Covering All Bases with the Right Mix of Metals

0:11 Hi everyone and welcome to B Metals Live Investment Summit today hosted by 6, covering all bases with B-Medals. I'm pleased to introduce our speakers for today. We have John Wilton, President, CEO, and Director, and Derek Iwanaka, Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Development.

0:30 John will walk us through a company presentation and then Derek and John will be taking questions live. Remember, you can submit your questions at any time on the Q&A panel on the right-hand side of your screen. Also, the presentation will be recorded and available to you to watch at your own time on SIX.com. Without further ado, I'll hand it over to you, John. Great, Dasha. Thanks very much for the introduction and welcome to everyone to our second webinar. We'd like to give you an update really on B Metals, maybe a little bit more background into our current commodity spread and focus going forward, and give you an update primarily on a news release we put out in mid-December with some drilling results from our South Mountain project in Idaho.

1:26 Disclaimer for your attention. This is a slide from RBC as a review of the financial year 2020. And it gives you an indication of some of the asset performances, general, some stock exchange indexes, some commodities. And really, what that really shows us is that where B Metals is now in terms of our commodity spread and the top performing commodities of last year and we see that continuing into the into the next years. You can see silver was one of the top performers followed by copper, gold and zinc, all commodities that we have in the current portfolio through our exploration and development programs in Idaho, our exploration in the Zambian Copper Belt, and the fact that we're looking to enhance our strategy with the addition of a gold project in the medium term.

2:34 So a little bit of background on those commodities themselves. Many of you will be aware that gold is seen as a very important store of value, especially in uncertain times as we experienced last year with the COVID pandemic. And we we can see that the potential fallout and the influence of that pandemic on some of the currencies may well continue for a number of years. So in general, the the overall long-term value in gold appears to be pretty bullish. Silver has really been a real hot commodity during last year, and that is likely to continue in a similar vein. Also importantly, as countries start building their way with major infrastructure investment likely to re-stimulate economies during the current year and into the future, Copper, especially as well, that copper is seen as very much a green mineral in terms of the green energy sources, which are big consumers of copper in things like wind turbines, electric cars, and so on.

3:47 Zinc, also an important commodity in those infrastructure projects around things like galvanizing for long term, reducing the sort of replaceability of infrastructure and making it more sustainable in the longer term. So that's why we need metals in our global economy. And these are many of the commodities that we're exposed to from an investment in B metals at this time. So really, what's the standout features of B Metals? One of those is that the company was founded by some of the founders of other successful mining companies such as Bima Gold and B2 Gold that have delivered exceptional value to shareholder over a number of decades.

4:37 And our culture has been very much mirrored on that from our directors. And we're looking at keeping our overheads to a minimum and really getting our investments from, you know, well-sought-out investments into the ground and really to move the projects forward in the most efficient ways as possible. So just to quickly summarize, many of you will have seen this slide before. This is our board of directors. On the left-hand side there you'll see Clive Johnson, Tom Gerrigan, Roger Reashier, founders and principals of both Bima Gold and B2 Gold. And about during the middle of last year, Mark Connolly joined us as non-executive chairman, which gives us increased sort of independence on our board, balances us up. And Mark was also very much involved in working with the B2 team through the merger of the Focola project in Mali into B2 Gold a number of years ago.

5:41 My own background is as a geologist before B Metals, working for Antofagasta PLC, exploring mainly for copper throughout Africa. And before that, my relationship to the team, as many of you may now know, came through working with a good friend and colleague of mine on the original discovery of the Ochicotto gold deposit in Namibia in a covered terrain that ultimately was acquired by B2Gold and has put a very successful mining operation into production. Kristen Reinertsen is our CFO and Corporate Secretary based in Vancouver along with Derek and very much part of our culture of keeping our overheads to a minimum, maximizing the investors money into the ground and efficiently into the projects.

6:35 Derek's background, very experienced in investor relations and giving us a huge amount of input into our corporate development strategy. And interesting enough, started his career with Bima Gold back in the day. I spent a significant amount of time working with Dennis Sandsbury based down in Reno in the USA. Dennis has been responsible for designing and building many of B2 Gold's and before that Bima's mining operations across the world. Huge amount of experience and very interesting and informative guide to work with and Dennis and I really reviewed together our more advanced opportunities that we're looking for, specifically now in the gold space, and working on our South Mountain project together, where we're hoping to complete a PEA study towards Q3 this year.

7:32 Another member of our advisory panel is Dr. Richard Solito who's based here in London in the United Kingdom. Dr. Solito and I worked together during my times with Antofagasta and he agreed to work with us on the advisory panel of B Metals. One of the world's truly most experienced economic geologists, huge amount of experience in a number of commodities, best known probably for his work and research in porphyry coppers, but a huge amount of experience in other styles, including epithermal gold deposits and a number of polymetallic deposits. So really what we have in B Metals at this point in time is a lean and mean team focused on putting money into the ground with our project teams being generally in country, both in Zambia and in Idaho in the USA.

8:30 And collectively, the guidance we're getting from the board and the advisory panel is a group that's discovered more than 34 million ounces of gold, a significant amount of base metals have raised huge amounts of mining investment money over a number of decades. And ultimately, in their gold mining efforts, produced collectively some 7 million ounces of gold. So if we wanted to sum up the value in B metals, probably in 1 slide, this would be the one that we would use. And it shows the overall value creation of the team through BIMA Gold Corp, B2Gold. Obviously, that's still very much building at this point in time. And from B-Metals since our inception in 2018.

9:21 So during the middle part of last year we decided to increase our exposure to gold projects. So what we've been doing is searching and evaluating a number of gold projects across the world. At this point in time, we've probably reviewed over 50 projects, running from sort of advanced exploration stage through to more projects with resources and even PEA studies completed on them. We're continuing that review. We're starting to get a number of projects really under our radar, on our radar at this point in time. And we're looking to put out competitive bids on such projects. But at this point in time, we're also being very conscious of the fact that we don't want to overpay for an asset in the current gold cycle. So we have to look for exactly the right fit and fit with the current portfolio of projects and culture in returning value to investors that we have in in B Metals.

10:23 The South Mountain project that we're well advanced on at this point in time is interesting and it is a true polymetallic project in its own right and what we're seeing there the main commodities are zinc probably followed by silver and gold in order of importance. And we'll talk a little bit more about the importance of copper in 1 part of that deposit. That's becoming really interesting for us in the drilling that we completed by the end of last year. So a little bit more detail on the carbonate replacement deposit as it's known in Idaho in the USA. One of the things when we were looking for our first more advanced project in B Metals was that we liked the high-grade nature of this mineralization.

11:13 And there you can see it ranked really up in the upper quartile in terms of zinc equivalent grade of projects in North America, stable jurisdiction. And we like the high-grade nature of that mineralization. Other factors that attracted us to this project was that there was existing underground infrastructure, which makes access to the mineralization a lot easier. And we've been drilling from underground from our first drilling program back in 2019. Also, we see that given good technical results that are coming in from the project, if those are to continue, the project has a relatively low capital cost to potentially get into production with a short build time.

12:04 The project is largely located on private land, which is a big factor in terms of permitting the project

12:11 in Idaho, where there is support for mining projects in the right environment. The vendors of this project, an Idaho-based company called Thunder Mountain Gold, have been very supportive with the transaction. And the key members of that management team have joined us on the project team and provide a lot of continuity from previous

12:36 exploration and development work on the project, have an excellent network into local authorities and the general mining environment in Boise, Idaho. And many of the permits are already in place that could lead to production on this project, given good, continued good technical results. They've also done an excellent job, and our project team has really reinforced that in building strong community relationships in the nearby settlement of Jordan Valley. And we've rented accommodation from the local residents in Jordan Valley and really built a very warm relationship and there's good support for this project to go forward subject to those technical results.

13:28 Just an indication, Some nice slides of the mineralization itself. So the South Mountain mineralization is really related to a generally massive sulfide body that's hosted within what's called the Laxey marble. And around those massive sulfides, Often we see what we term as scarn-hosted mineralization, which is more disseminated copper, zinc, and silver style of mineralization, effectively wrapped around those massive sulfide bodies. When we first got involved with this project in 2019, the overall deposit was referred to more as a SCARN style of mineralization. But getting Dr. Richard Salitto there, looking at the mineralization in 2019 and 2020, we realized that this really should be called a carbonate replacement style of mineralization.

14:22 And what that means is that probably we have ourselves underestimated the upsize and upscale that this project might deliver. Similar styles of mineralization known in Mexico, for example, have really been significant deposits, ending up being responsible for 30, 35 million tons of ore grade mineralization at these sort of high grades.

14:50 Another factor is at this point in time, we've been focused in the area within the blue ellipse there, which is where we access from the underground drifts and expanding the resource base in that area with the aim of getting ourselves between 1 and 1 and a half million tons of high-grade material that we will work into a PEA study and then make some decisions on whether we go into a feasibility study or even potentially into a direct construction mining situation.

15:21 There is medium and longer term potential within the geology of the red ellipsoid and what we call is the northern limb of the Laxey marble where the original prospectors back in 1904 found similar mineralization on surface high-grade silver veins within the marble unit and it's unlikely that there isn't high-grade polymetallic mineralization under those surface occurrences in just the same way that we see in the blue ellipse on the area of the current underground development.

15:56 So if we look at a 3D view of the 2 underground levels, We've really spent most of our time in the black underground drift called the Sonoman level drilling an area of the deposit known as the DMEA zone and you can see there in the darker red color that's the infill drilling that we did this year, at the end of this year, on the DMEA zone, and that certainly appears to have expanded the size of the resource, and we've identified some new zones of the DMEA

16:32 mineralization towards the southeast of that overall zone. Important to remember here that this doesn't show that the light pink color is already an expansion on the existing resource that we inherited

16:48 the year before, before we did our drilling in 2019. So we probably multiplied the, you know, the existing resource base, you know, a number of times from when we got involved with the project. What we've done mainly this year is including that infill drilling on the DMEA zone, we've also started to drill and construct from a new drill station, the Texas drill station, the red dot there in that view, to explore for deeper extensions of what's known as the Texas zone. Texas zone historically has been known to be a higher copper content in that mineralization with some really good grades on silver.

17:36 So just to look at a little bit more detail on the news release that we put out mid-December last year, and what you can see there is that we've really got some high-grade gold credits associated with the mineralization and some significant silver grades. And the overall, we've preserved the high-grade nature of the zinc mineralization. And on the DMEA zone, we're seeing that important gold and copper content in the DMEA zone mineralization.

18:09 We had a note from Haywood drafted by Geordie Mark that was published. He was impressed with the high-grade nature of these infill drills, drill holes, the continuity that it's showing coming from that DMEA mineralization, improving on even the drilling that we did back in 2019 there.

18:32 So in terms of a project timeline and what it means for South Mountain in producing a driver for the 4B Metals going forward, you can see that we're here at the moment in 2021. And that's not to discount

18:49 the expansion of the resource that we've done to this point in time. We'll be looking to do an updated resource estimate that will come out in about March this year. And given that we only started in August, September time back in 2019, and that we also had a late start this year due to the impact of COVID on the financial markets. We've done really well in implementing this project and getting some really good intersections that look to have expanded the resource significantly and preserved the high-grade nature of the mineralization. So in 2022,

19:30 we're looking to complete some environmental studies that will be required that will get us more towards a construction decision and probably look at completing a feasibility study in that time, which will be focused on really improving on the existing overall

19:50 metallurgical test work. We know from the existing metallurgical test work we were getting good recoveries of zinc and precious metals in a lead concentrate and we may look on improving those in that feasibility work. And then importantly, this project has a short pathway to potential production.

20:11 So now to update you a little bit on the work we've been doing out in the Zambian Copper Belt on what we call our Pangeni project. This project is located in the northwest part of Zambia, where we're looking for extensions of the highly prolific Central African Copper belt that includes deposits in the Kifuwe-Antikine side of Zambia and also in the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC.

20:41 In the DRC, one of the biggest copper discoveries in recent times has been made with the Kamoa deposit from Ivanhoe. And effectively we're looking at continuation of those similar belts down into the northwest part of Zambia and underneath

21:00 areas where the bedrock geology is concealed by thin veneers of Kalahari sand cover. The importance of that is it masks the bedrock geology and means that in the 70s and 80s when a lot of exploration work was carried out in this part of the world, those areas weren't easily explorable by the techniques that were known at that time, which was mainly focused on soil geochemistry, where you need a residual soil for that to be effective. To the west of us, Anglo-American have a large early stage exploration project. Rio Tinto have been active in the area, and both Anglo-American Rio Tinto, Barrick, and First Quantum obviously are very active in Zambia in terms of exploring on early stage projects and obviously in the case of First Quantum producing significant amounts of copper and gold from Constanche and copper from the Sentinel mine which is about 130 kilometers as the crow flies from our project.

22:07 This gives you an idea of the exploration methodology here. The tan base cover is the areas of that Kalahari sand cover. What we do is we identify from interpretation of magnetic data, we identify conceptual targets, then we go in with cheap and effective air core drilling to punch shallow holes through that sand cover which on average is about 25 meters in thickness, recover bedrock geology and geochemistry and then the resulting anomalies which are hopefully anomalous in copper, we follow up with core drilling and you can see during our drilling of this project last year, we've got some significant results. We're seeing a good amount of structures that host chalcopyrite and in some cases boronite mineralization.

23:00 And what we're looking to do with the exploration last year was to vector towards areas of higher grade mineralization and expand on the mineralization that we discovered back in 2019. The Section in the middle there gives you an indication for the mineralization that we've discovered in 2019 on what we call the D2 target. Significant widths over 5 meters true width running at about 0.5 copper and then down in the southwest target significant widths of mineralization running at higher tenor copper, up to 2.7% in some instances. Importantly, that mineralization from a geological exploration point of view is associated with a mineral called kyanite.

23:48 The importance of that is that we know that that mineral, kyanite, association with chalcopyrite, is a major pathfinder in the nearby Sentinel deposit which is producing bio-first quantum as I mentioned earlier. So even with a late start into the field season in Zambia last year, we finished a good program of air core drilling. We followed up with the drilling of 5 core holes. Sampling of those is in progress as we speak. And a number of targets have been generated worthy of core drilling follow-up, which we will get to in the start of our 2021 exploration program.

24:34 Results from the completed core drilling we can expect towards the end of February, early March this year. Derek, if you could take us through the sort of corporate slide, the share ownership and our recent financing in August last year, please. Sure, thanks. What I like to point out here is the share ownership. Not only do management and directors own a significant portion of the shares right now. I would say a really big portion of that retail section, that pie fit where it says 56%, probably over half of that is going to be friends and family. So it's really terrific to see a lot of support in the stock and you probably see on the trading side of things that we may not trade a huge amount, but usually if there is some pressure, the insiders will either typically step in to buy in, but also you don't see a lot of selling.

25:34 And so we don't have huge volumes as of yet, but you don't see that typical selling pressure that you see in some of the other stocks. So that's a good support. And then we also have a fairly large institution that has come in to help us and hopefully when we do latch into this goal project that they're able to step in and help again. I guess the other thing I just point out is that the share price has done fairly well. Certainly through the pandemic, we had a bit of a lull, but soon afterwards, we came back quite strongly. And I think a lot of that was kind of supported because of our, our new strategy to expand our exposure into the gold sector. And so we're looking forward to finding this gold project in the near future.

26:24 Back to you, John. So really, just to just to summarize what's the value proposition here and why, you know, new investors now is a good time to invest in 2B Metals, is really that the company is truly led by some of the top mindfinders, builders and operators in the business who have a track record of really returning exceptional value to investors in their companies over a number of decades. Importantly, I guess with some other companies like ours, the Board of Directors wouldn't be that engaged and maybe just get involved with the AGMs and brief updates, but that's not the case with us. Our advisory panel and board of directors, we have every 2 weeks we have an update meeting, everyone's engaged on that and you know the full team has been probably in the last 3 years, full team has been on almost every one of those calls.

27:21 So that shows the level of engagement and guidance that we're getting to make B-Metals another success coming out of the well-trusted stable of B-Man B2. Access to capital is important. And obviously the importance there is in every sort of market cycle. As we all know, sometimes commodities go through some weaker support through commodity prices, and the ability to raise money in those tough times is probably more important than doing it when markets are more more buoyant. But the main thing is maintaining discipline in the expenditure and investment during those times. Exploration and development money is hard to come by and we really take that investment by our long-term backers very seriously and look to get as much bang for our buck as possible on the projects that we select and the current projects we have, how that is invested.

28:19 There's some good near-term drivers coming out of B Metals in the next months, which is really going to be the identification of entry-level gold projects, whether that's more exploration-orientated or more of a resource project remains to be seen at this point in time. But one thing I can assure you will really be a really good quality project that we bring into the mix here. We'll be seeing more news flow coming out of drilling results, holes that were completed right at the end of last year just before the Christmas slowdown and ultimately a updated resource estimate at the end of March time and then that plugging in to a PEA study to complete it completed sort of mid to third quarter 2021.

29:11 Also Pangeni, we expect drill results to come out of the core drilling and the air core drilling that was done last year, again, just up to the Christmas break. And, you know, that's already, we know from the numbers that we're seeing, that's already generated a number of new targets for testing at the early start of the 2021 field season, which will be in about April, May time, after the rainy season abates. So I think what we're showing now is that we're building our portfolio of projects. The South Mountain project is really pushing towards a much more advanced stage. By the end of this year, we'll be able to make some big decisions on that project and secure, hopefully, given good results, 75 percent interest in that project with the vendors, Thunder Mountain Gold in Boise.

30:08 The Bengani project continues to deliver encouraging results with really the potential there, if it's successful, although earlier stage exploration, the discovery of a truly world-class copper deposit. And with the new gold project to come in, that really will expose our investors to a number of value entry points in B Metals. So thanks very much for your time in listening to this presentation. I look forward to answering your questions to the best of our abilities. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Derek and John, for taking us through your presentation. We're now going to transition into the live Q&A.

30:56 So if you haven't had a chance, please submit your questions in the Q&A panel on the right hand side. So, John and Derek, the first question that we have is, there are so many mining companies out there, what makes yours so special? I think to sum up the answer to that question, really, we would come back to the team. The important thing is the continuity in the team, the wealth of experience in returning value to shareholders by building projects across the world. That would be the main factor and the track record that's sort of related to that. Also, what comes with that is a certain culture, openness, and transparent nature of the work that we do with good financial discipline and investment into the projects.

31:52 Maybe just to add on that, I mean, there are very few teams that have built companies from scratch and have made them into multi-billion dollar generating companies. So the guys that are involved with our team have built BIMA Gold and have built B2 Gold, and we expect to see something similar with with B Metals at some point. So Very, very extraordinary team. And that's that's a huge reason why we're here is because the team attracted us. Of course. And why is the company expanding its exposure to gold? I would say that's really a way of exposing our investors to another very valuable commodity.

32:39 We've, myself and obviously the other people on our board and advisory panel, have got huge wealth of experience in Gold exploration, development and mining. So it's a good time to bring in that extra sort of string to our bow at this point in time. And we have to bear in mind that through South Mountain, there is a significant amount of precious metals already in the polymetallic nature of that deposit. So in a way we're already in the precious metal business in that there are significant credits of both silver and gold associated with that mineralization. Well just I think given the state of the world today, there's still a fair bit of uncertainty given the pandemic and just where the economies are revolving around that and how everybody reacts to that. But I'd also just say that, you know, you see the yields going down in the world, you see that inflation is likely to increase. And as John pointed out, you're gonna see infrastructure and stimulus to increase the infrastructure build out. So that could only really be good for metals. And so I think we've selected some of the best metals to to expose our shareholders to this rising metals market.

33:59 All right. Well Hakan is asking who will be preparing the PEA for South Mountain? That's not been decided right at this point in time. We will go to a third party consulting group to help with that. But obviously, you know, ourselves and the input of the team will be significant into that. And then ultimately, we'll get a third party sign off on that PEA study and to be compliant with the 43-101 requirements. All right. Eric Jones is asking, will the South Mountain PEA study be completed by a well-known third party? And what stage are you with selection?

34:50 Yeah, as I sort of just mentioned, we're really at that stage now where we're trying to select that appropriate group. And the important thing again is, as with us and our partners there in Idaho, we get a good fit with the right company who has got the appropriate experience base on being involved with one of these underground mining operations with high grades, both from a mining point of view and from a process metallurgical point of view. All right. And how soon do you think South Mountain could be in production? That's a bit of a difficult question to get to get an absolute timeline. As you know, as I mentioned earlier, we're looking to get the PEA study finished by the end of the third quarter this year.

35:42 What's an advantage of this project is that because it's relatively modest at this point on tonnage, but the high-grade nature, it means that the feasibility study stage could be relatively short, probably focusing more on really optimising the process metallurgy, and ultimately on a construction decision, the actual build of the project could be also relatively short timeline. Derek, anything to add? No, no, I think you covered it there. Perfect. So why do you think I should buy your stock now rather than waiting to see this potential gold acquisition to happen? Well I think what's going to happen is when we do find the right quality entry level project for us in the gold space, you will see significant uplift in our stock, probably potentially in terms of volumes and value.

36:44 So Now is the time to get involved while we are trading a little bit lower than anticipated levels. And I think, again, that comes back to a lot of the pedigree of the team involved, track record and the fact that we're looking for exactly the right project that will fit and add value for B Metals. I was just going to say that there are some recent examples out there that we've seen some of our peers that have either optioned a property or purchased a property and they've seen some significant increases in their share price. I mean, Artemis would be one of them, Titan Mining would be another one. They saw really good jumps in their stock price when they did acquire or when they've announced an acquisition. So not saying that we'll necessarily see this the same type of bump, but hopefully we will see some appreciation once we do announce a deal.

37:48 Right. Well, Deep is asking what sort of raising are we going to see moving forward for Gold Project and what size of project are you focusing on in terms of annual production number? In terms of size of projects, that's obviously a bit open, but if we'd be looking to find a project that ultimately could produce somewhere in the region of 100,000 ounces per annum, Whether that project ends up being more of an exploration project or more of a development project remains to be seen. But that sort of scope and pedigree in the sort of geology and mineralization setting for those projects. Anything to add?

38:34 I mean, I guess if we're looking at a range of entry-level Gold projects and some of those could be earlier stage but they could also be more advanced stage and I guess if it was more on the advanced side we are hoping to see something that could probably produce around 100,000 ounces of gold per year. So that would be kind of a target for us from an advanced stage project. But yeah, I mean, it's not easy to find those advanced stage projects. There's probably at least more opportunities on the earlier stage, side of things. So anyways, we, we will try to make our acquisitions as soon as we can. And obviously with the right terms, to make sure that they're, creative for our shareholders. Great.

39:20 Well, thank you so much. That's all the questions we have for now. I want to thank you both, Derek and John, for taking us through your presentation and the Q&A session. I also want to thank everyone who submitted questions and attended the summit. If you didn't get a chance to ask a question or you've just thought of 1 now, please stick around after we close the webinar. We have a short survey where you'll be able to leave your contact details and the B-Metals team will be happy to follow up with you directly. Also, if you would like more information on B-Metals, please feel free to watch their last summit they did in October, available on six.com as well as bmetalscorp.com, which goes into more detail on the company's management. You can also find more information on their website at bmetalscorp.com and so I'll just pass it back to you John and Derek for the final word.

40:12 Great, thanks very much Dasha for the opportunity to present and as you say in the future we'll be doing more of these events and you'll see more news flow coming out of Bmetals through news releases in the coming weeks and months. Yes thanks again and thanks to everybody for staying or tuning in. I know the inauguration was going on today so hopefully we made it worthwhile.