Introduction to Cortus

0:08 Hello, everyone, and welcome to Cordis Metal's Live Investment Summit today, hosted by 6. We're joined today by Sean Major, Cordis Metal's Chief Executive Officer. Sean's going to walk us through a company presentation and after we'll move on to the live Q&A session where we'll be accepting questions. You can submit your questions at any time using the Q&A panel found on the right hand side of your screen. And as always, this summit is being recorded and will be available to watch afterwards on Six.com.

0:31 So without further ado, Sean, I'll hand it over to you. Well, thanks, Cam, and welcome, everybody. I'm here today to talk to you about Cordis Metals. And as it says on the slide here, we like to think of ourselves as leading a new age of discovery in Nevada.

0:57 We're a new company, but we have acquired an established project generator. There's a private operator, Clay Newton, who is our resident geological expert and has 30 years experience exploring for gold in Nevada. So his specialty is tectonics and structural geology and he's developed a methodology for seeking large deposits under cover. Clay is large deposits undercover. Clay is exceptional at doing this kind of work and has written a paper about it, plans to publish that paper and another perhaps within a year or 2 and It explains his methodology for doing this So we convinced him to not publish right away, and we are working with him to generate new projects.

2:08 But he also had about 20 projects already staked and had done some work to advance them. So our group, this is the group here, has had considerable success around the world over the last 20 years, but we haven't worked in Nevada. And the group that I'm talking about is, we go under the name of Metals Group. So, Metals Group is a team of professionals who have worked for decades in the industry.

2:55 We have expertise in operations, but we are primarily a geological and marketing group. So the companies that wave the banner of Metals Group have access to marketing infrastructure as well as top-notch geological talent. And each company has its own operations and its own local expert. But they share these resources to keep costs down. So you can see some of the credentials here. This isn't all of the people, but down below you see Ewan Webster is a PhD, and we have another fellow, Malcolm Dorsey, with a PhD.

3:53 Crystal Adair is very experienced in the field, and particularly at managing remotely, which has helped us greatly during COVID and dealing with liaising with the local people to get our logistics taken care of and keep the timeline cracking. We have also Brad Williamson and Colin Padgett are part of our technical team. So this group works together to evaluate opportunities for our metals group.

4:33 And We were looking in Nevada for a project, came across Clay, were able to negotiate some terms with him to acquire his portfolio, and for the last 7 months we have been exploring and prioritizing that list of projects. We will be starting to tell our story in earnest here over the next few months. So you folks are lucky, you're in early to hear our story. This slide is talking about the metals group, some of which I've already covered.

5:13 It emphasizes that we're looking for large scale deposits and they're of an epithermal or karlin-type nature. But the most important feature that differentiates us is that we are looking in the basins between the ranges. I'll get to that in a moment. If you're not familiar with Nevada, or even If you are, there's a bit of information on this slide. You can find this presentation on our website. It's pointing out though that Nevada is a top-ranked jurisdiction. It has more production per square kilometer, square area than any other jurisdiction in the world.

6:06 It's also the most attractive for investors, according to the Fraser Institute. We like it because They have a very reasonable tax regime, and projects there tend to be quite profitable, even at low grades. So it's worthwhile making discoveries in Nevada. The local economies benefit greatly from mining, so there's a lot of support. There's a lot of infrastructure, from roadways to contractors, for almost any aspect of the process of exploration and production.

6:55 The government has demonstrated that it supports mining above other priorities. It's an ideal jurisdiction in our minds. There's a little bit in here about the price of gold. So there are many major producers have built out their production plans that they've been following for the last 10 years on lower priced gold. So call it $1,200 per ounce. And so the prices that we're operating in now are excellent for them and they're making a lot of, building a lot of cash on their balance sheet. And they've cleaned up their last round of acquisitions, which would have been around 2010.

7:51 We think that there's a window of opportunity here over the next 5 years where these majors will be continuing to produce and make as much money as they can, building up their war chest. And towards the end of that timeframe, we think they'll be looking at acquisitions again. So the window of opportunity in Nevada is to rapidly advance early stage projects. Doing that, we feel in partnership with third parties, considering we have a significant portfolio and they all have excellent potential, We need a little bit of spending on each one and we would retain an interest in as many producing projects as we could. This window, if we make arrangements with private parties that are looking for a project to do a bit of work and with some success take it public would appeal to us as would any arrangements with junior companies that have an interest in making a discovery.

9:03 So our projects, if you look at this map, the black dots are showing you that we're located in the in all of the major trends and even in some. That are new. Trends that are under explored. To the left. To the West. There's a significant section. There were we have several projects in the Lahontan Basin. There are existing deposits and mines in that area, but it has not been developed to the extent that the other significant trends have been Carlin, Cortez, Battle Mountain, Getchell, Long Canyon.

9:51 So 65% of our projects are in those recognized trends and those trends are responsible for producing 80% of the gold in Nevada, and that is nearly as much as Canada produces. It's a very significant mining jurisdiction. Mining jurisdiction.

10:19 This slide talks about our exploration concept. In Nevada, for 200 years, They've produced over 200 million ounces of gold. And this has been generally in exposed rock in the ranges. By ranges, we mean mountains, of course, as you can see in the distance in this photo. And those structures that are highly mineralized, our theory is that they continue into the basin. So over The time that Nevada has developed, the ranges rose up and the basins sank.

11:08 We look for areas where the structures continue into the basin. We look near the foot the mountain and the pediment. We use a range of methods to come up with our targets there, which I'll talk about. If you consider the way that mineralization was formed in Nevada,

11:37 the fact that the basins are underexplored is a significant opportunity. It's more than half of the land mass in Nevada, and it has a similar potential to what has been discovered and produced in the ranges to date. So we are very excited about any type of methodology that would lead you to make these discoveries that have been not a priority to date. We talk about systematic exploration. Our group is known for that. We've brought that to many jurisdictions around the world over the last couple of decades, places like Western Australia, where we minority partners with established miners.

12:35 And our commitment to exploration acumen contributed to discoveries that their minds, including putting together or consolidating land packages and data and information and resources

12:55 to come up with an economic reserve. So one of them was a nickel mine in Kemalda and the other was a gold mine near Kulgarni. And in both instances, we were able to sell our minority interest, a significant gain to our majority partner. And this was near or around the 2008 crisis. We came out of that with a significant cash windfall and distributed a large portion of that to our shareholders with tax-free returns of capital.

13:39 So we are not, we believe strongly in the systematic exploration methodology. You look at the sidebar here, it's saying, or pointing out that Clay Newton started with ideas and there were 250 plus prospects. He did that on some basic data, which is, you know, there are some publicly available survey data available, and He would have had his own concepts, perhaps some proprietary data to come up with these prospects. Then he would go in the field, map the anomaly, and stake some claims.

14:28 We, in our portfolio, 5 of our projects are still in this early stage. Others on the list have advanced through some soil and rock geochemistry. The rock geochemistry, rock samples are limited. Soils are more likely,

14:50 just due to the nature of the cover. We have about 10 projects in that phase. With mapping and some physics you start to see where there could be significant deposits on trend with known deposits and mines. At this stage, where we have drill targets, we are looking for permitting and bonding, and at that point the projects are ready for third parties to take over. Third parties could become involved sooner than that, if they wish, in order to kind of get a leg up on some of our entire portfolio.

15:43 Or they can wait until that point and we've de-risked it somewhat and carry on from there. The drilling expectation for each of our projects is in the range of 2,000 to 4,000 metres of drilling in order to adequately test our targets. And so we're looking for arrangements that would make that happen. Once we have proven up our concepts through discovery or 2, the value of our portfolio is sure to grow. And we expect that our share price would climb with that.

16:32 We have 2 slides here that I won't dwell on. They are available, as I said, with our online presentation. But it is pointing out that in the Lahontan Basin we have Powerline Project and the Grayson project. And they are in the same valley. Where there is 8 million ounces of gold. It's relatively under explored. Nobody has looked in the basin. We feel that the structures clearly continue on from known deposits and minds and that they're accessible in the pediment in the shallow cover near the mountains. Each of these has drilled targets ready to go, And this was the basis of our initial transaction.

17:20 Cordis started as a CPC, a capital pool company, and our qualifying transaction was to acquire Powerline and Grayson for 1 million shares and reimbursing some operating costs. That came with the 43-101 report. And so these are among our portfolio that are available for sale. That are available for sale. Our portfolio includes

17:54 8 more projects that are in our top 10. And You can see just from these summaries that all of them are similar to, analogous to, close to existing mines and deposits. And some of them are drill ready. We know the scope of work that should be carried out, relatively low cost up to the drilling phase. And we have some interesting information that we think would pique the interest of any junior minor. These are 4 more of those 8, and we're very happy to take interest from any group that would like to

18:47 own these projects. The value proposition for Cordis is as a professional group that are investors ourselves and we see public companies as investment vehicles.

19:09 They're set up to raise the capital to find the projects that will lead to discovery. The discovery chart or curve is really our bread and butter. So I think most investors are familiar with that, where there's a steep increase up to the discovery phase, a bit of a lull before production. And throughout that there's volatility depending on the markets. So junior mining stocks are, In my view, are risk averse if you get in in the early phases because they are inexpensive. And if you can find an operator with the technical ability and the corporate savvy to make arrangements, then these projects hold value over time.

20:09 Our proposition is to have several discoveries and provide our investors with exposure to that upside. Many juniors have only 1 or 2 primary projects, and we have 10 times that with continuing project generation.

20:29 The methodology that we use is applicable to the entire Great Basin. Right now we're focused in Nevada. It's a highly recognized jurisdiction, as you know, And we feel that by working there on these projects, we will really get to know the operating environment, build relationships. And as we've proven with other companies in the metals group, that leads to low low-cost acquisitions and long-term value growth. When I said earlier that we're a project accelerator, I mean to differentiate us from the project generator model.

21:25 Many project generator models are kind of a lifetime work, We're looking at. A lifetime work. Where. Geological group may have projects that they, were able to get their hands on, and they convince people over time through several cycles to put money into them. And our mandate is to attract the capital to develop them quickly to the discovery stage.

22:01 Hopefully by doing that, we'd be able to stack the discovery curves or have the curves go out in a series, one after another, so that you don't see the dips. They either stack up or spread out. The way you achieve that, we feel, is through a variety of deal mechanisms.

22:25 We would consider spinning projects out or like in that case, the shareholders of Qortus would receive shares 1 for 1 in the new co. And that new co. Would continue to finance based on the merits of the project that was spun into it. So as we go through our portfolio and discoveries are made, that's one way to stack the returns for shareholders. Let's see here. We think that the gold market is strengthening and that these majors will have an appetite for acquisitions within 5 years.

23:19 And so our expectation is to get to the discovery stage within 2 years on as many projects as possible. Now, our capital structure, this is where we're sitting at the moment. It says April 1st, but it's still applicable. We have under 30 million shares outstanding, there's significant number of warrants, and some options outstanding. So those warrants have an accelerator clause, which means that if our stock price is at 25 cents or better for 5 consecutive days, the company has the ability to trigger a 30 day termination by providing notice to the shareholders.

24:23 And rather than forcing it, this is really in many cases a wake up call for the investor for them to realize that they've got a significant gain on their shares and that the company had intended those warrants as a financing, secondary financing. If we were able to have the warrants come in, then in the options, we would expect to have working capital of approximately $5 million and outstanding shares in the $50 million range. So with $3 to $5 million in the kitty, We think that we're set up for covering our DNA.

25:11 And any. Inexpensive exploration costs that we have for each of the projects, and that our ongoing G&A would begin to be covered by the third-party deals that we make, where there'd be some cash payments coming back to us. So you can see that in that way, our costs are covered or offset somewhat, partially or wholly, and our main focus is on continued participation in the outcome from discoveries on these projects. So I'm going to end with this slide. We're based in Edmonton. This is where the corporate office is.

26:00 We have personnel based in Vancouver as well, and we have a Nevada operations base in Winnemucca, Nevada. So, Winnemucca is centrally located amongst our portfolio of projects, providing us with good access there. There's a crew house and it keeps our costs down for tenure management and the kind of exploration that we carry out at this stage. Well, thanks, Sean. That was wonderful. I wanna thank you for listening and I'm happy to take any questions. Absolutely. I will remind everyone in attendance right now that you can submit questions to the Q&A panel on the right-hand side of your screen.

26:47 We have received a few questions ahead of the summit, so we'll get into those first. Sean, what are the terms of your option to complete the acquisition of your project portfolio? Okay, well, this, the agreement we have with Clay Newton is with a company called Intermont LLC. So we issued them 1 million shares for their first 2 projects, formed the basis of our GoPublic transaction. And for another 5 million shares, we can acquire Intermont itself, which means that we would be acquiring 18 to 23 projects at various stages.

27:36 And the total cost is 6 million shares. On approximately 20 projects. Only 300,000 shares each. And we will have reimbursed them for some of their operating costs. So it was a very favorable deal and compared with other transactions you see in Nevada, which sets us up to be able to make good transactions with the next round of financiers without blowing up the company. Right, Thank you. The next question is, do you have any deals in place with third parties to fund drilling and discovery? What terms would you expect?

28:27 We've been negotiating with several parties. Some of them are private groups planning to go public with their project. That's something I mentioned earlier. And there are juniors as well that have been speaking to us in the time since we went public. It's only now that we're reaching the stage that we would be able to negotiate those terms. We're very much looking forward to finalizing some of those in the next few months. So we will, our goal is to have half of the portfolio under option this year. Okay. What are your annual holding costs and or burn rate?

29:20 Well, for having office space and capacity infrastructure team members in Edmonton, Vancouver and Nevada, including field crews, we're about 1 million dollars a year. For that includes management, consultants, professional fees, staff. It also includes notably a contractor that we work with to develop a cloud-based data set. So to help tenure management in Nevada, we have a digital database for all of our claims. We have over 2,000 claims across these 20 projects.

30:19 So we use a cloud-based system for data collection in the field that automatically updates our information. And this forms the basis for data rooms that are useful for deal making, whether it's with smaller operators or eventually with the majors. There's about, you know, you could go up to another million dollars for new claims staking and additional field work. Thank you for that. The next question is how will you generate returns for your shareholders?

31:10 I alluded to that in the presentation where our model would be to enter into a variety of transaction types with third parties. Either we could spin out a successful project where shareholders are keeping their share in Cordis, getting another share in the second company, and riding the discovery curve and market trend for that new company. Or if we are making deals with third parties where it's a joint venture type structure, we would expect an NSR there of, you know, combined between The prospect generator and ourselves, it'd be up to 3% NSR with a buyback on 0.5.

32:10 So you start to see some returns from either accelerated production schedule or selling those NSRs. And on top of that, we would want to have a continuing interest in that company. So we would negotiate a share piece and therefore you build a portfolio of stock in these new companies which you can manage. And by bringing in the revenues, you have a corporate capacity that is managing this portfolio of projects and continually looking for something that would be a massive deal.

33:01 That's how we see the life cycle of the project generator or accelerator. You accelerate what you have, make the most of it, and one of those isn't, we think, sure to pay off or multiple. And you are operating in a target rich environment in Nevada where anything can happen. So you're present, aware, and taking advantage of what comes to you. I think shareholders would benefit from that type of a proactive strategy as well as spin out from many of these projects. Great thank you. Next question, what are your plans for marketing to stock and projects?

33:55 Well, first of all, we will be putting out press releases that profile our projects and the results of some of the early stage exploration that we've done. I think that these will go a long way to people realizing the upside that there is in these projects. That will be our experience so far has been to publish these broadly, so North America, Europe, and to ensure that we have active campaigns on several levels to make sure that there's ads being placed and lead generation.

34:43 So a very proactive marketing strategy, which is, it's not cheap, but it's necessary. And we're not shy about that. So we would, like our other companies, we make significant investment in marketing efforts And it pays off in the volume that you see in the stock. In our case, we have these warrants that we'd like to see come in. And by publishing our news and making sure that We always have buyers for the stock. We think that the story will play well once it becomes known. We think the market will agree that we're significantly undervalued.

35:31 Okay, Thank you. Can 1 or can an invest asks what is the anticipated depth of such basin cover deposits? Well, it varies. But I think we're looking at sort of 200 to 500 meters. And we know of instances where the mines in the range were quite successful. And there's only a couple of different mines in Nevada where they've extended into the pediment. And in these instances, at least one of them, the major deposit was found in the basin itself.

36:26 So when you've got significant mineralization and an excellent infrastructure. Like you do in Nevada, they're producing gold at low grades in the ranges and at these prices and better, we would expect to have a valuable asset in spite of the overburden. Okay, thank you. Edward Dorsa has asked a few questions. His first is, I can see you have diversified in terms of location geographically. Will you be interested in doing that continentally by producing gold from Ghana, Africa? He follows up with, Ghana is Africa's largest producer of gold. Will you be interested in diversifying by way of continental Africa, where you will require much less capital investment to produce gold as you may require in North America?

37:26 Well, there's 2 ways to answer that question. One is that we recognize the potential in Africa. We've operated there previously with one of our companies in Equatorial Guinea. And while we were there, we looked at opportunities in Guinea-Bissau and Cameroon, as well as some of the other West African jurisdictions. So we're very familiar with how to go about business there. It was an exciting time and there were some very significant assets that we targeted.

38:16 It's a difficult place to operate. Once you find something, it can be difficult to keep it. Our experience there was successful and we generated a really substantial return for the shareholders again, through a return of capital as well. But you've got the potential for mines worth billions, And it's very difficult to get to that point. We do have experience doing it, but we've turned our attention to North America and South America. You know, we're operating heavily in Canada and now Nevada, as well as Chile.

39:07 We have experience all over the world with the metals group and our history. We find that the North American jurisdictions are, the costs are defined, you can budget for them and investors don't get as many surprises, neither do the operators. Because of the stability, I think that's why Nevada is top ranked, but it's more than that in Nevada. They have very low cost infrastructure and production, which makes a wide range of results economic or viable.

39:53 That may be true of Africa as well, but it's many time zones away and there can be many unexpected hurdles. We've gone the route of preferential relationships before, which can be hard to navigate. We did it in the time of the emerging international laws about corruption. And so we've done it kind of as the poster boy of clean living. And, you know, it was respected, but there are other countries and miners in the world from that don't subscribe to the same standards, and so it can be very difficult to compete with them.

40:41 You may be able to make the discoveries, but you have to be good at negotiating your way out with a gain is likely the assets are going to be run by somebody else. I think we all know that countries like China and Russia make significant investments in infrastructure in African countries in order to have access to their resources eventually, which was certainly our experience. All right. Well, Sean, thank you. Thank you, everyone, that's been in attendance today. That's all the time we have for questions at this point. I would like to thank, of course, everyone that's in attendance, everyone that asked questions, but Sean, thank you for coming on and giving that great presentation.

41:28 To everyone in attendance, If you didn't get a chance to ask a question, or if you think of 1 after the event, we'll be sending out a short survey where you can leave your contact information and Cordis Metals will reach out to you directly. You can also find more information, of course, at CordisMetals.com. Sean, I'll hand it back to you for the final word now. Well, thanks, Kim. And thanks, everybody, for attending. Certainly contact us if you'd like to have more information. And please follow us on our website. We are, I think You're going to see significant news from us over the next period of time. And we're really looking forward to advancing these projects quickly.

42:15 So I'd really love it if you'd be a part of that. And we have several other companies, of course, in the metals group, which we're happy to talk about as well. If you want to take a look at those. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Thanks, John. And with that, I guess we'll sign off. I hope everybody has a nice day. Thank you.