Kuya Silver: Record Q4 Results & Growth Financing

0:03 Hello everyone and welcome to another live Kuya Silver market update. We're joined by David Stein, President and CEO to discuss this week's news regarding quarterly production results for the fourth quarter and the full year at the Bethania Silver Project. Now this is a live event and we encourage you to ask your questions. So you can do so by submitting them in the bottom right corner of your screen in the chat box. As always, this event is being recorded and can be viewed shortly after we conclude here. And to kick things off, we have David here going over a brief presentation and then we can jump into the Q&A. So with that said, David, the floor

0:35 is yours. Thank you. Thanks, Kyle. Yeah, pleasure to speak with everyone again. And for those of you who are new to the story, I'm gonna go fairly quickly through the update And then, but there'll be more, there's always more information on the website. Here's our disclaimers. Please, you know, go onto the website. This is on our presentation all the time. Some of the slides that I'm going to present today are just kind of special to talk about Q4. They won't be in the main corporate deck,

1:15 But please feel free to go and look at this online as well. It'll also cover our other projects. I'm not going to talk today in my presentation, at least, on Silver Kings or Umm al-Hadid, the Saudi Arabia project. But unless there's questions about that, happy to answer them. But again, there's more information in the in the deck on those. And then we're going to focus on Bethania, which is our flagship. And, you know, I think, you know, it's worth reminding everyone that it's very special that we are a producer. There's very few of us, you know, probably around 10 in the entire world that that are actually dominantly or get most of their revenue from silver. And of that, we're you know, We're one of the most silvery or silver rich of those 10.

2:06 If you looked at our Q4 results, you saw that 88% of our revenue was from silver in the quarter. That was at $57 silver. So if anything, it's higher now. And so we're giving investors what they want, which is which is silver exposure. They may not just know it. They may not know it yet because, well, that's why we're getting out and trying to tell the story. And but but I mean, it is it is a really unique Bethany is a really unique mine, a unique opportunity, and it's worth a premium valuation that we're not getting yet. But that's the goal in the next year or 2 years, is not only to grow into the production that we'll talk about, get valued for that, but also get a premium valuation for the exploration and growth profile that we can deliver over the next 5 years.

2:56 So that's that's kind of the story here. You know, the biggest risk that you have in mining is time. And we're already in production. We're already fully permitted. We're permitted. Our mill's permitted. We're in a friendly jurisdiction. And now, you know, we've got a really strong balance sheet. So for no debt. So we've really got all the pieces. We're putting together all the pieces and I guess the ramp up will be the last step that we'll be executing on in 2026. So there's where we're located. I do still get a lot of questions on this when I meet people. We're very close to Lima, but up in the mountains there, you know, good jurisdiction near the city of Huancayo.

3:45 I've made a few adjustments to this who have seen the this slide before this is our hundred hundred plan. So it's still the plan but Obviously, there's a couple of changes brought about by the much higher silver price 1 is that if we if we can make an assumption about a higher silver price, I used to have $30 in this slide, that our cash flow, annualized cash flow, once we complete phase 1, instead of being 20 million is now gonna be, well, probably 50 million after tax and 75 million EBITDA, right? 1.5 times 50 million or $50 of margin. So that is obviously, you know, an incredible opportunity. You know, so there are peers that kind of produce That kind of production are trading in the billions already so we you know if we get there There's no reason why we can't join that party and you know just for reference the market cap today is about 150 million USD.

4:50 Okay, so that's why I'm going to talk USD unless I say otherwise. The other thing is on the 100-100 plan, which is 100 million ounces of silver resources and 100 million a year of free cash flow in 5 years. Well, the cash flow side of it may not take that long. Again, given the silver price, we used to be saying that we would need to produce 5 million ounces a year at a 20 dollar margin to produce 100 million free cash flow. I mean, now it's more like 2 million at a $50 margin, right? So that's not that much more than we'll be doing in the next few quarters. So that's obviously a very, very exciting development.

5:35 You know, who knows what happens with silver prices. That's not the point here the point is that you know, we we have the the leverage and and the already the vehicle built really to be 1 billion if not multi-billion dollar company over the next few years and and that the flagship and the starting point of that is the Bethania mine. The other thing that's slightly different on this on this slide is is going to be our phase 1 phase 1b that may get combined this year You can see they're both now fully funded. The recent financing that we did, we set as earmarked to essentially add or develop our milling or processing capabilities so that we're no longer dependent on toll milling. And, you know, if I'll leave it there, I'm sure there'll be a question on that. So we can all can elaborate more later. But that's obviously an exciting opportunity that really further de-risks the project, de-risks our ramp up, we'll lower the costs as well.

6:32 Either way, whether we build or buy a plant, it's going to lower our costs as well. So that's so really a number of exciting things have happened very, very recently here with us, some in our control, some out of our control. All right, so here's the Q4 results that we just reported the other day. And I just wanna talk to, you know, talk through this again for those of us who for those of you on the call who follow us really closely and really dig into the numbers you know first of all we you know to 2,000 tons in a quarter is a record for us so that's great I think you know to be perfectly honest I would have liked to see more than that.

7:20 And I think, I think, you know, that will come in the next couple of quarters. I think, you know, obviously every, when you're ramping up, every quarter should be better than the last. And Q3 wasn't because we had some problems which we talked about you know 3, 4 months ago with you guys which have now been all solved. So we started off basically with very little material to process from Q3. We did process that ore or that material, and we also added to it some of the stockpiled material. That is the low-grade stockpiles that we've known we've had at site for years. You know, at lower silver prices, not worth, it's definitely not worth trucking to the mill, but at these silver prices, it definitely is, no question. So we started preparing some of that material to process, and we did process about 2 thirds of our processing in the quarter was those low-grade stockpiles. Before I get to the stockpiles though, the stockpile processing, we did as you can see shift resources heavily into development in Q4. So a couple things going on there, you know, that I want to flag.

8:34 Number 1 is this is a really good thing because development is going to turn into tons of ore, tons of mineralized material as we call it, and then profit and revenue in the next few quarters, and you need to do that development ahead of time. If you look at our previous quarters, the ratio of mining, mineralized mining to development was a lot higher, okay? Or it said another way, less development happening. And that's because with the limited resources that we have, and we've talked about the challenge of ramping up and hiring people in the past, the limited resources that we had was going heavily into just mining whatever material we could find, you know, to generate some revenue and kind of survive for months and months, quarter to quarter.

9:24 That all really changed for us in August of 2025 when we completed that, the financing at 50 cents. That gave us enough working capital, a lot of headroom, but it's still taken a few months to really shift the way of thinking at the mine to thinking ahead, thinking longer term. And it's happening and it started to happen in Q4. And so from that perspective, it's really good to see, although we would definitely like to see more tons and we will. But the fact that we're doing so much development is fantastic and it's really going to pay off in the coming quarters. The low rate stockpile, as I said, we started the quarter without a lot of material to process. So we decided and at the time the silver price was rising, it was hitting $50, I believe, in October.

10:13 So we decided let's ship some low grade stockpile and add that. And we did that and it was fine. I mean, what it does do is, and we didn't split the numbers out here, is it lowers the overall grade, of course, because this low grade stockpile is low grade. Our fresh material was around 9 ounces per ton in the quarter. That's again what we were processing, what we mined in Q3 and a little bit in early Q4. And then I think the low grade we were doing was 4 ounces. And then that also affects the recoveries as well. Overall, we're still getting very high recoveries on the fresh material. Okay, there's no change there, but the low grade, you definitely get low, you get much lower recovery.

11:02 Cause partly because it's partially oxidized from sitting out in the open for 10 years, 10, 12 years. So you lose a little bit of recovery because of weathering and then also just lower grade, it's harder to recover anywhere in the world. So that's just physics and chemistry. So we're not planning on doing that in Q1. We're focusing back on the fresh ore. It was a little bit of almost like I guess it kind of an experiment with the higher silver prices and you know again it still would work but we now sense that there's limited capacity with the mill and we don't want to overwhelm them with a bunch of material that's not going to generate that much profit for us. So we're going to focus and the mine is you know is is is is got a you know delivering a lot more of my material. That's good. So we are gonna be processing that here in Q1. We've already started processing a big, you know, a pretty nice stockpile we started the quarter with. We said that in the press release and you know, lo and behold, we'll be selling that at $9 an ounce. So that's a nice little bonus as well.

12:10 So the low-grade stockpile strategy, just to wrap up on that is, you know, first of all, There's all this material lying around from the previous mining. We've identified it before. We've even talked about it before. Never put it in our resource. We've never given any economic value to it. But what we did do in the fourth quarter, and we talked a bit about this in the November 21st press release, is we're preparing it ready to ship. So we did quite a bit of that in Q4. We did, you know, over 5,000 tons. And in order to do that, we need to transport it to the flat loading area that we

12:42 have where the other stockpiles are. We have to remove the debris and waste that you find. Debris would be things like metal bolts and stuff that's sitting in there, again, from just sitting around at the mine for the last 10 years. We bulk sample it, so we actually know what we're sending to the mill. Okay, that's important, that's never been done before. And we cover it to prevent further weathering. So we have 5,000 plus tons of that material and we have no as I said no plans to process it in the short term but it's there for future flexibility if we need it. Now the mine headcount jumped quite a bit in Q4, especially November, so that's good and we've held on to that. You really never hire people in December in Peru, and there's some reasons for that relating to how people are paid in Peru. People don't tend to leave or join new companies at the end of the year, but we're back at it and hiring people in January and it's looking very good.

13:46 The last update on the mine I want to give is the ramp. We have, since we had this in our presentation, kind of reengineered the ramp, redesigned it a little bit. So instead of a figure 8, it's now a corkscrew going down.

14:04 And so that's one big change. No significant change to the cost. We also decided to make it wider so we can get bigger vehicles and more material in and out. And the additional cost is marginal. So it's a really kind of exciting development for us. It's really going to be key to us, you know, finishing the ramp up. I think we can definitely get a lot more production from the mine as it is in the next couple of quarters. But to, you know, to get our, you know, up to our 350 tons per day. While it is possible to do with the current 2 adits, we really think this ramp is going to be just a huge breath of fresh air in terms of material movement for us. And essentially, as soon as it gets down to the bottom of the green area, we can start using it for production. And then the blue would be like a phase 2 to get down to the to the next level.

14:55 You can also see the next level we're going to develop is going to be 50 meters between levels instead of 30. That's again, 30 we inherited from the previous miners, 50 is just going to be more, you know, a little bit more efficient. So not as much development, not as much horizontal development required, which again is, you know, it's time and money. And so that's another little slight improvement that we're making to the operation that will pay off and later this year and in the years to come. So I'll just quickly, I've already probably spoken longer than I wanted on the update, but the exploration is another big important push for us. And we don't have any news on it yet because it's just starting. But as we've said before, we've got really 7 different silver deposits that we need to kind of flesh out further. The only one that's in production is the Bethania mine.

15:55 And it alone is going to be, you know, we're very confident it's going to be much bigger than it is today because of the potential at depth and also a long strike in this in this other eastern zone here as well as well as some of these other you know other vein systems. So we're starting right now with the drill program here drilling essentially offensive holes about 50 meters below the mine, below the resource model. That will pull, that should pull the resource down in the various veins that we're expecting to hit and then also convert some inferred into indicated. That will also help with the mine planning in these lower areas as we continue. You know, we approved the first phase of that in the second half of 2025.

16:46 I would expect that we'll, as soon as we finish this, we'll just re-up and do another 5,000 meters. Maybe likely just another slab below this, although we also want to drill off to the east as well, and we have the drill bays to do it. So we may be doing some drilling out this way as well from underground. And then finally we will get to the surface drilling as well probably in the second half of the year. And we're right now setting up the systems in place and the permits and all that to get that done so that we can potentially be drilling in sort of 3 areas. So the east extension, just keep drilling at depth probably for at least another, for at least a year. And then also the regional exploration projects. And likely we'll start with Carmelitas first, but we'll obviously wanna hit all those areas in the coming years. So there's a lot of exploration coming. And again, really there's, I think, very little to no value in the stock for it That's all upside and what you'll see is that will reflect on our multiple that we trade at in the future So if if a sort of a boring flat production kind of company trades at 10 times EBITDA, you know, we should trade at 15 or 20 times because of our growth profile.

18:06 And obviously that's how you very quickly get into the billions of dollars of market cap. So we'll leave it there. Here's the newest cap structure based with the financing that we just closed. And that's it for the presentation. Let's do the questions. Great, thank you. Thorough presentation. Given that was thorough, David, thank you for that. I know a lot of people appreciate it, but I'm also reading the chat here and I know a lot of the questions are regarding the press release for this week, so it's probably worth just resharing your overall thoughts on this press release and what this milestone means for Cleo Silver's trajectory.

18:48 Yeah, look, I think, again, the, the, the, the, so I guess there was a couple parts of the press release, right? What 1 is just the raw like just the q4 numbers, you know, they they showed a obviously an improvement over Q2 and Q3, but we're still producing at, I think, something like 1 1⁄8 of what our phase 1 should be. So it's still early days in that sense. Now it should pick up very quickly. I'm getting some feedback. I don't know what's going on. Let me lower my volume here. Maybe you do the same. That's sometimes the issue. I'm not hearing it. Okay so yeah so there's still a lot there's still some you know some big jumps in production that we're expecting in the next few quarters to get to that phase 1 target of 350 tons per day. And we're still looking to get that by Q4 towards the end of this year.

20:00 So I think our sort of our medium term guidance is not changing. I think it's been tough to predict or to forecast not predict, it's not a crystal ball, but it's been tough to forecast the mine in the very short term, just because, you know, There has been a big, really a big sea change in terms of our way of thinking about the production in the near term. And it's been in a good way. We now have the capital that we can start focusing more on development and making sure that we get to that 350 tons, you know, by the end of the year and maybe a little bit less concerned about what happens in the short term with the production, because we don't need the money. We want, we want, and don't get me wrong, we want to produce as much as we can and we want to show the market that the ramp up is going well.

20:52 But we're definitely less motivated in terms of the short term than we are in the long term here, in the medium to long term. The other thing that was talked about in the press release is the financing and the mill options that we have, the plant options, I should say. And, you know, we alluded to either buying or building a plant to, you know, kind of de-risk that aspect of the project as we ramp up. I think the toll mill that we've been working with for the last year has been great. We've been getting very good recoveries on our fresh ore from Camilla.

21:37 You know, the people and the team have been good to work with and the location's good in terms of our logistics, taking our concentrate to Lima Cayao. So it's been good, but at the same time, you know, toll milling always comes with its own risks. There's a third party there that you don't control what they do. And so we do want to vertically integrate that, like all larger mines do. And so that's something now we're fully funded to do, whether we decide to buy one of the plants nearby or build our own at site, we can do both, either of those right now. And then, and I think we'll make an announcement on the preferred option and the way forward on that very soon in the next couple of weeks.

22:26 Let's stay on that topic and share what you can, but When you're evaluating both acquiring an existing flotation plant versus constructing 1, what are the key factors you're weighing in that decision? And what timeline should we be looking at for getting the processing capacity operational? Okay, well, let's look at it as if like pros and cons okay so so in terms of in terms of buying an existing plant the pros are you know basically you can start processing on day 1 you know you close the deal and you're processing the next day so there's no there's no wait and and then and you then there's a lot of other hard work that's already been done for you.

23:16 The tailings of storage, labor, all that kind of stuff. So it's really, you know, sort of a quicker and in some ways, I guess, less risky way to go, especially if it's a, you know, a plant that you know is in good condition and is operating really well, which that we would determine in our due diligence. You know, the other the other nice thing about having a mill is depending on the size of that mill, we may not be needed, need the full capacity of it right away. So we could continue tall milling, presuming that they tall mill, we could continue tall milling and earn a bit of additional cash flow that way well as we continue to ramp up you know the Bethania mine proper so that is those are kind of the pros there.

24:03 The pros on building our own is that it's gonna be closer to the mine. So less transportation costs, minimal transportation costs.

24:14 And ultimately, ultimately if we wanna go to 1000 tons per day, like we've said before, we think that's what the district deserves to have in the next 3 to 5 years in terms of the geological potential and where we expect the mining rates, you know, will need to go. That would be, you want to, if you're going to be producing that much tons per day, you really want that at site. So I think the long-term growth, we want to center it around the Bethania mine in terms of having that plant, but that may not be necessary right now this year. We may have another option that would kind of bridge us there and still be a really good way to de-risk the operation and lower the costs.

25:04 Interesting. You mentioned deferring the processing of higher grade fresh material. I believe you said 9 ounces per ton to this month, January, 2026, to take advantage of the significantly higher silver prices. How are you thinking about the timing and optimization of material processing going forward, especially with the strong silver price environment we're in?

25:30 So As we ramp up, we'll actually have less, there'll be less flexibility on the timing because essentially we'll have to process all the time. So you'll just be processing. And I mean, I guess we could, you know, if we wanted to speculate on the silver price, we could hold our concentrate back and not sell it. But I think, you know, I think that's something that we're able to play around with a little bit right now. And to be totally honest, there's a part of that that's out of our control because we also wanna, we wanna be good partners with the toll mill and schedule our stuff ahead of time and, you know, make sure that they have a window. I mean, right now, lately, we've been doing longer process batches, which is, I think, better for us and better for the mill. So, you know, we take over that mill for, you know, a third to half of their month, right? And then the rest of the, you know, that doesn't leave a lot of time for them to do other work. So with other mines and other people in the area.

26:31 So that's kind of the situation right there. So as it worked out, we didn't do much processing in Q4. That was partly because of what happened in Q3. And then partly because we ended up deferring the next batch into January. So the operation has been ramping up to phase 1 target of 350 tons per day. Right now, currently, what are the key bottlenecks or challenges you're working through to reach that target and what gives you confidence in achieving it?

27:11 So, probably the biggest bottleneck is still staff, it's still staffing up. And it's, as I said, in previous calls and with individual investors, it's happening. You can only hire so many people per week. But we, we've definitely seen a big improvement in that in Q4. And so I'm not worried about whether or not it's going to happen it's just something we just have to we just have to keep working on it and and it will get done you know so that and then those crews obviously need to be trained and need to be safe and all that stuff. You know, once we get those people, you can see where, you know, they're able to do a lot of good work on the mining and development side.

27:58 The next, the other, you know, it's probably 3 bottlenecks and probably this would be the same of all operations, all underground operations. Next one's going to be the material handling, so again that's getting the material out of the mine. I mean we're constantly making improvements to that

28:16 with the resources and with the infrastructure that we currently have. I mean the reality is that the ramp, once we get the ramp down to that 640 level, that will make a huge huge difference. And honestly we'll have spare capacity at that point in terms of material handling and getting the rock out of the ground. And then the third would be development. I mean, development has not been that much of an issue. You know, we've we've had we've we've had enough stopes and working faces open for for a while given where we're given where we are in the in sort of the mine ramp up but there will be more more of the development work needed to get to 350 so that's another thing that will happen over the next few quarters. And again, it's probably the least bottlenecky of all the issues right now, but it is something if we don't keep focused on it, it could become a bottleneck later on.

29:17 Going back to the workforce, I'd love to hear your thought because I recall the one slide you had. It looks like a rather large percentage is employees versus contractors. What are your thoughts on contractors versus having your own workforce? So we found in Peru that you really, you really want it, you know, because the, because the labor laws are what they are, we really want to build the regular mining workforce that's going to go do the mining for us day in, day out in the underground development and all the surface, you know, infrastructure really need to be employees. And then you can hire contractors on the margin for certain special jobs.

30:08 So I think we'll always have a mix of the 2, but leaning more towards employees. Gotcha. You mentioned this was the first quarter where Bethania operated with excess working capital. How does that financial flexibility change your decision making and priorities for 2026 beyond just processing plan investment? Yeah, I mean, again, what it really means is that, you know, we we can make those trade off decisions That maybe don't produce as much or in the near term and push that out if it's gonna get us more Production later on that's really what it means So we're not we're not So we're not so desperate to get a certain number of tons to sort of pay everyone and keep the lights on.

31:01 We can actually properly develop the mine and really think about long, you know, the long-term future and viability. So with 88% of Q4 revenue and 92% of annual revenue derived from silver, you're extremely leveraged to silver prices. How are you thinking about capital allocation and growth strategy in this current silver market? And what silver price assumptions are you using? Well, that's kind of an open debate within the company, I would say, as to what we should use, you know, going forward, because it's been changing so fast. It's honestly been hard to keep up in Q4 and early Q1. I mean, we want to be conservative, no question, but we also don't want to be like ridiculously low So, you know, I I had my presentation From you know, probably going back to this to the summer Something like a $30 silver price, right?

32:02 Which is that's more than conservative. That's just that just seems ridiculously low right now. So we have to adjust that. It doesn't really change a whole lot. We've got a very low cost operation here. You know, We had a very good IRR at $25 silver price in 2022 when we put out our PEA. So so this isn't this isn't something that lives or dies by the silver price. Right. You know, obviously, on the margin, there's, you know, stuff around low grade stockpile, stuff like that. But I mean, that's not going to make a big difference either way. I think we need to develop the mind, get to our 1.5 million ounces a year, make 50 to 75 million in cash flow on that. And then we get revalued to a, you know, something that's probably 5 to 10x of what we're trading at today.

32:55 Few individuals upon registration and in the chat are wondering if the company expects further share dilution, If so, to what amount? Definitely for the status co-operations, we should not need any further share dilution. We, You know, I frankly probably would have said the same thing in in, you know, in October, November. We were looking at, you know, potentially doing a debt deal to finance the plant. You know, we ended up, you know, seeing our stock price double. We decided to that it was much less risky and a lower cost of capital to to do the equity financing instead in January here. So we did it. But.

33:42 But, you know, we're We're very, very nicely capitalized to do everything we need to do at Bethania going forward plus plus extra. And we should have we should have a lot of money left over. And we're not that far away from the mine basically producing its own cash flow and being able to fund its own exploration and its own sustaining CapEx. I mean, that's that's only, you know, 2 or 3 quarters away. So so we're in great position in terms of balance sheets. So the only the only thing that I could see that would be, you know, significantly dilutive would be like an acquisition merger, that kind of thing. I mean, I'm not guiding anyone to expect that. I'm not looking at anything right now. But, you know, this is that that kind of thing can happen. Obviously, if we see great opportunities, It's very difficult to compete with Bethania, but you know, it's possible that there's something out there. So we'll have to see.

34:40 Upon registration, an individual has a few questions here. December 2024, KUYA announced a letter of intent to implement surgical mining. How did that work out? Was it implemented? How does the plan for ramp up 2026 look like? And is 350 tons per day still the target? Okay, So let's talk about the surgical mining first. I mean, we signed that deal. I mean, we actually, you know, I've got a definitive agreement with Novomira now. So we've continued to work on them, work on the deal, work with them, I should say. We haven't been able to figure out all the permitting yet in Peru on that.

35:29 It might be easier to implement it in Ontario, frankly. But with that being said, we do have some really interesting ideas about mobilizing that Novamira surgical drilling technology in Peru as well. But you know, it's just something that's going to take time. So I mean, I wouldn't look at that as a real critical piece of the operation, but it would be a nice add on because it would be cheap, quick production for us. And it's a great it's a it's a fantastic idea. We really like it. But you know, it's just been it's just been you know, we haven't our mind doesn't need it. So it becomes more of a, you know, more of a growth project, more of a side project for us. Whereas, you know, versus the core project right now is the mine ramp up.

36:19 What was the second part of the question, Kyle? 350 tons per day, 2026 expectations. Yes, we're still, you know, we're working on updating everything. And again, we'll have some news on that pretty soon, but my plan is that we are pushing for that. And I don't see any reason why we can't achieve that. Great. Individual in the chat saying, would you discuss the difference between metals processed versus metals sold during the fourth quarter? What is an appropriate proportion to use going forward? Well, it's a very, very specific question. So metals, metals processed, metals sold will.

37:16 So I think the intention is that the metals sold relates to, I mean really all the metals are sold, you know, they get all the metals. It's just they don't pay us for everything. So for example, with silver we get 95% of the value. With some of the other metals the percentages are different. And and so it's not a you know it's maybe it's maybe it's confusing terminology. You know I consider that 5 percent that we don't that we don't get paid for a cost, right? Because we actually did produce the silver, it's just we're not getting paid for it. So that's part of the the TCRC or the treatment charge slash refining charge is that some of the metal you don't get paid for And then on top of that there's some extra charges that that you have to pay as well to get that material processed And it's a pretty standard thing and honestly all silver lead zinc Or silver lead and zinc sorry silver lead yeah and zinc lead zinc silver concentrates around the world All you know they all trade at a certain rate and it's pretty consistent.

38:23 So we get the market rates for those when we sell our concentrate. And that's really the difference is that the metals sold will link more directly with the revenue. Thank you. Now you touched on this briefly during the presentation, but Hans might not have been in the room at the time. Would you please provide an update on exploration and drilling program, start and end date, expected meterage and holes, if any plans have changed? Okay, no plans have changed. I mean, We have, in terms of the design, we've got 5,000 meters laid out and that's underway now.

39:09 I would expect it'll take us probably the rest of this quarter and maybe into April to get all the results back from that. But before we complete that, or as we complete that, we'll probably just design the next drill program and just keep going. So I don't think the drill program is ever going to end. But there will be some kind of cadence of news releases about it once or twice a quarter, depending on how fast we can get the assays back. And obviously, if they're material or not. For sure. RD is wondering, would you be putting together a timeline for Bethania's progress? Yeah, I think we are looking at doing that. I think, Again, let's see what we are able to do on the mill or the plant announcement and the development there where we just raised the 25 million for.

40:12 And then I think that would probably be the appropriate time to do a State of the Union and get further guidance. Fair enough. Fourth quarter recoveries were lower than the third quarter. What do you expect going forward? Yeah, again, maybe you missed the early part of the presentation, but it's specifically related to the low-grade oxidized stockpile we were processing. And so the lower recovery reflects the blend of that. And I would expect it to go and we're not at the moment anyway we're not planning on processing any low grade this this quarter or at least we're not doing it right now so I would expect I would expect that the the recoveries will just go right back up to where they were before.

41:02 Slightly different question similar path here How might grades differ over the next 4 quarters compared to the resource estimate? That's a tough question to answer because we do, you know, continually, you know, we have a PEA that did, you know, did have a 7 year mine life and a model that went along with that. I think if you look at the year by year, you know, probably the grades varied from, you know, maybe 8 ounces per ton to maybe a maximum of 11, kind of in that range. But we do change the schedule, the stoke planning and stuff is something that we change, and it's very dynamic as we go, and as we ramp up, and as we get more experience with the mine. So I think it will be in that range, the range that we expect based on the average grade, but nothing particularly low or high.

42:03 And again, the higher production we do, the more that should average out to the average mine grade. Right. David, can you do me a favor and go back to the Corkscrew ramp graphic, just so in case people came in a little later here. An individual is wondering, when do you expect to reach the green range of the ramp project? I'm assuming it must be blue range, though. Yeah, probably. Or finish the green. Yeah. So just go ahead and address that. Yeah, I think we're gonna push very hard to get that done in the next few quarters here, definitely before the end of the year and we'll see. It's been a little slow to get that project started but we're taught that is something that will be done by contractors I believe.

42:58 I'm sorry are you referring to the green or the entire ramp? Just the ramp project in general. So yeah, so I think stay tuned, we'll be able to provide more guidance on that in the coming months, but it's not, it's probably a 9 month project from start to finish. Once we get there, we haven't quite started it yet, but we should be starting very soon. Great. Walter's wondering if you can comment on the current silver ETF holdings of your stock and possible future ETF buying of your stock? Sure, we got our first ETF buyer in December buying in the market which was the Sprott SLVR ETF.

43:45 So we're happy about that. I think they have, last time I looked at their website. I think they had 3 million shares of Kuya You know and we're getting mean given our market cap We're you know pretty decent size holding for them And what that means is that if if that ETF attracts more capital, likely they will buy their, you know, all their holdings in proportion. So they would keep adding to that that position if if people keep buying that fund. So that's that's great. I mean, I think that the silver mining ETFs in the States are much bigger in terms of market cap. So we're not on any of those yet that I'm aware of. SILJ is a big one, obviously, that I think we would be hoping to get on soon.

44:38 And our market cap is increased both because of the financing and also the share price going up. So, you know, I think we're getting close to where they'd have to, you know, seriously consider adding us. But, you know, we don't know what the fund managers are thinking. They're independent. It's up to them. But obviously, I think at some point, you know, you get big enough, they have to buy you. It's just a matter of when and we're getting there. So so it's that's a nice additional buying that should be coming into the shares over the coming years and quarters. And I mean, right now, if you look at our percentage ownership in ETFs, it's still very low. I mean, it's, you know, it's about 1 and a half percent.

45:30 Whereas, you know, I think some of our peers, the ETF holdings are close, are between 7, 8, 9% of their shareholding is just held by just ETFs. So that's a lot of potential buying that could come in in the coming years. Great. 350 tons per day has been brought up a lot. An individual in the chat is wondering, if you get the mine tonnage up, is the tow mill even capable of handling the incremental volume? So the one that we are working with right now has an expansion plan already designed and permitted to do that. And so that's always been our expectation, discussions with them that, you know, that expansion will take place this year and and it would be no issue with that being said there are other options for us we could split our our and and process it at 2 different plants if we had to or go to a bigger plant There's some bigger ones that have spare capacity in our district as well.

46:34 So, I think it's a solvable issue on the toll milling side. But again, we don't plan to toll mill for very much longer anyway. Right. Same in the Vujraskin, another question here. What was the highest tonnage mined annually of Bethania historically in its life before Kuiya? Let me back calculate that. I think it was maybe 80 tons per day average. Right. Isn't that that? OK, here's another question has break-even now moved beyond Q1 Well, yeah, you know, I think again because You know break-even Obviously, it's great milestone and it's important.

47:32 It's more important when you don't have any money and the market's always worried about your next financing. Well that should be now in the distant past for us. Obviously we've got 30 million dollars on the balance sheet. So we're making decisions now based on what's best for the final ramp up not necessarily Trying to trying to make you know Break even this particular month or this particular month or whatever it's gonna happen very soon whether it's March April May whatever Frankly doesn't doesn't matter because the the amount of money difference is insignificant. And and so, you know what I say, It's it's it's soon whether or not it's this quarter or not. I don't know obviously this silver price makes a big difference there as well I mean our break-even tons per day is probably lower Much lower than it used to be. I don't know exactly what it is We're you know, we're working on all those sort of new budgets and stuff like that.

48:34 So we'll have more information, but it's probably much lower than 100 tons per day. I like this question here. How has the recent rise in silver prices changed your thinking related to the buy versus build decision regarding the processing facility? It's honestly not a factor. Good question, but it's not much of a factor. We ultimately want to build our plant, But if there's an opportunity to buy one that that gets us there faster, we like that opportunity to because again, I think what what what the buying option may give us is essentially almost like a three-phase ramp up of I'm talking about from you know from 0 to 5 5 million ounces a year so like the hundred hundred plan that we talked about so it almost might give us a middle area where we could produce 700 tons per day. So we could go from 350 to 700 to over 1000.

49:40 Whereas the other previous plan, which where we basically just built it ourselves, it would do, we have to build 350 first because that's what we're permitted to do. We don't want to re-permit that project. And then we would jump to some expansion after that. So I think it's more about logistics and risks than it is about the silver price. Can you do me a favor and move to the slide with the cap structure, please, David? There's a couple of questions here that pair nicely together. Can you talk about the current shareholder structure and how has it changed with the private placement? And the other question is, why did Kuya choose a brokered private placement and not a loan to finance the mill?

50:29 Yeah, okay. So, I mean, we definitely, we have a few more institutional shareholders coming in. I mean, that $25 million financing was largely institutional. So, you know, it's, you know, call it 20 million shares ish is is You know About 10% of the company, right So that that so definitely added to the to the institutional. We were very under-owned, almost very other than Crestcat, you know, sitting at 7, 8 percent, something like that. The other institutions we had in Cuyo are pretty small shareholders. And I would say even this financing it was quite spread out. There weren't any like really really big buyers of it. So I think people are still test dipping their toe in the water here and and then would add to that position you know as we deliver.

51:31 So that's kind of how it that's kind of how it how it went. So it's it's not dramatically different than than it was before the financing. In terms of the in terms of the share structure. In terms the trade-off loan versus equity. So we went fairly far down the road looking at debt, project debt for this. And project debt is always secured. Security comes with covenants. Covenants are fine if everything goes well, but if they don't, it becomes a big risk for you. So, you know, if we were still at, you know, 40, 50 cents a share Canadian, you know, I think we would have already done the debt deal by now. It would be announced in the books, but it's a matter of the trade-off between dilution.

52:27 Obviously, dilution at a dollar is significantly different than dilution at 50 cents, right? I'm talking about 25 million shares difference. So, and we ended up raising probably more than we thought. You know, that was, again, once you get going, you might, you know, you gotta take advantage of the markets And I, you know, don't like doing financing, equity financing. And so once you're already, once the wheels are already in motion, you got to, in my mind, just just take advantage of whatever you can get. And then if, you know, if the brokers and the investors are there to upsize it. And so we ended up upsizing it, as you probably know. But we went in looking for 15 million Canadian, and that was significantly less risk that we thought at doing that deal at a dollar than than to do a secured loan.

53:24 You know, getting project debt is not, you know, for a small company is not cheap. You're looking at, you know, probably high teens to 20 percent cost of capital between because they'll want warrants to or some kind of upside kicker convertibility or warrants, one or the other, because the loan guys know that if they're loaning you money and that you use that money to unlock value, they want some of that value, right? And they deserve it. So it's not loans are not dilution free. And then, you know, until you become like, you know, a huge company and, you know, the banks will lend you money for you know for 5% or 7% we're a long way from that and all small companies in our case no you know nobody's going to give you money like that that cheap so so that that's that's honestly the the trade-off we will we you know we looked very seriously at it but but again with the share price moving up in December the way it is, the equity financing became a kind of a no-brainer for us.

54:29 David, Great presentation, great Q&A. Thank you everyone for making it a great Q&A with all your questions submitted. If you came in a little late, our team is very quick with the turnaround. Expect the replay on our channel as well as YouTube, or on our website rather than channel, but on our YouTube channel as well. I'll pass it over to you, David, for closing remarks with the final question. Looking out over the next 12 to 18 months, what should investors be watching for as the key milestones and value inflection points for Kuya Silver? Well, I think it'll be different things in the 18 months. I think in the near term, the first exploration news at Bethania in the last 5 years is a big deal.

55:17 That's a huge deal in my mind because it makes a big difference. You know, again, in terms of what kind of multiple we end up trading at, if we're seen as a growing company with a, you know, great exploration, huge exploration upside, which, you know, we geologically believe, but ultimately we need to drill and prove that to the market, I think. So that's probably the bigger thing in the short term in the next, let's say, 3 to 6 months. And then beyond that, as you get into the second half of this year, it's going to be, you know, delivering on the production and starting to show some real cash flow from Bethania. And then, you know, and we've seen again with some of our peers that made that transition in 2025. Now that the silver price is not such a concern with investors, you know, when they make that transition from kind of, you know, cash flow negative to cash flow positive, you know, some of our peers out there, some of the bigger, you know, silver mining, you know, kind of junior mid-tiers, their market caps go up by hundreds of millions of dollars, like almost overnight.

56:27 So that's something that we'll be looking forward to, but it's more likely to be the second half of the year. David, thank you