BeMetals Series: Recapping the Latest Kato Drilling Results and Portfolio Update (Ep.4)

0:07 Hi, everyone, and welcome to the fourth episode of B Metals Monthly Series hosted by 6. I'm pleased to introduce our speakers for today, John Wilton, President and CEO of B Metals, as well as Derek Iwanaka, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Development, also at B Metals. Derek and John are going to walk us through a company presentation, and after we're going to be taking questions live. So remember, you can submit those questions in the Q&A panel on the right hand side of your screen at any point today. And as a note, today's presentation is available for download in the handouts tab on the right hand side of your screen as well. And because this is a B-Metals monthly series with your registration

0:38 and attendance today, you will automatically be notified for upcoming episodes. But as always, this event is being recorded. It's going to be available on demand on six.com in the coming days. So look out for that. And without further ado, John, Derek, I want to pass things over to you. Great, thanks very much, Cameron, for that introduction. And welcome to everyone early in this 2023 new year. As Cameron mentioned, we're gonna give you a brief update today on the progress we made during last year, 2022, with some news release results from drilling in Japan. That's the main focus of this webinar and also a brief update in general on where we are with B-Metals at this point in time.

1:26 There will be some forward-looking statements, So there is the relevant disclosure cautionary statement. And just as a summary, many of you listening to this webinar will be well aware of our spread of projects. 1 development that has occurred at the end of last year was that we decided to terminate our option agreement with Thunder Mountain Gold on the South Mountain project in Idaho in the USA. While we did return some interesting geological targets from a geophysical survey at the property. We felt that these were a significant distance away from the current resource base.

2:12 So we've decided to terminate that option agreement and focus on our Gold and Copper exploration at this point in time with really a strong focus on our exploration drilling and other exploration activities with Kazan in Japan, our wholly owned 5 properties there. And the Pangeni Copper Project in the prolific Zambian Copper Belt, where we have JOGMEC, the Japanese state agency as a cornerstone strategic partner.

2:52 So really to run through now the recent results and a review of the drilling results from the Kato project primarily in Japan. As you'll be aware that we have those 5 high quality exploration properties, 3 of which are located on the northern island of Hokkaido, 2 down on Kushu. Many of you will have heard from us and other sources. One of the big areas of interest in this Japanese terrain for the potential discovery of very high-grade gold deposits is the Hishikari gold mine located down on the island of Kushu that remains into production with Sumitomo metals and mining.

3:45 That gives us a lot of geological confidence in the terrain in Japan to deliver further discoveries of relatively high-grade mineralization. And also important to remember that other than Hishikari itself, in the past, a number of significant and high-grade gold mines were developed throughout Japan in similar young age rocks and with similar geological settings in what in general we would term epithermal gold deposits. So our 5 projects in Japan are called Kato, Todoroki, Konami, Tashiro and Hokusatsu. The focus of our exploration work during 2022 has really been with the drilling at the Kato project.

4:39 We generally term that as being our most advanced project that's really based on the amount of historical drilling that was completed on that project by the precursor to JOGMEC in the last sort of countrywide scale exploration that was completed in Japan in the mid 1990s. Importantly, really, until the last 5, 3 or 4 years, 5 years possibly, there has been very little exploration done in Japan for gold. And unusual that we find a terrain that has the pedigree and the potential for discovery and development, as we see in Japan, that has almost had 3 decades of very little exploration.

5:30 Important project also for us up in Kaido is the Todoroki project, where we completed in 2021 a series of surface sampling, channel and chip sampling. We will talk to the results of that program. And that will also be lined up for drill testing for the first time by us in about mid-year in 2023 now.

6:03 So to get to the results that we put out today in summary, this on the left here, this is a geological, simplified geological map of the area of drilling on the, what we call the Kato project, formerly known in Japan as the Seta River project. And what you can see there is the results of the drilling have now been able to extend the strike length of the important setter vein by some 400 metres from where we intersected the first high-grade area of the setter vein in hole KT2211 back in about May of last year.

6:53 We can see that we've sequentially stepped along strike and really encouraging was that we've also intersected what we've identified as the Kamatake vein that also appears to have a strike length of some 300 or 350 metres. And that's running parallel to the Seto vein itself about 400, sorry, about 40 metres to the south-west of the set of vein. That was sort of newly identified by us in some of the historical drilling and those results are coming together And we will start in this year's program, testing the deeper extents of that Kamataki vein. Obviously a very potentially useful situation, having another vein set developed immediately to the southwest of the important set of egg.

7:53 You can see that we've extended the mineralization over that some 400 metres, and to the southeast in boreholes such as KT2215, we think from the interpretation and looking at the quartz textures in those epithermal veins, we are very much in the upper reaches of the setter epithermal system in that area. So as we've demonstrated, and we'll look at this in the next slide, elsewhere on the property, we could anticipate improved grade continuity underneath those intersections as we continue our drilling in 2023. Very importantly as well is that the Setter vein system certainly remains open-ended along strike to the southeast, as you can see on this slide, and actually trending towards an area of gold in outcrop chip samples that were taken some years ago in the Seta River itself.

9:00 And importantly, those outcropping samples sit below an area of what we would call a center unit, which is often the upper portion of these epithermal vein systems.

9:19 So just to look at an example of a cross section through the set of vein itself, here's a previously reported hole, KT2211, And that demonstrates that changing grade as we've gone underneath the historical holes such as KT1802. There we saw grades of about 22 metres at 0.5 grams a tonne. But as we've gone underneath the steam heated zone of this epithermal system, you can see how the grades pick up into some really interesting and certainly economically viable significant widths and grade intersections.

10:06 On the right hand side, there is just an example

10:10 of the quartz vein from KT2211. Importantly, we're finding that extends now significant distance on strike, and we'll be further testing to see the depth extent of that part of the system.

10:30 Another example, some 100 metres further along strike from KT2211, hole number 12, where we first intersected, you can see there in that pink-purple colour, the Kamatake vein that's running sub-parallel to the Setter vein itself. And we've now extended through the recent drill results put out today in holes such as KT2215, that that extends again some 350m to the southeast. Again, we're seeing that that zonation in vertical depth, where we're seeing some significant grades from the Seta vein as we go in underneath the base of the steam heated zone.

11:24 So as mentioned, we've also completed a phase of target generation now on the Todoroki project, which is on the western side of Hokkaido. That's based on historical information that's put together from the mining of this project some years ago, where approximately 200,000 ounces at about 10 grams a ton gold were produced. We've conducted phases of geological mapping, channel and rock chip sampling. And now incorporating all that data with satellite imagery and other remote sensing techniques, we've generated a set of important drill targets, specifically to the north initially of the historical mining area.

12:20 And we will be looking to drill test those targets around mid-year in 2023. Also, very importantly, at Todoroki, to the southern extent of the Chlira River, we have also found a boulder sampling trail of quartz vein material

12:42 that extends right up to the base of the younger volcanic rocks, which is the green colour shown on this map. That indicates to us that that vein swarm extends further to the south and right up to the base of that post-mineralisation volcanic cover. So that also provides very interesting targets for the expansion of this, what we think is probably more of an intermediate epithermal system in the Todoroki area. So I'll let Derek now talk to our corporate overview and just provide a general update on where we are financially and what our plans are for the forthcoming exploration, focusing on our gold Kazan projects in Japan and our copper exploration with Jogmech in the Zambian Copa Bel.

13:48 Thanks John. Yeah, it's unfortunately it's been a rather painful last kind of 12 months. If you look at the bottom left hand chart there, that's the share price performance over the last year. But the good news is, I think since we finished off that painful last year, the market has started to turn up. Certainly the gold price has improved and we are starting to see our share price improve slightly. Maybe the focus back on gold more specifically in copper and kind of not doing as much work on the zinc side of things maybe has kind of helped out on that part. You know, really important in this market is cash and fortunately we are supported by B2 Gold and others and so we do have a good cash position to carry us forward to do this drilling in Japan as well as in Zambia.

14:50 You know, $8M in cash with a market cap of $22M is a pretty attractive, I think, entry level at this point. Not too much change on the share ownership. There really hasn't been a hell of a lot of trading in the last 6 months or so. But I am seeing some improved trading volumes recently in the last couple of weeks. We have had a little bit more news.

15:14 And as John pointed out, we will start to drill again in Japan here next month and we'll also we don't really touch on it much but we should have some drilling results coming out from our Pangani project in Zambia within the next month or so as well. So we should have more news flow coming into the year and I will just add that we are going to do some more marketing this year, more than ever before actually because well almost 3 years of B-Metals four-year life has been during COVID. So we're just gonna start to get out there more this year and hopefully that's gonna improve on our market front as well. That's about it from this slide, but back to you, John. Thanks very much, Derek.

16:01 Yeah, just to round off now on this brief update. I think many of you would have seen this slide before. The important thing, as Derek just mentioned, is that we're currently well financed to deliver on our planned drilling at the Kato project in Japan and our other properties of Kazan in Japan. And also, we've got strong backing on our Copper exploration from Jogmech. That was really something of a coincidental tie-up, but obviously that's very, very interesting for us to have Jogmech on board and they're very keen on our Copper work in Zambia.

16:47 And as obviously most importantly for us having B2Gold as a strategic financial and technical partner who have been strong backers on our work, especially in Japan. So we'd like to round off on that point and obviously very happy to answer any questions as they came up. We've hit our sort of targeted short update here of about 15 minutes and happy to answer any questions. And obviously afterwards, you can always reach out to myself directly or Derek while we're here in Vancouver at the moment and on the road in the next months, both at our projects and various marketing events.

17:33 Thank you so much, John and Derek, for the great presentation. Short and sweet, as you said. It doesn't look like we have any questions that have come in, so I want to pass things back to you to close us out for the day. Okay, Cameron, thanks very much for that. And as I mentioned, very happy to answer any questions as they come in. We will start our drilling again in February in Japan. I'm really excited to get that drilling going again and continue the interesting results coming out of Cato and test some of those other really exciting vein targets at the Todoroki Gold-Silver prospect further on the west of Hokkaido.

18:17 Thanks very much for your time and wish everyone all the best for this year. I do see one question just came in from James McCowan. He just asked any comments on new acquisitions of projects? Yeah, thanks James. I'm happy to answer that question. We're always obviously looking at new project opportunities as they come along. In the near term, we're probably going to focus our efforts at Kazan in Japan and the Copper exploration in Zambia. But as you will be aware, we're always looking at more advanced and other high quality exploration projects that we come across or come through our extensive networks that come across our desk. But in the current markets, we have to be a bit realistic about what we can take on. And there is an element of getting maximum value out of the good portfolio projects we have at this point in time. But for the right opportunity, obviously, we do have access to capital to take other projects forward.

19:32 Great. There's also a question that's come in from Ken in the last minute, just talking about timeline to drill results. Yeah, as I said, we've taken a short break over the year-end slowdown period with our drilling in Japan. That will start up early in February. So I would hope that in March, April time, we will start to see more results coming out of Kazan in Japan. And there should be a batch of copper-related results coming out in February or March from the drilling that we completed at the end of last year in Zambia. Wonderful. Well, John, Derek, now it looks like that's all the questions you received for today.

20:19 So if you have any other final words, I think we can wrap it up. No, thanks, everybody. I see that people came from all over Canada, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, our friend Karl Heinz in Germany and John Gray in the UK. So thanks everybody for joining today and happy to answer any questions offline by email or by phone. You