Introducing Justin Black, Chief Metallurgical Officer

0:05 Hello everyone and thank you for joining us today for this live Chesapeake event. Today I'm joined by Interim CEO Jean-Paul Sosso and Chief Metallurgical Officer Mr. Justin Black. I'll hand things over to JP to begin the presentation and then we can jump into the Q&A. If you have any questions please submit them in the chat box which can be found on the bottom right corner of your screen. As a reminder this event is being recorded and will be made available shortly after we conclude.

0:30 With that out of the way, Sean Paul, the floor is yours. Thank you so much, Kyle. I'm really happy today to share with everybody an introduction to Justin Black. We prepared a couple of slides here to go through. That talks a little bit more about the technology and really highlights Justin's experience with the technology and how much it's come along over the last few years. So just to start off, here's a couple of cautionary notes. It's the same as in our corporate presentation. If you want to take a chance to read those at some point, make sure you do so. We'll be making forward-looking statements. So this is kind of a high level. Everyone's seen this before, a summary of Chesapeake Gold. The main purpose of our conversation today is about the technology, but we do have Metates and our Lucy project as well that are very exciting projects within our portfolio.

1:24 But we really want to talk about the potential of our technology and how Justin's going to help execute on this strategy. So first of all, just a high-level review of the technology, just for those that have not heard this before. In nature, there are deposits that are formed. They are mostly precious metals with sulfide associated with them. Those sulfide precious metal deposits, over hundreds of millions of years through natural processes on Earth, those sulfide deposits start to transform and to convert from being sulfide rich to being oxide rich. A lot of the mines out there globally are actually taking advantage of what nature has done over this 100 million year period to use a simple processing technique of cyanidation in order to extract the precious metals on a heap leach.

2:19 Now, beyond that oxide, you get into the sulfide, and that's where things become more challenging. And the options that we have available technology-wise are very limited, and they're usually really cost-intensive. And so the whole purpose of this technology and why we think it's so exciting is the fact that our technology is really cost effective, requires a low capital upfront. And basically what we're doing is mimicking what nature has been doing over this 100 million year period and doing it over months. So basically, we're transforming sulfide material or sulfide ore into oxide ore that then can be put on a heat bleach and we can recover the precious metals. So as I've said before, there's been a review by McKinsey & Company.

3:09 They've reviewed all the deposits that are out there globally around the world and they estimate 2.6Boz in situ of reserves and resources and Gold that's out there. And of that, 1 in 4 is considered sulphide or considered refractory. And that amount has basically been locked in the ground, unless under the certain circumstance where they can use the old style of technology to then extract it. But most cases, those deposits sit in the ground and their estimation is about 580Moz have been stuck. And if you just multiply that by the $3,000 Gold price, which we've been seeing over the last year, you can see that that is a $1.7 trillion market. So this is a very exciting market that's out there that has not been really tapped.

4:01 And the other exciting part of it is because it's so challenging to actually process this ore, it's been left in the ground. And so it's been high graded and all the non-refractory types have continued to be mined, found. And the grade of those deposits has been inclining to about an average of 1.21 grams, whereas these refractory type deposits are much higher, almost double the grade at an average of about 2.25. So that's a lot more margin to work with, with regards to our technology and getting more performance out of it. And so why is this important? This is important because technology really transforms

4:41 the way we look at metals and the way we look at the market. And Chesapeake in 2020 acquired this technology, brought it in. Last year I went to the company that held the underlying license, which is Highcroft. I was able to terminate that license, bring in their portfolio of patents and patent applications into Chesapeake, thus consolidating the technology in Chesapeake. As you know, I've always said we're the authority of the technology. We have some of the forefathers that are on our board or working on technology. And this is where Justin Black comes into play. It's been, I guess, a little over 3 months now. I've been working with Justin. It was a significant add to the team and an important individual that has actually worked on this technology under the Highcroft umbrella. And she can share a little bit more about both his background now and also what had happened at Highcroft and what they had done there. Yeah, thanks, JP.

5:40 Yeah, I think it's been almost 10 years now where I've been kind of evangelizing about this technology and just realized it. And it was even a little longer than that, I think 11 years at the first column testing, this method was put into operation at the Highcroft site. And a little while after that column Came down and the initial good results came through so when I went down the site and helped Randy Buffington and art of Brado Launched a really huge column program where we did over a hundred columns in their lab Which you know we worked with some of the labs in the area to get that third party verification. And when we had a lot of positive results out of that, we, we scaled it up further. We took over some of the old equipment at the Merrill Crowe facilities and turned carbon columns into giant column tests. And again, we had good results. So we invested in built test pads, 150,000 tons at first, featuring 3 different domains at Highcroft. And again, took 20% recoverable material.

6:45 And after oxidation, produced gold at 80 or 91% recoveries, depending on the domain.

6:52 So we just saw continued success as we scaled up the technology. With any new technology, there were battles to fight and there were struggles, but we learned from those and continued on. And I think we ultimately process almost a million tons of ore refractory or there was really low recovery expectations using this method on the pads built at high craft. And you know, I just assumed I'd be up there helping them run that for years and years. And then 2020, we ran into COVID and basically the whole technical team kind of broke up. It was hard to keep everyone together. Randy had to leave for personal reasons. I left for COVID. Kind of I was a here and away again type. And it was, you know, a disappointment for me at the time, but the benefit has been under Chesapeake, we've gotten a lot of that original team back together.

7:45 And so the old vision of, you know, proving this technology out to the industry has really been realized by a lot of the innovative stuff that's been done by Chesapeake over the last several years to solve the problems that we encountered on our first iteration, and then to kind of secure that knowledge in pushing forward a more advanced test program with Matates under Chesapeake and patenting all the improvements. So A big thanks to JP for bringing me on and letting me keep pushing this technology forward. So an important thing there is, you know, all the work that was done at Highcroft and all the work that's being done here at Chesapeake, you know, we're using third-party labs, we're bringing in engineers to do the work.

8:34 All of this work is being overviewed by other parties. And this information is not just being generated by Highcroft or Chesapeake on a standalone basis. So there's a lot of checks and balances along the way to confirming the results and the work that we've been doing. And it's really important to note that, with any sort of new technology, there tends to be always a start of a new technology and the technology has some sort of setback at some point. You know, Randy Buffington likes to tell people that the same thing happened at the Cortez roaster. You know, they started it up, It didn't really work, but some people saw the work that they had done there and they implemented that technology at other sites and fixed and fixed challenges that they had at that Cortez Roaster, you know in our case, there was a lot of great things that were happening at Highcroft And what happened was what happened to everybody.

9:34 We all got locked in our homes and we weren't able to continue doing the work that we wanted to do and the work that was necessary to be done. And the same thing happened with the technology. It ended up being a wonderful opportunity for Chesapeake. But unfortunately, that was our setback. Not that something was truly wrong. There was things that we can improve on. And I think bringing into Chesapeake, there's been a lot of work that's been done behind the scenes over the last 4 years to find ways of improving both on the work that is done, but also finding innovative solutions internally for various things like improving

10:14 solution recovery and regeneration. That's a novel idea that we've brought in on that side, which we've patented. But the underlying technology, what's been worked on for the last 11 years, that's really moved past this novel state. And just looking at the numbers and speaking to our team,

10:33 we believe that over $100 million has been already spent on this technology and advancing it, just to put that in perspective for all of our viewers today. So the technology is much more further along than we've been able to disclose in the past. But now it's very clear that this next step we're taking and bringing other parties in, you know, this is a technology that provides a big solution to a challenge that we have in the precious metal industry is either finding new deposits. In our case, those deposits have already been found. It's just finding a processing technique that unlocks them. So, we've walked through this several times over the last few years. For the audience that has not seen it, this is a comparison between old technology, which is the POX autoclave, versus our technology, which is in this case the sulfide heap leach.

11:29 Metates was put through a Pox AutoClave process. We took it to a PFS level. When you start using technology like this, the necessity is to continually increase the scale in order to get to the return that you're looking for. For the Pox Autoclave, it very quickly went up to a 90,000 ton per day operation, producing on average over 560,000oz of Gold to mine the whole deposit in 27-years. But because you're looking at such a large project, then you're talking about a much larger capex. And so the $3.5 billion capex you see here, that includes desalination plant by the water of the Pacific coast, bringing water into site to run the flotation cells.

12:18 Again, flotation, crushing, grinding, oxygen plant to feed the autoclave. Then we had the autoclaves, then the infrastructure, electrical power plant. All of those things added up to that $3.5 billion.

12:34 And that's a very challenging number to raise money to. For a small company, even for large companies, it's a big risk to take that on. Thankfully, our chairman and CEO at the time saw that there needs to be another solution. And that's really where this technology has come in. So same deposit, nothing's changed, only looking at a quarter of it. This is a starter 15,000 ton per day operation. Again, 31 year mine life producing 147,000 ounces of gold equivalent, 70% gold, 30% silver, 360 million capex, which is much more doable and buildable and financeable.

13:16 And again, the NPV is significant. $1.1 billion US pre-tax is still a really amazing number when you look at what the capital expenditure required to get to that return. And just looking at what the underlining of that is, is, you know, we're looking at $1,600 gold and $22 silver, which is prices from yesterday, right? And we're getting a 35% IRR. So at today's prices, the economics would look much better than they are on the screen here right now. And the other key point is looking at the life of mine on sustaining costs, $750,000

13:54 per ounce. Again, that's first quartile.

13:58 Do you have anything else to say on this, Justin? No, just a lot of great points that, you know, you saw it on the kind of financing side and I saw it on the consulting side where you build this great project or engineer it up and then you see the sticker price and you go, oh, it's too bad we're not gonna be building that. And so 3 and a half billion pretty often fell into that range. There weren't a lot of projects we built that were that size but the 360 million range, that's doable. And the more exposure we get on the technology really it's gonna look like a very low risk, very high return project. So it's exciting for Matate specifically. Okay, this is the key update that we had late last year.

14:46 And this is, you know, we've been working on this. If you remember back, we were looking at ways to increase the rate of oxidation.

14:54 We had found one way that a certain regime of our solution, the concentrate crushing, gave us a much faster oxidation rate. And so we had taken that and we had set up columns that went to certain day periods in order to build the chart you see. So the first 1, 0 days, again, that's not using the technology. That's just straight up running it on a heap leach with cyanide and all we could get in that case was 33% of the Gold and 35% of the Silver, which basically confirms again that this is a refractory deposit.

15:32 Once we put the technology on, 126 days of the technology, then we're able to achieve 50% goal recovery. After 146 days of the technology, now we're up to 60%. And then finally, just over 200 days here, we're achieving nearly 75% recovery. So that's a doubling of recovery. And that is just the technology transforming that sulfide material into oxidative material, which is then amenable for cyanide recovery.

16:07 Just quickly on this one, you know, we took the material that was already oxidized and then we zoomed in and had a look to see, And a lot of people ask, can you show where the technology is working?

16:20 At the top right picture there is marcosite again, that's iron and sulfur, which you see in the chemical formula under here. We found a similar crystal, you can still see that, and I'm holding 1 up too, that radial pattern with the crust of form on the outside looks just like the picture at the end of the scanning electron microscope there's a little XRF gun that can tell you the exact chemistry and you can see again all we got back on the 3 point shot was just iron and oxygen. So the sulfur has been stripped out by the technology and oxygen has come in and replaced it. And so this is hematite, which is the oxide form. If there's gold in there, then we'd be able to recover the you know, the term that people use normally, commonly would be rust. So this has been rusted out.

17:12 The next one is our massive pyrite down here kind of looks like the one I'm holding up again. Again, there's little crevices and cleavage planes in there. And the chemistry goes down it and eats like worms into it. And where you have this high reflection, the lighter parts, you can still see that the pyrite still exists and hasn't been fully consumed. But in between where it's darker and black you can see that oxygen has replaced those locations.

17:38 Again this shows partially transforming and if we would leave it underneath the system I'm sure we'd continue that process to eventually be fully transformed into an oxide crystal. And then the final one here, which is similar to our cube, and you can see the chemistry is eating the outside in, so it's a shrinking core, and you can see the cracking form just like when you look at your car outside that's been outside You know all winter for a few years you start seeing the rusting cracking along the outside the same thing is happening here So it's rusted and cracked on the outside. It's hematite And then the center we still have the pyrite crystal And then there's that pre-existing crack there, we can see it preferentially eating down. And what's interesting is you actually see that dark shadow along the edge. That's where that transition is actually happening, where The actual sulfur is actually being stripped away from the pyrite crystal and oxygen is replacing.

18:40 So this is, this is the next, you know, trying to get a better understanding of how this would work in the field or at the lab and you know, Justin, why don't you walk us through this one? Definitely. So what we've got on the right is just your typical pit. That's kind of the life of mine pit for the study that was done in 2021. And From that pit, it conveys to a crusher. And then the crush target we're going for is, we'll say around half inch, it depends on the deposit. Matates, I think we're looking at 3 eighths. And after crush, it goes to a heap oxidation pen, which is essentially just a leach pad where your ore will sit for a short period while it's going through the oxidation process. And now we say short, but it could be, you know, up to 6 months depending on what the deposit shows and in the lab we've been speeding that up. But essentially it goes through the oxidation process and once that's completed, it'll be picked back up and shipped to the leach pad where normal cyanidation occurs. And everything from that point on is just like a typical gold heap leach, which is pretty much the easiest way that a commercial company or industrial company is making gold in the market.

19:48 So there's really only that one added step, the heap oxidation pad and the ponds associated with it. So showing this kind of overview to people that are familiar with development of mine projects is, oh, That doesn't look like such a

20:01 big step compared to adding a mill, flotation, you know, some type of oxidation process at the end and then maybe tailings facilities. It's a lot easier pill to swallow, especially when you look at the capital number and the on off pad, isn't something that's another new technology we're tacking on. It's used in the industry, famously it's used by Spence for some exotic copper oxidation. And so we've got a similar model in mind for how it would be done. But really it's just a matter of buying some special conveyors, which isn't too big a leap. Yeah, the interesting thing, and you just brought that up, Justin, is, you know, when you look at someone that's producing today, and they've been mining the oxide for plus 10 years.

20:50 And then they hit the sulfide boundary and now they're stuck. So they're looking at closure costs, reclamation costs, and then a hundred years of water treatment costs. They see all we need to do is add that little blue rectangle there and the operation can continue. So it's not a big jump, but it's a wonderful opportunity to keep things going and keep things moving. And that's really something that excites groups that have a similar situation as I've described on looking at our technology as a viable

21:25 solution. Yeah and as a kind of long-time operator it excites me for you know the communities that are often built around those mines when you know you've got a deadline and we're out of ore in 27, that's the plan. And something like this that can open up for years more, maybe decades is an exciting thing for communities and small mines everywhere, I think.

21:50 So the next slide basically is highlighting the environmental benefits of the technology when comparing it to traditional techniques. Again, these are not our numbers, as I've said in the past. These are from a sustainable report from 2023 from BARRIC. Pebble Veo is a Pox autoclave in Dominican Republic and then Veradero is in Argentina.

22:15 The only real difference between these 2 projects is the processing technique. They use very similar size fleet, very similar when it comes to the mining operation, but the only difference is processing. And you can see here, and you'll remember earlier in this discussion is, you know, you're going down the pox autoclave route, you need to have flotation,

22:38 you crush, you grind, and then you float the sulfides. Well, the flotation part requires water. For metates, we needed a desalination plant to bring that water in, right? That's been removed, there's no no flotation. And because there's no no use for a high intensity amount of water, that also means that there's no tailings facility too, because we're not crushing and grinding it down to the bug dust in order to float it. So the technology works on the right-hand side there where the water needs for the project is much less and more environmentally friendly. The second is the energy use. Again, energy to run the flotation, energy to run the desalination, energy to run the oxidation plant, energy to run the autoclaves, all of that stuff is removed. The energy that goes into the system when you're working in a heat bleach environment is actually the chemical energy.

23:30 And in our case, it's the chemical energy from the oxidation that goes into that actually transforms it from sulfide material into oxide material.

23:40 And then the final part, again, it's just about the equipment. We have a whole bunch of equipment, obviously, there's gonna be a lot of emissions associated with that. In our case, minimal amount of equipment, chemistry is doing the work, the GHG emissions and the heat bleach environment where technology worked is much less. And so on a comparable basis, it's much better. And without revealing the secret sauce, the chemistry we're adding is really a non-hazardous thing for the environment or for the people working with it so we don't introduce some new hazard to offset the benefits JP mentioned. Yes, perfect. Thank you, Justin. So just a high level before we go on to the Q&A. You know, right now, just earlier or late last year, we actually sent new material from Metates up to our new lab facility.

24:34 That material is being processed, Justin's taking the lead on that. We're at the point where we're looking at accepting third-party projects and we've been working with a lot of various parties that have similar sort of refractory challenges as we had at Metates and trying to bring that material in. We have those other projects, Lucy and Metates, and those things are continuing to advance in the background before, or as they were before. But really the technology where we're basically preparing the way for the technology to be an important part of our portfolio. And just to put everybody into perspective before I jump into Q&A,

25:19 last year is when we purchased the technology license and all of the IP and brought it in. That happened around just a little bit after now, So it's not even been a year yet since we've purchased all of that and brought that in-house. Secondly, in September of last year, we filed a brand new patent basically to protect all the innovative developments that Chesapeake has done in-house. That was a key step before we started to tell the story to other people. And now we brought Justin in, who 1, has the experience of building the project, advancing the commercialization, scaling it up, and it's given us the personal capacity to take on more other people's samples as well. So we're really at the forefront of this next push with the technology that we're very, very excited about. And honestly, been waiting to do this since I started at Chesapeake. So

26:22 it's been a long time coming and I'm sure Justin, there was talks of doing this back in the day when you're with Highcroft and it just didn't get there. So now is really the time for our technology to shine and we're looking forward to sharing this with the broader precious metal market. Yeah, it's 7 or 8 years I've wanted to do exactly this and even between being involved with the project and the technology at Highcroft and Chesapeake, I'd get calls from people in the industry asking, you know, hey, we know we were working on this. And we've just hit sulfide, you want to help us evaluate it. And I say, you know, my hands are tied. I'm in this job now. Or, you know, I don't I don't have access to the patents and the license and it's a whole different ballgame so the people we're talking to that are interested we're mutually interested and I you know I think we're gonna have some exciting news sometime before too long in that

27:18 kind of idea of a partnership. And hopefully that leads to a pilot plant that I think really help propel Matates forward in development. So, Kyle, you can open up the questions now.

27:37 Sounds good. Great presentation, guys. We'll get into it here. There were some pre-submitted questions I'll tackle first, but yes, please feel free to submit your questions in the chat. First question, can you provide any further commentary on the departure of Alan Pangborn and how this transition might affect the metallurgical direction of the company? Yeah, so as many know I started off here at Chesapeake. Alan brought me in. Alan's been a mentor of mine and a friend. He got me excited about the technology and about Matates and I was happy to join him here. He had to step back soon after when I first started at Chesapeake for personal reasons. You know, he's remained on as a director, continued to guide me and guide what's going on in the lab.

28:31 But as time has progressed, we've started to move away from, you know, a lot of those innovative technologies I was talking about that we were working on that Alan was participating in, to now going to that next stage, which is commercialization. And so there's just been this natural transition that's been happening over the last year. Part of it is showing with, you know, Randy Buffington's involvement and, and Justin Black's involvement, as well as our QP Art So these are the individuals that had brought up the scaling of the technology and the commercialization at Highcroft. And that's really where their strength is. Alan has done a fantastic job getting us to where we are. And The challenge we've been having is, our lab has moved from Vancouver, just in the background of the backyard of Allen to down in Southwest United States.

29:27 That's where they had more space, they had the equipment, They had the know-how to really take it to that next level with our new lab. Justin is just outside of the town, just in Phoenix, outside of Tucson.

29:41 Our QPR is in Tucson. And then Randy Buffington is just in the state of Nevada. So really what's been happening is our critical mass for the technology has been doing the shift and it's just been a natural process. And I think at the same time, Alan has also been getting involved in a much broader set of projects.

30:01 I know he's a member of CDL. He's been involved in mentoring young technology developers and other areas of the mining industry, not necessarily processing. And so there's just been this natural transition.

30:17 And Alan, right when he told me after he was planning to resign, he called me up and said, you know, JP, I'm still the second largest shareholder, I'm going to hold you account for what happens. So I don't expect Alan to go away anytime soon. And I'm sure Alan still has ideas that he's gonna be whispering in our ears. But at this stage, Alan's got a handful of things that he's working on himself. And we're so thankful for everything that he's done at Chesapeake over the last 4 years, so 4 to 5 years. So it's been really good. Thank you. The next question, while we understand there are plans to monetize the metallurgical technology, Could you share any specific timeline milestones or potential industry partners you're targeting for implementation beyond Metathase?

31:10 Yeah, so when it comes to the timeline and the monetization, I'll talk to the kind of the monetization and I can let Justin talk about timelines. So there's really a couple of different structures for this. And the perfect example is going into the copper space because there is processing technologies right now that are advancing. What gets us exciting is the licensing fee pathway. That is, we'll partner with a company, we'll do some test work, show that the chemistry is actually amenable to the rock. And Once we were able to confirm that that is the case, then we move on to the next stage where we look at, similar to what we've been doing with our ROC, but getting it up a little bit in scale and then forming a partnership where that can be a licensing fee where they would take their current operation, right, and we'll help them, you know, facilitate the next step, you know, adding in that extra pad, putting in all the necessary infrastructure to do that, And then there's a licensing fee. So that's one way.

32:18 And there's examples in the Copper Space where that has actually been happening. And then the other is, you know, there's certain projects that for whatever reason, maybe licensing fee is not the best or most ideal. Maybe they already have royalty agreements on their property and maybe there's another pathway. And there could be a Part JV ownership or participation in some way in that project. And again, the Copper Space, I can point to a couple of deals that Newton has done, that's Rio Tinto's technology, where they have done that, actually. So, you know, those are the 2 routes. There's also projects that have been abandoned and orphaned, and those might be other opportunities for us to look at. But really, It's we're prioritizing opportunities where we can get this fast track to showing the market the strength of the technology.

33:08 And so that's one way where we're prioritizing all these projects. And like I said, there's over 200 projects that we've identified where we believe the technology could be applicable. And we've narrowed into a handful that we think are key within a few states of where the test work is happening to keep everything quick. And Justin can talk about timelines and how that fits into our schedule. Yeah, I've been very active in the last few months talking to my contacts in the industry, those that JP has, you know, everyone in our company is pretty well connected across the mining industry. And we have good understandings of a lot of the deposits in, you know, our immediate area in Nevada and Mexico and you know a state in any direction and so we have a list of about 200 names of projects that we like and then we further prioritize.

34:02 And several of those projects are in active talks with us to either they've already sent material to the lab or it's imminent. And then of those projects, essentially we're gonna prove out the technology with some amenability testing. And those that work, we'll talk to them about their next steps, whether they want to do a wider test program to support a 43 one-on-one or for us, we're really prioritizing the ones that are already operating that have maybe exposed sulfide or that they're mining around or leaving a pit closed and look at kicking off a pilot plant with them on their facility, using our technology on their ore that again, just kind of proves it works in a wider span than just high crop towards been proven for a million tons.

34:50 And we think that, you know, not only will that open up an economic path, like one of the ones JP talked about, but it'll help springboard into, you know, raising in visibility for Mitates because that's, you know, a big thing. It's not a new technology, but the story was papered over a little bit during COVID. I think we need to bring that back to the forefront so that people really understand what an opportunity this is for Matates and then the industry at large. Yeah. And one of the things that we're working on is creating a schedule where we're providing updates to the market more quickly. So as we bring other projects in, they're all gonna be a little bit offset in the process. Right. As many of our investors know, right.

35:36 You know, we'd say, oh, we're going to have an update on the top days, his technology, and it'd be almost 9 months until the next update. Right. We're wanting to get them all on a little bit offset in the timing so that updates are more regularly so we can share more about how things are progressing with the technology instead of everyone just waiting until the next Matates update. Yep, so the Matates material in the lab was, it started last month and so you know several months for the oxidation and the leach. So, results of those are stock coming out. And then, some of the partners that have sent material to the lab will be following. And I think for me, the big milestone will be maybe, When we decide to talk about which partners have had great results in the lab and then hopefully which partner we've decided We're gonna pursue a pilot plant with I think those are some big ones that are coming probably 26 Okay, 2026 potential pilot plant with potential partners. Any plans on a pilot plant for Matates?

36:41 We've kind of put tons of material, The point I think we're getting to 15 or 20 tons of material through the lab and extensive column testing that does a good job supporting a metallurgical assessment, I think. So the pilot plan, I think we just, we really want to prove it more at scale. And for me, it makes more sense to do it at an existing mine with infrastructure. It's going to be less of an investment to do the same thing, demonstrate the technology in the same way. And we'll be able to show parallel lab results from anyone we pilot plan with, and Highcroft, and Matates. And I think that the proof will be pretty evident once we've got a couple different places that have done it at scale and they all have the same basic lab results.

37:30 Thank you for that. We'll jump into the Q&A questions here. Some have already been addressed. I'm trying to weed out everything here. How much work slash time will be required to complete a PEA when you're satisfied with the oxidation results? Okay, so we have oxidation results and then the post-oxidation leach results that we expect to come out Q1, Q2 next year. And we've kind of got it in our plans already to be pursuing not a PEA, but a PFS in parallel. And so we only expect 2 or 3 months after we've got our oxidation and leach results ready to be able to take that report to market.

38:21 Bruce says, my understanding is chemically oxidizing sulfides results in gypsum formation. Is this the case and how is it dealt with from an operation slash cost perspective? So this starts to get into a little bit of the secret sauce, but he's right. You don't wanna form a bunch of gypsum and calcite in your pad and seal it up and prevent access for your sanitation solution to the gold. And so our technology does a good job of avoiding that. I you know, there's a little bit of. There's no magic to it, but there's a little bit of, advanced kind of scientific concepts that we'd have to get into that. Probably reveal more than JP would probably disconnect me from the call halfway.

39:10 So I'll have to leave it at that, but it is a good point. You don't want to form gypsum and we don't see that in our results over the last 10 years. We know that it's a potential problem, but we don't experience it. No worries. He has a follow-up question here too. How Do organic carbon and antimony influence results in operating costs? Fair question. We haven't run into any projects where we've had organic carbon or antimony present in significant enough quantities for us to know. One of the things we're doing in this rollout to the industry is we are looking at a little bit more diverse bodies that usually they have gold and they have the sulfide manifest.

39:58 And we think the deportment probability is gold in the pyrite. Some of them also have copper, some of them have may have antimony. And so we're going to see how the oxidation plays out with those. But right now we have, you know, a large number of options that we can test with that don't have organic carbon, antimony, copper, any of those other elements that would give us plenty of good options for projects to work with as a partnership or royalty. But I think as far as organic carbon goes, I don't think it'll affect the oxidation, but you'll still have to deal with it when you move it to the heat for cyanidation. So any of those problems that we don't directly address, which is really the sulfide and the refractory nature, will still have to be dealt with by your downstream processes.

40:50 Thank you, Justin. I noticed I missed a question here and I don't want to put words into the individual's mouth, so I'm just going to read it as is. Is Mexico allowing all this? Yeah, so can I give you a little update on Mexico? Late last year, we did go down to Mexico about the time. When we were following the appeal for San Vicente 3, And I had conversations with the state government there and the conversations with the state government was around what's happening in Mexico, what's the new government like? And their commentary was very interesting. Their commentary was prior to this past election, the last time the state government had actually met with the federal government was 2 years ago.

41:40 All right, so the secretary of economy had not met the secretary, the federal secretary of economy for 2 years. And now they're meeting regularly within every 15 days or monthly. And so the communication and what we've been gathering from the federal government is they're way more open to communicating with both the state as well as players within the market. At the PDAC, both Justin and I attended, we heard from the government at the opening of the Mexican Mining Forum, that The mining industry in Mexico is open for business, which is a completely different message than what we heard from the previous administration. He went so far as stating that the ban on open pit mining, which we had heard and were concerned about, is no longer an interest of the federal government.

42:35 It was said in Spanish, somebody stood up, asked for him to repeat that in English, he repeated it in English to everybody to hear. So they're not taking on this approach again to ban open pit mining. They're being more open to mining in general. I did a talk here a few months ago, Kyle, with you, highlighting all these benefits, but again, just for everyone's sake here, There's La Preciosa project that's owned by Aveeno that got its permits to go underground. There is the Alamos project at Malatos, the underground expansion that was permitted. There is 2 projects under Pinoles that have gotten their permits.

43:22 I can say that I've heard about 37 different exploration permits have been granted to companies in our industry. Again, all of these things were really challenging in the past to get, but it seems like the new government is way more open to advancing the mining industry and being supportive. And way more open to communication with industry too, which is a happy situation for everybody. As time goes on and we continue to see these similar moments in their decision-making come to light, it's just going to further add a foundation that mining in Mexico has turned a page, and now we're in a better direction.

44:16 And that's all the messaging we've been seeing and there's been a change. Thank you for that. We have one final question here and I'll let you 2 gentlemen go for the day. What specific timeline milestone should investors be watching for regarding the metallurgical development of Matates over the next 12 to 18 months? And maybe I would just say for the company as a whole. Okay. Well, for me, I think the biggest, you know, and I'm kind of. 1 track mind on the technology and how it applies in the top taste. And I think a big thing there will be, you know, the announcement of some successful partnerships and, you know, 9 to 12 months, and then the hopeful announcement of a partner for a pilot plant. And again, the reasons that I stated before are still why it'll help springboard any raising or development of metates, and it'll also keep, generate even more interest into the technology in the industry.

45:23 Yeah and I would also add to that you know there's other things that we could announce over the next several months just to give the market more understanding of how the technology is being adopted widely and how there's actually interest. And we're working hard to get those stories out and get those announcements across to the public, just to continue, 1, to share that with our own investors, but 2, by doing that, we're also increasing the awareness of the technology, which helps to continue to build this momentum that we're getting with regards to interest and bringing third-party projects in house, while we're also working on Metates in the background. Yeah, I'd say for me that Metates as a project is really at an inflection point, you know, it's been in development for, I think, around 40 years.

46:14 Since since I started my career in mining, I remember it was one of the first projects I touched on long ago. And this technology really takes it from one of those top shelf expensive, but eventually someone's going to build a type of projects to, wow, this is an immediately interesting project. You know, the gold environment's great. This technology changes the ask and the development timeline and everything about Matates. And, you know, I think it's going to be a huge thing for Chesapeake, obviously, to both show how it changes Matates and then how that technology can change other projects in the industry that are under the similar kind of development hell conditions. Gentlemen, thank you so much for your time for the presentation and addressing the Q&A and thank you everyone that submitted questions for the Q&A and attended this live event. If you came in a little late, this is being recorded and our team will have it up in the next couple of hours here, so keep an eye out on our YouTube channel and our Six.com website to watch the replay.

47:18 Thank you for your time, gentlemen. Thank you.