Minera Alamos: On the Cusp of Gold Production

0:05 Hi, my name is Bianca Peschola. I'm the CEO of 6 and welcome to the Manera Alamos Live Investor Summit. I'd like to start today by introducing our presenter, Doug Ramshaw. To kick things off, Doug will be telling the company's story and then we'll be accepting questions. You can submit your questions in the Q&A panel on the right-hand side of your screen.

0:25 Without further ado, take it away, Doug. Thanks, Bianca, and thanks everyone for joining us today. For anyone wondering what I was doing on my long weekend, today's news release, which I'll go into today, will probably explain that. For those new to the story, we'll obviously give the overall kind of view of the company, but I will wanna talk specifically about our exciting news that we put out this morning. I will be making some forward-looking statements, this is customary. And now a little about us. We are a multi-leveraged gold mining company. We are just coming out of the development peer group and are on the cusp of graduating to the ranks of gold producer right around year end.

1:22 We are a seasoned group of mine builders in an industry which certainly at the smaller end of project scale, I don't think builds enough. Our team has built 3 successful mines in the last 12 years and certainly has particular penchant for going after heap leach gold assets, which we feel limit the capital requirements to build up a production profile. Before today, we had 2 such assets, but with today's announcement, we've added another pipeline asset, as our intention here is to to build a multi project production profile that can grow organically from within.

2:12 And and finally whilst our focus is in Mexico you know perhaps in time we'll add another jurisdiction, but we have real competency in operating in Mexico. Our team has worked together down there for 12 years. It's a fantastic environment for permitting and for its mineral prospectivity. We're ably assisted with our largest shareholder of Cisco Gold Royalties, who are a fantastic both financial and technical partner that allows us to do what we do best. Today we announced a new pipeline asset. I'll go into it in a little bit more detail, but in basic terms, the deal capitalized on our ability to take a modest initial resource that we've modeled at us and get it into production cheaply and then grow it organically out of cash flows that might come from it. You know, we did this with less than 1 percent dilution to our existing share capital.

3:19 And I think also importantly, the majority of the cash payments, which are actually quite modest, are due over multiple years post our first mine entering production. So the overall impact of this financially is extremely minimal for our shareholders and as big shareholders ourselves, that's important. It's an advanced gold project in northern Zacatecas, surrounded by some world-class operations like Panasquito and others. And what we really like about it is it closely resembles what the company's management team built when they ran Castle Gold, a project called El Castillo in Durango.

4:08 It's a bit of an El Castillo lookalike that just happens to now be, you know, a future development project for the team that built El Castillo. So we love it as a new cheap heap leach operation. And I'll talk a little bit more about it as we go on. A little about the company. I mentioned that Cisco Gold Rorty's is our largest shareholder. We've also attracted those missing generalist investors in our in our sector. Close to 18 percent of our stock is held by U.S. Generalists. And as I like to point out, I think the reason we attracted them well before this move in the gold price is we've been talking generalist language. We're very, you know, when we talk about spending capital, that's the shareholder's capital. And so anything we can do to mitigate that and focus on a strong bottom line is, we think, a very endearing quality of our company's business philosophy, and one that has attracted those generalists.

5:16 We also, as we've developed this story over the last year, you know, attracted a growing number of the analysts community that, that see this as a company poised to take advantage of the current gold market environment we're in. Even with today's purchase, the initial payment of 400,000 US, we have sufficient cash and investment holdings to more than cover all our existing plans, including the plans for the new asset. And I think one of the reasons we've seen a positive response in the market is, you know, we've come off the back of 3 straight share financings. There is no warrant overhang in this stock. That's important. It's something I've, I've, I've hammered home to investors that have come in that, you know, whilst you might want a warrant and feel like you're getting extra leverage that way, they can be a ceiling on a stock. And I would much rather have that kind of uncapped ceiling so the stock can properly reflect the developments that we as a management team are making.

6:24 And all this work over the last year has seen us outperform both gold, the GDXJ and our peer group developers. And I think a big part of that is as a developer, we are poised to actually take advantage of this gold price in relatively short order. And that has led to an outperformance of that peer group really only beaten by Liberty Gold and their Black Pine exploration project. So very happy that what we're doing as a company is reflected by a strong market appetite for a story that can take advantage of this gold market. Because I think the best way to play a rising gold price is to be producing gold. And that's our goal early next year.

7:15 I mentioned a little about the team. We are a strong technical board. Without going into too much detail on everyone there, yes, you can see we have a series of geologists, engineers, metallurgists on the board. This isn't a board filled with finance guys or lawyers. This is a company strong on its technical expertise, which will drive the projects forward. On top of that, we have key members of that Castle Gold team. Federico Alvarez, recently promoted to chief operating officer. He ran the El Castillo operation both for us and then continued as VP operations for Argonaut Gold once they bought it. Miguel Cardona was the VP exploration that, you know, tripled the resources at El Castillo after it was up and running. And Darren Kernighan, our CEO, who's down there in Mexico with the rest of the team, he designed and oversaw the construction of it. So If you could want 3 people from the Castle Gold experience to be running this new iteration of that same business model, it would be those 3 gentlemen, and we're very fortunate.

8:29 So I mentioned assets. We've now got 3, Santana, La Fortuna and Sierra de Oro. And, you know, we focus in northern Mexico. Mexico, despite some bad press, you know, is a very good jurisdiction for mining. Probably the biggest 2 challenges facing the mining industry would be water management and permitting and permitting timelines. Mexico has a really first class permitting environment, which allows you to be able to start and finish permitting within about 12 months. That allows us to plan forward a series of sequential mine builds with a lot more certainty on a permitting landscape than perhaps other jurisdictions.

9:16 Also, in northern Mexico, it's a better part of Mexico in my opinion to operate and that's where we'll continue to look for opportunities. Southern Mexico is tough, I think you'd have to have projects of real scale because of added security needs And our business model is about starting small scale and growing out of that early production, deploying capital back into the projects from the cashflow generated within to grow them organically. And that's, I think, more suited to Northern Mexico and the style that we're approaching this with. I'll go into each of these in a little bit of order. Not to today's news might have caused a flurry of interest today, but in reality Santana is key.

10:08 We announced construction at the beginning of the year, and this is due to complete right around year end. All being well, Mexico is not looking like it's going to have a major rainy season. I looked recently at the World Meteorological Organization's stats, and supposedly there's only a 10% chance of an El Nino event this year, 60% chance of weather normal and 30% of a La Nina warmer and drier event. Now someone's got to be that 10% and I guess given it's 2020, I think we can throw all this out the window. But all being well with a typical rainy season, construction should complete around year end. And that will allow us to graduate the beginning of 2021 to a class of gold producer.

11:06 And from there on out, it's about growing out of that early production profile, both organically at the Santana project and through these other assets we have to grow a bigger mining company. We have aspirations of that and I think we have the platform now in place to do that. I mentioned capital intensity. We really are at the bottom of the curve where we want to be in terms of amount of capital deployed per ounce of annual production. There's a chart there from Cormark Security showing just that. And also leading amongst developer peers that, you know, at these gold prices in terms of the margins on an all-in cost basis. And again, that's indicative of how cheaply we build our operations.

12:04 So these are the kind of metrics you want because they speak to what capital is required, obviously, to build the production, but then what we're able to do with the healthy margins we can get off open pit heap bleach goal production moving forward. To me it's never about high grade over low grade, it's all about margin. And open pit heap bleach really allows us to do that. So I mentioned construction's well underway. The big item on a heap bleach is establishing the heap bleach pad. That work is ongoing right now with the pad liner going in sometime over this quarter.

12:51 The rest of the construction is running in parallel with that. So we're well on the way to having something which much more resembles a mine, you know, over the coming months and look forward to further updates to the market as to construction progress over the next quarter as we head towards a conclusion of that. The water well tests have all been completed. We're looking at providing not just water well that will satisfy Santana's initial needs and expansion needs as we see Santana growing, but also as a responsible member of the local community, which we as a company coming in there and building a mine, we in many ways have joined their community. You know, we are making sure that we have water wells that are going to provide useful new sources of water for the small community in our area.

13:51 We have a crushing system that was bought earlier in this year that that will allow us to move from contract mining, which will provide contract crushing early on in the operation. To take in crushing in the in-house as we expand the operation. This should further reduce our all-in sustaining costs for our production. What's really exciting and something to look for at Santana because I'm sure construction updates are probably boring. I love exploration, I just don't like the cost of exploration. Our business model will provide a lot of exploration but it will be done so out of cash flow So you can have all the excitement of exploration without the constant private placements required to do it.

14:40 The drilling I would look for in the second half of the year, which will really indicate whether Santana has as much bigger growth potential than perhaps we're planning in terms of the initial operation, will be when we drill some of the other pipes on the property. The main resource that we will be starting the operation on is at Nicho and Nicho Norte and a couple of pits there. Those pits host a couple of breccia pipes. We have identified 6 more of these, at least on the property, and we will be drill testing them. We know they're gold bearing from the surface sampling. Now it's a question of proving that the grades we're seeing at surface, which are very indicative of the grades we see above Nicho, do actually translate to grades and volumetrics in pipes. But if we're fortunate to even have a couple of those pipes meet our expectations, Santana can grow considerably from the starting operation where we're heading into construction and production with. So that in the second half of the year will be key exploration results to watch.

15:56 Sierra de Oro, the best way I can describe it right now, we are producing a 43-101 maiden resource. There's a lot of historic drilling, 70-odd holes, over 6,000m of trenching. The best context I can give for it ahead of That is when the team built El Castillo, it started with a resource of 400,000 ounces at about 0.4 of a gram and a 1.5 to 1 strip ratio. Our internal modeling of Sierra de Oro has this deposit beating El Castillo on every one of those metrics, strip ratio, starting ounces and grade. We'll look to confirm that for the market as we release a 43-101 resource statement

16:47 in the near future. We're very excited. It is an analog geologically and in every other form. And I can't think of a better team to be building another El Castillo than the team that built the first one. Interestingly, the company that discovered Sierra D'Oro, Niranda Gold back in the early 90s, also discovered El Castillo. So maybe they're, you know, we appreciate their discovery work and for us it's about building mines. So we'll take the work that they did in discovering these things to now build something forward. The deposit outcrops at surface, very little strip. You know, the claims we picked up today in black there are the core claims that host the main mineralized system on the, in the area.

17:43 We had some preexisting claims, both adjoining it and a large bank blanket claim around it. So we have all the necessary land to establish a mine there. And interestingly, like, you know, a lot of flat land, which will be very helpful for building large heap leach pads. Historically speaking, the vast majority of that Noranda drilling was above that 0.4g grade for El Castillo days. That was shown also in trench results across the property. There's a bunch of later drilling that we're going to be incorporating.

18:30 Those are the dots in blue into the resource model. And so stay tuned for that. Not to be lost in all of this, in 2018, we released a PEA on another project we had La Fortuna in Durango. And This is still a very advanced project that we'll sequence into our production profile. We'll make a decision on it around year end as construction teams move from building Santana to what are they going to build next. In the interest of time, I'll move a little ahead to the PEA summary. This was just based on a modest 5-year mine life. Like all our projects, there's always room to expand them, but we do not mind starting on a relatively modest resource.

19:25 This was a 300,000oz starter pit at a 3.5 to 4g open pit grade, 6 to 1 strip. And I think what's key here is, we use 1250 Gold in our assumptions and we still came out with a 93% after-tax IRR and 11-month payback period. Obviously, we're talking about much higher gold prices now. But the reason we use that is we want a business model that works in good markets and bad. So We stress test everything at $1,000 an ounce. We run models at $1,250. I assume moving forward, we'll run models probably closer to $1,500, but we'll always test those lower thresholds as well.

20:13 This project has all-in sustaining costs of $440 an ounce, and has plenty of room to grow. It has about 26 million US in CapEx. So the perspective of building Santana first was it's a lot easier to take some debt on to build project number 2. You don't want to be a single asset company taking debt on for project number 1. Right now we're in the right gold market. You could get away with that. But there have been countless examples in our industry of companies which unfortunately not from a technical issue with the project but from a market condition perspective, you know, can get screwed by taking debt on too early. Where does this leave us? You know, before acquiring Asset number 3, we always had a goal of hitting 150,000 ounces a year as a producer from a number of assets.

21:07 We have not stopped looking for a complementary asset to build around Sierra de Oro, Santana and Fortuna. You know, and I hope that we can continue to add smart asset level deals where you're not having to dilute shareholders with big M&A cost of acquiring another company when there are assets that you can go after where you are talking about limited dilution and money invested directly into the ground, not as acquiring another company. So, we're just starting out on this step to intermediate producer status. And the goal is we won't stop there. I'm happy to say for the last year and a half, we've built a track record of doing what we said we were gonna do. For a lot of people that have seen this slide before, we always talked about an asset number 3 on there. Well, we've now given asset number 3 a name.

22:05 It's not going to stop us now looking for an asset number 4. And I think we are primed to take full advantage with Santana going into production early next year of the gold market that is currently providing so much excitement. We traded a rough average PNAV to our group, but there's certainly room to continue to improve on that, especially as we graduate out of that group and into the class of gold producers. And finally, just a little update. Obviously this year there will be construction ongoing at Santana with a view that operations would start. So maybe pre-stripping will start late in Q4 with mining starting in Q1 of next year. There'll be a phase 3 exploration drilling at Santana running through the rest of the year. We will finalize decisions on La Fortuna.

23:04 And what I didn't do over the long weekend was change this slide to reflect now Sierra D'Oro coming into the mix. And whilst We've always talked about sequentially building these operations out. With Santana up and running, it will become a lot easier, and with the bandwidth we have, to be able to start concurrent building and concurrent development of projects 2 and 3. So over the coming months, we'll consider our options for sequencing and how Sierra Douro fits into that timeline. But I'm really excited that we offer an opportunity to, I think, really capitalize on the gold market that we are currently blessed with. And with that, I'm happy to take any questions that there may have been from today's news or the presentation in general.

24:00 Great. Doug, can you still hear me? I can, yes. Awesome. Let's jump into some questions. As a reminder, anyone can submit questions using the Q&A column on the right-hand side of your screen. Starting with first one here from Paul Coros. He says, what will be the company's hedging policy once in production? That's a good question. I mean, rather, I like being uncapped. In many ways we're uncapped from having no warrants right now and you're seeing the result in the marketplace or if we apply that to gold production, I think that people want to fully take advantage of gold prices and gold prices movement. The only time we would ever likely consider hedging would be, for example, you know, say a debt package that we entertained for Fortuna involved a modest portion, 10, 15% of it, of production for a certain period of time to be hedged purely to give us complete comfort on that modest part of the production.

25:10 You know while we have debt on the books I guess we would consider that. But in reality I think you know what with Sierra D'Oro coming into the mix it may actually eliminate the need to take debt on for Fortuna, which would then eliminate the need for even a modest hedge of certain production that was tied to Covenant Sun on that debt package. So, no, I'm a big believer in let's take advantage of the gold price on the upside by not being hedged and building a business model that can survive, right, you know, a move on the downside by going over, going after projects which can survive in the toughest of conditions. Very good.

25:56 Another question here, are there any current permits on Cerro de ORO? No, and it's a good question because I want to highlight something that Mexico do right with permitting. They force us, any company should be thinking about this anyway, social license is really important. In many ways, what I love about the Mexican permitting environment, you can't avoid appropriate social license because you can't start the federal permitting process without having community agreements in place. So, you know, our seasoned team of Mexican nationals, you know, understand, I think, better than anyone operating in their country.

26:41 And Federico Alvarez, our COO, is an absolute consummate professional when it comes to all community relations. So we will start with community work at Sierra del Oro, and we're blessed by being in a district where those communities are built around the mines that exist in that Concepcion del Oro mining district. So we're very comfortable with the communities down there and look forward to working with them and bringing value to the district. This next one comes from Rob Rubly. Can Doug comment on the security situation in the areas of Mexico where Monero's projects are located? And follow up from Mark Turner, any issues with it being so close to the state border?

27:38 Yeah, we don't view issues with it being close to the state border. Our team on the ground, Mark certainly met them all in person. I'm very comfortable with their assessment in the area. I'm just a guy that sits in Canada that the team in Mexico made me look good. They are the brains of the operation, I can assure you of that. He knows those O2 well. So no, we don't view an issue with being close to the Zacatecas border there. In terms of security in general,

28:21 one of the things we do to mitigate certain security risk is not producing Dory at our sites. It's one of the reasons we reduce capital cost and also actually security costs associated with being a miner there. We send loaded concentrate to the states for processing into the final dore. So if you are producing dore at site out of an abundance of caution, even in better parts of Mexico like Sonora, you know, in Zacatecas and Durango, which I consider better than most states south of Mexico City. Out of an abundance of caution, if you're producing Doriat site, your security costs are going to go up. And so by working with a gold concentrate, you are saving on the initial upfront capital costs, but you're actually saving on your op costs as well. So no, you have to be smart. You have to be smart in any part of the world But we we view the kinds of operations.

29:22 We're building is something more akin to what you can do in the north of the country You know and so don't don't view it as problematic for us. And our team who've operated there for 12 years have never had an operation on that front. And I think it's just about being smart with how you approach stuff.

29:47 Can you still hear me? Yes, Yes. Great, because that was the sound of my mic falling. Cool. This next one is from Nermina. She says, are your expansion targets remaining within Mexico?

30:03 Just like you don't want to be a single asset company, so we've addressed that, we'd address that prior to today, but we've addressed it further. I don't think you want to be necessarily a single jurisdiction company either. The business rationale of this was to build a platform based off our core strengths operating in Mexico. Thereafter, we would entertain looking at the Americas in general. But I think the pipeline is well-stocked right now, that we don't really need to look outside of Mexico for the foreseeable future. And partly because Mexico does offer a really good permitting process and has countless opportunities which really are bread and butter. These 567 hundred thousand ounce resources which if you're an explorer you're looking at and you go, well, it doesn't really move the needle for selling, you know, but it's gonna cost us a bunch of money to maybe add a few hundred thousand more ounces that still don't move the needle for necessarily selling. Whereas for us, we can see A56,700,000 ounce resource and go, you know, we can build something on that and then establish a greater resource out of production. So for now, Mexico is still a core strength.

31:30 And I think we'd be wise to stick to to what we're doing there. And you know we're not in a rush to to try to grow this company too quickly. This this company can grow very very well without making too many aggressive, you know, stances which may be taking on a new jurisdiction would do. So I think we're fine with where we are right now. We love operating in Mexico because we are primarily a Mexican-run team. With the exception of me and Darren, really the team's largely Mexican and fortunately because my Spanish is absolutely abysmal, They actually all speak very good English and I'm very appreciative of that.

32:25 Speaking of English, Gustavo submitted a question. It's in Spanish, but I'm going to do my best. Here's what I am understanding. He's asking about any alternative shipping system for concentrates, or are you just talking about the shipping of the bars themselves? I'm sorry, Bianca. I missed the very beginning of that question. Yeah, so he was asking about any alternative shipping systems for concentrates. Well, when we built El Castillo, we sent loaded carbon to a place in Idaho, Metals Research in Idaho. And that's certainly from Santana is the plan right now. I think what would be interesting is, while you don't necessarily want to have a refinery at site and pre-producing Dory at site, if we build A number of these operations in northern Mexico.

33:24 I think it would allow for us to have future plans to, you know, acquire some industrial ground near a population center where we are refining our dore inside Mexico and reducing transportation costs, etc. So I think that that would be a plan that could develop in due course. Very good. Hugo is asking about my life here. He says, is La Fortuna only 5 years in production and can you increase the number of years? Yeah, and I apologize in the interest of time, because I kind of like the Q and A sections because I get to hear from you guys and rather than you hearing from me, I slipped through a slide on La Fortuna, not because it frightened me, but because of the time that we had, all of our projects when we acquire and pick up ground, we want to make sure that we have a large, contiguous land package and in the case of Fortuna.

34:29 And I quickly, flip to that slide in the place of Fortuna, that initial resource is right there in the middle of that large claim boundary. We have both brownfields extensions of the pit that we produce a PEA on. So brownfields exploration upside and a lot of greenfields exploration targets as well. It should be, you know, Fortuna is an interesting one because there's been no systematic exploration done since 2008-9 when incidentally it was our team doing that work. So in due course, we know the targets that exist there, both in expanding that pit, but also elsewhere on the property. And so, yeah, the whole concept of starting these operations on modest resources is to get them up and running so that we can expand out of cash flow.

35:24 At El Castillo, you know, it grew from 400,000 ounces to 1.2 million ounces over the course of 2 years, just expanding that resource out of cashflow. And that's the same, I think, shareholder-friendly approach that we want to take with all our assets here. Very good. John Mac says, Bianca and Doug, super event and great to get the updated presentation. Will you be doing any site visits?

35:57 And when will people be able to go into Sonora for work? Basically the gist is, when can people come visit the site? Yeah, I mean, my guess is, you know, it's in the big population centers in Mexico, and it's unfortunate. There are, you know, in South America, We're seeing the lack of funding and And and the fact that people need to live and and socially distancing is is harder for them You know in to keep their lives running normally than it is perhaps in more developed countries. We're seeing some real troubling numbers coming out of that. And it's heartbreaking to see because you look at countries like Peru that were quicker than a lot of developed countries in closing borders, taking necessary steps.

36:51 And it's heartbreaking to see some of that. We're seeing the same in Mexico in big population centers. So our team's completely isolated. Our contractor is. We're very cognizant that as members of the community when we're out there at site, we have to work in a manner that, you know, at no way risks bringing COVID into the area. And so we will not be risking bringing anyone from outside our own team into the area for the foreseeable future. We got our last site visits done early in February. That actually led to National Bank's coverage initiated in June.

37:37 I do look forward to the opportunity when we can have people to site and seeing the operation up and running. We will do our best to keep the market aware of what's going on, especially as we enter production with video and the like to hopefully give people a better taste of what they obviously can't see firsthand. Touching on COVID, Lawrence Lepard wants to know how much COVID risk is in your first poor target for Santana? Less about COVID, more more about COVID cost us maybe a few months at the beginning of the year. And it was actually fortunate that we were just starting construction.

38:28 The community carried on doing what they were doing because they were being paid to clear the pad area of the bigger trees, which they get to keep the wood and make use of. So they actually did quite a bit of work when we were shut down, which didn't cost us too much time. The big thing, Lawrence, is the original plan was to have the pad in prior to the rainy season. Now, assuming it's not a bad rainy season, just like you can mine throughout a rainy season, you can build a mine during rainy season. And it does appear with the caveat it's 2020 and anything can happen that we're not going to have a tough rainy season. So my our guidance is more reflective of things being normal now moving forward from a weather point of view.

39:17 And it would appear, you know, that things, even though COVID is prevalent in the big cities in Mexico, that the government, you know, from a community point of view, from an economy point of view, you know, want to keep driving mining as an essential business moving forward. And I can just hope, you know, whilst I can understand that's important for the economy, I would very much hope that every company that is running a mine, you know, or in the case of us, building a mine right now, is absolutely taking into account the health and safety of all those people that are either involved with the operation or in the communities that they operate within.

40:07 Great. A question here from Nermina. What is the processing plant capacity? Will it serve all 3 mines? For now, metals research, we have more than enough capacity for Santana, for Fortuna as well, because half the gold for Fortuna was gonna be into a gold concentrate form. The other half of the precious metal component actually reports to a gold con. Fortuna is a milling operation. We own the 2000 ton a day mill. It will need to be moved down there at some point. So roughly 50% of the precious metal output there actually reports to an off spec Copicon that will be traded in, you know, to a partner buying the concentrate.

41:00 So yeah, there's enough capacity there. I just, as we build out a series of these operations, it will just make more sense for us to build our own refinery at the right location for security purposes and everything else. But that's again, something which is a lot easier to fund out of cash flow from operations than basically building each mine with its own refinery. So what this does, it gives us tremendous flexibility as we build out that initial production base. This next question looks like it's for me. It's do you have the presentation available? It is in the handout section right next to the Q&A fourth one.

41:46 You can download it directly from there or if you missed it this time around it is on the Minera Alamos website as well. Next question here Sean says How are you analyzing the concentrated site prior to shipping to the USA for processing? We have assays. This process is something that Darren and the team have done multiple times. In fact, even before Santana was part of Minera Alamos, I'd been parachuted in as president and CEO of a company called Corex Gold that owned Santana. And the asset needed new management.

42:33 I realized that day 2 on the job. So I think week 2 on the job, I'd met Darren and we talked merger and then we ultimately completed that in 2018. But so I had some firsthand experience then because we did a 50,000 ton bulk heap leach test at Santana and produced about 1,000 ounces of gold from that heap leach pad. At the same time, garnered way more metallurgical understanding of Santana than 50 bottle roll tests and a couple of columns would ever do because we we leached that ore in the environment that the mine would be set in. This was not done in some lab.

43:19 So the process there was always a series of assays, assays at site, check assays at the carbon stripping plant in Idaho, and final check assays when we're looking at the the final Dory product. So so there is a There's a real checks and balances that starts with our our assaying at site. We don't just take the numbers from from the gentleman in Idaho, even though I can attest to the fact that the numbers always matched. So, and I think, you know, Darren never had any issues with working with them in the past in that regard too. So a lot of checks and balances in there.

44:07 This next one's coming from Leslie Watson from Tucson, Arizona. Is there a rail structure near the concentrate production sites? No, what we would be doing is trucking gold in its loaded carbon form. So it won't actually be rail, it will just be trucked. You can really only... Transportation costs work out... The cost to, I should say, the cost to truck and strip the gold from carbon works out at around $10 an ounce, maybe a little less. So that's what I love about this. If you were producing your own gold dore product at site, out of an abundance of caution, your security costs are going up more, considerably more than that $10 an ounce.

45:02 So it's a fantastic way to keep your operating costs down whilst also avoiding that capex. So, but I think from a transportation point of view, it really is only Northern Mexico that you would do it in. And again, I will never expose our shareholders to a part of the world or part of Mexico that I'm not prepared to go myself. And I'm very comfortable in Northern Mexico. And there will be good reason why Monero never has an asset in southern Mexico, because I don't think it's appropriate to expose our shareholders to a place that I'm not prepared to expose myself to. Fair enough. Another one here from Nermina, What is the source of power at the site, via transmission line or locally produced?

45:51 It's interesting because for tuna, for heap leach operations, you really don't have a large power component to this. We have a small in-house plant design and obviously a contractor mine fleet. So, you know, everything will be working off gensets at Santana. Fortuna is interesting because it is a milling operation. And so there is a much bigger power component required to it. Interestingly, the Mexican government are expanding the two-lane highway from Sinaloa into Durango and beyond.

46:39 And that passes within, you know, about 20 kilometers of La Fortuna. And it's gonna include upgrading grid power in the area too. So the PEA called for diesel initially for Fortuna, but certainly the upgrading of infrastructure in the Fortuna area will greatly enhance the Fortuna's economics down the road. But the nice thing about heap leach operations is they're not a huge power consumer. Do you have the buyback option on Fortuna Royalty and if so, would you consider it? We don't. And I understand that from a royalty company perspective, you know, they're in the business of royalties.

47:31 So you're very typical. You don't typically see buybacks in place on things that they've negotiated with. You tend to see buybacks when it's a prospector has sold their property to a junior, and they retain a 1% royalty, half of which can be bought back for 500,000 dollars. That's the area where you tend to see that, and royalty companies are in the royalty business, So the last thing they really want to offer up is a buyback on that. But, you know, what I will say is, I mean, a royalty is a form of dilution. Absolutely. And we're cognizant of that. But we also are cognizant that it's a better form of dilution, especially early on building this company out, than avoiding that money and having to raise a whole bunch in the market instead. And so, and certainly, certainly the strength of having a Cisco behind us that complements, you know, gives us flexibility on funding, you know, we're obviously in a better market now, but gives us flexibility on funding, but they're also incredibly supportive in terms of accessing their technical staff, which augments our team as well.

48:50 And that's what I like about the fact that we also lend input to them as a partner of theirs, with Darren providing a lot of insight to them on metallurgical issues, you know, and studies for their company. And so we're very, very fortunate and I'm a huge cheerleader for the relationship with the Cisco. Very good. Okay, final question and then we'll move on to your final thoughts. This one comes from Eric Peterson and he says, and this is a fitting last question, what is your end goal for the company? I hope it's the last job I ever have because it means we've been a successful in building this company out, but also had the latitude of time to continue to build it out. And this, you know, whilst we have the team from Castle Gold, we've now added a project which is remarkably similar to El Castillo.

49:50 You know, I can speak for Darren because he's been asked the same question with me, too, and has the same answer. I mean, the idea of a takeout here, You know, sounds great. A lot of people want, you know, want, you know, that nice liquidity event. But Darren and I want to build this and then build it bigger. And we think that that offers far greater value for our shareholders. In a case in point, when Argonaut bought Castle Gold for $130 million, They then bought a company called Petalment Gold for La Colorado for, I think it was about $160 million. And I hate throwing a number out that I'm not completely sure on, but it was somewhere around that. Argonaut went for over 1 billion dollars market cap, which showed that a lot of money was left on the table by those shareholders of those companies, which basically both form the foundation for Argonaut.

50:43 We want to capture that for our shareholders. So, yeah, we both want to build and then build some more. But we're going to do it with a pace where we limit the opportunity of making mistakes. We're not trying to keep up with the Joneses in terms of headline production rates, you know, or headline answers in the ground. To us, the most important metric is a strong bottom line that will drive a much stronger, you know, top line answers and production in due course. But we have a certain pace we go about things which we think protects bottom line growth, which is a metric that I think in the 2000s, the industry as a whole kind of lost sight of when it was all about growing resources and growing production rates and we saw a tremendous amount of really bad M&A done during that time. You know, we, you know, in many ways I can draw from my experience of watching that to say, okay, those are great mistakes that I don't want to repeat with Monero.

51:53 Fair enough. Awesome. Well, I want to thank everyone who submitted a question. If for whatever reason your question wasn't answered, or you just thought of 1, and you wanna reach out to the Minera Alamos team, I'm just throwing up the information here. You can email them at info at mineralamos.com, or visit their website. I'm sure they would be more than happy to answer any additional questions that you might have. Thank you, Doug, for the awesome presentation and for walking everyone through the story and for answering all of these questions. I will throw it back to you for the final word. Well, I have said it a few times, but I'll say it again because I like saying it I think it's important You know Way too often management focuses on the shares they own and less about the shares That their shareholders have you know to me we focus on you and hopefully existing shareholders and maybe future shareholders, because without your support, we can't actually do all this stuff that Darren and I and the rest of the team have a passion for. So, more than anything, I just want to thank the support, you know, for what we do, because honestly, each and every day working on Monero Alamos is an absolute thrill for me in my 26 year career.

53:15 I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt, the team that we have in Mexico, that are the real value drivers for this company, have made the last 2.5 years for me, the absolute hands down best experience of my career. And I'm very thankful for that and thankful for the support we have from the market in terms of what we're doing here. So I wish everyone, I appreciate everyone coming and please stay safe and healthy during these tough times. Thank you.