First Mining Gold: Fully Financed and Surfacing Value

0:05 Hi, my name is Bianca Mishola. I'm the CEO of 6 and welcome to the FirstMiningGold Live Investor Summit. I'd like to start today by introducing our presenters, Dan Wilton, CEO of FirstMiningGold and Spiros Kakos, Vice President of Investor Relations. To kick things off, Dan will be telling the company's story, and then we'll be accepting questions. You can submit your questions in the Q&A panel on the right-hand side of your screen. Now, without further ado, Take it away, Dan.

0:32 Thanks, Bianca. And thanks to you and all of your team for your support over what's been a pretty interesting and active last few months. So listen, we really appreciate the engagement we get from our shareholders when we have presentations in this format. Always love hearing from you all and I think this is a great interactive way for us to make sure that we get your questions answered. So the real focus of today, we wanted to just update our shareholders on plans moving the company forward on the back of what's been a pretty exceptional last 6 months that I think really has started to transform this company. We've started to see it in some share price appreciation, but most importantly, I think when you kind of sit back and take stock of where we are versus where we were at the beginning of the year, in terms of financial flexibility and strategic position, I think we're in a much, much better place here. So we just want to walk through.

1:35 I'll do a brief presentation with a goal of leaving lots and lots of time for questions, answers at the end of this. So I'll be making a few forward-looking statements as we move forward here. First Mining is still more than ever focused on advancing our portfolio of Canadian Gold assets. Number 1 in that is Springpole, which is one of the largest undeveloped open-pit Gold projects in Canada. We're making some great progress on SpringPool through the pre-feasibility and the environmental assessment process. We'll talk a little bit more about that going forward. We've got our strategic funding in place through our Silver Stream with 1st Majestic. And that's left us in a really, really good position to make the investments that we need to, to be able to continue to de-risk and ultimately surface the value of Springpool.

2:29 We're also today the largest shareholder in Treasury Metals, which is advancing the very exciting GoldLund-Goliath development plan. This is, you know, by virtue of us having sold GoldLund to Treasury and taken back shares, what we've created inside Treasury really is a district-scale, multi-million-ounce gold developer. And we're excited about having all of you, our shareholders, become direct shareholders in Treasury when we complete this distribution. We've had a lot of questions about the mechanics of that distribution. We'll talk about it briefly today, but essentially we'll be distributing those shares around the time of our AGM next year and through a plan that's going to look a lot like a spinoff company. So you as a shareholder at the record date, we will need a shareholder vote to approve it.

3:26 And if you're a shareholder at the record date, you will receive those shares more or less automatically in your accounts as we go through that distribution process. And interestingly, you know, the portfolio of assets beyond those, I think we've really been able to demonstrate that we can surface some real value in those portfolio assets, including in the top of that list, our partnership on our Pickle Crow project, which is going very well with our partners, Oteco Minerals. And we'll talk a little bit about how that's moving forward. But all of this is to say that we've done a lot of these really, I think, interesting moves to surface value. We've raised more capital, and we'll talk a little bit about that too.

4:12 But that really gives us the flexibility to be able to further advance and de-risk and demonstrate the value of the balance of the portfolio assets. And with all of that, I think we're still trading at an exceptional discount to our peers. As I kind of say, when you look at the math, I think we were trading with a spring pull at a market cap of about $100 million at the beginning of the year. And I think when you dissect kind of what some of the value of the other portfolio assets is, you're still getting spring pull for that or less right now. So, and this is a world-class strategic asset that we really think deserves a much higher value recognition, but we'll continue working on that.

4:59 Just a quick snapshot on the back of our, of our financing that we completed a few weeks ago, $35 million of cash on hand and another, you know, in excess of $30 million between marketable securities and the stream proceeds receivable under the Silver Stream. And then that strategic investments and partnerships really reflects the value of our stake in Treasury and reflects the value of our remaining project interest in Pickle Crow and our interest in the TechO. So the average trading volumes have continued to be very strong. And as you can see, you know, it's been, we've talked about this a number of times before, it's been a real priority for us to begin building that institutional base. We've had a small and core group of supportive institutions all the way through, But really one of the main reasons for completing this financing was having an opportunity to broaden our shareholder base and build out some of that institutional shareholding.

5:56 So as you can see here, sitting, I think, in a very, very different position than we were 6 months ago. And this just kind of tells the tale. We're sitting today with our holdings in Treasury Metals, the value of our shares alone worth approximately $65 million The warrants that we took in consideration for our sale of GoldLund, which all of those are the shares and the warrants will get distributed out, but those are sitting at or in the money right now. And we think that there's some really exciting things happening at treasury. We'll talk about that moving forward quickly. And Autechco, this is the one that catches a lot of people by surprise.

6:43 After the stage 1 earn-in, which is after Autechco spends $5 million on Pickle Crow, they've raised $37 million. So we're pretty confident of their ability to get that money spent in the near term here. You know, you add up what the market value of our share interest in Oteko will be, some of the cash payments under the year and the implied value of our remaining project interest, which is carried through to a construction decision, which is a really important element of our investment there. That adds up to at least a couple of weeks ago, added up to almost $100 million. So, you know, I think for these projects, which, honestly, at the beginning of the year, I think a lot of investors were looking at as liabilities, not assets. I think we can safely say that we've demonstrated an ability to really, excuse me, surface value out of these projects.

7:37 And the Silver Stream funding with 1st Majestic, our share position and the ongoing payments we're gonna receive as we hit milestones, the next of which is at PFS, which we're expecting very early in Q1 next year. So with all of that, as I said, still, when you take away the value of those strategic investments, And this isn't counting the value of the other portfolio assets, really. They're not really attributing much value to those at all. But we're trading at less than $20 US an ounce when your average advanced gold developer is trading at $90. So again, I think this just continues to show, we've often talked about the 5x reversion to the mean.

8:23 If we were just trading in line with others, that's a 5 times return here on the value of SpringPool. And we think as we move through PFS, we're gonna be able to demonstrate really exceptional and robust economics on SpringFall. So this is a chart that I think really does emphasize these points. You add up the strategic investments in cash value, that's about two thirds of the market cap. So you're even more than that, maybe 0.75. So you're still getting the 1.6 billion, that's the after tax net present value of SpringPool from our PEA at $1,500 gold. You're getting that $1.6 billion of value for less than $100 million of value reflected in the share price. So lots and lots of room for us to continue to see share price appreciation as we take risk out of the projects and demonstrate that fundamental value.

9:23 The team's well enthusiastic and it's obviously been a very, very busy 9 months here where we've been undertaking a bunch of this transformation, but we're very thankful to have the team that we do have moving the projects forward. So I'll just talk a little bit about SpringPool. It's a project that most of you on the phone know pretty well, or on the webinar know pretty well. This is a 5Moz equivalent deposit and one of the few projects in the world that is capable of producing in excess of 400,000 ounces a year. And That's part of why this is such an important strategic asset for us. The PEA economics we've talked about a number of times.

10:12 I think when you look at the leverage to the Gold price that Springpole has, It's one of the things that's not particularly well appreciated by the market, but for every $100 on the Gold price, you'd see a $200M increase in the net present value at Springpool. So, every $100 on the Gold price was, you can go back to earlier in the year, that was double the market cap of 1st mining. So, really, really good leverage to an increasing Gold price environment. Permitting and pre-feasibility process is well, well underway. We're kind of rounding the corner on estimations and kind of locked down on, I think, the concept that we will be putting forward in the pre-feasibility study. There's been an enormous amount of work done and really, really good technical work optimizing the project.

11:10 And we're confident of being able to put forward a very robust look at this project with the PFS, which we're saying is now gonna be coming out very early in Q1 2021. And again, the region in terms of a jurisdiction, we can't ask for a better place to be permitting a mine. Ontario has permitted 4 big open pit mines in the last 4 years, and we're grandfathered under that CEA 2012 process, the same process that all of those other projects. Cote, which is going into construction, Magino, which is going into construction, Hard Rock and Hammond Reef, all of those big open pit mines in Ontario permitted in the last 4 years. So, and making very, very good progress.

12:00 I was up at site last week and had a chance to go over the areas where the cofferdams are again. Reality is these 3 5m deep cofferdams total just a little bit more than 500 meters, and average 5 meters high. These are not big construction exercises in the context of building a mine. And with all of the work that's been done, think of the geotechnical analysis of the rock that's underneath those cofferdam footings, there's, you know, all of the great environmental baseline work that's been done over the last 9 years to give us the understanding that we have of this aquatic environment. Everything that we're seeing here, the science is telling us that this is a project that we will be able to build and operate in an environmentally sustainable fashion without long-term impact to the environment.

13:03 We won't talk too much about the PEA summary, only to say, here at the bottom of this chart, you just kind of have, you know, we did our economics at $1,300 Gold, which looks a long way in the rearview mirror right now as we sit today. But at a $1,500 Gold environment, that's that $1.2Bn after-tax NPV, $1.75Bn pre-tax NPV. Very, very robust project with low walling, sustaining costs, low strip ratios, good recoveries from the metallurgical flow sheet that we've developed over the course of the last couple of years, and think ultimately this is something that we're going to be able to put forward a very robust project here.

13:50 And why is it important in the end? Springpole is important again for all that large projects have kind of been maligned by investors over the course of the last 7 or 8 years, these are the projects that the industry needs. And we're gonna see that more than ever in that timeframe of 2025 to 2030. There's just really nothing of size that if you don't know where it is, you don't have it in a permitting process right now and a game plan to develop it, the probability of it producing before 2030, I think is very, very low. So as we go through our permitting process, we think that we're going to be able to demonstrate that Springpool is sitting as one of these really, really strategic assets in the industry, ready to build when the industry needs it most.

14:45 And there's just a couple of very interesting comparables on this page, particularly, you know, the great success that Steve and Dean and the team at Artemis have had with acquiring Blackwater. They've just re-scoped that project. You know, I think when we look at SpringPool, there are a lot of advantages even the SpringPool has over Blackwater. It's a bit further advanced, obviously with its EA approvals, but yeah, we think that SpringPool can compare quite well to every other project on this page. We talked about the robustness of the ore body and that's one of the biggest defining factors of the project is that it's a big, homogenous, continuous ore body that you're going to be able to mine efficiently and effectively and in a low-cost manner.

15:42 We have talked quite a bit about the Silver Stream. The 1st US$10M of this is closed. And so we're sitting with 7.5 million US of 1st majestic stock. Next milestone payment of 7.5 million US is on completion of the pre-feasibility study. So this was a really, really important piece of financing to give us the ability to have Springpole funded through that PFS process and through the environmental assessment process and fund all of our corporate costs from here till that 2023 timeframe. We've now supplemented that and I think this financing that we've done, an important part of that was us now having the flexibility to continue right into a full feasibility study on the back of completing the PFS.

16:35 So that's very, I think, very important to that, having the project ready at the time when the industry needs it the most, for us to ability to really continue to drive this project forward while it's going through the EA process was we thought very important when we had the opportunity to do so. And that brings us a little bit to the timing. So we've submitted our terms of reference, which is essentially the table of contents to the environmental impact statement. We're in the process of collecting, sort of final collection and compilation of all of that data. It's an enormous amount of work that goes into one of these documents and, you know, we're really blessed with having had so many years of active work done on the project.

17:27 Even before 1st mining owned it going back to 2010 2011. That all of that work that's been done leaves us in a great position to move this environmental impact statement forward with a goal of having that submitted for review middle of 2021. And then in Ontario, it's been a pretty reliable 18 to 24 month time frame to move this project through that combined federal and provincial environmental assessment process. That leaves us in kind of mid 2023 to that really critical de-risking and we think really critical value enhancing time frame. And in the same time now, pre-feasibility study, as I said, well underway, should have that out very early in 2021, And that then gives us the ability to move right into feasibility study. We're just kind of finalizing the timeframes and the scope of work for what we need for the feasibility study on the back of the PFS.

18:30 But with the financing we've completed, very, very well placed to do those things in parallel as the project is moving through the environmental assessment process. So that's Springpole. We're going great guns. And I think all the work is going very, very well. So I'm very excited about that. And in the rest of the portfolio, we'll just talk very briefly about Treasury, which is moving forward very quickly on putting together an internal, soon to be published, scoping document on what GoldLund and Goliath would look like together from an economic perspective. So we're optimistic to have a PEA in kind of the same timeframe as our PFS coming out on Springpole. So lots of great work ongoing right now.

19:22 And I think there's another drill that's going to be turning on GoldLine and Goliath sometime soon, hopefully this month. And it's really all moving forward, I think, in a way that is going to be able to demonstrate that this is one of the most robust near-term development projects in the gold sector. So, very excited about that. And importantly, the rationale for us for doing this was, A, we were getting no value for GoldLund. I think a lot of investors saw GoldLund as a liability to us. And I think we can conclusively now say that we've demonstrated and once we see what the combined economics look like on this, we're really going to be able to say that this is something that I think has enormous value in a near-term construction kind of time frame and doesn't require any more investment from 1st mining to move it forward. So simplified our spend as well.

20:24 On the distribution, again, we talked about that. We're aiming to distribute, I always have to get these numbers right because Treasury has consolidated their shares 3 for 1. So they're not quite as handy numbers as they were, but it's 23.3 million Treasury shares and 11.7 million warrants, which will be distributed directly out to our shareholders in 2021, again around the time of our AGM. And retained exposure, we still have 1.5% NSR royalty on GoldLund and $5 million of milestone payments as the project moves forward. So we're very active here, very busy. Our sleeves are rolled up on the board and on the technical committee, helping scope out this combined operation, making sure that we're getting really the best input from all of the parties who've been involved in Goldland and Goliath to scope what we think is going to be the most economic project there.

21:23 You don't need to spend too much time on this rationale, but 2 contiguous projects put together, development plan's going to look like a single mill and tailings dam being fed by 2 mining operations. 1 open pit, 1 predominantly underground, and there's going to be a real complementarity between those. So, And the other thing that I just never want to forget is that there's still an enormous amount of exploration potential at Goliath and at Goldland to move these projects forward. And we continue to think that this is ultimately going to be a 5 million ounce district. Lots of unexplored terrain on Goldland, which we know well, and on Goliath, which we know a little bit less well, but you could not ask for a better place to be exploring.

22:14 Just outside of Dryden, just off the Trans-Canada Highway, every bit of infrastructure you could ever ask for. So very excited about that with the PEA ongoing and some drill results and ongoing drill results, we think, coming out of Gold Lund and Goliath, setting us up for a very, very interesting surfacing of value there. And then on Pickle Crow, as I mentioned, you know, our partner, Ateco Minerals, has raised about 37 million Australian over the course of the last 6 months. So they're sitting with about 33 million in cash right now and just announced that they've upsized their drill program to 45,000 meters from 10,000 meters. So we think they're gonna get through our, you know, initial 5 million and pretty quickly through the $10 million earned in spend at Pickle Crow.

23:06 So far, some pretty interesting results that are coming out. And we think that there's lots more real value for our partners of Ateco to continue to surface here. But importantly, again, our 20% project interest in Pickle Crow is carried through to a construction decision. So after they earn into their 80%, we don't have to fund any more. And we are carried through on all of their expenditure until they get to basically a construction decision on the back of a feasibility study. So we think that element of the structure of this transaction has some real value for us as well.

23:54 And in the balance of the portfolio, you know, with a little bit more financial flexibility, we're doing some interesting work. Again, these 3 projects I think had been probably prioritized a bit down our list when we were very much more capital constrained. But there's some real exploration opportunity at Cameron. There's I think some fantastic exploration and development opportunity around our Quebec portfolio and Hope Brook as a past producing gold mine, we think again that's another area that there's some fantastic exploration potential and really interesting development potential at those projects. So again, I think this is something that have you seen how we've been able to surface value from a couple of the other projects.

24:41 Over time, I think these projects moved down that path as well, but we now have a bit more financial flexibility to spend some money and time understanding it a bit better to figure out how exactly we're going to surface the value from these projects. But we get no value for these. Like 9 months ago, we got no value for GoldLund and we got no value for Pickle Crow, each of these projects I think could be of an equivalent or greater value than those other projects. So this is the right environment for us to be surfacing that value for our shareholders. Lots of work going on and there'll be lots for us to continue to report on over the course of the next 6 to 12 months. You know, the pre-feasibility study at Springpool really is the focus, but that and driving forward on the permitting, targeting submission of the environmental impact statement in the middle of 2021.

25:36 We've got this PEA on a potential Goldlund-Goliath development scenario, drilling ongoing at Treasury and the distribution, which will be coming out within 12 months. And lots of drill results we think are going to be coming out from Pickle Crow with a 45,000 meter drill program. And with the balance of the projects, still very much looking forward to surfacing value on the other projects. So with all that, I think we're ready to move from here into questions. And Spiros, I'll turn it over to you. Oh, thanks, Dan. Yeah, we've got a lot of questions here. I'll start off with the first question from an investor called Thijs.

26:22 Is there M&A interest by others in non-core projects held by 1st Mining? Thijs, Yeah, thank you very much and great to hear from you. Yes, there is. You know, the short answer is we've had phone calls about every one of our projects. And in large parts, you know, particularly after people have seen some of the success that we've had with Pickle Crow and how that's been able to kind of surface value to us. The reality is there just aren't that many projects in the gold sector that are at advanced stages like this portfolio has.

27:04 And you know, it's really a testament to Keith and the team, to the vision of putting these projects together in 2015, 2016, in a time when no one else wanted them. We're now in the environment where, you know, this is exactly what Keith and the team had talked about when they set up 1st Mining Finance. It was this environment to be able to find partners, to advance projects, retain interests, and, you know, see how we can leverage these projects to the benefits of the shareholders. So yeah, lots of interest in all kinds of forms. But importantly, I think you need to find the right partner for the right project and each of them is different, each of them needs something a little bit different and they need a different game plan. And so you know who your partner is and what the deal structure would look like depends a lot on the stage of the asset and the people who are going to take it on and what their game plan is.

28:06 So we're working hard at making sure that we understand that ourselves and look at a broad suite of options because we have a bit more flexibility to do that now. But Yeah, there certainly is a lot of interest. Great. Dennis, next question has been asked a lot today. What was the trigger for the recent finding? Finding or financing? Funding. Well, financing. Funding. Funding. Listen, the rationale for the financing was, there were a couple of really important ones. Number 1, as we were kind of rounding the corner on the pre-feasibility study, And the team's pretty excited about sort of what we're seeing here. We, as we're doing the work about what it would take to continue to technically de-risk the project moving it forward into feasibility, we had always said through the Silverstream we were funded to get to PFS and funded to get to that environmental assessment approval milestone.

29:08 We weren't funded to do a lot of work in between, and I think when we had the opportunity put to us to be able to have the funding to continue to advance the project and really kind of shorten some of those time frames from the time you receive the environmental assessment approvals until when you might actually have a construction decision. Everything that we can do to shorten that time frame, we wanted to be able to do because we believe that this is a robust project. We're going to get permitted. And that's going to bring value to us having the project ready at the time when the industry needs it the most. So that was kind of number 1. And number 2 was to have some increased flexibility to be able to optimize around the existing portfolio. So I think we've been able to demonstrate that with Pickle Crow and with Goldon and Goliath, we have real value in the assets in this portfolio.

30:09 And, you know, I think, as I said, with each of the other 3 projects, they all need something a bit different. There are some opportunities for us to understand them better, some opportunities where we can do a little bit of work to demonstrate more upside so that we'll be able to surface more value for our shareholders. And so, you know, sometimes that's consolidating in and around land packages as well, which we wanted to have some flexibility to do. I mean, spending a bit more money on exploration or testing a few targets. So all of those things are really important, But that was the other real fundamental driver was having enough capital to be able to properly assess some of the other non-core assets. So non-core, some of the other portfolio assets so that we can turn those 3 projects into 50 to 100 million dollars of value each in the way that we have at Pickle Crow and at Gold Lung Goliath.

31:09 And the third and probably the most important reason was The quality of the institutional shareholders who were approaching us and wanted to become shareholders of 1st Mining in a significant fashion, that was one of the largest reasons for us to undertake this financing. It was, you know, I think again, the quality of investor that was looking to get invested, we wanted to facilitate that. And so, yeah, those are really kind of the 3 main reasons. Perfect. Here's another question from John Lewis. Dan, in the past interviews, I've heard you speak to de-risking SpringPool for helping sell the property to a bigger player.

32:00 Assuming all goes to plan with permitting at Springpole, what's management strategy for either holding Springpole through to production, partnering it with someone, or selling Springpole outright? Well, John, thanks for joining us and Always a pleasure. The short answer to your, is it A, B or C question is yes. And I hate to be kind of flippant about it, but I think our primary job is moving the project forward and de-risking it. And as that happens, as we advance the project, as we get those environmental assessment approvals, I think that's the time when you really assess all of those alternatives.

32:46 And I think there are all kinds of alternatives to building a team to put a project into into production, if that's the right thing to do, and you have an attractive cost of capital to do it. Or, you know, as we've, as we've often leaned to, it's, it's more about finding a right partnership to move that forward and that partnership can take a number of different forms where you know, someone can put up the construction capital, you retain an interest in the project, or, you know, ultimately, all the way towards selling the project outright. And I think all of those are opportunities, but the time to really assess those opportunities is when you have the ability to make those decisions.

33:32 I think we're now very, very well-funded to get through those key de-risking elements of the development plan both on the technical and the permitting side, to be able to surface that value and be in the best position to have those discussions and ultimately make that decision at the time when we can assess it at the highest value for our shareholders. Perfect. Thanks, Dan. Next question is by David Barrett. Why is 1st Mining waiting until the April 2021 AGM to distribute the recently transacted Treasury metal shares to the shareholders? Why can't you do this earlier? It's a good question.

34:18 Part of it is around the makeup of our shareholder base. We do have a substantial U.S. Shareholder base. And we're blessed with a great U.S. Retail shareholder base that active and supportive and vocal. But in terms of when we were looking at the mechanics of doing the treasury deal, there were just some SEC limitations to what we could do in terms of distributing those shares right at the time. So part of it is we sort of need to wait for, you know, securities law reasons for, you know, 6 months or so after the closing of the transaction.

35:12 And the other part of the reason is we really wanted to be actively involved both from a governance perspective and from a kind of technical perspective in scoping out what the combined project looked like. And so while we are a 40% shareholder, I think we have a little bit more say ultimately in how some of those processes go. And more or less, we're working very collaboratively, the team's really coming together. But, you know, I think we wanted to at least hold these shares through the point at which we can demonstrate

35:52 the economics of a combined Goldlink Goliath. And I think that's the real key for us is that in that 12-month timeframe, I think we're going to be able to show this is a really, really robust project and we'll have a bit of a better sense of the path forward from there. But yeah, it's a combination of somewhat arcane securities laws and us wanting to really have our hands on the steering wheel to get the project to the point where we really understand the value.

36:24 Next question is for Mike. Dan, have you ever considered spitting off non-partnered properties such as Cameron, Hopebrook and others back to a land bank company?

36:37 Mike, we haven't really, we've, we've, we've thought about it a little bit. And the, The reality is we've taken a long time over the last, you know, since the beginning of 2019, since I've been here to try and get very focused on delivering the fundamental value out of these assets. And I appreciate that we're not getting much value for these right now, but I think putting them into the land bank where sort of no real work gets done on them, and they don't really advance, versus us investing a little bit in these projects to be able to surface 50,100, $150 million of value out of them, we thought that on a risk return basis and based on what we know and the fact that we have control out of them now.

37:33 And we can kind of prioritize a little bit the work that gets done on and between those projects. You know, I just, I think it may require a little more patience, but I think we will have a much better opportunity to surface real fundamental value from these projects, if you can demonstrate that they can go down, you know, down a development path. And that's fundamentally what we're doing at Springpole. And that's what's happening at Goldline Goliath and that's what's happening at Pickle Crow. And you can see the value that's starting to accreed to those projects. So yeah, no, I think that's, I think that's, it's, it's an interesting idea, but I think for now we, we keep our sleeves rolled up and moving those projects forward.

38:20 Great. And keeping in that theme, Richard has a question. Would you would 1st Mining create a spin off royalty company similar to Great Bear has for its long term shareholders? Yeah, interesting. We've watched the Great Bear, the Great Bear Royalty Company with great interest. It was something that we spent quite a bit of time on as we were making the decision about ultimately about financing with the SilverStream with 1st Majestic. And it's not a coincidence that if you look at the terms of all of the transactions that we've done in the last year, you know, Pickle Crow, we have a very attractive royalty on.

39:06 Goldlund, we retained a very attractive royalty on. And I think we're not getting any value for the royalties in the company. So yes, I think it's something that We certainly have been watching others do to great effect. And I think when you look at what's the value of the royalties that we have, and not just, you know, it's not just a number of ounces times a percentage. These are projects that people are actively spending millions of dollars moving forward, right? That's a royalty that has real value. You're shortening that time frame to actual cash flow. And yet they are sitting in district scale land packages where you can have this amazing exploration upside, which we really believe in. It's why we own the projects.

39:54 But for us to be able to retain some of that value for our shareholders, yeah. So it's a long-winded way of saying yes, it's certainly something that we're watching and certainly something that we're thinking about, but stay tuned. Okay. Matthew has a question. Have you begun the process of choosing a mining engineering team for SpringPool? To what extent will you lean on 1st Majestic's expertise? Well, that's an interesting question, Matthew. So we've had a great team helping us move forward on the pre-feasibility study. And that's really, you know, I can't overstate the, the importance of declaring reserves on a project like SpringPool. Like, I think that is a really significant milestone that maybe the investing universe doesn't give as much credence to as it should, but when you've gone through the rigor of a pre-feasibility study and demonstrated economic reserves, that is a real milestone for a project.

41:04 We've had a great team with Osenco and AGP and PESOL and Wood Engineering helping us move forward on the pre-feasibility study and on a bunch of the environmental impact assessment work. And yeah, so I mean, I think our own team Internally, certainly Ken Inquist has done a fantastic job and continues to do a fantastic job of really leading and managing that team. So I think kind of going through a feasibility process, you always wanna have a check to make sure that you have the best team possible working on it.

41:55 But I think, you know, we're delighted with the team that we've had going through this pre-feasibility study so far. Okay. Next question is from Motion. Motion says, we say that we are trading at a significant discount to peers. Do you believe this is due to the permit not being there yet, or do you believe our value will be considerable prior to it? David Gardner It's a good question, Moshe. It really is. It's tough. You never really understand why you're trading at a discount, But I continue to think that there's just a large portion of the investing public that doesn't believe we're ever gonna get a permit at Springpool. And in large part, I think it's because there's not a lot of people have really looked at the technical details of the project or really understood the environmental work that's gone on since, you know, 2012-2013.

42:56 And I think anyone who looks at the data and understands all of the work that's been done, both on the engineering and on the understanding of the aquatic environment. I think all of that should give credence to our belief that we're gonna be able to get this project permitted. And ultimately, it can be built and operated in an environmentally sustainable manner. So yeah, ultimately, how that value accretes, I think if you look at other mining development projects that have had permitting milestones or permitting hurdles to overcome, every project has to go through permitting, that you tend to see value accrete over time because these permitting processes, there's a lot of information that happens over time as you're going through these processes.

43:57 And when people start seeing the volume and quality of the technical work that you've done to understand and make the argument for your permits, then I think that helps give people confidence of getting to the outcome. And the other thing that's really important for us is we're ultimately going to need to demonstrate that we have partnership with our local and our Indigenous communities and that we have the social license to operate. And that's no different than any other mining company anywhere in the world. I think we were in a great part of the world and have had great collaboration with our indigenous communities. And we're going through this terms of reference consultation process now, but we've been inactive consultation since March of 2018.

44:51 So yeah, I think as you demonstrate the, you know, I think declaring reserves, I think a viable PFS, I think an environmental impact statement where you show people how you're going to be able to plan and operate the project. I think all of those things take risk out of the project and they should be reflected in the share price in advance of actual receipt of the environmental approvals. Question from John. What are the current plans for the non-partnered properties? Are we going to move aggressively to de-risk them, getting drill programs, going ASAP? That's a good question. We're just assessing that now, understanding that we didn't have a lot of financial flexibility to advance those projects until recently.

45:47 The last thing we want to do is just throw a bunch of money at them without having really well thought out plans. So that's all sort of what we're formulating now. But yeah, it's in part, it's drill programs, In part, it's other technical investigations, better understanding resources that are there, looking at some potential development plans, at least scoping out some potential development plans to then figure out where we should spend money to further de-risk the projects. It's kind of a little bit different on every one of them, but yeah, we will have drills turning next year on some of our projects for sure. Okay.

46:33 Question from Anthony. When do you expect the date to be for the cutoff date for receiving the stock and warrants for TML equity? I would expect that to be, this is just a rough ballpark. And we've got, I think some more information on this on an FAQ section on our website, if anyone wants more detail on the spinout. But our current thought is it ends up being a record date about a month before our AGM. Our AGM is usually scheduled for early to mid-June. So that would put it to a record date of April or May for that distribution. Still to be confirmed, we're still working through some of the mechanics of it, but roughly sometime in that timeframe, because you'll need to actually have the shares and be a shareholder of record to vote in favor of the distribution and then the distribution happens.

47:32 Okay. There's another question. Can you update the NPV for US for $1900 gold US? The SpringPool NPV? Well, the quick math is it's about $200 million after tax NPV for every $100 of the gold price. So at $1,900, that would be about 1.2 billion plus about 800 million. So yeah, call it 2 billion after-tax NPV. That's what we're talking about here. The leverage of this project to increases in gold price, That's the value of a big project, right?

48:18 We have a lot of ounces and the leverage that we get to that higher gold price is really substantial. Okay. Question from Brian, assuming $10,000 an ounce of gold, how would you finance a mill? Well, if the gold price is $10,000 an ounce, There's lots of different ways I think that we'll be able to finance a mill. Depends a little bit on what our share price looks like at $10,000 an ounce once we have permits. That will depend a little bit on what the operating cost environment looks like when we're at $10,000 an ounce and we have permits in hand.

49:06 So there's a lot of different ways that you can look at financing financing the build out of a project and again it has to map against the capabilities that you have on the team or the capabilities that you're able to add. And what are the values that other potential partners might see in it? There's all kinds of different assessments that we can make at the time. And in terms of that actual financing, you know, this project at $10,000 an ounce would probably have like a six-month payback period. So I don't think we'll have any trouble finding project financing at that point if we if we decide that that's the path we're going to go down.

49:51 But that's that would be that would be a good problem for us to have. OK. Brian says Did 1st Mining have any input to the change of Treasury CEO? I think that was something that ultimately was discussed as the company was coming together. I think all credit to the team at Treasury, and including to Greg Farrin, who recognized and was a real advocate for ultimately making a change. Yeah, I think we all collectively knew that with this project that was this close to a potential construction decision, it just needed a different skill set to really maximize the value and move the project forward. And so, yes, as Treasury's announced that that search is underway.

50:52 And and I think we're going to find a lot of interest is this is one of the most I believe it's going to be show itself to be one of the most robust and certainly one of the most buildable projects in the gold sector. Okay, Warren has a question. When visiting Springpole last week, were you able to meet or speak with any of the Indigenous from the community? Last week was a very quick, quick trip. So we didn't meet with any of our communities last week. I had been out to the projects a couple of weeks before and did have a few good meetings, including with one of our communities around Cameron.

51:43 We'd signed a negotiation protocol. So it was actually welcome to the community there and had a lovely signing ceremony and nice lunch together. And yeah, so those those discussions continue ongoing. It's obviously very, very important of us, part of us moving the projects forward. And ultimately, as I said, part of us making sure that we have that social license to move the projects forward. Great. Mark has a question. When do you imagine the first pour at Springpole? Imagine. Imagine.

52:29 Well, listen, I think as we're rounding the corner on pre-feasibility, we're gonna have a better sense of the timeframe to move forward. If we are in receipt of environmental approvals in 2023, We're working right now with our partners to understand ultimately, you know, the balance of the permitting regime, plus, you know, what you need to do to make a construction decision, plus a construction timetable. A lot of that work's ongoing, so I wouldn't prejudge it until we actually have people giving us the answer who've done the work, But I think we've guided historically, you know, 2027.

53:24 In that kind of timeframe was what we'd been talking about in the past. You know, if there's an opportunity to move it more quickly, you can rest assured that we'll do everything that we can to try and accelerate that time frame. Okay. I think we have to come down to the last question now. And Dan, there's so many to choose from, unfortunately. There's a lot of questions pertaining strictly to Treasury metals. So I for those questions, I think maybe investors can just call in and we can answer them. But here's 1 regarding a 1st Oteko. How much drilling did 1st Mining do at Pickle Crow before the Oteco deal? We did very little drilling, to be honest.

54:13 After the project was acquired in 2015, I think there was a push for us to better understand some of the distribution of Gold in the tailings there. We did some drilling and understanding of how much Gold was in the historic tailings. But in terms of exploration drilling, we really hadn't done much. That's part of the reason why it makes so much sense to partner with a team that really has an exceptional track record of finding and developing high-grade gold deposits. And we've got great partners. If you look at what the team at Ateco has done at Bellevue Gold in Australia, going into a past producing high-grade gold camp and using systematic and modern exploration techniques, having a different interpretation of the high grade, focusing on that, and then putting really putting the resources behind it to, to, you know, continue to delineate those resources and continue to grow the resources.

55:32 They've done a great job there. I think we're at very early stages. I think they've drilled 4,000m out of the 45,000m so far. There's lots more to come. But they're looking at, you know, not just kind of what was near mine. But they're also they've expanded the land package, they're looking at, and they've already through some different data interpretation, I think identified a few other real opportunities that they want to test for new resource. And, you know, they're very, very excited about it. And they've got great shareholder backing. And, you know, we've we had always heard from when I had joined this company in 2019, from the people who knew Pickle Crow the best, we'd always heard that what the project really needed was, it was not a great project to spend 1 million dollars on to try and drill. 1 million dollars was never going to get you much at Pickle Crow. This is a project that needs a 20 or $30 million drill program to really systematically go look for higher grade gold to test the structures at depth, which they only mine down to 1000m at Pickle Crow.

56:52 The reality is you look at the Red Lake, the real Red Lake mines didn't start until 1500m down. So There's lots of opportunity at depth at Pickle Crow, but it's gonna take a big comprehensive and expensive plan that we as 1st Mining were not equipped to do and just didn't for us measure up to the value of what we have at Springpole, which has been our focus and priority. In the beginning of 2019, we've always seen that as the biggest source of value. I think They're doing great work and expect that, you know, we're excited to see the drill results and they're going to be coming fast and furious from our friends at Ateco, I think, in the, over the course of the next few months here.

57:43 With that, I think that's about all we have time for here. Great. Hey guys, I'm back here. I just wanna thank you both so much for walking us through everything that's been new and exciting with 1st Mining And thank you everyone who attended and who submitted questions. As mentioned, if you have any other ones, please submit directly to the 1st Mining Team. And I'll pass it back to you, Dan, for the final word. Okay, listen, I just wanna thank everyone. So many familiar faces and names dialing in or connecting in with us here on the webinar. I love this format and love the ability to kind of directly interact and answer the questions. If you have any other questions please feel free to reach out. You can get us at info at firstmininggold.com And you kind of most of you know where to reach me these days.

58:38 And we'll have this webinar ultimately placed at placed up on our website as soon as we can, as soon as we can get it edited and put up over the next couple of days. But again, really want to thank you for your attention and thank you for your ongoing support. We really are blessed with a great shareholder base and obviously lots more work to do. But thanks very much for joining us today and stay tuned. We'll have another one of these in the not too distant future.