EV Nickel: Creating a Clean Nickel Business

0:07 Well, hello everyone and welcome to ED Nichols live summit today hosted by 6. I'm pleased to introduce the president, CEO and director, Sean Sampson. Sean's going to walk us through a company presentation and after we will open the floor to a live Q&A. So as a reminder, if you have any questions, feel free to submit them on the right hand side of the screen and we'll hopefully get to them after the presentation. And as always, the summit is being recorded and will be available to watch afterwards on six.com. But without any further ado, I'll hand it over to you, Sean, to get things started.

0:37 Great, thanks, Tasha. Welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining our presentation. So as just mentioned, we'll run through some slides, which are available on our company's website as well and then we'll take some questions at the end. So I'm going to speak a bit about some forward-looking statements and as a result we have our disclaimer so please take a look at that. So to summarize what EV nickel is to start here, we acquired 100% of the Lanier Nickel Project from another junior called Rogue Resources. We bought that earlier this year, and that includes W4, which has the historic estimate for 2010, which had 15 million pounds of class 1, so nickel sulfide in the ground at 1%.

1:25 In addition to that starter resource, the 15 million pounds at 1%, We have over 9,000 hectares to explore, and we've identified on that 30 kilometers of striped pine. Where we are is within 30 kilometers of Timmins, and 6 hours from the US border. We think it's a great location to be in as Detroit is becoming more and more important with EV, with the EV market. And then also just being in Canada helps along, of course, with permitting. And I mean, it's a great place for us to be. And then thinking more macro with the EV coming on as a whole new category for a global base metal like nickel, it's really exciting. I'll talk a bit about our view on the macro. We don't focus so much on the nickel market or quite comfortable with where we think the fundamentals are going for nickel.

2:21 And we think within the nickel demand as it comes on from EVs, we anticipate that the EV makers want to go after the cleanest metal possible. So Langmuir is able to draw from hydropower in this part of Ontario, and we start with a high grade sulfide, which is a very important part of both our story. And I think any nickel business when you begin putting it together. Nickel production seems to be declining and there's a limited pipeline for new projects. So again, on the fundamentals, we're quite positive looking forward for what's going to happen with the nickel market. So there's 3 things that my company is focused on right now. One is finding more nickel at our Langmuir project. The second is securing more land in the Shaw Dome area, so south of Timmins. And then third, beginning to put the pieces together of a clean nickel business.

3:12 And that's what I'll talk you through today. So macro, what we think of the nickel market, we think that the new demand category from EVs is going to be stressing the market. So if you look at the demand side, nickel currently is really a stainless steel story. So the vast majority of current nickel demand is committed to stainless steel. With the hockey stick type projections with the EV rollout, that leads to a whole new demand category with battery requirements for nickel. And then if you look at what people are forecasting out for the nickel market, we see a gap between the forecast supply and the demand. So again, I don't focus so much in this area, but we're pretty positive on the fundamentals going forward. It's also neat when you look across the different battery metals. So as you look at the different potential inputs to the batteries, for nickel, we are not currently the main demand. So it's a stainless steel store, which makes it very different than lithium, for example, where some of these other battery metals are developing and they're developing on the back of the EV market.

4:22 So if you look at nickel, it's already a global base metal, and this is a new demand category is being added on to the demand stack, which is really aggravating and stressing the market as we say here.

4:41 Struggling a bit with my mouse. So if I look at the EV rollout plans, so I mentioned before that we think Detroit is gonna become more and more a part of this. Now there's obviously the battery EV companies now that everybody knows of, you know, Tesla, Rivians have great recent news. But if you look across the traditional automakers, that's really where the sort of hockey stick demand really kicks in when the rest of the world and all the vehicle manufacturers are all beginning to tilt towards EVs. That's, again, why we're very bullish looking forward at what happens to the nickel market. And then when you dig down into what's actually happening with this new demand, when the EV companies come in, they now require that their inputs all are able to talk about what the carbon cost is, the footprint of their supply chains.

5:36 So with the raw materials, this is a priority. And we've heard this in conversations with the different EV companies so far that they are stepping in and they need to buy these inputs. And for each of the inputs they're looking at, they need to know what the carbon footprint is coming in. So they're pushing suppliers. So the mining companies like us, it's a tremendous opportunity to step in, to fill the void, not just with new supply, to go after this increasing demand, but also to be thinking differently about how we provide the supply. And something they're very confused by and something that I latched on to when I heard last year at the Tesla Battery Day when Musk was talking about future demand. I know that many nickel miners and nickel exploration companies heard and latched on to the comments about they need more nickel. But the thing that I found most interesting in his presentation was really his distillation of how the global supply chain that has developed for nickel currently is very confusing for new entrants to the market. So there's Tesla, very large potential buyer of nickel. And when they look at this idea that nickel is pulled out of the ground in Ontario, and then it's sent to a different jurisdiction for processing, and then a different jurisdiction for final processing, he commented, and we've got his quote here, that the nickel atoms traveling around the world, it just doesn't make sense. Now that's how our industry has developed along. And that's exactly

7:08 what these new buyers of nickel are asking the mining companies to begin questioning. So we are trying to position ourselves as a clean nickel producer. And that's a big part of our story is we begin putting the parts together for eventual nickel production.

7:30 So why the shah dome, We love the location. So I touched on before how close we are to Timmins. So we're within 30k of Timmins. Now there's many mines and projects that operate in this major mining camp in northern Ontario. And again, we're served by clean hydro power up there. Our project in particular down southeast of Timmins, we have over 9,000 hectares currently. We have over 30 kilometers long of these commodities that we're looking to go at. And again, we're very close to town and it's a great place to be pulling together a new business because we are serviced by an 85,000 person town. And we can draw on a very capable labor pool. That plus we have historic production down where we're looking for more nickel. I'll touch on that a bit more later.

8:21 So as I look at what we've done with our project, so again, EV nickel picked this up from Rogue Resources. What had been completed already on the project was it was discovered the W4 back in 2007, and then a 2010 resource report came out back then. On W4, again, that's our starter resource. EV Nickel picked that up and we initially put out our own technical report in April of this year. And that was when we did the acquisition. So EV Nickel acquired Langmuir from Rogue Resources for a cash payment, in addition to a bunch of shares and then a future payment based on the size of a future resource, which can go out in either cash or shares to Rogue.

9:11 And then subsequent to that, the company completed a financing, a $2 million financing. So that was into a private company in March. And that was what the company then began spending on the Lanyard project. And EV Nickel completed initially some geophysics work, which I'll talk about, which allowed us to target drilling. And then over the summer, we did a lot of drillings. We did over 4,000 meters of diamond drilling on the project. And we're just beginning to get those assays in now. The delay was because of our IPO a couple weeks ago, when the dollars finally came into the company, then we were able to pay the labs and get the results. And that's what we're talking about now to the market. So half of our assays came in last week. I'll talk about those. And we're still waiting on the other half. And we've got a bunch of work ahead of us as we're going to set up early January, what our phase 2 drilling looks like. And this is all towards beginning on a new, larger resource next year, 2022.

10:13 So on W4, that starter resource I talked about from 2010. So going into that, we had over 22,000 meters of diamond drilling. And then of course, this summer, where 4000 meters are coming in, we've got a lot of data around the W4. And it's a really neat deposit. It's near surface. Our overburden is no more than 20 meters, and it actually comes to surface as well. It's a large, high-grade, near-surface deposit. That starter resource, our historic resource, again, is 15 million pounds at around 1% and it's majority in open pit, so open pitable. And from there, we've got a huge land package to explore.

11:00 And this W4 is open at depth and it has very interesting exploration potential around the deposit. So the work we began this year was initially geophysics. So we re-ran all of the data we already had on the Langmuir project and developed these geophysical reviews, which identified 16 different EM trends across our property. And from there, we were able to go after 6 high priority targets. So they did this work blind. It wasn't with knowledge that there already was an historic resource on one of them. One of those 6 targets was the W4 zone, but we still have 5 other priority targets which we have not yet drilled.

11:46 So that really set up our work. So we, before we sent out the drill rigs, we did this geophysics work, reviewing with the new technology and the better processing power, all of the data we already had, and we were able to hone in on 6 targets. One of them was the W4. We still have 5 more, 5 more that we want to get tested. So the work we've done this summer was what we call our phase 1. So that was just under 4,200 metres of diamond drilling. And last week, we reported on the first half of the results. So this shows you on the right, the red outline was the existing mineralization shell from that historic resource from 2010.

12:31 So the objective of this drawing was to get new data in the door, new samples, and try to figure out if the mineralization continues up and down trend. So again, in our first half of results, which we came back with last week and reported, we had some tremendous results. So very high grade nickel. So we had over 8.6% nickel in 1 interval. You see that's EV2101. So that's to the east of the existing mineralization. And that one, if you do the math on spot prices, the day we released that, that's over 30 grams per ton gold equivalent. And then in addition to the headline grade, we had very high nickel tenors. So they went from 18% to over 40%.

13:17 And I'll tell you, our technical team is very excited about the nickel tenors, because that's again, the estimated content of nickel and 100% sulfide. And it gives an indication, it gives an indication of what the grades would be for a potential concentrate down the road. So we'll be doing MET testing next year, but those high nickel tenors leads us to believe that we'll have very good results on our MET next year. And we're excited to see how high a concentrate percentage this rock can get us up to. So we intersected the ultramafic mineralization to the west. So we know that the trend extends. So, so far after half of the results being back in, We're really excited about them. We had some wonderful hits within that group, and we've been able to confirm that the mineralization extends beyond that initial W4 zone.

14:12 So if I look out and what's coming up down the road for us in the drilling world. So we announced that in early January, we'll get the second half of the phase 1 results in. And at the same time, as we're working through those now, we're figuring out where we're going to go after our phase 2. So for our Phase 2, of course, we've got from the geophysics, those additional high priority targets across the Langmuir property, and we're going to go after some of those with phase 2. So in addition to more detail on W4, we'll hit the other high priority targets across Langmuir. So we're really excited about what 2022 is going to tell us. Part is from drilling we've already done in 2021, but then also looking out more broadly across the property to find out how much bigger we can get this initial starter resource of W4, but then also to try to figure out where else there's interesting mineralization.

15:05 And I'm excited to be able to go after the other high priority targets, knowing that we've just begun to scratch the surface on what's out there on Langmuir, because only one of them has been drilled before. So that's exciting for us. And even more exciting is the drilling partner we're working with for phase 2. So we also announced that we partnered with Missa 90, which is a drilling services company based near Timmins in Porcupine, Ontario. And they're 100% First Nations owned and operated. And we love their values and we're aligned completely with that group, that was very important to us. That'll become part of our story as we begin rolling out parts of clean nickel next year. And it really gets down to also how we work with communities and how we partner up with our suppliers.

15:53 So we've contracted them for a minimum of 10,000 meters. Again, we'll talk more about what phase 2 looks like. Those guys are going to be in with a rig right after the new year in January. So it's exciting, we have a bunch more data to come on how much more nickel there could be at Langmuir. And what really excites us is both Langmuir, which on this map, you see our property with the W4 there at the red star, but then it's an unconsolidated district. So this district is an exciting one because it has had historic production where our historic resource at W4 is at 1%, but you've had production from the Shaw dome, which has been higher than that. So 1.74. We've got resources and historic production, which is grading between 1 and higher than 2% on the shah dome. So what we're looking for is high grade nickel deposits.

16:48 And we also want to go after trying to get more land on the Shaw Dome. So we love the fact that we've got land and we're drilling in an area where there's been historic production before. We love the high grade. And of course, we think there's a huge amount of opportunity for us to get our hands on more land on the Shaw Dome. And that's a big part of where our time is focused. So if I think about the Shaw Dome more generally, So this chart on the left shows the regional mineralization of the Shaw Dome and you see on there where there's been past producers and deposits. And that dotted box on the left, I've shown you the same size of land, so the same geographic footprint on the right as the Kambalda Dome in Western Australia. So this is really interesting because the geology is quite similar where it's also in the Kamatiates, so similarly hosted nickel sulfide deposits in Western Australia and they have produced a huge amount of nickel out of a small geographic space. So the Combalda dome on the right, that map has produced over 50 million tons, creating 3% nickel.

18:01 So these chematiates, they happen up and down the flows. So in Kambalda, they go north, south. For the Shaw Dome, they head mainly east, west. You see the black squiggles on the Shaw Dome map on the left. And we're really excited about what the potential is on the Shaw Dome, because on these commodiates, when you get down into these flows, you can get a lot of nickel mineralization in a relatively small geographic footprint. So we think that we've just begun finding how much nickel there could be down the Shaw Dome. And we're excited to find out how much we can get and how much we can pull together into a nickel business.

18:40 So to summarize why we're excited about the Shaw Dome, number 1 is location. It's As close as it is to Timmins, it's an established, excellent place to be mining, an established mining camp. So, the second after location, we have the grade. We have the starter resource, the historic resource at 1%. It's in an area where it's got even better grade down there. And we think the Shaw Dome, based on its historic production, and how under explored it is, has a huge amount of potential. So on our Langmuir project, we've got over 9000 hectares and 30 kilometers of strike. We think the W4 and the geophysics backs us up is just getting us started. So we're excited to get into those high priority targets and figure out what else there could possibly be there at Langer.

19:27 So team-wise, I've been talking for a while now. My background is general commercial stuff. I got into mining 15 years ago, working at the seniors. I used to help run Kinross Gold. And then I've been at a couple other juniors. I also run Rogue Resources, which is the company that vended this non-core asset into EV nickel. So I'm the CEO of the company. My background prior to that, I started out in financial markets and I worked a lot in private equity with consulting. So I come with a general commercial background. My partner in this is our VP of Exploration and the real star of our team, Paul Davis. He spent over 20 years of his career up in Timmins. He's an expert on the commodities. It's what he did his master's on.

20:13 And he's exactly the guy that I want running our drill program. Rounding out the team, we have Travis, who's our CFO, he's based out in Vancouver. He's a very seasoned mining guy,

20:24 used to work at Integra prior to their acquisition. And then Mike Silver, who's a very experienced and seasoned banker in Toronto. So we've got a nice tight experienced team. The real star of course is the guy running our technicals, that's Paul Davis. And then under him, we have a team of geologists up in Timmins who have deep experience and exploring for these types of flows and they're fired up and excited to see how much data we've got so far and they're really interested in what the potential could be for the Shaw Dome. So on the board in addition to me we've got a couple from Northern Ontario. So Linda is based out of Timmins, she's an environmental expert. Michael is an old colleague of mine from the PDAC board. He lives just outside Thunder Bay.

21:11 He's First Nations and he's very, very skilled and excellent connections on all levels of government. It was very important to me to have representation on our board from Northern Ontario. Both Linda and Michael I've known for many years and this is their first public board, but they really bring an important part to the story, important part to the business. And that's really what my focus has been for forming the board. Then more broadly, I have Gadi, who is a very experienced guy for public boards, and he chairs our audit committee. And then rounding it out is Stephen Delaney, who is a well-seasoned Toronto based investment banker who knows the junior space and is an expert on nickel more specifically.

21:59 So Our cap structure, I touched on before where our shares came from, so where our finances are, and I'll touch on that on the next slide where I run through lockups. But using a 50% share price, We have just under 10 million shares that went out in the founders round when we initially formed EV Nickel. 6.6 million shares are in the hands of Rogue Resources from the original transaction. Then our March financing, 6.8 million shares went out in the March private financing. And then our IPO at the beginning of December, 7 million shares. So we have a very tight share structure, just over 30 million shares. So using a 50 cent share price, which we're ticking a little below that right now, we're just over 15 million in valuation, sitting on just under 5 million in cash.

22:54 So we have a tight share structure, and it's pretty much in safe hands. This speaks to the lockups and escrows we have in place. So again, that first group, founders and rogue, we're locked right up. So between stuff not being free trading and then lockups that are signed on top of that, those shares are not moving. And they're out over 3 years, they come into the market free trading.

23:19 Then that March private round of 6.8 million shares, 20% of that became free trading on our IPO. That we anticipate, we think is the majority of the sales volume on the market. But we do know where all those shares are and we have commitments from those guys that they're holding on. 6.8 million shares went out in that private round and then 7 million shares went out with the IPO as free trading right away. So again, very tight share structure, just over 30 million shares. So as I compare EV nickel versus other potential nickel plays out there, it's a tough thing to do because we're all at different stages of development. And then at its core, we're very different grades as well. So we've created this comparison on a few variables, 1 being the grade, and you can see The dark blue being where the high grade potential juniors are.

24:19 And then the low grade, for example, Canada Nickel, that has had a tremendous amount of

24:24 success down at 0.26 versus our grade of 1% with our starter resource. And we have a much larger land package, even then they have after their recent acquisitions. If I compare us to the other play in the Timmins market, Class 1, so we have a comparable grade there right around 1% as well, but they're a much smaller land package. And I think that they don't have as much potential upside in that we are just beginning to scratch the surface having just looked at one of the first 5 high priority targets across our land package. So there's a number of variables to compare us on against the other potential comps. I'm very confident of our valuation right now based on what our starter resource has, what our exploration potential is, and the size of our land package.

25:18 So I think that the 1% at the W4 with 15 million pounds on the ground is

25:24 us just getting started. And I'm very comfortable around our position down the shall dome for finding more land, finding more nickel on Langmuir and getting our hands on even more land down there, which I think will put us in very good comparison to these other nickel juniors. So to sum up sort of what are we, I think of us as a pick and shovel play where you can invest and play the electric vehicle boom. So we're a top quality asset in terms of our starter resource, the land that we have. And I think that if you think, you know, The famous story of people who made money on the gold rush were the ones who were selling the picks and shovels. By us selling the input that goes into these EVs, it's a very interesting play on that. So what our mission is, is that we're gonna accelerate the transition to clean energy.

26:16 And we feel as though the world needs more of this nickel, the high grade type that we have, the clean nickel that we think we're going to be building our business around. I think decarbonization is the challenge of a lifetime for all of us. And we're going to source that material that's going to help the EV companies grow and begin addressing the challenge of decarbonization. So again, 3 things that we're focused on. And again, this converts into sort of news flow going forward. One is finding how much nickel there could be in Landmere. 2 is getting our hands on more land in the Shaw Dome. And 3 is really beginning to put the pieces of the puzzle together for a clean nickel business. So that is where we're focused. And that's what all of the news coming from the company. And we're going to have a huge 2022 on each of those 3 fronts.

27:06 So that's it for me. Dasha, do you want to jump into questions?

27:11 Yeah, absolutely. So if anyone has a question, feel free to submit them now. But Sean, do you think you'll be able to attract investment from ESG funds? Yeah, for sure. It's as we think more about the clean nickel business, I'm very confident that the pieces of the puzzle we're putting together will appeal to ESG investors. We've had initial conversations. I think that'll just gain more steam as we begin putting more of the news flow and the story together on the clean nickel business. And it's exciting. That's a big part of our direction, the direction we're taking, where we're addressing this very large challenge of decarbonization. And I think that aligns quite nicely

27:53 with the mandates of many of these ESG funds that are really looking for a true home, which allows them to play decarbonization. Because that's entirely how we're constructing our business. Got it, thank you. And can you tell us a bit about what your relationship is like with the First Nations in the area? Yeah, we have a great relationship with the regional First Nations. So we have going into the drilling, we took it upon ourselves to reach out to each of the First Nations and go through our plans with them. We didn't have to sign an agreement or even do that outreach, but we did it. So we have developed relationships with each of them and we will keep them posted as we proceed.

28:42 And the way I really intend to work with the First Nations and the community more broadly, is that I'd like to partner with them and share with them the economic potential, the benefit of our project. So that is really where I find that these types of agreements with groups like the First Nations and other members of the community where there's the most potential benefit is around sharing the upside and working with them. And that's really the reason I'm very excited that we were able to go through a competitive process to get ourselves a drilling contractor and partner with a 100% First Nations owned and operated organization. So that's really the beginning of us working with the First Nations. I should say our initial conversations was the beginning. This is an example of how I intend for us to work with them. But my plan is to pull together a business and really be partnering with the local communities and that definitely includes the First Nations in the area.

29:43 Absolutely. And How do you plan to grow your team? Right. So we are going to be growing our team. Our focus so far has really been around exploration and geologists with expertise in this specific area with the Kamatiates on the Shaw Dome, and more specifically with deposits and finding deposits around these flow-like geologies. So that's been our first focus. Then we're going to pivot to grow the team where we're going to have more of a project focus where we've got a lot of work to be done, especially down the different avenues with the clean nickel story. So that includes looking at carbon sequestration, for which we're going to be working with the top minds of the world on that area. And on my own team, I need someone to be managing that. So that's the more broad sort of project approach. In addition to bringing in people to work with me on community engagement and the First Nations. So I'll be first and foremost on the most important thing, which is working with the communities.

30:47 But we're going to bring in resources on that front and work with me, but that's really how we begin to round out the team beyond just the initial exploration geology focused. Thank you. Richard's asking, do you have any plans for a U.S. Listing OTC? Yeah, that's definitely on the horizon for us. We've got to get our legs under us with the Canadian listing, but that's definitely part of the plan for next year. It's a focus for our founder group And it's something we've already had discussions with the lead dealer on the IPO. And it's definitely in the cards for next year. Again, because we think that people are after investors are interested, and I can gauge this on feedback that I've received directly from investors.

31:33 People are desperate for true ESG plays more broadly. And then specifically within trying to play the EV boom. We think there's going to be a lot of investor interest from markets beyond Canada. And we will look at U.S. Listing. Great. Thank you. And so to what degree does EV pickup rely on American legislation choices at the federal level? Yeah, that's a great question. So of course, U.S. Politics is a tough one to predict. And I think that it's not, as you look at the global boom in EVs, the US market, though very important, is not integral to the hockey stick.

32:19 Like the EV revolution has begun, as we say on that earlier slide, and it's even more of a story with huge penetration across the US, but the US is just part of that story of that revolution. So I would say that even if the US can't pull its act together, which I think it will, and I'll come back to that, it's still very much a huge growth and a new category of demand for global nickel supply. In terms of the US pulling its act together and being able to focus in on EVs, I think that there's too much sort of momentum behind a shift, a transition to a cleaner economy. And I do actually believe that there is good bipartisan support for the transition. And you see that in politically split areas of other jurisdictions as well. I think that the US issue, when it gets down to it, is it really a partisan issue?

33:25 And the focus on the transition to a cleaner economy, and more specifically, electric vehicles, will actually have bipartisan support. So it's not as clear cut of a difference between shifting from carbon intensive energy to clean energy consumption. It's also layered in there a shift in manufacturing. And I think if you look at, for example, the U.S. Automotive industry, they are jumping in, you know, all in on the EV move. So whether that's dependent on Washington coming in line with them or whether the trains already left the station on that, I take the moves from Detroit as being very positive.

34:14 And I think that even if the partisan issue in Washington gets in the way of the most aggressive, the most supportive policy coming from the center, I think that the EV revolution, even in the US, is well underway and it really can't be slowed down at this point. So I don't think we're hugely dependent on whatever legislation comes out over the next 6 to 12 months, because this is really a move that's going to be over the next decades. Great. Well, Sean, thank you so much for taking us through your presentation and the Q&A. And of course, thank you to everyone who joined us today and asked questions. If you do think of another question following this summit, feel free to contact EV Nickel directly. And there's also more information you can find on their website, evnickel.com. And again, this presentation has been recorded, so you can watch it on six.com afterwards.

35:04 But I'll pass it back to you, Sean, if you have any final remarks. No, that's it. Hopefully, folks have heard the overview of the story and we're really setting the stage now as to what news will be coming out on those 3 fronts. So again, we're trying to find the most nickel we can on Langmuir, trying to get access to more land in the district. And third, we're beginning to pull together the parts of the clean nickel story. So it's on those 3 fronts that we're going to have news throughout 2022 and we're very excited in the thing that we're building.