Cassiar Gold Extends Higher-Grade Domains at the Taurus Deposit

0:03 Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, depending on where in the world you're signing in from today. I've got with me today Marco Rox, CEO of CastShare Gold, to discuss recent drill results. The company announced this week. Marco, how are you?

0:15 I've been better. I know a bit of a flu this week, but I got some respites from releasing some nice drill results. There you go, BBS Kids Club today, but nice drill results usually help, I think, better than Advil, so there you go. So here's how today's going to work, just for the folks in the room. I've got some questions I'm gonna run through about those drill results, but today is an interactive event, so please do use the chat button at the bottom right of your screen to ask questions at any point during today's event. I will try to get to as many as we can today. If there's any I don't get to for whatever reason, I will make sure the Casio team still gets them and they'll be able to get back to you using the email or phone number that you entered on registration. The only other piece of housekeeping today that I'll say is today's event is being recorded and the replay will be available probably midday Eastern time.

1:04 So it'll pop right into your inbox. It'll also be at the same link and on Six's YouTube channel. But that's all the housekeeping out of the way. So I want to get right into the good stuff of today's interview. So Marco, the release mentions that 91% of the ounces of Taurus occur within 150 meters of surface. With these new high-grade intercepts extending that deposit footprint, how are you thinking about the expansion potential of Taurus, and what areas do you see as kind of most promising for future growth?

1:34 Well, I mean, it's, I'm not sure if, you know, necessarily the high-grade intercepts, you know, really change much about what we see as the overall potential at Taurus. You know, Taurus is very, very shallow. 91% of the ounces are within 150m from surface. On average, there's about 10m of soil overburden on top of the deposit and in some parts, it outcrops. What we see outside of the resource, the deposit that we've updated earlier this year, we see both very large geophysical anomalies, as well as outcrop at surface from mapping and sampling, as well as pretty much almost everywhere we've been drilling, we intercepted mineralization.

2:25 More importantly, centered around Taurus, on the immediate margins of Taurus, the deposit remains open laterally in most directions, as well as at depth. So we have a target of getting to 5 million ounces. To be quite honest, personally, I think the potential is significantly higher than that. But I think that's kind of a realistic medium-term goal that we can achieve,

2:55 given the resources and the speed at which we've been advancing this project. Obviously, we want to continue to grow the deposit laterally, potentially connect to different pits that we have. We have some small pits and eventually get to the new coast targets where we actually did most of the drilling this year and where we see a lot of potential as well. Awesome. I got a lot of emails in advance of this webinar about drill hole 25TA245. So hopefully the question I'm about to ask will cover most of those, But if it doesn't, let me know in the chat and I'll try to give you some more details. But obviously that hole returns some exceptional grades, including that 369 grams per tonne Gold over 0.4m.

3:41 Can you walk us through just what these high-grade, sexy, visible Gold intercepts tell you about the geology at Taurus and how you're planning to target similar structures going forward? That's a great question. First of all, 369g per tonne of gold is really not what you can expect. We look at this deposit as a gram to a gram and a half over significant tonnage, millions of tonnes of rock.

4:18 But of course, we know that in terms of the geology, we have 2 main styles of mineralization associated with the gold. We have the gold with quartz veins and in the above-tangent area of our deposits. These are very, very thin, they're in the centimeter scale, but they can carry, every once in a while, some nice high-grade intercepts, especially along some trends, and also gold associated with the pyrite, with these coalescing envelopes. So, you know, I would say, you know, you can't expect to find this kind of like 300 grand per ton plus intercepts all the time. But having said that, and this is actually something that became, you know, something we were in a qualitative approach to our most recent 4.31 compliant resource estimate that we've put out. We were able to really, you know, define much better geological models and structural controls for this like, you know, higher grade domains in that way that we basically targeted and we were able to extend it.

5:26 And this results confirms our thinking and also allows us to, for the future, potentially continue to target these, you know, higher grade, you know, domains. Although,

5:38 you know, most of the ounces will be at the more typical, this is what we expect, you never know the future, more typical to the gram to a gram and a half grade that we have in the overall deposit. I know you have results pending from 11 drill holes at New Coast Prospect, which is 2km south of the forest. I'm just curious, What prompted you to allocate over 70% of this year's drilling meters to New Coast? What's the strategic thinking behind exploring that regional target specifically? That's a great question. At the Torres deposits, just over 1 square kilometer footprint, we already have the 1.91 ounces inferred at 0.95 grams per ton, with an additional 410,000 ounces indicated at 1.43 grams per ton of gold.

6:34 You can add those 2 resource categories and you already have a very substantial deposit right there.

6:42 The deposit remains open. We don't know how big that deposit is going to get. We know it's open laterally in most directions and at depth. But in the last 2 previous seasons, we have allocated 9 drill holes into the New Coast targets. All of those 9 drill holes were mineralized. They're between 100 to a couple of hundred meters in some cases. So they're kind of really spread apart, but what we realize there at New Coast is that, you know, New Coast, you know, has the potential to become another tourist. In fact, I mentioned this before in a couple of interviews, the old name for New Coast was actually Taurus II.

7:27 Our thinking here is, We clearly have a pretty exciting deposit that already has the scale that you want to see at Taurus. And the new coast target is roughly 2 kilometers south of Taurus. And our goal here is to be able to demonstrate, at least kind of put a sort of wireframe into an area where we can feel confident that we can really see and believe that we have potentially another Taurus there. That's the reason why we've allocated so much drilling for that target this year, because that can really demonstrate, unequivocally, that new coasts could be effectively tourist too.

8:20 Okay, I appreciate that. With 8.8 million tons indicated at 1.43 grams per ton goal to tourists and the deposit remaining open for expansion, What are the kind of next milestones that you need to achieve to move this project towards development?

8:37 Well, by the way, we don't have just 8.8 million tons at 1.43 grams per ton for 410,000 ounces. We also have 63 million tons at 0.95 grams per ton inferred for 1.9 additional million ounces.

8:56 It's already a very substantial resource size. What are the key steps to take the project forward to a development decision. Internally what we were thinking is it's kind of a three-track, 3 parallel activities as we advance this project. Basically, we want to get to a development decision in 5 years for this part of the property. And over the next few years, the 3 tracks is to continue to expand mineralization, not only to grow the resource size, but also do infill drilling to get it to higher categories as well. While At the same time, taking the project through

9:48 economic engineering studies as well, we plan to have our maiden PEA coming out in the first half of next year on the back of MET studies that we're looking to release as well in the first half of next year. And the third kind of track that we're looking to progress in the meantime is also the re-permitting environmental and social work that's required to get production. We already have 2 mine permits in place. We have infrastructure, power, mill, etc. But we still probably will be looking at A23 year re-permitting process, which in a grand scheme of things and The overall global mining environment is a very short timeline.

10:36 It's the 3 tracks that we want to advance over the next 4-5 years to get to a mine development decision. Great. I appreciate it. I want to touch on Casier South specifically. I know the release mentioned that Cassier South

10:52 has historical underground mines that produced over 315,000 ounces at 10 to 20 grams per ton gold grades. How does the exploration strategy differ for you guys between developing the bulk tonnage, we'll call it, tourist deposit, versus exploring for the high-grade veins at Casio South? That's a great question. In the last 5 years, we've allocated 75% of our budgets to the bulk tonnage and around 25% of our budgets to the high-grade. To be quite honest, given the nature of our deposit on the bulk tonnage at the Taurus deposits, We're typically hitting mineralization from surface. So every meter of drilling there typically counts towards basically adding ounces.

11:40 And that's why when you look at the amount of drilling that we've done, we were able to increase our resource so effectively

11:47 with a relatively limited amount of drilling compared to some of our peers. You know, and this is, you know, a function of the nature of immunization that typically starts at surfaces, starts at surface. And at the high grade veins in the south the mineralization style it's a little bit different so in the south Basically what you have is on average the veins are 3 meters wide although they pinch and swell and on average the the grades of the veins are between 10 and 20 grams per ton as you can see by the you know historical you know you know grades and recoveries as well But what you have there is the entirety of the grade is basically just concentrated, typically on those on average 3 meter wide veins.

12:43 And outside of it, there's really not much. So what happens is when we're trying to drill for these vein structures, you end up spending a lot of meters just to get to your targets. And, you know, sometimes you might miss the vein or sometimes the vein pinches and swells or you also have a bit of a negative effect. But in practice, what that results in is that you end up adding less ounces per meter drilled on the high grade than what the ounces you get from the bulk tonnage. Now, it's interesting because I know that a lot of investors in the mining and gold junior space are very, very enamored with Grave.

13:29 But Grave has the benefits, but also it's downsides. So that's the reason we've been focusing on the bulk damage. We can add more ounces and we're building something much, much bigger, much, much faster. Having said that, the high-grade vines is something we're quite excited about because we have infrastructure, we have a fully unimpeded mill, we have mine permits, we have grid power, we have water, we have 17 portals, 25 kilometers of underground workings, we have tailing facilities, we have 160 kilometers of access roads. And that puts us in a very unique position for a potential, you know, much nearer term bootstrap

14:19 for this project focused on the high-grade veins as opposed to on the bulk tonnage. So that can provide enough finality to basically going to production sooner than what we are envisioning for the TOR deposit or the bulk finance side of our project. And obviously that's attractive in and of itself because it has the potential to get in cash flow much, much sooner. And it's basically balancing the risks and benefits of both sides of the property. Of course, you have some benefits, but also some downsides, depending on what strategy you want to pursue. But not wanting to make this conversation too long because it's a conversation that comes along quite often.

15:11 It's what I would call a Hollywood problem. So. Yeah, I'd love a champagne problem for sure. Those are the better ones to have if you can get them. I know we kind of just discussed this in the last question, but just to kind of summarize, based on what you learned from the 2025 program, how's Cassier thinking about the 2026 exploration season? Are you gonna continue focusing on near surface expansion Or are there other priorities emerging? Just in simple terms for the investors in the room, kind of what have you learned? What comes next? Yeah, I mean, like part of the answer is also related to what I just commented, right?

15:47 So I guess, you know, we will have to see, I mean, you know, the results on this release from Taurus are quite exciting. And again, it goes back to the Hollywood problem as well. We have more targets than we can chew for the near term. But also, we still have over 70% of our drill meters from this season yet to be released, all of them coming from the new coast targets. So I guess we'll need to see the results from that. I guess we'll see, we need to see, you know, you know, how our geological models get updated with the new drilling at Taurus.

16:32 We're also, you know, basically building new models for the Cassier South and the potential extensions of the high-grade line, especially with new geophysical surveys that we conducted late last year on the Cassier South part of our property that provided some very exciting anomalies as well. So we've got to put all of these opportunities on a scale and also In tandem, also put in balance the development scenarios and see what can generate the fastest return to our shareholders with the least amount of risk. And again, Hollywood, champagne problems, whatever you wanna call it, We don't have any short-term targets. There's a lot of ways we can develop this.

17:22 And it's good problems to have, as I said. Sure, that makes sense. I know, Joe Maxwell mentioned, continuing to identify new trends and advance higher grade domains, a long strike and down dip. What have you learned about the structural controls on mineralization that kind of give you and the team confidence in the systematic expansion potential?

17:44 Yeah. No, this goes back to kind of a similar comment I made earlier on one of the questions is, if you look at our new mineral resource estimate for a 2-1-1 compliant resource, we have much better handle and much better geological models, better defined domains, and basically testing some of these targets resulted in very good results. So that increases the confidence on the potential to basically continue to extend these structurally controlled, higher-grade domains. But again, we're not here just to define higher-grade, tiny domains.

18:33 We're looking for tonnage, we're looking for size, we're looking for 5Moz plus. We'll continue to grow this in some parts of the property. We're very confident about some particular

18:51 structural control domains that we can extend. We can do that. But at the end of the day, the project is really severely under-explored, undervalued, but also under-explored. The footprint of the Torres deposit is just over 1 square kilometer, and our land package is 590 square kilometers. So we have a lot of room to grow. And at the end of the day, we've got to drill where we drill. Sorry, I think I lost your net there for a second, but I think we're back.

19:36 Now, one thing I know, you mentioned this is an important region in British Columbia. Just for the investors in the room who are new to the Casio story, I know there's a number of them just based on the data I'm looking at. Can you elaborate on what makes the region you operate in attractive from an infrastructure permitting and operational standpoint, just compared to other gold districts? Yeah, I mean, there's so many things that makes the region. I mean, this is a gold rush area. In the late 1800s, a 72-ounce solid gold nugget was found right at the heart of our property. So that was kickstarted the gold rush in our district. You know, there's 5 pest-producing mines. You know, There's been a lot of mining development in our region.

20:26 It's a mining region, there's a lot of infrastructure already in place. We have provincial highway 37, we have the Castor Pave Road going straight to the TOR's deposits. We have, you know, mine permits already in place. We have grid power, we have water, we have, you know, pretty nice-sized camp. We have portals, tailings facilities, a full unit permanent mill. This is a very significant infrastructure that first and foremost, it really highlights how undervalued we are. Forget about the gold, just look at our infrastructure. And then you add on top of that all the resource that we have.

21:12 But also, more importantly, it really makes it all of these advantages make really add 2 benefits to the company. 1, it really allows us to operate extremely efficiently. And the second is, it really significantly lowers the barrier for development as well, because, you know, a lot of the infrastructure is already in place where naturally most new and exciting deposits are being found in the middle of nowhere, which is natural. But we're blessed to be finding or defining very, very sizable districts in an area that already benefits from all of this infrastructure and permitting and operational advantages as well.

22:04 Okay, great. Another kind of big picture question before I get to some of the stuff that was sent in over email, but for investors trying to understand cashier's opportunity, what would you characterize as the real differentiating factor of the project? Is it that near-surface nature of the resource, expansion potential, high-grade domains, or is it kind of all of the above or something I didn't catch? I mean definitely all of the above. I think I but I would maybe like the the 5 things I really like to highlight as our key, you know, differentiator or competitive advantages are 1, we have a team that has a track record of discovering, permitting, building, operating, selling billion-dollar gold projects, not only in Canada, but around the world.

22:55 The second thing is the infrastructure that we just mentioned, the paved roads, the power, the water, the mill, all the other infrastructure I already mentioned a couple of times in this webinar as well. The third thing is the resource, which at the end of the day, it's important to be honest with you. There's no point having all the infrastructure, you can only have gold to mine. So we already have a very substantial resource, but again, we've barely stretched the surface on this district. There's a lot of room to grow laterally. There's a lot of room to grow at depth. And we're just in the early innings of, you know, trying to understand how big this district really is. The fourth thing, and it's only 5, so bear with me. The fourth thing is really the fact that we are in a safe jurisdiction and we have mining permits and community support.

23:46 I can't emphasize this enough. You know, the world has become very small for mining companies. It's a really tough world out there. You know, some companies struggle to, you know, you go to South Africa, some companies struggle to access power because they have rolling blackouts. Or you go to Mali and the project and the government is taking over your project or taking some of your employees hostage, or you're in Russia and you're forced to acquire sailor assets because of the geopolitical problems that you have around the world or you have, you know, changing, you know, geopolitical landscape like in Latin America. So that's really the fourth. But the fifth one, which is, I would say also, you know, For me, one of the most, if not the most important, is really the valuation.

24:33 We're trading below $15 Canadian enterprise value per ounce on the ground. We're one of the cheapest ounces on the ground. With all of these benefits, that actually should put us at a premium. You compare our valuation to peers like, look at Artemis that just went into production earlier this year, or look at Thesis, or look at Citgo, or White Gold, or Skeena Resources. You can see that our potential for rewrite is enormous as we progress this and eventually get to a mining decision. So you'll be very hard pressed to find anything cheaper and with a better risk reward than what Caster Gold offered right now.

25:20 Awesome. So that's the end of my questions, and I think it covered a lot of the ones that came in advance over email. There was 1 before I get into the stuff that's in the chat, which I appreciate your patience, guys, in the chat. 1 that came over email is just if you could speak to the tech team that actually performs the drilling. Have you worked with them in the past and are you happy with their performance this last season? I mean, we have, there's, I don't know which one you're mentioning to. So we have like, you know, our geological team, our technical team, which are all in-house geologists. I'm very pleased with their work. They've been delivering year after year. They're really the brains behind the operation as we unlock the treasure that we have here at the Cast Your Gold project. If you're asking about the drill company, we've been using Hard Rock Drilling for the last 3 years.

26:11 They're actually very competent, quite efficient as well. We've been drilling at just under $190 per meter drills, which I like. Canadian, by the way, which is a testament to their efficiency, but also to the infrastructure and access that and the efficiencies that our project provides. So but you know, we're always open to any new contractors, you know, if you can provide a better service at a better price, We're always happy to consider anyone. Perfect, thank you. Going into some of the stuff in the chat, Baron asks, first he says, well done on the drill hole expanding Taurus. He's looking forward to the rest of drills in the PA, but he wants to know, how are we gonna prove the stacked vanes thesis?

27:04 Stacked vanes, I mean, well, we know we have stacked vein systems throughout the project. It's important to differentiate the 2 different styles of mineralization that we have in the Cassier North part of the project and Cassier South. Cassier North, we see for the most part very narrow veins that are typically in a centimeter scale, the thickness of those veins. In the South, they're on average 3 meters wide so they're like nice thickness those 3 meter veins So I mean in the north I think it's less relevant You know proving that you know stacking of veins or we see the We have this this concept of stacking of mineralization and I guess the way to demonstrate that is to do drilling.

28:02 Interestingly enough, we completed a 720-meter long drill hole at the New Coast targets, for which we actually don't have the assays, of course, they're coming soon. But we have released the core photos of that in September, so I'll encourage everyone to go and check the core photos. It basically looks like the type of drill core we see at Torres in the bulk-planet style mineralization of our targets. It's nice to prove that stacking, although it's a bit of a conundrum as well. We have so much potential at depth. These orogenic gold deposits can go up to 2-3 kilometers. To be honest, I'm not terribly excited to do a 3 kilometer deep drill hole. It sounds like a very expensive enterprise.

28:56 But also at the end of the day, we have so much room to grow laterally and we have so much gold at surface that it's much easier just to expand close to surface, which is also theoretically much more economical than just trying to go deep, deep, deep just to prove a geological point, as opposed to focusing on the ounces that are technically or theoretically much more feasible or economical, which are the ones that are closest to surface and could be put into a pit. To that stacking concept as well, it's not so much about the veins on the bulk tonnage. The veins provide a kicker.

29:42 They add some high-grade ounces. But At the end of the day, we're going to put everything through the mill. When you go through the higher-grade vein domains, you're going to get more ounces and better return. But We're going to process everything. It's more important on the southern part of the property where tagging those high-grade underground discrete vines, which are very juicy, where they might be. Where they might be. But also, the challenge there is, it's 3 meter wide vines, 2 or 300 meters deep or 500 meters deep.

30:29 It can be a little bit time consuming and frustrating to find them, but also, you know, there's a big, big upside to tag those finds and then to define them to eventually, you know, mine them. But we'll just continue to go from what we know. We have known mineralization at Taurus and at New Coast. And, you know, from there we're expanding, you know, the resource at Taurus. And eventually, we want to be able to put a resource at New Coast. Eventually, we want to be able to put a resource in the Cassier self-hydrated vines and continue to work from what we know and continue to expand mineralization in a very systematic approach. I appreciate that very much. One question I got here is, Do you have any plans and options to get the tailings processed as a standalone JV project to raise some drilling cash?

31:24 I get the question relatively regularly. We've had discussions with a couple of groups to process. I can't remember exactly. I think we have around 35 to 40,000 ounces in the tailings. Tailings are running around a gram to a gram per quarter. It's a decent amount of gold at current gold prices. That's what? 150 to 200 million? But you know what? One aspect is it could be a bit of a distraction. And also, the other aspect is, you know, 1 gram to a gram and a quarter, if you need to truck that for a few hundred kilometers, you can get quite expensive as well.

32:15 So like, you know, it's something we're definitely considering. And if we have a good deal to monetize that and, you know, create more space in our tailings facilities, while at the same time we can get paid, we'll definitely take that. Great, I Appreciate that. One question, somebody notes that despite a great story and improving results, there's still a large selling volume. They're curious where it's coming from, whether it's from a individual institution or if you know really where that big selling volume comes from. Well, I have no idea who's selling. It's a great question. All the institutions I speak with, they guarantee me that they're not selling a share. But we've had big, big volume, big, big turnover in the last 6 months. I think we traded like almost 100 million shares. We have 147 million shares outstanding. So I would say there's a good chance we have basically an entirely new shareholder base.

33:12 And it's interesting because all the new shareholders that I've met this year and that are, you know, have been accumulating significant, you know, like, you know, positions of millions and millions of shares each. You know, almost all of them see this as a 10 bagger. And when you look at our peers, it's hard not to see it that way. So in a way, I think what has happened is following the bear market 2022 to 2020, end of 2024, which was kind of really tough for the junior gold space and very, very tough for cashier gold share price. I think there's maybe some shareholder fatigue. A lot of people, I think, threw the towel way too soon. And I feel sorry for them.

34:06 I've been accumulating shares over the years through not so good times and some really bad times. Because you can whine about the share price because it doesn't represent the value of the company, or you can see it as an opportunity and buy something that is a lot more valuable for, basically, at a fire sale price. And that's what I've been doing. And I think a lot of these, you know, shareholders that have been coming in over this calendar year see the opportunity and they're saying what we're building and they're not here for, you know, to double or triple their money. They're looking to get a much, much bigger return. That's what Junior Space is all about, so I appreciate that.

34:53 Question from Bjorn in the chat. He asks, is it possible to do a 10K ton bulk sample from high grade and how much free cash flow could come out of that. NK what? 10,000 tons? I believe so, yeah. Yeah. I mean, we have, I mean, Why go for that? Why don't we go for 300 tons per day, get fired up the mill and start production? You know, why go for 10,000 tons only? That would be my reply. And I guess you know, The counter answer to that is we need a proper mining plan. We do also have some high-grade hits at surface, like just this press release that came out, 13 meters at 13 rems from 28 meters downhole.

35:44 It's not at surface, but it's pretty close to surface. Close. Sure. Yeah. We also have an intercept from a couple of years ago, just a few hundred meters north of this at Torres East area, where we hit 6.6 meters at, I think, 22 rems per ton from 4 meters on hold. So we have some high remuneration every once in a while on a belt stowage area. Again, this is not representative of the overall grade of the resource, but some just higher grade domains that we have within the overall deposit. But I think it's much more efficient to instead of just chasing some shining objects that could give you like a few a few, you know, a few million dollars or $10 million is actually really doing a proper plan and really properly assess the possibility of bootstrapping this into production.

36:54 And if you look at 10 to 20 grams per ton, which is kind of the grades that we see at the Cassier South, for example, from historical grades and recoveries. That's basically 35,000 to 70,000 ounces per year, which at current gold prices is a lot more attractive. We have a full yield in permanent milled as in good condition. And we have mine permits for that level of tonnage as well. So you know as opposed to try to do a bulk sample and ship or and lose a lot of value and only recover so much value out of the goal by letting whatever offtaker take most of the value, we could actually wait a little bit longer and do it properly ourselves.

37:44 One last question I got from the chat, and we're already a bit over the time. I said we'd be today Steve asks do we have timing for the PEA? Yes, the first half of next year for stuff next year easy answer Marco, thanks so much. I know you're coming off of flu. So particularly appreciate you giving some extra context to yesterday's press release. Everybody who joined, thank you so much for being with us today. Really appreciate your time. And if you have additional questions you think of the perfect one to ask right after the webinar ends, as I usually do, Please do still send it in. I'll make sure the Casio Gold team gets it. But Marco, thanks so much. Hope you have a great end to your day. Thank you.