling done.

45:28 And like I said, we're only 12% into the program. So more to come for sure. Great. And 2 versions of the same question. One of them is funny, so I'll just read them both. Somebody says, what are the chances of Contango getting some real cell-side coverage? And the other version of it right under is, I am curious when we'll have some people with functional brains covering us in the press. So I probably should not comment on that. But those are those are good questions. Good legitimate questions. So I'm actually through I think all the audience questions, but I'm actually, I'm sorry, that's not true. One person shot in asking the man show ASIC and the lucky shot likely ASIC. I'll hold off on lucky shot likely, but I'll say what we're targeting is sort of a $2,000 ASIC.

46:21 I think, you know, with 3000 in today's world, a $3,000 margin is not not bad. We're in one of the things that Trump mentioned this in his speech last night. Oil prices are low. And oil prices and diesel prices for mines is a big, big component of any any operating mine. And so I'm hopeful that as you know, the Gold price tells you that we still have currency inflation. But in terms of mining, if one of the main components like diesel is not going up, I think I looked at the oil price today was $65 a barrel. So outside of something not good happening in Iran and the Straits of Hormuz, then that's a big component of our cost increases.

47:12 And so now I'm kind of transitioning to address the question at Moncho. This year we're going to have higher costs. We're waiting for specific guidance from Kinross, which we'll release with our year-end results here coming in about 3 weeks. So I'll say stay tuned for that number. But what I can say is, based on our discussions with Ken Ross, that our life of mine number, in their estimation, hasn't changed. And so I think, you know, rough numbers, we're still guiding as we have to that $1,600 number, life of mine. This year, every year is a little different. I think we've got it. Certainly, this has always been in the Feasibility study for Moncho. This was always the lowest year of production and the highest all in sustaining costs.

48:05 Next year is the reverse. Part of it is timing when you mine and when you actually get paid for the gold at the other end. But that's just that is the way this year and this year is going to play out. It will be a low year. Next year is going to be a high year. Perfect. I'm going to give people in the chat one last chance to ask a question because I already asked Dave what has him most jacked up. Rick, I'll ask what has you most jacked up as we go towards lucky shots over the next year? Dave, is that a Dave question or a Rick question? No, that's Rick. I already asked Dave. We're both geologists. He's more of a geochemist. I'm more of a structural guy. But like I said before, the fact that we've found a high-grade vein that is not, nobody's put a rock hammer on before. And nobody's, when these guys were mining here for 20 years, they never found it because they never looked for it. And so the whole act of discovery is about being there and observing.

49:12 And so, you know, when we built the West Drift and we said, crap, what's that? That's a nice looking vein. We went and sampled it and it was like, oh, geez, that really is a nice looking vein. Wait a minute, it's not like the other veins. What's going on? So that's exciting. And in a whole district, as I said before, where we've got, I don't know, 2 dozen stars on a map that somebody said there's Gold over there. There's a lot to do here. We're going to stay measured as Dave said, and disciplined. We want to make money. We want to find a resource that can generate a reserve, that can generate a 5-year mine life producing 50,000oz of Gold. That's going to maintain, we're going to maintain that objective and stay focused on that and not get distracted, you know, trying to chase something that may or may not exist. We're well aware of it and we understand it.

50:09 I think we understand it structurally. I think we've got more work to do to figure out how far it goes and all those things. But look, we're on track and it's right there. So it's not, you know, we don't have to drill a 2,000 metre hole to find it. Perfect. Jan had one last question that snuck in and that's when are the Moncho Q4 numbers looking to be released? Yes. So year-end is in about 3 weeks. 3 weeks, perfect. Yeah. Sorry, one last thing snuck in. Nope, somebody just said, thanks guys with 5 exclamation marks. So Rick, Dave, I will echo that and say thank you so much for letting me grill you. I know a lot of technical questions, tried to keep it as nerdy, but also lemony as possible. So I appreciate you guys playing ball.

50:55 Looking forward to chatting with you guys again soon. Everybody in the chat, I know there are a lot of you. Thank you so much for joining. If you do have other questions additionally, please send them in to me. I'll get them to the Catengo team as soon as possible. But Rick and Dave, thank you so much, this was awesome. ♪