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Inflection Resources: Deutsche Goldmesse Spring 2024 Presentation

Watch Inflection Resources' presentation from the Deutsche Goldmesse Spring 2024 on May 3-4.

Wed, May 22, 2024 at 11:00 AMendedReplay
Inflection Resources: Deutsche Goldmesse Spring 2024 Presentation
Company
Inflection Resources Ltd. (CSE:AUCU)
Date
Wed, May 22, 2024, 11:00 AM ET
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0:10 Good afternoon. I'm going to speak to you today about Inflection Resources. We are a Canadian and US listed company based out of Vancouver, with assets in New South Wales, Australia. And I'll just start with a photograph here, really give you a sense of the terrain that we're dealing with. It's a very big, open country, but it's also very accessible. It's cut with a network of roads and makes things very logistically very simple for us. I will be making a lot of forward-looking statements, so please bear that in mind. So what are we doing? We are targeting tier 1 scale porphyry deposits in northern New South Wales. This is an excellent jurisdiction in terms of mining. There are a number of very, very large mines within New South Wales and it's just an excellent place to do business. We own 100% of our assets.

1:03 We've acquired our assets through staking open ground. In fact, we are the biggest holders of exploration licenses in the state of New South Wales with over 7,000 square kilometers. This is a massive piece of ground. And then the key piece here is we've got an association with Anglo Gold Ashanti. This is fully funding our exploration efforts through our multi-year exploration alliance. And I'll talk a little bit about the strategy. But we're located about 4 hours drive west of Sydney, so a very easy place to get to and to get around. Just talk briefly about the capital structure. 95 million shares outstanding, currently with a valuation around about 19 million Canadian dollars. The management team owns about 28% of the company as the largest shareholder.

1:49 And then we have institutional support from Crescat Capital and Resource Capital Funds, both US-based specialist funds. 1 statistic I always like to throw out there is 64% of the shares are held by 10 individuals or groups. Just briefly a little bit about the team. I won't get into everybody here, but it's a very technically driven team. There is a lot of geologists within the group, a lot of them very, very experienced. We just recently brought on Fraser McCorkindale. Fraser until a couple of months ago was the global head of exploration for Newcrest Mining based out of Melbourne and he's got a wealth of experience in the Belter Rocks which we're exploring. The other gentleman I'll just draw your attention to is Dr. Douglas Haines.

2:38 Douglas was the former geoscientist for a very successful and iconic Australian mining group called Western Mining, and later became BHP. But Douglas has been involved in some massive discoveries throughout his career. The most notable 1 was Olympic Dam, a very big deposit in South Australia. More recently, after he retired from BHP, he was involved with the discovery of the Kamoa deposit in the Congo. And he won a big international discovery award for that discovery. But it's a long way of saying it's a very technically driven team with a lot of geologists. So what are we doing over in New South Wales? Well, We're exploring this belt of rock called the Macquarie Arc. This is an ancient belt of volcanic rock. You can see at the bottom here in the dark grey units.

3:25 This hosts some world-class mines. The big one in the belt is called Cadia. This is Newmont Mining's flagship operation in Australia. It's a big copper mine, but it produces close to a million ounces of gold a year, essentially as a by-product. It's a massive, massive mine. These are big block cave underground copper gold mines. The other 2 big ones in the belt are Cowell and North Parks, and again, these are porphyry deposits, big underground operations owned by Evolution Mining, one of Australia's second biggest gold mining groups. The key piece to note on this slide is our land position. In the orange there, darker orange, that is our land position. We extend over about 300 kilometers from north to south. And we're critically covering the northern extension of this belt that hosts these big mines, but it's covered with a blanket of sediment. So if you recall the photograph I showed to start with, it's this flat terrain, this sediment is sitting on top of the perspective geology, masking the underlying geologists. We're essentially exploring blind targets through sediments.

4:32 And again, a little bit about the infrastructure here. Tremendous place to operate. You can literally drive anywhere you want to go. There's no seasonality issues here. It's a very simple and cost-effective place to explore. And most of the projects are located on sort of barren farm lands in cattle country for the most part, doing a large cattle station. So very, very simple place to operate, cut with a network of nice little roads servicing these big cattle stations and farms. This is probably the key image that explains the real opportunity. So we've got 2 maps here side by side, a simple geological map on the left-hand side showing the location of the Macquarie Arc and the dark grey. The pale orange is a sedimentary cover sitting on top of that with our claims in the dark orange.

5:18 On the right-hand side is a map of the same scale. That white squiggly line represents the limit of the sedimentary cover there. But what really is the key part here is the underlying image is the magnetic map. So this was an airborne magnetic survey flown by the government of New South Wales to encourage investment in mining and exploration. And what this clearly highlighted is the big belt of volcanic rocks that host these big deposits to the south clearly extends under that blanket of sedimentary cover, masking the underlying geology. So there's clear continuation of that belt, and we were able to acquire about 60% of the belt by staking what was open ground, which is kind of incredible, considering to the south of where the outcropping geology occurs, it's gridlocked with lots of small claims in and around these major mines. So we were able to secure this huge district scale land position, and in doing so, We built a beautiful interpretive geological map, extrapolating the known outcropping geology to the south underneath this cover sequence.

6:23 And with that, we identified about 36 massive targets in the geophysics that we considered analogous with those large deposits located further to the south. So this was the exciting piece of this. These were very, very large, complex magnetic features comparable in scale and tenor to the big deposits further to the south, But critically, they were on open ground and had never been drill tested. So it's really turning the obstacle into opportunity is the phrase we like to use on this one. And how do we do this? How do we go about exploring through this post-mineral cover? Well we use a technology called mud rotary drilling. This is very, very cheap and cheerful drilling, essentially old technology used for drilling water wells. And we drill down through the sedimentary sequence till we hit the prospective basement, just using this cheap mud rotary drilling. And then we transfer the rig changes to do diamond drilling, we do short intervals of core drilling at the bottom of these mud rotary holes. So we can drill a hole here, a typical hole costs around about 45,000, 50,000 Australian dollars. So that's the key piece of this, being able to drill through the sediments as quickly and as cost-effectively as possible.

7:34 And we typically drill 2 to 3 holes into each of these targets. We're looking for something very, very big. These porphyry systems are vertically extensive, almost tubular-like in size and shape. But outboard of that, they essentially are, in a very simplistic manner, concentric zones of alteration. So the footprint of these mineral systems is very, very large. So we believe by poking 2 to 3 holes into the prospective basement sequence, we'll at least recognize whether we're in a mineral system or not. We don't necessarily anticipate hitting mineralization straightaway. We really just want to confirm we've got a mineral system with the right age and the right characteristics. If we don't see those key attributes in the form of fabled geochemistry or alteration or any evidence of mineralisation, we move on to the next target. This is a key part of this. It's a very disciplined approach to testing lots and lots of targets as quickly as cost effective as possible.

8:32 It was this strategy that attracted a major mining company. Last June we announced a large-scale multi-year agreement with Anglo Gold Ashanti. They recognised the district-scale potential of what we've been doing and the scale of the targets that we're testing. We've got a four-stage agreement. Stage 1 is where we're at right now. These are all Australian dollars. 10 million Australian dollars across the entire portfolio of targets with that scout drilling program. So we're testing these initial targets. At the end of that 10 million phase, they got 0 interest in any of the assets, but they had retained the right to select up to 5 projects, whereby there's a mechanism to earn up to 75% interest in each of the 5 targets.

9:21 And AngloGold have just elected already, before we've even completed phase 1, to initiate phase 2 on our Duck Creek project. And that Phase 2 is essentially a $7 million of expenditures to earn an initial 51% interest in each of the projects. And then phase 3, to earn a 65% interest, they've got to spend an additional $20 million. So it's a fairly rich deal for an early stage exploration project. Then above and beyond that, to get to 75%, they're required to do what we call a pre-feasibility study. This is a very substantial study of a big underground porphyry type deposit. It would be very expensive and require a lot of drilling. It includes engineering studies, environmental studies, water studies, you name it. It's a very comprehensive document really that consider all aspects of a potential exploiting a deposit.

10:15 The other piece is this pre-feasibility study is required to have a minimum 2 million ounce measured and indicated resource as part of that pre-feasibility study. Key part of all of this is we receive a 10% management fee for operating on behalf of Anglo Gold. So this year we're expecting between $1 and $1.5 million in just the management fees, which is critically, we don't have to go to the market to raise capital. Our treasury has been pretty much in a steady state since we announced this deal and we foresee that being the same case for the foreseeable future while we're doing a lot of drilling. But that phase 1 program is comprising of approximately about 35,000 meters of drilling. It's a very aggressive drill program. And then phase 2, that will transition into more deeper drilling looking for these ex-big porphyries.

11:08 And this just really gives you a spread, a sense of the spread of the targets across our portfolio. So it's sort of 300 kilometres there from north to south, a lot of big targets. We do have some targets outside of the agreement there in the grey, but the ones in red are all being drilled by Anglo Gold and critically have never been drill tested before. And we're doing this 2 hours up a paved highway from one of Australia's biggest mines. This really is just a quick example of one of the types of targets we're testing. This is, if you just look at the images on the left, this is a magnetic map. We're looking for big complex features in the magnetic, so those red colours are magnetic highs and the cooler colours, the blues and the purples, are magnetic lows. So broadly speaking, we're looking for areas of complexity within the magnetics, magnetic highs surrounding steep magnetic lows.

12:00 And In this case, Duck Creek, we tested one of those magnetic lows and we had a lot of alteration of a very large

12:06 area in that initial sort of scout drilling, shallow drill hole program. So we got a lot of indications we're onto a system here. This is the project that Anglo Gold has elected to move into phase 2, but we're certainly very encouraged with what we're seeing. We've got rocks of the right characteristics, the right age, the right geochemistry, et cetera. Now we just need to focus in on finding the sweet spot. And then really in terms of the catalyst going forward for the balance of this year, it's all about drilling. So it's the completion of that phase 1 drill program, so testing that wide variety of targets, all fully funded by Anglo Gold. We're about 60% of the way through that phase 1 program right now. And then phase 2, drilling on that Duck Creek project, so deeper drill holes in and around those areas where we've identified a lot of favorable alterations.

12:56 So there'll be a lot of news coming out of the company, and it will all be drilling-related and all critically fully funded by Anglo Gold. So really if I can just summarize where we are, we are targeting very very large copper gold porphyries and that's an important point to really stress the scale of the targets which we're testing. We are truly looking for tier 1 scale discoveries,

13:23 comparable in size to those major mines located further to the south of us. Anglo Gold, fully funding everything. This is a wonderful partnership with one of the world's biggest gold mining companies. We own 100% of all our assets. We've literally acquired over 7,000 square kilometers of exploration licenses, the biggest haul of exploration licenses in the state of New South Wales. As I mentioned earlier, it's all about the drilling. We're aggressively drilling. We'll probably be drilling over 30,000 meters of drilling this year on the water, greenfields, exploration targets. So with that, I will leave it there and take any questions you may have. Thank you, Alistair. I've got a question. The Anglo Gold agreement is on 5 targets, yeah? It is, eventually, potentially up to 5.

14:09 Okay, you've obviously got many more targets, so are you looking to do similar agreements with other companies? Well, Right now, phase 1 covers all of the targets. At the end of phase 1, Anglo Gold can elect to select up to 5. So the question will be, what happens if we identify more than 5 of interest?

14:28 Those will all come back to ourselves, and Anglo Gold won't retain any rights on those. Now, we'll see how it all plays out. I don't know how many projects they will select as part of phase 2. They've already early elected to select 1, the Duck Creek project, but I would anticipate they're going to select probably another 2 or 3, but we're a little bit in the hands of Anglo Gold at that point. If you generate more than 5 targets of interest for them, is the agreement flexible enough for them to extend that to 6, 7? Listen, it's a wonderful partnership. Right now, it's fairly rigid, the agreement, but we also just modified the agreement for the early election of the Duck Creek project. So listen, if Anglo-Gaul want to do 6 or 7, we're probably not going to push back on that. Okay, well I wish you the best of luck there. Thank you very much Alistair. Thank you.

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Speaker profile Alistar Waddell

Alistar Waddell

President, CEO & Director at Inflection Resources

- Geologist with over 25 years of diverse mineral exploration, development and capital market experience. - A founder, and former CEO of GoldQuest Mining Corp., focused on exploration in the Dominican Republic. -Previously VP – Greenfields Exploration for Kinross Gold with global mandate to develop new exploration ideas. - Founder & Chairman of Headwater Gold focused on exploration in Nevada, Idaho & Oregon. - Lived and worked in Australia, Canada, Bolivia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Chile and the Dominican Republic.

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