First Mining - Town Hall

0:07 Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, depending on where in the world you're signing in from. I'm joined today by FirstMiningGold CEO, Dan Wilton. How are you today, Dan? I'm good, thanks. Romeo, how are you? Good, good. I Just got a couple of things to run through before we open it up to some prepared questions. But I just want to say that today's event is being recorded and that recording will be available today in the afternoon, likely in the mid-afternoon.

0:31 It's also an interactive chat. In fact, we really encourage you to be interactive during this event. So there's a chat box in the bottom right of your screen. That's where you can ask questions at any time during today's hour. We'll try to get to as many as we can following the event. I will say there is a chance if we don't get to your question, I will make sure that Paul Morris gets your question. You can always e-mail him directly. I'll give you his e-mail at the end of the event. But I'll make sure that any questions you ask in the chat today, get to the First Mining team to be able to get back to you soon. We're going to do today, Stan's going to start with a little update

1:03 on first mining, and then we'll ask a number of the questions that you guys entered in advance of the event, and then we'll get into some live audience questions. Without further ado, I'll throw it to Stan. Perfect. Thanks, Romeo, and thanks everyone for joining us today. I'm coming to you from beautiful Winnipeg, Manitoba on my way back from a trip up to our Springpole project yesterday. So very excited and things moving forward well there.

1:27 I just thought we'd kick off here with just a little discussion about the gold environment and where we are, just to take 5 minutes, kind of set everyone's understanding of kind of what we're seeing as a project developer in the gold space. So if you'll bear with me here 1 minute, I'm just going to share my screen.

1:53 There we go. So, you know, this is one of the things that I think we hear from a lot of shareholders. And, you know, we're in an environment where the Gold price continues to go up, hitting all-time highs. You've now had some of the Gold producers, their share prices really start moving and the developers haven't yet. Certainly our share price hasn't really responded to this increase. So while frustrating, you know, this is this is kind of a hallmark of every of every gold market that there is always a first push into the producers. I think we're starting to see that push take on some real momentum, which is interesting. And I think the other thing on momentum is obviously, you know, more investors coming into the sector.

2:41 It's really starting to show up, I think, in the appetite that we are seeing from larger cap gold companies to look at development again. And that's been something that as we've gone through an inflationary period coming out of COVID, that appetite's been more muted. I think we're at a point now where We really are starting to see that. I mean, a couple of very good examples that we've seen on the acquisition front over the course of the last few weeks. I don't have it on here, but a Cisco Mining, obviously being acquired by Goldfields, you know, at a value of more than $200 an ounce resource in comparison with where we're trading at $7 an ounce with projects that are almost equally as advanced in stage, maybe not from a construction development side, but certainly from a permitting side, you know, we're a long way down the path like they are windfalls. So, you know, we think that's a very, very good omen where you're seeing, you know, gold mining companies now starting to recognize the need to add resources and particularly in critical places. We've talked about this a lot but you know over the last number of years you've seen a lot of activity and when you look at this chart Our takeaway is that just about every 5 million ounce project in Canada, if it's acquired, you know, not in the middle of construction when they'd run out of money, which is a couple of the cases on here, if

4:11 it's acquired pre-construction, post environmental assessment approvals, those projects have typically been acquired for $500 million plus. And that's not at record gold prices. We are now at record gold prices. So to us, I think it just sets very clearly the stage that we've been talking about for years. I mean, we said when I started here in 2019,

4:38 you know, the goal was to have these projects ready for the time that the industry needs them the most. And I think we're there. If we're not there, we're very much getting there. You know, we continue to remind people we've had an unprecedented level of build of gold projects in Canada in the last 5 years. 7 major projects built more or less at the same time. But they're all starting to pour gold, almost all of them. A few of them still finishing up this, the end

5:07 of this construction process. But there was a period 5 years ago where those mid-tier and large cap gold companies were a wash for choice in projects if they wanted to be part of something being built. Now it's down to a much smaller list and we keep reminding people that we've got 2 of the 10 largest gold projects undeveloped in Canada. One of the most advanced from a permitting perspective. So we're still on track to submit that final environmental assessment for Springpole at the end of October. And I think that puts in terms of, you know, rank this list by the projects that are next to get their EA approvals, Springpole, Eskay Creek, maybe Horn 5 are the ones that are very much at the top of that list.

5:58 So,

5:59 it leaves us and our projects in a very good position from the perspective of the industry. You know, and then I think the value thesis here is still intact. We show here the NPV of our pre-feasibility study at Springpole, but I'll remind you that was done at a $1,600 gold price. You know, gold price is over $2,500 today. DuParcay, that study done last year, so a pretty fresh pricing,

6:26 you know, operating and capital cost pricing, but at a gold price of $1,800 an ounce. We're sitting today and $700 an ounce higher than that. That's all margin that goes to augment those NPVs. But even sitting where we are today, we've always said we think there's multiple baggers here just in us sticking to the game plan, de-risking our projects and moving them forward. And then with a projects like we have, these large scale projects have really unparalleled leverage to the gold price. And that's where I get really, really excited here is we know that we've been increasing the fundamental value of these projects by de-risking them

7:09 in an operating and capital cost environment, which may have been a challenge, but a gold price environment, which is very, very strong. And we are all expecting to continue to go up. So that's really sort of what we wanted to talk a little bit on that side, just kind of setting the stage for why we think, first mining really is a project for this gold market. You know, we've heard that from a few investors. This seems to be a portfolio that was built for this market and the reality is that that was not unintentional. We have acquired an advanced and de-risked large

7:47 scale projects with meaningful leverage to the gold price. So with that, why don't we dive into the questions? Awesome. So like I said, I want to start with some of the questions that came in in advance, just so we can tackle some of those. Then we'll get to the already great questions that are running in through the chat. So the first one, and this is a number of investors asked this one, this is a kind of combination of a few. That's basically the timeline to production at SpringPool, looking for your best guidance for shareholders and prospective investors. So timeline to production, there's a couple of big assumptions 1 needs to make when you go through that, but we're still again, the main milestones on that timeline are submitting our final EA, which we're on target to do for October.

8:35 It's approval of that EA and, you know, we're still targeting approval of the EA in the federal process, certainly by the end of 2025, and hoping the provincial process is in and around that time as well. There's then probably another 12 months of permitting that would go on after that and more feasibility and de-risking work, targeting what could potentially be construction decision in 2027. And ultimately that would be targeting production end of 2029,

9:14 probably. So 2, probably a 2 to 2 and a half year construction period. Still a lot of work that we need to do to better understand that and important, you know, for everyone to understand. There's a lot of work between environmental assessment and, you know, having a shovel ready to go into construction.

9:33 Part of our ability to move that forward is gonna be to what extent does the value in the project get recognized when we move from the perception we've long had at this project, which is you'll never get your permits to a project, you know, which we'd love to have agreements with Indigenous communities, environmental assessment at hand. When we get to that point, and there is real, you know, real momentum on the project moving forward, I think it's worth a lot more than 7 bucks an ounce because comparable projects and just different projects, but call them broadly comparable projects getting acquired at 200 bucks an ounce. So it gives you a sense of what the range is there. Nope, makes sense. Next one, it's also a combination question. I know you've already tackled it a bit in your blurb at the beginning, but I don't want to give anybody's question short shrift. That's the gold's been hitting record highs. So a number of questions came in about when you think investors are going to roll back into the sector, chasing those gold gains. Just hoping to take your temperature here on when you think that might happen and how it'll impact first mining.

10:40 I think it's happening right now. I think we're seeing that in, you know, increasing holdings by non, you know, non mining focused funds, call it generalist investors who have now been looking at the gold sector for the last 3 quarters as probably gold miners as one of the best performing subsectors in any index. I think that accelerates. I think you have,

11:07 it is inherent. You're gonna see index rebalancing because they have done well. And those who are chasing indices are going to rebalance as well. And by the way, most active fund managers chase indices in terms of performance. So as the performance chasing starts, you're going to see this accelerate because those producers are still not trading at crazy multiples. When you actually look at multiples of nav, multiples of production, I think you've still got a ways to go in terms of that being value based on where the gold price has gone.

11:41 What are the catalysts that really get the developers going? I think we've started to see it, right? I think it is the M&A market, which we've talked about long coming here. You know, I think the Cisco transaction is a real bellwether, and I think we're gonna see more of it. And we saw our friends and partners at First Majestic this morning acquiring Gato Silver in what I think is a fantastic deal. You know, very on brand for First Majestic, strong synergies with a deal like that. But keep your eyes peeled because I think you're going to see over the next month, I think you're going to see 3 or 4 deals like that get announced. Whether it's mergers of mid tiers, whether it's acquisitions of smaller producers or acquisitions, strategic investments into companies, you know, like ours.

12:32 This is the environment where we're starting to see these things really come to play. So I'm very, very excited about it. I think we're all going to have a much better sense after the big conferences over the next couple of weeks in terms of where we're going. But yeah, I think this is exactly the environment where we see potentially some stocks like ours re-rate and that re-rating can be doubling or tripling in a short period of time. Sure.

13:06 I got one question. This is feel free to give whatever length of summary you'd like. But there are a couple of questions about basically what's what work has been done in the last 6 to 8 months of first mining, what achievements can investors point to from this year? I mean, lots of work that's going on. The real focus for us, certainly at Spring Bowl, has been moving forward with the environmental assessment and getting that final EA ready. I can't overstate how big a task that is. You're talking about 15,000 pages. It's a culmination of basically 10 plus years of work that have gone into the baseline data collection. A lot of great analysis and revision of project plans to really account for a bunch of the risks that have been identified going through this process. So I think we have a better project now, certainly.

14:04 Lower risk, you know, I think better thought through, better technical solutions than we had going into the start of it. So that's been a real focus. Continue, another real focus has been moving forward with and working with the indigenous communities around Spring Pool. An enormous amount of work going on, you know,

14:31 by the communities in terms of getting ready for that EA process, contributing into that EA process. And, you know, it's never lost on us that these are communities with a lot of priorities. And some priorities far more important when you're talking about community health and safety and, you know, community well-being's far more important than contributing to our process. So we really genuinely appreciate all of the effort that's gone in there as well. You know, We don't talk about those outcomes as much because it's a process. And we'll

15:10 endeavor to keep moving forward in that process, but really appreciate all the effort that the communities have been putting in. And then at DuParcay, you know, well, I'd say at Springpool too, and it's really kind of struck me over the last couple of days. We haven't really seen this certainly reflected in the share price. It's not something that you kind of beat the drum on. But the understanding we have of our projects at a fundamental geological level,

15:41 is night and day from where it was 2 years ago. And I give full credit to James Maxwell and Caroline Pienaar and our team, our exploration team, who, you know, have really made this their own. And I think we've made some real fundamental discoveries, you know, don't get a lot of credit for it, but I would say, you know, there's at least a couple of real on the verge of a couple of real discoveries in the Bertucci around Springpole. And then at DuParcay, with the exploration success that we're starting to see there, I think in terms of understanding the different, you know, real controls of higher grade there just gives us a lot more flexibility and optionality to be able to demonstrate the growth that's coming from there. So yeah, it's, you know, It's not been an idle time. And that's part of what is frustrating for us as a management team, frustrating for the shareholders.

16:39 But for us who see what we're doing day to day and not really seeing that reflected in an increased share price, rest assured that's very frustrating for us, but it's going to pay off. And we know it's going to pay off because that increased understanding and knowledge of our projects directly translates into

17:01 strategic interest in these projects, and really gives us a good opportunity to say, okay, we're moving forward. These projects have advanced, our understanding of them has advanced. And Now the exploration results coming forward from DuParcay, I think are gonna be very interesting because they stop testing a thesis and they start demonstrating a thesis. Great. Got one and it's kind of a tough question to answer. So to the best of your ability, but there's a composite of a couple. What is the strategy and timeframe to generate significant returns to investors? People were looking for hypothetical scenarios. Right. Well, I think I just go back to the thesis that we kind of opened up with here today. And that thesis is that there is a shortage of projects.

17:57 There is a shortage of opportunities to grow meaningfully

18:02 in the gold mining sector, particularly in Canada. And we've gone from in 5 years, gone from a period of abundant availability of development projects to

18:14 now what could you buy and build before 2030? That is a very, very short list. And I think we've advanced our projects into that. So, you know, I go back to, we used to say, you know, not to take any credit for paraphrasing the great Wayne Gretzky, but we were always gonna skate to where we knew the puck was gonna be, and

18:39 we're there and the puck's coming. So I think That really the strategy for us in terms of demonstrating the shareholder value, we hit these milestones. And I think that shareholder value gets recognized in one of a number of ways. It gets recognized in investors who start looking at what this deep value is relative to other projects when we've actually genuinely de-risked them and they have to judge our projects based on their merits. And when people look at our projects based on their merits, they benchmark very, very well versus a lot of the other opportunities. So it could be investors who start seeing that.

19:20 It could be other mining companies, strategic investors who see that, may become investors in first mining at some point. We've talked about that a number of times. Or that comes down particularly for a large project like Springpool to potentially, is there a partner that comes forward to say, okay, we've got a significant capital in front of us to fund that period from environmental assessment approval to

19:53 construction ready. If you look at how a bunch of the other deals have been structured around investments into these big Canadian assets, you know, that's been hundreds of millions of dollars that comes in for someone to earn into a 50% interest or something like that. I mean, debate what those numbers are, but it's in the hundreds of millions of dollars. So that I think where, you know, we keep advancing,

20:21 those external stamps of credibility are going to come and we know they're going to come. And those are things that I think can have very immediate re-rating opportunities. But for us to get there, I think an important part is, you know, we certainly as a management team and as a board need to know that we, you know, can get ourselves to particularly that EA approval at the end of 25. And we get to that, and that's obviously very much been our focus at SpringPool. We get to that, that I think really opens up that landscape. So, in 2022, that was a long way away. Sitting where we are today, you know, major project going through that process in what's now 16 months, you know, and don't even have to say 18 months anymore. Like those major catalysts are around the corner.

21:16 It's funny how quickly a long way away turns into a short way away, but you're telling me summer is over, right? Like, you know, it's crazy. Jumping into another question, somebody wrote in, actually, there's 2 people wrote in to ask, How concerned are you about a takeover bid of first mining? I'm a lot more concerned now than I was, you know, a couple of years ago. And that's just that you've seen the share prices of people who might want to take over first mining really increase. You know, I'm not yet losing sleep at night about it for a couple of reasons. Number 1, you know, I don't think there's a scenario where Keith Neumayer lets this company get bought cheap, to be frank, like, you know, I think there's, there's always going to be another path there for us. We're always going to have some other, you know, ability to generate competitive tension to surface a market price if it did come in. And it wouldn't be the first time we've seen that, right? Like, you think back a few years ago to

22:30 when a Noron got sold and it was a series of escalating bids that the top 1 ended up at 300% higher than the first one. I think in our situation, it's a little different in that there's a lot of people still sitting waiting to see these catalysts, waiting to see us hit these milestones.

22:55 When we hit these milestones and people know that you have a project at SpringPool that has environmental assessment approval, or we're demonstrating, you know, potentially a smaller, quicker to develop project at DuParcay, which I see is some of the questions that are coming up here as well. That's where, You know, I get a little more nervous about it, but no, the other thing is I spent, you know, 20 years as a corporate finance practitioner, been through a lot of hostile takeover bids. And ultimately, you know, it comes down to knowing that you have quality assets and generating competitive tension. And I think, you know, we're in an environment now where you can justifiably look and say, listen, if you're one of the 10 companies that wants to own, you know, a large scale development asset in Canada,

23:47 this is going away. So now's the time you have to get serious about it. And that's ultimately, you know, what can surface that competitive tension. So yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm more worried about it now than I was for sure. Fair enough. This is I know you've already touched on it, but I only ask because so many people ask that, so I just want to have a clear answer for it is, when will the EA be submitted?

24:10 By the end of October. There you go, thank you very much. This is also a composite of a couple, will financing be necessary prior to a construction decision? Yeah, and that's, I kind of made allusion to that before in terms of the timeframe. So, you know,

24:27 it kind of depends a little bit on, on, you know, are we advancing it ourselves? Or do you go find a partner? And are we talking about is financing required for first mining to get to construction decision?

24:41 Or is a financing required for is a first mining gold financing required for Springpole to get to a construction decision. So yeah, the short answer is we are going to need a total, I think I'd call the number probably 15 million Canadian from here to get to EA approval at the end of 2025. If that's really like if that's really all we're doing, and that's covering our corporate costs and other things. So that's sort of how we're thinking about the budgets. And then there's exploration on top of that. There's obviously a lot of good work we'd like to do at DuParcay.

25:28 But those numbers, I think, are largely scalable. And I hasten to remind everyone and all of our shareholders here that in a $2,500 gold environment, I think we have a lot more optionality with our 30% interest in Pickle Crow, right? We have a lot more optionality with our 20% interest in Hope Brook.

25:53 More and more inquiries about those projects coming in as well. You can't really tell when you're gonna be able to pull the trigger on something like that. But our shares in NexGold, for example, we've still got a number of levers that we can pull. We've talked a lot before

26:13 about royalties and the fact that DuParquet is largely unencumbered with royalties. Springpole, I think still has some room. So yeah, there's lots of flexibility for us to get certainly to that side, but yeah, one of the options is an equity financing for sure to help plug that gap and give some certainty to it. I appreciate that, makes sense. I got 2 more questions. I know there's so many great questions in the chat. We're just gonna get with them in a couple of seconds. I wanna get through 2 more that came in in advance just to make sure we're covering those. 1, and The only reason I ask is it's the second webinar in a row with First Mining that I've heard this question. I don't usually hear it about this

26:49 jurisdiction, so I'm eager to get your perspective. Are there any concerns about nationalization of mining in Canada? No.

27:10 No, I have no concerns. No, I have no concerns. What I do have concerns about is protectionism in Canada. And ultimately, limiting the competitive tension for a large scale gold project in Canada. If the most active buyers of gold projects worldwide were, you know, Chinese state-owned enterprises, the reality is we probably can't sell a project to a Chinese state-owned enterprise. Now, keep in mind, the government of Canada and the government of Ontario and their wisdom have yet to determine gold as a strategic metal. I kind of think it's the ultimate strategic metal when you talk about actually, you know, being able to keep your treasury funded, but technically those rules don't apply to us, but we all know those rules apply to us. So yeah,

28:00 I'm more concerned about a protectionist agenda, but I don't think there's any scenario where you have real nationalization of a mining industry in Canada. I don't think that'll ever happen. And I think what you're actually seeing now are a lot of levers that the government has been creating for companies like us to facilitate project financing. And that we're exploring a few of these ideas, particularly around partnerships with Indigenous communities and communities being able to own infrastructure around mines. And a lot of the funding of that infrastructure can come from, you know, loan guarantees and other really creative paths forward. So

28:53 yeah, I don't think there's a scenario where it gets nationalized. I'm a little concerned about, you know, what's your tax rate going to be when you get there with the mining code, but we'll still own it anyway. Of that, I would have great comfort. I appreciate that very much. One last one that somebody wrote in, just direct word to word, so I'm just gonna ask it to you the way they asked it, is what is it that you see that inspires you about First Mining's future?

29:22 I just came back from a trip up to Spring Pool yesterday. I'm very inspired with what that project can represent in terms of once in a generation development potential to drive infrastructure and benefit the lives of people in the community living around it. You know, that to me, they've been doing this for a long time, you don't often feel that intersection of, you know, really fundamentally changing people's lives and the work that we're doing day to day. I think there's real potential for that to happen.

30:05 You know, I, I think what am I kind of most excited about? I think 5 and a half years ago, or 5 and, you know, almost 3 quarters years ago when I started on this journey with this company, I think we were we were begging for a market like exactly the market that we have, you know, there's been a lot of things in between. But if you could have asked us for a dream scenario in 2019, and it said, okay, 2024 projects getting EA approval, you know, sort of like to have had a done a year or 2 earlier, but you know, we then got the right team in to get us through the process in the right way that's going to maximize our chance

30:53 of receiving the approval. But I'd have said, you know, targeting approvals in a $2,500 gold price environment with a project big and robust like this, let alone like, oh, and then we're gonna have another, you know, large scale, 5 million ounce plus project in the middle of the Abitibi in Quebec, which we see there's great, you know, great flexibility and maybe a different path for development. I never could have imagined that the company fundamentally, with the valuable assets that we have, be in the position that we are in. Like it's that part is just so dramatically exceeded expectations in an all-time high gold price environment. So the only frustrating part is, you know, it's the share price, literally.

31:39 You know, everything else seems to seem to kind of been coming true. And what that means is that, you know, we keep doing what we need to do to hit these milestones, the share price in a near term duration here is going to look after itself. There you go. So I'm gonna jump into the audience questions now from the, sorry, the live audience. There were 2 questions that clearly they jumped into the room and asked them immediately. I'm going to jump to that one first, which is about the DuParquet starter pit. Someone wants to know how long you think it'll take to get it going, 1 just wants an update on the progress. Yeah. We haven't made a big announcement about this, but we have kicked off kind of a PEA update at DuParcay based on some of the work that we've done on the starter pits.

32:29 What I would say is this, conceptually, there is a scenario where let's say, you know, we've talked how the projects in the middle of the Abitibi at last count, at our last count, there are 17 mills within 200 kilometers of this project, many of which are sitting on care and maintenance or have excess capacity. So let's imagine a scenario where we don't need to build a mill, you just need to actually start mining and trucking ore. I think there's a scenario at DuParcay, we've been told by some of our advisors, that would be kind of within a three-year time frame, you could take a smaller project there on the scale that we would look at for a starter pit.

33:19 We've looked at kind of 3000 tons a day, but in that, you know, in that kind of range, I think there's a scenario where you could get that project permitted, you know, inside of 3 years. And so that's one of the things that we're, you know, we're working on now in discussions with a few groups that have milling facilities around us, then just understanding if that's an option or at least understanding the trade-off of what that would look like versus starting smaller on a smaller, higher grade operation. I won't call it a starter operation. I just call it a right-sized, higher margin opportunity at DuParcay. Originally, we thought that that was only a few years of mine life. And I think with our work we've done now, we've come to understand that it's significant potential mine life for something of that kind of size and scale. So it's interesting. That's why we're pretty excited to kind of bring all that together and targeting Q1 next year to have a PEA update on that, which then just lets us talk about part of why we're so excited about it.

34:34 It's frustrating not be able to really get into numbers on it because it's exciting. So anyway, but still some work to do. I got to condition expectations a bit here. There is still some real work to do on it. That makes sense. One question in the chat, you know I love asking questions where you look into your crystal ball, but somebody wants to know if you expect the share price to move at the point of submitting the Spring Pool EA? Maybe I'm just, you know, had my own expectations conditioned by the market over the last 5 and a half years, because everything that I would have thought would have moved the share price. I wouldn't say they've all not done it, but certainly many have.

35:22 I would answer that question to say, do I think that us submitting the final EA is a major, major catalyst for this project? Yes, it absolutely is. And can we expect a share price reaction to that? I don't know. I hope so. But again, I think if we can get to a point of talking more about the environmental assessment approval. And if you don't get a share price reaction to that, then I'd have bigger questions. But yeah, I think it's a major catalyst. I think it kicks off and really puts the project in a very clear path. Still a lot of work to do on it over the ensuing period.

36:11 But I think it puts it in pretty rarefied air in terms of projects with a runway to get permitted near term. Awesome, thank you. David asked in the chat, this is about share counts. That's 2 part questions, so I'll ask both. Do you think the large volume of shares out is depressing the share price? And 2, are there plans to consolidate? I always push this share consolidation question to the chairman who has very clear views and is very clearly stated that we're not consolidating the shares. So do I think it depresses the share count or depresses the share price? No, I don't think it. I don't think it depresses the share. I don't think it's a real impediment to seeing the share price go higher. I think it's a bit of impediment potentially to the momentum with which that can happen.

37:03 And I say that only because, you know, you can trade the shares for half a penny and make 3% or something like that. So I think it does tend to have a little more aggressive, you know, maybe short term trading activity. But I don't, you know, I think the things that are going to get the project fundamentally re-rated are going to be fundamental in value. And I think people can see through the share count with that. So at this point, yeah, it's, you know, I'd always kind of say, absent some major catalyst to do it, then I don't think there's any plan to do it. Great.

37:50 You covered this bit already, but just want to address directly WCW Warren from the chat asked, update on boots in the ground over the summer on Springpole and DuParcay. Yeah, you know, keep your eyes peeled, Warren, because there is An update coming from a bunch of the regional Geology work that we've been doing at Springpole this year. So No drills yet Although we are anticipating You know launching on a small drill program at Spring Pole this fall. But a lot of the boots on the ground work at Spring Pole has been regional soil sampling, mapping, trenching, looking at a couple of those really high prospectivity Bertucci projects.

38:45 So more to come on that, but one of them, you know, we discovered a project, well, an area called Challenger, just north of Saddle, which is about 15km west and a little bit south of Springpole last year. And we drilled at Saddle last year and drilled 114,115m of 0.9, so like pretty, you know, significant intercept. And following it up, last year, our team then found about 350 meters north of that, found a grab sample that was mid-20s grams. So there's lots of smoke around there. And we've always known there's, there's a number of drill holes into saddle, which had been explored in the eighties. So, but this is, this looks and feels like something different.

39:30 And then at an area called Bronco, which is on the north side of Birch Lake, similar kind of distance from Springpole. So very interesting work that the team's done there. Hoping to have news releases out on that Birch Uchi regional stuff, you know, this week or next would be the goal, but in the near term. Lots of good work there. And then at DuParcay, I think you've been seeing it in the news releases that have come out. It's been pretty consistent drilling, really since the winter, and in very good shape there. I think again, the GEO team having a really fundamentally different understanding of where we're going to drive value through the drill bit at that project than we had even a year ago, and starting to demonstrate that. I keep pointing people back to the news release where we put out DuParcay hole 24.

40:37 That hole went through a number of different mineralised zones in the existing deposit, but what it hit at the bottom of it was 30m plus of almost 6g. That's what underground mines are built on. Those are pretty rare intersections in the Abitibi. And more importantly, it really starts to define a style of mineralization that's not really been looked at before and at a structural contact. So more work to come on that. We've drilled a bunch more holes. There's more results coming. Lots more news coming out of DuParcay before the end of the year that I think's really starting to demonstrate this thesis that there's a lot of blank canvas at that project just because when it received the bulk of its drilling, it was for a specific purpose, which is, you know, reasonably tight space drilling for an open pit mine.

41:39 And there hasn't really been that focus on structure focus on mineralization style focus on grade to drive the exploration. And we've now got that. So it's coming around, but it's a pretty, it's pretty exciting there. And I think when you look at, you know, just in filling in the blanks in some of the places there, it's, you know, there's gonna be lots of good news coming before the end of the year. Great. Looking forward to it. Yeah. One comment in the chat asks, why isn't there more insider ownership at First Mining? Well, it's good to ask my wife. I think the biggest issue is, well, we have pretty significant insider ownership, right?

42:29 And I think When you look at the fact that almost all of that insider ownership has been cash going into the company or shares bought on the open market, I think we benchmark actually very well against a number of other people. Don't let the percentage necessarily fool you. You know, there's look around and see how many other, you know, CEOs have written checks, you know, greater than $1.8 million into their own company. Like, I don't think there's that many. There's a lot of people who've accumulated cheap shares or, you know, got a lot of, much options that were in the money.

43:15 You know, this is stuff purchased. And my, you know, my number is, is paltry next to Keith's, but Keith's Purchased those shares. He's in the market pretty much every month buying shares So I'm pretty proud of where we are and insider ownership, you know, I think you'll continue to see that grow. Certainly, I've been having it grow on my side by doing things like taking everything but my salary in equity-based comp over the last couple of years. Because we believe in it. And I think it's an amazing opportunity. So yeah, it's, I think you will continue to see it to grow, but I'd also really dig in to who's actually really bought shares in those companies versus who's managed to get inside ownership by virtue of founding the company or getting large amounts of shares given to them.

44:16 That's an important distinction. A lot of people don't think so. But speaking of Mr. Neumayer, there is a question in the chat from Blaine. He wants to know, in your opinion, is Keith satisfied with the progression of SpringPool and DuParquet? Well, The right person to ask of that is Keith. I, yeah, I think he is. I think he's frustrated like the rest of us with the share price. But I think in terms of the performance and the fundamentals that we've continued to move forward here. You know, Keith is someone for whom it can never happen quickly enough. So there's always, always pushing, which is great. You know, I think that's important to have that impetus and that kind of support, you know, that you're getting from a founder and a chairman.

45:07 Yeah, I think there's some things that he wished were happening more quickly, particularly on the permitting side, but I think he's satisfied with, and I dare say happy with the team that we have and the work that we've been able to do over the last few years. Awesome. One question on bureaucracy and timing and permitting that I'm actually curious about myself. He wants to know why it takes 12 to 18 months more to approve the Spring Polly A when all the questions in the pre-submission have already been answered. The answer to that is that the, it still goes through a process, right? And this is just the, the nature of how these processes go. And to be honest, we are thankful, very thankful that our project is still grandfathered under the CEA 2012 Act, you know, because that I think gives us a much higher degree of certainty than going through the impact assessment process from 2019, which just hasn't granted nearly as many positive outcomes as see a 2012 did.

46:24 So, you know, I think a part of it is, you know, you do socialize. There's immense value in that back and forth in the draft process, you do socialize a lot of the issues. A lot of that process is working to, you know, come together to find solutions for things. And that's been, you know, that's been very positive. Like I said, at the outset, there's some pretty important project changes that came out of some of those discussions. And I think it's left us with a much better project. But in terms of why it takes that time, this is sort of like we've invested the time to really in detail understand and discuss with regulators what the path is, what the important parts are in terms of getting to that EA approval. And now they have to go through their process and their process is technical evaluation.

47:20 Their process is active consultation with Indigenous communities who've been, you know, at the same time kind of coming through in parallel with us. So, yeah, it's there's still a process to go through. I think under the federal EA process, there is still a defined clock, there's about 300 days left on that clock for the federal government to come back and render its decisions. So this is one of the nice things about the 2012 process is there is a defined clock. So, you know, that clock stops when you get, you know, when you get information requests and it can stop for reasons like that along the way, but I think it gives real momentum and we've set the stage to allow those who need to go through those processes to make those decisions to go into it really well informed. So, you know, these are important things, right?

48:26 You have people in Ottawa and in Toronto and other places, important places like Red Lake and Thunder Bay, in roles in the provincial and federal government that are making really important decisions on behalf of society around, you know, should we let a project like this go forward? So while it can take time, it is something that's really important for them to do. There you go. Well, we've touched on this, but might as well just do a quick version of the answer again. SOPL from the chat asks, how well funded are you going forward? Well, yeah, you know, we finished, we finished June with about 13 million of cash and marketable securities.

49:15 Still a reasonable spend going on right now. And so, yeah, I think I'd talked briefly about kind of a framework of what the spend is from here to, you know, here to EA approval. It's probably call it another 15 million of spend, plus or minus. And yeah, we've got a lot of different levers to find that capital for sure. So we're looking at a number of those, obviously a number of those different levers to give us the runway to do it. Perfect. Same person had a bit of a follow-up question. They suggest the reason that the share price is depressed is related to dilution. Curious if you have any comments on that or feedback to that comment.

50:02 Yeah. I've done a little study myself looking at a range of Canadian project developers because we hear this all the time. And obviously the share count is a trigger for a lot of people. When I look at it, the work that we did went back to, say, selfishly, from the beginning of 2019 when I got here. How much has our share count increased versus other project developers. And I would put our share count increase, you know, probably in, you know, in top quartile of performance. So bottom quartile of percentage change in shares outstanding.

50:54 And there's some big companies that people love that are in that list. And what I was surprised at is the number of them that have actually rolled their stock back as they've gone forward. So you got to do your homework on this stuff, but there's a lot of companies that rolled their stock back in this time frame. And I get it. I think that's, you can understand why they would have done that. But the other thing that I also hasten to remind people is that in that timeframe, so, and let's say that that number, maybe prior to our last financing was that our share count had increased by 70% from 2019 to today, which for a company with no source of funding, no source of cashflow, I should say. Lots of sources of funding, but no sources of cashflow.

51:51 And having put the money that we have put into these projects is pretty remarkable. And we've been able to do that a couple of different ways. And 1 has been leveraging the portfolio that we have. With all the deals that we did with Pickle Crow and Hope Brook, taking share positions in our partners, creating royalties, selling those royalties. You've got a bunch of milestone payments that are coming over the course of, I think some of them coming over the next 12 to 18 months as well. You count the Silver Stream financing in that as well. We've raised more than $60M of non-dilutive capital over the last 4 years, which given we have a market cap of 120, tells you how little we're getting rewarded for the value of our assets.

52:45 But the other thing is that we need to point out to people is, let's say it was a 70% increase in share count, our resources have increased by 45% in the same timeframe. With the acquisition of DuParcay particularly, right? So I think when you look at it in its totality, I'm pretty proud of the way that our team has worked for shareholders to minimize that dilution. I think it's a real testament that, you know, when we do raise equity, we don't do it willy nilly, we do it with a real purpose. We've leveraged flow through in order to give us the funding to be able to do all of that geology work that I think is really, really starting to bear fruit. But that's an investment that we really felt that we needed to make. So yeah, I hear you.

53:40 I think our track record actually stacks up pretty well against most of the industry in terms of really looking out for the shareholders and trying to minimize that dilution. Great, thanks. Moshaver asks from the chat, what's the likelihood of sale of other assets such as Cameron? He gives an example. I agree to hear from you. I would say it's a lot better at a $2,500 gold price than it was at an $1,800 gold price, right? We're coming into an environment where I don't want to say just the rising tide lifts all boats, but people have access to capital to be able to do creative things with us.

54:28 And we can do creative things with the rest of those assets. So we're not quite there yet for the same way that our stocks kind of languished, the stocks of a lot of our partners have kind of languished as well. Big Ridge, NexGold would have expected to have seen significant re-rating on real ounces in projects like those. So some small comfort that we're not alone, but no real comfort in that there's nothing we'd love better than turning those assets, which I think are worth $50 million into $50 million and us having the runway to go do what we need to do. Lots, the pace of those discussions has picked up significantly over the course of the last 3 months, in terms of, you know, call it unsolicited inquiry into what are we doing with some of these projects or discussions with other groups that may have you know, some some interest in helping move them forward in 1 sense or another so Yeah, lots of inquiries you know, I think we're gonna continue to try and move those forward. But at the same time, you know, we don't want to give projects like some of those away, just at any value.

55:47 So, yeah, no, it's getting to be a much better environment to, for other people to be able to raise money to be more creative with it, basically. I appreciate that. And as we are getting towards the end of the hour, I did want to thank everybody for joining us. We had a pretty big crowd today, so I really appreciate everybody's time. Questions you wrote in, I know there were a couple of questions we couldn't get to. Not many, thankfully got through most of them. We did pretty well, Dan. But for the couple we didn't get to, I'm going to pass them on to Paul at First Mining's team. You can always reach him at paul at firstmininggold.com, but I'll make sure that he gets these questions that were in the chat, so you can get back to as soon as possible. But thank you so much. The replay will be available later today. And Dan, of course, as always, thank you so much for your time. All right, well, thanks everyone for joining us.

56:33 Continues to be a very exciting time here, moving forward towards major, major catalysts, and we really appreciate everyone's focus and attention and support. It really means the world to us to have a shareholder group that's this engaged. So thanks again. And if there's anything you need from us or wanna speak to us about, you know where to reach us. So thanks very much. Appreciate everyone taking the time today. ♪♪