End of Year Town Hall with First Mining Gold

0:03 Good morning, good afternoon or good evening, depending on where in the world you're signing in from. This is one of those events where we have representatives from 6 out of 7 continents. So I appreciate everybody making time in the middle of your morning, day or night to join us and chat with us. I've got with me today Dan Wilton, CEO and Director of FirstMine and Gold, Paul Morris, Director of Investor Relations. And we're hoping in just a few minutes, we'll have at least for a couple of minutes, Chairman of the company, Keith Neumeyer, also the CEO of First Majestic. But gentlemen, how are you today? Well, thanks, Mario. Great to see you. Awesome. So here's how today's gonna work. I got a couple of quick questions that are gonna come from me But today is largely a town hall. I do want to hear from investors in the company So, please do jump on the chat at any point in the event be in the bottom right hand corner of your screen. You can message any question you'd like. We'll try to get to as many as we can today. Because there's so many of you in the room, it's very possible we won't get to every question. But if that's the case, I'll make sure that the FIRST Mining team gets them afterwards and they'll be able to respond to you via email up to your, or phone, according to the information that you gave on registration.

1:06 But let me finish housekeeping, get into the good stuff. I'll get a quick synopsis, actually, First Mining, just because I know about a third of the audience today are not part of First Mining's community. So new to the story, I'd love to get a quick synopsis for that crowd before we get into the news from this year.

1:25 Sure. Well, Paul, do you want to kick off with the quick synopsis? Absolutely. I should point out that Keith has joined us. Hi, Keith. Hey guys. Welcome, glad you could make it. Nice to see you. So yeah, just a very quick synopsis, I guess for the benefit of viewers who are not overly familiar with the story. This company was put together by Keith back in 2015, where I think in the space of around 15 months he acquired 8 different projects, different companies. What we have done over that time, or since then, is monetized some of those projects, actually almost all of them. That has given us around $70 to $80 million, which we've put towards our 2 flagship projects, which is where our focus is right now.

2:17 1 project, Springpole, in northwestern Ontario, a multi-million ounce project with very, very robust economics. We've recently updated the pre-feasibility study and I'm sure we'll get to some of those rather attractive numbers during this call. And this is a project going through the permitting process in the latter stages with

2:44 expecting an EA decision at some point in the not too distant future. So very exciting there. And our other project, our Duparcay project, which is located smack bang in the middle of the Abertibi region of Quebec, a very sought after region. It's just mining, mining, mining everywhere there. This is also a multi-million ounce project. We completed a preliminary economic assessment on this project back in, Gosh, towards the end of 2023,

3:18 robust economics. And yeah, exciting times. You know, I'm the director of investor relations and, you know, somewhat as Dan knows, obsessed with our stock price, But, you know, we'll get to that very soon. So that's really it in a nutshell. Awesome. Thank you so much, Paul. I appreciate that, especially for the folks in the room. Think about, like I said, a third of the 400 people here are new to the story. So glad you give that synopsis to start off with. But I do want to get into some of those attractive numbers right away. So I know for anybody who invested right after last year's end of your webinar, they've had quite a good year with the stock. I do want to hear from all 3 of you, but Keith, I'll start with you. What do you think the market finally noticed about first mining this year?

4:02 Well, you know, the equities lagged the gold price. Gold took off, you know, almost 2 years ago and started to move and the gold stocks really didn't do very much. And then over the last year, a lot of money started running into the last 18 months, started going into the majors.

4:22 And the majors were hitting all-time highs and the money just naturally comes down to the developers. And that's what we're seeing. And you know, First Mining is in a very unique position. We've got 2 5 million ounce projects. One's close to permitting, and the market's waking up to that fact. And 1 is so close to infrastructure that It'll be a mine for sure. There's no question about it. So we have 2 5 million ounce plus assets that both will be producing assets over the next probably 5, 7 years, something in that range, maybe less, hopefully less. But we'll see. But no, it's a great time to be a mining company and great time to be a developer. And it's nice to see some money coming into the sector.

5:11 I appreciate very much, Keith. Dan, Paul, I'd love to hear from both of you on the same question. Yeah, you know, I think Keith's kind of said it, part of it is just the overall interest that has started to come into the sector. We always talk about the trickle-down effect and I think we're starting to get that now where, you know, what we hear from a lot of the newer investors who are coming into first mining is, they might be new-ish to investing in gold equities

5:42 and they're looking for leverage. And as they're looking for value opportunities in the sector, when a lot of the producers are, as Keith says, trading at all-time highs, they're still reasonably attractive by cash flow yield standards. And if you have a view that the gold price is going higher, there's certainly still some value there. But the reality is, you look back to the beginning of the year, and first mining was trading at $7 an ounce in the ground for advanced stage ounces in real projects in tier 1 jurisdictions. So we always kind of knew that was going to change at some point. It was a lot longer of a journey to get that change than we ever thought it would be. But we just had our head down and doing the fundamental work to move the projects forward and make them better. And that's where I think that's really started to be recognized.

6:37 And so for all that we're sitting today, you know, with a share price that's up, you know, 3 to 4 X from where it started the year,

6:47 it's still cheap, right? Like it's still, We're still trading at $30 an ounce, where our peers are trading at $150 to $200 an ounce. We can still see that real path to value delivery here, when the milestones and the major milestones, particularly on SpringPool, we think are in the next 6 months.

7:10 So we just keep moving forward and we'll talk more about some of the progress that we're making, but keep moving forward towards these milestones and it's getting recognized. And credit should go to the team. It's hard for investors to really see the amount of heavy lifting that goes on behind the

7:32 scenes. Unless somebody would hang out in First Mining's office for a week and to really see or travel with Dan to all the communities in Ontario and Quebec and, you know, talking to the mayors and the leaders within those communities and all the government officials that the company has to talk with, both at the federal level and at the state or the provincial level. This is a lot of hard work. And we now have a light at the end of the tunnel where we're seeing that this work that we've spent over the last 8 years and 100 million dollars or so that we've invested in this project, the Springfall project I'm referring to,

8:10 is looking like it's going to pay off like soon. And that's going to be a big catalyst to take the stock even higher as far as I'm concerned. Yeah. You know, I should mention, you know, I've been an investor in this company since Keith formed the company back in 2015. I actually joined the company as the director of IR at the beginning of 2021.

8:33 And I speak to investors all the time and they would ask me, Paul, what's it gonna take? Why is this stock not moving?

8:40 You've got great projects, great jurisdictions, great economics and at Norting, I would say to them, look, you know, we need the sector to come back into favour. And for that to happen, we need higher gold prices. And while that won't immediately guarantee a rotation of money into the sector, the higher it goes, the more likely that's gonna become. And I think what we've seen over the last little while is people are starting to take note. And we've seen the share prices of producers already move, as Dan alluded to just a few minutes ago, it normally trickles down then to the companies like us, developers and then the explorers.

9:34 Dan and I were at a conference in London. Gosh, I've lost track of time. Was it last week? Last week. Last week before last. I was listening to someone, Ronnie Stoefel, he presents the story. One interesting fact he mentioned was while we've seen the price of shares of actually

9:58 producers, developers and explorers move somewhat, there's still a lot more room for them to move. And he brought up a slide that showed that the GDXJ, the junior Gold Index and the GDX have net outflows, still have net outflows. And while we've seen the share prices of gold and silver miners move, you know, it said, imagine what will happen when those inflows, you know, they turn to net inflows. I think the potential is huge. And I'm more excited with the share price now than I have been, but yeah, I think Lots to come.

10:46 There you go. I have one question. And, you know, it's forward looking. It's crystal ball gazing. It's all the fun stuff. But it also reflects a lot of the questions that are in the chat and came over email. And that's, you know, like I said, anybody invested after last year's end of year webinar has seen great returns. After this run, is there room to grow in the short and medium term? I know you guys have all alluded to it so far. I'm going to ask it directly to Keith first and then I'll throw it to you, Paul.

11:10 I would imagine that means room to grow the share price. Is that what that's referring to? You know, it's

11:18 absolutely 100 percent. You know, it's the company has a market cap of approximately $600 million. Springpole alone, if it was by itself permitted, it would have a market cap of 1 billion dollars ready to break ground. And DuParcay, you know, would be a little bit behind that, but, you know, DuParcay in some senses is actually a little bit easier than Springpole. You know, DuParcay is right on a major highway. It's surrounded by infrastructure, power lines and the grade is better. So it's likely going to be a lower cost producer. And with all the infrastructure in place around DuParcay, it'll likely be in production a lot faster than Springpole, even though we'll break ground on Springpole first. It'll be very interesting to see which one actually is producing first, because I think the build-out at DuParc will be faster. But nevertheless, we still need permits at DuParc as well, and we're getting there with those ones.

12:28 The amount of groundwork that the company has done, the name is getting recognized. The analysts are starting to pick it up. The institutions are starting to come into the stock. People are actually realizing that, hey, this first mine in gold that's been around for the last 8 years is actually a pretty serious company.

12:47 And it's really worth looking at. And the money's coming into the stock, it's obvious. And of course, being the founder and the chairman, of course, I think it's cheap. And who knows where it should be trading, but I could easily see a 2 or $3 stock. I think that's reasonable. Yeah, the 1 point I'd make to Keith's analysis about the value of Springfool, now every deposit is different, But if you look at advanced stage developers with comparable-sized projects, you look at the market cap of Skeena today, which pre-construction is about $4Bn. When you look at the total ounces that we have, it's pretty comparable between our 2 projects. Now, they have a 3g open pit and I get that. That's you know, that's it's got exceptional grade.

13:46 But just to say like, I don't think there's any cap on a pre-construction value here. Because again, historically, we've seen these companies trade at pre-construction values of $100 to $200 an ounce,

14:04 pretty consistently across cycles. And a lot of that in gold price environments that are not the gold price environment we're in today.

14:15 So I think when we talk to investors and point out like, listen, we're at 30 bucks an ounce today and the peers are trading at 5 to 7 X that like, I think it gives you a pretty clear line of sight on where we think the company can get in the next 3 to 5 years with a lot of these real milestones now, kind of within the next 6 months. Awesome. Paul, I'll leave it to you for any last thoughts on if you think the stock's got room to grow. Oh my God, absolutely.

14:49 I mean, first, I think the generalist investors are just starting to come in. The other thing is also, And this came up a fair bit when I was on my recent travels.

15:06 You look at crypto investors or Bitcoin investors, and I think they're looking, they're starting to look at gold stocks. And that I think can really have a profound impact on our share price. But, you know, as Dan mentioned, and this is probably the metric that I use with, you know, when I speak to investors, you're currently trading at $30 an ounce. Our peers are trading between 150 and 170 dollars an ounce. I think that in itself shows some tremendous upside on the stock price. Also we're trading at, what is it, around 0.15 our net asset value when we're using a gold price, a recently revised or updated pre-feasibility study, we used the gold price of 3100.

16:03 Our previous PFS was done at $1600 gold. But anyway, you know, around 0.15 times net asset value at $3100 gold. We know gold is right now over 4200. But, you know, developers like us would really trade probably between 0.5 and 0.7. So from that metric at $3,100 gold, that also implies some very good,

16:34 in our slide we use re-rating potential, I like to use the term capital gains potential. That to me is an excellent broker. The other thing, and we've alluded to it a little bit here, is the company is still institutionally really underheld. And as Paul and as Keith have said, we're starting to see, you know, these institutions

16:55 looking at first mining. I think there's still a lot of the institutional investing world that is going to wait until environmental assessment approval before they decide to invest. I think it's just a reality. I think there's a number of investors who just don't feel that they can handicap that risk and like don't want to be wrong even though the risk reward I would say looks pretty positive right now.

17:21 So I think that's a huge opportunity for other investors who are sitting today, knowing that there's a bunch of people waiting for these outcomes that are coming, you know, we're anticipating coming in the next 6 months. This is a really good time to get positioned, I think, because there's no reason why we shouldn't see our shareholder base transition from 20% institutionally held to 50 to 60% institutionally held. And you imagine you have someone or a group of, you know, the largest gold investors in the world, all trying to acquire your shares at the same time. And like up to the point of wanting to buy 40 or 50% of the company.

18:06 Like you, I think that's going to have a really, really solid underpinning on the trajectory of that valuation.

18:15 Sure, I appreciate that very much. I do want to zoom out and talk about macro for a second because as we'll get into soon thereafter, first mining does have pretty remarkable leverage to the gold price. I know gold price already surprised everybody, I think, except the most aggressive bulls by going past 4200 and then settling around 4200 for quite some time now. I'm curious for the 3 of you luminaries in the room, where you think it's going to go next? And Dan, I'll start with you first on this one.

18:43 I mean, what I keep saying to investors that we're meeting with is there is nothing that has got gold to $4,200 that's changed. And I don't think there's anything that's going to change in the macro environment that's going to make it a less bullish case for gold. As we've come through this, there's a lot of people who are saying, well, this is really all just war premium that's crept into the gold price. And what, I mean, we ever actually have some kind of settlement in the Middle East, you know, the gold price is gonna collapse. Well, you know, it kind of happened and it hasn't.

19:26 As I understand it, President Trump has solved a number of wars around the world recently, And yet still the Gold price is where it is. I don't think that rush to safety was a driver of the supply and demand and the fundamentals. It's really been central bank buying, looking for an alternative to the US dollar. Number 1. And number 2, we are starting to see as those are kind of paying attention to what's going on, particularly with Tether and the crypto space, these, you know, both a propensity toward what I think is going to be a very interesting,

20:04 call it gold backed currencies, gold backed stable coins.

20:14 And just what Tether is buying into its own accounts, basically with the interest income from, you know, the other stable coins that they have that are more fiat based, Like they're buying, Tether's buying as much or more gold than the Chinese Central Bank right now, and it is accelerating, right? So I think what we are seeing is, and Paul alluded to it before a little bit with some of the kind of call it convergence of the of the rationale, the crypto world and the gold world. Some of that convergence really is coming into, you know, the gold price. And I mean, and it's not just gold. Obviously, we're seeing silver very similarly moving up. And there's you know, we're going to talk about Silver forecast. There's only one guy I'm going to look to on this panel who's going to give you that. It's the guy who produces it and mints a bunch of it. But no, where do I think it's going? I would be very confident in a $5,000 Gold price next year.

21:20 And I think, I've always kind of thought peak to trough, peak to trough analysis. I've always thought $7,000

21:30 was in this cycle. And I think my bias would be if governments are still borrowing way more money than they're ever going to be able to pay back and fiscal situations is deteriorating as it is all over Western Europe and Japan and North America and many other places.

21:50 I just don't see anything that's going to change the trajectory of gold right now. So I think it's a great place to be with assets that have huge leverage to the gold price like we do. And just so we kind of get the numbers out there, you know, in our study at $3,100, SpringPool had an asset value of $2.1 billion. At $4,200, that was $3.8 billion. So you're talking about almost doubling it on $1,000 of Gold price. And so you think about what happens

22:21 when you see the next $1,000 of Gold price, like there's significant, significant leverage there. And I think that's where we're starting to see some of that, The investors looking for value in the sector, the value and leverage argument, I think we're a very good asset for that. I appreciate that. And Keith, like Dan said, you're the guy people look to for silver price predictions. And as somebody who bought a number of first majestic rounds when I was at Frankfurt. I'm eager to hear what you think about precious metals prices in the future.

22:51 Well, currency debates minister stay or at least, you know, as far as we can tell, or, or foresee, governments around the world aren't going to be changing anytime as far as you know, we could tell. And that's a big problem. And then you've got security issues around the world as well. Governments want security and they want to be independent. And gold gives them that independence away from the fiat system. And

23:18 so That's what we're seeing right in front of our eyes. It hasn't happened quite like this for generations. This is a generational change. This move a 10, 20, 30 year move. We're likely gonna see 5 digits silver, who knows what that means. Records is calling for 23,000.

23:47 He's been calling for crazy numbers for a long time. I know that, but, you know, I don't know. Look, I'm a, I, my prediction has been on the table for a couple of years and I said 5,000 on a gold, $100 silver by 2030.

24:02 And I think that's a fairly conservative approach. It may happen the way this gold prices move so quickly. In the last 12 months, you know, people are saying that we're gonna hit 5,000 next year. You know, it could very well do that. I hope silver doesn't hit $100 next year. I think that would be too fast of a move, but it's possible.

24:25 You know, silver and gold are 2 different metals. I look at gold as a currency And I know when I say to people that I don't look at silver like a currency, I know I lose a lot of people and they shake their head and they go, Neumayr is like, you know, he's crazy. But I don't think there's enough silver on the planet for silver to ever become a currency.

24:50 In gold, you just reprice it. I suppose potentially you could reprice silver, but you'd have to reprice it to some kind of crazy number. Then what are you going to do? Have a coin in your pocket that is worth 5 grand, it's just not going to make sense. So anyway, 70% of Silver is used in industry. We've had 6 years of deficits in a row. It would take 10 First Majestics to fill that deficit. And that's kind of my full-time job. But Dan and I have been working on this project, first mining gold project for over 5 years now. Both Dan and I have quite a lot of our money in this project. Both Dan and I have been financing this company for the last several years, including Paul.

25:38 He's put money in himself and it's really nice to see the efforts over the last 8 years are slowly coming to fruition. But it's going to take more time. Still going to take a lot of work, but it's nice to see what's happening in the space.

25:53 Now, I appreciate that very much. And Paul, I'll let you get in in a second, but Dan, I know I'm lucky enough to hear you explain this a number of times in a year, but some people only join us for the end of year webinars. Can you explain leverage to GoldWise for first mining, what $100 increase to the gold price means for first mining's value? Yeah, I mean, and this is some of these numbers are fresh. The DuPont K numbers are a little bit dated, but I think still relevant. So $100 in the Gold price equates to roughly $250M

26:24 of after-tax net asset value to our shareholders. So, the So, you know, the 250 million US, so you put that into, you know, Canadian dollars, it's another call it 25 cents a share in fundamental value for every $100 in the gold price, which is pretty remarkable from where we are now. Now, keep in mind that number today, at a spot price basis, it's probably 6 plus dollars a share of net asset value at $4,200 gold. And you can buy the shares for 50 cents today. So that gives you a bit of that, just a sense of what that trajectory looks like. But again, you think about every, it goes up by another thousand dollars.

27:20 It's another 2 and a half billion US of after-tax net present value of those projects, right? So, you know, and important to understand that leverage is an important part. One of the things that's equally as important, and I think will become in the next year or 2 more important, is the scarcity of big projects, and particularly the scarcity of big projects in good jurisdictions. There are only a small handful of projects that are going to have the ability to be built in Canada, the US or Australia, which is where every mining company wants to own projects. There's a small handful of projects that could be built in the next decade, let alone in the next 5 years. And that's why with Springpole rounding the corner on the EA, the scarcity value of these large projects is really coming to the fore, because we're starting to see a lot of these big projects getting acquired by people who we didn't ever really think were going to come in and buy these projects. It happened again this morning actually.

28:27 Our friends at Equinox Gold have sold a bunch of their Brazilian assets to CMOC, which was like the Chinese molybdenum company. So just so we're all clear, like that's who's coming out of the woodwork to buy gold projects now in Brazil. And I have a bit of a soft spot for at least one of those projects because in a prior life as a fund manager we owned it and kind of saved it from bankruptcy and got the project you know ready to to rebuild and it was one of those kind of foundational pieces inside Equinox but you're seeing that you're seeing Fresnillo coming by probe in the Abitibi right? Like these companies that we didn't think were ever going to be the ones that are driving the value are the ones who are showing up to do these, you know, these really large deals.

29:17 And it leaves every one of the other mid-tier and large-cap Gold producers looking around to say, well, where am I going to add the next platform for growth? Because they're all going to struggle to be replacing their reserves because they haven't spent the money on exploration that they needed to spend over most of the last 10 plus years. First Majestic is a bit of an outlier If you look at the number of drill rigs that are turning at any one time, it always amazes me the amount that Keith and the team have continued to spend on exploration. And sometimes had to fund that in ways that weren't just free cash flow to make sure that they were growing the reserves. But that's not normal in the sector. And that's not the it's certainly not the average. So I think we're coming to a point where we really are going to see the scarcity value of these large projects start driving what it turns it drives valuations much closer to 1 times net asset value than 0.1 times that asset value where we're trading today great Paul if you have any last macro thoughts before I get into recent news at first mining I'll throw to you you know honestly I think both both Dan and Keith probably said everything I would have.

30:40 I would have said the only thing I got to say, one person I should refer the audience to If they look up our friend Ron Stoefele, S-T-O-E-F-E-R-L-E, in Gold We Trust, do a YouTube search and listen to what he has to say. Lots of webinars. I was listening to him in London 2 weeks ago, and he's calling for the next couple of years for gold to hit the $8,000 mark. Yeah, that happens. Well, Dan talked about the leverage of our projects to the price of gold. And Keith mentioned he could see this being 2 or 3 dollars stock. He didn't say Canadian or US, but I think easily, easily attainable.

31:34 No, Awesome. I appreciate that. I do want to, oh sorry Keith, if you had something go for it. What? No, sorry. I thought you had something. I do want to get from Dan and Paul. I know we didn't have a chance to talk about it because it all came through so quickly. There's been a lot of news from the company recently. The Cameron sale, the updated BFS, deep arcade drilling, etc. So I'll throw just for 1 an update for folks in the room who may not have kept up with all the news. Dan, I'll start with you. But also what you think all it means for the stock in the near-term future. Yeah, so, I mean, let's kind of tackle them one by one. So, PFS update, I think, is an important resetting of the benchmarks of the financial robustness of the Springpole project.

32:21 And there's a couple other things that I think investors will likely see here coming forward, which is what the spinoff socioeconomic benefits are from the project that are driven by these project economics. This project has the potential to be one of the largest economic drivers of North Western Ontario for a generation. And I think it's important that people understand that. In an area that's suffering right now from the real downdraft in the forestry business, so this is jobs and major major economic growth for the region so that's I think important but you know the the PFS was important for us to kind of get the economics of the project as we have it scoped in the environmental assessment, get those out because the previous report was done, you know, priced largely in the middle of COVID. And there's just a lot had changed in the design of the project and in the costing environment over that time. And I think what we've seen on the back of the announcement of this PFS update is just a recognition from a number of investors that this is one of the biggest and most robust projects in Canada. So I think it was important for us to kind of get that restated with fresh numbers.

33:47 More work to come, obviously, as we take the project through in our next stages to Feasibility Study. We'll talk about that in a minute. But that, I think, was very important. The Cameron partnership, and We're very excited about how the Cameron project is going to move forward. We always loved the project. I think it was the last project that First Mining brought in in the acquisition phase. It's in a great location. It's got amazing geology, but by virtue of its size and by virtue of the fact that we have Springpole and DuParcay that already kind of have that critical mass, We always struggled to find the capital and the focus to move it forward. So the important thing about this is getting a great team. We're partnering with the Fiore group and Frank Giustra and Sean Coon-Coon and that team, obviously fresh off a number of wins, but very active in the region. So it's the same people that have been behind West Red Lake Gold, the same people behind NexGold that have the Goliath project, which is only about 100km away from Cameron.

35:01 And I think we're still going to be very involved. We're going to be a 48% owner of the project going forward. Some really interesting things to come there, but I think it's 1 step at a time on Cameron. We need to get back out doing exploration, have a fresh team with a fresh look at what the resources are and how they can grow. But for us, I think it's just another in a long line of moves that we've made for the shareholders to be able to really just kind of highlight the value of these other assets that we've had in the company that for years and years and years we got no value of. So I mean ultimately what do I think that our project interest is going to be worth there? Well, I think it's well north of the $20 million of equity that we're taking for it, right? Like, I could see this being worth, you know, the company being worth $200 or $300 million in a couple of years as they start demonstrating the resource growth there.

36:06 Because it's a project that really does deserve to be moved forward. So that's also exciting. And then, last but not least, more exploration results at DuParc. I think we've got another, call it a final set that are likely to be coming out Early in the new year, but what we've defined at DuParcay is that there is an entirely open exploration horizon on the contacts of these big cyanide intrusives that no one's ever looked for because they didn't need to. Because from 1933 to 1956 like they mined in the cyanides, they always knew what was in the cyanides, Osisko went in and drilled the cyanides. Clifton drilled the cyanides, but they never drilled on the edges of it. And we're finding on the edges of these things, like 20 meters of 3 grams from surface.

36:59 If those were in a standalone company in this market, just those drill results without a 5Moz resource would be 100M to 200M market cap company. Not to mention that the owners of big resources in the Abitibi are getting gobbled up. I think there's some really interesting news to come from DuParquet going forward. We'll talk a bit about that as we talk about next steps. You know, so I just want to go back to Springpole. The producers are making huge, huge free cashflow right now. They need to replenish their reserves.

37:47 And what makes Springpole attractive? Well, I just want to mention a couple of numbers from our updated pre-feasibility study, which we did at $3,100 gold. After tax, net present value of 2.1 billion US. And Dan talked about the leverage. But I think what's really, really important is this is a project that in the first 8 or 9 years can produce on average, probably a little more than 300,000 ounces of gold annually. That is significant at all in sustaining costs of less than $1,000 US. The margins are phenomenal.

38:34 So, you know, I think when I gave my little synopsis right at the beginning, I said very robust economics. I'd say that's pretty robust economics. It makes a very attractive project. Certainly sounds robust. 1, I'm going to throw it to all 3 of you here, because I know you guys did a lot of the conference circuit from Colorado through to Zurich and London, Frankfurt. And I know the word sentiment often feels like tea leaf reading in mining, But I do think it's important to discuss. So, Keith, I'll throw it to you first. And what were you experiencing at the fall conference? What were people telling you about where they think the mining sector is going? Well, they're asking me, of course, but no, everyone's got a smile on their face, which is really nice. Over the last decade, 2 questions I got all the time was, when is silver price going to go up, when is your stock going to go up?

39:27 So you sit there, you have 20 or 30 meetings over a couple of days, and half of it is about silver and why is it lagging, why is it not moving and the other half is why is your stock not moving? You know, so with so many great things going on. You know, the fact of the matter is there's no money that was coming into the mining sector at the time. All the money was chasing Nvidia and high tech stocks and no 1 cared about what we were doing as a mining company. And in both cases of First Majestic and First Mining Gold, no 1 really cared. And now sentiment is changing. You still see a lot of the old faces that we've been seeing at these conferences forever. And we're friends with them. We know most of them. Many of them are shareholders of both companies.

40:15 And so we sit down, we have great conversations now, and everyone's, as I said, everyone's got a smile on their face. But one thing we are now seeing is new faces are showing up. And there's a lot of young people as well, which is quite fascinating. I think I've seen over the last year, more young people showing up in these conferences than I've seen ever. So that's pretty encouraging. That's great. Daniel, I was just gonna say, as a director of investor relations, I've spent the last 4 or 5 years chatting to investors who would say, as Keith just said, when's this stock going to move? Now they're asking me how high do I think it's going to go? That's a toughie. I mean, who knows?

41:08 But a lot higher than where it is right now, in my opinion. You know, Dan, I'll throw it to you for where were you at? What were you hearing across the United States and Europe as you talk to people in the industry? Yeah, I mean, I think certainly from an investor perspective, it was really around like a real focus on milestones, like where are we? Are we going to get to the finish line with these milestones? Because, you know, how can the stock be this cheap, there must be something wrong. And I think that's part of when we see that sentiment change. You know, I've described it in the past as, you know, the active disbelief of investors, like, they just actively disbelieve everything that you say. And that was kind of what was coming through in our share price for a long time.

41:54 I'd say we have less active disbelief, although there's still a lot of people on the sidelines, particularly on the first mining story, kind of waiting for delivery of performance against milestones and catalysts. But I'll tell you, it's the first time in my career and it started at Beaver Creek where our first meeting at Beaver Creek, our share price was still $0.20. And at the end of the week, our share price was $0.32. And so, pretty excited about that. It seemed a pretty big move. And then, it seems we get to these next conferences, we're doing some institutional marketing and have a few funds that are starting to build position. And slowly but surely, you just see the robustness in the share price, where historically any little downdraft was a reason for everyone to lose all faith and everyone sell. And now little downdrafts are meant with lots of buying that came in. And not least of which, we put out our PFS update and there was a real rollover in the share price for a couple of days in which Keith ended up buying another couple of million shares because he's like, this is crazy. This makes no sense that you put this out and like, that's it. So he was he was in the market buying and, you know,

43:26 that was in the mid 30s. And you know, we've hit 57 in the last couple of weeks. So the sentiment has changed, for sure, the sentiment has changed. But I think there's still a lot of room for us to go. And what we need to do, you know, as a company is keep moving forward, keep doing the things that we've been doing, keep doing the work that we need to do to move the project through to these major milestones which are coming in the next 6 months and I think once we deliver those it's going to open up you know open up the investing world significantly. So yeah, from our perspective, it's delighted to be doing this in a bit of a tailwind environment. This is, I can think of maybe 3 other months since we've been doing this maybe 6 months in 2020 where we had like a real tailwind, but You know I've also been around this industry for 2 or 3 cycles and know what it feels like when you really start getting momentum Coming in And I'm not sure we're there yet. You know, as Paul said, GDXJ and GDX have still been seeing outflows.

44:39 We haven't seen that real popular sentiment turn. And when it does, again, All of the gold prices where it is or the gold prices going up There's there's multiples of return on on a lot of things mining related for sure Fine, I know. Oh, sorry Paul Sorry, you know because I mentioned Bitcoin or crypto investors coming over to the gold space. Keith mentioned right off the bat, we could be a $2 to $3 stock. Let's say that's Canadian dollars. I'm sure he meant US, but let's say it's Canadian. That's 5 to 6 times where our stock is currently trading.

45:26 And I look at Bitcoin at, what is it, $90,000. Can I see that going to $360,000, $400,000? I weigh things that to me sound, does that sound reasonable or feasible? Anyway, my money's on first mining. Well, appreciate that very much. Dan, I want to clear up, I think 75 to 80% of the questions in the chat all at once by asking what the upcoming catalysts are at both SpringPool and DeepRootCat. Yeah, so for SpringPool, you know, we're very focused on moving toward the EA decision, which we're targeting for Q2. We've been saying Q1, Q2, I think it now solidly looks like a Q2, but everyone's dates are kind of firming up on that now.

46:20 And that's just, I think, in large part because of the recognition from all parties, including those that have to give the approvals, recognizing the amount of work that the indigenous communities that we're working with have been doing. Their own processes are progressing well. Still some important discussions that we and governments need to have with the communities around whether it's accommodation measures, participation, and from our standpoint, ultimately, you know, our real goal to come to long-term relationship agreements with the communities. So, there's still lots of work to be done on that front.

47:05 And some of that stuff just can't and should not be rushed. But again, there's a few milestones in that process. So at some point we will see the draft decision document or the project be certainly on the federal side be filed publicly for a public comment period. That I think will be a pretty important milestone and just demonstration of kind of where we're marching forward to on the timelines. But no, I think it's kind of all eyes on what we're gonna see hopefully in the lead up to that EA decision, which for us is with some demonstrations of community support.

47:55 And then ultimately that EA decision coming. So at DuParcay, so we'll take a step back. The rest of the work program at Spring Pool for this coming year is really focused on the rest of the data collection that we need for the feasibility study. So, that work is started now. We've got about 70 drill holes, most of which are sort of geotechnical and site characterization in nature, but we're making good progress on that. And so we'll have those, some of which are gonna need to be drilled from the ice. So that most of that work is done in Q1, early into Q2, EA decision Q2, and then really driving on to that feasibility study with a goal that we'd have a feasibility study done really kind of by the end of 2026.

48:47 And from there, you know, you're into the rest of your detailed permitting and project financing discussions. And further into what could be a construction decision late 2027, early 2028. So lots that will continue to come, but the major, major milestones at Springpool are really driven by what's coming in the AA decision in the first couple of quarters of next year. And then at DuParcay, As I said before, another sort of final round of drilling results from our drilling of this year. We're continuing on collecting environmental baseline data at DuParcay, which is a really important field program for this year to get ourselves ready to enter into the EA process in Quebec and driving towards what would be all the data that we'd need for a pre-feasibility study moving to a feasibility study at Duparcay.

49:45 I don't think we get that study done in 26, but the goal is we have collected all the rest of the data that we need, which is some more drilling, some geotechnical work, some geochemistry site characterization, and some really important work with the community at DuParquet. We signed this agreement in September, which is really important for us as an opportunity to develop the mine and develop the town together. So a lot of that work is actually looking to kick off early in the in the new year and just phenomenally exciting to think about how you know the town and first mining can collaborate on where we're gonna put the infrastructure what the developments gonna look like and you know imagine you go into these processes with like a real plan that's all agreed by everyone.

50:37 And you know, if we had the ability to turn back time, we'd have loved to have been able to do the exact same thing at Springpole, starting like right from the beginning with the community buy-in, but we're doing a lot of that work now and we'll get there. But that's really on DuParcay, there'll be more drilling next year, but it really is around kind of that vision that Keith was talking about where it's time to really start advancing DuParcay and have great support from the government of Quebec to really kind of start talking about how we move that forward on a pretty fast track. Awesome, I appreciate that so much, Dan. I think that clears up a good number of the questions. Now, that being said, there are tons of questions left with 9 minutes. There's absolutely no chance I'm going to get to all of them. So I will make sure the team gets them. I'll send them all directly to Paul afterwards. But I'll get through a couple of key ones. And this one is to whoever can do, I guess, the fastest napkin math on this. But Michael asks, what would you guess that first mining's tier 2 projects, so anything other than SpringFall and DuParquet, are worth in aggregate on a per share basis at today's gold price? So if anybody's got a guess for that, I hate making you guys do math on the spot. Well, I think Dan answered that question earlier.

51:48 He, I think he came up with $70 an ounce, which would put the stock at about 6 bucks. Yeah, no, the 6 bucks would be a little bit more than that. And that was with everything, but you're just talking, They're basically talking about Cameron, Pickle Crow, you know, other odds and thoughts. What I would say, you know, what are they worth today? Are you know, 30% interest in Pickle Crow and you know, what's going to be a 50% interest in Sava Mining. What are they worth today? I don't know. $50M? What could they be worth? That's just simple metrics today. What are they really worth? I think it's multiples of that. And I think the more work that gets done on those projects to demonstrate a path forward. I mean, we never really talk about Pickle Crow, but it's one of the largest high-grade underground Gold deposits in Canada.

52:42 So, we're excited at some point for, I think, our friends at Firefly to help breathe some new life into that. But yeah, no it's there's definitely in this environment or the gold environment that we're talking about on a per share basis you know Could we say that those are worth, I don't know, 10 to 20 or 30 cents a share, like if when they realize kind of the full value of them. So they provide us and in the future will provide us with a little more financial flexibility, you know, like the other assets have done, given us that critical financial flexibility to withstand going through 7 years of a miserable market downturn.

53:30 Awesome. No, thank you very much. I think that's a great answer. Just Romeo, a number of questions are coming in related to M&A and potential partners. I think that the audience should be aware that we travel extensively. We know the mining industry inside and out. We know all the players within the mining sector. We watch them, they watch us. It's a pretty small, tight community. As First Mining de-risks their 2 core assets, you never know when a partner is going to come in or if 1 ever does come in, or you never know if you just got bought out at 100%. These things, that's not the purpose of you going to work every day. You don't just wait for that partner to come in the front door to take you off, you know, your project.

54:18 We're, we're taking these projects to production. That's what we're going to do. What that looks like with a partner, without a partner or with a bank or without a bank, you know, we're not in a position to answer those types of questions yet. I can tell you, Dan's always talking, the team is always talking to ways we can get these mines up and running. And that's the whole focus. Yeah, I just say on that front that it's a very different set of opportunities in front of us today than there were a year ago, right? Not just because the projects are more advanced, but you know, got a market cap that is multiples higher than where it was as well. So, you know, I think Keith's exactly right.

55:09 Finding a partner or selling a company is an outcome, it's not a strategy, right? Like there are things you can control in this world and things you can't. So we need to be moving forward on the things that allow us to move the projects forward. And there are some of those other discussions that sort of come to fruition. We've been pretty open about being open to having a partner come in. I think there's a lot that could be very good about that. But yeah, that's something that I think the real timing for some of those discussions is going to be when we've taken as much risk out of the project as we can and you certainly wouldn't expect to see anything until you've got some of these major milestones in the next 6 months that you're through and you know like the share price is reflecting that in the valuation.

56:04 Awesome. And thanks, Keith. I appreciate that. I know that was a lot of the questions that were still sticking around in the chat. And thanks for jumping in yourself to answer some of the ones directed at you. One question in the chat that I'm gonna close on today to give you all one last opportunity to talk about first mining, is John from the chat says, please make Paul's Christmas very merry. He's busted his ass this year for the company. What was that? Say that again? John wants to make sure that you specifically have a very good Christmas Paul because he appreciates your work but I want to ask all of you What are you most excited about for next year? Keith, I'll start with you, and then we'll go to Dan and Paul just to wrap this up. What was the question? I didn't hear you. Sorry. What are you most excited for next year, that first mining? Well, just getting the milestones. There's EA milestone. Don't forget, this is 8 years in work. And we've had to collar a caribou, we've had to have people collect fish specimens, where pick flora and fauna and do water studies. So the amount of work that goes into getting a permit for a mine is just absolutely enormous. And $100 million in, 8 years of hard work with a very solid team that have been working with the government and the local indigenous groups to get this over the line.

57:16 It's happening, and we can see it's happening. So I think that's personally the most exciting thing that's going to happen for First Lightning in 2026. Awesome. Thank you, Dan. I'll throw it to you. Same question. Yeah. I mean, I think there's a couple of things that we're really excited about, but mostly, you know, we're very, very focused on bringing this EA process to its conclusion. And, you know, what I'd be really excited about is getting to a point of agreements with the communities that we're working with and be very excited to get that community support. That's still a process that we need to go through. But I think, again, the extent, as you say, coming to the conclusion on some of these milestones that have been many, many years in the making and then open up what is, I think, the really exciting part of how we drive forward at SpringPool is going to be very exciting. And then at DuParcay, I'm always going to be excited about the ongoing drill results that we're going to see there. I'm very excited about how we start really taking some of the concept at DuParcay and start it down this path towards something that can be a real productive mine and bring a lot more jobs and energy and infrastructure to the communities there as well. So yeah, it's 26 is going to be a very, very, very big

58:47 year for first mining. Still lots for us to do. But yeah, there's a lot that I'm excited about for next year. Awesome. And Paul, I'll leave it to you actually to close off today on what you're most excited about for 2026. Well, you know, I'll tell you what I'm really excited about is some of these these catalysts that we've been talking about coming to fruition and being becoming reflected, well reflected in the stock price, because you know what makes me happy? Happy investors. When I speak to happy investors, when I was a stockbroker, that drove me and it's the same here. And I've got to tell you, it's been a pleasure lately. A great pleasure. I mean, it's been a pleasure since I've been with the company, but certainly a pleasure lately as our stock has moved.

59:33 But you know, I'm really looking forward to what I think is in store. Just in case you weren't going to mention it, but please, anybody who's listening who wants to talk to me or whatever, please send me a message, send me an email and I will get back to you quickly. It's Paul, P-A-U-L, for those who don't understand my English accent, paul at first mining gold dot com. So Paul at first mining gold dot com. I look forward to hearing from you. Awesome. Well, Keith, Dan, Paul, thank you so much for this webinar. I think this is a lot of fun. I know there were so many people in the room and we couldn't get to every question, but I'm gonna send them back to Paul. And like he said, and it's true, I've seen it. He's one of the only people in the industry who will definitely get back to you. So I appreciate everybody's time today and hope you all have a wonderful end of the year, but end of the week as well. So have a good day. That's great. Thanks everyone and thanks, Ramiro. Thanks everyone. Thanks very much.

1:00:33 Thank you. Merry Christmas everyone. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.