RPX Gold Reviews Latest Drill Results

0:04 Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where in the world you are signing in from today. I'm lucky enough to have with me today, live from the Corshack, which is always exciting, Mike Michaud, President and CEO of RPX Gold. You can see work going on in the background, which I always find exciting, but he's here to discuss this morning's drill results. Mike, how are you today? I'm very well. Awesome. Good to see you again. Yeah, good to see you. And here's how today's going to work, just for the folks in the room. So I've got some prepared questions just based on this morning's press release that I'm going to throw to Mike. Then once through, this is an interactive event, so if there are questions, I know 1 already came in in advance over email. If there are questions from the live audience, if you're into it, please do. There's a chat button at the bottom of your screen. You can ask questions at any time during today's event. There's also a request meeting button if you'd like to press that at any time. You can request a meeting with the RPX team. I'll be sure to get in touch with them afterwards. If for whatever reason we don't get to your question today, at a time it's slightly off topic, etc. Also make sure the RPX team gets that question afterwards and they'll be able to get back to you as soon as possible.

1:06 Last boring thing before we get into the meat and potatoes this is being recorded will be available for replay you probably get about mid afternoon Eastern time it'll come in the same link that you're accessing this right now. It will also be on Six's YouTube channel. Let me get into the good stuff, because this was a very fun release. Because Mike, the headline result here, my opinion, 30.12 grams per ton gold over 3.39 meters. Inside that broader 13.3 meter intercept in SDs 26,626. But you've also got high-grade hits showing up across multiple holes. So when you first saw the assay sheets come back from ACLabs, what jumped out at you about the consistency of the program versus what you were expecting

1:47 going in?

1:55 Thanks again for being on this morning. It's exciting times. We finished the PA financing the other day. Now we're drilling again. Some of these results have come back from the drilling that we've been doing since last October. We're excited about the results. That's why I'm up at site. I'm in the core shack. Things are going really great. In fact, last night in the town of Walla, we had town hall meetings. We had a good turnout from the town of Walla. We're really excited about that as well. We're working on our engagement with the community and First Nations. Things are moving ahead at a fast pace this year as we travel towards the completion of a PFS study.

2:42 This drilling, when we saw the results, these are fantastic grade results, but as you said, it's the consistency of the thickness which really matters to us. The way we're looking at mining this is not trying to mine out the high grade bits that have been done in the past, high-grade Gold in quartz veins. We're mining the zone that's averaging around 10m from hanging wall to foot wall. That generates a more moderate grade, but what it generates is consistency and also a lower risk as we're not chasing high-grade. We're mining the whole zone in its entirety. For us, that's a much more reliable estimate.

3:23 It's typical in this deposit where we start drilling, we find the shear zone and then as we continue to drill and infill, we generally start to get higher grades as we identify these higher grade chutes. That's just what happened here with the 30g per ton. Now that we have an understanding of the geology and really a good understanding of the geometry of these higher grade chutes, once we hit one of these higher grade areas, then we can align up the holes down plunge. We can then extrapolate better and drill more of these higher grade shurikens because they will add a significant amount of Gold as we continue mining through the entire zone. But we want to make sure that we're not overestimating. So as soon as we do get a good hit, we go back in and we drill. We essentially bookmark that intersection to get a better understanding and more confidence in the gold in that particular intersection.

4:17 Great. And one thing the release flags is the possibility of joining the North and South pits evaluated in that 2026 PEA. For investors who haven't followed the Wawa story as closely, can you walk us through why that actually matters strategically and what a connected pit scenario could mean for the scale of the project versus what people can see in the current PEA? Yeah, right now in the PEA, it's outlined 2 small pits, North Pit and the South Pit. They're separated by a distance of around 500 M. And as we've started to drill out in this area and around the pits that we've defined, particularly in the near surface area that wasn't very well drilled in the past.

5:03 This is where we can add to the resource space and having a larger inventory which can impact then the size of these small pits. Ideally they would join to 1 larger pit and what that does is it provides a longer mine life to operate the open pit. And as you're generating cash flow from the open pit, it allows you to generate cash flow for a longer period of time before we need to reinvest that into the underground mine. And what that does, allows you more money in your bank account. Then when you go to the next stage, which requires a significant investment to go to the underground mine, we'll have all of that money in the bank. So it really lowers the risk for us as a company going forward, provides us more time to generate that revenue and also provides us more time, more runway before we need to make that decision to go to the next phase of the project. We're going to be doing a lot of drilling during that period and with that additional information we can best decide what the proper approach is before making that large investment in the Enneagram mine.

6:07 So it's significant that we can extend the current open pit. I appreciate that. And right now, the extended mineralization beyond the current mineral resource by over 100m long strike. With the updated MRE plan for later this year, how should investors

6:25 think about the relationship between these new results and the resource growth potential ahead of the PFS in the first half of next year. There's going to be some growth. A lot of the areas within those pits we've defined. What we're really focusing on is providing confidence. A lot of infill drilling is initially in the program and we want to provide that confidence not just in the gold grade distribution but also in the metallurgy, the geotech, the environment sampling. These are all the information that we're collecting as part of this program. And it's going to provide a lot of confidence in those areas that we can then input into the engineering studies that we need to complete as part of the PFS studies.

7:14 And That's really the main focus for this program. Although we do have in our plans later in the program to test with about 4,000m of drilling, to test some of the really great exploration targets that we've identified over the last several years. Our focus is always, of course, right now, defining the resource, but we will have an opportunity near the end of this program to better test some of those exploration targets, which I think are really exciting. So, if there's an opportunity to test them, we're definitely going to take a first try at those targets. Awesome. I appreciate that. Now, I do want to talk about the Gold price for a second because it's trading around $4,700oz, I believe as we speak. A very different price than what most PEAs in the sector were built on. Some I see at $1,800. So the 2026 PEA and Wawa was effective February 18th of this year, without getting ahead of that PFS work, which obviously I don't want to do, how does the current gold price environment change the conversation for RPX around a near surface, open pit first project like this?

8:19 Yeah, I mean, it's Gold price is really important. We're highly leveraged to gold price. One of the things is that having a higher gold price provides flexibility. If we do the resource estimate and mine planning and PFS study at $3,500 gold, the gold is actually at $4,500. What it does, because we have a lot of low-grade, it provides us an opportunity to lower the strip ratio in the open pits as we convert some of the lower grade material into ore, which is currently classified as wastes as a stripping. It provides a lot of flexibility there. The fact that the price is as high as this, it's really provided or laid out the urgency of doing this. To really leverage that gold price, we need to get into production as fast as we can to take advantage of this high gold price.

9:13 We expect it's going to last for a number of years, We don't know for how long. So getting into production, making cashflow is our number 1 goal. And quickly as possible, while we have this good goal price, that's what we wanna do. And that's why we have gone with this route of toll milling because we can then get into production faster.

9:32 We can permit faster, no construction, lengthy construction times, there's no tailings. The permitting is a lot easier refining as we're going down that path. And I just think a lot of people are a lot more accepting of a project that doesn't have a toll bill or tailings area where there's a lot of infrastructure that we can utilize instead of going through that lengthy process. So I think that's what's really pushed us down this road is the urgency to really leverage that high goal price that we have now. It's great. I mean, I know investors love the word urgency and the words as fast as possible. So I'm sure people like to hear that. But I do want to talk about that phased approach too, because it's built around the open pit cash flow funding the underground operation. Can you talk about why that sequencing matters for shareholders, particularly, you know what the alternative is for developers, which is just equity raise after equity raise after equity raise. I love you could just speak to that strategy for the folks in the room.

10:26 Yeah, what it really does is it keep the CapEx low. And in the first part, because of the total scenario, we don't have the, we'll have some capital in the order of around 50 million dollars but we won't have the price of building a new mill, I think that's really important. But this phase approach, what it allows us to do is put cash flow, put money in our bank so when we go to the underground, we can pay for it ourselves.

10:57 So what that does, it lowers the risk to us as a corporation. We're not going out there acquiring a large debt to get the next phase developed. We're not diluting shareholders to raise the money to do the drilling or to get the underground developed. We're going to pay for it out of cash flow. That goes back to how long we can run those open pits for. Right now in the PA it's 3 years. We hope that we can extend that to maybe 4 or 5 years, gives us even more money in our bank account. And it just allows us to pay for getting the underground to that little bit without taking a large debt and without large equity financings, which we're always very sensitive to dilution to shareholders and helps to minimize that as much as it can. The phasing is the really unique optionality of this project.

11:44 It gives you a bit more time to complete the drilling so we can then be more knowledgeable with the next step of what is the best way to further develop the project after the small pits are finished. Awesome. I appreciate that. I want to zoom out and look at the region for a second because I know Wawa sits in the Michi-Pick-a-ton, pardon, Green Sun belt, but you're with the big dogs with Wesdom, Alamos, Hemlo, all his neighbors, and you've mentioned excess regional mill capacity. How does that infrastructure position affect your thinking on CAPEX timelines and the potential for terminal arrangements as you advance the PFS?

12:25 Yeah, this is, you know, something that is critical. Utilizing the existing infrastructure, not just on site, but in the area, we have power, we have the Trans-Canada Highway, we have workforce, and most importantly, we have access to access mill capacity And that's not just in the region with 5 mills, you know, with 140 kilometers of us, but there's also, you know, farther regionally, there's other mills as well. So we're really trying to take advantage of that proximity to this existing infrastructure as much as possible. As it works out, we're really open to exploring the best way to do that. It's about trucks and moving ore through towns, and the economics and mill recovery. So there's a lot of different aspects to that. And that's why we're collecting all the data now and starting to have these more formal discussions with toll millers in the area to see what best fits us.

13:35 Now that the PEA is done, we can have the information to be able to have those discussions with the mill. We just sent out actually this morning another 75 samples to SGS for some metallurgical analysis. So, you know, that's all important information that we continue to collect over the course of the next number of months to be able to finalize the plan as part of the pre-feasibility study that's going to be completed now in H1 of 2027. Awesome. I appreciate that. I'm going to get into some nerd stuff here, mostly for the geologists in the room. I know there's always a couple. Some of these intercepts are eye-catching on their own, but I want to kind of zoom in. On SD25625, the hole pulled 2.38 grams per ton, over 14.49 meters with multiple high-grade subintervals.

14:22 But there's also SD26627, which ran 3.33g per tonne over 16.78m.

14:29 So for the nerds in the audience, What's the drilling telling you about the continuity of the Jubilee shear and the predictability of the mineralization from here? Yeah, I think as we drill, we continue to intersect that consistent thickness. It probably varies from somewhere from 7m to 13m, averaging somewhere close to around 10m. It's really tracking that shear zone, hanging wall to foot wall, and that's what we intend to mine. As I touched on before, it's very easy to get distracted by the higher-grade mineralization in some of those shooty areas. We drill them off, better define them so we know the amount of Gold in there, but really the mining is going to go hanging wall to foot wall. And you can picture this thing, it's 2.5km long, It's 10m thick, it goes down 500m and it's just like a piece of plywood with some very gentle bends. These bends are often important because they're related to some of these areas where we have these higher-grade chutes, so we've defined the geology pretty well.

15:31 So that consistency is really important because what it means is a beefier deposit if you look at it that way. So when we go into the open pits and we go into the mining, we can actually mine a larger tonnage and benefit from the economies of scale. And that's why we're really looking at 2000t per day open pit. And when we get to the underground, we're doing some studies. In fact, we believe we can probably mine something a higher tonnage from that because of the consistency of this deposit and the thickness and our ability to be able to predict that. We're happy to continue those studies and best determine what's the best way to mine this out using that economy at scale.

16:17 Great. Appreciate it. I want to talk about upcoming targets because you initiated that new diamond drilling program on May 20th, targeting both open pit and underground potential along the share. What are the priority targets for that program and what should investors be watching for as news flow develops over the second half of this year and those start coming back in?

16:37 Yeah, as I said, I think the priority is infill because we just want to make sure we have a lot of confidence. We don't want to go into these small pits and not have it estimated correctly. We continue to improve our confidence with a lot of infill drilling, extension drilling on those areas, which is going to add incremental ore. I think the most exciting area is in between the 2 pits where We've had some really good intersections that we announced today that could add a lot of, maybe not so much on the resources, but could change the shape of those pits and bring in a lot more into the open pit part of the project. So I think that's a target, and with that, we're going to get the information we need for the environment, the geotech and

17:23 the metallurgy. But like I said, I think it's exciting about the exploration targets. In the last part of 2024, we found the faulted extension of the zone to the south. It was never known before, never tested. We put a couple of holes in there and had some really great results with visible Gold and good alteration. We want to get a couple of holes into that. At the north end of the deposit, we've had some cross-cutting veining. Looks like there's a set of about 3 or 4 parallel quartz veins. We've been getting assay results out of there up to 80g per tonne, so we want to get a few holes back in there and better understand that and see what potential that has for the future as well. At depth, for the most part of this deposit, there isn't 1 hole deeper than 300m.

18:10 We know from the surrounding areas like Island Gold and Eagle River Mine, they're down to 1,500km already. We'd like to get a couple holes in there again it's not our focus but 2 good targets leave alone and if you ever hit on these things you can really just change the you know change the the value of this property pretty quickly. So, I think that we've got, kind of the meeting part of the program, but near the end, maybe a bit exciting too. So if we have the opportunity to test some of those, I think we will, Because that's really who we are. I mean, the whole purpose of these small pits was to generate the cash flow so we can get back to exploration drilling. So that's a big part of what we want to be able

18:55 to do here to show the big picture of this deposit. That's great. Nothing more exciting than the truth machine. I'll say for the folks that popped in the room a bit late, 2 things. There's a request meeting button at the bottom of the screen. Please do press that if you'd like to request a meeting with the RPX team. I'll make sure it passes through. You can also ask questions in the chat. You'll also find it at the bottom of your screen. Mike, 1 I got for you, and this is a little off topic, so stay with me. I know the company rebranded to RPX Gold earlier this cycle. Now you've got PA done, the PFS underway, and a market-making agreement with ICP, security's kicking in June 1st. How do you see RPX's market positioning shift as you transition from explorer to developer? Is there a re-rate involved? Is it a difference in how you communicate? What does that market position change feel like?

19:45 Yeah, you know, over the course of the last year and a half, we've really been doing a lot of work behind the scenes with the drilling and the engineering. We really believe in the story and we thought with the coming out of the PEA, we have a really good, robust project here. We want to drive it forward. That's why we thought it was important with the rebranding and the RPX Gold. We wanted Gold in the name. We wanted something that shows a bit more of the direction that we're going. Ultimately, we are going from exploration to ultimately be a Gold producer. We're headed down that road and I think now we have the story that we want to tell. So it was an important time to start getting out there, doing more marketing.

20:31 We're beefing up those efforts. Part of that was the new market maker. We haven't concentrated on the share price that much yet. We know it's important. We wanna be able to do that more. And now we have a story to tell. So we really want to get out there and market it. And I think as this year goes on, we have a lot of work to do. We're working on our IBAs, we're working on our permitting, we're working on the PFS, we need to sign the MOU with a nearby mill, we'll have drilling results. So lots on the go, good news flow. Now is the time to get out there

21:06 and start telling the story. We still go to conferences, we tell people about the project, they say they love it, never heard of it before. That's on us, that's something that we need to improve upon And that's what we're doing this year. We feel the story is right. And I think because with the name change, it wasn't just for external reasons. It's also internally, where is this company going? This is our strategy. This is a new energy. We've strengthened the management team. Now We brought in a person to help on the environmental side. On the First Nations and community relations side, we're looking to bring on some strength on the engineering side now as we go through the PFS. We're doing everything that we need to do to drive this through the PFS and including the marketing of the company.

21:53 I mean, I think we're probably trading, we believe at 10% of our PEA NAV value, which is probably at the low end compared to some of our peers. And when I look at our peers like a Radisson or an Amex or a Talisker, we're all using the toll milling scenario. They're a little further down the road than us. They have a PFS done, they have their toll milling contract signed. What we need to do is continue down that path this year, de-risk the project, and every stage that we de-risk the project, we should continue to add value to the company and to the share price. So that's really what we're trying to do this year. And I think that that value is gonna come, And it's all has to be done as 1 unified front where we have information, more information coming in, more work getting done, more promotion being done. So everybody knows the path we're on and the real value of this company.

22:46 No, appreciate that extra context. I think that's great, Mike. One last one for me, and then I will get to questions that came in over email and from the chat. But closing out from my end, if you're to lay out the next 12 months of Catalyst for shareholders, folks watching this and the replay, What are the milestones you want people marking in their calendars between now and the PFS delivery and the first half of next year? Obviously not exact dates. What do you want people looking forward to over the course of next year? I think one of the most important aspects is confirming the toll mill. That's really important. I think it helps to validate the work that we've done. It also confirms where the ore will be processed. That's really important.

23:32 We need those details because that's gonna filter into the pre-feasibility study. So the distance of shipment, the prep we have to do to prepare material to be sending to what mill it's going and what size material they might want, the sampling protocols, the metallurgy and how that's going to be recovered. We'll work in different mills with slightly different processes. That's a really important part of this. We're starting to work on that now. I think that's going to be really important. This is a mine that goes for 10-years, as the PA says. Once we start drilling here, it could go for many years. We know from the other mines in the area, they're all over 40 years in production now. You just really need to get a mine started here and then continue to add reserves as you continue going forward.

24:30 I think that's an important one and how we start with the toll milling may not be how we end up. We start that way and we'll go from there. It's really about getting that started. Like, excuse me, like I said, there's 5 mills in the area. There's more further afield. So we're looking at all of those. I think that's going to be an important step. I think the next thing, IBA and permitting, we're working really hard on that. In fact, we had some good meetings yesterday regarding that. We've had some initial meetings with the MECP. We're working on all fronts. I think When we release some of those milestones, I think people will appreciate the value of that. Of course, ongoing drilling and the announcement of the PFS. I think they're all things that are going to happen in less than a 10-month period. So I think there'll be a large news flow of some pretty big catalysts and some pretty big milestones.

25:25 So we're looking forward to getting that out and sharing that with the public as we get some of these tasks completed. Awesome, Mike, Thanks so much. Now, there are a couple of questions that came in over email. First one, a fellow noted, with today's excellent drill results showing strong continuity and high grades between North and South open pits, how significantly do you expect these step-out targets to impact the updated MRE later this year? I think that they're going to expand the mineralization for sure and they're going to provide higher confidence. I think what it does is by adding to the resource base, I think when we start to look at these open pit optimizations, we'll be able to better feel how big those pits should be ultimately.

26:17 We've certainly been really comfortable with the Jubilee Pit, the South Pit, that's always been there. Now we're continuing to advance that to the North. We have a North Pit there as well. If we're able to, depending on the Gold price we use and some of the costing, maybe the opportunity to generate some pitting in between the North and South pits. It could have a big impact on the pit optimization. We're looking forward to that. At the end of the program, as I mentioned, with the wider space, exploration holes, that would be more for wide-space step-out drilling for conceptual targeting. Typically, not anything that would add to the mineral resource base in the near term. So yeah, there'll certainly be some opportunities to increase the MRE.

27:13 Great. And they had a follow-up question. We've already touched on this, but worth reiterating because somebody asked. Will this expansion allow you to scale up the throughput parameters originally outlined in the FEP 26 PEA? I think it certainly could. There's a number of factors that go into that expansion, having more ounces available, a bigger resource estimate is one of them. The other thing is how the costing and the Gold price is at that time. Because of the marginal material in this deposit, if we had a cut-off grade of 0.3g per tonne, let's say if there was an opportunity, if we had our own mill at site, for instance, and that was the cut-off grade, you might have almost doubled your resource estimate compared to if you're using a 1 gram cutoff closer to what we're using now because we're toll milling. So the costs are higher, we stockpile that lower grade for a time down the road. So there's a lot of different parameters that that go into that and you know I'd like to think that there's a way that you would do it at the the PFS stage and maybe have a gold price of 3000 but when you're in operations it goes to 5000 you would definitely take some of that lower grade material and send that to the mill because it's so profitable, which ultimately lowers your stripping ratio and improves your profitability.

28:41 So those are all a good operator and some of those things will be operational decisions after we are in production. Great. There's one last question in the chat, but feel free to use this opportunity to ask any additional questions while we go through this last one. And again, reminder, I know I popped in a bit late. This will be available for replay relatively soon. You can also request a meeting by pressing the request meeting button at the bottom of the screen. But Ian's friend of the chat near the beginning of the hour. Are there any further drill results pending in the area between the North and South pits? Well, we are we are drilling there right now. So there's gonna be more. And so we're, We are looking forward to that. The fact that there is mineralization through that area and we continue to drill, there will be a resource in that area.

29:31 It's really going to be a matter, especially in that central pit area, on the economics. We know that if we run a pit there over $3,000 an ounce with an optimized pit previously, some of those initial pits did cover that area. We didn't put that in the PA because we felt that separating it into 2 smaller pits was a more optimal way to go. So now with the additional drilling, and then the conditions at the time when we do the PFS, that'll probably have more impact whether we have a pit in that area or not. And like I said, if you do it all at $3,000 and you go into operation in a year from now, you might change that design as well. So I think the North Pit and the South Pit are probably there. That central pit area is something that, you know, ultimately you have some optionality going forward depending on the conditions at the time.

30:30 Awesome. Well, Mike, thank you so much. Exciting news, obviously, today. Thanks for joining me from the Coreshack. I always like seeing people really on the job. I think it's fun. Thanks for everybody who joins. I know it was short notice. I appreciate everybody jumping in. Just a reminder, The replay will be available in a couple hours. But Mike, thanks for letting me grill you on today's release and wishing you a good end of your day.