First Mining Gold: Fireside Chat

0:07 Hello everyone and welcome to today's live event with 1st Mining Gold. I'm joined today with Dan Wilton, the CEO of 1st Mining. We're going to be going through a discussion today, reviewing 1st Mining Gold and the opportunities and projects that they have. So, Dan, thanks for coming on. And I think to start, it might be the most useful to just go through maybe a summary of your company and the projects that you have.

0:30 Sure. And thanks, everyone, for joining us here today. First mining project developer with all of our projects in Canada. We're really focused on advancing our 2 main projects, the Springpool Gold Project, which is one of the largest undeveloped Gold projects in Ontario. It's well advanced in the environmental assessment process and we're going through the feasibility study process there as well. One of few mines that we think is capable of producing more than 300,000 ounces a year in Canada in terms of development projects. It's a really critical strategic project there. Our Duparcay project, which we acquired late last year, again another 3.5Moz measured and indicated, a couple of million ounces have been inferred in all of our holdings in Quebec.

1:22 A big, robust, open pit and potentially underground project located in the heart of the Abitibi Gold Belt. Both of those are tier-one infrastructure, tier-one jurisdictions. We're busy advancing that project as well. And drill's turning on both of them this year, which we're excited about. No, that's great to hear. Okay, great. So a nice little synopsis just to get everybody, you know, get the feet wet, make sure that anyone that's not kept up, you know, maybe unaware, maybe new folks in the room are aware. But correct me if I'm wrong, it's my understanding that the company initially started as a mineral bank and now it's become a developer. Could you walk us through that change in strategy?

2:07 Keith Neumeier, who we are hoping is going to join us shortly, has worked through a couple of technical difficulties. Keith founded the company in 2015, originally under the concept of a mineral bank. It had everything to do with the fact that we were in a very similar stage in the industry as we are right now. A time at the

2:36 end of the first phase of a pretty savage bear market in Gold, particularly developers, where We got to a point in the industry where Gold development projects were selling at values far less than you could spend money on exploration and find new ounces. We're in a very similar position today, but That was a time when Keith and a few like-minded individuals formed 1st Mining and went out to acquire in a short period, in about 12-months, they acquired 8 projects or companies and really built up the portfolio that we have today. The transition from Mineral Bank into developer was really 1 taken looking at that portfolio and having lived with it for a couple of years.

3:29 It was just before my time that they made the decision to drive forward on Spring Pool, but something that obviously we completely agree with.

3:37 It was the largest asset in the portfolio. It was the one that everyone thought carried the most value and one that if you advanced it through and hit technical and permitting milestones, it had the biggest opportunity to surface the value from those $10 an ounce ounces to where development projects historically have traded, which is in that US$50 to US$100 an ounce range. The company prior to my arrival embarked on the strategy of moving that forward, augmented the team to be able to do that. Then on my arrival, very much continued in that vein, moving Spring-Pull forward through initially an updated PEA and then through PFS, which showed a very significant and robust project.

4:27 Now I think we're about 80% of the way through a Feasibility Study and significantly through the environmental assessment process. We're making good progress going forward and we think that's all about demonstrating that those ounces are advanced-stage, viable development-stage project ounces that are moving forward. But the important thing is that's not all the answers that we have there. There is a lot more to find and so we put really what is a district scale exploration opportunity beside both of these projects now, both at Springpole and at DuParcay. Okay, fair enough. And you know what, I'm just going to touch on a quick point here to everyone in the audience. You know, I'm already seeing some questions coming in.

5:17 Please feel free to submit questions throughout today's discussion in the chat, exactly where everyone is seeing that. And actually to answer a question, we're gonna dive right into the next topic. Dan, you gave us a synopsis, we've talked about some strategy. I think now's a good time to drill down into some of the real specifics of your different projects. Maybe you could start with some Spring Pool, as mentioned in one of the questions from the audience members. Start with project specifics at Spring Pool? I think so, yeah. Just especially, Bill is asking, what's the current status on drilling at Spring Pool? He's also asking about other projects, but maybe we start with Spring Pool. At Spring Pool, we had an active program this winter, really in the fall and winter.

6:03 Taking a step back, last summer really conducted the first real boots on the ground, what we call boot and hammer initial geology work, working up a bunch of the regional targets in the Bertucci that we acquired or optioned into in the prior couple of years. We did the first real district-scale geophysical program at Spring Pool, and really covering most of this Bertucci belt with detailed MAG and EM geophysics for the first time. That's really allowed us to hone in on where are the places that you want to prioritise looking at exploration targets. That's all now been ground truth and over the course of this past winter and last fall, in total, we've drill tested 4 of those targets and some pretty exciting

6:59 things coming. Some news yet to come out on that, but I think what we are planning on demonstrating here is that this is a district that has real exploration opportunity that's going to give multiple generations of discovery potential, which I think is very important. The rest of the work at Springpole, in terms of how that's moving forward, particularly on the environmental assessment side, we submitted the draft or published the draft EA about a year ago and a lot of people don't appreciate exactly where we are in this process. So, I think it's important to just to kind of lay it out. That draft EA has been reviewed by all of the regulators that have to review the ultimate final EA when it gets submitted.

7:56 We've received in total about 1,200 comments from regulators. We've now responded to most of those 1,200 comments. And there's some back and forth that needs to continue to happen. But I often liken it to a bit of a game of Texas Hold'em. And The 1 thing we can say now is that we've seen the flop. We've seen all of the initial comments that come back and there's still some more work to do in the back and forth. We're using those comments to frame the write-up of the final environmental assessment, which we aim to submit about a year from now. So lots of that work going on, ongoing baseline environmental data collection, but so far, so good. I think this is a project that there's nothing really unexpected that's come out of it. And I think we've got a strong confidence in all of the data that we've pulled together so far there. And then on the other side, on Feasibility Studies, like I said, we're about 80% done the work on the Feasibility Study. There's really only one last set of data collection, field data collection that we need, which is around some geotechnical and hydrogeological

9:09 work in the southern end of the pit. But we've got updated mine plans, we've done really detailed Feasibility Level metallurgical work. We've got the detailed plant design, the process flow sheet. A lot of work has been done on the tailings strategy and how we're going to manage the tailings and waste rock. A lot of that work is done to a very high degree already. It's finalizing a bunch of that, prioritizing that work with what has to feed into the environmental assessment. People don't realize how advanced SpringPool is. This is one of the most advanced development projects in Canada.

9:55 That's very exciting to hear. Now, Dan, I do want to ask you a question regarding the event today. Of course, as advertised, we're going to be looking at having Keith on. And, you know, there looks like just looking at the chat, there's a lot of engagement already going on. People are clearly very interested in the story, very interested in listening to you speak about the project and the future. Maybe they'd also be interested in listening to Keith speak. I'm wondering if you'd be comfortable

10:19 with potentially rescheduling this event, and I apologize to everyone if that's the case that we're gonna go with. Dan, what are you feeling? Do you want to continue going on this one-on-one between us as I'm not sure the technical difficulties will resolve themselves? Or would you like to potentially push today's event onto another date and time? Wish I could throw it out to the people in the audience for a vote. I would say we will, at a minimum, we'll reschedule this so we can have the original fireside chat with Keith on for sure. Yeah, I think we can, why don't we just kind of pivot a little bit to some of the questions here. I think that's great. We are seeing some people. Yeah, and we'll go from there. Yeah, we're seeing a number of comments saying to please continue. Why not do both? Keep on going.

11:10 So if, yeah, as you say, let's maybe dive into the questions that are in the Q&A. Folks, we had some conversation planned for today when Keith was going to be here. So yeah, we will be postponing that and you'll get to see Keith's beautiful face on a later date. We'll be making sure to promote that event to you and everyone that's currently in the room now will be potentially sending you all direct emails letting you know about the details of that future date and time. Let's dive in though, Dan. Okay, I'm sorry, just before we get into that, the one, I'm just seeing the question now in the chat about the current status of drilling on other projects. I will just highlight to the audience that until last week we were drilling at DuParcay.

11:57 There's another one of the comments that's asking how close the fires are to some of the operations, as many of the people on the call will know, we're having an extraordinarily serious forest fire season, early forest fire season, in northern Canada, and it's affecting really the area around both of the major projects. Around Duparquet, there's a fire 30 or 40km away around the town of Lessar. Nothing right in the area of Duparquet, but as a result, everyone who follows mining projects in Quebec knows that most people have demobilized out of the field. For us, we don't see any imminent danger, but it did mean we had to

12:45 get the crews off the drills until such time as that's clear and safe for them to get back out into the field. We're in a little bit of a different situation in that while there's a fair amount of forest around DuParcay, We're also right beside a town of 700 people in quite an established municipality. Obviously, we take that very seriously and we understand the forest fire situation. If a bunch of our shareholders recall, we actually had to evacuate the Spring Pool camp a couple of years ago. But anyway, we had drills turning at DuParcay until we were shut down by the forest fire. We got 3 holes drilled and I think we're very excited by what we're seeing in those holes so far.

13:34 I think they seem to be validating the updated geology model that James Maxwell and our exploration team have done a lot of work on. And I think really bodes well for our opportunity to drive discovery at DuParc in the future. One of the things we're very convinced of there is

13:58 that the exploration didn't stop at DuParc because of a lack of opportunity. It really stopped because CliftonStar, our predecessor company, ran out of time and ran out of money. But there are a lot of very interesting opportunities that are following existing structures down. And again, with all the work that our team has done in terms of really understanding the structural setting and the context, we think there's lots more discovery to come there. So we should start seeing assays back from the first 3 holes toward the end of the month of June. And so we'll have hopefully some interesting things to talk about over the course of the summer. Okay, that sounds good. And you know, talking about the summer and timescales, Andy has a question that's quite popular with the group here. He's just wanting to know realistically what timescales are you looking at for production on any of your projects?

14:50 For production, what we are talking about now, we'll put Spring Pool first in terms of it being the furthest advanced in the environmental assessment process, which is an important part of permitting of these big mines. Absent there being some other opportunity inside the portfolio, which there's a few smaller mining opportunities that might exist around the existing project, but those aside, we'll focus on Spring Pool. We're submitting a final environmental assessment about a year from now, and then environmental assessment approval in 2025, which it would be followed by a period of kind of project permitting, which substantially de-risked the project at that point, but you still have some procedural permits to go through. So, Targeting construction

15:50 beginning 2026, if we are financed to do so, and then you're looking at production late 2027 or early 2028 would be the best estimate at this point. There's still a lot to understand in terms of the project delivery and how that would all work and ultimately getting that project financed. But on the timeframe that we're on, Those are the indicative timeframes to get to production in that 2027 to 2028 timeframe. What's interesting about that, and while that sounds like it's still a ways away, when you look at the sum total of development projects in Canada in the Gold space that are of significant size.

16:39 There really is not a lot that can be built in that time frame. We're in a period right now where you've got 6 or 7 large Gold mines in Canada under construction or coming out of construction. Cote, Maginot, Hard Rock, Back River, Blackwater, Valentine. There are a bunch of projects right now that are in construction and there's just not a lot of projects in Canada in the gold space or really in the mining space that come to follow those up. We really like that position because it means that you're not going to be competing as hard as some of these projects are trying to build 7 projects at once. You're not going to be competing for talent and for equipment necessarily in the same way.

17:34 It just really enhances the strategic value of the deposits we have when you look at where they fit at the time that the industry is gonna need them the most. Right, okay. Michael has this question. He's just wondering how long will your current cash last until you need to find additional funds? Well, current cash, we're looking at that right now. So, listen, I think we are going to need additional funds to get through the balance of the environmental assessment process and through the feasibility study process.

18:09 I remind everyone that we do have a significant number of options here and some of the other assets that we have in the portfolio in terms of the value of those. Now, those have all been really impacted in the same way that 1st mining share price has been impacted when you look at the share price of some of our partner companies. You look at the project, look through project value at Pickle Crow, for example. But even when you take that aside, if you look at the future cash and share payments and some of the other portfolio assets, there's $50M worth of value there today. I think in a slightly better Gold market, that could be $100M to $150M of value.

18:56 The trick for us is how do we unlock that and keep ourselves well-funded to keep the work going forward while we look to unlock some of that other value. There are a number of other opportunities that we can look at. In the past, we've brought in partners, we've sold our Royalty assets that we had, We've brought in partners to create new royalties on our projects, which I think is an avenue that we'll continue to explore. But I think we're in a better position than most companies at our stage because we do have a number of these different options that we can look at for funding. Right, absolutely. There was a question here, and I just lost it, but it was just effectively asking any about the discrepancy between gold price and potentially stock price. Why the disconnect? And if you have any comments for that?

19:47 Well, I have all kinds of rationalisations in terms of where it is. The biggest issue is, and Paul Morris, Our Director of Investor Relations constantly points this out to me. The biggest issue is that the appetite for Gold developers really has not been very strong for a long time. We're in what is probably the 10th or 11th year of a downturn on development spending. A number of projects have made their way through in this downturn, but I was looking today for some reason at the TSX Venture Exchange composite index number, and I recall in 2011 when there was a lot of appetite in the sector for Golds more broadly, that number was like 30, I think it topped out at 3,500, 3,600 or something like that. It's 600 today. So just as an indication of the kind of general malaise,

21:03 While the Gold price has moved, and some of that Gold price move has been seen in producers, and a number of the producers, intermediate producers, are up 50% to 100%, not many of the developers like us have seen big moves off the bottom. It was a particularly difficult fall when the Gold price went down. A lot of our share prices went down and just never really have recovered since then.

21:32 But I think that the light at then. I think the light at the end of this tunnel is that this is, without question, the best setup for a strategic market in the Gold sector that I've seen in my career in terms of the people who need projects having

21:55 very strong balance sheets, having lots of cash on the balance sheet. Most of them have dealt with almost all of the debt that they would have on their balance sheet. Most of them are in net debt negative positions, or net cash positions, which isn't always the case in this industry. They've had their share prices now up 50% to 100% and none of them have invested in long-term development pipelines. At some point, all of that mid-tier producers that are aspiring to get up into the major leagues, they're going to need projects to develop, or they're going to need to go buy other projects at 1x their net asset value because that's where those deals are going to get done.

22:39 When the development sector in general is trading at 0.1 or 0.2x your net asset value, you can afford to pay a pretty serious premium and still have it really accretive and not that risky because most of the money you're going to spend is going to be in building the project rather than buying the resource and then having to commit the capital to build the project, which was a bit of the challenge, certainly in the last cycle.

23:09 Historically, when you look, I think with a sustained, elevated Gold price, and listen, I think a US$1,900 or US$2,000 Gold price is pretty healthy for the industry. The industry is seeing cost inflation for sure, but they're still generating record levels of free cash flow right now. That free cash flow is going to have to be deployed into growth at some point.

23:38 If the broader market doesn't ultimately recognise the value of 1st mining Gold or other project developers, then I think certainly that strategic market is going to recognise it. And so that for us can manifest itself in a few ways, one of which we've talked about for years is the opportunity to bring in a strategic investor, a long-term strategic partner, preferably as an equity shareholder who can have a front row seat to the development of the project and work with us to help get it from here to the starting line in terms of getting that EA approval and getting through the permits. And we're now in kind of a timeframe that a lot of companies look to make those strategic investments.

24:24 They tend to happen right at the point of discovery or they tend to happen as you're sort of lining up on the final line of sight for your feasibility study and ultimately getting your permits. And I think we now have enough definition around that process that I think it puts us in a pretty good place. No, that's good to hear. And Matt's wondering just about the company's current relationship with Treasury Metals and what advantages does that have and what does the future hold with that relationship? Our relationship with Treasury Metals, we are still the largest shareholder of Treasury. We own about 14% of the company. We still have a strong relationship with the management of Treasury. We talk to on a reasonably frequent basis and We nominate 2 of the 8, 7 directors on the Treasury board.

25:23 Our directors on the Treasury board are Dave Whittle, who is now the chair, and Fraser Boucher. Treasury is a very interesting development stage project. They put out an economic study, a pre-feasibility study earlier this year that showed robust economics with US$300M of capital and US$300M-ish NPV of the project. The important thing about that is that was just scoping the project that exists now, but they've got tens of kilometres of prospective stripe length to continue to explore. I think anyone who looks at it objectively knows that you're going to fill that mill that they're talking about building for 30-years with new discoveries that you're going to make in that whole Dryden region.

26:20 I think for us, we were a little disappointed that you didn't see more of a reaction in Treasury to the really positive pre-feasibility study that they put out. We've always kind of looked at it as something that would be kind of ready at a time when just where we might have an opportunity to monetize that. But at values like it's trading at today at $0.26, I think it's difficult to think about us selling our Treasury position any time soon. But sometimes you get into positions where you have to make difficult choices about things like that around capital allocation. So never say never, but I think the team's done a good job and I think it's an interesting and robust project that is another one of those ones moving forward in a kind of similar time frame where it could be ready for construction in kind of an 18 month time period.

27:23 Okay, well, I mean, thank you for that, Dan. As everyone should be able to see, Keith has joined us. Great to have you on, Keith. Thanks, Cam. It was a bit of a challenge. Lots of technical issues, but one of your tech guys did figure it out. So that's good. I'm glad to be here. And sorry I'm late to everyone. I see we've got over 100 people on the call. So Nice to see the interest in 1st mining and I'm not sure what's been talked about yet, but I'm happy to jump in. So just continue on and I'll jump in if required. No, absolutely. I mean, everyone was indicating a very, very big deal of excitement to have you on the call. So it's great to have you here. We were basically just going through some live questions that were coming in from the audience. We had sort of talked about, and Dan, feel free to let me know if I'm getting in this, where we talked about some strategy. We've gotten into a little bit about some of the specific projects, Spring Pole to Parkette, and really with both of you on, I think we've covered those points pretty strongly, Dan.

28:27 So maybe at this point we could just talk about, just go into a brief mention about any other projects. Dan, you've commented on partnership interests. Keith, if you have anything to add, maybe we can just sort of go over anything there that sounds like we could get back on track with? Well, I'm not sure what Dan's spoken to today, but I think most significantly, it was really the DuParcay acquisition. You know, when I put this company together back in the early days, 2014, and got it public in 2015, 1 of the acquisitions we did back then included the ownership of 10% of DuParcay. And there were some 70 odd shareholders. There's a privately owned mine that's historic producer in Quebec, quite a famous area in Quebec. And we're super happy to be there of course, but it took forever to get the other 70 some odd shareholders to agree to sell the balance of 90% to us. And I think current management led by Dan, I think has done an exceptionally good job of getting that transaction done over the line and at a reasonable cost as well.

29:37 Unfortunately, one of the reasons why the share has been somewhat under pressure of late is really because we issued a lot of stock to get that 5 million ounce acid in Quebec, which will 1 day, in my view, will become a producing mine again. But these individuals that own that stock, they've owned this private company for decades and decades. It was the first time they were ever able to get any money off the table and some of them are getting quite old as well. So when they saw their share show up in their brokerage account, of course human nature, the first thing to do is sell their stock because it's free money to them in a way because they've written it off a long, long time ago and all of a sudden they get the stock in their broker account.

30:25 So that's what's happened and it's just a fact of life. I've bought stock. We've had other friends come in and buy stock as well. Who knows if it's over? You can never really tell. But that was one of the major things, in my opinion, that really caused the stock to drop over the last few months. Okay, yeah, no, Absolutely. Fair enough. Gentlemen, I think we've done a good job, no matter how disjointed, of covering a lot of what's going on with you guys. But I'd love to sort of dive in on the topic of capital appreciation. At the end of the day, investors invest because they want to see returns. But why 1st mining? And what catalysts do you have that could convince investors to not only just take interest, as many people here on the call have, but importantly, invest now?

31:15 What are the advantages to doing that right now? Well, I'll jump in first. Dan can get into the Pacific Sun Catalyst. I get this question all the time. I've been in the mining sector for 35 years and put together a variety of pretty interesting companies over that period of time. And, you know, from a management team perspective, and I've been in Dan's shoes and currently in Dan's shoes and in another company in my primary full-time job at 1st Majestic. I'm the chairman of 1st Mining, but I know Dan goes through similar challenges that I go through and you know answering that question is almost impossible because as a management team you don't actually know what catalysts are going to drive your stock higher because it's like physics I remember you know in grade 11 and 12 physics you know you learn if you put energy into something, you're going to get a return.

32:09 You don't know what the return is going to be, but the more energy you put into something, there is a return. It's just pure physics. And when you have 100 people at for example at 1st mining all going in the same direction There is a payback But you don't know when that's going to occur and it's usually a multiple of many many things coming together at the same time, which all of a sudden you wake up 1 day and the stock's up 3 or 4 or 500 percent and you go back and say, geez, what happened? And you try to explain what happened. And it's really the 3 or 4 or 5 years of hard work, pure blood, sweat and tears that have gone into something and it could be creating a new technology It could be you know, it could be creating a new company. It could be creating a mine It could be whatever it could be but you know it's what I've seen so many times in my life my career where you put a bunch of people together working in the same direction, and it's nature.

33:10 Nature pays you back for that effort. And you just don't know what it's gonna be or when it's gonna happen. Yeah, In some senses, it's the great overnight success. Overnight success, 10-years in the making. I think that's a little bit about what we're talking about here with where we are on specific catalysts that are going to move 1st mining forward. I think there is all the progress that we have justifiably demonstrated in going through the environmental assessment process. We're further along in that process than just about any other development project in Canada that's not already in construction. At some point, you just pick up the momentum that comes with all of this work that's been going in for years and years and years.

34:03 It's important to have the team in place to be able to keep things going, to get it set in the right direction. But I can see with 1st mining, you don't know if it's drill results at DuParcay that are all of a sudden going to get people to say, wow, that project that you bought for $25 million is actually worth $500 million or more, based on what it is. It's already one of the largest undeveloped resources in Quebec, in Canada for that matter. But there's that one catalyst, and as Keith says, you don't really know what it is. But what I can tell you is we've got a bunch of different catalysts coming up over the next 2 years that are really meaningful in de-risking these projects, in making them better.

34:55 Ultimately, I think it's going to be in attracting that strategic investment from bigger players in the industry to either look at partnering with us on these assets, or ultimately, they'll need to own them themselves at a value that's very, very different than where we are today. The actual catalyst coming up, we continue to advance in the environmental assessment process. There are milestones along the way there. A big one is probably a year from now with submitting the final EA. When you get that in, that's really the, we've been in a marathon, but that's kind of the starting gun for the last 100-meter sprint, right, in a sense.

35:48 And it's important, just getting to the starting line and where we are, there is real value in that catalyst. There's the work that we're doing in building relationships and ultimately hoping to move toward agreements to get the consent of the Indigenous communities around the project. Ultimately, our real goal of building real and lasting partnerships with those communities as we develop the mines. There's a bunch of steps in those processes in terms of agreements along the way to final agreements that I think can be very meaningful. And then there's the exploration success that I think we're going to be able to demonstrate at Spring Pool, in the Bertucci more broadly, and at DuParcay, where not just are these 2 of the, pretty soon, going to be 2 of the 10 largest Gold projects in Canada that aren't developed, but I think we're going to be able to demonstrate that what we know about them today is only the beginning. And this is where it starts getting really interesting.

36:52 So yeah, lots between PEA at DuParcay, exploration results at DuParcay, updated resources down the track. Yeah, There's a lot going on there. And then, as it kind of started the question before, there's the rest of the portfolio that we still have, which we're all indebted to Keith and the vision of picking up these assets what's now 7 years ago, almost 8 years ago, I guess, in some cases, but these are some of the best undeveloped assets in Canada and all with solid established resources. But the overarching thing I think that a lot of us here, and we talked about this a little bit before, the thing that's really going to start that momentum coming is when is the sector coming back into favour? When do funds flows start coming back down to mining developers? Because we've only really seen a couple of very, very short spurts of that activity coming over the last 10-years. When you get into a bit of a sustained uptick, which we all know is coming because it's just a matter of fact that the investment has not been made in the industry to find new projects or develop new projects, those established projects are going to attract a lot of interest when that comes. And if that's Gold price

38:23 at $2100 or Gold price at $2500 or, Keith, I think you called a $3000 gold price recently, if I'm not mistaken. You've got to understand the leverage that these projects have to the increasing gold price that I think we're coming into. Sorry, Cam, I just wanted to step in and just add to Dan's. I'm glad he went macro because I think, you know, investors should understand the macro environment as well. And because there's many factors that are occurring. Now, of course, corporate factors we can talk about all day long, you know, the great things happening at 1st mining and, you know, what management feels, you know, potential catalysts, you know, are that could drive the stock higher and so on. But there are macro and micro catalysts out there. And I think the one of the macro catalysts is really just cyclicality of the mining sector. You know, when I put 1st Majesta together, it was 2002, and I could tell you the mining sector was hated back then.

39:25 The previous company I put together was in 1992, and the mining sector back then was also hated. When I put together, and of course in 2002, that was the beginning of a 10-year bull run in the resource sector and we saw these stocks go up by multiples of factors over that 10-year period and it was pretty exciting 10-year bull run. It wasn't just straight up mind you, over that 10-year period, there's many, many ups and downs and we thought the bull mark was over until it really did end in 2012. And it was from 2012 to 2015, it was a pretty difficult period for investors in the mining sector. And that's when I put 1st mining together in 2014, 2015, right at the bottom of the market. Now we've gone through 7 plus years and the last 2 years not being very pleasant.

40:16 And so once again, we're at a trough and then we know from history that this will end and also you look at a micro catalyst, you know, June, May, June is really your bottoms. If you look at a 20 or 30 year stock chart or even a metals chart you look up gold for the last 30 years or silver for the last 30 years and see when those metals bottom it's usually May and June and the stocks also bottom around the same period of time July August tends to be when these stocks tend to start moving and they generally hit peaks between December and February. So you could trade that. A lot of people trade those that cyclically quite well. So you've got the macro environment and the micro environment. Then you've got all the corporate initiatives going on at the same time. So I think you know, you've got many things coming together at the same time, which I think will help our share price over the next, you know, couple of quarters and and hopefully beyond that. But you know, just on a Side note, I was thinking about this before the call.

41:18 I've been investing in the mining sector for many decades now, and I love buying stocks that can go up 3, 4,500%. You have to be patient, it's not gonna happen tomorrow. If you have a stock that goes up like that in a matter of a couple of weeks, you're pretty darn lucky. You're very smart, you're smarter than me. But normally you have to be patient. And then I love stocks on sale. I love when people want and don't, there's no buyers around. And then that way I could get a big position and wait it out. And you know, 1st mining's got that exact potential. I've seen that kind of payoff over the next, you know, who knows how long, but it will happen in my view. You know, that's great. And I mean, that really leads into what I was going to ask.

42:05 I think you really covered it. I was looking to ask you about your thoughts on the overall sector and trends. I think you answered that. And I was also going to ask you guys both about the potential appreciation that you see with this? And Keith, you really may have answered that, but I'd love to see if you guys had any further commentary to that. Well, Dan hasn't spoken for a bit, so I'll just quickly jump in on that. But management can't really predict those kinds of things. Regulatory-wise, we're actually not even allowed to. We have our personal views on where we think the stock could go and those kinds of things, but we can't say, hey, the stock's going to do this over the next period of time because we could believe it, but we can't say it so you know it's not a fair question to ask But I'll pass that on to Dan. Sorry. Yeah, no only only to say You know we we do have our views and think that where we are right now.

43:01 This is you know the stock represents excellent appreciation potential right now. I've been involved in the mining sector for about 30-years, mostly in the financial markets. One thing that we can look back on is, in different parts of the cycle, where are Gold projects typically valued? I can tell you, at the end of the last real bull run in 2010-2011, you had Gold projects, ounces in the ground generally for advanced-stage projects, particularly the like that we have with Springpole and DuParquet, they were valued at US$50 to US$100 an ounce in the ground.

43:54 That was at a Gold price that was probably a little bit lower, or most certainly a little bit lower than where we are today because we're still, a lot of people forget, we're still now above the highs of the previous Gold cycle, which was 1900. There's been cost inflation and all the rest of that. We get that. But I think you have this kind of just reversion to the mean, and that if we get back to a normal, quote-unquote, gold market, even normal in relation to where developers should trade relative to producers, that is multiples increase in our share price.

44:41 And so we have a chart in our investor deck that people can look at that just kind of does the math and we're not saying it's going to get to there. We're just sort of saying, based on some assumptions, this is what it would imply. And it implies share prices that are north of US$1. I think one thing we can talk about is what we believe the fundamental value to be of the assets that we have. And the fundamental value of the assets we have, we believe to be in excess of a couple of billion dollars. And that's in a Gold price environment, looking at Springpole in a $1,600 Gold environment. That's going to change, right? And we all know that it's going to change. We have a little bit of an interest rate increase here in Canada today.

45:27 We're talking about maybe having a little interest rate increase in the US, but we're coming to the end of this rate tightening cycle. And when it rolls over, and it will because it has to, because the math says that it has to, that's where I think you could see Gold really go from the level that we're at that some people might be thinking is a top, but I think we are really, really solidifying a base here. And when rates roll over, and they are going to, that's where I think you could see Gold really start to run and you get Gold in the $2,500 or $3,000 range, that's every, just a little statistic, but from our PFS, every $100 on the Gold price was $150M of after-tax US, after-tax NPV at Springpole.

46:21 So, The fundamental value increases basically by our market cap, just with Springpole, not counting all the value of all the rest of the ounces. The fundamental value increases by more than our market cap with every $100 in the Gold price. Everyone is here because they have a view on Gold and I think they share our view on Gold and likely are here because of Keith's view on gold and silver in large part. So yeah, if that's your frame and kind of your investment thesis, then this really is the maximum leverage investment I think you can get. I see a question about share consolidation and the answer is no. I don't believe in share consolidations in my opinion.

47:08 Unsuccessful companies roll back their stock and successful companies split their stock. So, you know, you look at, there's many companies out there that have a lot more shares outstanding than 1st mining and I'm not at all afraid of the amount of shares outstanding. It creates liquidity for institutions and if an institution wants to come in and buy 5 million shares they could do it without moving the stock to any great degree. And that's what institutions like. They want the liquidity. And that's what drives capital to companies like purse mining. OK, fair enough. There's another question just asking you guys who you would consider to be on a list of strategic partners potentially and as well. Have any majors looked at you? Over the course of time, I've signed a number of confidentiality agreements with other mining companies.

48:03 We've had a lot of interest in the progress that we've made at Spring Pool. It is a project that is of a size to be meaningful to the biggest gold mining companies in the world. I would just say that we have had a lot of interest and maintain a regular dialogue with many of the largest gold companies in the world. We kind of leave it at that. I think there's always room for that to become more active, for sure. But yeah, it's something that's been an important part of how we make sure that the industry is current on the progress that we're making. And 1 nice thing about strategic investors is they do tend to really focus on the fundamentals of the progress that we're making.

49:02 No, that's fair enough. Keith, did you have any comments about that at all? No, I'm just looking at some of the questions that are coming in and about fending off a hostile suitor. Yeah, I'm a big believer of not doing that. I don't believe in poison pills. I don't believe in shareholder rights agreements or anything like that. Public companies are public companies and they should be at the mercy of anyone that wants to buy shares. And if someone wants to come in and try to take over the company, then let them try. You know, that's why we're public and it's fair game for any investor. And we're all on the same page. And then, you know, In my view, if it ever did happen, which who knows, it's pure speculation, but it'll go down to a shareholder vote at the end of the day.

49:53 And if there's a transaction to be done, it'll be done at the will of the shareholders as a whole. Another question regarding the Canadian government. I can tell you, and maybe Dan wants to comment on this because he knows a lot more about it, but the Ontario government is very supportive of the Spring-Fall. They want this asset developed. It's gonna create an enormous amount of jobs in this area. It's a very impoverished part of Ontario and they need the jobs and they need the infrastructure. They need the roads, they need the electrical infrastructure. This is going to bring an enormous amount of wealth to this part of Ontario and the Ontario government knows it and they want this mine produced or in production. Dan, would you like to comment on that? Yes, I'll just add to that to say that we have a really good profile throughout both the bureaucracy in Ontario and the permitting authorities that we're working with, and right up to the, on the political side, right up to the ministries and the premier's office.

50:58 So, and part of it is exactly as Keith says, this project is a major driver of infrastructure into an area of northwestern Ontario that needs infrastructure development. And the infrastructure here, power lines and roads, could really open up to the benefit of many of the Indigenous communities further North at Springpool, could open up real opportunities there as well. Both in Ontario and Quebec, we've had great support from the regulatory agencies. I think a pragmatic approach and their relationships that have been built, not just at 1st Mining, but you look at the relationships that Steve lines and a lot of our permitting team who we'd worked with in permitting the Harbrock project over 6-years, they brought those relationships to bear for 1st Mining when Steve joined in late 2020.

52:03 The one thing I'll tell you, the mines minister in Ontario is a former CEO of a mining company, actually a couple of mining companies. He gets it. He really understands our region around Springpole and it's the, you know, one of the most engaged ministers of any kind around our business that we've ever had. He's created a Mines Ministers Industry Council that actually solicits feedback from the industry in terms of streamlining. And you've seen what he's done in a very short period of time in terms of introducing what is, I think, called the Build More Mines Act in Ontario. So if there's any question about their intention, Their intention is to see more mines built and particularly where you can really leverage the infrastructure into broader economic development.

52:58 Well, that's great. Well, gentlemen, listen, It's been a great conversation. I think we've had lots of engagement from the audience members and we keep getting questions coming in and coming in. We are coming up close in the hour though at this point and I'd love to pass it over to either of you, both of you. In fact, for any closing comments that you'd like to leave with the audience today about anything we've talked about or anything else that you feel has gone unmentioned. My last comment before Dan closes is really, there's no junior mining company out there that I'm aware of that has 2 5 million ounce assets. And not only that, these are not in difficult jurisdictions. Quebec and Ontario are 2 of the most favored mining jurisdictions on the planet and have 2 tier 1 assets and 1 relatively small company is very, very unique. And I think it gives investors an opportunity to participate in something I believe will become quite a large company over time.

54:01 Yeah, and I would just add to that that, you know, certainly where we sometimes hear investors having the view that, you know, that The catalysts are all coming, but I'm going to have to wait for a long, long time before there's going to be meaningful things happening, or the share price isn't going to move until we get permits at Springpole. I think, A, what we're going to demonstrate with DuParc A over the course of the next year, I think should alone account for some meaningful increase in our value and hopefully that translates into share price. But there are just a number of catalysts coming on Spring Pool as well, whether it's exploration, whether it's the path forward, working with Indigenous communities, whether it's going through the environmental assessment process and ultimately towards feasibility and strategic partners and all of these different things that are very important steps on the way to turning this resource in the ground into a real vibrant economic mine that's going to bring jobs and economic development to the country and to the region.

55:17 There's lots that we're gonna be talking about between now and then, and you know that with hopefully a little bit of tailwind with the Gold price going in the right direction and investor sentiment coming back down to the developer sector, I think there's lots of opportunity for us to see the share price move here.