Newcore Gold: Delivering on a Multi-Pronged Exploration Approach

0:09 Hi everyone, thank you for joining us today. For those of you who don't already know me, my name is Mal Karwoska and I'm the VP Corporate Development and IR for Nucor Gold. I'm joined today by Nucor Gold's President and CEO Luke Alexander as well as Nucor Gold's VP of Exploration Greg Smith. We've had a very busy start to 2022 with our 90,000 meter drill program at Enchi, continuing to deliver very strong results, including the announcement of 3 new discoveries on the project from 1st Pass Drilling. We look forward to taking this opportunity today to dive into more detail on the results, as well as highlight the key achievements from this ongoing exploration program at ENSCI, and of course answering your questions. So before we get started, I do want to highlight that we will be making some forward-looking statements today. I encourage you all to visit our website where you can find the full cautionary language.

1:02 Please also note that there are some handouts available under the handouts tab. Lastly, questions are highly encouraged. After the presentation, Luke and Greg will be answering your questions. So please do make sure to submit those using the questions tab. So with that, I'll pass it over to Luke to kick things off. Thanks Mel and hi everybody. As Mel mentioned I'm Luke Alexander, President and CEO of Nucor Gold. I think the focus of today's presentation is really to highlight the execution and the success that we've been having with our multi-pronged

1:35 exploration approach at our Anchi project. We do have a great district scale exploration project which is fundamentally underpinned by a very robust PEA that we put out last year in June of 2021. The company is driven by a management team and board who have a proven track record of making money for shareholders and are truly aligned And we also are uniquely positioned in the sense that we've got very good support from the capital markets as well as deep-pocketed institutional investors. Our view as a management team is that the company is undervalued today. When you look at where we're trading on a per ounce basis or relative to the PEA that we put out and the economics that were demonstrated within that, our view is that we are undervalued and we think there's a real opportunity for shareholders to participate in the re-rating of the stock as we continue to execute on this 90,000m drill program.

2:39 We are going with the view that a number of the people on the call and watching the webinar today are familiar with Nucor. I will spend a few minutes just kind of giving a very quick overview of the company and then hand it over to Greg to really dive into the drill program that we've been doing. Starting here on slide 4, as I mentioned we do have a very strong management team with a proven track record of making shareholders money, truly aligned through our 27% ownership in the business, as I highlighted 40% institutionally owned. I'll touch on Ghana and the reasons why it is a tier 1 jurisdiction. We've got a very good resource to be building off, currently sit at 1.4 million ounces, a very robust PEA, which I'll touch on, but where we're gonna create value and we'll talk about it, especially in Greg's section, is that 90,000 metre drill program and where we think that's going to add to ounces over time.

3:39 Really strong capital structure, only 120 million shares outstanding. And these are some of the current institutional investors who own us. These are deep-pocketed, long-term focused investors who are dedicated to the mining and precious metals sector and see the opportunity that we've got at our ENCHI project. As I mentioned, we're also very well supported by the capital markets. Currently have 5 tier 1 investment banks who cover us from a research perspective. And anyone who's got relationships with these groups, I would highly encourage you to go and read up on some of that research that they provide. One of the things with Nucor is I think that we sometimes get lumped into a basket of other African companies and as a result we trade at a discount because of a perceived risk that there is with some of those countries within Africa.

4:34 Ghana has always been ranked as one of the top tier jurisdictions. You can look at a number of different independent surveys out there who rank Ghana at the top of the list. It is very pro-mining, it has a very stable government it is Africa's largest gold producer 6 largest gold producer globally so with that you also get a very skilled labor base and and a lot of mining services companies in country At the end of the day though, I always say don't listen to me but look at what the major gold companies out there are doing in Ghana. You've currently got 4 of the top 10 largest gold producers on the planet who have significant operations in Ghana. Let's look at Ghana, or Newmont, who's obviously the largest gold producer on the planet. They currently have 14% of their global production coming from Ghana. They're spending another $750 to $850 million on a project which sits just to the north of us along the Sefweed-Bibiani belt, and that will take their overall production coming from Ghana to 20% of global production.

5:47 I think that speaks for itself in terms of what a tier 1 jurisdiction Ghana is from a mining perspective, but more importantly from a politically safe jurisdiction as well as a security perspective. We saw a lot of M&A in Ghana in 2021 and I think this further reiterates the point of the desire for companies to get into the country. There's 2 prolific gold belts that run through Ghana. You've got the Ashanti belt, as well as the Sefwi Bibiani belt. 200 million ounces of gold historically discovered in Ghana. We sit on the Sefwi Bibiani belt, great neighbors along trend from us. You've got Kinross's Toronto mine, which sits 50km to the north. It's got a historical endowment of 5.5Moz.

6:41 Bibiani to the north of that at 6.5Moz historical endowment. And then here's that Newmont asset that I was talking about. The AHAPO asset which sits at 15.5 million ounces. So very large deposits along trend from us, which is a great place to be for a company at our stage. We also benefit from very good infrastructure. We've got a paved highway, which runs right through the middle of our project to the town of Enchi. Enchi's got all the support services we can want. It houses all of our employees. It's got a hospital, it's got a university campus, so that really helps in terms of the economics of our project, but also more importantly, or as importantly, it sits 10 kilometers away from the town of Enchi, So we don't anticipate any issues when it comes time to putting it into production.

7:36 In terms of the project itself, 216 square kilometers in size, we've identified 25 targets to date, 40 kilometers from the northern end to the southern end. So it truly is a district scale exploration project from that perspective. I highlighted that the company is fundamentally underpinned by a robust PEA that we put out. This PEA here outlines a very simple open pit heap leach project at an 1850 gold price. You're looking at an after-tax NPV of $302 million, after-tax IRR of 54%. And one of the things that really helps drive that is the low capital required for a heap leach project as well as all of that infrastructure that we get to leverage off of. So this is the fundamental underpinning of value that I highlighted that shareholders get with Nucor today.

8:39 Really good kind of production profile, but where we're going to create value from here is the additional 70,000m of drilling that was not included in this PEA. This PEA only included historical drilling as well as about 20,000m of our 90,000m program and we ultimately think that the market is really overlooking a lot of the results that we put out in 2021 as well as earlier this year, which don't get included in this PEA.

9:14 Along With the PEA, we also put out an updated resource. So we currently sit at 1.4 million ounces. If you look at all the historical work that we did, it's about 110,000 meters of drilling and trenching that feeds this 1.4 million ounce resource. As I mentioned, it does include about 20,000 from our current 90,000 meter program. So that leaves an additional 70,000 meters of drilling that will go into future economic updates as well as resource updates. Of that 70,000 we anticipate about 40,000 of it is true resource expansion type drilling. The additional 30,000 sits with drilling that we've done at new targets, previously drill tested areas, as well as deeper drilling on the project. So when you start to look at $40,000m relative to the historical $110,000m, our view is that you'd start to push about 2 million ounces from that perspective using that back of the envelope calculation.

10:27 The 1.4 million ounces, about 85% of it sits within the oxides. That helped drive a 0.2 gram per ton cutoff, which gives us that 1.4 million ounces. But if you wanted to use a 0.5 cutoff, You're looking at a different gold price environment. You're still looking at over 1 million ounces of gold at roughly 1 gram per ton. As I mentioned, this 90,000 meters and the additional 70 is really where we think we're gonna create value for shareholders from here. Looking at this slide here, it really highlights the systematic multi-pronged approach that we take from an exploration perspective. Looking at the top of the pyramid here, we've got our 4 current deposits that make up that 1.4 million ounces. Greg will get into it in some detail how we've been stepping out at all of those existing areas looking to expand the mineralized footprint, looking to grow the oxide ounces.

11:28 We've then gone back to a number of previously drill tested areas. These are areas that had limited drilling on them and our goal is to move these up the pyramid over time and add them to the overall global resource that we've got. We're also focused on other targets across our property where we're doing trenching, soil sampling, mapping, other work that will ultimately let us evaluate which ones we want to move up the pyramid and drill next to over time add to the number of ounces across our property. The last thing is the opportunity at depth and this is something that we're very excited about and we think the results that we've released have been overlooked by the market in terms of the higher grade structures that we have identified on our project, and Greg will touch on that in a bit more detail as well, but that's the last kind of leg of the stool from an exploration perspective.

12:28 I think with that, I'll hand it over to Greg. He'll walk us through the exploration in a bit more detail, and then I'll come back and talk about the opportunity at depth as well. All right, thanks Luke. So yeah, just to follow on, obviously this is the project area here. Luke's kind of highlighted the distribution of the various targets. Significantly here, it's noted that in each case, for the 4 deposits that make up the resource, the drilling that's been completed since the resource estimate. Again, that includes both big step outs along strike and as well, in all cases, some deeper drilling. In terms of the resource, in 2021, we were able to have a first pass initial resource at Kwachi Krum. So that's one of the successes we had there, bringing that from a previously drilled area up into the resource category.

13:27 And then now a couple of areas here that are previously no prior drilling, and we'll be talking about these, Tokosea and Tsuyum South, 2 of the 3 areas where we've made some recent discoveries. So we'll jump now into each of the resource areas. Tsuyum is, again, our largest resource, makes up about half of the 1.4 million ounces. In terms of the 70,000 meters since the resource, we've done a little over 14 at Sioum. Just quickly to locate ourselves on the project and we'll see this image we've seen it before but here's the Seum deposit, the Boin deposit, the 2 deposits here, Niamh and Kwachi Krum which were actually along the same structure so all of these in relatively close space with lots of room for expansion.

14:19 We'll look at these 3D images. They've got 3 main components to them. So again Luke's mentioned these are pit constrained resources. The pits are actually quite shallow. They only average about 60 meters deep and that's why most of the material is oxidized and transition material. So those are the gray outlines that you see there. The colored areas are the blocks that make up the resource, up to half a gram in blue, up to 1 gram in yellow, and greater than 1 gram in red. So these are, again, large areas. This image here is about 3 kilometers long. It's almost a kilometer wide here, the main pit that makes up the bulk of the Cium resource, again, 725,000 of the 1.4 million ounce resource. So this is the distribution of the drilling that we've done since the resource. So again, it also includes a couple of areas we'll look at later, Tokasea, Sium South, again, all in the greater sort of Sium area, and as well, a subparallel structure here at the Sium extension. So lots of drilling, again, that's filled in some gaps, expanded these zones along strike, and as we'll see, followed some zones to depth as well And that'll be a again a key sort of theme that for all of the the resource areas We've expanded them along strike and and as well to to depth So in

15:49 terms of into the the heart of the central part of the seam here, again, we've actually done some what we call up dip drilling here. These were areas where we hadn't drilled close to surface. We had some previously good intercepts that were included in the resource, but this is drilling that was done subsequent to the resource estimate. So again, 0.6 over 77 meters here that includes some higher grade chutes. And then this is a diamond drill hole that we put below the level of the open pit. This is the open pit that sits in there that constrains the resource estimate. And again, getting some good high-grade values as we get a little bit deeper there, 2.3 grams over 14 meters. We've got some other areas as well where we didn't have a whole lot of success right next to surface, but as we get a little bit deeper again seeing some really positive high grade results as we get a little bit deeper.

16:46 And then again in terms of the CUME extension some real good grades coming out of there, 3.5 over 10, 2.7 over 7, greater than 2g over 24. And then I've talked again about this Ciom extension parallel zone that we'll look at in a little bit more detail when we talk about the new discovery. So that's the largest deposit. Boin is our second large deposit. Again, we've done significant drilling since the resource estimate there. Currently we're over 5 million, sorry, 500,000 ounces of the 1.4 million here at Boyne. Like Sium, we've done a significant amount of drilling since the resource estimate, and again, like the other zones, this has included significant step-outs. In the case of Boyne, over 1km, 1.2km step-out to the south, step-outs to the north, but as well a number of significant holes below the existing deposit.

17:52 You'll see that here with the LeBlanc models again, the pits are in grey, the grades are in the yellow and the red and the blue. And again, another theme is we'll start to see that there are these higher grade shoots that develop along the trend. This is a structurally controlled deposit. So They do form these relatively straight lines, and that's the control to the mineralization. But along those big corridors, you see specific areas where you're getting above average grade material. And these are the zones that we're now following to depth in all cases. So a couple of highlights from Boeing. We've got the recently the highest grade intercept that we've got on the project here. So 95 grams per ton over 2 meters. Again, this is the pit that constrains the current resource. Both of these holes were drilled subsequent to the resource estimate.

18:53 And then a big zone here at above-average grade material, just below the level of the previous resource estimate, and we expect that to have a real positive effect on the resource, similar to the one we were looking at at Sayoum. We've also got some areas where, again, we had some previous drilling but didn't really test these zones up in the upper portions. We put a new hole in here. And again, some above-average grade material within the oxides, in this case over 69 meters. So very significant there. And then the last section we'll look at at Boyne is all the way down to the southern end. So Again, this is where we've done this big 1 kilometre plus step out to the south, and we're still seeing good strong mineralisation here.

19:42 And zoom in a little bit here on the cross-section again, good above cut-off grades over anywhere from 33 to 20 metres. Again, some additional drilling that's required here. And we've actually gone back into this area now and put a few additional holes in there. So really shows the potential at our 2 largest deposits, which make up about 90% of the resource, significant upside potential that we've now unlocked with this additional drilling. So our third largest deposit that makes up our current resource is Niamh. Again, with an additional drilling here, about 17,000 meters, about 1.8 kilometers that makes up the current resource. Again, structurally controlled big linear feature in there.

20:30 Where we've really seen some success here at Niamh currently sits at about 129,000 ounces. Where we've really seen some success here at Niamh currently sits at about at 129,000 ounces Where we've really seen some success here We have expanded the long strike, but where our drilling has been focused here is is actually following some of these high-grade chutes to depth. So again, the red colors in the block model are greater than a gram per ton. We're now seeing a couple of quite well-developed chutes where we've put a dozen drill holes now into the mineralization below the level of the open pit. So you can sort of see that the gray area there, that's how deep the pit goes in terms of the current resource. So below that, this is all material that potentially we'll be able to add as we continue to focus on this higher grade zones at depth. If we look at some of the drill highlights for those areas, there's 2 things, well, 3 things I guess that we like and it's again we've got good grades and good widths within the higher grade portions of these structures so you certainly need both. Again these are following up on some areas where we've got some of the better results on surface, good continuity, we've got a number of holes in here now again they continue to be within much wider structures but we're seeing these high-grade core structures that you know 5.4 over 9 5.6 over 8 5.8 over 7 in terms of

22:02 that, which we call the sort of central chute. And then you look at the southern one here. And again, both of these, I sort of talk about them as 2 chutes, but all of the drilling that we've done is represented in these 3D models. We actually haven't put any holes in here yet. So we do have some potential to basically join these 2 together. And then that would be about a kilometer of strike length where we're seeing these higher grade results. So again, here, 3.2 over 9, 7.4 over 7, 3.5 over 9, 6.2 over 6. So it's really important that A, we've got good grades and good widths, but that all of the drill holes are intersecting this higher-grade mineralisation.

22:43 So again, following along with that theme of continuing to expand on the oxides, but as well now transition into this higher grade mineralization that's going to be below the levels of the open pits. And we believe that that's, again, a real sort of game changer as we look to include higher grade material

23:04 into the strategy here going forward. So I mentioned previously again, structurally controlled deposits. We were just looking at Niamh. This image connects it with our newest resource area at Kwachi Krum, also shows the drilling that we've done recently in the gap zone, extended Niamh to the south, Kwachi Krum to the north. These zones are open to the north and to the south, similar to Niamh at Kwachi Krum. We've had good success. Again, it's our newest resource area, so it is our smallest at this point at 55,000oz, 56,000oz, but it only covers about 800m of strike length. So we've done additional drilling now, doubled the strike length here to the north. We've done some really wide-space drilling, but intersected some interesting results to the south as well. And we'll continue to follow up on that and, again, essentially connect it to the Niamh deposit, which is on the same structure. So this is one of those sections, big step out to the north of the deposit. So this is well, probably 400 meters outside of the resource area, Again, intersecting some good wide zones, multiple structures, which is a theme for most of these areas. It helps with stripping ratios. Obviously, there's no pit here because it's well outside the resource area.

24:27 We've got plans to do some follow-up drilling here, and again, following this to depth as well. So that's the drilling on the 4 deposits. Again, the theme being that we've expanded them significantly along strike. In all cases, started to intersect some of these higher-grade results at depth, in particular in the NIAM deposit where we've really got these 2 chutes now that

24:56 are well advanced where again we've got these dozen holes into them with good continuity. So we'll end here looking at some of the new discoveries that we made. So they're not quite as advanced obviously as our deposit areas, but this really is exciting. So we've used about 10,000 meters to test these new areas As Luke was pointing out on the pyramid slide, it's a key part of our multi-pronged strategy here is to continue to move these zones up the pyramid. We'll definitely need these zones to finalize our strategy to continue to build the overall resource here. And these zones go right from the far northern area with Eradi to the far southern and the whole 40-kilometer strike length at Sioum South. So a number of them, Tokosea, Sioum South, the Sioum extension parallel structure, sit in the heart of the project area here. And again, that's significant, adjacent to our largest deposit at SIUM.

25:57 And we'll look at these areas relatively quickly. I'll just sort of step back for a second. We've got 2 main tools that we use to define these targets. This is airborne geophysics. It's conductive zones in the electromagnetics. Again, really highlights the structures that are hosting our deposits, that continue for the whole 40 kilometer strike length of our project and provide us with real certainty that we've got some additional targets to test out there. And then we combine those with, of course, the Gold and Soil anomalies. We're looking for Gold deposits, so Gold is what we want to focus on. We're fortunate in that in all cases in our resource areas, we've got kilometre-scale Gold and Soil anomalies, and then we've got additional kilometre-scale Gold and Soil anomalies, 2 in particular here at Tokosea and Seyum South that I'll talk to now, where we've just completed first pass drilling. And then first we'll look at Arati, which is all the way up the northern area. So we've

27:00 just put a few holes, follow-up holes in Arati, actually had the best intercept that we've had to date So a nice wide zone here near surface 0.9 grams over over Almost 48 meters and that does include some higher grade core structures So again, these are what we like to see. These are what we'll be following to depth eventually. Again, good, we haven't talked a lot about it, but good deep oxidation here. So at our main deposits, the oxidation actually goes 70 to 80 metres vertically. Here at Arati, it's a little less, but still a good zone of oxidation. And it is significant that this nice wide intercept occurs

27:43 within the oxides. So, I've teased a bit now about these targets to the south that we've just released results on. The first one I'll talk about is Tokosea. So again, this is first pass drilling here, relatively wide spaced drilling to put it into context. There's the Sioum resource there that we were looking at earlier. This is the Tokosea area that we'll look at in a little bit more detail. We'll look at Sioum South soon, and then the Sioum extension. So at Tokosea, Again, we've intersected multiple structures here. You rotate this around and see that in terms of the drilling, you've got a number of subparallel structures that are being intersected in here. And that's important to build tonnage within the oxides.

28:32 The majority of, because it's a first pass of the intercepts are within the oxides. They do include some good grade material, 3.5 grams over 9 meters. Again, they include multiple structures, which is what we always like to see, including some very significant grades and widths

28:51 within the oxides. So we'll now jump over to the Sioum South. So again, that's just the other side of the Sioum deposit. And when I say the other side, If you look at this image here, this is an area that's about 8km long, 8-10km and 5km wide. So it is a big area, so there's lots of room

29:13 to expand there. We'll look at Sioum south now. Again, just completed a first pass drilling program there after having completed some trenching. You can see the gold distribution essentially, every hole intersecting gold mineralization and then a number of subparallel structures or related structures that are occurring in there. And again, that's what we'd like to see in terms of being able to build tonnage. This cross section here highlights a couple of the main structures that sit through here. And again, getting some really decent grades out of this relatively close to surface. Obviously more drilling to do, testing these zones to depth. The last new area I'll look at is again quite exciting in that it's relatively close to our seam deposit. So this is the southern end of the seam deposit here where we've had some really good success and some nice grades, above average grades within the previous drilling there.

30:13 And where we've now started to see some really nice results are in a series of subparallel structures here located about 200 to 300 meters adjacent to the existing deposit. We'll look at a couple of cross sections there now, 1 in particular which highlights all of the structures. So you see here the mineralization associated with the main trend and again some above average grade material

30:40 associated with that. And then if we look at the new drilling, the new discoveries that we've made, again we've got some real nice intercepts, some higher grade material that we're seeing here, really shallow and obviously open to test it to depth, and that'll be a priority in the coming weeks. Interestingly enough as well, We've got a third structure that we've intersected in some previous trenching here. So again, if you can get these multiple structures all within a closed-based area, that's really how you can build some tonnages here. And again, the majority of this drilling being within the oxides, but we're already seeing some good grades. So with that, I'll pass it back over to Luke to sort of maybe put a lot of those results in terms of our expansion along Strike and the Oxides and some of this deeper drilling into context using an analogy of our neighbour at Toronto.

31:40 Yeah, thanks, Greg. I think as we highlighted a year and a half ago when we kicked off this 90,000m drill program, it really was focused on multi-pronged exploration.

31:53 Our view is that by moving all of these things forward at the same time, that's how we're going to create the most value for shareholders. As Greg highlighted, we have expanded mineralization at all of our existing resource areas, gone back to previously drill tested areas. And then we've also made 3 new discoveries which we're extremely excited about and that will warrant meaningful follow-up drilling as we continue to push the project forward. One of the things that we often get asked about is, what are you seeing at depth? What kind of high grades are you getting on the project? How's the deeper drilling going? And I think that might be something that's overlooked by the market a little bit. And I would encourage people to go back and look at our November press release from last year as well as a number of other releases that we've put out, which highlight some of the higher grade on our project. But what we're looking at here is a long section of our Enchi project and we then compare that to Kinross' Tyrannomine.

32:58 What we outlined within our 1.4Moz is that about 85% of that sits within the oxide and transitional zone. So again, prior to this 90,000m program, the deepest hole ever drilled was only down to 150m. So when we kind of put that level of oxidization on our project and compare that to Kinross' Toronto mine or if you were to compare it to half over Bibiani, where you really start to see these deposits grow in size and increase in grade

33:31 as you start to drill deeper. And those results that Greg was highlighting at NIAM, 5 grams over 9 meters, 5.5 over 7 meters, 6 over 6. Those are the kind of high grade results that we've been saying over the last year and a half that we're looking to make with the deeper drilling and we're extremely pleased with the results that we've been having thus far. Greg highlighted it looking at this long section here at NIAM but given we get asked all the time, I think it's important to reiterate. We believe that we've identified 3 high-grade chutes here at NIAM. They do remain open in between all 3 of these chutes because we haven't drilled there yet. These models that Greg was showing you

34:23 include every single hole drilled so we're not cherry-picking here. In terms of you know the results 5.8 over 7 meters, 5.6 over 8 meters, 5.4 over 9, almost 5 grams over 8 meters. We're consistently hitting high grade at depth and that's why we now have the confidence to start saying that we think we've identified one of these high-grade chutes that plunges at depth. It's important to also remember that the depth of this pit here is down to about 75m, 80m, and the depth of the drilling for us is still only down to about 250 to 350 meters or 300 meters below surface. So when we talk about deeper drilling, it's still relatively shallow compared to projects globally.

35:14 Moving to the south and apologize for being repetitive here given Greg's talked about some of this but I think it's important to really highlight the point.

35:24 6.25 grams over 6 meters, 3.5 over 9, 4.5 over 13 meters. Within that we've got 7.4 over almost 8 meters, 3.2 over 9. That gives us the confidence again to start talking about how we think we've identified another one of these high-grade shoots that we see at other deposits along the Cefuit-Biviani belt. And lastly, to the north here, this one we've only been able to put a couple of holes into so far, but we're already starting to feel encouraged given other results here at NIAM, 4.1g over 4m, 4.9g over 1m, 5g over 1m.

36:14 So we think we potentially have another one of these high-grade structures here on the northern end as well and again remains completely open in between. So with that I think you know it probably you know makes sense to open it up to questions and I'll hand that over to Mel. Thanks Luke and thanks Craig for a very good detailed presentation. So I'll kick things off on the Q&A. I'm gonna do my best to group these questions based on topics. So we'll kick things off focused on the resource estimate that we anticipate completing by the end of the year. So that is the first question. When do you expect the 70,000 meters of drilling to feed into a resource update? Over to you Luke. Yeah, so we're looking to complete the additional 70,000. So the total 90,000 meter program, roughly end of Q2.

37:10 We'll then get the assays back from that. So, with that timing in mind, we'd expect to have a resource update in Q4 of this year. People often ask what could that potentially look like and I think I touched on it a little bit when we were looking at the resource estimate here. So if you look at all the historical work that fed that 1.4Moz, you're looking at about 110,000m of drilling and trenching. We've then got an additional 70,000m of drilling that is on top of that 110,000m, of which about 40,000m of it would sit outside of those new areas like Tokasea, the parallel structure as well as Seahoom South and some of the deeper drilling that we won't necessarily be able to wrap a resource around yet.

38:09 So back in the envelope, that's kind of how I answer the question is, if you look at 40,000 metres relative to a historical 110,000 metres, that's where we think we'll start to push 2 million ounces with an update. The other thing that I just forgot to mention is the grade. When we look at our current 0.62 gram per ton grade, again, about 85% of this resource sits within the oxide transitional which means it lends itself to a heap leach operation. If you start to look at heap leach projects globally, you're typically looking at about 0.4 to maybe 0.5 grams per tonne. And in a number of cases today, we're seeing that drop down to about 0.3 grams per tonne. So one of the real benefits we've got is obviously the grade and that really helps drive the economics of our of our project.

39:07 The other thing that we didn't touch on is the strip ratio. Our current strip which was outlined within the PEA is about 2.1 to 1 so again that really helps drive strong economics for the heap leach operation. So you did touch on this, but I will ask it. With the 40,000m of resource expansion drilling, is it fair to say we can expect 2 million ounces plus from the resource update later this year? Yeah, I think hopefully that answered the question there is, you know, back of the envelope, 40,000, you know, relative to 110, with a bit more targeted, given our knowledge of the of the project is, you know, we would like to think we're starting to push that 2Moz mark. But one of our stated goals is obviously to build this to a 3Moz to 5Moz resource.

40:00 With those new discoveries that we've made, I think you can start to see line of sight on follow-up drilling and how that will add to resource over time, as well as obviously the higher-grade discoveries that we've started to make at depth. With additional drilling, our view is that we'll be able to start wrapping underground resources around that. So we don't want to lose sight of the opportunity to have a multi-pronged approach to really start to build it towards that 3 to 5 million ounces. Million ounces. Thanks. A question for Greg now. So such shallow only 60 meter deep pits, do you find wide zones of high grade in the richer zones on your pit models? Sorry, wide zones?

40:48 Of high grade. So find wide zones of high grade in the richer zones on your slides pit models. So presumably it kind of has to go deeper. Yeah, so I think it is important to keep in mind that there is no genetic change in terms of going deeper so we you know I highlighted even in some of the the recent drilling that we did the the same parallel structure is a good example there where we've got some nice higher grade material 6 grams over over 6 meters that that sits right next to to surface there. Likewise, again, in the resource areas, there are individual holes within the oxides that have some higher grade results.

41:35 What tends to happen is, and then with the deeper drilling at NIAM, if you look at that, those Zones are, so this is the parallel structure here, where again, we're seeing some almost 6 gram material relatively close to surface. And then in terms of that deeper drilling, if you look at the highlights there, those zones are still contained in wide zones of 1 to 2 grams per ton, over 20 meters, 36 meters, 40 meters. But they've got these higher-grade core structures. And that gets to the economics of, Obviously, a gram per ton in an open pit is very significant. But as you get a little bit deeper, the economics dictates that you're going to want to focus on these plus 3, plus 4, plus 5 gram intervals.

42:29 And So that's why we highlight those as we go to depth. But we're still seeing those nice wide structures down there. That is certainly encouraging because obviously if you've got structures that again are averaging 35, 50, 40, 25, 20, and in some of these cases there's secondary structures associated with that. You see there's a secondary structure there. So that's actually over 50 meters wide there. It's just nice to see those plus 30, 40, 50 meter wide structures hold together. And that gives you more confidence that, again, it's going to really have some legs and continue to depth. But from an economic mining underground perspective, the significant values are these that are plus 5, plus 6, as we've seen, up to 7 grams per ton over 7 meters that are really of interest as you're mining underground.

43:23 And with that deeper mineralization, is it best understood as oxide transition or sulfide material? So it is non-oxidized material. So in that sort of narrative, it would be called sulfide material. We don't have a lot of sulfides associated with the mineralization, so when we're looking at this these intervals there It's quartz vein related, so there are some broad alteration zones that have a significant increase in the quartz veining, and that's really the main control to our gold mineralization. There is some pyrite associated with both of those, with the quartz fanning, with the alteration, with the gold, but really from a sulfide component, we're really only looking at 1 or 2 or 3% sulfides in the rock. So it's certainly the type of material that we expect to have good metallurgical recoveries coming out of.

44:20 So on that note, can you give an overview of the metallurgy work done so far? So yeah, like a lot of the work that we've done, we've concentrated on the oxide. So we've got a couple of hundred bottle rolls that we've completed in the oxide. Some of that was included in the PEA, actually. Some of it we did subsequent to the PEA, but that confirmed those results. And then as well, we've advanced a series of column tests. So those are significant, certainly from the heap leach standpoint, to ensure that this oxidized material can be leached. We're obviously transitioning now into doing some additional studies on the sulfide material as we've just started again to get all of these results from the slightly deeper drilling.

45:10 So we'll do additional metallurgical tests on the sulfides. And what we did earlier in the year is we actually drilled some designated large diameter diamond drill holes on our 2 main deposits Boin and Sayoum. So we're doing now a follow-up metallurgical testing to all of the work we did last year and that'll include larger sized samples going into the columns. It'll include coarser material, so an analysis of the recoveries based on grind size. So basically the follow-on work that needs to be done to, again, confirm and even optimize the recoveries that we used in the PEA. Yeah, and I just add, anyone who's kind of interested in getting into the MET in a bit more detail, we put out a press release July 15th, which outlined those column tests that Greg was talking about, which show you recovery profiles and all the rest of it. And obviously, you know, we're doing a lot more work, given how important MET is, but I'd guide people to that July 15th, 2021 press release if you're looking for more detail on that.

46:19 And then for the bottle, sorry, for the bottle rules, Luke, those are included in the PEA. Yeah, in the PEA. So they were done previous to the cutoff date for the PEA and then the columns were in progress basically as we were finalizing the PEA. Great. It's perfect, actually, the slide that you've got up here. But in regards to this question, how do you intend to mine the high grade below the bottom of the pit? I'll jump at that one. So yeah, we've talked about underground mining methods. So that is, again, the logical transition. Again, you can see the grey sort of shaded areas. That's the bottom of the depth of the pit. And that's certainly going to change as well. We'll expand the pit again to the south here, and probably in some areas, again, the obvious area here that we need to do some more drilling. Maybe it'll actually get expanded to a little bit deeper there.

47:16 But there's always going to be a limit as to the practical depth of any open pit mining scenario. And then as you go deeper from there, so when you've mined it down to here, then basically you start to mine underground. You do a ramp or you do a shaft. Ramps are obviously better. But the good thing is that this mineralization is not sitting a kilometer below surface or anything. We've got mineralization that goes right to surface. And these underground potential resources that we talk about within these chutes that are now developing are basically directly adjacent to the bottom of these pits. So they can be developed relatively inexpensively and again the logical scenario would be that from the bottom of the pit, you start to ramp down. And again, the good thing is you're there immediately in high-grade mineralization.

48:11 And then I might just add to that, I mean, again, if you look at Toronto or AHAFO or Bibiani, I mean, at Toronto, they're now mining at 800 metres below surface. They're now drilling from underground down to 1.2, 1.3 kilometres below surface. So these, you know, these extend, these Greenstone deposits extend meaningfully at depth, but obviously we're still just focused on drilling below our deepest hole and continuing to chase that mineralization at depth, but there's no reason that these will stop at 300m, 400m. Our expectation is that they will just continue to depth. Really, it's honing in on where are these feeder structures because they aren't going to exist across every single pit we've got on our project and that's highlighted here on the cross section that Greg's pointing at.

49:07 But again, we think that with all this drilling, we've started to hone in on where some of these feeder structures are and now we'll continue to chase them. And then back to Greg, kind of a nice follow-up question to this is, at KwaZulu-Krum, how deep do you think you can go at depth to fit within an open pit in your current estimations? 400 meters of max depth or shallower? I think giving people a bit of a context in terms of where that difference between open pit and transitioning to underground will be might be helpful. Yeah, specific to Kwachii-Krumah, again, it's our newest resource area. So we haven't done a lot of drilling there. But one of the things I do like about it is, again, we're starting to see some really good grade material.

49:54 So the red is plus 1g material. Even at the stage of drilling that it is now, you can start to talk about, again, a couple of these chutes that are developing. Again, we haven't done any deep drilling here, but certainly if I was to do drilling, then this is where it would go. In general, the economics, these structures are good widths. We've seen that there's multiple structures in most cases. So that helps with stripping ratios. Again, we've talked about the fact that the oxidation is relatively deep. But in general, we're looking at an average, again, of about 60 meters on the depth of these pits. At their deepest, they go to, say, 150 meters. And that's going to be the practical limit of some of these open pits. And again, that's influenced by a number of factors. The stripping ratio is influenced by the transition from the oxides to the non-oxidized material.

50:51 And of course, like most mining studies, it's influenced by grade. So we do see that where we've got the better grade material, and boin is probably one of the best examples there. You know, here's a good example of lots of plus 1 gram material in here. And that is actually the deepest portion of the boin resource there. And it gets down to a little over, again, 150 meters depth. So really, I guess that's the long answer, the short answer is depending on grade, but certainly it's going to be in that range of 60 to probably as deep as 200 meters in areas where we've got above above average grade material.

51:38 Great, a question directed at Greg specifically with the high grade structures, what upgrading do you think for the initial production profile, I mentioned the first 5-years production, how much higher grade than the Life of Mine grade in the PEA do you think you can improve with the current drill program? Yeah, so Boy, that's how long you got. But obviously, there's significant advantages to being able, again, with an average grade of 0.62 and a largely off-site deposit, which we love. Again, the PEA really highlighted the robust economics there. But bringing up any component of 5, 6, 7-gram material earlier on in the production profile is obviously going to have a super meaningful impact.

52:29 And There's a lot to like about that. Again, we call it deeper drilling. But again, the top of this high-grade zone is only 150 meters below surface. So you could very realistically develop that early on in your production profile. Now you're not going to want to put this material on a heap leach. This is too high grade for a heap leach. So that brings in obviously a component of what we do expect in the future to be included in some updated PEAs which is looking at a milling scenario. And you'll want to increase your recoveries of this material from the average in the oxides in the PEA, which is 79%, to what we see more as the average in the bottle rolls, which is plus 90%, because the economics of this high-grade material means you want to maximise your recoveries.

53:25 The other thing I might just add to that, and Greg, you can probably point it to a couple of cross-sections, but with a bunch of the additional drilling that we've been doing, we have been identifying some 2g Oxide material from surface. So, from a mine planning perspective and NPV optimisation perspective, obviously, we would sequence it so that we're focused on those higher-grade oxides at the front end of the mine plan. And that obviously can really help the overall economics of the project. So Greg's highlighting one of them here. That's 2-gram material from surface. So it would logically make sense to go after this material first as we're mining it because as everybody knows, having that at the front end of a mine plan really helps with the overall economics of the project. So that's another thing that we've been very pleased with, with a bunch of this additional drilling, is starting to identify where some of these higher grade kind of starter pits could exist on our project.

54:32 And interestingly Luke, you know I just happen to bring that one up but that's actually on the you know the southern end of the the the the Sioum extension we call it and it's actually quite close to that sort of 6 grams over 6 meters in the parallel structure that we've seen now. So those both are probably related to some positive influences, some cross structures associated with these 2 mineralised, again, subparallel structures here. And we're seeing some nice high grades within the oxides close to surface on both of those. Yeah, great points. I'm going to wrap 2 questions together for Luke. So what will be the lifespan for Nucor Gold? And I think that feeds into What is the longer term exploration strategy for Nucor?

55:19 I think we kind of stated it from day 1 when we relaunched the company almost 2 years ago now, is that our goal, given the size and district scale opportunity that we've got at our Enchi project is to grow this to a 3-5Moz resource. And the reason we talk about 3-5Moz is at that stage you're looking at 200,000oz of production over a 15-25 year mine life. Once you get to that kind of size and scale, that's potentially attractive to any mid cap or major company out there. But as we move towards building it to that kind of size, our view is that by continuing to put out updated economic studies, similar to what we did with the PEA in 2021, which outlined an NPV of over $300M at an 1850 Gold price, that means a fundamental underpinning of value for the company that analysts and shareholders and investors can look at when they're evaluating the company and the merits of the company and the upside potential.

56:31 So we will continue to put those economic studies out as there are step changes in the resource. So take it from, for example, right now we're at about 93,000 ounces of average production over a 10.5-year mine life. As we build this to 2 to 2.5 million ounce resource, maybe we take that to 125 to 150,000 ounces over a 10 to 12-year mine life. That will create another fundamental underpinning of value. So that's the approach is to kind of systematically de-risk the project and ultimately grow the overall size and scale of it. With all that being said, one of the real advantages that we have is that because we're currently sitting on about 1.2 of our 1.4 million ounces in the oxides, oxides are very low capital to bring into production.

57:30 So there could be a scenario where our shareholders in the market says, you know, these economics are too good for it not to go into production. And that could be something that we we look at at that stage. But I think it's important to remember that we only relaunched this company about 18 months ago. We only kicked off this 90,000m program in August of 2020. So with all that in mind, we're continuing to wrap our arms around it, made 3D discoveries that all weren't follow-up drilling, making high-grade discoveries. All of that will feed into future economic studies, which will give us a better understanding of the overall project and the upside opportunity. So just to wrap things up, I've got a question for each of you, starting with Greg.

58:19 With the remaining meters that are pending or to be drilled, can you elaborate on what areas will be the focus? Yeah, I think we will continue to obviously follow up on the good results and where we've had some recent successes. And again, it's kind of no surprise. It's our largest resource. So we've got this really healthy 750,000 ounce resource that's sitting at at Seyoum. There's a lot to like there in terms of really wide zones that are almost a kilometer wide. We've talked about the higher grade results that we're seeing on the southern end. And these are, you know, again, this is a relatively wide screen here, but still associated. We've now got these good results that are coming out of SIEM South, coming out of Tsokashea, coming out of the parallel structure on the SIEM extension.

59:16 So it really starts to be a super attractive area. You know, we're looking at an area here that's, you know, probably 8 to 10 kilometers long and 5 to 8 kilometers wide, where we're already starting with our largest resource and now where we're really having success with this first pass drilling on these kilometer scale targets where we're seeing nice high grades adjacent to our existing resources so there's really a lot to like about this particular area and we'll be doing a lot more drilling here. Great. And then Lou, just to wrap things up, I think this is a good question to end with, and I know you have mentioned it, but I think it's worth reiterating. So you noted that the market has overlooked some of our recent drill results. Can you just summarize what you believe the market has overlooked?

1:00:07 I think the high grade results that we've been putting out. I think one of the things that we committed to the market is that we will put results out on a monthly basis. And if you go through the news flow you'll see that we've done that over the last year and a half. But I think with that kind of repetition of news releases, I think some of the high grade has been missed and that's why we really wanted to reiterate that point within this presentation, as well as the expansion along strike at all of our existing resource areas. Those have primarily been within the oxide layer, which are very valuable ounces that will feed into future economic studies, as well as new discoveries. I mean, Greg's touched on it. I mean, these are multi-kilometer targets that we've made 3 new discoveries on. You start to look at that in relation to, you know, Sium and Boeing and Niam and start to think about how many ounces that can add over time. I think all of those things, you know, are really going to contribute to the fundamental value of Newcor and the ultimate re-rating of the stock. And that's what I get really excited about is all of that work has been successful and something that should drive the company forward.

1:01:32 Great. So I just want to say a big thank you to everyone for joining us today and to 6 for hosting us. We are out of time, but please do reach out if you have any further questions or want to meet with us. I encourage you all to visit our website, check us out on the Verify platform. You can take a virtual tour of the Enchi project and spin around those 3D models yourself. And the 3D, as noted, is fully up to date and includes all the drill results we've released. Lastly, don't forget to give us a follow on social media, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube. We post a lot of great content to keep you up to date on our developments. And thanks for taking the time to get an update on our drill results and the successes we have achieved to date. We wish everyone a great rest of the week and we look forward to continuing to update you