E-Power Starts the 2025 Exploration Campaign at Tetepisca

0:04 Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where in the world you're signing in from today. I've got with me today James Cross, CEO of ePower Resources. James, how are you today? Doing fine, Romeo, thanks. Awesome. Now, here's how today's going to work. What I'm going to do is run through just a number of questions I've got for James based on ePowers most recent news release. But then this is an interactive event. So do feel free to ask James questions during today's run. There's a chat button on the bottom right of your screen. You can ask questions at any time during today's event. We'll likely get to them. But in the off chance that we don't, I'll make sure that James gets the transcript of the event, along

0:36 with your email as well, so we can get back to you as quickly as possible. The only other piece of housekeeping, today's event is being recorded and will be available in your inbox, probably midday Eastern time. It'll also be available on Six's YouTube channel and also on events.six.com. But eager to get into the protein of today's event. So, James, first off, fill us in. What should shareholders have an eye on based on your most recent news release? Yeah, well, we've started our 2025 Phase 1 exploration program. The crews arrived in the field, I think it was the day before yesterday.

1:11 And so the work's begun and the objectives around the work are, They're outlined in the press release, but maybe I'll go over them quickly, just to help everybody understand. The first one is to further explore the Graphy Sontra area, which is a very unique area. And really, for the last few years, it's been my favorite target on the property. And one of the things that makes it very special is graphite is it's carbon based. So it began as life forms like leaves and grass and dead insects and accumulated on a relatively flat surface over time. And ultimately, metamorphic events using extreme heat and pressure turned that into carbon as graphite.

2:03 Then you've got these, what start out as flat beds that sometimes

2:08 move around because of the movement of the plates and stuff like that. So at GraphiSantra, we have a kind of unique situation. Once in a while, you can get lucky enough where you store it out with that flat surface and it folds itself right in half. So imagine folding a sandwich in half and then compacting it together. So what you're doing is creating somewhat of a ball of concentrated graphite graphitic rock. And also there we've got the combination of very high grades at surface reported grades and the target is about 2.3 kilometers north to south and maybe 1.2 west to east. So rather than just being one of those long, narrow structures, you've really got a plot of land that represents a serious target. Now, to the naked eye, the flake size distribution also looks very good. And again, we want a deposit skewed toward larger flake graphite rather than finer flake graphite, because ultimately, a miner gets more money for large flake graphite.

3:28 And it also has a character of mineralization that will help whoever ultimately mines this project, help them deal with waste a lot more effectively. So that's a finer point of the whole thing. But Graphisantra has those 4 things going for it. The folded, I guess, character of the deposit and concentrated with high grades from surface. And what appears with the naked eye to be great flake size. We're getting testing done to verify that right now and it should be released really any day now, within a matter of days. And then you have that unique character of the mineralization that is going to help a miner ultimately deal with waste.

4:18 The other objective of the program is at the Northern Claims, which we had never visited until last year. And it has a beautiful geophysical, I guess, a signature on it. But we'd never visited the property until then. So the crew went out there and with a device called a beat mat, which is like a plastic sled that a person pulls,

4:46 walked really on the known conductors, which were detected from the air in a LIDAR survey. And one of the ways we find graphite is the conductivity in the ground. So they were able to find lots of or 5 different target areas, significantly sized target areas that have high grade graphite mineralization from surface or less than a meter from the surface. So that that sled will detect that conductivity if it's close to the surface, and you just scrape away that upper overburden. So that's what we're doing with phase 1 of the program. Awesome. No, I appreciate that. I think that's helpful context for the other questions I'm going to throw at you. So I know you touched on this, but I'd love if you could just lay it out for the folks in the room. What are the kind of key milestones and timeline that investors should expect for this year's expiration campaign? When you anticipate beginning field work and releasing those initial results?

5:45 Yeah, well, on the southern part of the property, near the end of the last field season, we took 4 250

5:53 kilo-ish in size samples and bulk samples and brought those to the lab for testing for 2 primary purposes. One is the flake size distribution of those.

6:07 Because again, to show that there's a preponderance of larger flake graphite in what we're scraping up from the surface. And also the, we're also testing for the ability of the graphite to be easily, we're testing the ease of separation of the graphite from the rock. And those results should be published really any day now, in the next few days, I think. And that will help us determine exactly what we're going to do in phase 2. So, you know, we're going to announce the, you know, the finish of the work program we do there. Results might take a little bit longer, but we're gonna collect 3 more bulk samples, at least 3, from Graphy Sontra, and then an additional bulk sample from the Northern claims, and bring that for similar testing to what we're getting the results for in a few days from the 2024

7:11 program. Great. One question just for clarity, that $200,000 funding, is it intended to achieve the specific proof of concept objectives for a larger financing round? Or is it sufficient for the immediate exploration goals? Well, it is sufficient for this year's exploration. So we had some flow through leftover from last year. So that's what's being put to work in the field right now for phase 1. And this second round of financing,

7:41 the 150 plus 50, that will fund the phase 2 of the exploration. So what we're trying to do is keep the the exploration program, low cost and high impact. And low cost because right now, you know, our stock price isn't very high. So if we do a big program, we're diluting a lot. So yeah, this will be sufficient. Now, of course, it is ultimately proof of concept for a much larger company that might want to come take this from us or option it from us and spend significantly more to develop a resource there

8:25 and go into production ultimately. Great. That actually ties into a question that's in the chat from Wesley who asks, Who are potential buyers of e-power? What are the groups that you anticipate might be looking at e-power in the future? Yeah, well, the first one I would say is industrial players who

8:44 desperately need to have graphite for their manufacturing process. And because there's a problem. You're going to need 140% more graphite production in 2030 than we had in 2024. That's globally. And the US recently was cut off from Chinese graphite. And China produces 75%. So there is a rush on trying to secure geopolitically reliable sources of graphite for Western industry. So top players there would be large manufacturing groups who employ graphite in their production process, Like the auto companies is 1. Defense related companies is another.

9:39 Big manufacturers, because the problem for them isn't the cost of what they're gonna pay to develop a project, but the cost of not having 1 to supply them their entire manufacturing base collapses. Also, we might see a situation where mining companies actually get back into graphite because they've been out of it for

10:04 70 years or something like that. So you might see like the Rio Tintos of the world go back into graphite and, and want to make money on it, because they see this, this problem too. Those are the big ones. And then you also have the Glencore type companies who want to control that element of the supply chain. So yeah, a few different potential possibilities out there. Awesome. Now I want to kind of zoom out and talk about the district just for a second. I'm curious if you could just give me and the audience a bit of context on what the geological advantages of the Tenepiscite District are and any infrastructure benefits that could theoretically accelerate ePowers development timeline?

10:50 Yeah,

10:53 I guess the geological advantages are kind of simple. Those are high grades combined with good flake size distribution skewed toward the larger flake. You don't often see that really. When you see very high grades you often see a flake size distribution more like amorphous graphite. So it's got that unique combination going for it. Now it's also

11:21 located in an area you can drive right to. You could be in Baie-Como, Quebec, which is a port on the mouth of the St. Lawrence. You can wake up there and by lunchtime, you've driven to the property, 3 hours, 15 minutes or something like that. And the forestry industry is very active here. So they've cut so many roads through the property. Without the forestry business, you might be in a place where no man has ever been before, but you can drive right to it. And also the hydroelectric power industry is big up here as well. About 50 Ks, maybe 60 Ks from the property. There's a huge dam called Daniel Johnson or manic 5, they call it, which really supplies New York City with power.

12:14 So and you also have the road, the major highway 389,

12:20 which goes up to the iron mines and passes, you know, just a short distance from the property. And so you've got that unique combination of nobody lives around here. So they're not gonna complain that you're making noise or anything, but the infrastructure is top class. Right, no, that makes sense, appreciate it. The other thing I wanna talk about is just proximity to the port, that Baycomo port. I'm curious, I assume it does, but I'm curious your perspective on how that positions ePower competitively in the graphite market for that battery sector demand particularly.

12:55 Yeah, well, if you find a good graphite deposit, you want it to be somewhere near your ultimate customer, especially being a bulk material. Like if we found graphite in Baffin Island way up in Northern Canada, especially inland, it might not matter, just because it's going to be so hard to get it to the market. Now, Bay Como being only a little over a 3 hour drive and also being a major port quite far east in Quebec makes it well positioned to serve both North America and Europe. Bay Como is actually the place where

13:39 for grain exports from the prairie provinces of Canada and the central US goes on barges in the Great Lakes, all the way to Bay Como through the Great Lakes in the St. Lawrence River unloads there and then is the grain is switched to ocean going vessels to be exported to the rest of the world. So you're only a week sailing time from, say, Hamburg, Germany, or something like that. And

14:07 you have barge access to the interior of the US and Canada. Right. And you also have road access to the rest of the continent and rail access. They actually have barges that carry rail cars across the river to the back of the railroad. And then those can access the rest of the continent as well. So we're kind of really located a three-hour drive from a major transportation node that serves all different modes of transport. That's great. Zooming out and just talking about the future for a second, what needs to be accomplished at Tedapisca for ePower to advance towards a resource estimate, a preliminary economic study, and just what kind of timeline do you think we're looking at? Yeah, well, with this property, we never intend to go into production ourselves.

15:01 Now, if we were forced to do that by

15:04 a partner who wanted us to do that, meaning a funding partner who would want us to do that, we would, but we're not intending to do that ourselves. Now, we could, you know, we're in a strange situation, you know, the market is tough. So anytime we do a financing, we dilute our shareholders. And you know, we could easily delineate a 43-101 resource on this property and a big globally significant 1. We already know there's a lot of graphite here. So you know, imagine you're a person with a huge canvas sack filled with

15:46 thousands of tiny little nails and the bag is full. And someone says, well, you don't you haven't counted them. According to the standards laid out in National Instrument 43-101. We haven't, But we know there are a lot, you know, so to do that, it would probably cost you know, we could probably tell somebody right now, give us 5 and a half million Canadian dollars. And we'll get you 2 million tons of graphite in the ground and the right graphite for your purposes, assuming their purpose fits with what we've got there. And also not 400 meters below the surface from 0 to a hundred, easily accessed graphite. So I say $5 million, 2 million tons of contained graphite.

16:38 Great. No, I appreciate that. I think that's helpful. It's always good to just see where your head's at strategically. So I think that's useful for investors. One thing I wanted to ask is, you've already touched on it, but just as we get towards the end of today's event, I'd love if you could provide just specific details about the exploration activities planned for the Summer's Work Program. It's going to include drilling, geo-surveys,

16:59 mapping, And what are those targets you're looking at? Right. Well, again, GraphySantra is the first priority, then the Northern claims for phase 1 of the program. Now, phase 2 will partially be dictated by the results we're waiting for right now that should be in within a matter of days. So we're not going to do or at least we don't anticipate doing any diamond drilling this year instead because, you know, we're not looking for graphite so far below the surface. You know, we're looking for surface to maximum 100 meters, but there's plenty around that looks like you know, we could just drill down 10 meters or something like that, with a man portable drill, and start to develop some tonnage in places where you can kick the graphite on the ground, you see it's high grade, and you could space out some drill holes with a simple man portable drill.

17:59 Now, Would that be 43-101? I'm not sure, but it gives us a number we could show an industrial player. Like, we've already got this many tons here and have reason to believe we can get you a lot more, but need funding to do that. Great. No, I think that's a helpful view into what it looks like for the summer. I was on a question from the chat from Graham we haven't touched yet. He says, are you due for a Quebec Exploration refund this year, and how much would it be? Yeah, I don't think we have anything coming right now. If we do, it's small. Now, we are going to do some, we're going to deploy when we deploy flow through capital, we don't normally get that refund.

18:49 Because it's already taken by investors. Now, we are putting some capital into the ground that may not have the Quebec tax credit taken by an investor. In other words, it might be an investor from BC or Ontario and they don't need a Quebec tax credit. And then the company can get that tax credit. So at the moment, we don't really have anything significant coming, but we should have some of that coming. Now, it generally takes about 9 months to get. But it does help fund next year's program. And off the top of my head, I think for next year's program, we should have at least 50,000 of that covered because of the money we're going to get from Quebec ultimately.

19:50 And that's an estimate, but I think it's a pretty good one. Got to love Quebec, right? Yeah, absolutely. And when we deploy hard dollars in the ground, we do get that tax credit. Sure. Which is 35, I believe it's still 35% given where we are, As long as you're in the plan Nord area, which is above a certain parallel of latitude, and we are, you get 35% refund. And we've never failed to receive a penny, we've claimed. The system actually works. Hey, that's rare, rare in a jurisdiction. Yes. So while we close today, James, I'm just going to throw it to you for what are you most excited about from this year? What's keeping you up at night and pleased with ePower this year? Yeah, well, I guess, you know, the macro picture around graphite is, you know, it's something we used to predict.

20:46 You know, we really got the company started in early 2019, on the assumption that there would be a graphite crunch globally, and especially in the West, as it really all comes from the east. So, and now we're there, and now we don't even have to look at graphite prices because Canadian projects, you know, There really aren't any, except a few. And there's only one small producing mine, which is very near depletion. So a Canadian mine would not really have to compete with Chinese pricing, because you're not trying to turn this into a highly profitable operation compared to China.

21:42 Instead, what you're trying to do is make sure that it outweighs the cost of not being able to use your manufacturing base to make money or to defend yourself. And so it's changed over, you know, here's an analogy for you, which I've used before. Imagine you've got a $35 million fighter jet. And there's 1 screw that you need to fly that plane. Without it, you can't. And it normally costs $10. And you normally get it from China. They've said no more and we're using all our screws anyway. So now you can get it made in Canada for $150. What do you do? You know, great.

22:29 150 is fine. I'll take it. And so we've had a divergence of price. We have 2 graphite markets now. And we're here to cater. We are their manufacturing base of the West. We're their insurance policy against losing everything. That's a pretty picture. So it makes sense to be excited. James, thank you so much. I think this is really great to help lecture context from this most recent news release. Thanks everyone for joining and those who ask questions. If you think of the perfect question right after the event ends, as I often do, Please do send it in. I'll make sure James gets it and gets back to you as soon as possible. But thanks everyone so much. Have a great morning or afternoon depending on where you