Q&A with Contango Ore – Alaska’s Next Gold Producer

0:08 All right. Well, hello, everyone. I am pleased to introduce Contango Aura's president and CEO, Rick Van Nuenhuisen. Before we jump into the discussion, I want to remind you all that you can submit your questions at any time on the Q&A panel on the right-hand side of the screen, and we will get to them after the discussion. But without further ado, Rick, can you provide an update on the Manchot Project and why the name changed from Pete Gold?

0:32 Sure, Dasha, good to see you again. Yeah, so just the name change on to Manchurian, it's an Athabascan name and after discussions with the Tetlin tribe, we decided to, in honor of representing, you know, their tribe, to switch the name over to an Athabascan name. It's actually specifically an upper Tanana Athabascan name, so there's a lot of dialects in the Athabascan language. So it represents, refers to the large lake, which is called Tetlin Lake in English, but in their language it's Pancho. And it's obviously, the village is located right adjacent to the lake and very important subsistence lake for them. So in of the lake and the importance to them, we're re-named the project to that.

1:20 Fortunately, the project isn't really next to the lake, it's on the other side of their land holdings to the north and everything that's related to the project basically drains to the north. So we're pleased that none of the work we'll be doing around the project site will have any sort of direct or indirect impact on the man show on the lake itself. So it's a good setup for us. In terms of an update, we've accomplished a lot this year. We had a $19 million program. We're not quite finished, but all the drilling was completed earlier this summer. We've got all the assays back for the infill drilling. We're just finalizing QAQC on those.

2:07 Of course, we don't have any results back yet for the exploration work that was done. We did about a $2 million exploration program, kind of right in and around the known deposit. And as you know, just to remind people, it's a 1.2, 1.3 million ounce gold deposit, averaging about 4 grams. And this year's drilling effort was largely focused on infill drilling, further infill drilling to define a mineable resource, using the approach of basically an elevated cutoff because we're going to be trucking the ore directly to the Fort Knox mill. No processing on site. We're not even going to actually crush the ore on site. We're going to do the crushing up at Fort Knox because their power is much cheaper there at Fort Knox rather than creating our own source of power at the Tetlin area.

3:00 So that resource update probably won't be finalized until the end of the year. My guess is we probably wouldn't release an updated resource early next year. I'm actually getting together with our TP later this week to go over a plan and plan that out and get that in the works. But it will be at a higher grade,

3:25 roughly the same number of ounces, and we're expecting that grade to come in around 6 grams per ton, rather than the current 4 grams per ton that's carried in the resource prior to this year's drilling. It's a pretty well drilled deposit. So when you kind of approach a project differently and look at it more as from a feasibility level of what you're actually going to be doing. Again, since we're not processing on-site, we're not building a mill, we're not building a tailings facility, we're simply mining the ore and then loading it into highway trucks and trucking the ore up to Fort Knox and running it through their very large mill. Fort Knox of course has an 18 million ton a year mill with a lot of excess capacity so we'll be running between 1 and 2 million tons of ore through their mill on an annual basis. So yeah, it's a pretty exciting time.

4:19 We got a lot of work done this year. In addition to the infill drilling, of course, we did a lot of metallurgical work, a lot of geotech, hydrology, condemnation work to make sure we don't, when we do the complete feasibility study, we're not putting facilities on top of a potential war body. So, and that kind of then dovetails into the exploration work that was done. As I said, we had about $2 million worth of exploration work done.

4:47 Should have the results for those in another month or so. The labs are slow. Everybody's, everybody I think worldwide is complaining about how slow the labs are. So we're not really alone in that area, but we're certainly anxious to see the exploration drill results as well as, of course, the infill. But I don't think there'll be any surprises with the infill drilling. I think we'll pretty much see what we expect to see. But since we're using an elevated cutoff grade to accommodate the trucking door up to the mill, you'll be seeing more of a 6-gram head grade than a 4-gram head grade. I think we've been guiding to that for quite a while now. That's great. Thank you. And so there was a 10 million U.S. Dollar investment from the Alaska Permanent Fund. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

5:41 Yeah. So the Alaska Permanent Fund obviously is a sovereign fund for the state of Alaska. It comes from a percentage of the oil revenues that are gained by the state as a result of the production on the North Slope. They have what they call the Alaska Future Fund. So it's a sub fund underneath the Alaska Permanent Fund. And Permanent Fund is about an $83 billion fund, a huge fund. They created a $200 million sub fund called the Alaska Future Fund in partnership with Barings. And Barings actually is the portfolio manager of the fund. We're their first investment in the fund and we're the only investment in the mining space. So they did a lot of due diligence on the company, on management, on the company, on the asset.

6:31 And before they would make an investment in the company, but we were pleased for them to come in for $10 million. This was about 3 months ago, 3, 4 months ago now. We did that financing at $21. I actually participated myself, bought 1 million shares at $21. So I've got obviously real skin in the game and I really believe in what we're doing here. I think we've got a good shot at doubling our value over the course of the next 2, 3 years as we move the Matt and Joe project into production. And of course, we realize some of the other things that we're doing

7:10 in the company, specifically with the acquisition of Lucky Shot and that. So very pleased to have the Alaska Permit Fund and the Alaska Future Fund bearings involved with the company as a significant shareholder. So I think it's a good statement on the company. Absolutely. Well, perfect segue into my next question. Can you tell us a bit more about the recently acquired Lucky Shot property. Yeah, so this is a pretty exciting project. It's high grade, it's in the Willow Mining District. It's located right just about 40-50 miles outside of Anchorage. The communities, they're kind of called the bedroom communities of Anchorage, Wasilla, Palmer, Willow. There's probably about 100,000 people that live in what they call the valley out there.

7:59 There's excellent road infrastructure. The borough maintains the road infrastructure right up to the mine site. It's kind of behind the first set of big mountains in the Talkeetna Mountains, so it's an out of sight if you will. It was a historically producing mine. It produced about 250,000 ounces of gold with an average head grade of 40 grams which is now just over an ounce and a half per ton. So very high grade. Narrow vein mining. Average widths were between 1 and 2 meters. So But very high grades. The district itself, there were probably 30 mines that operated here from the 19-teens, 1920s up until 1942 when the War Act shut down all non-essential mining in Alaska.

8:49 And gold mining was considered non-essential. The only things that were considered essential would have been things like tungsten, iron ore, copper.

9:00 So it was shut down in 1942 and there's really hasn't been any, there hasn't been any mining since then. There's only been a little bit of exploration on and off on the project in that long interim of time. It's been close to 80 years now. So I think it's a pretty exciting exploration target, not just the Lucky Shot itself, but the extensions, obviously, to the Lucky Shot down dip, along strike, and in the rest of the district. We recently staked a big land package, probably doubled our land package in the area, and covering off some of the other historic mines that had been operating around the turn of the 20th century there. So we're excited to get back in there.

9:48 We are finalizing our selection of our mine contractor as we speak. Expect to get them and start to mobilize equipment probably in November, December timeframe and hopefully be up and running and mining by January of next year, 2022, which is just around the corner. And we're also putting in a snowshed. Obviously, it snows in Alaska in the wintertime. And The front part of the mine, again, since it hasn't been operated for 80 years, we're going to put in some safety things with a snow shed that covers the first 60 feet of the underground tunnel, which is actually in overall pretty good shape. Nobody's really been in there for 80 years, but we're going to refurbish that. First thing the mine contractor is going to do is refurbish the existing underground workings and then extend them another 70 feet or so and then advance them another 800 feet, get into the foot wall of the vein, drift parallel for about 1,500 feet in the vein, and then just drill the heck out of it.

11:01 First from the foot wall side, then we'll cut across the vein, take a bulk sample of the vein as we cut across, and then drill it again from the hangwall side. So between those 2 panels, we should outline, again, assuming the geology is continuous, which we've got a lot of, there's about 173 drill holes that say it is continuous.

11:20 We'll get underground and demonstrate that it's continuous. And we should, our objective is to outline about 500,000 ounces of ore there in the 20 to 30 gram range. That would be our expectation on grade. So exciting time and that's that'll be our second project and again something that has great infrastructure, rough numbers, we think that's going to cost the neighborhood of 15 million dollars to accomplish in the next year and a half. So we're excited to see that project quickly being advanced forward. Great, yeah, sounds very exciting. Contigo Ore also has 4 other projects. Can you give us an update on those as well? You bet. Yes, we've got, I'll start with Shamrock. We recently staked that property.

12:10 Maybe I'll just kind of advance to the very end of my slide presentation here. So here's a map that shows our other projects. We have Shamrock, which we recently staked. It was open land, kind of a bit surprising that we could find open land right around the Pogo mine, which is a mine that's operated by Northern Star. It produces in the neighborhood of 300,000 ounces of gold a year. That's what they're projected to do, I think, this year. So this is right next to the road. It's a historically

12:46 alluvial mining district with a fair bit of information that we've been able to put together from previous operators. Core Mining acquired a junior company called Northern Empire for a project that Northern Empire had in Nevada. And so this was a non-core project to core mining, and they dropped the claims. We picked them up, and then we bought the data from them that Northern Empire and others had put together over the years. So we've got quite a database of geochemistry, geophysics, and geology. And this map shows the work that we accomplished this summer. We focused in on 2 areas, the one up the north called Hilltop and the one down to the south called Banner Dykes. And we did a big geochem program.

13:43 We're just finalizing results. We'll probably have a press release updating results on that. But we've got 2 nice targets developing here on both these targets, at Hilltop to the north there and at the Banner Ridge to the south. Our next project I'll talk about just briefly is the Eagle Hona. Very large land position immediately north and east, sorry, north and west of the Manchot deposit with some of the same stratigraphy running up

14:17 a long trend there. We had done previously back in 2018-19, we had done a lot of geochemistry up here. And there had been some historic building as well. And we were basically following up on all the hot colors here, the hot pink colors of over a gram gold in stream sediment and pan concentrate samples. So we did a lot of sampling this year, as you can see on this map, a lot of follow-up sampling. And we're just finalizing results for that work now. And again, we'll be planning subsequent work next year, follow-up geochemistry and surface work. We did some trenching in areas, very steep country.

15:02 It's not all like Tetlin, which is just across the Toke River. It's where Tetlin area is all kind of rolling hills. This is steep mountainous country. So a little slower going to, obviously safety is a factor here. So, but we carried out the entire program in good stead. The last project is called Triple Z. It's actually to the northeast and it's right at the junction of the Taylor Highway off that goes up to the northeast there and then the Alaska highway that goes up between Fairbanks and Whitehorse. And that's a well-defined

15:41 porphyry copper gold target. Good soil geochemistry, anomalous copper, anomalous gold, Coincident with a very strong IP anomaly. So we are waiting for a land transfer to be completed between the federal government and the state of Alaska. It's been rather slow going. I think the change of administration always slows things down. But they have completed all the survey work, and that work is just being reviewed and accepted by all the affected parties. And so we're hopeful that that will get done over the course of the winter months here, and then we'll be able to drill that good quality target next year. So those are our early stage projects.

16:25 And now again, you can see where LuckyShot is located there. Again, just great infrastructure. So I think we've got a nice portfolio of projects developing in the company and I think we're well positioned, we're well financed with $29 million in the bank. So I think we're in a great position to start seeing our mine, our exploration projects, specifically Manchuro, turn into an operating mine, and I think Lucky Shot will be not too far behind it. Great, thank you so much for the update on the other projects. In Contango Ore's year-end results, You booked 24 million US dollar net income and reported 35 million US dollar cash balance. What are the anticipated plans with the money?

17:12 Yeah, so basically it's to advance these projects. Of course, our flagship project right now is Manchuro. We expect, we're pretty much wrapped up with all the work this year. There'll be, you know, the last cash call I think was a few weeks or so ago. So our balance going forward is, you know, probably in the $27 million range. We will start, we're expecting to start construction on the Mansfield project next summer. And so I'm expecting a pretty significant budget there. And obviously we're starting to build things. I think people will know and understand that we're actually all, both ourselves and Ken Ross are pretty serious about getting this thing into production as quickly as possible. So that's where a good part of the money goes.

18:00 The next one we'll be spending a fair bit of time and dollars on is LuckyShot. As I mentioned, we're the mining contractor. We're expecting that mining contractor to be selected in the next week or so here. And then for them to start mobilizing and getting going underground, we'll probably be somewhere in the fall time before we get to the place where we actually are in place to be able to drill and detail the vein underground.

18:26 And obviously, we'll spend in the neighborhood of $15 million over the next 18 months to 2 years. Building out that- that or body. And then obviously working on your plan to start developing that or body into a producing line so- that'll be the- the next 2 big focus of the of the company and where the dollars are gonna be spent I'm expecting us to be drilling in shamrock next year and Eagle Eagle Eagle Hona will expect some ground follow-up work And hopefully if the land is transferred that land transfers be that triple Z. We could see maybe million dollar program out there drilling this high quality porphyry copper gold target there. All right, thank you. So my last question here before I open the floor up to the attendee questions, but can you share the progress of the uplist to the NYSC?

19:21 Yeah, I'm pleased to report that actually we've filed our application and expect a 2 to 3 week turnaround with the SEC. It's called S3 filing, perspectives filing. It gives us a lot of flexibility going forward and certainly expecting to get uplisted on the American stock exchange with that and getting more liquidity into the stock. I think we all know this has been a sort of a friends and family finance company in the past. And I think one of the biggest knocks on the company is it's very hard to buy the stock because there just aren't very many shares available for sale and for trade. So getting uplisted on the NYSE American will do that. All the other companies we've put together, NovaGold, Trilogy, and Alexco, they all trade, they're dual listed and trade both in Canada and the US.

20:18 Contango of course is only US listed, so getting that NYC American listing I think will open up the company to a much, much broader group of potential shareholders and investors. I'm very excited to see that hopefully here in the month of November. That's great. Thank you so much Rick for the update. And now we're going to go into the attendee questions. If you do have a question, please feel free to submit them now. Great. Thank you so much. So we do have a bunch of questions here already. Question from Kyle. Could you please provide some high-level estimates on what you believe are the all-in-sustaining costs for the Lucky Shot mine and also the capital costs?

21:07 Yeah, it's a bit early to start predicting capital costs and operating costs. This is really an exploration project still. Lucky Shot hasn't been a mine since 1942. So, you know, I'd be very hesitant to try to put any, any sort of guidance out at this point.

21:28 What I can say is the, We've selected the contractor. Atkinson has been selected as the mining contractor. They were up on site yesterday getting organized to get their equipment mobilized up between now and the holidays. And they then would plan to get underground first of, right after the New Year's break. And their schedule has us in a position to be able to drill in July of this year. So a little ahead of where we had, I think the guidance that I'd given earlier.

22:06 So I think, then once we're, let's say we started in July drilling, 3 months through a program on that first drift in the footwall, then we at the same time, we'd be advancing through the vein, getting into the hang wall, putting a 500 meter drift along parallel to the vein and from the hang wall and drilling that. Once we get that outlined and we've got, we've got those 2 steps done in the next, call it 18 months, I think, you know, then we can start talking about how much additional capital and how much, what we think our operating costs will be. So, you know, give us a year or 2, 18 months or so, and I think we can probably give you good guidance on that.

22:51 It is a high-grade deposit, so we always know grade is king in our business. So that historic 40 grams, I'm sure we'll be using a lower grade cutoff than they used back in 1942, but it's still a high quality narrow vein mining project. So we'll be able to update in 18 months or so. All right, thank you. Mark is asking, Does the move from 4 grams to 6 grams change the overall resource size?

23:22 Short answer is no. And that's actually amazing because typically when you use an elevator cutoff, you definitely lose ounces. We're going to lose a few ounces, but not very many. As I mentioned, we'll put out a resource estimate in conjunction with the feasibility study and some guidance. Was just talking with the folks at Ken Ross. I suspect that's not going to be until the end of their 0.25, so like March timeframe. I was hoping to be able to get that out a little sooner, but in order to be able to call it a reserve, which is what we kind of like to do, We've got to wait for some more guidance on the feasibility study. So there's still, once that's out, we'll turn it into a SK 1300 report.

24:13 But the guidance that Ken Ross is giving is to that 6 gram delivered grade. And certainly the infill drilling demonstrated that the continuity at that elevated cutoff was there. And that was sort of the good news that came out of all that drilling.

24:28 Great, thank you. Ellis is asking, where will you mill the ore from Lucky Shot? Not determined yet. When we acquired the Lucky Shot project, there was included a mill building. For processing by the former owners, so long as they didn't use cyanide, so

25:06 for a gravity only separation process. So that's something we'll take a look at, but again, it's a bit early to try and decide where we're gonna mill. Gotta find the ore body first. When it was shut down, they had mined 250,000 ounces, but that's typical in those days. They didn't really have a lot of resources carried forward. So that's the objective over the next 18 months. So yeah, we'll we'll leave it at that for right now. Thank you. Kurt is asking can you speak to the exploration potential outside of the current underground targets. Yeah, so there's mean there were 30 operating mines in this district in 1942 and it was shut down. Now then they were all, none of these were huge mines. There was one other large mine, the Independence mine, and then the Lucky Shot were the 2 largest by far.

26:02 So and then this again, these were quartz veins that surface, the miners would go in, they'd mine the quartz vein and stay on their quartz vein and probably send it to one of the 212 or 3 of the operating mills that had been established there. Of course, there was 1 right at Lucky Shot. So there are lots of what I would call prospects of high-grade quartz veins right on the surface that we'll eventually take a look at. We're going to focus right now right on Lucky Shot and the down dip extension of Lucky Shot. We know that Coleman has a 120,000 ounce resource that was drilled out by the former operators at Full Metal. That was back in the early 2000s. And then what's interesting to me geologically is all of these historic mines that did produce back to 1910s to 1942, they were posted in the Granite Diorite.

27:01 There are a number of prospects in the adjacent Hatcher Pass schist, and they were all too low grade to be mines back in the early 1900s time frame. They were described as stock works and vein zones and disseminated zones. Those might be really interesting prospects to go take a look at from a modern mining standpoint. We've got a great model in Alaska with the Pogo Mine hosted in shifts. Very similar overall geology, deep seated intrusions into a shift in nice terrain. That's exactly what we have at the Lucky, in the Lucky Shot or in the Willow District. So I think there's lots of targets to take a look at there.

27:51 That's why we consolidated the land position and basically doubled the size of the claim blocks there. There are other claim owners in the district and certainly we'll, over time, we'll have discussions with them and see if we can convince them to let us explore the projects. And we'll obviously be selective about what we end up doing. But again, the focus right now is gonna be right at LuckyShot. Got it, thank you. So we talked a bit about the New York Stock Exchange listing, but Kyle is asking whether there'll be an equity financing associated with it. So I just got an update. In fact, I've been emailing this morning a little bit. We should be up and trading on the 23rd of November is what I'm told. Now, that's the day before US Thanksgiving. So I won't be surprised if there's maybe some glitch or something, and it may not be till the following week.

28:42 But we've basically been working closely with the exchange.

28:47 So there's no requirement to do a financing to be uplisted. So that's, I think that's an interesting development or recent development. We do, and as I've said before, We've been kind of a friends and family company with not a lot of shares available for trading. I think our shareholders are actually pretty happy with where the company is going. So we will be opportunistic about doing the financing, you know, I'd say over the next couple of months. Gold price has been a little lukewarm, I'd say, for investor appetite. This time of year generally isn't the best time to look at financing, but we can certainly be opportunistic. Gold's moved above that 1830 level, which I think was good to see that move, but it seems to be kind of stuck at the $18.50, $18.60 level. So we've got $25 million in the bank, so we're not pressed for capital. We're certainly going to spend dollars over the next 2 years executing our plan at Mancho and at Lucky Shot so we definitely will be looking at to raise additional equity but we'll certainly be opportunistic about taking the timing when we do that. Okay with the with the listing Jeff has a question I just I just lost it so I think maybe it's already been answered.

30:14 Our next question is, in your opinion, what is the mine life extension of probabilities in Mancho? I think Mancho has got excellent opportunity to find additional resources. If you look at the Geochem slide that's in our presentation, there is substantial amount of geochemistry, soil geochemistry, and geophysical data that's been collected over the course of the last, you know, 5, 6 years, and lots and lots of targets left to drill right around the chief Dan what we call the chief Danny area which is sort of a roughly 5 5 mile area of interest right around the known deposits there. And that only represents I don't know 7 or 8 percent of the total land package that is under control through the Tetland lease.

31:05 So we've got a lot of work to do over the time. The focus right now, of course, is going to be getting the plus million ounces that are there into production, generating cashflow. And the secondary standpoint will be, my guess is we'll have sort of 3 to $5 million exploration programs, probably going forward from, you know, including next year and going forward from there. So definitely lots of opportunity to expand the five-year mineline, the current 5, plus or minus five-year mineline. Got it. Thank you. Brian's asking, do you believe that Contango or will get sell-side equity research coverage once getting uplisted? Yeah, absolutely.

31:53 There's not a lot of companies out there that have, that are development stage companies that have a 2 year time frame to get into production and generating cash flow. So there is definitely lots of interest from the analytical side. And of course, when we talk about going to financing, that obviously gets all the bankers' attention. So again, they will be opportunistic about that, but I do expect to get a significant amount of coverage from the bankers in the mining space. It will be a pretty unique story to a company with far less than 10 million shares outstanding and generating, you know, plus $50 million of free cash flow. Absolutely.

32:39 Dan is asking, how do you think about the risk of fuel costs to truck ore 250 miles from Manchota to Fort Knox? Yeah, certainly we're seeing a lot of, it's a great question, and we're seeing inflationary pressures that even the Federal Reserve is admitting now that inflation might be a little more than transitory. And I'd say, you know, from our capital cost side, I think we're pretty well protected. You know, the $130 million estimate that Ken Ross put out as guidance, I think, you know, there's not a lot. We're not building a lot. You know, so we don't have a lot of steel and a lot of cement that, you know, is subject to inflationary pressures. So I think our capital side is good. I think Kyle's question is a good one on trucking. We certainly are exposed to increased fuel prices, and we've already seen increased fuel prices.

33:31 I think they're at the range where Ken Ross's $750 guidance, all in sustaining cost guidance that they put out in Q2, in late June, I think it was, incorporated a part of that increase in fuel cost from say, you know, a year or 2 ago. But I think it's certainly an area that we're, we should pay close attention to and that we should spend time on looking, how do we maximize or minimize the amount of fuel we're using? How do we, how do we maximize the efficiency of the operation. It is the biggest single cost center for our project, just kind of rough numbers. The truck that wore up to the Fort Knox Mill, the 250 miles, it's about $75 a ton.

34:19 Mining is about $25 a ton when you consider the strip ratio and processing is in the neighborhood of $25 a ton. So, you know, it's the big cost centers and it's probably the one that we should pay the most attention to. So I think Kyle brings up a great point. Great, thank you. Kevin is asking, what do you see your future engineering needs may be and how can firms get information to you to assist in this need? Well sure, reach out to me or up on the corporate slide here, the info at contangoor.com. We will certainly respond to you. Obviously LuckyShot, Rancho is in the hands of Kinross and they're managing the feasibility study and all that's associated with that.

35:12 Obviously, Lucky Shot's 100% ours, so that's on us. Again, we're exploring it right now, so we've got our mining contractor selected. We haven't selected a drill contractor yet so if there's a drill contractor out there that likes to do underground drilling please do reach out to the info at contangoor.com. We'll probably be wanting to select that and get that lined up early next year. I'm pretty sure drill rigs are gonna be at a premium like they were this year. So yeah, use the info at Contangoore and we'll certainly get back to you. Great, absolutely. Kevin's next question is, I don't know if I understand it, but has there been any thoughts on rail?

36:00 Rail to Fremantle? Yeah, short answer is no. I mean, it's a small high grade mine. So, the cost of rail is in the neighborhood of $10 million a mile. And you'd have to put in 1 about you know 100 plus miles of rail. So short answer is no not at all. The trucks trucking works well. The capacity of the highway is sufficient to handle the truck traffic. There were a lot more trucks driving up the road when the pipeline was built and the road was nowhere near as good a road as it is today. Thank you. So was the $3 to $5 million annual exploration budget per year going forward at Mancho Project for Contango Oars, 30% interest or 100% basis?

36:52 Yeah, that's a good question. That's 100%, just to clarify. So our share would be 30% of that, so. Great, thank you for the clarification. $100 million for us. Okay. Kurt's asking, given your experience in more remote parts of Alaska, how does the infrastructure at your current project affect future economics? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, Alaska is always, when it comes to Alaska with big ideas and big dreams and they're going to go find the next Donlon, Donlon Creek, you know, 40 million ounce gold deposit. We actually did find Donlon and it's 25 years later and it's still not permitted and no decision in sight to build it, which is disappointing me personally, because I stole a fair bit of number of shares of NovaGold.

37:40 But I guess as I've grown up a little more here and want to look at cashflow, I'm going to stick to the road system. I think we've got a lot of opportunity in Alaska right around the road system. We have a hungry mill at Fort Knox. It's an 18 million ton a year mill. And Fort Knox has been running about 9 million tons a year. So it's half empty. Obviously, we'll put 1 to 2 million tons of mansure ore through it with the Peat Gold joint venture. So that's partway there. They've added Gill to the mix, which is what, about 10 miles away from Fort Knox. So I think there's a good strategy to pursue there.

38:26 And if we happen to find something, you know, 5 million ounce gold deposit that can support its own mill, that's fine too. Obviously, drilling next to a road system is a lot more efficient and effective than drilling out in the middle of nowhere. We have to establish camp and everything's, everything's fly in, helicopters are not cheap. So yeah, I like the road system and there's lots of things around the road system that we can take a look at. So that's where we're going to stay focused, I think. Thank you. In closing here, what is the focus after Manchot and Lucky Shot project? Are you going to focus on the existing properties? And if yes, which one? Or will there be another acquisition?

39:12 Well, we're always looking at new opportunities. So we've got our early stage, our 3 early stage projects. We'll advance those. You know, but we don't, we haven't found anything that looks like a mine yet. But I, you know, I'm talking specifically about those 3 projects. Lucky Shot, I think, has a really excellent opportunity to become the second mine, the operating mine in the portfolio. So yeah, I think there's a number of things in Alaska that might provide opportunities for us. And We're not restricted to just working in Alaska. We happen to know it really well, but I spent well well over 10 years working in in Nevada and In in Western US and Arizona went to school in Arizona. So, you know know that that part of the world pretty well as well.

40:02 Don't have any plans to go to, what I call the funky places. I used to work for Placer Dome and in all the funky places in Africa and Central Asia. I had a great time working there, but I wouldn't invest a nickel of my own money there. So I'm not gonna take contango or shareholder's money there. We'll work in nice friendly places where you wouldn't mind going on vacation. Great. All right well thank you so much Rick for taking us through a company update and this discussion and also the live Q&A And thank you to everyone who joined and asked all these great questions. As Rick said, if you do have another question or want to contact Contango Or, the information is on the slide right here, so feel free to do so. And also there's more information at their website, contangoor.com. And this has been recorded and will be available to watch again on six.com so it will be uploaded shortly but before we close out I'll just pass it back to you Rick if you have any final words.

40:58 Well thanks Dasha and yeah if you have questions that we didn't get to please don't hesitate to just send them here to info at contango or I'll get I'll certainly get back to you and yeah look for our uplisting to the NYC I think that'll be a pretty significant milestone and continued updates on our Lucky Shot and Mantra projects. A lot of activities that I think are happening in 2022. So I'm pretty excited.