First Mining Gold Digital Roadshow

0:08 Hi, everyone. Welcome to 1st Mining Gold's live digital roadshow. I'm joined today by their CEO, Dan Wilton, who's going to be going through a corporate presentation and after going into a live Q&A session. So if you'd like to participate today, please feel free to submit any questions you have to the Q&A chat found on the right-hand side of your screen. And just as a note, at the top of the chat on the right-hand side of your screen, again, there's a survey link that you can fill out and indicate if you'd like to get in touch with the team. As always, today's event is being recorded. It's going to be available on six.com in the coming days. So look out for that if you want to refresh. But Dan, with that, I

0:38 want to hand things over to you. Cam, thanks very much. And thanks to everyone for joining us today in this investor presentation. I'm going to take through the investor deck and make a few forward looking statements along the way. I encourage anyone who wants to dig into this a little bit more can find this presentation on our website as well www.firstmininggold.com. So 1st Mining is actively advancing 2 multi-million ounce gold projects in a couple of the world's most prolific and friendly mining districts, particularly in Canada, Ontario and Quebec. Our 2 main projects consist of the Pre-Feasibility Study Stage Springpole Gold Project, which is located in northwestern Ontario, about 100km from Red Lake.

1:27 And that project is advancing well through the feasibility study process and going through the environmental assessment process, and as we'll talk about, is well advanced in that environmental assessment process. Our second real focus project is the Advanced Stage DuParcay Gold Project, located really in the heart of the Abitibi Gold Belt in Quebec. Duparquet is a project that we consolidated 100% ownership of last year. We're very excited with our first drill program underway at that project. But a PEA coming out, a preliminary economic assessment coming out on that project kind of at the end of the summer, beginning of September is the current timeframe. We're very excited to really demonstrate what we think that project can be. And then in addition to those, we'll talk a little bit about some of the other assets that we have inside 1st Mining Gold that really make this a unique investment opportunity for those looking to invest in Gold assets really with exceptional upside potential.

2:33 And on top of that, have an experienced team on the exploration, development, and environment and financing side for that matter to help unlock the value of our projects. So we've mentioned sort of where our key projects are. Again, just some of the other assets that we have in the portfolio. The Pickle Crow project being advanced by our project, Auteco Minerals. Pickle Crow is one of the largest high-grade underground deposits in Canada. They've grown that project over the last 3-years from about 1 million ounce resource to now in excess of 2.5Moz. The Hope Brook project in Newfoundland that our partner Big Ridge Gold is advancing. Big Ridge has spent now I think in excess of $15M, put out a new resource on Hope Brook last year, earlier this year, excuse me, and has significantly grown those resources as well by more than 50% over the last couple of years.

3:33 We have our Cameron project, 100% owned, really district scale exploration project that's located about 80km north of New Gold's Rainy River mine in northwestern Ontario. And then we're still the largest shareholder of Treasury Metals, which is advancing the Goliath Gold Complex around Dryden, Ontario. And Treasury Metals put out a very attractive Prefeasibility Study earlier this year that showed a really robust development. So again, with this, the key takeaway is not only do we have inside 1st Mining, 2 multi-million ounce projects in 2 of the world's best mining jurisdictions, but a number of other assets that can provide us some real flexibility in terms of how we keep the projects well financed moving forward.

4:19 So sitting today with a little bit more than 800 million shares outstanding, market cap of about 140 million Canadian. We've got about $20 million in cash and marketable securities, and then future cash and share payments and the value of our joint venture interest that we talked about. It will sit more than $30M. So again, a good pipeline of funding to be coming into the company. We trade on average about 1 million shares a day in Canada and typically about 0.5 that. This is kind of showing about a third of that every day in the US. Large US retail and high net worth shareholding base and lots of very dedicated shareholders that have been with us really since the creation of the company by Keith Neumayer, our founder and board chair in 2015.

5:12 So covered by 4 analysts here, as you can see, and all of them with price targets that are multiples of our current share price. So this just kind of lays out when we think about the real strategic nature of the 2 main projects that we're moving forward here. This chart shows the largest undeveloped projects in Canada. And I think the real takeaway from this is a couple of things that one can take away. Number 1, there are 6 of these projects in construction right now that over the course of the next 2 years will be built and turned into mines. I think that speaks to the importance and the strategic importance of a large gold project. Because I think if you look at the next level down in terms of smaller gold projects, There are a number of those that are not being built right now. So the real takeaway big projects get built when this generation of projects is in construction is completed.

6:12 First Mining is going to be sitting on 2 of the top 10 Gold projects in Canada and not sitting on them, actively advancing them. And one of those projects, our Springpole Gold project, is really one of the next most advanced in environmental assessment and a permitting process in Canada. So, large projects, strategic and really being advanced in a meaningful way. I think this sets the company up, you know, really with a foundational value of these really strategic assets. But the other important thing to understand is that around these existing resources, we have put together real district scale exploration opportunities, and we'll talk about those as we go through the project descriptions.

6:59 But both in Quebec and in Ontario, we're very confident that these resources that you see here are really only the starting point of real district scale and generational exploration opportunities. We're trading today at a very attractive value for new investment coming in. You know, sort of $7 an ounce. And this company was set up in 2015. Really, the last time that the market was kind of this bad is a real contrarian investment. And that was something obviously you look at Keith Neumeier's history. Keith's one of the ultimate contrarian investors in the mining sector, particularly with respect to a lot of the investment they've made in 1st Majestic.

7:46 This is an unbelievable opportunity to get really high quality assets at very, very attractive multiples. We often get asked what's going to close that gap over time. And really for us, there's 2 avenues that we see that valuation gap closing. Number 1, it's continuing to de-risk these projects and add to the fundamental value of them. And that's what our team does every day. They are advancing our projects through engineering studies, through environmental baseline work, and through environmental assessment processes, particularly our Springpole project, to move it forward to get it to that time period of a construction decision. And I think it's important to understand when Springpole gets to a construction decision, there are not going to be many other projects in Canada capable of being moved forward at that point in time.

8:41 This is we're sitting what I call the period of peak pessimism in the lifecycle of any mining company. It's this part in the development curve when you're not quite at that construction decision and a lot of investors just see risk in a permitting process. I think we see it as the time, really exciting time that we define what this project is going to look like and actually, you know, check the boxes on getting all of those risks understood and mitigated, demonstrate that we can get permits and our social license to develop this project. So when we get that right, and we're very confident that we will, here you can see that the share price from where it sits today, really, if it just trades like most other developers trade, not even the fact that I think you're going to see accelerating investment in the developer sector more broadly.

9:35 But if it just trades sort of reverting to the mean of where other developers trade, you can see that there are multiples of potential share price appreciation. This is really an opportunity for, we think, exceptional share price appreciation with 1st Mining, investing where the shares are right now. A very important part of our business is ESG. Some people think of it as a bit of a buzzword, but for us, it's how we operate our business on a daily basis. We're very proud of the fact that we've continued to increase the gender diversity in our team, including all the way up to the C-suite with our chief financial officer, and a number of our key technical team are women.

10:22 And the other diversity element that we're very proud of is the percentage of indigenous people on our team. When you look at our entire employee base, we're about 20% of our employees are of indigenous background. And many of those working at our Spring Pole project from the communities that are closest to the project itself. Of our camp staff, we're now, I think, well over 50% approaching. I think yesterday someone told me 70% Indigenous on employees in our camp. So we're delighted. It's been a real focus of ours, as has increasing our spending with Indigenous communities and with Indigenous-owned businesses. So lots of really good work going on here. If you want to learn more about this on our website, we've just published our 2022 ESG report. It gives a great snapshot of a lot of the great work that our team is doing on a day-to-day basis on the ESG front.

11:21 So I'll talk for a brief minute here about the Springpole project and just go into a little more depth. Here you can see the location of the project. This is in northwestern Ontario, a couple hundred kilometres from the Manitoba border, and located about 100 kilometers east and a little bit north of the mining community of Red Lake, Ontario. They've been mining in Red Lake since the 1930s. To the east of us is the town of Pickle Lake, which they've been mining at Pickle Lake since the 1930s. This is fundamentally a real resource development area between forestry and mining that's the main drivers of the economy in Northwestern Ontario. What makes Springpole such a strategic project is that this really is one of very few projects in the world that's capable of producing in excess of 300,000 ounces a year.

12:15 That really puts this project into a very, very rare camp of projects of that potential size and scale. We put together a pre-feasibility study that we published in January 2021 that showed a very robust after-tax NPV of just shy of US$1Bn at a US$1,600 Gold price. So we all know that there's been significant inflation in the mining business and cost inflation. We've seen a number of projects being built that have had real challenges from cost inflation.

12:53 We know that the CapEx numbers that we've been working on with Spring Pool from that 2021 timeframe will have experienced inflation. Those will be higher. We've done some work on what we think those numbers are, but between scope changes to the project, and we made some important ones over the last little while, and between some of the cost inflation, we think that we're still confident that what we have here at Springpole is a very, very robust long life mine. Again, we talked about the jurisdiction and the unique strategic nature of the Gold Project, But the infrastructure in the area is really quite good. We have forest roads that go up well onto our mineral tenure and go within about 18 kilometres of the camp. And the intention really is that this project can bring some very important infrastructure to help connect some of the communities to the north of us, particularly the community of Cat Lake with a road, and at the same time bring a new power line in that could open up a number of other economic opportunities, primarily for the communities around the project in opening up other other economic development opportunities around forestry and potentially renewable power generation. So we're very excited about what the project can really bring to the area.

14:18 We've spent a little bit of time on this project. It won't go through this. There's lots of numbers on this page, but only to say this is a very robust project. And one of the really important things to understand is that this project has very, very important leverage to the Gold price. So as you see that Gold price, we ran the study at $1,600 an ounce. You see that Gold price march up to the $1,900 to $2,000 per ounce range. Every $100 above $1,600, based on our PFS, added about $250M of pre-tax NPV and about $150M of after-tax NPV. Put another way, every $100 on the Gold price increases the fundamental value of this project by our market cap, a little bit more than our market cap.

15:15 So that's the kind of leverage that you have here to a rise in Gold price. Again, potential for multiples of our current share price to be reflected in the value to be reflected in the share price going forward. Very strong IRR, strong payback, and again, a very robust project with an attractive cost profile that would put it in the bottom quartile of operating costs in the industry. The development plan, this is a sort of snapshot of what we're working with right now through our environmental assessment. But it basically, we have to build 2 small dikes. They end up being in total less than a kilometer long and average about 5 meters high. In the context of building mining infrastructure, These are not really big, significant construction items, but you build those dikes and then dewater this North basin of Springpole Lake, have an open pit mine that in the PFS would run for mining for about 9 years and processing stockpiles for another couple of years. And then at the end of the mine life, basically the pit fills back up.

16:26 When the water environment is back to a stable equilibrium for the long term, then the dikes are removed and basically this all is reclaimed by the lake. So, you know, very, very compact footprint for a project of this production profile. And so That leads to a lot of questions about where we are in the environmental assessment process. This has been a project that I think has had some perception challenges around this dewatering of the North Basin of Spring Pole Lake. We are well advanced in the environmental assessment process. We've been in that process since 2018, so it's now 5 years that we've been moving through the EA process and really kind of in the heart of a very important part of that process now.

17:15 So we submitted and published a draft environmental assessment a little more than a year ago. That draft has now been reviewed by all of the regulators that are going to need to review the final EA. We've received more than 1,200 comments from those regulators. We've responded to those comments. Some of it brings up some more back and forth as we try and deliver answers and or find solutions to some of the questions that get posed. But based on where we are right now, we're starting the preparation of that final environmental assessment, which we will aim to submit about a year from now. And that environmental assessment, remember, is gonna go into the hands of all the people who've spent the last 2 years, you know, having us answer their primary questions on it. So with that knowledge base, it really frames up, I think, a very constructive process for this project to go through its final environmental assessment review.

18:15 So targeting ultimately that environmental assessment approval to be received in the area of mid 2025, with some follow-on permitting from there, would lead to potentially construction decision in 2026. Which sounds like a long time from now, but when you look at where Springpole is versus a number of other projects in Canada, you know, this really is, I think, the next sizable mining project to be permitted in the province of Ontario. And we've had great support and great collaboration with a number of the ministries both in Ontario and federally as we're going through this process. So we're very confident that this is a project that can be well understood and ultimately get its environmental assessment approvals.

19:08 And on top of that, so that's sort of the game plan for the main project, the feasibility study around the existing deposit is well advanced to the point of, you know, we're more than 80% complete all the work we need for that feasibility study. And we're now, as we've gone through that work, I think have a much better understanding of the Spring Pool deposit itself. But Importantly, over the last 2 or 3 years, we've added a number of exploration opportunities around Spring Pole to the point where we've more than doubled our mineral tenure in the area. And we now control about 70,000 hectares, which covers, we think, the most prospective structures in this Bertucci Greenstone Belt, which is the same belt of rocks that goes from Pickle Lake and arcs down past Spring Pole into the Red Lake Camp. Same belt of rocks in which Great Bear had the Dixie project that got acquired by Kinross last year for $1.8 billion.

20:09 So we think that there's there's a number of other deposits to be found in this camp. And we're working up now 80 plus generational stage targets. And to the point where we've drill tested now 4 of these targets and should have some news coming out on some of those over the course of the next few weeks. But the short summary is there is a massive gold endowment that's seen very, very little exploration in this district. And it's a district where I think, you know, 1st mining and our successors will be exploring for a generation here. So that's really Springpole, Advanced stage project, approaching key milestones over the course of the next year to 2 years and unbelievable exploration upside around it. So we'll talk a little bit about our DuParcay project now. Again, our second multi-million ounce deposit.

21:05 We put out an updated resource on DuParcay last year, which was just shy of 3.5Moz of measured and indicated resource and another 1.6Moz of inferred, making it one of the largest deposits in Quebec.

21:23 And like at Springpole, we've recently added to our land package around the existing deposits that we'd acquired, and really, I think, have a line of sight on significant exploration upside that we're now starting to test. We're 2,000 meters into our first 5,000 meter drill program and we've just raised another $5 million really targeted to exploration in Quebec because we're so excited about what we're starting to see here. So keep your eyes peeled on our news flow for some really significant exploration potential that's going to be outlined here around Duparquet. This is a project that had kind of been forgotten about. You know, we acquired it for about 10 million Canadian in cash and about $15 million worth of our shares last year. But we think there's a project here with a value that is multiples of that and have a preliminary economic assessment underway right now, which we're targeting to have out to the market at the end of the summer, early September.

22:23 And that I think is going to lay out 1 vision, obviously not the final program as there's still a lot of work to do, but certainly 1 vision for how we think this opportunity might develop and we're confident of the ability to demonstrate that this is a very, very significant development opportunity located in the middle of one of the most prolific Gold camps in the world. So lots of good things coming from there. But what a lot of people don't appreciate is how much work has been done at DuParcay. We acquired this project in September of last year, but between 2008 and 2014, this is a project that saw in excess of 270,000 meters of drilling.

23:14 It saw a really first class metallurgical study at a pre-feasibility study level, including pilot plant scale testing of flotation and pressure oxidation. It saw a full environmental baseline report that was completed in 2012 and 2013, and a complete pre-feasibility study that came out in 2014. So just an enormous amount of data that our team can leverage as a starting point that is significantly further advanced than almost any other development project in Quebec right now. So we're very excited about that. This just shows a little bit the incremental ground that we picked up from IAMGOLD earlier this year And this really shows the existing land package, the main DuParquet

24:08 resource. And see if I can get this to work. It's just kind of right here. And you can see this little section here, which I've now just colored over. That really, We didn't have a whole lot of exploration tenure there to be able to grow these deposits. You can see the width of the DuParcay structure. So picking up this IM Gold ground, we're very excited. And as soon as the fire restrictions are lifted, our next hole that we plan to drill, a couple of holes that we plan to drill at DuParcay is gonna be testing depth extension of a couple of these targets. And they really were discovered and delineated by CliftonStar in that 2008 to 2014 timeframe, but they weren't closed off with drilling. There's still a lot of opportunity. They were closed off by the land package and they were closed off by essentially running out of time and money. So we're very excited about what we think we're going to be able to find in that expanded land package there. So we won't talk too much about this resource here, only to say, there's going to be an update of this resource, obviously, with our preliminary economic assessment coming out. But this just really highlights on the land package where we've seen a little bit of drilling. And the red you can see here just on the right bottom part of that chart. That was the historic mine. So DuParcay was 2 past producing mines, the Beattie and the Donchester mines. They

25:38 were mined down really only about 500m, so very shallow for mines in the Abitibi and very little exploration below that depth. So this, all of these deposits, we believe have opportunities to grow along strike and certainly at depth, particularly with some of the deposits a little further along at the Central Duparquet and Dumico that I was talking about. You know, most of those are drilled, not really any deeper than about 250 meters. Some interesting resources around those that we think have significant opportunity to grow. So very exciting on that front. And the real game plan at Duparquet is, you know, continuing to prioritize developing our relationships in a new environment that our team to be working in. And so that's working with the local municipality.

26:29 It's involved us reaching out to the local indigenous community at Picogan, who had a very, very warm reception from, and also us working with the regulators in Quebec who've been exceptional as well. Really, you know, a big part of the project at DuParcay is that there is an environmental legacy from the historic mines. They operated for 20 years. There are historic tailings that are deposited in the area. There's some degrees of soil and groundwater contamination. And ultimately for this project to achieve a level of environmental remediation, really the best opportunity to do that is in conjunction with a development plan because you need all of the same infrastructure to build a mine as you do to remediate some of the environmental legacy of the site.

27:23 So I think we're aiming to scope a lot of that in our preliminary economic assessment, which should be out in the second half of this year, but we're targeting kind of at the end of the summer. And with the exploration ongoing now, again, lots of very exciting things to be coming from DuParcay here going forward. So, And that just kind of gets highlighted on this page. You can see here some of the initial, you know, potential pits and some of the grade sensitivity inside those pits. There are some areas of significantly higher grade, particularly in the early years of a mine plant at DuParquet. So I think when the PEA comes out, we'll be able to talk a little bit more about some of the flexibility and I think really interesting opportunity for optimization of the development of this project going forward.

28:14 And then with the exploration, you know, we're hoping to find some results from our drilling that are going to corroborate what's been found there in the past that a lot of this has just been forgotten about. I mean, this is a project that's had 4 grams over 100 meters. It's had 8 grams over 40 meters. Inside most of it, large, wide intersections of disseminated mineralization. So this isn't just kind of small, nuggety areas that end up carrying, you know, having grade being able to be carried over larger intervals. This is a really contiguous mine deposit here. So we think there's lots of opportunity for us to demonstrate that through our own drilling and should have lots of good news coming out on that front over the course of the summer. And then with our most recent capital raise, being able to continue that program going into the fall, which should deliver us consistent news flow through the fall and into the winter. So that's really the highlight of the 2 main assets inside the company at Springpole and DuParcay.

29:22 Advanced stage, multi-million asset, multi-million ounce, really strategic Gold projects in 2 of the best jurisdictions in Canada. They won't spend too much time talking about the rest of the projects. We've highlighted a little bit of this, but our partners at Aoteco Minerals, drilling at Pickle Crow, have done an amazing job of finding new veins, new mineralization, and they're now stepping out from the existing mine workings and testing some of the regional structures here that they think could themselves host multi-million ounce potential. Big Ridge Gold at our Hope Brook project, which we still own 49% of Big Ridge, It's done a great job of demonstrating an updated resource there and a clear pathway for continued resource growth.

30:10 And then our Cameron project, again, I think an earlier stage exploration project, but one that was taken to feasibility studies in the 1980s and 1990s. There's a 30,000-ton bulk sample on surface. There's a ramp down 300m underground. So you can actually have done test mining on this deposit. So it's very interesting parts of Cameron that we hope to be able to talk more about over the coming months. And then at Treasury Metals, the team there doing a very good job moving that project forward with a pre-feasibility study that had come out showing a multi-hundred million dollar NPV for a development project in one of the best infrastructure endowed areas that anyone could develop projects in Canada.

30:59 So I think we'll kind of leave it there for a summary of 1st mining and what's going on. And at this point, we'd love to move to any questions that people might have. Yeah, thanks, Dan. And just as a reminder to everyone in the audience, if you have any questions, you can submit them in the chat on the right hand side of your screen. Dan, the first question comes from Nico. What are you doing to attract potential strategic partners who can maybe see the crazy value gap here?

31:26 Nico, that's a great question. You know, we have been really actively talking to the industry Going back to 2019 from my arrival, I joined in January of 2019, and that's been a big focus of ours. And a part of it is there's always been this knowledge gap between what the industry thinks, particularly thinks SpringPool is, and the industry actually, most people have forgotten that DuParcay even existed. But there's been this knowledge gap between what it is and what we've actually done. And I think we've been consistently, pleasantly surprised that when we engage with strategics,

32:09 once they've had a chance to really dig through the data, understand what the project is and understand where we are going through the environmental assessment process, people come away really quite comfortable with the work that we're doing and often highly complimentary. Now, what closes that value gap? Ultimately, you haven't seen a lot of big, bigger mining companies making strategic investments in a way that that they certainly used to or have in the past. I think there's still a perception that you know they can wait and see with SpringPool. I think when we get really to the point of submitting that final EA, recognizing that, you know, someone would be able to look at all the questions that have been asked and answered.

32:58 I think we'll have a little more clarity, hopefully, certainly on a process that the Indigenous communities around Springpole will be undertaking to build that community consent, which is something that we take very seriously and we think is a very important part of this project. But as we move down the path and demonstrate that, you know, there is a path forward with support for the project from regulators and from the communities, I think it's an inevitability that we're going to have significant strategic interest. And that's not a bad thing to be really surfacing at the time when you get closer to that EA approval. Because ultimately, if you're going to bring a partner on, we're going to get the most value for the project, you want to do that at the point where you've taken the most risk out of it. And so we'll continue those dialogues. We really want to make sure that the industry is watching what we're doing because we're quite proud of what we've been able to accomplish with a small team over what is in the industry a reasonably condensed period of time. So yeah I think looking beyond just 1st mining Gold but to look at developers more broadly.

34:13 We all know We've started seeing the M&A market helping to close some of those gaps. We've seen that with B2 acquiring Sabina this year, for example, I think is a very good example of that. There's a lot of the larger and mid-tier gold producers that don't have a lot of development pipeline right now. They don't have that next generation of projects. A lot of them over the last few years have been looking at projects that are in construction, kind of waiting for them to fall over and they'll be able to get them for cheap. You know, I think a lot of those projects are coming around now to completion. And if they are successful and they work as they intend to and the money's been well spent to put them into production, I think you're gonna see another wave of consolidation where producers are gonna look for newly built projects, probably, but it's only gonna take a few of those purchases because there's not that many of those projects to buy, but it only takes a few of those purchases, because when everyone knows they're working, they're not going to be inexpensive.

35:29 I think this is the time that the forward-looking group should be looking to their pipeline because the developers have almost never been cheaper right now. So, but in the meantime, you know, we're quite happy to continue to de-risk these projects and ultimately make sure that whatever that strategic investment looks like when it comes is going to reflect the real value of the assets that we have. Okay, great. Paul wants to know this. Is your existing retail shareholder base tapped out or holding onto their stock tightly? You know, that's an interesting question. I think our existing retail shareholder base, there's certainly, you know, a number of the shareholders that we talk to on a regular basis that have been with the company and invested in the company, you know, going back to 2015, 2016, and many of them at much, much higher prices than where we are now.

36:29 And I think, you know, what I've been absolutely delighted with is that as we've continued to hit milestones and we continue to talk to a number of these really core shareholders, they continue to support us. They are the ones who are in the market buying at $0.13 US or buying at $0.17 Canadian day in and day out. And I think we've seen that particularly in the last 6 months as this latest round of malaise has kind of hit on the share price. Are they tapped out? No, I don't think they are. I think they are, obviously, everyone's patiently waiting for milestones to be able to deliver more conviction. But a number of those shareholders are there every day buying shares in the market. I mean, and as frequently, you know, kind of once a quarter-ish, as is Keith Neumeyer, our founder. Keith, you know, routinely buying 250,000 shares kind of every quarter and adding to his adding to his position. And I think the lower the share price goes I think you'll continue to see him add more shares. We'd all like to add more sort of at these levels.

37:42 The one the one caveat that I would put to all of that is that there were a number of shareholders who we issued shares to for the acquisition of DuParquet. These shareholders had been stuck in a private company in some cases for 50 to 70 years. In some cases these were investments kind of passed down through a family. And then after 50 to 70 years, there's finally a liquidity event. And not surprisingly, some of those shareholders moved a little more aggressively to take some money off the table. But one of the nice things about 1st mining is that we do trade significant volumes. We do move through a lot of that selling pressure. So for all that none of us are happy about where the share price is right now and be very clear, we are not at all happy about it.

38:36 I think we've fared reasonably well and held levels, particularly over the last 3 months when a lot of other people have seen more significant down drafts. So it's it's you know, I said it at the beginning of the presentation. I think we are in this position of max pessimism, despite the fact that the gold price is very healthy. At 1900 dollars, gold mining companies are making a lot of money. They're generating free cash flow. And that free cash flow is ultimately going to make its way down to the developers because it has to. Because the producers are going to need to build new mines and extend their mine lives. Okay, great.

39:22 Paul wants to know which permits do you still need before construction decision at Springpole? Short answer is all of them. And not to sound too flippant about that, but I'll kind of take it back to the process. So I won't go through an exhaustive list. You can find an exhaustive list, I think, in our pre-feasibility study in terms of the permits that you need. And there's a lot of them, but the key de-risking element in getting those permits is getting the environmental assessment approval. And so that's why we have such focus and put such resourcing towards this EA approval process. And that is going very well. And again, targeting having that EA approval, call it mid 2025 based on where we are right now.

40:16 With that environmental assessment, approval generally comes a number of conditions and it's not rare that you would have somewhere between 50 and 150 conditions that come with it. And that really spells out from the regulator's perspective the things that the company needs to focus on. Some of those conditions are you need to get X, Y, and Z permit. Some of those permits you can't really apply for until you have the environmental assessment approval. So that's why there is this period of permitting that goes past the environmental assessment, but once you have the EA, most of those permits are procedural in nature because all of the substantive issues have been addressed through the EA process, federally and provincially.

41:04 No, fair enough, absolutely. Another question we have is, what are some of the potential sources of funding other than issuing more shares? Yeah, it's a good question. I think from our standpoint, we talked a little bit about some of the other assets that we have in the company. Strategic ownership and project level interests in Pickle Crow. We have project ownership in Hope Brook. We have shares of our partner Big Ridge. You know, we've had a process over the course of the last year, a year and a half, well, really a couple years of kind of consistently being able to monetize a number of these other assets that we had. And it started with some of the things were easier to sell, some of the listed securities that we had. You know, we as we had worked our portfolio and rationalized some of the portfolio over the last couple of years, we held on to royalties.

42:04 And we sold those royalties late last year and beginning of this year in 2 transactions for a total of about $17 million, which went a long way to fund our work programs for this year. I think we continue to do that with a number of the other assets that we have in the company right now. Now the challenge is some of those things are quite illiquid. And all of those share positions and project interests are currently reflecting the really depressed value that we're seeing in the market. So it's a difficult decision to have to sell those things. Although in general I would say on balance if I had to sell other people's shares at a discount versus selling 1st mining shares at a discount. You know, we would almost always prefer to sell other people's shares.

42:54 So we'll continue to look at that. And then there's still, I think, quite a bit of room for, call it an asset-based level of financing at the Spring Pool project and at the DuParquet project. So we consolidated ownership of DuParquet with really on the main part of the deposit, There are no Royalties on it. And so I think we do still have an opportunity that we could create a Royalty and sell that to a Royalty company, use that as some of the development funding that we need to go forward. Similarly, at Spring Pool, I think it's got in total a little bit more than a 2% NSR equivalent if you look at the existing Royalties and the 1st majestic Silver Stream that we did in 2020.

43:41 I think there is an opportunity to increase a royalty at Springpole. And if you look at where some of those comparable royalties have sold on other projects, it's for tens of millions of dollars. And so I think somewhere in there is the opportunity to get a more substantial funding really by leveraging the value of the assets rather than having to take dilution at the equity level. We have now done a couple of issues of flow-through shares last August and then this one that we just announced this week. And that's a relatively cost-effective method for us to raise capital that's targeted at exploration.

44:28 All that flow through, unless it's CDE flow through, which is more development expenses. But we're able to raise capital at a significant premium to our current share price and minimize that dilution effect. So we take it really seriously. We're all shareholders. We watch that number of shares very closely because while we're growing the fundamental value, we know that in the end it gets divided by that number of shares. So I think there's, you know, you add up even in today's market environment, you know, there's still between marketable securities and future cash and share payments that are coming in from some of those option deals. There's still tens of millions of dollars of non-dilutive funding available to us on our current balance sheet.

45:19 Okay, great. This next question is, the precious metals sector has been in the doldrums for many years. What do you think it's gonna take for that to change? Well, that's a very good question. I mean, I think the macroeconomic environment is going to help us out. And I think where we are, you know, first and foremost, it starts with investors wanting to increase exposure to gold. You know, just the events of the past weekend geopolitically are enough of a reason, I think, that people should be really thinking hard about having some safety exposure to gold. Gold has always outperformed in periods of geopolitical instability.

46:09 And I think when you take that one step further, we're at a pretty unique period in time right now where Central banks are accumulating gold at unprecedented rates. A lot of the central banks that are accumulating gold are accumulating gold fundamentally as an alternative to holding U.S. Dollars. And you have the U.S. Economy in a position right now where I think anyone who's honest about the statistics knows that we're in a real recession, if not a nominal recession. And we have been in a real recession for more than a year now. And just that your inflation rate is higher than your nominal GDP growth. So, and I think that's why we're in this period where people feel uneasy.

47:00 It's not obvious that we're in a period of challenging economic decline, but I think we're going to see it. And part of that is that we haven't really seen the impact of rising interest rates taking their toll on the consumer and on the environment. And the U.S. Is better protected in that than Canada is. But we are coming to a point where 1 of 2 things is going to happen. You're going to have interest rates continue to rise because governments acknowledge they can't get inflation under control, in which case you should want to own gold. You should want to own all hard assets because they will protect value in an inflationary cycle. Or you're in a position where really the gold price or the interest rates, the central banks come to realize that they've pushed interest rates as high as they can without doing real, real damage to the economy.

47:53 And those interest rates start to soften as you start seeing, you know, companies going into or countries going into nominal recession. And I think you're going to see that in the next 12 months. And as those interest rate pivots come, I think you're going to see the gold price run, because typically as interest rates come down, gold price goes up. Just cost of holding gold is less. So we're at a bit of a unique position here where it looks a little bit lose like no lose situation for gold. So I think people should want to have exposure to gold. And generally as that exposure comes into gold, you know, in a risk off environment which we're in right now, it starts with bullion, it then moves to senior producer, royalty companies, then moves to senior producers, junior producers, and then kind of down to the development chain as investors are looking for value.

48:47 And there's no question right now that the development sector is the deepest value investment opportunity in the gold sector by far. Not just because of the valuation versus fundamental value right now, which I think is a reflection of concern about capital cost, inflation, and other things. But it's also the fact that if you are investing for a rising gold price environment, the developers, by virtue of starting at such an attractive level, just have kind of the multiples of their share price leveraged to an increasing gold price environment because the value of the projects goes up and up. So I think it just takes a little bit of that. We need a bit of sustained trajectory in the Gold price, which a number of people are calling for over the summer and going into the fall.

49:38 But I think sustained Gold price pushing up from levels where it is today through all-time highs, which honestly could be 2 or 3 days of trading in the right environment. And I think you could then see real capital coming into the sector. And the other thing is that Gold senior producers have been one of the better performing subsectors for 0.25 now. And so as it starts outperforming quarter on quarter, you start getting a little bit more kind of performance chasing and that will bring more capital in and ultimately it's sort of how that capital comes down to the developers. We believe all of that, and even if that flow of external capital doesn't come, at some point, the low valuations of developers get solved by the industry.

50:29 Because with a high Gold price and Gold companies generating unprecedented levels of free cash flow, they fundamentally understand that it is a depleting resource business. Every ounce they take out of the ground is not there to take out next year. And they need to find more. And I think you pretty quickly find that what they would spend on exploration to find an ounce of Gold is far more than what they can buy for in projects like ours today. So I think you'll see the M&A market really start picking up in the back half of this year. And very quickly, as we've seen in previous cycles, particularly 2010, 2011, that becomes a game of musical chairs. And it just takes the producers being in a position where they start getting rewarded for growth, which they haven't been up till now. But when they start getting rewarded for growth, which they will in a in a positive share price environment, That's where you're going to see the M&A market turn on almost immediately, because they've all been doing their homework on projects like ours for years. So there's not going to be a huge lag time for them to get interested. And then, you know, it comes back again to our slide on the scarcity of real world class projects in tier 1 jurisdictions. And we've got 2 of them in this company. So we think it bodes well for us.

51:56 What are the big news items that you're looking forward to over the next 6 months? Thanks, Lorraine. Listen, the biggest ones, I think for us, we have this preliminary economic analysis on DuParcay coming out at the end of the summer. We're very excited to be able to kind of put forward a first view on value there and sort of lay out a game plan as to how we're going to move that project forward. I'm very excited about the exploration results that are going to be coming from DuParcay and some of the exploration work that's going on with our team in the field at Springpole over the summer as well. It's more earlier stage kind of grassroots, but I think just demonstrating that on both of those projects, we're sitting on real exploration districts, not just the existing deposits.

52:48 And we need to demonstrate that we're going to be able to continue to grow those. And then on Springpole itself, we look forward to the opportunity to be able to put a little more public color on the path we're moving forward with, with the indigenous communities around the project. We've had a number of very, very good discussions and sort of 3 of the communities are moving forward with an Anishinaabe impact assessment, which we're quite proud to be participating or allowing them, helping them participate in and drive forward. So yeah, I think news on that front on Springpole as we drive towards submitting that final EA and very excited about the PEA on DuParc.

53:39 Great. Absolutely. And that touches nicely on the next question. If you could just review your community strategy. Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, I think we understand as a team the importance of mining projects benefiting local communities. In my past life as a private equity investor, We funded projects in remote areas of Brazil. We funded projects in Kenya. We funded projects in Canada. We funded projects in Australia. The one thing that is universal in the mining industry is that you really need your local communities to benefit from any development that's happening around them. It is the only way that it works.

54:29 And so, you know, from our standpoint, we've been, you know, in active discussions with the indigenous communities around our Spring Pool project for years. And those are kind of coming to a point now with the draft environmental assessment and as we're kind of moving through that EA process with a lot of the feasibility work that we've done, that the information is at a point where we hopefully are in a position to really be able to advance those discussions. Where we'd like to drive to is a place where you know the communities and the company end up in a real position of partnership and I think that's been a long held goal of ours and it's a lot of work to move forward there, but it's understanding what are the priorities in those communities and what are some of the challenges that the communities face or some of the barriers they may face.

55:28 But, you know, I think we come at it, I think, with a lens of wanting to be, you know, flexible and creative and ultimately work to find opportunities for everyone to participate. And not just in, you know, the direct economic benefit and employment and contracting, but in the real capacity that having a project like this in a reasonably remote area, Springpole is not that remote, but a lot of communities that we're working with, you'd consider remote communities. And this will be the largest economic driver for a generation for a lot of these communities. So that's, I think, the approach that we take on it and something that is very serious to us and the intention that we're bringing to it. Now in Quebec, it's a slightly different scenario where the project that we have is built around the project is right beside a town that was built around the original mine in the 1930s.

56:38 And so it's been a real priority of ours to, you know, for the first time in a long time, try and be present in the community. It's said to us opening in the process of opening an office in the community. And I think being trying to put forward a face of being a member of the community and a responsible member of that community. So we hosted an event last Friday for the Fête Nationale in Quebec. And yeah, I think, you know, we're just trying to, trying to, you know, be open and listen. And particularly there at DuParquet, there is a whole development plan that's gonna take a number of iterations back and forth with the communities because there's no 1 way to do it. So what we're excited about having this PEA coming out is, it's a starting point, right?

57:39 It's a well thought out starting point for discussions where we can work together to understand priorities and see how the plan might change to allow everyone to benefit from it. Okay, fair enough. Another question is this, what's the next permit required at Springpole and do you see it as an opportunity for a re-rate? It's an interesting question. So we do have some exploration permitting ongoing at Springpole. It's a big land package. And so as we as we make advances on some of the other exploration that's moving forward, It opens up other avenues that we'd like to better understand and test. So there's ongoing exploration permitting, but really for us, the major next advancement is this environmental assessment process.

58:33 And so for us, the next steps in that process are submitting that final EA, which we're targeting at doing about a year from now. And then with that, that kind of gives the regulators, you know, kind of formally being on the clock, the time that they have to review it. But you've got to keep in mind by the time we submit that project, we will have had all of the regulators who are looking at it engaged in discussion for 2 years. And a very important 2 years because most of what we are incorporating into the final EA are results and comments on the 1,200 comments that we've already received from regulators. So it's been a very thorough and robust process.

59:21 And that's gonna continue all the way, until you submit the final. And then once you've submitted the final, there's still more questions and more dialogue as they frame the conditions that they'll put on the environmental assessment approval. But that to us, I don't think it's a binary thing. I don't think there's a situation in which you wait, you get your permit, and then all of a sudden there's a re-rate. I think if you look historically, as we demonstrate progress toward that milestone, I think you will see that value start to climb up. And I think that's particularly because you know, of the very low starting point where we are right now. I think that re-rating comes as we demonstrate that we're getting toward the finish line. And when I think about the importance of just getting that finally a submitted, right? Getting to that as a milestone, I think that's very, very significant when you look at overall what we will have been through in the process until the point where we get that done.

1:00:28 That's an investment of millions, bordering on tens of millions of dollars to get to that point. So, yeah, I think investors should be able to take some confidence in the fact that we get to that point. There's, you know, the significant amount of this risk that's been discussed and addressed. Fair enough. Sybil has some questions about development stage. So I'm gonna ask them all together, Dan, just so that you can kind of come at this from wholesale point of view. Did you ever take a project to development? Will you stay with these 2 projects, DuParquet and Springpole, to the end? Presumably meaning to development or to the end. And then what's the timeline for these 2 projects to reach the development stage?

1:01:18 Sybil, thanks. These are all great questions. So our company, 1st Mining, has not taken a project to development, but our team at 1st Mining has been involved in a lot of developments. So our chief operating officer, Jeff Renson, has a career that spans a number of much bigger companies, including Rio Tinto, and Newmont, and Goldcorp, has been involved in billion-dollar construction projects and responsible for major, major pieces of infrastructure, most of which are really germane to what we're doing. A lot of work around geotechnical work, tailings, water management, which is a critical part of the development plan at Springpool. So on the environment and permitting side, our team led by Steve Lines actually took the Hard Rock project, which is in construction right now, they took that project from scoping study to construction permits over about A66 and 0.5 year time frame.

1:02:21 So, you know, and I think from my perspective as a, you know, as a financier and investor, have been involved in advancing a number of projects to that point of construction and helping finance projects going into construction. And I think I've seen a number of them that have kind of come out the other side. The second part of your question is a really important one though. And that is, you know, if I could rephrase it, instead of staying with the 2 projects to the end, I think the real question is, do you build those yourself or do you find a partner or do you sell the projects?

1:03:07 And I think those are kind of 3 common paths. We get asked this all the time. And I think from our perspective, the most important thing is being in the best position and being really well-informed when you get to the real point where you can make that decision, which is once you have the environmental assessment approval and the permits in hand, and you're getting to the point of that construction decision. So as you get there, you need to understand what are the opportunities to finance the project ourselves. It would take a build out of our team, but that's all entirely in the realm of doable. And from our team's background and history, I think something that is entirely doable.

1:03:54 But the real question is at that time, the risk of taking on all the capital to build the project yourself. It really depends on what the financing opportunities are at the time, what's our share price at the time? What's the dilution to existing investors at that time versus what are the opportunities to bring in a partner who could lead that construction effort and hopefully minimize some of the risk for our investors? Or is there someone who at that point decides that they want to own the project? And I think you find that happens, you know, probably more than half of the time. And I think, you know, the view of, my view or the view of our board is, I think we'll make that assessment, you know, at the time when we're able to make that assessment. But the key point is getting to the point where you can make that decision and having as much risk taken out of the project as you can so that you can assess what's the best thing for all shareholders at that point on a risk adjusted basis. So our goal on that for SpringPool and on the time frame, obviously, if we're talking EA approval over the next 2 years would be in kind of a 2 to 3 year time frame. We'd expect to be at a position where we can, you know, really thoroughly understand those options and make the decision on what's the best path forward for the shareholders.

1:05:22 So that's certainly for Springpole that's in that 2 to 3-year time. For DuParcay, I think we'll get this PEA out and then with the scope of the project that we are coming forward with, enter into some discussions with regulators around what we see as the permitting process going forward, just to better understand how that development timeline might work. And there's a few things that I think could accelerate that, and particularly at DuParquet where There is a degree of remediation of the existing environmental legacy that goes with the development plan.

1:06:07 And depending on the status and stage of the project, I think that could be an opportunity to see some acceleration on a timeframe. But I think we'll be in a much better position to assess that as we complete this PEA, talk with some of the regulators around about how it might move forward and then see where we go from there. No, absolutely great. Regarding Springpole, could you comment on the progress being made with the regulators? Are there certain milestones over the foreseeable future that you're looking forward to? Yes. So, I think the progress, as I said before, we submitted this draft EA about a year ago. It's now been reviewed by every regulatory agency that's going to review the final EA. We've received in total now more than 1,200 comments. We've responded to those 1,200 comments.

1:07:03 Sometimes those responses bring more questions. But I think it's been a really constructive process for us and 1 that I think takes an enormous amount of risk out of the permitting process. Because you really, you know, as I describe it sometimes, not that mining is playing poker, but for those of you who have played Texas Hold'em, we know the cards that we have in our hand and we've seen the flop. We've seen the first 3 cards come out. So we have a very good sense of, you know, where are the issues that are gonna take more work? Where are the issues that, you know, we're gonna need to focus on to get to conclusion. And so far, you know, again, it's been a very collaborative process and we're getting great feedback from the regulators and everything sort of moving forward as we would expect. So real milestones, you know, what I would like to be in a position to be announcing.

1:08:08 It's getting to that point of submitting that final environmental assessment, which is about a year from now. And in the lead up to that, to the extent that there are, you know, whether it's engagement agreements or process agreements that we're moving forward with, with the indigenous communities around the project, you know, some of the other discussions that we have going on on that front, to the point that there's anything kind of that we can talk about there that's that are milestones along a path for us formalizing, you know, our relationship with those communities. Then I think I'm very excited to be able to talk about those as well. But, you know, we need to keep our head down and keep driving the processes forward here. There seems to be a massive disconnection between the stock price and the quality and size of your projects.

1:09:01 Is it primarily a function of weakness in the sector? And if so, what do you think will cause investors to come back to the sector? And also, do you have any idea of timing? That's a good question. So, Yeah, I think it is fundamentally weakness of the sector and particularly the Gold development sector. This seems to be the part I showed that slide in the Lassonde curve earlier. This seems to be the area where investors are avoiding. You're still seeing some investors seeking the explosive growth on exploration success. And there's been a number of very good exploration discovery stories that are capturing a lot of attention.

1:09:50 You know, and we're and we're delighted the industry needs more large deposits discovered. I just think investors often lose sight of the fact that every one of the projects that we have was at one point, you know, several hundred million dollars of value as an exploration discovery. In fact, our Springpole project at one point, I think, in a predecessor company carried a market cap of $500 million in 2010, just Springpole. And that was before we'd done all the real work to be able to understand if you can make it a mine. So yeah, I think a part of it is that In periods of capital cost inflation, investors have been nervous about what inflation is going to do to development projects.

1:10:39 And there's, you know, that's obviously it's a concern. I think people need to remember that the gold price has done a pretty good job of front running or staying in front of inflation. And I think when we talk about that leverage to the gold price, in some senses, when you go to restate your economics in a project on the back of a new study, And for us, that's our feasibility study, which we'd likely target end of 2024 to the middle of 2025. I think the gold price, you need to look at the economics and the cost inflation in the context of a gold price and understand if the project, you know, economics have improved or gotten worse. But I think we are sitting poised at an era right now that is, I said this before, this is like the maximum pessimism that I've seen around the gold sector, really in 30 years that I've been involved in financing and working with gold mining companies.

1:11:47 And it's confounding to me in part because the producers are trading today at reasonable valuations. They're generating really record free cash flow and they're dealing with cost pressures. Yes. But the gold price is more than compensated for that. And they're generating record free cash flow. And most of those producers don't have anything in a development pipeline to be able to demonstrate growth for the next 10 years. You got to remember, the average mine, when it is built, is built with and scoped with kind of a 10-year mine life. Some a little bit longer, a few a bit shorter. Well, you just take a step back to the last time that there was real capital availability, which would have been 2012, 2013, 2014.

1:12:37 And even then it was getting more and more selective. But there were a lot of those projects that got completed. And not to pick on new gold at Rainy River, but Rainy River, I think, hit commercial production in 2015 or 2016 with a 10-year mine life. Well, the reality is, like, The time has moved on. We're almost at that 10 years. And they've extended it with some exploration. And that happens with mines. But it doesn't extend all of them. The original Canadian Malartic mine, the big open pit, is going to be finished in the next couple of years. And those resources grow. They find other ways that they're going to be able to utilize that infrastructure and make it really economic. All that said, we're at a point now where I think from a macroeconomic perspective, the gold price should be poised to rocket. I think we're in a period of real macroeconomic uncertainty.

1:13:38 And I think we're in a bit of a no-lose point for gold in that if we really are dealing with inflation and persistent inflation that we're going to have to raise rates to combat. Well, if we're in a period of persistent inflation, then people should want to own gold as a hedge against that. If we're in a position where, you know, all of a sudden the rate hikes are paused or start to reverse. And I think you could see that, despite the fact that the inflation may not carry on. Inflation is likely to carry on, even if you start reducing rates. But when we get to that point of the pivot, then traditionally, you know, you drop the opportunity cost of holding gold and you can see gold go up. So I think the fact that we're sitting at this at this kind of breaking 0.1 way or the other, and gold holding in where it is, you know, above 1900, at least for today, knock on wood.

1:14:38 And I think really poised for some real increases from here. I think this is where you can start seeing the capital coming back into the sector. And it will almost always come back in in the lower risk fashion. So it starts with people holding bullion, it goes to people holding royalty companies, and then goes to people holding large cap producers. And as those valuation discrepancies rise, and we've seen that certainly in the large and mid cap producers, which many of those are up 100% off their lows, while you have most developers trading at your all time lows right now. So the other thing that goes to solve this disconnect is the M&A market. And, you know, as a former corporate finance practitioner for 20 years, I've been involved in a lot of M&A deals in the mining sector.

1:15:31 This is without question the best setup for a really robust M&A market that we've seen in a 30-year time frame that I've been doing this. So I think that opens up a lot of opportunities and it really only takes 1 or 2 projects to get bought, then the scarcity factor will kick in. And it goes back to the chart where we talked about the number of sizable development projects in Canada and the fact that pretty soon when the other ones are built, we're going to own 2 of the top 10. So a long-winded response to that, Cam, but I think that kind of hits on the key points in that we're in a macroeconomic sector that I think is going to drive interest aggressively to the Gold sector. And we have a gold industry set up which is very very favorable for those valuation discrepancies between producers and developers to close.

1:16:27 Fair enough. Absolutely. Dan David says this that he always compares valuations of market cap rather than share price to account for dilution. And his question is, what was the market cap in March of 2020, the last time that the shares were in the mid-teens? Yeah, shares only got to the mid-teens in the late, late, yeah, March 2020 would have been about the time, which was just the, you know, really the pullback at the onset of the pandemic. You know, I think since then we have done 1 equity raise. We've issued the shares to acquire DuParquet and this most recent financing that we've done.

1:17:19 So it's maybe, I'd say 125 to 130 million shares. So probably would have been about 700 million shares. The market cap wouldn't have been that much lower, 120,125. We had a market cap in 2019, I think, that for a brief period flirted with 100. But it's been, I think, consistently above 100 while I've been here. So, you know, I think it's important that you that you look at the overall market cap rather than just the share price to a degree. In part because, you know, you have to look at some other metrics like the amount of gold underpinning those shares. And that was one of the things that we really emphasized when we consolidated the ownership at DuParquet was that we issued 10% of our shares, an incremental 10% of our shares, but increased our gold resource by 40%.

1:18:24 So it was a wildly accretive acquisition for the companies on kind of a gold per share basis. And I think those opportunities are out there. And when you see them on something that you know and understand and see a really clear path forward, I think everyone we're going to benefit over the longer term from us having made decisions to do things like that. With a large percent of retail, is the plan to shift hands to bigger money as you develop your main project? Volume is not a problem, obviously, says Philip. Yeah, Philip, listen, I think that's something that we've continued to pursue over the course of the last few years in terms of building that institutional shareholder base.

1:19:13 When I started, it was very, very small. It's still small, but it's grown, you know, probably from a 5% to a, you know, 15% ish zone. But, you know, we really see this as the opportunity, right? For whatever reason, We have struggled to build that institutional shareholding base. And in large part, I think it's legacy, outdated views of our project and things that we knew there's a certain percentage of the institutional investing public that's going to need to see real milestones achieved before they believe we're going to get to the finish line. I think we have delivered a number of those milestones and over the next 2 years, it's our intention that we're delivering all of those such that a project like this should be garnering a premium valuation not a discount valuation.

1:20:07 The opportunity is that when that institutional interest turns, and I believe it will, it just means that there's a lot of buying to come into the company yet. And so I think that's something we'll continue to work on. I think the other angle to that is the ongoing discussions that we have with potentially interested strategic partners, which we thought for a long time would be a very logical path for us to go down to find a larger mining company that wanted exposure. We've had a number of those discussions, continue to have a number of those discussions. And I think that's one of those catalysts you can't really forecast the timing of. But the one thing that we do know with absolute certainty is that there is not a long list of development projects in Canada.

1:21:04 And the investment opportunities that these bigger companies have to take projects that can be meaningful to them, like our Springpole project could be, and to put those into their own growth pipeline. There's just very limited number of projects of this size and scale in tier 1 jurisdictions where everyone says that they want to be. So in the last little while, bigger companies haven't wanted to put the money into development, I think we're as I said at the outset, we're seeing an environment now with one of the biggest discrepancies between the valuation of larger mining companies and the valuations of project developers. And I think that all ultimately comes back to, you know, real share price appreciation when that dynamic changes. And that dynamic has to change because the large mining companies by and large have not invested in their own pipelines.

1:22:04 They've not been successful through exploration at finding new projects. And so when they go to buy new projects, you see results like B2 buying Sabina for $1.2 billion or Kinross buying Great Bear for $1.8 billion. So it just that scarcity factor is going to come into play at some point. And our goal, we said this, you know, probably going right back to when I started here as CEO in 2019. To borrow the phrase from Wayne Gretzky, you want to skate to where the puck is going to be. We want to have these projects ready at the time when the industry needs them the most. That time, and you could have seen this in 2019, that time is 2026 to 2030.

1:22:53 That's the maximum time when there are going to be very few projects to build. And I think you will have seen a giant game of musical chairs having already been played where all the projects being built right now will be consolidated into other companies. And we're going to have 2 of the top 10 gold projects in Canada sitting inside one little company and having de-risked them significantly ourselves. We will see the value when that comes. I'm confident of that. Awesome. Thank you for that, Dan. And here's another one. This one's from Ronald. So is the Quebec project gold exclusive? I think Quebec has a robust critical minerals funding program. Yeah, Ronald, it's a great question, you know, and that actually goes to some of the work that we're doing really at all of our projects right now to understand what are some of those critical minerals that are sitting inside these deposits.

1:23:55 So, for example, at our Springpole project, we know that there's a significant grade of tellurium in the project. Tellurium is a metal used for largely solar cells, cadmium telluride solar cells. And so it's on the critical minerals list and Springpool, got to verify the numbers, but would be one of the larger tellurium deposits in the world. It's quite a rare metal as it turns out. So we're doing a little bit of scoping work there to understand if that's an angle that there is a real economic opportunity to make out of that. At DuParcay, I think we're still a little bit in the early days of understanding what is the real chemical makeup and mineral makeup of the deposits. And part of it is that changes as you move from west to east on the project.

1:24:55 But it's something that is a focus of ours. And particularly where we have these historic tailings, which are sitting at surface and cost very little to access. That is one of the areas that I think could be really interesting if there are some of those critical minerals that are sitting in kind of a tailings reprocessing opportunity. So yeah, it's one of the things, kind of core value of our company is that, you know, you look for different ways to do things. You can't be afraid of change in this industry. And this is honestly, the mining industry is the most risk averse, change averse industry on the planet in large part because it takes enormous amounts of capital and you know the downside to not getting it right is pretty significant.

1:25:47 But with all of our projects, the advantage of developing a project today versus 10 years ago is that there is an entire world of technology that 10 years ago you never would have fathomed could have gone into a mining project that's actually executable now. So we need to continue to look at these opportunities with fresh lenses and we're looking at the critical minerals element there with that lens as well, not just there but really across all of our projects. Perfect. Thanks for that, Dan. And developers are great if they work out because nobody notices them. Permitting is how though, do you have any landmines in waiting? Well, Trent, the development industry is the reason they kind of call that the valley of death in the Lassonde curve.

1:26:43 You know, I think when you're at the outset of something like a 7 year environmental assessment process, I think, you know, there's all kinds of unknown unknowns. There's all kinds of known unknowns and those are the things that you design baseline data collection processes to, to understand better. And there are unknown unknowns that you tend to find along the way. I think a lot of those risks are much, much greater with a project that's sitting 3 or 4 years behind us, a project that maybe has just been entered into the environmental assessment process, where there's been a little bit of data that's been collected, but there's still a lot that people don't know until you understand things like hydrology and hydrogeology and waste rock characterization and geochemistry.

1:27:38 And a lot of those things don't get done until a pre-feasibility study or later. And it's a lot of detailed work and it costs a ton of money, you know, both on the environment side and on the engineering side. That's the real benefit, I think, to being able to look at projects like Springpole. And we have a similar benefit from DuParcay because of all of the work that was done from 2008 to 2014. And lest we forget the fact that this was a mine that produced for 20 years. So we have a lot of that data as well. We have a house full of production data in the town of DuParquet. It's remarkable. But you need to look at that data to get the information out of it, which is, which takes some resourcing again. I will put it to you this way.

1:28:25 I think, you know, having gone through where we are in the environmental assessment process, having created and published a draft EA document, having had that document reviewed by every regulator that is going to review your final EA, right? That's this comment response period. It's the strategy that Steve Lines, our VP of Environment Community Relations and our team employed at the Hard Rock Project, which they took from scoping studies to construction permits in about a 6.5 year timeframe. That draft EA process is of critical importance to de-risk that final EA, that last part of the final EA process.

1:29:12 I'm very confident that having received all of those comments, understood all those comments, responded to those comments, you really start narrowing down the list of issues that you need to deal with. And right now, yeah, there's still significant issues that we need to deal with. We still need to agree with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans on a fish habitat compensation plan. We're getting great guidance from them on where we can look. We still need to really understand and agree on a caribou habitat risk mitigation plan. But again, I think these are, we're down, I would say you never know everything, but we're down to kind of the mostly known knowns that we're dealing with now.

1:30:04 Maybe a few known unknowns, things we know that we don't know. But I think we have far fewer unknown unknowns, which are the real landmines, I think that that you talk about there. So Yeah, no, I think, and as to your first point, which is, developers are great if they work out, because I think you have the maximum opportunity to make significant investments at a stage that's actually a lot shorter to the turn in real fundamental value than investing in a later stage exploration project before it starts all of this. So you've got well understood de-risked resources, in our case reserves, at Springpole. There's just so much that you already know about the project that are the real landmines that torpedo things along the way.

1:30:56 Awesome. Thanks for that. And we got an infrastructure here from Ron. Is a logging road sufficient infrastructure for a project this size? He says he's not familiar with Ontario logging roads and is asking if you might need to convince the province to upgrade to a freeway. Well Ron, you know I've driven this road, it's pretty good road, So when we talk about logging roads, I don't want to leave you with the impression this is a logging trail. This is a forest access road that was actually built by the foresters working in the area with some of our help and participation a few years ago. It's typically something that you'd be able to have 2, you know, semi-trailers past each other on that road. So it's it's pretty substantial.

1:31:50 And it would be with with some upgrade, particularly, you know, another another 6 inches to a foot of gravel on it, you know, it would be approaching something like a class 1 forest access road, which is a big industrial road that, you know, 2 trucks can pass each other at 80 kilometers an hour. So that access for us is important. And that road right now at Springpole goes down to the west toward the town of Ear Falls, Ontario, which has a big sawmill, so they actually still haul a lot of timber out that direction. And I think in the next year or so, that's supposed to join up with another road that goes down toward the municipality of Sioux Lookout, which is really kind of the main services center for all of the Indigenous communities to the north, the main kind of health care and social services center, one of the busiest airports in Ontario, as it turns out, for a lot of the fly-in, fly-out communities sort of north of there. So you know, there's not many mines built on the side of freeways, unfortunately, and usually, not surprisingly, The government doesn't spend a lot of that money to upgrade those things. They usually rely on the proponents to do it.

1:33:05 But there is, you know, we have great support from the province of Ontario, specifically around the opportunity to bring infrastructure up into this area. When I talked before about the location, the project sits between Pickle Lake and Red Lake, so 2 historic mining camps. There's also highways that go up to there and Pickle Lake is the end of the, not quite the end of the highway, but really the end of the provincial highway system. There are roads that go north from there to the Musselwhite Mine, amongst other places. But it's kind of the beginning of a real winter road network that goes north from there. Well, winter roads are, in an era of climate change, are not nearly the robust solution that they were even 20 or 30 years ago. And we experienced that because we resupply our camp on a winter road.

1:33:58 And you know, it's becoming less and less reliable. It's just a fact of life. And that for us is a real issue. It can be a cost issue. And it most importantly is a safety and human health and safety issue. But ultimately, our ability to bring a road up toward the community of Cat Lake is a really important part of this project. That's a remote community that really only has winter road access and the opportunity of a road there is to drop the cost of living in these remote communities, you know, in some cases by 0.5 or more. And that's just being able to get groceries delivered in a big truck rather than flown in by plane. So yeah, that's, in addition to driving a road up there, I think the opportunity of having a power line that comes up in this area and what that can open up for, you know, other opportunities in forestry, other economic development opportunities that really be driven by the First Nations communities around the project.

1:35:04 I get very excited about that aspect of, like the mine is one part of the development, but the impact that the mine can have is just so much further reaching than just the actual mine development itself. Perfect, thanks. And we've got only 2 more questions left here. So can you please explain how the funds from the most recent financing will be used? Yeah, that's a good question. So this financing that we closed on Monday is structured as Quebec flow-through funding. So what that means is we're able to pass our exploration tax credits on to investors in Quebec.

1:35:52 And that allows us to raise that money at a premium. So our share price was trading at about 17 cents. We raised that money at 27 cents. So very significant premium to our share price. And that's, you know, we do that in order to really make sure that we're, you know, trying to minimize impacts and minimize dilution. But that $5 million then sort of by definition needs to be spent on exploration activities in Quebec. And the reason that we raised that money is that we had an opportunity. We were really kind of, you know, about a month into our initial drill program and got really excited by what we see as the size and scope of the opportunity at DuParcay to grow the resource base. So our exploration team is phenomenally excited about it. We built up a Quebec-based team that's doing fantastic work on the project.

1:36:58 And I will tell you, having worked on, financed, and owned projects in a lot of different places in the world. This is an amazing place to find drilling contractors and to be drilling. It's, you know, from a quality of service perspective, from a cost perspective, the ability to deploy $5 million into a drill program here can get us a lot of news that's gonna stretch out really over the fall and into the winter. And we're very confident it's gonna demonstrate a clear, robust opportunity to continue to grow this DuParcay resource. We're early into it now, we've only drilled 3 holes And then we had to demobilize, get the people out of the bush because of the wildfire situation up around the project.

1:37:53 You know, we're anxiously awaiting the day when we can get back in and get the drill turning again, because I think that's going to provide us again with really consistent and we think really good quality exploration results and news flow that I think will be really quite complimentary to preliminary economic assessment coming out at the end of the summer, early fall. Excellent. And the last question to wrap this up is why should I invest now? Always a good question. Listen, I think We are at a point in the gold market right now for those of us who operate in it, that feels like maximum pessimism.

1:38:42 I think you're seeing that not just in our share price, you're seeing that in the share price of most Explorers developers. It feels a lot like 2015, which was the worst of all time that most of us had experienced in our career. A few of us, more and more of us are scratching our heads asking if this feels like the sector has been kind of more abandoned by investors. You know, I think when you look back at different time frames that you had to make investments in our company specifically, but in developers in general, you know, The last time you could have invested in this kind of level would have been well pre-pandemic and even then not for very long.

1:39:31 And the work that we have done, the fundamental value that we have added and the risk that we've taken out of these projects over the course of the last 3 years, you know, we've spent tens of millions of dollars finding the answers and avoiding the landmines, as one of the attendees put it. We are just so much further advanced, I think, on a risk-reward basis. We've taken more than half the risk out of it. Let's pick a number. And you're still getting it cheaper than you would have in years gone by. So, you know, is there an opportunity that it might get a little bit share price might go down a little bit more here if there's continued negative sentiment, maybe. But I think the macro setup for gold developers has never been better.

1:40:28 And Fundamentally, when you look at the investment or lack of investment made in productive capacity in this industry over the last 12 years, the fact that exploration spending has turned up fewer and fewer new deposits, the fact that Larger companies continue to deplete their resources every day and are not finding new ones. And the fact that those same larger companies are today generating record levels of free cash flow and have the healthiest balance sheets that this sector has ever seen. It's just a recipe for at some point, these developers are going to get snapped up. And a few of them will get snapped up. And then the flood of money is going to come back to the sector. And you want to be in before that happens. Because we've seen it in a number of mining investments when you hit a catalyst and all of a sudden, 1 day it changes.

1:41:23 And we may not know today even what that catalyst is. It may be external, it may be macro, it might be specific to our project. It might be an agreement signed with an indigenous community. It might be us hitting another milestone on the environmental assessment process. It might be a drill hole. And this business, we are only ever 1 drill hole away from a real potential re-rating. It might be a strategic investor coming in. It might be another external source of validation on the projects. There's so many of these things that could happen at any point in time. I struggle to see, you know, why this wouldn't be a great time to be adding to one's position if one was already a shareholder in an unbelievable time. You're getting in way cheaper than I got in. And I can say that honestly, hand on heart, my cost base is well above 20 cents.

1:42:21 And I've been in for 4.5 years with a large part of that. I think it's a phenomenal opportunity to be investing in an advanced stage project that has those key catalysts in sight. It's going to have a very, very robust news pipeline coming out over the course of the next 6-12 months. I hope it comes across and we're excited about it. We really are. I think this is a really a fantastic, unique opportunity to be making an investment here. So, yeah, I can't give investment advice. I can only tell you what we in the company are doing and the, you know, the faith that we have in the assets and the game plan that we have to move forward. We can all feel your excitement, Dan. Awesome. Yeah, thanks for those insights. So that's actually all the time and questions we have for today. So thank you for taking us through the great presentation of the Q&A. I also want to thank everyone who joined in and submitted questions.

1:43:20 And as always, today's recording will be available to watch on demand in the coming days. So feel free to look out for that. You can also find more information on 1st Mining Gold by going to their website. And thanks again to everyone involved for making this event successful. I'm going to give it to Dan here for some final thoughts. Yeah, no, I think you've I think you've said it all. Really appreciate everyone for joining us. And obviously, for more information, www.firstmininggold.com and info at FirstMiningGold.com to reach out to us. And yeah, we love nothing but hearing from existing or prospective shareholders. So thanks for taking the time today. You