Drilling Down: Two Ontario Gold Stories

0:04 Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where in the world you're signing in from. I did see at least a big handful of Europeans, so really thanks for joining us in your early evening tonight. I will say, I'm very excited for this conversation because I've got with me today 2 companies in kind of the same region, very similar stories. I got Brian Skanderbeg, President and CEO of GFG Resources, and Michael Michaud, President and CEO of Red Pine Exploration. Gentlemen, how are you today? Great, sir. Thanks very much for hosting us. Great, thank you. Yeah, awesome. So here's how today's gonna work, just for the folks in the room. This is an interactive event. I know some questions were already submitted in advance over email, and I appreciate that very much. But it's also live, so there's a chat button at the bottom of your screen. You can ask questions at any point during today's event. I'll try to get to as many as I can.

0:49 If for whatever reason I don't get to your question, it's probably because we've either run out of time or it's just a bit off topic, it's a little too specific. But I'm so happy you asked it because I'll make sure that the GFG and RPX teams get those questions afterwards, so they'll still be able to get back to you. I'll also draw your attention, it will not be the last time during this meeting, to the request meeting button at the bottom of the screen. If at any point during today's call it inspires you to want to talk to management of either RPX or GFG, please do let me know by pressing that button and I'll make sure you get connected with those teams. Last boring piece of housekeeping that I promised, round of the meat and potatoes. This is being recorded, will be available for replay. You'll probably see it at around 1.30pm Eastern. It'll pop right in your inbox. It'll also be on Six's YouTube channel. Okay, enough from me. I want to get into the good stuff. I'm going to start, Brian, with you, but this is a question for both of you. Ontario, obviously, has a long, storied history in Gold mining.

1:37 And I think every decade has looked a little different. So I want to get into what the current exploration development landscape looks like compared to 5-years ago. And I want to know, if you think, with the way the world's moving, are investor appetites genuinely shifting towards established Canadian jurisdictions like Ontario? Yeah, I think I would answer yes to that. There's been a pretty prominent shift to jurisdictions of top tier jurisdictions like Ontario and Quebec and Canada in general and Finland and Australia. And that benefits all of us that are working in these belts. Now, GFG has been in Timmins for 8 years. And so I think we're in a good position to talk about the history of and the evolution of this camp. And what I can say is that when we came there in 2017, 2018, we felt like it wasn't that competitive. We felt like there wasn't a true leader in the camp. We felt like this is a great opportunity to enter one of the prominent camps in the world where we didn't face competition. We looked hard at a lot of belts when we came there. I would compare that to now where holding 800 square kilometers in this belt, only Discovery Silver holds more land than we do.

2:53 So increased competition very much changed the amount of capital being produced in the belt. I think that's a really good metric. I just did some quick math thinking about this before the meeting. You are taking companies that used to make US$500, US$600, US$700 an ounce AISC margin, and now they are making US$2,500

3:11 per ounce AISC margin. That's for all the producers in these camps. There are a lot of things that have been changed. Capital availability, cost to land, cost of operating and even interest in being there. So I think it's fundamentally different now than where we were 8 years ago. And I appreciate that. And It's certainly interesting to see some of the producers I work with whose Feasibility Studies were at $1,800 Gold and their ASIC is at $1,600. Obviously, the cash flow situation looks different now. But Mike, I'll throw it to you for your perspective on how Ontario has changed in recent years. Well, I mean, I agree with Brian. I mean, it's certainly, it's exciting times. There's a lot more companies with a lot more money doing a lot more exploration and you see the great results people are putting out. You see the M&A activity.

4:01 I mean, it's really a

4:04 bit of a frothy market in Ontario. And I think you combine that with some of the government initiatives to speed up the permitting process, making it a little easier for companies to get permits and license to go forward. I think that just makes it better. Certainly from our perspective, we're getting a lot more calls from

4:28 companies outside of Canada that do want to come to Ontario. They're interested in our project, looking into our database and our data room and whatnot. So, we've certainly seen an uptick in that. And I think that really shows in this world of tightening borders, More people are probably driven here to Canada and in particular Ontario. And you know, I was at an event the other night and some people I met there who were non-mining people are interested in mining now. Just because of the news, What's critical minerals? What are rare earths? Should I be investing in this? I just think it's taking a forefront in the general public. So good to see that interest level. And I think, you know, Ontario is really a big part of that scene.

5:18 I appreciate that. Yeah, it is true. Certainly generalists, we see it on the platform, people who have not been in mining before are suddenly interested. I always say once my mom ever asked me a question about gold I'm gonna say that's the top, but we're never gonna do that. So no worries there. Brian, I got one question for you,

5:35 specific to GFG. Timmons Gold District has produced 70 million ounces historically. So with 3 district scale projects on the go, how are you prioritizing where to put the drill?

5:46 And what is a discovery at any of them do for your broader portfolio at this point? Yeah, let's look since it's a challenge for companies like us is the balance of allocation of capital and You know, I think we've evolved our thinking over time as GFG has migrated from an asset in the US back into Timmins and from maybe an asset that was a little more established to something that's a little more risk on at the front of the space like where we are now. I really like a simple ratio and I like putting the majority of our dollars in something I have pretty high confidence in. I like putting a reasonable amount of our dollars in places that have high risk, high reward ratios.

6:34 And what I think about that, what it means for our budgets is we're taking 60% to 70% of our dollars and putting it into a target that is not maybe

6:45 high on the discovery risk side. So we're advancing a well-established system towards a resource. We can create momentum. We're growing a system. We're growing deposits that have a reasonable chance of being economics. And then we pair it with something where we own 800 square kilometers. We probably have 50 different targets and we have 8 or 10 of those that are really good discovery stage targets and if we can take 20 or 30% of our dollars and put it into those types of targets and test 5 or 6 or 7 brand new things a year,

7:16 that's where I like the weighting. That's not where everybody's going to play the game, but for GFG, I think that's an appropriate waiting and something I like. So we can't test them all, but we do our best to give ourselves a lot of irons in the fire to both grow a system, create momentum and drive discovery. Awesome, I appreciate that answer. And Michael I've got one for you on RPX. I know you've worked across multiple continents with big organizations, certainly bigger than the junior space like I'm Gold and West Elm where I think you actually knew Brian from. What brought you back to Ontario with RPX? And what specifically about the Wawa district gives you the conviction to anchor this next chapter in your career there.

8:05 Yeah, you're right. I do love that Wawa area. I think it's really 2 things. It's great geology and great infrastructure.

8:15 If you look at the deposits there, you have the Hemlo Gold mine, you have the Island Gold mine operated by Alamos, you have the Eagle River mine. These are all mines that started in the 80s and 90s and are still going today. Just as Brian said, You're looking for something in the region that has something that could be a great deposit, have a great mine life, make a lot of money. That's why I like the area. It has the right geology, a lot of big Gold systems, and a lot of those big Gold systems are

8:46 near or in these diorite bodies where they're a brittle unit within volcanics and it breaks apart, allows the Gold to flow in. That's what I like. It's a great exploration model. We've been very successful in there And that's why I'm back there. And I knew this project, the Red Pine deposit or Walnut Gold project, I knew it from a number of years ago when I was working in that area with West Dome. And I think it was a great exploration property. And why I joined was I think it could be more than that. And that's what we're finding now with the PEA, is we've been able to look at this deposit and say, how do we get it into production in a way that's low risk, low capex for us to start generating cash flow that we can use to really drill off the rest of this deposit. And we know from the rest of the other areas, a lot of those other deposits in the area didn't really find the best parts of those deposits

9:41 until after 20 or 25 years of mining. We're hoping to find it a heck of a lot quicker than that. So that's our goal, get this thing into production. And we want to do it quickly via toll milling. And that's the great thing about this area, that infrastructure, roads, power right to site, a town right beside us, but most importantly for us, toll mills. There are 5 mills in the area. There are a couple of mills that are really key that we could use for toll milling.

10:11 It's that access to that excess mill capacity that's really going to allow us to fast-track into production, generate the cash flow we need to then do a lot of other things. It's exploration, it's development of a larger underground project or possibly a large open pit. It just gives us the optionality to then use that money to do the drilling that we want to do and by doing that, minimizing dilution to the shareholders. Great. No, I appreciate that very much. Now, my next question, I love when this happens. There's a better version of it from the chat. So I'm going to ask the chat's version instead. As Graham says, in Ontario, First Nations approval is everything. So he wants to know how close are you both with local groups and what does the permitting regulatory road look like?

10:52 He specifically mentions environmental assessment, but generally what's the permitting road for both of you look like right now? I can start with either of you if somebody's got an instinctive answer. Go ahead, Mike. Yeah, sure.

11:06 We've been here for a little drilling for a number of years. We have exploration agreements with 3 First Nations groups in the area. They're all in good status. We have a number of people that work on our exploration team that are from the local First Nation, which the closest one to us is the Michigan First Nation just outside of Wawa, Ontario. So we have a good relationship. It's always been open. We've always involved them to the best of our ability. As we go forward here, after the PA, now we're going towards the PFS, we already have started our IBA negotiations, which really involves setting up a framework for discussions and review process and consultation. And I think it's really important to get that started as early as possible.

11:56 So, I think that we have a lot of goodwill behind us and we're going to continue in that way. I think that's on schedule. On the permitting side, it is a brownfield site. We do operate on leasehold patents. Mining has been going on in this area since the 1890s. We believe this is a fairly straightforward approach to the permitting, specifically because we don't have a mill or a tailings facility on the site. We're not proposing 1 at this time through a toll milling scenario. So that really speeds up and simplifies the permitting process. And because I think the permitting, what's required here, Ontario is well known from other sites we've already started a lot of that baseline data collection even before we started the PA. So about a year ago, we started collecting this information,

12:51 speaking with the ministry about what would be required, what permits are probably required. And we've been able to bring in some good environmental consultants to help us with that. So we can get the process started at an early stage. So if any kind of thing pops up that seems like it's gonna be problematic, we can address it a lot earlier. So for us, we believe it's gonna be a relatively straightforward process. And also, the fact that we're trying to utilize existing infrastructure,

13:18 like a toll mill that's there, it means that we're sharing resources. And I think that's a really important part of the world today. There's cars downtown in Toronto here that you can rent for a couple hours and you could use. We're trying to use a mill that's already established in the tailings area that's established. So maybe that creates, you know, a situation we're actually using

13:42 less resources to be able to develop the project than if we had to build our own new one from scratch. So I think the way we take the project forward is also going to be very important in the process, both from the social, First Nations, and the permitting approach. Awesome. No, I think that's a helpful context. I want to talk about tech for a second because I know this will be a question for both of you, but Brian, I'll start with you because I know GFG is emphasized using modern techniques like sonic drilling, data integration, etc. How important would you say is technology in your current exploration strategy and how do they improve your chances in making a discovery? And Michael, I'll get you in on this one afterwards as well. Yeah, I mean, to me it's the time and the ability to synthesize.

14:28 And, you know, there's a variety of technology and advancements that are applicable to exploration, whether the geophysical or geochemical or AI and computer generated software.

14:42 The way I see it is that we build an immense amount of data. And our data consists of maybe 10 different layers. And the ability to synthesize that, analyze that and properly target a new system is far quicker with a technology. Now, with GFG, we're applying a lot of technology like sonic drilling has been around a long time, but it's not like it's been broadly applied in the areas in the style we're using it. So we're creating another data layer

15:15 that is quite critical for finding new Gold systems under cover. So for GFG, it's taking a technology that maybe has been around for a while. It's applying it a different way. And it's giving us another data layer that is really critical for our success when we're looking at Gold systems undercover. And the area we work in is, the opportunity is there because of the cover. So, for us, it's about using sonic drilling,

15:43 give us ourselves another data layer, give ourselves another way to explore in an area that's pretty blind, and then use technology to more quickly turn that data around and synthesize it to generate a proper suite of targets. That's how we're using technology a little differently. And I think you probably talked to the majors, they're looking at it a little differently. There are certainly advancements in how they're logging and the quality of the data, the rigour of the data that they're generating, such almost real-time, super detailed logging of drill core. And I do think that when you look out 5, 10, 15 years,

16:19 geologists will still be doing some of the same things. And they'll be also using a very different suite of technology and they'll have a lot more data in their hands and they'll have more ability to analyse it much more quickly. So that's some of the ways that GFG is using technology. No, I appreciate it, Micah. I'll throw it to you just because I'm always curious about mining tech. Is there anything you guys are using that you find interesting that's really helping you guys along as you explore the region?

16:44 The, yeah, I mean, I may not be the right person to answer this, since I still have a VCR that flashes 12 all the time, but certainly our team at site is up to speed on all that. We have an interesting

17:00 technique, we're using SWIR analysis, which really using infrared is able to look at the different mineralogy within the rocks. And when we're analysing core, because it's so altered, We're really trying to find the original ore type that it was. Because we have different pulses of mineralization and different styles, it's really important for us to sort that out for our understanding of how we connect different styles of mineralization together. Because what's in that particular ore type may mean lower or higher recovery. It may mean that there's Arsenic in some and Pyrite in another. These are all really important things for the down the road metallurgy, for environmental concerns,

17:51 for continuity and it's important to have that initial information from the diamond drilling so then we can start to domain the deposit into these different areas and group like with like. That allows us then to assess those units better and the value and how is the most optimal way

18:15 to mine and to process those areas. One of the areas that has really improved a lot with technology is ore sorting, where it's come from people standing beside a conveyor belt pulling off black rocks from white rocks by hand. Now the technology is quite good and it can be done on a fairly

18:36 high production scenario. We're starting to look at that as well because in our scenario of toe milling, we have to truck the rock down the road and pay a total milling charge. Anything that we can sort out of the ore that's not of value before we ship it is going to add real value. So that's what we're looking at now. So we're excited to see how that's going to progress over the course of the summer. Cool. And I'll stick with you for a second, Mike, because I know the PEA on the Wawa Gold project outlines that 1.7 million ounce resource and a production target, I think, pretty ambitiously of 2027. I'd love if you could walk us through the critical path between here and first pour. Where do you see any potential risks or where are your biggest opportunities? Just kind of walk the audience through how we get into that first pour.

19:28 Yeah, the way we proceed is we have to get to the PFS. That's really important. We plan to have that completed in Q1 of 2027.

19:38 The reason that we can do this fairly quickly is that again, no mill, no tailings area, which often are big delays and can create a lot of work to understand that better. For us, it's really about mining and the environment, and then the toll milling, so metallurgy. In the PEA, we had about 80% of the ounces at the indicated level. That's quite high for a PEA.

20:05 We have a small drilling program that we want to do and by doing so we can convert the remaining inferred and indicated as we advance towards the PFS. And that drilling will also be used not only for the Gold grade and to improve our confidence in the Gold grade, but we can be using it for geotech, so we can look at what stope sizes we can have and what are the pit walls going to be in the open pit. We can look at it for environmental analysis, is it acid generating or not? So for our low-grade stockpiles at site and waste rock,

20:37 we need that information. Also, more metallurgical analysis, and that's really just to get a spatial distribution of where the lower and higher grade areas are for metallurgy. So we have the option of optimizing later, what gets sent to the mill, what gets held back, what needs a different process. So, all very important information, we have to do that.

20:59 And I would say some of the other things are more environmental work. So we're doing our baseline studies. We started that last summer. That's continuing our permitting efforts. We've now submitted our project description to the Ontario government. So we're waiting to hear back on that about what permits would be required going forward. And really as part of our goal to get into production, we do need to sign a contract with a toll miller in the area. So we've had some informal discussions. Now that BA has dropped, we have a better feel for what material

21:34 and what tonnage rate we can provide to a toll mill in the area. That's really important. So, our next goal is to enter into more formal discussions to nail down where the toll milling will be done. And Then I think once we know that, then the parameters, what will be the recoveries, the cost, how is that rock going to be shipped, that then provides information that we need to go into the PFS. But

21:59 having it fairly straightforward and working on these already. We still believe that our PFS will be completed in the first quarter of 2027. So it's aggressive. We have a lot to do this year. We're staffing up. We just hired on our community

22:17 relations liaison and we brought an environmental consultant. We're looking to beef up our engineering and operations team. I think we're pretty strong on the exploration side already. There are a number of things that we've done to reduce the amount

22:38 of execution risk. But from what I see in the market, and this often happens in the mining industry, when it is a little frothier, You see a bit more money, more companies, consultants, finding the right people. Delays

22:53 seem to be the biggest risk. I don't think it's a technical risk. I think it's more, you know, people, timing issues. So we're trying to address that as best we can. I appreciate that. I'm going to zoom out and ask you both. Brian, I'll start with you on this one. I want to talk about the macro for gold for a second, because I do love asking explorers and developers this, because obviously for producers, I know how the Gold price affects them. They make a lot more money. But for you guys, how are you thinking about balancing the urgency to advance projects in the current Gold environment against

23:25 the discipline of not overextending on capital allocation?

23:30 How much is that on your mind, Brian? That's really what I'm asking. Yeah, I think when I speak with shareholders, there's a desire to be as aggressive as 1 can be at this time of the cycle. And you have more capital available. You have a massive amount of land position. You have an advanced system like Aljo and you have a pipeline of targets that offer discovery potential. So our shareholders want us to be as aggressive as we can in testing those and giving as many irons in the fire. Now, How does that translate through to our execution? We're still spending $4M-$6M

24:07 a year. I would say we're probably taking a little more risk in our capital allocation than we have historically. I would go back 2-4 years, maybe, when capital was a little tougher and you wanted to put the majority of that capital into more advanced targets. I would say we're a little more open to risk these days in the front end of our pipeline and weighing a little more capital into that side. And that would be the biggest thing. I would say, yes, we're for sure being more aggressive than we were a few years ago,

24:45 both in terms of total spend and also in how we spend it. So I would say, yep, that's how it's affecting us in terms of the capital markets. I appreciate that, Brian. Mike, how does it hit you guys? With that aggressive production schedule that you just described, How much is the macro for Gold on your mind and an investor's mind that you talk to? Yes, it's amazing how the Gold price has really changed the way going forward. We looked at this project a year ago. We were drilling some nice exploration holes at depth. We were step outs of 600m, we were hitting some great results. The market really didn't react at that time. This had been late 2024.

25:33 What we wanted to do was look at how do we pay for all that drilling going forward without diluting the shareholders? That's what's really pushed us into looking at the deposit that goes to surface. Can we utilise that deposit to generate the cash flow we need? With that, we really started to work on the PEA and we found it was pretty positive, even at the $2,500 goal. So we said, let's go, but then we quickly realised this deposit, that surface has never really been that well drilled. So we took the time, we did the drilling last summer and then that's what we used to update the resources and start the PEA. And since that time, of course, the price has gone from $2,500 to $3,500 that we're using in our PEA, and it's much higher than that. It's really changed the deposit a lot. And in fact, when we look at the project, We still love the open pits. They're even more robust now. And even just sitting there without finding another ounce, making $500M discounted, or $750M over the next 8 or 9 years is pretty darn good. And what we're really saying is in those first years, get the money, US$85M a year, put it in the bank, then we've got optionality. And for a junior company like us, it really gives us some time to think about what's the next stage. We're mining these small open pits with a truck and shovel, hauling down

27:03 the road, getting a check every month, and then using that to drill off the rest of the deposit. Then in 2 or 3 years time, you know, with a bank full of money, we can say, hey, what do we want to spend our money on? Start the underground, build our own mill, buy another project. I mean, it just gives you options. And I think that is something that this project really offers that doesn't come out of the PA when you're reading it or the press releases. It's just something that It's really, we've got a great option to do and we're starting to tell the story now. Great. A bank full of money and wondering what to do with it. That's real champagne problems in mining. So that's not so bad. I got one question I want to jump to from the chat actually. Mike asked, he's curious what sort of non-dilutive money raising opportunities both companies have, given the assets that you currently own. So I can gather what he's implying, but I'm curious where you guys take it. Brian, I'll throw it to you first.

27:57 Yeah, I mean, 800 square kilometres of ground, you know, offers us a few different paths to advance. There's a couple obvious ones that are there. One of those is a partnership model and portions of our portfolio. If we looked at how we advance our properties and how much capital we have available, there are portions of them that may be best advanced under partnerships. And I take that into a basket as saying it's non-dilutive in the sense that we get another 6 or 8 irons in the fire, yet we're not 100% exposed to it, but we might be 20, 30, 40% exposed to it. And the translation of discovery into shareholder value is still there and still retained for GFG.

28:45 So that's one of the avenues, and I would throw it a couple of our properties where we have some dialogue ongoing, and I've talked to the market about it before, and that's continuing, is to look at various partnership models and get other people's money going in the ground. We're benefited in the sense that right now we own some equity in a company called Rocksmore. Rocksmore is the guys we sold Rattlesnake Hills in the United States to. We own about 1000001 half dollars of equity in that company and that company has performed exceptionally well and is sitting on 6Moz, 7Moz, 8Moz in Nevada and they're probably going to keep performing well. So there's a way of looking at some of the equity positions we own to drive into non-dilutive financing on that side.

29:32 Both Mike and myself, I believe we both use OJEP, which is a couple hundred thousand dollars free from the Ontario government to generate new targets. That's non-dilutive. We'll take a couple hundred grand from the government, put it in the ground every year in a heartbeat. I wouldn't say we're looking at anything on the royalty side. Those are non-dilutive, but they actually have a very significant cost to the asset should you have discovery potential to them. So we'd shy away from any sort of royalty or streaming piece that often comes into play as you advance a deposit. But at this stage, the value of those just isn't there for us. So those are some of the ways GFG would look at that are non-dilutive. No, I appreciate that. That's helpful. And I appreciate the thoroughness of the answer. Mike, I'll throw it to you for the same question.

30:23 Are there non-dilutive money-raising opportunities that you guys have given the assets you own? Yeah, I mean, I agree with what Brian said. We try to minimise the dilution because although it's non-dilutive now, it can be fairly costly down the road when you do each production stage. I think for us, as we advance towards production, we'll have more opportunities to raise money under different financing structures. I think the project's a little too early for debt financing. At this stage, there are those opportunities out there. There are companies that will provide, you know, debt at a PEA level. For us, that's a little too early, too risky, because the covenants are often very hurtful, I guess, if you default on any.

31:20 So we try not to get into that situation. So I think when the PFS is finished and we look at a project financing, project development financing stage, then that might be a time to have a possible debt scenario or some other form of partnership with someone that could work as well. But I think The goal of all of this is to get to a stage where we're making money as opposed to just raising it off the market. So that's our goal to get there and it will take a few dollars still of equity to get to that stage. But being productive and being focused is really realizing that every dollar's hard to raise on the market, So we wanna make it as effective as possible and as much going into the ground as possible.

32:13 Romeo, I'd add a couple of things. And I know shareholders are often focused on non-dilutive and I would use a term less dilutive. And so less dilutive can be achieved in a few ways. And you know for us it's about you know even building the market, building momentum, doing marketing, increasing our share price so that you know instead of having to do 8% dilution, you can do 5% dilution in a round or something like that. The use of flow through charity, flow through charities for us in terms of the exploration sector, super good. So there's a couple ones that I would say are less dilutive and quite constructive and those are certainly ones we take advantage of as well. Awesome. I appreciate that. Brian, I want to stay with you because I want to go into your past briefly just for a second to see how it will impact the future. Because I know your background includes leading cloud resources through that 337 million acquisition by Silver Standard.

33:08 Here's what I'm curious about. How does that experience shape the way you're building GFG? And does that mean building towards a similar outcome or is there something different in the cards for this project versus that one? Yeah, I mean, Clode had been around for 20 years when I joined them, so I was lucky enough to find an opportunity where infrastructure existed and production was established and yeah there was minimal free cash flow there at the time due to a few reasons. Cloud offered me immense amount of experience, capital markets, exploration operations, just so deep and in the end it was a great transaction for all of our stakeholders And then we sold it into SSR and the mine continues to operate very profitably. And yes, that was a discovery that our team made called Zantoi Gap. So lots of analogies we can pull across in terms of exploring a belt, exploring undercover, exploring along these structural corridors in rocks like we have in Timmins. And that's very applicable to where we are with TFT. And I would say there's similarities there. The key differences are we're not a free, we're not a cash flowing company right now.

34:16 And we also work in a belt where there are 7 different mills. So, Clude was a fly-in, fly-out operations. What you found was going to end up in 1 mill and it was your mill. And unless somebody wanted to buy the company and that was your path out, and in the end that happened because we showed really good value to an acquirer. With TFT, I don't kid myself, Discoveries and Timmins are acquired. They are acquired because there are 7 mills around us and there are a lot of different producers that would happily take economic ore and put it through their mill. And there's also a lot of producers that would love the exposure to a belt like Timmins that includes 800 square kilometers, which we own and targets we have in a Folsom pipeline. So even if we found a discoverer, we might find somebody with deeper pockets that's happy to take it on and build it themselves.

35:05 So I think from a strategy perspective, GFG is set up to be acquired in time if we're successful. And that is certainly one of the reasons we went to Timmins because there's a natural path there. So Clode, lots of applicable things that I would have learned. And for me, it was my first job as an executive and a CEO, obviously, and lots of different things with TFT. I think the outcome and the paths probably end up in the same place in the sense that both companies were acquired. But that's natural. I mean, you're seeing a consolidation in this sector that reflects, you know, scale, reflects, you know, control of district scale positions and these things are being acquired.

35:50 And that's probably only gonna get more competitive as the longer metal prices hold anywhere near it is. Sure. Mike, I got a question for you, but then Brent I'd love to hear your answer for it as well. And it's kind of 2 part, but they can be the same answers, so bear with me. Because I know institutional investors in retail often have very different questions, concerns or viewpoints when they look at junior and mid-tier gold companies. So I'd love if you could give some insight for the folks in the room. What do you think is the most misunderstood thing about RPX's projects right now that you wish the market would get right? And if there is a difference between retail and institutions on that, I'd love to hear both, but if it's the same misunderstanding, that's good too. So I know what you think the market's getting wrong right now. I think for us, some of it is just awareness.

36:42 We meet a number of funds at different conferences and We have a number of calls with different funds and we often get, this is a great story, never heard of it. So, that's really an opportunity. It's on us that we've missed something there and haven't marketed enough. And I know we haven't, we've been sort of nose down, sort of completing this PA now is the time to increase our marketing effort. Brian said that really pays in the long run. So that would help them to share price and just getting the awareness out there. So I think generally that's really important. And I think also the other thing is the optionality. The Wabago project is a big project. I think they see the PA, they see the numbers.

37:31 People say 9-years is 67,000oz a year, but what's next? I think people don't understand that optionality, getting into production, using that money to explore, to see how big this can really be. Some of the deepest holes we have underneath the current deposit are only 300m deep, other than 1 area where we drilled down into greater depths of 800m or 900m and we had some really fantastic grades. It's really that upside and that longer term vision I think that a lot of people are missing. And I think for a lot of the retail guys that we have, you know, they're really looking at, oh, can I get in, get out of it, you know, make a little money and move on, where, you know, some of our larger or larger retail investors or funds are really looking, hey, you know, this is a long-term hold, this company's going to be 5 times its value at some point down the road? So, they're longer term, they have a longer-term view. So, it's really for them, the biggest questions are, how do we get from here to the next stage?

38:48 We've tried to always make sure that we raise the money to say, this is what we're doing with the money. First, we did the drilling, then we said we're going to do a PEA, we raised the money, we did the PEA. Now we're going to do the next step, we produce the PFS, and then we go into production. I think by staging it like that really helps to clarify what the program is and what the next milestone is so the people can track our development a little bit easier. Great. Brian, similar question. If you could shake every fund manager and make them know something about GFG, what would that be? Yeah I think I go back to when we think about our share base and yes we have institutional retail and high net worth and a whole spectrum of holders of GFG.

39:35 I think one of the themes or one of the misunderstandings we often come up against is the time required to advance these projects to discovery and the stages of discovery that lie ahead of that. And I do think that we often have, and many of our shareholders might have a bit too much short-termism and often, and I just would use this often as some baskets, retail versus an institutional side. Institutional can be longer, retail can be super longer and very loyal to shareholders too. And it's a very individually driven investment thesis. For GFG, we're out here trying to find a new gold. And I talk about finding a Gold system, and then I talk about trying to find the deposit, and then I talked about trying to advance the deposit. So it's this concept of these things take more time than anybody would actually hope or maybe want.

40:31 And so I think that's probably one of our misunderstandings. Even for me, I'm a very optimistic individual and sometimes I get ahead of my optimism where I'm like, success for us is finding a new Gold system. Everybody's excited. Then they're like, yes, but it's only 6g over 3m. I'm like, yes, but that's a new gold system out there where nobody's ever looked before That's what we start with right? So we have a target now called Nahani and we 12 holes over the next the 6 kilometer strike length right now and we took some core to PDAC and there's a system there. Yeah, we can see a system. We don't have assays on it yet, but I'm encouraged by the system. But that doesn't mean it's a discovery yet. I think we'll get some numbers out of it and I think it'll go forward and I think we have lots more to do. So it's often this detachment between planning a program, executing a program, finding a system and then advancing it to something where you might be able to wrap economics around it. And that's not a 1 quarter, that's A1234 year timeframe. Often there's a detachment between maybe the reality of our time frame and the reality of where some investors hope to find return.

41:39 I appreciate that. I know Brian you already gave a sort of take on the M&A landscape right now and what you think is going to happen next with majors in Ontario. So Mike, I'll let you get in first, but Brian, if you have any additional thoughts after I'd love to hear it. Really, I want to know what you think M&A is going to look like in Gold in Ontario in the next couple of years. You think we're hitting that wave? We're about to. We've already started to see it. Do you think majors are getting more aggressive in Ontario as they're looking to replace those depleting reserves with Gold at $4,800 today? Yes, I mean, I certainly see it in the intermediate and junior Gold producers. Not so much in the major, because our projects may be on the small side for them at this stage, but we certainly are seeing a lot more interest from junior producers who see strength in Gold production, so mergers of equals, if you will.

42:36 We're seeing more activity that way, and especially companies that are operating in forest jurisdictions, I think they want to be able to add to their portfolio with safer jurisdiction projects. So I think that's a real enticement. For us, it's really about the value and the opportunity that it would create and it's on a case-by-case scenario. So we certainly have that in our mind and we evaluate that as they come in. I think for intermediate companies, if I just look in the immediate area where we are with Alamos, Hemlo Goldmines and Westdome, these are companies that are generating a lot of Gold with a lot of margin and putting a lot of cash flow into their coffers.

43:23 So, at some stage there may be opportunities for partnering with a company in the region that has the financial wellbeing to drive a project ahead at an even faster rate than we currently have, and also the expertise. For instance, we can start with toll milling, service small pits and we're generating revenue, we've de-risked the project. And if the next stage is going to perhaps a very large open pit, an underground operation, building your own mill, you know, for a junior company, that is, it can be done, but it's quite a transition. And, you know, that would be a good time, I think, for us to be looking for partnerships for larger development scenarios. So I think the timing could be just right as a lot of these companies who have enjoyed doing a lot of exploration on their properties, having some success organically, that will now be looking for, hey, what is the next stage? Let's look for some other opportunities outside of our claim boundaries. And I think we're going to start to see that. And you can see there has been a lot of M&A activities in the area and everywhere actually around the world. So, I think that trend will continue with these Gold prices.

44:44 Awesome. Brandon, like I said, you already talked about M&A a bit, but if you've got any additional thoughts on what comes next or where we're at in the cycle, I'd love to hear them before we get into some audience questions. Continued aggressive advancement of M&A and via all structures of deal. For us, that might look like an option agreement with the major. And I think what we host is extremely large land positions that have high discovery potential. And that is quite attractive to the biggest gold companies in the world. And so for us, we have dialogue, ongoing dialogue with a whole spectrum of companies. We have a number of corporates in our share structure, Alamos being the largest at present, holding just under 11% of the company and been a good supportive company for us over the last 5 or 6 years.

45:38 But I just think quality opportunities for growth are not that deep in the spectre and even new discoveries are extremely limited. So, we are very much on the radar of a large number of gold companies that just wants to be kept up to speed and they wanna be kept up to speed because we're doing unique things and we're doing it in elephant country and we're finding really interesting systems. And everybody wants to be at the front of the front of the line to understand have they found something that is truly unique and has a reasonable chance to get big, big enough for somebody like the biggest gold companies in the world. So I think you're just going to continue seeing all sorts of M&A transactions because the balance sheets are so strong, assets are so scarce and the jurisdictions don't get any better than where we are.

46:31 Awesome. I'm going to go 3 more questions and I think we'll call it for today. One is on financing strategy, one's on jurisdiction, and then 1 actually conveniently gives you an opportunity to sell your stock. So great. I think we should end on that one. First, financing strategy. Ian from the chat asks, any thoughts on doing raises without warrants? So some shareholders would prefer a bigger discount at the raise if it wasn't attached to half a warrant. So I don't know if any of you have thoughts on financing strategy there. I would be eager to hear both of your opinions. It's usually a fairly big gap between, I think, existing shareholders and new shareholders. And trying to get a new shareholder in the warrant piece is pretty key and it's very individual to a given investor so we also have good shareholders very long-term ones that would happily write us a check without a warrant.

47:21 That being said, if it was easy enough to complete a full financing without it, we'd all do it. But I do think there's merit there. I do think that there's merit that a larger discount as a contrast to a warrant is a really good question we should all ask ourselves. And we should consult and talk with our key shareholders and say, what's your appetite for a 20% discount on the equity versus a 10 at the trade-off and not putting a half warrant out there to cap your stock down the line. And that's a good suggestion and it's good dialogue and it's probably quite niche for individual share basis. But I hear that shareholder and then into a dual and that's a good question we should all be asking ourselves. Hey, Mike, I'll throw it to you for any additional thoughts on the same topic. Yeah, agreed. If we could do finance without warrants, we'd do them all day long. But you can see with the look at the deals that have been done lately. This is an environment while a war is going on where maybe it's a little bit harder to raise the money and you have to entice more people with a warrant.

48:29 There's things that you can do to try to minimize that. There's, you can have 2 different structures in a financing from, you know, life offering to private placement. So maybe you could restructure part of a financing that way for 1 portion because of the format, the old gets a warrant and the other part doesn't. There's that, there's also the ways you can handle the warrant, put a higher strike price or exercise price on it, have an accelerator. So down the road, as the price starts to go up, you can force the exercise. I mean, there are ways if you have to take a warrant to minimise the down-the-road impact of it, but a lot of the times it's the market conditions and the way that works, particularly in exploration, if you have a set layout of the plan, you reach the end of that plan, you accomplish your goals, you have to finance and the market conditions at that time, you know, you have to deal with, you try to do things to minimize how much you would need or you break it down into smaller raises. All of these things we're always, you know, trying to optimize as you go. But the question particularly about the bigger discount and whether or not you have to use a warrant, typically it seems the investors would prefer

49:59 the warrant than a bigger discount. So that's something we're always battling, I would say. Interesting. I think it's a good debate. So I'm glad that the shareholder asked. I think it's an interesting conversation. So 1 on jurisdiction and then I'll leave it to each of you to talk about your individual securities. Somebody asked a subjective question, but I'm curious your take on it. They go, is Ontario the best place to mine in Canada? And is Canada doing as it said and actually supporting mining? So kind of a 2 part question on how supportive the federal government is and How would you rank Ontario in terms of Canadian jurisdictions? Brian, I can start with you if you don't mind. I think it's the best there is. And I don't say that just on policy. I take a very broader approach to it in the sense that I'm looking at it from the opportunity side, I'm looking at the infrastructure side, I'm looking at the people side, I'm looking at the tax side, I'm looking at the risk side overall. So if you just took the whole spectrum, Ontario has immense geology, it's got immense endowment, and there's a lot of metals there. So that's first and foremost. But when you layer that upon, we drive a highway to within 3 kilometers of our drill target, and we can truck to 4 mills within 25 kilometers of us.

51:17 And what that does is it takes our cost of exploration so much lower. And so we might drill for $100 a metre, and that's what we drill for right now. And if we wanted a fully loaded cost, it's $150. If you want to drill in the Yukon, If you want to drill in the Yukon, if you want to drill in the territories, you're 600,800, 1000 bucks a metre. So that's a really quick math to say we are 4 times more effective at finding an ounce of gold if all else was equal. And if all else isn't equal, because there's actually more gold there to start with. So I think Ontario has so many good things going for it that it's a great, and I'm from Saskatchewan, and I have a lot of time for Saskatchewan. We chose to put our capital into Ontario for a lot of reasons. So yeah, it's top of the list for us.

52:08 Awesome, I appreciate that, as an Ottawa boy, especially. Mike, I'll throw it to you, talk about Ontario and just what you think of the jurisdiction, how supportive it's been, et cetera. Yeah, no, I agree with Brian. I think Ontario is certainly one of the best, if not the best jurisdiction in Canada, you know, for all the reasons Brian mentioned and also, you know, the geologic understanding of the province and the number of various commodities that are offered there. I remember years ago when I was out mapping and we'd get to a diorite and we would just walk over it. Right now, we have a better understanding of what could be in that diorite and we stop and look a lot closer. I think the Ontario government has done a really good job updating the geologic database and our understanding of the geology and the different styles of mineralization across the province.

53:01 I think that's been really good. And what we're sort of seeing now on the other side, where the Premier and the Minister of Mines are starting to talk about how do we make it easier for companies to get the permits they need to do exploration and to get into mining. We're starting to see a lot of public support for that, a lot of support at the higher government levels. It is slowly trickling down to the people that actually work in those ministries to start to see some changes of how we could actually streamline some of the processes. And I think that's good. It's gonna take some time. And we have a number of new processes like the 1 Project, 1 Proponent that's come out in Ontario.

53:51 I think that will be helpful as we go forward and we have more projects that go through that process. But I would like to think that Now, compared to 5 years ago, we have a lot more support from the different government agencies and a willingness to work for us and to drive these questions that we have through. I just think it's an open communication, open dialogue that's a little bit better than it used to be. So for us, I certainly see an improvement in those lines. Great. Appreciate that. Now, one last question from the audience, but I'm going to change it a little bit and I hope the question asker doesn't mind. So they asked, what are the biggest differences and similarities between these 2 companies. What I'm instead going to ask you is, and I'll ask each of you, we've got 5 minutes, so try and take it 2 and a half minutes each if you can. Why should investors take a look at 1 or both of these securities right now? Brian, I'll start with you. For a couple hundred people in the room, why is now a good time to look at the GFG?

54:53 Risk reward. I think we're at the stage where I don't see a lot of downside to this equity and I see an immense amount of discovery potential and upside to it. And so when I think about our catalysts, our catalysts are advancing Eljo towards a resource and getting it to be something that's critical mass. And that's taken a good chunk of our capital and we're actively doing it now. We're drilling there starting this week again. Paired with that, we have Nahanni. Nahanni is like a 6 kilometer corridor where I'm like, you know, we're seeing a system work here and it's under 30 meters of cover and nobody's ever looked before. And there's a highway right there. And, you know, we're actively drilling it. We're pending assays and we've got that discovery potential sitting right there. Then the third piece is the generative piece.

55:38 We've been really busy this Q1 with the Sonic programs, and we've done 90 drill holes. We put 90 holes covering 150 square kilometers, And what we're doing is filtering that whole area for new systems. And that's coming back right now. So we have catalysts at every stage of this, and we're reasonably well financed. We've got a good balance sheet. And we also hold optionality of Panandore, which are immense land positions sitting between big mines held by all of our producing neighbours. So for GFT, we're a risk-reward story. I think the positioning for GFT right now is very strong and I'm really optimistic about the catalysts we have ahead. I appreciate that very much. And before I give it to you, Mike, to close us off, I'll remind everybody in the room 1 last time, there's a request meeting button at the bottom. If you do want to meet with either team, please do press that button and indicate which team you'd want to meet with or both. I'll make sure we get to those after. But Mike, please close us off with why is a good time now for the investors in the room to take a look at getting into or increasing their position in RPX?

56:41 Yes. And it really comes down to, it's a brownfield site. It's in a friendly jurisdiction in Ontario, in an area with a lot of infrastructure. And because of that infrastructure, we have the ability where a deposit comes right to surface to have a scaled, low-risk, low-CAPEX project that we can advance into production. Once we're in production, it generates the cash flow that we can then use to better define the rest of the deposit through exploration and also through the development of a larger open pit or underground mine. That time frame between when we start generating revenue and when we have to decide to deploy that cashflow into the next stage of the project gives us the opportunity to decide where is the best place to put that cashflow, depending on the marketing conditions at the time.

57:38 So I really liked that optionality. And really, if we never found another ounce on this property, And the PEA was it, that was it. It just stops at 300 metres down. We have a 500 million NPV based on the PEA. Typically these companies are trading at 30 to 40% of the NPV value from a PEA. We're at about 10%. We have a market cap of US$70M with an NPV of US$500M compared to our peers, which are much higher than us, where they trade against the NPV value. So, we're going to advance this year, de-risk the project, LOI with a toll mill, baseline studies, permitting, PFS study near the end of the year.

58:31 At each stage, we're going to continue to add value into the project and we follow the same path as some of our peer group that's before us. Radisson Mining was toll milling now at the Westwood mine. Amex will be toll milling at Eldorado. Talisker in BC, that's Toll Milling. There seems to be a new love for small projects that can use existing infrastructure to generate cash flow. And that's where we really are. And that's the value proposition is where we are today and where we expect to be in a year's time. Mike, perfect, thank you so much. Brian and Mike, this was great. It's good to bring together 2 great Ontario stories. I hope everybody in the audience enjoyed it. If you do think of the perfect question to ask right after the event, as I often do, please do still send it through. I'll make sure it gets to the right people. But thank you everybody for joining us and Mike Bryan, have a great end to your Wednesday.