Advancing the PC Silver Mine: PEA Results and the Road Ahead

0:00 Good morning, good afternoon, or good late evening from what looks like a very international audience today. So thanks for joining us from all around the world. I'm very excited. I've got with me today Chad Williams, CEO of Honeybadger Silver, along with COO Ron Hallis, and we'll soon be joined by Justin Cochran, who's in project financing, M&A and strategy, to discuss this morning's exciting news out of the company. I'm gonna do some really brief housekeeping and then I'll let you get into the exciting stuff. Here's how today's gonna work. The Honey Badger team is gonna go through a presentation. Then I've got some questions just based on that presentation But this is interactive. We really do want to hear from you and answer your questions as much as possible. So please do use that chat button at the bottom of your screen. We'll try to get to as many of your questions as we can today. If we don't get to it for whatever reason, I'll make sure the Honey Badger team gets them and they'll be able to get back to you as soon as possible. There's also a request meeting button at the bottom.

0:48 You can press that at any point in time during today's meeting or even after it closes and you can request the opportunity to chat with the Honey Badger team. The only other thing I'll say is this event is being recorded. We'll be live replay by late afternoon, Eastern time. It'll be in the exact same link but also on Six's YouTube page. But enough out of me. Let's get into the pro team. Chad, I'll throw it over to you for presentation. Thanks, Romeo. Yeah, the pro team. Okay. Thanks, Romeo. And obviously, thank you very much to 6 and a shout out to Daniel and Bianca, the founders of 6, who have created a great platform and are providing a tremendous service to the mining industry in general, including to Honeybadger and our investors. This morning, this afternoon, this evening, wherever you are, as Romeo said, there are people joining us from all over the world here.

1:38 We're very, very proud and pleased to present the highlights of the preliminary economic assessment and the updated mineral resource estimate that we publicly announced this morning here in Toronto, Toronto time anyway. And the 3 key takeaways for me, and you'll hear the details from Justin and Ron in a moment here, but for me at the 10,000 foot level, I guess the key takeaways or observations, number 1 is the size of the operation. I do admit that I was very pleasantly surprised by how large this mine will be. And don't forget, this is a restart. It was once a mine and we aim to restart it, but the size of the operation certainly impressed me. It was bigger than I thought it would be.

2:30 And, you know, for example, over 10 million ounces of Silver equivalent per year, certainly in the first 7 years, makes this or will make this a world-class operation and one of the biggest Silver mines anywhere. Number 2 is it will generate very substantial economic returns, cash flow, very good IRR, very quick payback. These are things that analysts and the financial community, they look at. And obviously, it's important for the people in the local community and also in the Northwest Territories who will benefit from the restart of this mine. So yes, the economic value of this mine is substantial.

3:19 And number 3, and this is very important, the PEA is very much a start, not a finish. Recall that we only acquired this asset about 6 months ago, 5 or 6 months ago, And we quickly asked JDS to create a PEA. JDS used the old information. In other words, we didn't do any drilling. We didn't do any underground development or anything like that. They just use the old information to refresh using today's commodity prices and inflated some of the capital numbers. But the point being is that I think and we think that there are many opportunities to improve the numbers, improve the economics. Small examples would be, for example, we didn't include any germanium because we didn't have a germanium resource and we hope to get germanium resource by the end of this year. That could have a substantial beneficial impact on the finances. Also, the Canadian government said this week that they will be improving the tax regime for mine startups like ours or restarts like ours. So that should help as well. So there are many, many things that we can do.

4:33 My personal belief is that we're blessed with substantial infrastructure that we may be able to restart more quickly and for a lot less money than even the PEA contemplates. And I underlined the word may because there is a lot of uncertainty. We don't know how long, we don't know how much it'll cost. So if you look at the PEA as a targeted rate of production, then perhaps there is a quick start, a less expensive way to get into production. And this is more of a minimum viable product or proof of concept. This is not commercial production, but perhaps there's a way to get the mill going and showing some visibility that we can get to cashflow relatively soon. Of course, we will always do things, you know, expeditiously, but also very prudently.

5:27 So with that in mind, I'll turn it over to Justin, who will go over the numbers with you right now. Thanks Chad. I'll go over through a few slides and try and focus on some things that weren't necessarily in the press release, but also focus on some of the key numbers from the press release. Do keep in mind that there's lots of forward-looking statements here. So please take a moment to read this when you can on the website. So just as a quick overview to remind listeners, this is Canada's next high-grade Silver-Zinc-Lead Copper project. It's fully permitted in the Northwest Territories. 3 deposit types here at Maine Quartz vein, which is the bulk of the resource, and then smaller bids in the stock work and a massive sulfide zone.

6:21 We will produce 2 concentrates, a zinc concentrate, which will host the germanium and a silver rich lead concentrate, which also hosts the Copper alongside the Silver and the Lead. We estimate close to 1 billion dollars of capital has been spent on this project by previous owners. We are standing on the back of giants in that sense. This mine was built originally by the Hunt brothers in the 1980s, but extremely well-preserved. And we'll show you some pictures, including, you'll see this picture of the ball mill here on the right, taken a couple of months ago. No ore actually went through this ball mill, but there's actually ore on the conveyor belts.

7:06 That's how close they were to restarting or to starting this mill. And we believe we can restart it quite quickly. It was 1000 ton per day mill now permitted up to double that, over double that. There's an airstrip that's been there since the 60s, an existing winter road track that's there, power 5 kilometers of underground development. So again, huge headstart, and we'll show you some pictures of that. Very importantly, very supportive First Nation governments. We've met with all of them very recently and everyone is quite eager to see this project move ahead. With the updated MRE that we released today, just less than 300Moz of Silver at an average grade of about 450g per tonne.

8:01 Looking at the economics here, we did present 3 cases. I focused this just on the consensus pricing case and our spot pricing case, spot being the spot pricing as at the end of August. Some phenomenal numbers, hopefully people will agree. From a pre-tax basis in the spot case, you know, over $7 billion in free cash flow, 2.5 year payback. One of the things that we didn't comment on in the press release, if you look at the after-tax NPV to initial capital ratio, this is a big focus for investors and a ratio approaching 4 to 1 in that spot case, which is just a fantastic ratio.

8:47 As Chad mentioned, over 10Moz of Silver equivalent, comprised of Silver, Zinc, Lead and Copper. A 22-year mine life, so almost 20Mt of ore and close to 200Moz of Silver equivalent over life of mine. And then, again, an interesting aspect of this project is its leverage to Silver prices. This sensitivity table has confused a few. We are only moving the Silver price here. This bought Silver case is taking the base case numbers for Zinc, Lead and Copper, but just moving the Silver price.

9:34 Again, just moving the Silver price has a dramatic impact on value as we approach our belief of US$100, US$150, US$200 an ounce. You can see again from pre-tax, after-tax basis, this is a very significant mine. And then just looking at the payable production, This is what is fascinating in my mind about this project. It's polymetallic, you've got Silver, Zinc, Lead, Copper, Antimony. We haven't factored in Germanium or other critical minerals here. But if you look at the payable amount of product that's produced at this mine annually, and again, this is just looking at the first 7 years, multiplied by relatively conservative pricing assumptions, you are getting, these are USD, you're getting over US$600M in annual revenue, close to CAD$1Bn, again, before factoring in Germanium.

10:44 The way I think about this is if you look at the mine model, there's about 300 million Canadian in costs per year. And a lot of that is transportation, TC's transportation, treatment charges, refining charges, of course, operating costs, but $300 million in costs per year on almost 1 billion dollars Canadian in revenue per year. You can see how this mine generates a substantial amount of free cash flow on an annual basis. About US$600M per year in free cash flow at spot pricing over the first 7-years. So a significant free cash flow producer.

11:30 And then we wanted to look at how does this asset, how does this mine compare to some of the largest Silver mines on the planet? And when you look at, again, our first 7-years of production, 10.7Moz of Silver equivalent Over the life of mine, 7.9Moz of Silver equivalent. It is on a global scale, a very, very large producer. And you'll see some of the largest mines in the world here. And then just in terms of, Chad touched on this in terms of long-term benefits in the Northwest territories for our indigenous partners. This is a project that will create 600 jobs through the construction period, almost 350 long-term jobs once we're in full operation.

12:27 Under our normal spot pricing, but also our base case pricing. We're paying well over 1 billion dollars, approaching $2 billion in taxes to both the federal government and the Northwest Territories government. Substantial export opportunities, of course, as well with the concentrate. And of course, an ability to keep critical minerals in North America, very importantly. With that, I will pass the call over to Ron. Great. Thank you very much, Justin. And thank you to 6 for hosting us today. I am a mining engineer and I was the link between the company and JDS Mining and the other various consultants that completed the preliminary economic assessment and the mineral resource estimate.

13:20 I'll just go through some of the details of the PEA and more importantly, what we already have at site. Again, this is, as Chad said, it's a mine restart. We're not starting from scratch. It's not a Greenfields project. So here's a picture and I'd be lying if I said every day we have a rainbow over the site, but this day we did. So there on the center to left is the existing mill infrastructure. And we'll have some more pictures of that on the inside, but just to show we are not starting from scratch. We have the process plant built, the darker brown in the back are the 5 fuel tanks already on site and in the foreground is one of the workshops on site. So again, it's a restart, we're not starting from scratch.

14:06 Next please. Here's an overhead view of the same general infrastructure. Taken a few years back, some of the buildings have changed a little bit, but again, to show we have the mill site, the fuel storage accommodations, office, et cetera, already in place and ready to go. Next please. So on the left hand side, that's our office. We had a visit of some of the directors. That's Colby Kushner, one of our directors, looking at the maps, another is looking at the core. And on the right hand side, within one of the workshops, we hosted some other visitors. And we have Andrew Jediman, our VP of Exploration, showing the spectacular core to the visitors. So it does look a little bit messy in the background but it just goes to show you we are a well-stocked operation and we've already had a number of groups up there this year investors, analysts, board members, etc. Through the site.

15:11 Next please. On the left-hand side is a photo from inside of the process plant, or the mill. You can see the flotation tanks in the foreground. Also the person in the middle, that's Claudine Lee, our Vice President of corporate and social responsibility, a key player helping us on this project. She was involved with NorZinc previously and came to us when we acquired the project. So Clodine has done a lot of excellent work building those relationships with the First Nations, the IPAs, et cetera. And on the right hand side, there's a picture again of some of the visitors outside our 930 level portal.

15:58 And we have plans to fix up the ground in there. Again, we have over 5 kilometers of underground development completed. Much of that was done in the early 80s, late 70s. So we will get some crews up there to rehabilitate that. But again, it just goes to show some of the existing infrastructure in place. So 5 kilometers of underground development, that is what is shown in the light blue color. So we're looking through the mountainside here. You can see the 3 different levels of the development, the lowest level where the ore would come out is almost right next to the process plant. So very short haulage distance.

16:45 And those faint gray lines are the traces of the 80 plus 80 kilometers of underground diamond drilling that's already been done on the project. Next, please. So this is looking now into the future. This is one of the mine plans showing the underground development. It's an underground mine, not an open pit mine. We'll have access for multiple levels using rubber-tired equipment. Those green corkscrew-like things are ramps going to the different parts of the ore body. So this is one of the mine plans that's been developed for the 22 year mine life. Next please. As part of the current study, JDS Mining was the overall leader for the PEA and they did the mining section of the report.

17:39 They did an excellent job in bringing the highest grades into the early production for quick payback. So As Chad and Justin have said, we have the highest production of metals in the first 7 years, so quick payback of any loans and financing. It's a little bit hard to see all the little details, but we do see the value of the ore being in some cases up over $1,000 per ton of in situ value of the ore, whereas our mine operating costs are in the about $150. So plenty of margin there to be to making a free cash flow. Next please. So again looking at the the volumes It's a significant producer on the world stage in silver equivalent as well as zinc, copper and lead.

18:39 And in the future, we will be getting the Germanium and other possibly antimony and tungsten resources. So lots of metals, lots of numbers to look at there. If there's any questions at the end, exactly on what we have, we can address those questions. Next please. Over to my colleagues in Toronto. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much, Ron. And thank you very much, Justin. So I'll conclude by recapping. Well, I guess there are 3 reasons to own Honey Badger right now, And I'll recap the presentation as well. So number 1 reason is obviously the Prairie Creek mine. We call it the PC Silver mine. We will rebrand it with an indigenous name, let's say within the next 6-months or so.

19:34 It is a world-class deposit, world-class mine. The grades are high. It's very, very high quality. Number 2, based on our numbers, we appear to be very inexpensive relative to our peers. And so the value is there. And I personally feel that we will get re-rated upwards over time as we continue to de-risk this asset and our other assets. And by the way, we have 8 Silver assets. PC Silver is one of them. And you essentially, not only do you get PC Silver for a very low valuation, you get all the other assets for free. This is my opinion. Do your own due diligence.

20:20 And obviously, you know, you have to crunch your own numbers. Number 3, somewhat unusually in junior mining, very high ownership from management and officers and insiders, including myself, obviously. And we do have some very good supporters like Mr. Eric Sprott and Mr. Rick Rule. Nokomis is a fund. And so we are well supported in the market. We have traded about 100M shares in the last month in the middle of summer, which is astounding to me that we've traded so much volume. But I think we're getting some new investors and new people that will accompany us on the next leg of our adventure, which essentially was kicked off today with the release of this PEA.

21:13 So speaking of PEA, the 3 observations I made, and I'll just quickly recap them. Number 1, it's a very large operation or will be a very large operation once it's back into production. Number 2, very, very substantial cash flow. Justin mentioned 1 billion dollars of revenue and only about 300 million dollars of costs. I mean, there's going to be taxes and other things, but the margins are very substantial. I mean, I don't care what industry you're talking about. Those are very high margins, and therefore this is a very attractive project. And, you know, I am on the record as saying that I think Silver is going to go to $200 an ounce. I know that sounds outrageous. And, you know, who knows? It probably will go there. But at that Silver price, the cash flow generation is very, very high, obviously. And number 3, the PEA is the start. We have immediately started the feasibility study, which will be due roughly in the second quarter of 2027.

22:15 And the feasibility will be a refinement of the PEA. We'll be able to cost some of the items even better, because like I said at the beginning, don't forget we've only had this asset for well under a year here, in fact, less than 0.5 a year. And so, we're going to refine, we're going to sharpen our pencils and refine our numbers. And the feasibility study will point to refined economics in the second quarter of 2027. And so we've got a lot of news. We're going to be drilling from underground. We are of course press release that Tusk is on site trying to evaluate how quickly and how much cost to restart the mill and so on and so forth. So there will be no shortage of news from Honey Badger between now and year end. So that's it for us, Romeo. So let's turn over to questions, please.

23:13 Awesome. Appreciate it very much. And thanks for the presentation. I got a couple of quick questions. I know there's some that came in an email already and there's tons of great ones in the chat. Keep those coming. I think there's time to get to quite a few today. But I do have a couple I want to run through first if you don't mind. Chad, I want to start with you because you closed on this mine at the end of April. And here we are less than 5 months later with the PEA showing a 22-year mine life, $3Bn of pre-tax MPV at spot. So take us back to the spring now. What did you think you were buying and how did these numbers stack up against what you were hoping for when you signed? Yeah. I mean, to be fair, we knew it was a good operation because we did our due diligence and yeah, we knew we had a winner, but we didn't realize we had such a good winner. In fact, you know, when I first saw the numbers from JDS, you know, the size of the operation really surprised me.

24:07 I mentioned that at the beginning of this call. And it's quite something. And to your point, I didn't realise how good it was when we bought it. There you go. Ron, if you don't mind, I'm just going to speak to your bona fides for a second. You joined the COO in February after a career developing and operating mines for companies big names, Kinross, Imgold, bale. For investors seeing Prairie Creek for the first time, this is a mine that was originally built in the early eighties with a mill on site and airstrip, roughly what 5km of underground development, all the permits, benefits agreements in place with indigenous governments, etc. How would you characterize how far ahead this asset sits compared to a typical company just putting out a PEA?

24:54 Yes, thanks, Romeo. Great question. I would say based on the fact, again, of all the infrastructure and assets we have, First Nations impact benefit agreements, Northwest territories and federal approvals to proceed, we are likely 10-years ahead of those other juniors that have, you know, maybe someone else has put 80,000m of drilling in and they have their PEA, or maybe they've done 40,000m of drilling. But given the amount of development, the equipment on site and all the agreements in place, I would safely say we've got a 10-year head start. That's certainly no slouch. That's pretty neat.

25:39 Chad, 1 number I want to talk about just because I think it's the one that stops people scrolling is the cost line. An ASIC between negative 22 and negative 40 USD. I think retail investors see that and think there must be some sort of catch. So I'd love if you could explain how the Zinc, Lead and Copper checks end up paying for the Silver. Yeah. And I can understand how some people are confused about that, because if you want to know what our margin is, you take the Silver price and add, let's say, US$22, US$23, US$25, And that's our margin, which gives you an idea of how attractive the economics are. And the reason is because we have like the, it depends on the commodity prices at the time or what people's, investors' views of commodity prices going forward. But in terms of reasonable estimates, about 40% of our revenue is Silver, 40% is Zinc and the rest is lead and copper. And so the bulk is not Silver in some ways, if you want to look at it that way, but at the current Silver price or even slightly higher, then it becomes a Silver mine again. That's why the Hunt Brothers bought the project in the first place because of the Silver. So think what in conclusion, I would like your listeners and investors to think of this

27:10 as a very, very high quality Silver mine. Because, you know, we'll be producing 4Moz per year of Silver. That is a world-class Silver mine, but the Zinc and all the other metals, they will offset all of our operating costs and then some. So it actually adds to the Silver price, if you will. So it makes, like you said, it's kind of a different way of looking at things, but it is a Silver mine. It was a Silver mine. It's just is fortunate that it has significant by-product credits to it. Yeah. No, always helpful. I appreciate just some clarity there. I think it's neat. Ron, I got 2 for you because the operation contemplates mining about 2,400 tons per day underground, but dense media separation upgrades that material before it reaches the mill. So lifting head grades from 112g per tonne Silver at the face to 173g per tonne into the plant, alongside nearly 13% Zinc. I was wondering just to help out the audience and the crowd today, could you walk us through the flow sheet and explain what that DMS step does for the economics of the operation.

28:21 Sure. Thanks, Romeo. And again, DMS is short for dense media separation. So the ore will come from the underground mine, will go through 2 stages of crushing with the product being less than 1 1⁄2 inch per particle. So what we will do to simplify it is to take these particles that are 1⁄2 inch or less, we'll throw them into a tank that has a heavy media solution with a gravity of about 2.75. So anything that is heavier than 2.75 gravity will sink and those items that are lighter than that will float. So because we know that all of our metals are very heavy, at the bottom of the tank, all the metals will be falling to the bottom of the tank and the waste rock dilution that comes in will be floated off the top. That's how we have the effect of getting rid of that dilution and not then having to pay to grind it further, add reagents and put it through flotation. So we get 2,400t of diluted material coming into the process plant, but in the back end of the process plant, we only need to treat about 1500t per day of higher grade material because we take the waste rock away. Okay, great. Thank you. And I've got one question just about the road, And I'll tell you, there's a number of questions that came in over email about it. There's a question in the chat.

29:49 So I wanted to summarize it all into one road question for you. Sure. That's sure. The all season road is the largest single item of the capital budget, roughly 205 million dollars. Looks like. But it is an upgrade of the existing winter road rather than a brand new corridor. And as I understand it, federal national trade corridors funding has already been announced towards it. So my question to you is, I guess, from an execution standpoint, why is that road the piece that unlocks everything else here? Why is everybody asking questions about the road? This is, I guess, my question to you. Certainly. So we showed some pictures earlier of people at the site, and we brought in some visitors this summer, including myself and Chad and Justin. We've been a few times. Right now, access to the site is limited by air only. And the airstrip we have the largest is a dash 8 that can land at our site.

30:38 So when we look, if we fast forward to the future, when we need to be bringing in millions of liters of diesel per year and shipping out hundreds of thousands of tons of concentrate per year, it's obviously more cost effective to do that by road rather than trying to fly everything in and out. So again, although we have a fully constructed process plant, we will need to bring in other pieces of equipment going forward. We will need to bring in mining equipment going forward. So all of those items are much, much more realistically and more cheaply brought into sight on a road rather than keeping planes active in the Northwest Territories. Great. Appreciate it. Are there any other road comments? Throw them into the chat if you don't feel they were answered. We'll be sure to grab them. But Chad, I wanted to talk money, because I know that was your old day job.

31:29 Pre-production capital comes in at $667 million. You say in the release the project naturally splits into pieces that attract different pools of capital. You've had inbound interest from smelters, off takers, debt providers, government agencies and infrastructure investors, Plus 2 unsolicited offers for complete turnkey financing. For a company your size, and I guess this is what the retail is always going to be wondering, how do you build this without burying shareholders in dilution? Right. I am a shareholder, so that's something that's very important to me. And by the way, you know, the 667, I think at least in my opinion, we should net the 20 million that we have in credits from the government already for the road. So I know it may not seem like a lot, but let's say 650 million.

32:16 The, the ways, like I said, There are many ways to do it, but ultimately we don't know how this will be funded, how the pie will be cut, if I can use that analogy. But we will try to minimise and quite frankly, if we can do no more equity dilution, that would make me very happy. And there are ways to do that. It may not be the best way, but there are ways to do that with debt. What we won't do, for example, is a Silver Royalty or Stream or a Silver company. So investors don't have to worry about that. And it's a trade-off, you know, the smelters would be willing to fund a substantial amount of this capital, but they're going to want long-term commitments. And do we want to be beholden to a particular smelter?

33:12 There are debt providers, but do we want to be paying high interest levels of debt going forward, mining is a cyclical business and debt has sunk more mining companies than even the terrible management that mining is unfortunately plagued with. Not our company, of course, but other companies. The point, though, is that debt is in mining something that is risky. And so, you know, I've talked about, you know, maybe a Zinc stream or even joint venturing part of this project to a very large company. Or, you know, there are all kinds of things that we can do. So Justin and I have our work cut out for us. So Ron had no summer because he had to work on this at PEA.

33:59 Justin and I will have no Christmas because we're going to be working on the financing package. But the really good news, and Justin is beside me here and he'll agree, I'm sure, is that we are highly, highly encouraged by the levels of the quality and the levels of interest from many different unsolicited financial providers. I mean, this is, you know, this asset has been around for quite a long time. So it's a well-known entity. And of course this is different times because the commodity prices are higher. We have obviously great support from the indigenous governments and we've signed benefits agreements And we look forward to working with them, of course.

34:49 The point being though is, and the governments, the federal government, the territorial government are supportive. And so this is, I don't want to jinx it, but this is very much a perfect storm to get this project restarted. They were so close in 1982, but we'll get it over into the end zone, across the finish line, if you will. The funding is available. We know it is. It's just a question of what is that going to look like and to minimize the dilution, minimize the risk to our company as well. And I haven't even talked about the government incentives, the credits and that kind of thing. So everything's on the table. Sorry if it's a long answer to a short question, but it's complicated.

35:37 But we do have lots of reason to be enthusiastic about what it's going to look like in terms of a funding package. Now, I appreciate a thorough answer. It's the shortest question in mining, but I think also the toughest. So you take your time answering it. Ron, I got one for you. Chad called this PA a starting point and the release raises the idea of a staged lower capital route that you guys have talked about to first production rather than building the full operation on day 1. Not to make it a Steve Jobs, Wozniak thing, but as a person who would actually have to engineer that, Ron, what does evaluating a stage start at Prairie Creek actually involve and what would make it the right call? Thanks. There's no doubt it is the right call and the industry as a whole and my experience, that's what we've been doing in many projects in many different places.

36:27 For example, I was operations director at Tassiist for Kinross And every year there was a new expansion happening there. It's not normal really to build a full-size plant. When I was with Lumina Gold, we had the Cangrejos project in Ecuador. We were going to start with a 40,000t per day mill and from free cash flow expand that to 80,000t a day. If you look in Canada, Artemis at Blackwater is doing this in a three-phased approach. So it's, I would say the norm rather than the exception in the industry to build what you can with the money you have and use free cashflow to make it bigger and get more cashflow in the future. Great. I appreciate it. I did want to throw chat a bit of a history note. The Hunt brothers, those rascals, bought this mine back in the 60s for its Silver. And here we are with Silver having touched North of $120M within the past 12 months. Your base case used to be $50 Silver and still produces a 29% after-tax IRR. So while your 12-month high case is worth $4.4B after-tax.

37:31 So how should investors think about the Silver torque built into this asset for folks who are chasing that? Yes, you know, to me it has substantial Silver and because of the by-product credits, it mitigates the risk. It has torque, but it is not the torquiest asset out there. Usually lower quality assets. I consider PC Silver as at the very high end of quality. And that's because of the high grades of the Silver and the other metals. The point though is that if you want torque, it's lower grades and, let's say, lower quality projects. At the lowest quartile of quality. I think we're at the highest quartile of quality.

38:23 So at some point, the torqueyness isn't as great as others, but I would rather have the quality than the high leverage or the high beta. I'd rather have what we have than the lesser quality assets. I appreciate the answer. One thing, and you touched on it, but I want to kind of get into it just a bit more to reflect on the questions in the chat too. As you deliberately did leave some value out of the PEA, nothing for germanium, antimony or tungsten, even though as I understand it, the resource runs roughly 1,000 to 1,600 parts per million antimony, none of Ottawa's new tax incentives either, or I know that Capitol Hill is obsessed with tungsten antimony these days. So my question is, why publish the conservative version? And how real is the upside that was excluded?

39:13 Yeah, the the intention was to to get numbers, credible numbers out into the public to refresh the 2021 economic study. I mean, that study was done during COVID. It's obviously 5 years ago. Lots of inflation has happened. And so we had many investors question what the capital would be and what this mine could look like. So it was important for us to get some numbers out, knowing that, you know, to Ron's point that he just said, mines are continuously improved and continuously optimised. For example, we don't know what the mill, we don't really, like JDS, there's no way for JDS to know how long and how much money it'll take to restart the mill.

40:02 It's impossible. It's a restoration, you know? And so they had to come up with an estimate, but we've got Tuscan there. They're going to come out with feasibility level numbers and that will be an improvement and we'll release that. The Germanium, it took time for us to get the samples out of the old core. We couldn't do it immediately. It'll take some time for us to get the, in other words, and the tax, I mean, the tax was, the tax benefit was just announced a few days ago. So, you know, there's no way for us, we thought about it, trust me, but there was no way for us to include it credibly in the PEA numbers. So yes, the important message for the listeners is that we think we can improve on what we have.

40:50 We think we can be quicker, less capital, better economics. It's already great. It's already I mean, to me, I'm very happy. We're all very happy. We're pleased that the market seems to be reacting well. And the feedback so far has been really, really, really good. I think it's surprised a lot of people. It's just going to get better, I think. Awesome. Ron, my last question will be for you, And then I'm going to get into the questions from the chat that we haven't already gone through because the board has authorized the next stage of engineering with the FS targeted for the second quarter of 2027. So although you had a tough summer, it looks like also have a tough fall with your background. So between now and then, what are the major work streams on your desk and what should investors watch for as the big signs that Prairie Creek is moving towards that production decision?

41:40 Sure. So, you know, Chad already referenced there was a 2021 PEA that was done by previous operators. There have been multiple feasibility and pre-feasibility studies done over the last decades. So we're not starting from scratch and we're basically refining and fine-tuning all that work and all those studies that have been done. So, you know, Again, when we talk about the 10-year head start we have, we believe we already understand the flow sheet quite well. We don't need to do a lot more flow sheet testing. We understand the shapes of the ore body and the rock qualities. We don't need to reinvent the mining method. So really in the next couple of quarters, the feasibility study is refining the cost aspects, breaking down the contingency and getting more details done compared to other projects where they may have to drill another 50,000m to get more samples and fresh samples for processing. It's again, we're a restart.

42:39 We're not a greenfield. So we have many advantages that way. Yeah, there you go. Okay. So there were some Great questions in the chat. I think I've covered some of them, but if I skipped your question by the end, please do let me know and I'll make sure we try to get to it. But Tom wanted to know almost right from the start of the presentation, Chad, have you had talks with the American DOE or DOW to discuss grants at all at this time? We've had conversations like third hand through intermediaries from U.S. Representatives. Obviously, the current tension with Canada and the U.S. Hasn't helped in that way. I think we all think that that will become fast friends again with the Americans. At least I certainly hope so.

43:28 And because of the strategic nature of the deposit and the minerals that are hosted in the deposit, there's no doubt that what we have is important to them and to us. So that will only increase in time. So yes, we've had some inbounds, but nothing really concrete yet. Great. Balka from the chat wants to know, are there any updates on Honey Badger's attendance at Canada Investment Summit? So yeah, we've had a lot of questions on that. Don't forget that the way the summit was structured was the federal government invited provincial and territorial governments to present their best ideas to international investors. So if you think about the format, you know, the actual ideas, we were 1 of 165 ideas. We were 1 of 5 or 6 ideas from the NWT.

44:24 And I think we were the most advanced idea in terms of closest to cash flow. So we were one of many, but the Premier advanced our, as well as the other mining projects. And so we've had, in other words, we weren't there, you know, in the event itself, We were there superficially and we were getting ripples of interest. Because we're part of the deal book, we've had people reach out to us, people we've never heard from before. And so there's no doubt that they're getting their ideas from that, the pitch book or the deal book. But just to be fair, this will take time because it takes time for these institutional investors to do their due diligence.

45:13 And most of them may not even be interested in mining. I think there was something like 65 mining names in that 165. So they're not all going to be interested in Zinc or NWT or whatever. So it's going to take some time for the benefits to percolate. However, and this is very important, In Canada, we have a substantial institutional investor base. They invest in Canadian projects and they are a little bit, they're feeling a little bit left out. They're like, hey, why do we need Blackrock to come in and invest in Honeybadger when I'm a legitimate pension fund or mutual fund or whatever that can invest in Honeybadger. We understand Canada. We understand mining. So ironically, what the summit did is it stimulated some competition from the internal funding sources. And so they're a lot more aggressive now talking to us. They don't want to miss out to international sources.

46:09 Yeah, it's interesting. I'm going to combine 2 questions from the chat into one. They're both about drilling. Really, can you discuss drilling plans for Prairie Creek in the coming year and can you drill all year round? Ron, do you want to hit that or Justin? Why don't we let Justin hit that because he's he's being very shy here. So the plan now is As Ron was mentioning through his presentation, doing some underground development work here, starting quite shortly, and then to put a drill at the end of our 930 level by the end of this year. Our intention is to shut down the site for the winter this year. So it will be shut down for about 4 months through the winter. But if all goes well, that'll be the last winter it'll be shut down. And from there going forward, we can drill it all year round, no restrictions there. Great, thanks. Just to add a little bit of color. So it's really not underground development per se, it's more rehabilitation.

47:12 So we're not driving new tunnels, we're making sure the existing tunnels are safe using modern standards to go under. And in terms of the shutdown, this is something that's done every year. We could drill all year round if we wanted to, but it's really not necessary. The reality is all of our staff will be working 110% on the start of the all season road, which is planned for the spring of 2027. So rather than having them on site and maintaining operations, we would rather have them work on all the engineering and all of the precious work that will be required to really start the work in earnest in the spring.

48:05 Okay. Yeah, appreciate it. Steven from the chat asks, have you purchased or done piloting on DMS yet? Ron, that's for you. Yeah, we have not. Again, we've owned the asset for 5 months and we're looking at when it will come into production. So no, we have not purchased any equipment, but yes, previous operators have done pilot scale testing and that'll all be documented in the PEA or if someone is interested, they could look online for the old PEAs through CDAR plus. John from the chat asks, what is Tusk's experience in Northern Canada? I would go to their website. They have, I mean, they're mill people.

48:51 They're specialized in electrical works, especially. And so I would say that that's location agnostic. For the listeners, they've looked at and have done very preliminary work and they think that a lot of the electrical systems, the wiring if you will, are salvageable. The switches will have to be replaced and of course we'll have to install modern process regulating systems, you know, computers if you will. They didn't have computers in Haiti. But the point being is a lot of the wiring which is expensive, time consuming to install and very expensive to ship into the site. They think we can keep a lot of that.

49:36 But anyway, time will tell exactly. We've had something like, my information is maybe a couple of weeks old, but We tried to restart 24 electric motors and 22 of them started no problem, 2 of them had to be trapped. So that's a small indication, perhaps, I don't know, early days. And, you know, I'm also on the record of saying that there will be days where we'll get some very good news. You know, this started and it's amazing. We're all doing, you know, high fives. And the next day something just won't start. It'll be seized up and we'll have to, you know, bring a new device in, whatever that is. Okay. But we do have a headstart. We're very blessed in that. And we've said that many times on this call. Great. I'm gonna wrap up with one of my more fun questions that I got from the chat.

50:21 Tom asks, I feel for you to say peerless or give an answer. I would ask, who's your most comparable peer? I don't know the answer. That's a great question. I mean, you can compare us to, you know, on a resource size, you can compare us to, but again, there's nothing that I know of that is fully permitted and also that has, you know, indigenous support to the level we have, which we're blessed and very fortunate to have. And of course, huge government support. It's the right time in the Northwest Territories. And of course, all the infrastructure, you know, Justin mentioned 1 billion dollars in today's dollars and years and years and years of work. I can't think of another example honestly.

51:09 So we are peerless. Maybe that's going to be the new name of the company. The peerless company. I love it. That's good. I'm glad we coined it here. Well, Justin, Chad, Ron, thank you so much for not just going through the presentation, but letting me grill you after. Really appreciate your time. I know there's people from all over in the chat today watching. So thank you very much. And please do share this replay with your peers and colleagues when it pops into your inbox, probably this early afternoon. Everybody have a wonderful day. Cheers, guys. Thank you. Thanks for having us.