Automated transcript · Written by software from the replay's audio. It can mishear names and figures; the replay is the record.
27:58 Eric always reminds me that this is his favourite slide in the deck and I think it's for good reason. Part of the interesting thing at Madison is that all the rock runs. Jasperites typically don't run. When you look at them everywhere throughout Nevada, they typically don't run. This runs half an ounce. Native Copper, somewhat unique to see, but strong native Copper within this system that runs incredibly well. And then massive sulphides. For example, at Fortitude, where Eric was the chief geologist previous to this, they had a lot of massive sulphide, but none of it ran. Look at the grades here, 0.6oz per tonne Gold, 11% Copper. The highest grade that we had in drilling last year was 1.5m of 69g per tonne Gold and that was held within the mass of sulphide.
28:45 This lends credence to the idea that there is something big below this that is pushing those fluids up to mineralise all these different types of rocks. So what would that look like? It would likely be a porphyry. Here's core from 2017 that was drilled into the Latite Porphyry. This is the fifth phase. We believe there is 0.167 phase down below it. If you look off to the right and see that Latite Porphyry, you can see it's hammered. There's chaotic folding, a lot of brecciation. That gives us and Rio Tinto a great deal of excitement. As mentioned, Rio Tinto drilling 4,000m as we speak. We are free carried with them spending up to US$30M to earn 70% of the project. There is drone footage on the website if you're interested in seeing it. I think that is worthwhile for you to view if this is a project that is of interest to you. There's a 3D model and there's a link to the website there as well. Let me run you very quickly through the other 3 projects and with a catalyst that are coming up for them.
29:43 Red Hill is 80 claims and around 1,500 acres internal to New Legacy's claim block. New Legacy is a $70M company. They've spent $50M on the asset. We were very pleased to be able to pick up this project within their claim block. They're doing great exploration. It is right on the Cortez trend. There's about 100Moz of Gold along that Cortez trend and they're drilling down deep to find it. Previous drilling here was done by Barrick, 24m of 5g, 13m of 8g. It's confirming that there's that big sediment host Gold system that's there. It's the exact type of thing that New Legacy is looking for. It's the target that they're after on this round of drilling as well. We picked up this asset for $25,000 this year. In the next 20-years we'll own it for a total of around $400,000.
30:29 So we thought it was good deal making on our side. Here's the location map. You can see right in the midst of the Cortez trend. Gooseberry. Gooseberry is an asset that Eric has been kicking me to drill for about 2-years. Very, very high-grade Silver Gold project. We picked this up for $20,000 because we were able to stake it. That lends a lot of credibility to guys like Eric who've been able to do this previously. He was the guy who staked Black Pine, that's now with Liberty. They've done an excellent job with that. That's turned into 2Moz. We picked up Deer Trail, that's now with MagSilver. And here we are now with the likes of Gooseberry and the likes of Madison. This is an asset that will start to be drilled by the end of summer.
31:15 We're hoping late September we will have the drill here. When we picked this up, we had to go out and find the data. We found 12 old banker's boxes of data covered in dust at the University of Nevada, Reno. Look at some of the grades here. Previous production grade 0.9m, 65g Gold, 4500g Silver. 0.9m, 113g Gold, 3700g Silver. Spectacular grades. The analogy here is the Comstock load, which is about 20km away. It's in the Cape Beagandesites, same rock. The Comstock load produced 8Moz of Gold, multiple 100Moz of Silver. It was the largest mine in the US until the big Carlin mines came along. Presently, it's little brother. It's 20km away, it's in the same rocks. It's only ever gone down to 1,350ft, it was the deepest drill hole.
32:07 That cross, that long section that you see there, the dark pink has been mined out. The light pink is what they refer to as reserves. Obviously, we don't refer to them as reserves at this point, but it certainly gives us a very good drill target to go at, especially with those types of grades. Tuscarora, as you get the feeling, we focused on high-grade assets in the Western US and this certainly fits the bill. If you look at some of the past drill holes there that have been drilled by us, Novo Resources, which was the predecessor, or Newcrest, they're very, very high grades. We have an internal plain block here that you can see that's 1,818 acres. You can see that South Navajo and East pediment, which I just referenced, but then you can see all the veins above that run through our project. Those were all previously in production. When you get to our project, there's a fault and 0-200ft of gravel cover. That's why those veins remain because the old timers lost them. We're going to go after this later this year, we're going to aggressively pursue this. Again, good high-grade asset in the Western US.
33:10 This is the team. I've been doing this since 1999. Eric is the former head of exploration in the Western US for Newmont. Obviously, Newmont was looking for stuff that was 3Moz plus, but he had a chance to see a lot of assets that were 0.5Moz to 1Moz. That's really where we fit in. We were able to get those assets and see them grow. Ken Cunningham, former CEO of Miranda Gold, a geologist who lives down in Reno, has been a tremendous director for us. Jonas Lang, Executive VP with Maple Gold, he's a little bit of a young blood on our board, a ton of energy, great director. And then Alan Eshmohan, who is our CFO. I will say this, appreciate the opportunity to come on and speak here. The company's grown significantly over the past while.
33:55 We've gone from being around a $10M market cap to $100M market cap today. It's worth your while as an investor when you're looking at these to get a feel for these companies. Both Wes and Morgan are stars in the making and running great companies and they're guys that are certainly worth listening to. If you're invited to one of these and you're at a conference where you were invited to, certainly worthwhile for investors to listen. Significant catalysts coming, drilling from Rio, we'll drill Gooseberry ourselves, we'll get after Tuscarora at the end of this year. We'll see where we go with Red Hill and what happens with new legacy, but we're likely to bring in a partner and drill there as well. So significant catalyst coming with a company that has cash and ready to grow. So thank you, Gwen, appreciate it. And I appreciate the time from Morgan and Wes as well.
34:44 Thanks very much, Warwick. I often comment on the challenge that I put to presenters to run through, you know, just your entire company in 10 minutes. There are a few things that you got to try and cram in there. So thanks for that. That was only 4 projects that you had to try and cover in about 90 seconds each. Again, I've got some questions already, certainly for work. But before we get to those, let's get to our third story, which is visionary goal, another new, fairly new story on the market. And Wes Adams, could you take us through the Visionary story? I was going to say Visionary Vision, but it seemed a bit redundant. Absolutely. Thanks, Gwen. I'll go ahead and share my screen now so that we can run through the Visionary story.
35:30 All right. So Visionary is a new company that was a first mover into a prolific orogenic gold district in Wyoming. We've got a large initial target. We're working on a 2.5 kilometer long gold trend. And we just started in 2020 with this project. We've made a ton of progress. This year we've taken 3,500 different soil samples. We've identified our main targets here. And we've just started a drill program that's going to be about 3,500 meters is what we permitted. And so we're testing this area that's called the Wolf Shear Zone. And it sits within a big district scale sedimentary formation called the Miner's Delight. And there's old mines littered all over this.
36:22 So we've put together a really experienced team and we're using systematic methods to explore this district And we are really excited about this year's drill program. First off, I'll tell you a little bit about my background. I'm third generation mining executive. The biggest project that I worked on was the Tura Parrawa deposit in Guyana, which was 11 million ounces. We developed that with Sand Spring, which did Gold X. We raised $100 million with the company and took the resource from artisanal working up to 11 million ounces. Grand Columbia has purchased that for about $300 million in production. They just raised $300 million to take that.
37:08 So, it was in Guyana, but I keep my own roots. My family's originally from here as services companies. Wyoming's always been a good place to work. Very experienced team of geologists to help us develop the project. Dan Housel has got a ton of experience in Wyoming. He was a Thayer Award winner for his work on the Donlan Creek discovery Eugene Sperry was VP of X for Quatera for 9 years And was a part of the Tassius development team also worked for rearmed Narsia Developing the L by a project in Spain Pat Hillard is on site today actually, and he played a major role in the Pinarina discovery down in Peru.
38:00 And he's also responsible for several uranium pipe deposits in Arizona, working on the Arizona Strip there. We also have an in-house geophysicist in Kent Sweet, a professor of Structural Geology in South Dakota School of Mines. And last but not least, Stan Dempsey Sr. Who is the founder and chairman of Royal Gold. And Stan's focus on helping us with our environmental social governance as we work to explore and develop mines within Wyoming. Cap structure. Right now we're sitting at about a $13 million market cap. I really think with some drilling success here, we've got a strong case for revaluation.
38:46 Currently, about 71 million shares outstanding. We do have a few options and warrants which will bring in some more money for us. We have the warrants are at 40 cents. There's 9 million. Sorry. They're exercised visible at 40 cents. We can call the warrants. They have a strike price at 27. So that'll give us a couple extra million dollars to work with if we have some success drilling. And just briefly, I'll walk you through our project, why we're focused in Wyoming. So we got here in 2020, there's abundant, you know, high grade gold that's been known for a while, but this has been overlooked by explorationists for about 100 years now. So there's been gold production in the area for between about 1842 to about 1956.
39:39 There's been very little, almost no work done since then. So, But we think there's a great opportunity because we're seeing orogenic gold, which produces about 75% of the world's gold. And so that's the style of mineralization that is preferred up here. And that's why they call it the Miner's Delight. Wyoming is a very resource-friendly state, produces about 39% of the coal in the US every year. And so we think while gold has been a part of the history here, I think there's a new opportunity to replace jobs that are declining in the energy industry with new gold development. And there's currently 3 gold projects that are being drilled in the state. One is a development project at the CK Gold property that George B is working on with US Gold Corp.
40:37 Then we've got Group 11 Technologies and GFG working on the Rattlesnake deposit. We'll be the third drill programme to start this summer, but I think we've got the highest grade target of the 3. And, you know, we've seen some really good numbers in our soil samples, in our rock chip samples. Last year we sampled over 1 ounce per ton, over a meter. We had 3 meters of 12 grams a ton. And up the trend 500 meters, we've got 4.94 grams. And then just north of us on a parallel structure, we've sampled 2.7 grams. So, you know, of the 69 rock samples that were taken on our wolf claim group, which is about 1000 acres, the average grade was 2.5 grams.
41:30 And we had, you know, 1 sample that was over an ounce that came out of a channel over 1 meter. So tremendous grade that we're seeing on site. The main structure that we're focused on sits on privately owned ground. It's got a great geophysical signature underneath it, which suggests that there should be sulfide mineralization and that this is not a superficial feature. We're going to focus drilling right on the high-grade, historically mined area. The Wolf was active between 1907 to 1911. They were actually carting this ore off. I think it was reported to have averaged about half an ounce a ton. And they mined about a 30 foot width across the shear. And the shear is about 2.5 kilometers long. So it's a tremendous first target for a junior.
42:24 And we've really put together kind of a district-scale land package. We have 50 square kilometres that sit in this Miner's Delight formation. So it really gives us a lot of upside, I think, as a small junior. We did pick up the Wolf or the Mint Gold Leaf Mine where we've sampled 2.5 feet of 1.29 ounces per ton and then 3 ounces per ton. So we're gonna do some more work on that. And the idea is really to prove kind of our principles that there are commercial gold opportunities in this district. And so if we can have a successful first program here at the Wolf, I think that's really going to open up the district scale potential. And so we're starting with a 3,500 meter drill program.
43:12 We've got a great team in place, going to be out really marketing this thing for the first time around our initial drill results. And also, you know, I just have spent a lot of time up here earning trust in the community and trying to be a good steward of our investor capital. So it's going to be a really exciting year as we tap into this old past producing gold district and lots of potential here, you know, on the exploration side. And we also have, you know, a group and team on the board and management team that everybody's done this before. And so I think right now it's gonna be an exciting time to be a visionary shareholder.
43:58 And with that, I'll turn it back over to Gwen. Thanks everyone. Morgan, let's swing back around and start with a question or 2 for Lakewood. You ran through your 3, I mean you had a transformational deal just a few weeks ago to add 2 significant assets to the portfolio. Can you explain your strategy at this point? So what is Lakewood's capacity to advance 3 projects in terms of people and dollars and focus? What is your strategy to tackle 3, as you call it, very promising projects at the same time? So Our plan right now is fairly simple in the sense that we are drilling, we are planning and we're going to be drilling Silver Strand, the Idaho Vasa. We're going to be proving that down to depth. We are running programs on surface right now to prove out surface mineralization, outcrops, we're doing a lot of sampling there. I've hired, or in the process of hiring a geologist for Eliza and Silverton to run a full geo program out there. So now we're going to actually come up with drill targets.
45:07 We're going to do surface sampling, probably some geophysics, that type of exploration methods. We're using drone technology on our Silver Strand asset right now. So from a capital side, we raised that $3.5M. Our burn rate is fairly low right now and we will be utilizing that in a very methodical and shareholder friendly way to explore. So again, catalyst there is the drilling. We're bringing SilverStrand up to 430101 as well. So we have 430101 that's just being completed on it. And we're gonna start very, very quickly exploring and mapping Elisa and Silverton. So that's pretty much where we're at.
45:58 I guess I'm curious when you're certainly like what's certainly still in the growth phase, I mean you're new so you're certain that by definition you're in the growth phase and you're working in an area where there is a lot of talent and sort of exploration and mining capacity but there's also a bunch of people operating there So what's it like trying to find people and sort of infrastructure, like whether it's, you know, geophysics equipment or whatever it might be. Can you describe a little bit sort of what it's like operating and whether, you know, whether the current market is helping or hindering you in that sense? Well, I mean, as most people that are in the resource sector know right now, it is very busy for drilling and that kind of comes back to our unique approach with Silver Strand to start was looking at the surface targets and then also having that available underground, Being able to look at it, go in, bring it back up to MSHA, which isn't much work, and maybe stick an underground drill in there.
46:55 From the standpoint of acquiring drills, I think we've got good leads on them. We're fully engaged and contracted and expected to be drilling by the end of summer. So yeah, there is a lot of, it's very busy in the industry, but we're very picky on the talent we have. We have Phil Mulholland, who is a known commodity in Idaho and in Montana and has had some big wins in his career that's joined us, but also being able to, how do I say, being able to attract the right talent versus just talent is really important to us. So we have, we're very integrated in the community in the sense of that we have a land guy, or a geologist in Coeur d'Alene that is very integrated with us and he's, you know, been in that area third generation as well. His name's Kurt Hoffman, He's been a huge advantage to us. So we're partnering with the right people in the area and the right companies for our success.
47:54 You're right, the industry is busy and there's a lot going on. So that look we have to, we have to look at it through a different lens. And that's, you know, outside the box thinking really is a core part of what we're doing. You know, new technology and outside the box thinking has helped us so far. Gotcha. All right, Warwick, A lot of questions have come in about Madison, so I'm just going to sort of pull a bunch of different questions into just 2 questions to try and keep it streamlined here. Can you describe Rio's exploration interest? Obviously there's a very interesting scarn target or area at Madison that's been tagged into and has returned some great results, but then you spend a lot of time talking about the porphyry driver for that. How do those divide out?
48:45 You have some recent trench results that are a part of that story. Can you describe what it is that Rio wants to find and is it both? Yeah, great question. I'll full disclosure, when we bought Madison, we bought it with a partnership with Rio. That was intact. At the time, Eric and I knew the asset well. We actually toured this asset in 2016. We ended up buying it last year from a company who had brought in Rio in April of 2019 and then in June of 2019 decided they were going to come a psychedelics company and focus on medical mushroom. We were able to go in and buy it. We bought it for a $2.4 million valuation. Because of that transaction, we've been nominated for S&P Global's deal of the year against US Steel, Grange is a bunch of multi-billion dollar companies. So a nice tip to that. My comment on this is when we got involved with Rio, Eric and I looked at each other and went, they're probably poor for your bust. That was our thinking. That has not been the case. They have found real interest in the Scarn.
49:57 All of the exploration this year has been Scarn-focused. Now, that being said, the question that dovetails into that was about the trenching. Rio, as part of their exploration programme, did trenching about 1.5km away. They took the trench through some epithermal veins that they weren't necessarily expecting. Those ran 15g Gold, 600g Silver, 1.5% Copper. They've already built drill pads there, they're going to drill those. That's a different style target completely, it's a kilometre and a half away. That gives us some real excitement. I think reservoir minerals, right? Epithermal at surface, porphyry underneath, they own 30%. They sold it to Nevson, they're $360M US.
50:45 That's the opportunity here. There's a real at surface target that is a big company, Rio Tinto, second largest mining company in the world size, that can dovetail into a big porphyry where this can become very large. Gotcha, okay. Do you wanna describe a bit what it's like as a, to be blunt, tiny company? Well, you're larger now than you were 4 months ago, but working with the biggest mining company in the world, like pros and cons and just how that runs for you? Second biggest concern coming into buying the asset with the transaction with Rio was, what's it going to be like? Because at that time in particular, it really was David and Goliath. We were about a $10 million market gap. We're on a $100 million market gap now, so we've grown, which is good.
51:31 But typically, the concern is, how's it going to be with news flow? What are they going to be like to work with? I'm going to say this very clearly, Rio Tinto have been excellent partners. We've developed a very good relationship with those guys. A lot of credit to Eric Saderholm, who you know, who worked at Newmont, knows how to work with these big companies, developed a great relationship with Bede, who's on the ground, and then the North American manager who's in Montreal. Last year, they had 1 drill hole come out that they rushed. They sent that to us immediately. We were able to put that out one drill hole standalone. When they get drill holes, as soon as it's through their QAQC, it goes into a system called pipeline. We get a copy. When they get a copy, we write the press release. We send it to them. Within 5 business days, we have an approved copy that goes out. Tremendous communicators, great partners, really pleased to be working with them. That's phenomenal. That is not a description that one, that doesn't fit the usual description of working with a major.
52:26 Look, I've worked with a few of the different majors along the way and a lot of the mid-tiers. They are, you know, it's an aberration. It's not the norm. They're very good to work with. But you know, we've worked very hard on our end, especially through COVID, where there were challenges to be a good partner on our end too. So it does go both ways. You have to work well with your partners, especially when they're larger. So, you know, again, all credit to Eric in that case. For sure. Hey Wes, I wanna ask you a bit about setting the scene in Wyoming. I mean, Miner's Delight, first of all, who goes to work in an area called Miner's Delight? Like, it couldn't be more perfect. But this is, it's Miner's Delight, yet it's an area that's hardly seen any exploration in sort of the modern times, to use that term.
53:14 Tell the backstory here. Like, there was a surge of exploration, and then talk about, you know, there's that sort of defined 2 trends and then there's one area of one of those trends that you're particularly interested in. Do you want to just sort of run through that, that funnel? Yes. So Gold was discovered in 1842 in the Lewiston district. So it was, there were guys that were traveling, you know, along the Oregon trail that made discoveries there. And then they ventured out and started, you know, finding more gold. They eventually settled at a place called South Pass City and built the Carissa mine. And the Carissa operated for about 100 years. It produced about 10,000 ounces a year. And so it was it was operated on and off. That was kind of the biggest of the mines. There's also a ton of alluvial gold that came out of these hills.
54:06 So the alluvial gold has to come from somewhere. There's low gold deposits everywhere. And so yeah, there's 2 main structures on either side of this craton. Basically, it was just a sedimentary mudstone that was sandwiched and cracked and fractured in many different places, much like what you see in the Abitibi in the Tumiscamine sediments. And so after that happened, it was intruded by granites, and then that brought the gold mineralization in. So we do see exceptionally high gold grades. I think that it's been overlooked for so long because everybody thought that was just like an old historic district. And Anaconda did some drilling underneath the Carissa.
54:53 They hit about 1 ounce per ton over 6 feet. And so they had really good results, but the gold price then was like $200 an ounce and everybody was looking for low grade heap leach. And so, you know, it just has been kind of forgotten about. And so we're glad to be the ones to be bringing it back to life. And, you know, we're seeing, you know, 30 feet of 5 grams, you know, across tunnels. And so if we can duplicate some of our drill results into the sulfides and get those same type of numbers, I think we're gonna be in great shape going forward. And all indications are that if it's in the sulfides it's going to be along the strike as well. And on all the other parallel fractures and there's tons of them across this district, many of them unexplored. So it's going to be a really exciting drill program and ongoing exploration camp here.
55:52 Gotcha. Must be interesting being sort of the first, I mean, you have deep Wyoming roots, but being, forging new ground in establishing this as an exploration play, you know, explaining the story to institutions and retail and trying to explain what's going on. That's a challenge. But then at the same time, there's an opportunity where I guess you don't have a huge amount of competition for picking up interesting ground. Yeah, I mean, there's you know, they're starting to get a little bit of competition up there now. There's some other smart geologists that are picking up lands. And that's great. You know, I think, I think the more people we can get to figure this out, the better. And you know, eventually, hopefully, we'll be able to have some synergies and consolidate the entire district. We have a large portion of it right now.
56:39 And so, you know, if we can prove our concepts and and and prove that this is going to be a district play, I think it's gonna get really exciting really fast. Warwick, I'm just gonna end with one more question for you. When we were all chatting before this call started, you said you'd just been on a marketing trip and you were talking about sort of the reception that you got on that trip. And of course I want to bring that up because I started with summer doldrums. It can feel pretty boring out there. There's been 1 or 2 questions coming in about marketing exploration stories these days. Yeah, do you want to just give some comments on what it's been like marketing and sort of what you're seeing out there as you take your story on the road? Yeah, I'm happy to. I'll even back it up just a little bit from that, but I'll keep it tight and succinct.
57:25 Look, for some time, American Pacific traded sideways for around 7 months, and it was essentially stock dynamics. The stock had run up, the financing had come free trading, the stock that we paid for the asset came free trading, and the stock traded sideways. And I knew for some time that we needed a bit of a spark. And we found that Michael Gentile, when he came and invested in the company, he's opened an awful lot of doors for us, and the company's done well since. We're gonna backfill that now by drilling and getting out and aggressively going after these assets and we're excited to do that. What we did find upon going to Toronto, I was in Toronto last week, the doors to the institutions were open. A lot of guys wanted to see us. All the investment bankers that we either knew from the past or got introduced to on our way to this trip, full rooms, 10 guys in a room and 15 guys on Zoom who weren't comfortable coming in. But the doors were certainly open. The institutions, the smart money is looking. They're looking at stuff that is where you've got to be that $75M mark-up or above to get that institutional interest.
58:26 You have to have that liquidity. American Pacific's trading 1 million shares a day now. So we've got that liquidity. We've got that following. For those companies, the doors are open. Those guys are forward thinking and they're looking ahead going, yeah, it's summer dollar trends today, but if this is the type of thing I can get invested in now, I'm going to see it do well come September, October, et cetera, as you well know. So yeah, it's happening. I mean, it's coming. I know people have been frustrated with some of the juniors, but believe me, from a guy in the seat, yeah, the junior stories can change very quickly and can grow rapidly. We've seen that over the course of years and I think we'll see that again and again. And there you go. I mean, I think that's a great place to wrap it up. I mean, like Warwick said, it wasn't very long ago that he was the $10 million company and that has changed significantly in the last few months. And then both Visionary and Lakewood are just earlier stage stories. They're both pretty new stories, just getting started on their exploration journey and so it depends what stage of the game you want to jump in at.
59:29 One of the things I love about the metal space is that there's good opportunity at all stages of the risk spectrum. You just have to decide as an investor which stage is the right fit for you. With that we've been on the line for an hour so I want to say thank you to Warwick and Morgan and Wesley for participating today and thanks of course to the audience for listening, for sending in questions and if you want to get a hold of any of us we are all very easy to track down on our various websites or you can contact 6 here and they can put you in touch. So with that, thanks everyone all and we'll see you again at another show soon. Thank you Glenn. Thanks guys. Bye.