Hycroft Market Update

0:00 Diane Argarit, Executive Chairman and CEO of Hiker Flying. Diane, how are you?

0:04 I'm good. How are you, Romeo? I'm well, thank you. Great to be here. It's been a while. Yeah.

0:11 And here's what I'm so excited about. We've had so much news, which is why I'm really so excited to talk to you today. It's been a couple months since we sat down one-on-one and honestly, I feel like keeping up with your news flow has been one of my full-time jobs. You have so much going on, more than almost any company I work with. You have technical report with headline grabbing economics, a new COO, 4 heavyweight board additions, drill results that seem to be beating each other every few weeks.

0:39 But before we get into the detail, right from the top, what's this stretch been about for Highcroft? What's summer 2026 meant? Yeah, well, in a word, transformational. I think everything that you're saying that we're doing, let's just set the phenomenal drill results aside for a second. But we now have a really good grip on where we're going with this company, what this high grade means.

1:06 That in and of itself has transformed us from a market perspective. But now we're demonstrating to the market that we know who we are, we've cleared the debt, we've funded the company, we're on a roll now, and now we're assembling and putting all the pieces into place to take us to that next level. And that means, you know, fortifying the board with these heavyweights, bringing in a chief operating officer who is a mind builder. And we've worked with Michael in the past at Remarco and he's phenomenal. So he's leading all of that. He can't wait to get this thing moving out of the ground.

1:40 The other team members we're putting together. So we're growing up as a company And we have very big plans and very big ideas for the company. And it takes a team. We've all been wearing a lot of hats for a while. And now we've got, you know, an expanded board, which is going to come with a lot of experience and skills on developing projects, building companies, growing companies. So it's just in a word, it's just transformational. And we're just getting started. Awesome. Yeah, it's funny. Usually people tell me they're adding some impressive board members. I go, okay, okay, okay. But I saw yours and went, oh, wow.

2:17 These are actually really, really, really impressive people. So that's quite cool. Very impressive. And you know what I say is like these guys can join any board they want. Sure. They're not they don't have to have a board seat. They don't have to have the money. I mean, in talking to them over the last few months, they are so amazed at what this team has been able to do and transforming what was always thought to just be nothing but a very large low-grade

2:41 system into something truly spectacular. And from an operating, I mean, they've been to site, they've read all the technical reports. This is a phenomenal validation by some of, you know, and the titans in the industry, right? They know this, they built companies, they built great projects. So this is a really remarkable thing to see their enthusiasm and wanting to be part of our boards. That's been very exciting for us. Awesome. But I do want to start with Wednesday's news because the numbers jump way off the page to me. At Vortex, hole 6090 returned 30.5m, creating 780g per ton of silver, including 5.5m at over 2240g per ton. So I'm sure Alex used some positive four-letter words, knowing him as I do. But you caught these, some of the strongest results the entire program. So what are these holes telling you about what's going on at Vortex?

3:37 Well, I think you pegged it best in one of our last sessions when you said Vortex is becoming a drama queen now and refuses to be overshadowed by Brimstone. I love that and I want you to know I've used that so many times. I love that saying. But look, we've always said that Brimstone is the higher grade. Vortex is much larger, but it's somewhat lower grade. And Vortex is like, yeah, don't count me out because everything that Vortex is doing is we go West and South. We're getting higher grades. Look

4:08 at those gold intercepts. That is really something phenomenal. So that's telling us there's something going on much deeper at Vortex And we are very likely to find, you know, a gold feeder system, a silver feeder system, because keep in mind that the gold is deposited at a different time than the silver was. Remember, we have these 3 different mineralizing events, and we've had 3 opportunities for minerals to be deposited in this system, whereas most mines it's 1 event. And so we look at these collectively as a precious metal system, but also individually as a separate

4:49 event that occurred. So it's very common to us, in our understanding, to have a phenomenal goal system being developed and created at Vortex. And that's what the team is focused on right now is is following up on these high grades. We've seen some high-grade gold hits in the past. We've disclosed them and they're interesting, but now we're starting to see how they relate to each other and how we're tying those things together. So I think you could see something very significant in gold, but also significant in silver. I mean, it's you know, when you get these higher

5:24 grades, the deeper you go, those are very good indications that you're getting near some kind of feeding plumbing source something like that. So we we could be more excited and of course, Brimstone just you know keeps delivering and delivering as well. We've got a lot more Brimstone holes that are coming in too. But yeah, Vortex has really been shining its light lately. There you go. The serious Gold grades, I think, are just so impressive to see. So it's an interesting note there. But I do want to jump to Brimstone as much as the drama queen does excite me at Vortex. But let's talk about Brimstone for a second, because I know whole 6167A cut 5.5m at 1,345g per ton of silver, including a 1.8 meter interval north of 4,000 grams, and extended the system to the north.

6:13 Your August results also pulled high-grade mineralization closer to the surface there. If you could paint us a picture of Brimstone because it seems to be growing just in every direction

6:24 at high speed. What's going on there from your perspective?

6:28 Yeah, so it is. It's still open in all directions and at depth. When we talk about the northern area, what we're seeing is brimstone is. It's this very large shoot of these stacked beautiful epithermal veins, classic epithermal system and but what we're seeing in brimstone is. We are we are start when we step out to angle deep to hit the deeper reaches of brimstone. We started picking up really interesting mineralization near surface, you know, 20 to 85 grams.

7:00 That's remarkable grades for a mine near surface and open pitable. So what it's doing is it's telling us that there's an open pit component that we could mine and access or generate revenues as we go down on the high grade. But the high grade is our primary focus. We just happen to be picking that up in the upper reaches of the holes as we were getting into the main system. So we think there's a lot of opportunity. We see it. We see it growing to the north

7:30 near surface. It's definitely growing to the south and east and west, both laterally. And we're picking up a lot of mineralization in between brimstone and vortex that we're starting to see as well. So we don't think those 2 systems are gonna tie together in the sense that they were formed at different times, but we do think there's opportunity for a lot more mineralization between those systems because everything is structurally controlled by these faults and when we get into those intersections of the faults and then drilling between

8:02 those structures in Brimstone, we just keep hitting more and more grades. And the other thing we're also seeing is it extends on the other side as well. So no shortage of drilling opportunities at Brimstone. And you're right. But the same thing with Vortex. It's still open in all directions and at depth as well. It's just exciting.

8:23 Every time I'm like, I wonder what's coming next. Each new release is fun. Now, I know in June you published the technical report summary. And for a lot of investors, this is the first time they could put hard numbers on Highcroft. You got that 51-year mine plan, post-tax NPV of $4.3 billion. What should investors be taking away from that study? If you could just summarize it for the hundreds of folks in the room today. That were very undervalued today.

8:51 I agree. Look, I mean, it was a really good study to put out and to help people understand the economics and the value in the ground, because we have done so much work on this project, but nobody really knew what gold price was at economic and or silver price or whatever. So it was really important to put this out so people understand the leverage to commodity prices, you know, how this will grow.

9:16 But so it's important from a value in the ground. It also allows us to compare ourselves with other developers, other large projects, and show how we are similar or set ourselves apart from them from a valuation perspective. And then you have to also add on that, look, we're in a tier 1 jurisdiction, we've got permits in place, we will be modifying them of course, we've got infrastructure on site, So we're way ahead of the power curve from a lot of developers. But I think it just really demonstrates the value of this asset and to have a multi-generational asset. I mean, a project of this size and scale is very attractive, not just to investors, but to other companies that are looking to fill their pipeline of resources and projects. So it was really important from that perspective.

10:11 We also are looking to put some economics out on the high-grade underground, because we do believe that our focus should be on the high grade. Get that material first. We can get in for a lot less capital, develop it, get underground and start that as a high grade mine. Not to say we can't also do the larger project simultaneous or on the back of it, but you want to get that high grade up front. And at the way that the Brimstone and Vortex high grades are growing,

10:40 you know, we are getting very optimistic about a nice size mine there as well. No, exciting. And here's the part I want. I know there's a ton of you in the room. Here's the part I personally would like everybody to absorb. The $4.3 billion base case used $3,600 gold and $48 silver. I'm a major psycho gold bug. I don't think we're ever going to see those numbers again, personally. That's very conservative. Let's hope not. But today, gold sits back around $4,400 or it's bouncing between $4,300 and $4,400. And silver is in the $60s. At the spot prices when you filed, the NPV was roughly $10 billion. Your market cap, obviously a fraction of that. I'd love if you could make the case for us and all the folks in the room. Why is High Crops one of the most price leveraged precious metals stories in the market today?

11:31 Yeah. You know, I think whenever you see large, large systems and, you know, the large project that the economics is based on was much lower grade than just the high grade component of it, right? Of course.

11:47 So, so anytime you have that, the leverage to commodity prices is always exponential versus a project, any other type of project. So, that's something that we see quite a bit because it's it's as you're developing these projects and is a commodity prices go higher than you just realize how much more value comes to the bottom line because your cost are fixed at the end of the day. Right. And so so we are we have a lot of torque to commodity prices, significant leverage, and particularly when you start looking at Silver as well. Just given our grades, given the amount of Silver and given the location and how few opportunities are available in the U.S.

12:34 For Silver. Sure. And I'll tell you, as a Gold and Silver bug, leverage matters. If you believe in the metals, leverage matters. You want the projects that have that leverage.

12:45 One thing I wanted to jump into with you, the technical report models a big kind of conventional open pit. I mean, conventional in the best way. But the drilling keeps strengthening the case for a high-grade underground Silver mine. I know engineering work on a decline is underway. Open pit, underground or a hybrid of the 2. How are you currently thinking to the path forward? And most importantly, I guess, when do you expect to make that call? Yeah, I'm glad you asked that question. So we have so many opportunities and priorities all at the same time at Highcroft right now. So as you accurately said, we can restart the heap leach, we can go big project, we can go high grade underground, we can do a hybrid, a combination of both.

13:32 The goal is, for the market, for us too, is we are advancing all of those opportunities

13:40 for the balance of this year. And we are studying them and we're doing trade-off studies and we're doing analysis because the ultimate goal is what generates the best economic value from that asset for our shareholders. That's the goal we're trying to get to. And we intend to have a very clear path forward by the end of the year as a result of all of this work. And that is to say, this is the project we're building, this is the project we're advancing, here's the timeline to get that done, that's what the market needs to see. Right now we have so many different options, which if you think about it is not a bad thing. Most mines, there's one way to develop them. Yep. Highcroft, we've got multiple ways to do it and that's very unique and rare for a mining project.

14:30 So for us the goal is to is to move all of this work down the path and say, okay, this is where we're going first, and then this is where we can bring this in in years 3 or 4 or whatever,

14:45 and have that clear line, because the one thing we're missing in the market right now is a timeline. And until we pick the horse we're going to ride, we can't, because all the timelines are different with all the different options, right? So we're, yeah, so that's our goal by the end of the year, that we say, this is what we're doing. And this is what makes, you know, the most economic sense for the project. No, exciting. Well, I certainly hope to talk to you once we get closer to the decision because I think that's really interesting.

15:15 I want to talk about your cash because you closed the second quarter with $220 million in cash and 0 debt. In a sector where, and for folks watching, I work with 70 mining companies, most developers especially are hand to mouth with financing. So this is very unusual. This is a rare position. How does that balance sheet change the way that you're able to make decisions?

15:37 Well, we're very protective of our cash, because we don't want to have to live hand to mouth. We've been there, done that. We don't want to go back there. Not fun. And we're very appreciative of our shareholders for all of their support and the company, the institutions, as well as the retail. We appreciate each and every one of you. But what it does is it allows us to to move things down the field faster and more efficiently

16:04 And to be able to have that money instead of saying, you know what, we're gonna have to go to the market and raise money, but we need a good use of proceeds. So which of these options are we gonna fund? We can fund all of them through our cash and keep the drilling going because that just adds more value to the project as well. So it gives us a lot of flexibility to do the work we need to do in a condensed time frame, whereas if we were having to go out and raise money for

16:33 each project or avenue that we were focused on and then wait to get those results in and raise more money. So it gives us a lot of financial flexibility, which is what you need at this stage when you're developing a project. Great. No, hey, I agree. And yeah, you're in a much better position than the hand-to-mouth crowd, which is most developers I hope everybody in the room understands. It's true. I want to talk about the bench you've been building. So and I'm not even gonna talk about the board yet That'll be my next question, but you've put in Michael Deal came on as chief

17:05 operating officer in late August. You added a corporate development executive, you elevated your general counsel. You've been building out a team really, really quick. What are you building this team to

17:15 do? What's their role in the near future? To build a mine. There you go. To build a mine. Absolutely. We've got to, well, you know, I mean, if you're not going to build a mine and get going, then you probably don't need a chief operating officer. You can hire engineering firms, which we've been doing, and consultants to kind of work through a lot of things. But Michael Deal is a mind builder. He is one of a handful of people who has worked on all 3 roasters in Nevada. He's underground and open pit, and he comes with a wealth of experience and he's a metallurgical engineer and just a phenomenal individual and very, very, very strong culture like our company. We'd like to say we groomed him that way because he started at Remarco. But so we have a lot of we're putting the band back together in case you notice.

18:08 Yeah. So, no, this is what we want to do. I mean, Michael's a mind builder. We're all operations people. And this is what we want to do is build this mine, get it out of the ground and show the market what a phenomenal asset we have. And, you know, Eric coming on is Corp Dev. You know, he's working a lot with me on the institutional side and analyst coverage and Haley Myers who's capital markets. So we're really saturating the market in terms of getting analyst coverage and that takes time and it takes work to help them with their models And so their focus is a lot of that and also being opportunistic and given our market cap

18:53 and our position, do we want to build a company here and use Highcroft as our core asset, but bring in other things too, some that may already be in production or some that are near near-term production. So Eric's got his eyes on a lot of that. General Council, Rebecca's been with us I guess she's going on 3 years now and we've got anyway we're we're building out the team at site because this is the stage where there is an awful lot of work going on as you start to think about, you know, modifying your permits and doing all the necessary work on the ground to start considering building the project. No, exciting. So we're excited.

19:38 Hey, honestly, every team addition I've found very exciting and they're certainly fun to talk to and work with. But I do want to talk about the board announcement too, because like I said, I'm more impressed than usual. You've got the former CEO and CFO of Newmont, the current CTO of Anglo Gold Ashanti, a nearly 30-year Freeport veteran who ran their Americas business, and Newmont's former general counsel. I've never honestly seen a board addition like this at the same time. That's a major league board joining a development stage company. So my question, I mean, I don't want to put words in their mouth, but I'll ask you, why did leaders of that caliber say yes to Highcroft right now?

20:20 Well, I spent hours with each of them having conversations. And of course, we then we go through our proper governance and governance committee interviews. But What I loved about each of those conversations is

20:37 seeing exactly what we have seen and what we have been able to execute on, which is What's happened at Highcroft over the last couple of years is not the Highcroft that we've known our entire careers. Like you're onto something new, something different. And many of them have said, and the opportunity to be part of something, Number 1, the importance of mining to Nevada, the importance of having one of the world's largest deposits and being able to provide support and guidance and direction to the management team in seeing how we can best start building this project and make it, turn it into a mine and the opportunity to be able to do that on time, on budget and delivering great value for the shareholders.

21:26 I mean, the excitement, you know, and that's what you're looking for in a board member. You want them to believe and buy into the story. And they did a lot of due diligence. And I can honestly tell you, hand to heart,

21:41 they are genuinely excited about this opportunity and think that the technical work that's been done is phenomenal and very much looking forward to helping us figure out our next steps through the balance of this year and the path we're gonna go forward. So it's really great. And Blake, you mentioned Blake Rhodes was a general counsel at Newmont. He was, but he also did a lot of M&A transactions. So he brings that element to the table as well. And yeah, it's just,

22:12 it's a very high powered group of people joining. That's a real, that's a lineup. It was so great. It's a lineup. I know we've got an all-star board now and it's you know we've got great existing board members and then these 4 new ones. It's really going to be phenomenal and They have so much experience with being in Nevada, with big projects, building them,

22:39 understanding how you generate this value from projects, from a technical perspective and from a market perspective. So all of those things are going to be so beneficial as we start really

22:54 putting the details together on developing this asset. Awesome. It's just certainly a Very exciting announcement. If you don't mind, I want to ask you 1 market question before I get into the future. Because, you know, asking me is like asking a barber if you need a haircut about gold. I think it's going up. I always do. But it's been an odd year. Obviously, everything went kind of crazy in January and then it's resettled a little bit. Where do you see gold and silver going for the rest of this year and into next year? And what do you think that means for for high crop?

23:29 Well, I think it's going to be great for all of us. I mean, look, you made a comment earlier about where gold and silver prices are right now. These are not bad prices. No, they were very profitable, right?

23:38 I mean, they're down from their highs earlier this year, but we're still way up in terms of, you know, over the last 18 months. So but But the fundamentals for gold and silver have not changed, irrespective of this crazy volatility that we're seeing. And a lot of that has been exacerbated by the war, because we know that commodity prices are sensitive to interest rates, and everybody had pretty much baked in a reduction in interest rates that they would cut those. But then with the war and inflation and oil, it makes it very difficult to cut interest rates. So now the hawkish position that's been taken on interest rates has created a lot of volatility, a lot of uncertainty. Then you have jobs reports coming out. But look, the bottom line is the fundamentals for the metals have not changed irrespective of all this noise. So this is not a broken bull market. This is a correction.

24:31 It's it's an intense one.

24:35 Yeah, sure. Of course. It's not for the faint of heart. But I kind of say this too shall pass and we'll get back to fundamentals. And then if you layer on that, look, we've had I think we're now 17, 18 straight months of central bank buying gold has has exceeded Treasuries as the number 1 asset class. This is telling you something This is telling you what's happening in the world with the g7 economies with that you know people don't want to own paper that is, you know, backed

25:03 by a massive amount of debt and getting bigger all the time. So everything is saying this is going to drive investors back to hard assets and that hard asset is gold And silver because silver is not just that but it's also an industrial metal as well. So we're very bullish on it. We think that the the commodity prices are going to rebound back to where they they were. We got to get through a little bit of this this messiness that we're seeing and the volatility. And, you know, but I've long term, maybe not even long term by the end of this year, hopefully we'll be back to relying on the fundamentals. And then we should be doing what we were doing, you know, the balance of the end of 25 and early end of 26.

25:52 Sure. I personally don't think Warsh has the ability to hike rates, but that's just me. But I'll also say, and I try to encourage investors to think about this, even at today's

26:02 prices and today's ASIC, you're printing money as a producer. You're printing money. Like it's so much cash. Absolutely. Like the napkin math works very well for gold and silver right now. So even if it doesn't move, it's still very, it's a good business to be in. But before we get into the million questions that have been in the chat and appreciate all you guys, I probably won't get to all of them, but I'll certainly drop a couple. I do want to close my questions with the road ahead, because you still have roughly 10,000m of Julian to complete in this program. The decline engineering work is targeted for the second half of the year and a development path decision is coming as we talked about today. So tons of people in the room give the investors what they're looking for. The catalyst calendar. What should they be watching from Highcroft between now and year end?

26:48 Well drill results will be ongoing And even though we define what our 2526 drill program is does not mean we're going to stop drilling at the end of 26. Not when we're expanding these systems like we are, I mean, we're stepping out anywhere from 100 to 200 meters and we're still hitting it. So, these systems are growing by leaps and bounds. So, continue drill news out but clarity around

27:13 are we gonna build the big project? Are we going pox versus roasting? Are we going high grade? And also the decline to do drilling from underground. So all of that work, while it doesn't make for a lot of splashy press releases because it's a lot of iterative trade-off studies between multiple options, but we will have clarity on that by the end of the year. And then you'll start seeing a timeline so that the market can measure our progress of when we expect to have feasibility completed and construction decision and all of these things. So this is the, I don't want to say the culmination because it sounds like the end, but of a lot of work that's going on.

27:59 And to even be thinking about going underground and an underground mining scenario after only having discovered these asset, these high-grade systems less than 3 years ago. It's pretty crazy. I mean, You know, Remarco, we drilled that thing. It was, you know, 8 years of drilling to have a resource and engineering work and everything to even contemplate that. That should be very significant to the market to understand how rapidly these systems are growing. So That's the catalyst for the end of this year. And then we'll have a whole new set of catalysts and timelines once we've selected the path forward. Awesome. No, appreciate it. And I encourage everybody in the room, keep an eye on the press release, join High Crops mailing list, join their socials, keep in touch with news whenever you can.

28:47 I'm going to get into questions from the audience because they're a bunch. There's a huge number of emails that I'm going to combine into one. It's a question that I know I've asked you 100 times before, but I always like your answer on it. And that's A lot of people want to know when is the earliest extraction of ore would actually begin at the Highcraft mine? Well it depends because we've got the heap leach that we're looking at which is a much quicker startup. We've got the high grade underground which would be next and then we've got the large projects. So until we decide which of these paths, because they all take their own timelines and their own builds, then we won't be able to say exactly. But what I can tell you is that we are going to have that as a result of all this work that we're completing at the balance of this year.

29:35 And I know that's not the answer everybody wants to hear, but it's until you know which project you're building and how big it's going to be and the size and the scale, You can't pinpoint that because they all take a different path. I love Highcroft's investor base. I think a lot of them, it's their only mining investment ever. It's just important to know, you got to know what you don't know before you start mining. That's just really part of the game. Yes, this is not an industry where you want to go out and just, you know, start mining it tomorrow. You've got to do the work. That's how you deliver excellent value to your shareholders without any hiccups. Appreciate it. One question somebody had is they looked at the short activity during July and August and they say it seems like market makers seem to hold stocks down when they feel another raise is imminent and want a good price price.

30:32 So they want to know, should they be expecting a raise over this next quarter? No, not with over $200 million in the bank. What's our use of proceeds gonna be? Why would we be doing that? No, we do not. But we have been watching the short position increase. And that is that is very concerning. And, you know, it could just be a lot of the markets that we're in right now. But I think ours has really been growing quite a bit more than others. So we're mindful of that. But no, this isn't we're not we're not raising money right now. That's what I figured. So I was glad to ask to clarify. Oh, you got to ask. Got to ask. This is a question somebody had that I also want to know because I want to get some. When is the next round of Highcroft issued silver rounds likely to be released?

31:25 Well, I can tell you that they're not silver rounds, they're silver bars this time. And I have actually seen them. They're beautiful. I saw the delivery when I was just at site. They're phenomenal. So stay tuned. You'll see them in our online store, but they are really spectacular. So they're bars this time. I prefer bars, so I'm gonna try to buy one at Beaver Creek if you're around. So, you know, I will be bugging you about it. I'll bring you one. I'll bring you one. Appreciate it. There's a huge number of questions. I'm only going to give a couple. I know you're in Europe, but I'll give some of the bigger ones. Somebody asked, how's the waste ore recovery study coming along? The waste ore? Yeah. I'm not sure I understand that question.

32:13 Yeah, not sure. If you want to clarify in the comments, let me know what you're thinking about. But I could keep moving along. One person asked, is HiCraft worried about Robinhood tokens that they say are back with one-to-one with similar like a sense? So how it's being traded on Robinhood, the app. Do you have any information about that? Our coins? No. Tokens. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, I haven't really followed that. So I don't have a comment. I'm afraid if I comment, I comment wrong. So I won't. It's, it's a, it's a very silly app to be honest. So, so fair, fair enough. One person wants to know just generally, why do you think High Croft is being shorted? What do you think is, why, why does that activity exist?

33:02 You know, it's interesting because I think when we, you know, went up 2200% and like, I don't know, 6, 7 months, you know, you can naturally see these momentum players going, okay, well, this is unsustainable, it's probably gonna come off, so I'll start building short positions, but we weren't seeing it then, but now we're seeing it. And I don't know, we're seeing other short positions on companies increase also, but I think with Highcroft, it's sort of the, you know, kind of the wait and see, are they going to build it? What's the next step? And some people are hedging bets against news flow. And the nice thing for us is we just keep putting out good news. So take that.

33:51 And that's the only thing I can think. I mean, it's it's been a stock that hedge funds will come in and play in. It's a large system and it it's highly leveraged. So we we do see that. But it is it's very disconcerting. Yeah, no, for sure. There's no reason for it. No, I agree. The person clarified their question about the way story. They mean the metals recovery from the low grade piles. They want to know how that's going. Oh, OK. So the so there's no piles like stockpile. Some People think when we're going to restart the leach that we're mining, we're rehandling or mining stockpiles of material. We're not. We are. This is fresh, leachable material in the deposit that was not mined previously when gold was 2,200 and the operation shut down. Now we are looking at that as a restart of the heat bleach operation, because that's something that's going to be done in tandem with any sulfide milling operation, whether it's high-grade underground or the big project, that will be started up in advance. So we're looking, we're doing all of the work on that to understand how much we have, what the recoveries are going to be for a heap leach, and then putting a plan around it to say does this make sense to go ahead and start this up

35:21 now. And so that's the work that's going on. That also will be completed. I believe it's going to be in the in the new year at this point, because we're doing the final metallurgical test on it. One of the things you have to look at is, is leach material, is it oxide, which is fresh material that leaches at a higher rate, or is it transition material, which is partially sulfides which leaches at a lower recovery? And because there was previously in the predecessor companies, they did an assay for sulfur. We don't know. So we've done the drilling since last year. We've assayed for those. And now we're completing the metallurgical tests and we know exactly what it is and how much recovery we're going to get get out of that. So that will that will continue through the end of this year and into next year. Awesome, I appreciate it. Thank you for for clarifying.

36:16 One person wants to know how many rigs are now operating on the property? Well, we've got 3. We have 1 RC rig that is busy doing some of the work for the leach and also we drill 3 collars with RC when we're going through waste and then we switch it out and put the core rig in to drill the targets at depth. And then we're also using it, we're going to be moving it around to some other high priority targets that we think have a lot of opportunity at Highcroft. So we're anxious to talk about that in the near future. And then we have the 2 core rigs, one's allocated to Brimstone, one's allocated to Vortex. We were supposed to have 2 additional core rigs in May, But what your audience may not realize is that we are slated in to get the first core rig that comes off the assembly line or the first one let go from another project.

37:10 When you are a company that has rigs and you think you've got a 10,000 meter program, If you've got those rigs and you decide to expand your program to 12,000 meters, you get to keep that rig. We did it last year. We kept a rig 4 or 5 months longer than we were supposed to because we were still in the program. That's the way it goes with these drilling contracts. So Our 2 core rigs were supposed to show up in May, and the 2 different companies that have those rigs have extended their programs. So now we're being told it's going to be probably in the next month or so, but we are delayed getting them. And when we do get those, we're going to also then we'll have 2 at Brimstone, 2 at Vortex, but we might take one and move it to some of these other target areas that are still within our plan of operations and our permitted boundary, but other areas. As I mentioned before in a prior call with you, Romeo, we are taking everything that we have learned about brimstone and vortex and applying it to other areas and we're seeing similar signatures, structures, geology and so we think that you know this high grade is not confined to just Brimstone and Vortex, but there's other opportunities as well. And I think that's one of the things that will really blow the market's mind when we, you know, when, if we have this other, another discovery out there and there's, you know, our view is there's no telling how big these high-grade systems can be and how many we have.

38:35 And fewer things on earth make me smile more than Alex being excited so can't wait. Oh my gosh, that whole geology team, I'm telling you, they're like kids in a candy shop. They are loving every day of what they're seeing and pulling out. So it's real exciting. That's some folks don't know. We gotta get him on too. Yeah, I should. I talked to Oxcock, but I should tell people in the audience, exploration geologists, they're the biggest adrenaline junkies on earth. They must be demons in the casino. These are really excitable folks, but I always like to see them smile. Paul from the chat asks, what's the current permitting status of the project in Nevada? Well, we have permits for heap leach and milling operations. We will be modifying some of those. If we go to the big project, will be modifying the air project. The air permit.

39:22 There's modifications to water permits. We don't. Highcroft was never contemplated as an underground mine, So we'll be asking for a permit to go underground. The good news to that is we would be coming in through the bottom of a previously mined pit, so essentially very little surface disturbance. It's pretty common to have more efficiency on underground access than it is large open pit. So there's a number of, you know, our baseline studies are in good shape. Our, you know, we call them bugs and bunnies studies. But there'll be, you know, various modifications based on the final project that we intend to build if it's different and it will be different in many ways than the last project that was contemplated.

40:11 Sure. One person wants to know, they say there's an increasing shortage of sulfuric acid generally and they just want to know if you're thinking about or already negotiating a capture future agreement for that item. Well so here's the thing on sulfuric acid we've completed the recovery metallurgical work on that and for roasting versus pressure oxidation, which is what the technical report we put out was based on pressure oxidation. Now we're doing the tradeoff because you do get lower recoveries off roasting, but you're also adding a third revenue stream off the acid sales. India and China have restricted exports of sulfuric acid. That was back in May. So we're seeing prices of acid really increase because it's not just for the lithium space, it's fertilizers, agriculture, it's everything, copper.

41:06 So, it's a very, very important component to a lot of different industries. And so, for us, if we build a big project, we would absolutely do roasting because it we would be capturing the off gases and generating sulfuric acid. If we do the high grade it it we would not be as large of a producer of sulfuric acid, not that we can't do it, but probably what makes most sense is to ship a concentrate to our neighbors. It would save you capital cost bills, you wouldn't have to build it back into the plant, And we've got so many great mining companies in Nevada that would very much have an interest in taking our material and putting it through their plants. So there's some benefits to that too. So all of that's, you know, we're excited about the ACID opportunity and that's all that's going to come out on which project we're building by the end of the year. Now, I appreciate it. I'm going to combine 10 questions basically into one here that people have hope it answers most people in chat and warning, it is an impossible question to answer. So I'll lead with that. But the one version of it, this phrase is, is there a possibility of Highcroft being acquired by a major basically, who's looking for all your answers?

42:33 Well, I think there's always a possibility of that. I mean, look, we've totally changed the narrative of Highcroft into what everybody thought it was since the 1980s into what it is today, that nobody saw this coming. So that's fun and exciting. So there's a lot of eyeballs on what we're doing. Look, you've got a phenomenal project that's long-lived. The big companies need to replace reserves and they're starting to look at, you know, they bought a lot a lot of producers over the last couple of years and now they're looking to grow organically and looking down the road as to where those future ounces are going to come from. And they're starting to look at developers. So, you know, when you, when you think about everything that Highcroft has, infrastructure permits, great jurisdiction, and 2 very, very high grade silver systems, in addition to the 16 million ounces of gold and 560 million ounces of silver sitting out there. I mean, it's a big company project, right? So yes, is it a possibility? It's always a possibility when you create something of value.

43:46 I know, you know, and then other people want it. And that's what we saw at Remarco. We weren't for sale and we were in construction, fully funded and on our way to production. But we had de-risked the project. We had built something of a lot of value, and other companies decided, thank you very much. We'll take it from here. So I think Highcroft has a lot going for it in that respect. But you know you never know until it happens. But it's certainly a possibility of course. Okay. No. Appreciate that. It's an impossible question so I appreciate you entertaining it very much.

44:32 Now, I know you're in Europe. I've stolen part of your afternoon. I'm going to say one last big question here. Somebody wants to know, and this is a shareholder who's very confident in the company, but they see some threads that say, silver's bull market might be over before high crop starts producing. They want to know what you would say to those pessimists with any information that you've got. Well, I would like to know where they're getting their facts from, because I don't see anything in silver that says the bull market's going to be over, even if it just stays where it is right now. I mean, I I doubt I don't see that but the other thing to consider is the scarcity value of silver in the US. I mean, there's not a lot of competition for what we're doing here. Silver still going to be needed in this industrial mineral and is still a critical mineral by the US government and will be and they're going to be stockpiling it silver.

45:23 So what I would say to that is when you have the grades that we have, you can withstand almost, well, not any silver market, but you can withstand a lot further downward pressure on silver prices when you have the kind of grades that we do. Your margins are very, very good and very, very strong. You may make less money at the end of the day if the commodity prices come down. But look, it's we we have to do the right work for the project and in a time efficient manner. And It takes what it takes. This is the nature of our industry. It's capital intensive, and it's long lead times. But we have spent the last couple of years getting to this point, and we are much further down the road than we've ever been.

46:14 And you can't always time the markets, but I think we're going to be fine because I don't see I don't see this bull market going away anytime soon. I'm the same. And honestly, I'll tell anybody if they think that the silver bull market is over, I'll buy all their physical at today's spot price. That's an open offer to anybody in the room. Please, but Diane, thank you so much. I really, really appreciate you joining me for the update. Always a pleasure. I know there's tons, tons of people in the room. I didn't get to exactly every question, but I will send them through to the High Croft team. I really, really do appreciate your time. Not just everybody in the room, but Diane, you as well. I know you're a very busy person and I'm looking forward to seeing you at Beaver Creek. Yes, me too. It's always a pleasure. Thank all of you for dialing in. If you have questions, send them to us.

47:01 We look forward to getting more good news out to you. Awesome. Diane, thank you so much. Have a great afternoon. Thanks. Okay. You too. Bye. Cheers.