First Mining Market Update & Town Hall

0:04 Morning, good afternoon, good evening, depending on where in the world you're signing in from today. I was just saying to the gentleman before the room opened that we have 12 time zones on today, so a big international audience. Really appreciate everybody's time joining us. I'm lucky enough, of course, to have on today, Florian Gromas, founder and managing director of Midas Touch Consulting, and Dan Wilton, CEO of FirstMiningGold. Gentlemen, how are you today? I'm great, Romeo. Thanks. Thanks for being here with us today. Awesome. Thanks for having me. Yeah, no problem. So here's how today's going to work, just for those of you in the room. First, I'm going to throw it to Dan for a quick summary of First Mining Gold. For those of you in the room who aren't fully acquainted with the story, for those of you who are, I promise it will not be too long. Then I'm going to pass to our illustrious guest, Florian, to run through some macro on precious metals. Then I'm going to pass it back to Dan for a brief update presentation on First Mining Gold. But crucially, this is a town hall event, so your questions are welcome. There's a chat button in the bottom right of your screen. You can ask questions at any time during today's event. I'll get to as many as we can during today's hour-long session. But of course, if for whatever reason we don't get to yours, it's off topic, doesn't fit with the conversation, or we just run out of time.

1:03 I'll make sure that the First Mining team gets that question, and we'll get back to you as soon as possible. So that full transcript will be sent right over to them. The only other piece of housekeeping is that today's event is being recorded and will be available for replay in the mid-afternoon Eastern time, likely 2 or 3. It'll pop in at this exact same link, but also on Six's YouTube channel. That is enough out of me for a start off in the protein of today's event. Dan, I'm going to throw it to you for a synopsis of First Mining. Thanks Romeo. And thanks everyone for joining us here this morning, or this afternoon or this evening, depending on which time zone you're coming in from. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Dan Wilton, the CEO of First Mining Gold. I'll just kind of set the stage here. You know, it's been it's been a very busy summer

1:46 with us at First Mining. We'll talk about some of the things that we've achieved here. I think very important milestones on our way toward some even bigger milestones coming in the fall, winter and really in the next 6 to 12 months to come. So just a quick background, First Mining is advancing 2 of the largest Gold projects in Canada. Our Springpole Gold project is in an advanced stage of the environmental assessment process And we are targeting that environmental assessment decision in Q1 of 2025, or 26, sorry. And we also are advancing the Duparcay Gold Project in Quebec, where we're continuing to have some phenomenal exploration results. We have a 3.5 million ounce, measured and indicated, a 2.5 million ounce inferred resource there right now, and very clear path to demonstration of resource growth at DuParcay and something that is a very exciting second leg to the stool here. One of the most exciting things that we've seen and we are seeing in real time here now is the illustrious Paul Morris, our Director of Investor Relations, has often said and often reminds us that we've been having in the last few months some

3:16 good investor traction, almost in the absence of the rest of the world starting to focus on the mining industry. Particularly call it in the last 4 weeks, we've seen that really starting. And we're starting to see the investment flows coming into the sector. And that's something that we haven't seen in years. Now a lot of that coming into gold into physical gold. But we're really starting to see those flows coming in to the gold equities, particularly the producers who are generating record levels of free cash flow. And for those of you who followed kind of what the second quarter results have been like, an unbelievable amount of cash being generated in the sector.

4:01 And that's important for us as we move forward because a lot of that cash is going to need to find new productive capacity opportunities like the ones that we have. And you know we are starting to see Investors looking down market cap, they're starting to look for earlier stage opportunities. They're starting to look for value where some of them have seen 2 and 3 and 4 X returns in some of the producer names. I think the developer sector is really starting to get some focus. I think we're just at the early stages of that. So really interesting opportunity and place in where we are in the market right now. But we thought it'd be super helpful to have Florian Grumus, who's been a good friend and partner of ours here over the last number of months, come and give a bit of a technical view and start on technical view of gold and silver, and then a little bit of a technical view on first mining. Because I think this starts telling a story where we have struggled to see momentum

5:04 for years as a sector. I think Florian can can really give a bit of a sense of how we're starting to see that momentum play out in the technicals and first mining stock, which is exciting. So we'll turn it over to Florian and then when when he's finished and come back to me I'll just walk through what some of these catalysts are coming up and then we'll get to the questions Awesome, Florian if you can hear me the floor is yours. Yes, I can hear you Welcome everybody also from my side. I couldn't really hear Anyway, I'm going to take over now and share my presentation So I'll give a little update on the gold market of course the macro situation the fundamental situation and a little bit of a technical update. And then we also take a look at the first mining gold chart, which I think is looking pretty exciting.

6:00 Can you just confirm that you see my screen and that you can hear me well? Yep, looks great So obviously I'm cooking with water like everybody else. So please do your own due diligence This is not financial advice Gold has been consolidating over the last 4 and a half months since the end of April. And we've seen real fireworks over the last basically 2 weeks. Gold finally broke out of this consolidation pattern and rallied sharply higher. We had a low at $3,311 just 3 weeks ago and yesterday gold reached a new all-time high at $3,578.

6:49 So yeah, it looks pretty good. It looks bullish, of course. We are in the bull market. I think most of the viewers are aware of that. And first of all, I want to look at some of the macro drivers of that bull market. I mean, it's nothing new, but you know that the M2 money supply in America is expanding, especially again since the last 2 years, basically. We had a little dip when they started hiking interest rates in 2022, but that is of the past and over the last 2 years and especially last year and this year, you can see that the M2 money supply is clearly rising again. So it surged by 1.36 trillion, actually, over the last 2 years. So that's 1 driver, the liquidity always in today's markets, whether it's the stock market, or crypto, or, of course, the precious metals and the mining stocks, but also real estate. They all depend on the liquidity in the market.

7:53 And as long as the money supply is rising, that's very helpful for all asset classes. And no surprise, gold is strongly tracking or following that With m2 money supply as you can see in this chart Of course, sometimes it's lagging. Sometimes it's running ahead Overall, it's simply following or tracking tracking it. So there's no reason to believe or assume that this trend will change here. You can see it is basically the last 60 years in the making this expansion of the money supply. And it's not only in America, it's of course on a worldwide basis. So if you look at the global M2 money supply, just since the financial crisis, the global money supply has more than tripled, more than 70 trillion new dollars basically out of thin air created.

8:55 That's an increase of more than 200% since the financial crisis on a global basis. So this is of course fiat money looking for assets and one of the asset classes that is, of course, benefiting from it is the precious metals. And I think that's obviously one of the main drivers for the precious metals bull market that we are in. And another one which is happening parallel to the expansion of the M2 money supply in America, but also globally, is of course the global debt. Nearly on a daily basis nowadays from various countries we hear debt problems today. Again France was in the headlines, I think yesterday it was UK.

9:43 Wherever you go, Japan of course I think over the weekend some news. So wherever you go, you can see in the Western world that the debt structure or the debt situation, the debt levels have reached rather unsustainable heights. And yeah, in the end of the day, global debt is rising. It's a new record that has just been reached. And of course, that is also a big driver, because it's not only that somebody is a creditor, but there is also a debtor. And of course, that is one of the big drivers. The debt markets in the Western world are in big troubles. You can see the long end in the bond markets.

10:29 The interest rates are not coming down, even though, for example, in America, the Fed is saying they want to lower interest rates. They are basically not able anymore because the market is not accepting lower interest rates anymore. If you basically lend money for 10, 20, 30 years and you see these rather high inflation numbers and rather high uncertainty levels, you're not willing to accept 2, 3, 4 percent in the longer run. That's what's coming. That's basically what we also think, what I think we're seeing right now in the gold market, that lots of institutional money is leaving the bond market and moving into gold because there is a debt crisis and the long end in the bond market is not under control of the central bankers anymore. So that's another very big driver.

11:19 And speaking of central banks, of course, especially since the invasion of Russia into Ukraine and the confiscation of Russian assets in the Western world, we have seen central bank gold purchases spiking. And this trend seems to be very strong, of course, mainly supported by the Chinese central bank, but there's lots of other central banks buying gold. And again, there is no reason to believe that this trend is changing anytime soon. Quite the contrary, looking at the price action in the gold market, you can quite surely assume that the physical market is so strong also because central bankers quickly stepping in to diversify their assets out of the US dollar, out of the Western fiat system as well and that's a trend that will continue.

12:15 So the Western retail gold investors are still not really participating in this whole bull market. It is mainly driven by central bank purchases and of course by the strong physical demand from China. This chart I think tells everything. It's the Shanghai gold exchange and basically the inventories for the futures gold contracts. And you can see that since The breakout here happened last year in February 2024. This, the inventory of gold stocks spiked dramatically and that's the main driver. And that's the physical backed futures exchange in Shanghai.

13:03 And that's what is creating all the problems at the paper gold markets in the West, at the LBMA in London, and also at the Comex in America. Because the paper shenanigans cannot continue to play their games like they used to play. We know that in the past 150 to 200 paper ounces of gold were basically used to create the price finding for 1 real physical ounce of gold. And now with the strong massive demand for physical gold, especially out of China, this whole COMEX short position basically is melting. We've seen huge imports into America over the last few months and I think that's also the reason why gold has held up so well over the last few months. We've seen a consolidation high levels even though it was a big rally already until April.

14:01 Gold only pulled back until towards 3,120. And immediately strong buying powers came back into the market. And that's the reason I think still a lot of big institutions, big private money and companies that basically have sold all these paper gold products are still basically short in the market and they need to cover their products or they need to cover their short positions because more and more people waking up to the fact, is the gold really there? And they demand the physical delivery or demand a proof. And it started at the LBMA in London last year in December, and this is not going away anymore. And so this trend is continuing.

14:47 The gold market is strongly supported by physical demand, especially, of course, the buying spree in China is continuing. And so, yeah, overall, I think there's all the reasons on the table to believe that the gold price in the mid to long run will move dramatically higher. It will not be a straight line higher. Of course, you will have lots of volatility and you're going to see sharp pullbacks. Last night we've seen one. Yesterday in the afternoon gold reached $3,578 and then pulled back nearly $70 overnight. But this is part of the game. That's, I guess, normal. But in the longer run, I'm very sure that we're going to see at least $5,000, more likely even $10,000 and $15,000 for 1 ounce of gold. But that's still in the future.

15:42 I mainly approach the market step by step. And to do that now I want to go to some technical charts. So first of all let's zoom out a little bit. This is the monthly chart for gold. You can see the bull market started here in the left corner in the early 2000s at $250 And then we had this first bull market between 2001 and 2011. Gold rose to $920 within 10 years, then sharply pulled back. That was nearly 50% correction down to $1,038 in December 2015 and then recovered and overall since basically the summer of 2011 until the breakout last year in February We had this huge cup and handle pattern in the making nearly 14 years gold consolidating within that pattern and Finally last year in February we got this powerful breakout and as you can see since then there's no stopping gold is just rushing higher and has reached the first 2 price targets out of this cup and handle pattern and now as of yesterday I said it before a new all-time high at $3,578.

17:00 If we zoom into the weekly chart, you can see that this was the triple low in September 2022. That was the year when the Fed started hiking or raising interest rates. Everything came under pressure, gold as well. Gold made that triple bottom here at 1615, so that's basically 3 years ago, and since then gold was able to more than double. So gold is up more than 100% since that triple bottom. And as you can see, there is this horizontal resistance of this cup and handle pattern. Once it broke through this resistance here last year in early spring, yeah, there was no holding back anymore and gold really strongly rallied throughout basically the whole year until that new all-time high in late April and then again a consolidation over the last 4 months and here we are again breaking out to new all-time highs.

18:03 So very bullish pattern, clearly continuation of this uptrend. Everything's bullish on this chart. Can there be a breather and a pullback? Of course, always. But I don't see any indication that this bull market is turning here It looks very bullish and I think you can actually assume that the bull market is rather accelerating here So zooming in further. This is the daily chart and This was the top in last October. And then gold went into a two-month consolidation pattern here, kind of a triangle. Beautifully breakout here early this year and strong rally, 3,500 in late April, 22nd of April.

18:52 A hard sell off within just a few weeks down to 3,120. And that was already the low of the whole consolidation. In hindsight, looks like a buying opportunity already. Then gold is here up nearly 10% since then. And again, over the last 4 months, basically another triangle consolidation pattern, which has been resolved now with this breakout a few days ago. And again, you can see if energy gets compressed in these triangle formations for a few weeks or a few months Once it's being released. Yeah Really the breakout really can be very strong and sharp and that's exactly what happened over the last few days Now if you take the height of that triangle and add it to the breakout level, we have a next price target realistically, I would say 3,750 is probably the next price target.

19:43 Maybe already within a few weeks, possible, alternatively over the next few months of course. That's I think the first price target. Then the second price target, very simple, I mean we are in uncharted territory here so second price target is more of a psychological one, a round number, people are focusing on these round number resistance kind of zones, so $4,000 would be the next one. And then above that, if you take the whole rally, the Lexans, mid of December until April, and use this as a measured move, and you add that basically on the breakout a few days ago, you end up at 4,400 each. So these are the next 3 price targets on the way higher that I see over the next few weeks, months, latest I guess by spring next year but it could happen actually very quickly here as well.

20:43 So that's the outlook that I have for gold and looking at the price forecast here, of course, yesterday we had this little reversal here. So I wouldn't be surprised if gold comes back below 3,500, maybe in the next few sessions, and maybe even test that former resistance of the triangle. So let's say worst case for a pullback, maybe 3,400-ish. But I doubt that it will pull back much further below that number already. And then, of course, higher prices. As I said, 3,750 is my next price target. And I think it's likely maybe even already in September. Stock market seems to be a little bit in challenging water here that fits the seasonal pattern. So maybe gold can stay strong in September while the stock market is continuing to correct.

21:34 And then once the stock market maybe makes a low, a typical weak low in September, then maybe stock markets can recover and then gold makes a bit of a correction, but obviously from higher levels than where we are trading right now. So yeah, that's my outlook for gold in the short term. Very bullish midterm. Yes, we are a little bit overboard, so you have to always assume that there can be 100,200 dollar pullbacks any time now. But in the longer run, the picture is very bullish. The trends are clearly pointing towards higher prices. And you just have to be patient and buy the dips, basically. And speaking of buying the dips, this is first mining gold.

22:21 That's a long-term chart going back the last nearly 10 years. You can see that like basically all other stocks in that sector, It's been a rather difficult period since the top in 2016. We had 1 strong bounce in the early summer 2020 after the COVID crash, if you remember. But the important takeaway from the very long term chart here is that the support zone around the 10, 12 cent kind of zone has held. It's been a strong basing pattern. This is the basing pattern here over the last year. Let's say 1 1 and a half years And you can see break through that former downtrend That was the first very positive signal and now obviously the second very positive development over the last let's say 8 months.

23:22 The stock is now in an uptrend. Clearly has broken that down trend over the last from the last 10 years. The trend has changed. I think it's a completely different picture now. You can see that the long-term

23:37 50-week moving average here is also clearly moving higher now. So it's been a successful basing pattern. And yeah, we can already see on that weekly chart here that there is much higher price targets potentially possible. You can also see that the stock has reached an 18-month high very recently, and the stock is up 50% just over the last 1 month. So clearly a turnaround and clearly an uptrend now together, of course, with the sector itself. It took much longer for many of the mining stocks than many people expected, but probably it's more sustainable because what we don't want to see is something like in 2016 where the stock sort of sector is rallying for 5 6 months very hard and then Everything breaks down and then it takes years again for the for the next uptrend, right? So this looks much more sustainable here.

24:32 And if we continue to zoom in over the last few months, this is the daily chart basically since the beginning of this year. You can see this is also the basing zone here, strong support. And we had this kind of wedge consolidation and the stock finally broke out and Yeah, make made a new really high just as of yesterday and Also an 18 months high and you can see 200 day moving average now pointing higher Good support here. Also the 50 day moving average at 18 cents. That looks very supportive. It's good to see the moving averages clearly below the price action and basically lining up and moving higher. And if We zoom out a little bit, yeah, break out of this wedge formation and the basing pattern and next resistance zone is around the 26 cent kind of zone. So I'm very bullish here. I think that looks very promising

25:31 And the stock has a lot of catch-up to do so it looks pretty pretty good to chart here, I would say. And that's it from my side. If you want to know more about what I'm doing, there is a daily gold call that I'm publishing. Thanks to First Mining Gold, they are sponsoring it. And it's basically a chart on the gold market every day for anybody who wants to keep up with the daily developments of the gold price. Please subscribe here on Substack. It's free of charging. You get it directly in your email

26:02 box on a daily basis. So that's it for me I'll be around for questions, of course, and if you want to visit my website, we have Monthly weekly daily research on gold silver Bitcoin and the mining stocks That's it. Thank you very much And I give over to Dan Thanks, Lauren, I mean, yeah, it's it's a pretty exciting story. You know, I think what we love to talk about here is the translation of this excitement in the Gold market into fundamental value in first mining. That's really what our big projects give us here. I'll touch on that for a bit as we go forward here. Just bear with me a second. Let me know when that has showed up on people's screens.

26:57 Yep. We're all good. Okay so we're making a few forward looking statements here. It's A couple of things to point out, you know, it's obviously been, as I said at the outset, it's been a very busy summer for us. A significant part of that was us kicking off our financing, which started in July, closed in August.

27:21 You know, we went out to raise on announcement, it was sort of a total of $20 million. We had overwhelming support from largely our existing shareholders. I just want to take a chance to say thank you to our shareholders.

27:43 The fact it was really that shareholder support that was really crucial in how we priced and executed this offering because we knew we had significant amounts of support from existing shareholders. And probably in the end could have raised $70 million if we'd have taken everything that was offered to us. So a lot of investors ended up being cut back. We really made an explicit focus to try and make sure that our existing investors were looked after. It's something obviously that's very important to us. But it leaves us in a very strong position. So we're sitting today around $40 million in cash and marketable securities.

28:31 And that gives us a very, very clear runway to go and hit these milestones that we're going to be talking about. And I think, you know, a couple of other things that I would point out to, you know, the average daily volume has really been ticking up. You know, Historically, that's been about 2M shares a day. In the last few months, more like 3.5M. We've had a couple of exceptional days. I think a couple of days ago, it traded almost 10M shares.

28:59 I think that's another very good sign. Lots of people still looking to get involved in first mining and now that we're financed, really the only opportunity for that to happen anytime in the near term here is for people to be buying in the market. So it's very exciting times.

29:18 The other thing I'd point out is we've had a couple of analysts who've initiated on first mining over the last few months. So Marcus Giannini and Haywood initiated, I want to say in April, with a $0.65 target. Brandon Gaspar at SCP just initiated this past week with an $0.85 price target. So these are people who've done a lot of homework and look at a lot of different stocks. This is their near-term price forecast. So another, I think, very exciting development for us is just an indication of the increasing focus. And ultimately, I think there is a real opportunity for us to see this institutional shareholding base grow.

30:05 We brought in some great institutions as part of the financing,

30:09 but there's still, you know, we're still like most developers are still dramatically underheld relative to some of our peers. I won't spend much time kind of looking at the price charts. I can never do this justice versus how Florian does. But I think it does show a bit of a change in the momentum and a bit of momentum that's building in the share price, which we're excited about. But again, to express why we're so confident

30:43 on the market finally seeing some of this fundamental value, it really is coming down to what we see as the fundamental value of our assets in the company. So we've talked for a long time about, we call this the re-rating chart, you know we're sitting today just with the technical studies that we have on SpringPool and DuParquet with what is call it $1.50 a share of net asset value. But remember, that's with

31:13 the SpringPool study done at $1,600 an ounce. This is less than half of the current gold price. And that's with DuParcay done at $1,800 an ounce. So historically and currently, advanced stage developers, ones with projects that have environmental assessment approvals and are towards a construction decision tend to trade between 0.5 and 0.7 times that fundamental value. So that alone, just based on

31:45 what I would call dated studies at way outdated prices, shows a pretty clear trajectory here to, you know, something that could be like 75 cents a share. But where this starts getting really interesting is when you look at the leverage that these large gold prices give our investors to the gold price. So with SpringPool and DuParcay, every $100 in the gold price translates into $250 million of that after-tax net present value. It's phenomenal leverage when you factor in, as of the close yesterday, that's almost $2,000 an ounce on Springfield in terms of potential value increments.

32:33 At $150 million US per $100 an ounce, you can see we're literally talking about billions of dollars of fundamental value that the gold price movement

32:47 has given to our assets. Now we need to keep moving them forward. We need to keep hitting these milestones. But at some point, you know, where we have been trading at significant discounts to a net asset value, at some point that gap starts to close. And we're starting to see that. It feels like some momentum, and really not just for us. I think we're seeing it through the development space, which is exciting, because I think it really does mean that investors broadly are starting to look more at value. We're going to start seeing some of these flow of funds coming down to the development sector. And importantly, strategically, the industry still needs to replace its reserves. The industry is having trouble finding more gold through exploration. And particularly gold producers have seen some very interesting charts that demonstrate that their spend continues to decline on exploration in spite of where we are. And if you look at what is actually generative exploration versus what's just right beside their existing operations, very, very little capital being spent by gold producers in trying to find more gold. In large part, because they're not very good at it.

34:04 History has shown that. So at some point, when they need to replace reserves and resources, they are going to need to buy projects. And I think when we have projects like these of globally significant scale and significantly moving forward.

34:23 I think at some point these assets like the ones that we have, and I appreciate we've been saying this, I've been saying this since 2019, but you know, we want to be skating to where the pucks going to be and we want to have these assets ready at the time that the industry needs them the most. That time is here. And if you know, we look at at Florian's price forecast for gold and you start thinking about the incremental value that we can see from these projects,

34:56 it's very exciting to think about just on a fundamental value basis where the price of the first mining shares can go. So as I said, it's been a very busy year for us, but a couple of really important milestones that we've hit this year. In July, we announced our long-term relationship agreement with Mishka Gogamang First Nation. And that was the result of years of discussions and really years of commitment from, you know, particularly the chief and council at Mishka Gogamang who you know, really committed to building a relationship with first mining. And it's one of those things that we really do value. But I think it's a real statement of our intent on how we want to work with Indigenous communities around the Springfield project.

35:48 So delighted to be moving forward there. We also successfully divested our 20% interest in the Hope Brook gold project for some cash and shares in Big Ridge Gold. Those shares are up significantly from when we had announced that deal as well, but continue to leverage the other assets in order to bring capital into the company to continue to stretch the runway here. Successful financing, $36M in new equity from existing and new investors. And I think again, that sets us up very, very well. We are very well funded to see our way through these milestones we'll talk about. We also brought forward that final Silver Stream payment with First Majestic.

36:34 And we continue to have very, very encouraging exploration results at DuParcay, as I said at the outset. Almost every drill hole, we continue to find Gold and often finding Gold, building out a bunch of new parallel zones and extending mineralisation into new areas, really demonstrating that resource growth. So keep your eyes peeled on more exploration results coming from DuParcay. We've had a pretty consistent exploration program since, let's call it, we started drilling in March in 2025, and have had drills turning most of the time since then. So a good backlog of results here that we're still getting assays back and should have consistent news flow on the exploration front at DuParc at least through the end of the year. Continuing to demonstrate that that project is one of the largest and one of the most robust Gold projects in the Abitibi in Quebec.

37:34 So what's coming in the next 12 months? I mean, you think about where we are today and where we expect to get to. Major milestones on the horizon, particularly the Springpole EA decision. Now, it's been a little bit delayed from the timeframe that we were working toward earlier in the year. So pushed into the first half of 2026, but I think for very logical reasons, and it has a lot to do with the process we've been going through with the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada, particularly, and the province of Ontario, and working with the Indigenous communities that we've been working with. It's a lot of great work that's been done by the communities and a lot of things that, you know, I think we still have needed to discuss and questions that we have been driving forward and answering. So providing I think enough time for everyone to make sure that they are comfortable in the project going forward, we're making very, very good progress on that. So continue to think we get that EA decision, it's going to be a major, major catalyst for Spring Pool and for first mining.

38:53 Moving from that EA approval into a feasibility study, there'll be some fieldwork we need to do this winter, but ultimately targeting a feasibility study that we'd like to have out in 2026 that would demonstrate really the current scope of the project and how we're going to take that forward. We continue with exploration at DuParcay and I think making, as I said, making very good progress there. We're well funded for an exploration budget all the way through 2026 with some of the flow-through funding that we raised in our financing, so very, very well set up there to continue to show growth at DuParcay. And then continue making progress, working with the indigenous communities around Spring Pool and working with other communities around Spring Pool and DuParcay in terms of building, really building that social license that's critical for moving our projects forward. So hopeful to have some really important catalysts to talk about there too in this same time frame. So with that, you know, I think We will move on from here onto questions.

40:03 Obviously, most of the people on the call here know Paul Morris, but if anyone has any questions and wants to reach out, you can always get a hold of Paul at FirstMiningGold.com. Paul is always there to make sure that we're answering your questions and getting the information that you want to see. So with that, I will turn it over to Ramiro and we'll get into questions. Awesome. Thank you very much, Dan. And thankfully, a lot of the questions that came in over email and in chat, particularly with the timeline for DuParc and Springfield have been covered. So I'm going to not jump into those so much, but I'll take some of the follow-on questions. Florian, I wanted to get you back in here quickly just because there were a couple of questions for you directly from the chat. So I want to jump in. One was, do you foresee any changes from Trump assent, adding gold back into the US system for treasury backing or to stabilize the US dollar?

40:58 The writer notes that the rest of the world is clearly moving to physical gold and away from dollars? So do you think that move will have any impact? Yeah, it's an interesting question and actually a very interesting situation. As the question rightly points out, the Chinese, the Russian, the Indian Central Bank and also the politicians clearly have been moving towards gold and continue to move towards gold, while the Americans are all over with crypto and digital assets. And it's very interesting, I mean, from my German-European perspective, On the one hand, it's very impressive how open-minded and aggressive America tends to embrace new technologies. That's certainly one of the strength. But at the same time, we all know that there's lots of questionable stories or truth about the crypto sector and about, of course, also Bitcoin.

41:54 It's been embraced by the Wall Street over the last few years. And at the same time, massive gold imports towards America to back the Comex short positions. There has been promised an audit of the golden Fort Knox. We haven't heard anything about that anymore. So Putting this all together, I think the Trump administration has been extremely pro-crypto. Unbelievable what happened in terms of regulation. Massive movement. You can actually, by the way, say that it's been rather disappointing the price action for Bitcoin, given what happened in America. A 180 degree change in the form of how the digital world has been perceived by the politicians.

42:39 So I assume down the road the Americans will come with some form of a stable coin backed by gold. That's what I think that will come. But this is still too early to really talk in detail about it. I think Scott Besser clearly understands the situation. He is also some form a gold bug. Trump's family background is also actually coming from gold. So something like this will happen. And I wonder how this really will play out, because as I just laid out, while the East clearly is ahead in terms of the gold game, America is pushing hard on digitalization and digital assets. So it's going to be very interesting. And the big question will be, of course, will America have enough gold to back maybe some bonds or stable coins in the future with gold?

43:31 As we know, most of the gold has been going to the East in recent years. So I think something will come, but it will probably take time. But it will come, because I think slowly but surely the confidence into the American leadership and also into the US dollar is eroding. So let's say over the next 5 to 10 years, I can definitely imagine something. And it is probably coming through the back door and not very obvious. It's slowly creeping in and actually they're changing already the money system in America. So it's going to be very interesting how this plays out. Great. I appreciate that very much. Dan, a quite large number of questions for you. Obviously, we've only got 15 minutes left in today's session, so I'll try to get to as many as we can. One question came up on email and in the chat.

44:18 Somebody asked, what DuParcay questions were you hoping to answer with this year's exploration campaign? That's a good question. I think the real focus of the exploration was seeking to answer the question of where are the avenues for growth for the deposit. You know, we in the prior years had tagged into a couple of these kind of parallel zones on the north and the south. Think of the north zone and the South Zone, particularly well-named for that. But further to the east, you had some very interesting success in areas called Mirwar and Ayi, which are similar sort of contact zones to the main cyanide ore body and didn't really expect to find them. Some of them were found almost by accident as we were trying to drill deeper on the main cyanide ore bodies, but have continued to be able to demonstrate the resource growth that's coming in these parallel zones, which tend to be higher grade.

45:22 We're just trying to understand what the continuity of those zones are. Very much additive exploration. We've drilled a few holes to go deeper to try and demonstrate the vertical continuity. Another element that we recall is that the deepest drill holes at DuParcay are only about 600m down. Most store bodies in the Abitibi don't really get going until about 1,000m. So understanding what's between 600 and 1,200m, we're confident that there's potentially another 5 million plus ounces there. So there's no reason that there's not. So some of it was just testing some of those. We're still waiting to get some of those results back, which I think are going to be interesting. But no, those were the main questions. The real focus has been on understanding resource growth and in some senses, filling in the gaps that historic property ownership and property boundaries had kind of represented, particularly between you know central DuParquet and Dumico, there's an area called Volentre now which we've drilled and shows that that's all one deposit. And so doing a little bit of thinking and mind planning in terms of, you know, if you have 2 pits that become one pit, that tends to do very, very good things for the economics of the deposit. So Yeah, those are really the main questions. It's all been around resource growth at DuParcay. And I think we've been able to demonstrate that there's a lot more.

46:53 Great. I have one question I'm going to throw to both of you, actually, and this is from Mark in the chat. I'd love to get you guys to look into crystal balls. So that's what this says. I said a lot of analysis points to a 4 dollar Canadian share price and everything's in place for first line and gold. Would you say this is achievable? Florian, I can start with you. Well, I mean, in a bull market, the surprise is always to the upside, first of all. And we know that the sector has been in a long bear market, long correction. Most of the investors have given up and we also know that this sector is famous for extreme gains once it's really starting to ready. So I wouldn't be surprised to see at least 80 cents to a dollar down the road. And I mean, of course, it's maybe been a bit of a different time back then and a different kind of company, but I mean the all-time high was around 130 Canadian and I mean look if it only takes 2 companies really wanting to buy those projects, 2 of the major gold producers who are now swimming in money because at these gold prices they're making a lot of money. The margins are incredible for the big producers. It just takes 2 of them to bid each other higher.

48:14 And then, yeah, I think sky can be the limit. Remember, in a bull market, the surprise is coming to the upside. Yeah, I mean, from our perspective, Can you see net asset value at $4 Canadian a share? Absolutely. I think if you look at the net asset value of the projects we have today, at a spot Gold price, it's probably pretty close to that, if not higher than that. Now, there's been some cost inflation. We need to keep our expectations a little bit managed around that because obviously from when we did the studies, there has been capital and operating cost inflation, But we're working through that. And the reality is I think even over the last couple of years, your capital costs have probably inflated 10 or 15 percent. But over the last couple of years, the price of gold is up 50 percent, 100 percent.

49:19 So I think where it starts getting very interesting is the real question of where are we in the gold price, and where do we get to in the gold price in a realistic time frame? And you look at the fundamentals that Florian talked about around money supply and around debt concerns, around potential currency devaluations that will be associated with that, around potential outcomes of debt spirals. When the rest of the world realizes they want to hold a safe asset, there would be some safety inequities that can pass on inflation. But people are going to go to gold. And if you get gold up to a $10,000 or $15,000 value, which I'm not the first person to say that it could go there, particularly on a, you know, you look at the revaluation of US gold reserves and what's required to back the currency.

50:17 You know, one of those kind of extraneous factors come in. It doesn't really cost anyone anything, but the price of gold goes way up. In a scenario like that, yeah, I think, you know, the economics of these projects start getting crazy. And the scarcity of the projects, and particularly near-term developable projects. Will become even more cute so yeah all of those things I think can combine I'm not gonna you know say today that. It's going to that level but can I foresee a couple of circumstances in a, I mean, not in a 20-year time frame, like in a 3 to five-year time frame where you could see that type of value? Yeah, I think you can, because I think it's underpinned by the fundamental value of the assets. And that, I think, is the critical thing that we need to remember. Like, this is based on an advanced understanding of the geology of these 2 projects and some pretty decent understanding from an engineering perspective of how they could be developed.

51:18 Great, thank you. 2 people in the chat said, appreciate the response. I'll keep buying. So there you go. Now, there's a bunch of questions in the chat that I'm going to kind of gloop into one and throw it to you with just one of the framing that we got over email. Somebody says, why is it that smaller developers that are even close to being permitted get bought by major producers? Investing in first mining seems like a no-brainer. What's holding the producers back right now? You know, I think the reality, We've been having ongoing discussions with producers since I got here in 2019. I think the reality is we are, I mean there are a number of those discussions ongoing, I'd just say first of all, and we've had pretty continuous discussions. I think from their perspective, the advancements in the environmental assessment process have been pretty key.

52:13 I think on balance, just given some of the perception issues around the development plan and, you know, the deposit in the Bay of the Lake and perception around challenges that might be around a permitting process like that, if you hadn't done all of the homework to really understand everything that we had done. I think it's always been a project that's been easy to wait for the milestone, right? Like We'll see, and if you get there, come and talk to us. We've had a bunch of those types of discussions over the last while, but I think an increasing pace of larger companies and increasing seriousness with which they're coming to understand that they're generating all this cash flow, they need a project to build, they want that project to build in Canada, and there is just not much that they're gonna be able to build over the next 5 years.

53:12 So again, coming back to that real scarcity, and I mean, extended from Canada, go to like any kind of tier 1 jurisdiction. There's really not much to do that is of size. So you know I think increasing focus that we're getting and ultimately there's you know the the corporates like the broader market there's always been a certain proportion of them and a pretty high proportion that we knew that we're gonna have to deliver on milestones in order to have the credibility to say look you're gonna be able to build a mine here. But in 2019, that was a pretty long wait. Like where we are today, that's not that long. And I think those major milestones really are kind of around the corner. And now we can say, hand on heart, we're very well-funded to get to those milestones.

54:06 So I think you'd see a lot of that activity starting to escalate, you know, through the fall and winter. And then, you know, the next real kind of major, major catalyst post the environmental assessment approval and agreements with Indigenous communities would be having your permits and being construction ready. That's, you know, and that's another, you know, scope of work that we're going to need to go through after we get the EA approval. But I think once you have that EA approval, that is the major, major project approval. And I think that's the real catalyst. Awesome. No, appreciate that. One quick 1 for the came in over email, somebody knows their American friends want to invest, but for some reason can't purchase on exchanges. He's telling them FF is hot. Is it possible right now for Americans to purchase on American exchanges?

55:01 It is OTC. So we're not we're not listed on any exchanges, but we are listed OTC on the OTCQX at FFMGF. So most platforms you're able to trade on OTC stocks on even most of the discount investing platforms. What we have found is it's been, you know, some of our investors in the US who participate in our financings have difficulty moving those financing shares into accounts for whatever reason. But in terms of just being able to go and purchase, you know, from your brokerage account, if you look for FFMGF, you should be able to find. Perfect. I appreciate it. We've got time, I think, for one more question each. Florian, I'll throw it to 1 from the chat for you. Curious on how ongoing wars, both in the Caucasus and the Middle East, will have an ongoing impact on gold prices and what those conflicts ending could mean, or ongoing could mean for the gold price.

56:02 Yeah, I think we have to be honest, there is a certain war premium in the gold price. And that has been developing since the invasion of Russia into Ukraine. If you remember, that was the first attack after the COVID high in February, March 2021. Gold failed around $2,070 and that all happened around this invasion. And of course, it's been, I mentioned it before, I mean, the sanctions against Russian assets were one of the big drivers that central banks started to buy more gold. So if there would be a peace treaty between the East and the West, in a very big picture.

56:48 Of course, I think we could assume that God would correct and take at least a breather. However, we've seen it after the meeting of Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin, how difficult it actually is, the situation. And I think none of the politicians in the Western world, besides the Trump camp, really wants to see a peace agreement here. The Ukrainians are not willing to give up part of their country. They're not willing to accept the defeat that has actually been happened. Russia is controlling those parts. I don't think they want to give them back. So I think it will be very challenging to come to a real agreement here and it can take a long time.

57:35 And then again, I mean, look at the demonstration of power that happened over the last few days in China, where they presented all their latest military weapons and stuff, and I think there were even a few weapons that nobody had known existing in the West and look at what happened in the Israel-Iran conflict in June and how quickly things basically disappeared from the radar because obviously Iran had very strong weapons. And so it's going to be interesting. I don't think this... Because behind all of this, of course, is the big conflict, China and America. And China will at some point most likely take over the leadership on this planet. Might take another 10, 15, 20, 50 years, who knows.

58:24 I think Trump is doing everything to gain back some of the leadership right now, but who knows who's following him in a few years. And we've seen a lot of weak leaders in the Western world, especially also in the European Union over the last 2, 3 decades, actually. So I don't think we're gonna see a big peace treaty and back to globalization. I think that's off the table for now. And so I'm not too worried about it, but we have to be aware of it. Should there be some developments towards that direction and a clear, strong peace agreement between Russia and the NATO and America and maybe even the Chinese involved. Yes, that would probably lead to a falling gold price because there is still some more premium in the gold.

59:14 Awesome. Appreciate that. Dan, I got one last question for you and this summarizes 6 or 7 questions came in email and on chat, so I'll throw it to you here. Is the plan for first mining to sell these enormous assets to a big producer or is it to mine the gold and silver yourself? Obviously, it's a it depends answer, but I'll throw it to you. Best thinking right now. I thought you just answered it for me. It depends. I think our plan, having done this kind of work as a corporate finance advisor and as a private equity investor for 25 years before arriving at first mining. The one thing I would say is you need to have options, right? And you need to pursue a number of different paths. And then make sure that the shareholders have alternatives. And At the time, the board working for the shareholders can assess what the best of those alternatives are. The reality is for SpringPool, in our current configuration, raising $1 billion to build a project would probably be a challenge.

1:00:17 I think with SpringPool, it is likely that we go down the path of finding a partner. And I think we've seen that work out really well in a couple of other examples over the last couple of years. And part of it is like just the opportunity that this project, when it's construction-ready, represents. I think you can achieve a premium value by people putting money in the ground, which takes away both the construction and call it operating and financing risk from first mining. So that's one of the ways that we'll look at it, but of course, we're gonna have to go down a path of understanding what all of the options are that we have in order to finance a project.

1:01:02 At DuParcay, it's less of a challenge. I think with the infrastructure that's around in Quebec, I think DuParcay is a more scalable deposit in that We know that there are smaller and higher-grade starter operations 1 could pursue to get into production at a lower capital cost. That's one that once we get the EA decision at Springpole and we've charted the path forward there. I think in 2026, we do really want to put some focus on DuParquet and lining up what that development plan is going to look like as well.

1:01:48 And I think there's, you know, there's a scenario where you find a partner for Springpole, I think there could be someone who'd want to come and get DuParquet pretty quickly. I think there are some people who would want to own both of them. I think, you know, we'd have no appetite to sell the company at anything like a premium to the current share price. So I think there's some things we have to do to kind of surface that value over the course of the next couple of years as we hit these milestones. But yeah, I think at some point, you know, if you if you get to a value that everyone can agree makes sense and you know, delivers the best kind of risk adjusted return to the shareholders, you know, we're always going to be open to that. Awesome. Well, I know we went a bit over time and I'm positive didn't get to every question. But like I said, I will be sending it to both Florian and Paul Morris at First Mining. I'll get back to you as soon as possible. But Dan, Florian, thank you so much. A lot of great positive feedback from the chat. I think this was a great session. Really appreciate all of your thoughts and willing to be grilled by both me and the audience here. So thank you so much. I hope you guys have a great end of your day.