Newfoundland: Canada's Growth Jurisdiction for Mining

0:03 So, yeah, welcome, everyone. My name is Matthew Mickleboro of Junior Resource Investing. I'll be hosting this panel today. Just a little bit of laundry items here, just as a reminder, this will be recorded or this is being recorded and will be available shortly thereafter. There will be room at the end for a Q&A session. So please get your questions into the chat. I encourage you if I have time or if they kind of fit organically into this conversation as we go, I'll get them as we go. Otherwise I'll make sure we have a few minutes at the end to grind through them. And just I also had a shoulder tap from from 6 here. Please, they're encouraging you to use the request a meeting button that these guys are both the CEOs are willing and able to meet with prospective investors. So yeah, please make use of that technology. Otherwise, the title of today's panel is Newfoundland Canada's growth jurisdiction for mining. And I think this is probably a fairly well-timed panel. In a world of increasing geopolitical uncertainty, jurisdiction has arguably never mattered more. Tier 1 jurisdictions allow companies to advance with confidence without costly or even catastrophic social or political events hindering them. Joining me then today to explore this idea or this concept are 2 Newfoundland CEOs. We have Sean Kingsley, CEO of Goldhunter Resources and Nolan Peterson, CEO at Atlas Salt. Thank you gentlemen for joining me and how are you?

1:15 Great, thanks for having me Matt. I'm a little bit sick, I apologize for that but I'll get through it. Get that on the laundry list of things to get out of the way before we get going here. And yeah, Sean is having some technical difficulties, but my understanding is he can hear us, so we'll continue on here. But why don't we just, yeah, opening up panel here for both of you, please. And I guess Nolan, I'll let you start this one. Newfoundland gets pitched as a tier 1 jurisdiction,

1:40 every deck on every screen, right? But let's move past the Fraser Institute rankings for just a moment here. What's something about actually operating boots on the ground in Newfoundland that has surprised each of you, like I say, good or bad, that maybe you wouldn't have read or known about if you had just read an article or a review of opinions?

2:01 Nolan? Yeah, yeah. So, I had never done business in Newfoundland before. I never even been to Newfoundland before. I started at Atlas Salt about a year ago, but I've been in mining for 20 years and of course you always know in Canadian jurisdictions things move a little slowly. You know, permits, approvals, getting people on board, getting stakeholders on board. So I was actually surprised at how quickly actually things can move in Newfoundland. You heard that even hearing things don't get done in Newfoundland, that to the extent that that was ever true, it's certainly changing now.

2:35 Since I've been on the job, I've never seen any slowdowns. We've moved relatively quickly. Our project was released from an environmental assessment in 2024 in under 2 months, which was shocking to me. Again, dealing in other provinces and territories where it can take decades in many cases sometimes to get approvals. So yeah, once there is alignment and everybody's on board with what you're planning to do, moving things along, getting support, the government ministers will step up for you, both the previous Liberal government, the new Conservative government, That's been the most surprising thing for me and very refreshing actually operating in a Canadian market where that's the case.

3:22 Very good. And yeah, Sean, yourself, good, bad or ugly? Something that just you've learned from actually operating in Newfoundland?

3:29 Totally. And you know, Matthew, like Nolan, I've been in the business for nearly 20 years, but of those 20 years, I've been going to Newfoundland and Labrador since 2012, so 14 years onwards. Surprises in those 14 years, very similar to Nolan, but I have a lot of experience working with the government of Newfoundland and

3:55 the mining department, the permitting office as well. Unlike other provinces and jurisdictions I've worked in, they're very accessible and they want to help.

4:12 They're very accessible, they're very nimble. I'll give you an example. When we did our exit transaction to Firefly 2 years ago, we had to get all of our partners and prospectors to sign and have that notarized. So I brought all those documents to PDAC, the PDAC conference in Toronto, and went to, met up with the Minister of Mines, and he literally notarized each agreement with the prospectors at their booth. Like there's no other province that would bend over backwards for our industry. So, you know, getting things done in Newfoundland, never an issue.

4:53 Excellent. And that's actually a decent segue, almost came to mind, almost like a small town feel in terms of the ability to prioritize these things. However, Newfoundland, maybe the strength and weaknesses, it's smaller and not quite Ontario or Quebec or BC, but you have this, but a bit of a stagnating workforce there, and you, but you at the same time, you also have this large gold rush happening in the last few years. You've got Equinox ramping up, Ballantyne Juniors gearing up behind you. Are there concerns about there being a labour squeeze this year or next? And how do you plan to avoid that or to deal with that? And Sean, I'll let you lead on this one. Yes. Being a part of CETAM, which is a Centre of Trade and Excellence in Mining here in British Columbia, we've done a lot of labour surveys over the last decade.

5:41 And it's not just a labour squeeze in the province of Newfoundland, It's across our country, across our nation. So that is challenging for our industry.

5:53 But what I found really cool in the last handful of years is essentially prior, all the university students would leave the province as soon as they graduate to go find work in the oil sands in Alberta, et cetera. Ever since Newfound Gold made that discovery about 6 years ago and really propelled it moving forward, everyone's happy to come back into the province and to find jobs and with Equinox and Valentine now in production, that's also increasing. So, you know, I see a bit of a paradigm shift now where the university students are, okay, well, what can I do in our province? And there's a lot of opportunities. One thing people need to understand about the island of Newfoundland is the services are readily available.

6:41 An hour away in Deer Lake, that's where our drilling company or the drilling company we've chosen or will choose next week is situated. The laboratory is like 10km away from our project.

6:57 Access to service providers is easy in Newfoundland, especially where we're located, where both of our projects are located. And so I don't really see an issue, but we recently brought on Equity as our service provider that's essentially running our camp

7:15 this season and hopefully moving forward. And they're not based in Newfoundland, but there's a lot of skill sets that can be acquired within the province, but also we'll bring some from outside of the province. So I don't see any issues, maybe helicopters, because a lot of the helicopter companies are going up to Labrador. Labrador

7:37 takes a lot more to move things around versus the island. Other than that, I don't really see any issues. Nolan, anything to add to that? What's your perspective on workforce competition? Yeah, so the same thing. I mean, Atlas Salt, we're at a little bit of a different phase, I guess. We've started construction 2 months ago, site preparation and clearing for now, but we're going to be gearing up pretty quickly as our financing rolls in. We designed the project very specifically to address the potential workforce labour shortages. I'll say first of all, you know, same as Sean, well not same as Sean, but I was, another surprise was how established the infrastructure is in Newfoundland,

8:20 how much the services exist there, how the roads are nice, there's people all over the place, right? And flying through Deer Lake, everybody there is already flying out to go to the mines in Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, BC.

8:34 There's a workforce there. They constantly ask me, send me emails on LinkedIn and say, hey, when are you building the mine? We're ready to be operating. They're already there. But in terms of designing the mine, we have put in some things that will make this a very modern build compared to even the most modern

8:52 typical Gold project or Copper. We've got battery electric vehicles, 100% battery electric fleet, so that reduces your operators' requirements, a lot of automation allowed, cutting-edge technology, it reduces your engine maintenance people required for maintenance, right? So you're using more technicians than you like the grease type of mechanics. So we have those types of things put in place and we're going to be building our project in phases, so we're not gonna be jamming it all at one go, and that helps to space things out. So yeah, incremental building and the knowledge that the workforce has already established

9:32 and ready to be deployed on our project, I think has created no issues for us thus far, and we expect to mitigate them going forward. Oh, sorry, you're on mute, Matthew. Thanks, Sean. No, thank you, Nolan. I thought it would just fit in an audience question now here that I thought it fit in well here. Just, Julio from the audience, and Nolan, I'll let you lead off on this, and then again, Sean, if there's any additional kind of content there for you. But Julio just asks, does Newfoundland offer any subsidies for projects? Is there any provincial subsidization that you can take advantage of?

10:11 So, yes. So, I mean, on the exploration front, for sure, There's funding available. So we just closed a small flow through on a different project in Labrador that accessed some flow through type funds from the government of Newfoundland and Labrador that supports exploration. We have received funding from ACOA, which is a federal program, but that's available through,

10:39 excuse me, that's available in the Atlantic provinces. So, and Newfoundland does have involvement in how those funds are distributed. And yeah, we're always in active discussions with the Newfoundland government about other ways that they can support. There aren't necessarily checklist type programs where you just submit a project and get, you know, $50 million or something like that from the government. At least certainly none that I'm aware of. If anyone is, feel free to put them, bring them into my attention. But there are initiatives at the federal level that target provinces like Newfoundland and Labrador that can help, you know, help advance our project. So we're in discussions. I see the opportunity to grow that potential there, especially for projects like mine and others in the region that are just, they just make too much sense, right? Let's get these projects going as quickly as possible with as much government support as the government deems to support us with.

11:37 And yeah, Sean, any additional color to add to that, just a provincial subsidization or provincial support networks that you could highlight? Yes, the government of Newfoundland does provide what is called a JEA, which is a Junior Exploration

11:51 Assistance Program. So I believe they give you up to 75% rebate of maximum for the island of Newfoundland, US$150,000. So we've

12:04 taken the JEA last year and the year before to do work, anywhere between geochemical and geophysical work. And they're essentially giving us money to make potential new discoveries. So yeah, it's good. I'm not sure on the operational side with Atlas, but definitely on the grassroots side, yes. Yeah, that's the program that we tapped into as well. Very good. Sean, so I'll split off here to more company specific questions and I'll pep these back and forth for you gentlemen, but Sean, I'll let you lead off here. Windfall Geotech produced 40 targets for you and the team flagged 5 as high priority. There's a lot of optionality going into a 10,000m program plan for you. How are you sequencing the drill so the market can get a read and maybe even just the first 3 or 4 holes without having to burn through all the targets for this season?

13:00 Yes. Just going back to the Windfall Geotech machine learning program, we have so much data. This is a consolidated land package, it's 26,000 hectares. It is a district-scale project And so it helps us with the level error. Not only has it confirmed the trends of mineralized splays coming off the faults that we've already identified, but it also highlighted other

13:29 potential mineralized splays. Obviously we need boots on the ground to ground-truth before we can actually even consider drilling these targets, but it definitely helps us. We have a lot of targets. We're very target-rich. We have 50km of mineralized splays, Gold-bearing splays on surface that the majority have not even seen a single drill hole. So we've got a lot of targets to drill. We'll start at Thor, which is a well-known area, very high-grade intercepts historically.

14:03 So obviously the markets these days and the last couple of years do appreciate some discovery intercepts, but also some really nice intercepts. Currently,

14:18 our project is not really being seen. One of our main priorities is to hit the low-hanging fruit that we believe we can come up with some really interesting intercepts that could wake up the market a little bit. Very good. And then, Nolan, a question for you here. When the 2025 UFS came out, you dropped mine life from 34 to 24 years, but you increased annual throughput from 2.5 to 4Mt per year. Can you just walk us through, I mean, obviously this is just about kind

14:49 of jiggering things so the economics are as good as they can be, but what were the trade-offs involved there? What ultimately made you change your mind or make that change rather to pull more production forward and giving up that decade of mine life?

15:03 Yeah, so I wasn't there for the original feasibility study, but going through the record, it was pretty clear that there hadn't been a new salt mine built in North America in 25 years, or there hasn't been 1 at this point in time. A couple of years ago, it was like 23 years, right? So there was a bit of a question mark, I guess, about developing a salt mine and marketing the product by the engineers and who are putting together the 43-101. So they set a target of 2.5Mt and said, this is what we can achieve through production, this is what we can achieve through sales, and this is a good feasibility study to deliver. It was certainly quite impressive at the time. But as you know, just financially, everything passed basically 15, 20 years, especially at an 8% discount rate, which we're kind of subject to as an industrial mineral.

15:57 You basically get no value for it on an NPV basis. The cash flow is still there, but the NPV isn't. So anytime you can pull that cash flow forward, it just makes more sense. So in the 2 years since that original feasibility study, we learned a lot more about the market, a lot more about the deposit capabilities of the mining fleet that we spec'd out that we're going to be able to mine it was determined at that time from the original to the updated. And we just realized we could go for more. We could go for 4Mt. So 60% improvement in production

16:30 at only about a 22% improvement in CapEx, or sorry, not improvement, increase in CapEx. So, you know, the numbers just make eminent sense to do that increased NPV by about 60%, increased after tax cash flows by 60%, increased IRR. You just check every box you do it. It's a perfect decision to make. The thing I would say, of course, is also that 24-25 years is our reserve life. That's longer than most mines operate in Canada to begin with, out of the gate. That's already impressive, but because it's a salt deposit as well, we already have another potential 50 years of resource defined by drilling. This is already shortening the mine life, getting those 10 years, we're not actually losing anything.

17:19 We're just bringing forward the potential to add the resource to reserve in the future. And that really didn't cost us anything to bring that production forward, except of course following the 43-101,

17:33 what's reserved or not, and what's your mind like. Very good. And Sean, back to you, just a question around your slide deck. You have some Valentine comparisons up in there. Obviously aspirational, structural arguments, I think there's value in that sort of forward-looking ideals. But of course, Valentine is in production, $3.1 billion NPV. And of course, Gold Hunter is, you know, you've got a $15 million market cap, give or take here. At what point does that sort of aspirational comparison, does that risk setting expectations too high? Or how do you manage

18:04 not getting over your skis in terms of those kind of comps, Sean?

18:08 Yeah, you know, it's all about analogs. You know, when the research analysts or the bankers are looking at a project, they want to know what is the blue sky, what is the potential. As a professional and very responsible team on a technical side, we have these discussions and we definitely see a lot of comparisons to what the Valentine was. They're kind of in a similar situation as us today. A few hundred thousand ounces and really just putting a jigsaw puzzle together. Our team includes people that have parachuted into situations like this. For instance, my VP of exploration, Rory, he came in post-discovery of the coffee deposit in the Yukon.

18:58 And within 3-years,

19:01 he led it from post-discovery into a Feasibility Study. The Feasibility Study before they got taken out. But there's a lot of smoke. There's a lot of data, a lot of opportunity. How do we fast-track that?

19:16 It took Valentine 10-years to do. How can we do that in 5 years? We have another person on our team, Tanya Tattler. She was the exploration manager at Valentine with Marathon Gold. She was there for 6 years and she's seen how that project came together. So we see a lot of the same kind of recipe to start with, multiple deposits or multiple resource areas along major fault structure. It's the control, the same rocks, same environments geologically. So yeah, essentially, we can't be the next Valentine today, but how can we move this project forward in a responsible way and at least demonstrate that this could be something like the Valentine. And that goes across the whole province of Newfoundland.

20:12 Newfoundland hasn't had its fair shake. When the

20:15 Boise Bay was discovered back in the 90s. You know, unfortunately we had the Bre-X scandal right after that kind of killed any momentum in our entire industry. And every time we had momentum here in Newfoundland, something happened globally that kind of just took the market away for that opportunity. Even that big Gold rush 6-years ago with Newfound Gold, every single mineral occurrence was staked in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador and unfortunately by many people that really didn't do anything moving forward.

20:47 So I always tell people, you know, the last 14 years I've been going into flood is the prospectors and geologists or prospectors mostly have done a great job on the surface, but not enough people have spent the money to drill to make those discoveries. And so it's gonna take a lot of drilling to hopefully be something special like Valentine, but we're up for the task. Excellent. And Nolan, back to you here. So just just discussion on the Sandvik MOU in 2024 was worth valued at 73 million here now in February was updated to $132 million. What is actually in that expanded scope? Is that actual true real vendor financing or is this equipment that Atlas is paying for up front or can you just break that down for us or provide some additional context? Yeah, so the additional

21:32 scope is all the additional equipment and supplies that Sandvik will be supplying over the initial life of the mine to bring us to full production. So with the original feasibility was 2.5 million tons and the expanded cases for our updated feasibility studies 4 million tons, So that means more equipment, additional fleet, additional electrification, automation, digital systems. And that's what encapsulates that increase in the capital cost. The details of what will be vendor financed or not in specific will be hammered out in the coming months as we work with our financing. We're in the middle of the financing relationship right now or discussions with Sandvik and our lenders through our Endeavor financial process through our debt broker advisors.

22:22 So, that will come out in those details. And then also, Sandvik is potentially bringing SCK Sweden, which is the Swedish Export Development Credit Agency. So, the bigger that 132 is, they can be a component of that financing as well as Sandvik too. So yeah, investors should keep in mind, be very

22:44 positive that that number is quite large because it brings that there's more opportunities for more financing from either the vendor or other partners. Excellent. And Sean, back to you here, just a question around Magnetare option payments. Those got pushed out to 2028, a couple months back there. Optimists said that that's a vote of confidence. Pessimists said that this is a deferral because he just didn't have the cash on hand to make those happen. Could you just, again, provide some clarity on this decision? And what does it tell us about your capital plan for the next 1 to 2 years? You know, Magnetera, you know, our partners are our largest shareholder and they agreed to not defer it but just to extend it. You know, the final payment was due June of this year and, you know, both companies realised like, we have an opportunity here at the Great Northern and it's not about taking advantage of the situation.

23:41 Extending it year upon year for the next 2 years made a lot of sense. Magnetera already owns almost 20% of the company. It wasn't about owning Gold Hunter. We picked Gold Hunter to move this project forward. It's always been our secondary project. Magnetera and the prior predecessors, Signal Gold, Anaconda, etc. Had to focus on Goldboro, which is now, you know, in the stages of going into production. And so this has always been, you know, Great Northern was their secondary projects. They didn't have the big budgets to really aggressively go at this. That's why a couple of years ago, they did the deal with us, when gold was still hovering around $2,000.

24:28 Now where gold is today, And we're finally launching a very aggressive drill program. And for the next 2 years, we don't intend to stop. So there's a lot of upside on both sides for the companies, for both of our pool of investors, which we share a lot of investors together. And so, yeah, it just made a lot of sense. There are partners not only

24:54 on the ownership side, but also on the technical side. Lou Lawrick, David Copeland, Tanya Tatler, they're on the Magnetero side and they're supporting us as we launch this drill program. So it's really a combined partnership effort and it just makes sense all around.

25:15 Very good. Now, Nolan, next to you here, just a question around the benefits agreement. You signed this with the province back in February, now you're clearing land. Maybe just again, provide some insight on that agreement. What is it, something about it that the market maybe hasn't appreciated yet, right? What is something about that agreement that maybe you've found demanding or something you've had to rise to help meet the threshold? Yeah, so I guess the first thing I would say is that we don't view it as demanding. Every company has an obligation and responsibility to support the region in which it operates. That's something that I feel strongly and Atlas does as well. So we see it as an opportunity to put those in writing and make those commitments. And so we're quite proud of the agreement that we made. One thing I would say, you know, it goes into the long-term thinking, you talked about the labor workforce. One thing that is maybe a bit of a sleeper clause is that we have, and again, people who aren't super familiar with it or don't understand the significance of it, we've agreed to a 10% apprenticeship rate during construction and 15% during operation, a ratio of 2 apprentices per journey person.

26:23 You know, the demographics of the workforce in Newfoundland and other provinces in Canada are generally going in the wrong direction on these types of ratios, you know, to try and draw upon existing workforce. And we've committed to training the next generation. And that's important for us because remember we have a

26:39 25 year mine life, right? This is a, it's not a 10 year project. It's not a 15 year project. It's not a construction program. It's a 25-year mine life. And so that means that we need workers for that 25 years plus, remember I said 50 years beyond that. So we're thinking about the next 2 generations beyond that, right? So the apprentices are going to be working on our site for decades. And that's something, again, we would already be needing to hire these people in 10, 20 years, whereas many other projects would be saying,

27:11 I only need these people, these guys and gals for the next 10, 15 years tops, and then they can find a job somewhere else. For us, we are truly thinking about the next steps and this agreement feeds right into that.

27:27 Excellent. Well, please do, Sean. Yeah, I just wanna jump in and applaud you guys, Nolan. Like, that's amazing. Like, as I mentioned earlier, you know, our labor force, we're going to have a huge glut. Not enough younger people wanting or even knowing to join our industry. And so, you know, all the, I guess, the old timers, you know, a lot of them have come out of retirement to fill all these gaps and stuff for now and there's not enough and that transition of teaching this new generation coming in, times are ticking so the more we can do to really kind of bridge that gap, is that what you guys just are doing is very applaudable. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, part of being a tier 1 jurisdiction, I think, is being good neighbors on the part of the company too, right? And making sure that you say that you take time to help the community as well. Not, yeah, no, Sean, well, a couple more questions here, Jensen, there'll be a closure. And like I say, I warned you guys, there's a couple of questions in the inbox that are flowing in here. But just Sean, to you, the Rattling Brook historical estimate sits around 250,000 ounces, but it is of course, a historic and now needs to be updated using modern drill validation.

28:40 If these drills come back lower grade or narrower or not what you were expecting, Does that change the way you think about the rest of the district or just that one zone or how does that kind of impact your approach moving forward?

28:52 Yeah, and you know, we as a company, we can't take the historic estimates and, you know, consider it or even talk about it as a valid estimate until we actually bring it to a 41, 43-101 standards. But what I will say is that, you know, the last estimates was done in 2019 and that's when Gold was what, 1200 USD. It was also with a 1g cut-off grade as well too. And with Gold being at US$4,500, you would assume that the cut-off grade would definitely lower. But taking all that aside, we're very confident with the drilling that was done. It is pretty recent, pretty modern. We don't see any issues.

29:39 We have full confidence in it. And the estimators that have done multiple estimates, not only at Rattling Brook, but also at Thor, are telling us that we just need a few holes at Rathenbrook to bring that into estimates that we can start talking about. That's one thing that excites me. But going into your second question, we don't see it as it might vary slightly. But the opportunity, not only at Rattling Brook, but we have 18 mineralized zones already identified, 50 kilometers of splays already identified that haven't seen, majority haven't seen drill holes. There's 3 different, one thing that I learned, so I've been on the road for 5 weeks, I just got back last week, I'll be back on the road after next week. And what I learned from Rory, my VP of exploration, is that we got 3 mineralized styles on the property. Rattling Brook, it's pretty consistent. We can potentially hit 100m of over a gram.

30:47 And at Thor, we got up to 25m of 8g and stuff like that. So 3 different mineralization styles, but we're not after what we know. We're after what we don't know. And that's what the market should appreciate. Bringing Rattling Brook into a 43101 that we can start talking about. Because I can't even say the number you just said about how many ounces that estimate is. But I think this summer's really going to at least propel us in a sense that we have 3 objectives, Rattlingbrook into a 43101, Thor expansion and Discovery. So along those ways, we're target rich. We're not afraid that Rattlingbrook is going to vary any sense.

31:38 I don't know, that's a long-winded question, but there's a lot going on on the property already. Yeah, no, very good. And you know what, this will be quite the segue, kind of opposite ends here from discovery drilling to project financing. But Nolan, you referenced that you've been working with Endeavor to help with your debt financing for a while now. I believe the number is $350 to $400 million you're looking for in secured debt. This is a question I was looking forward to, just because salt is niche, right? It's not gold, it's not silver, you know, it's maybe a bit more niche for people. So, I mean, I'm sure you get that with investors, but do you also get that with bankers too, right? When you're working with debt providers, What's their familiarity or experience with SALT? Are you just kind of forced every day, every conversation to kind of reteach SALT? Or how does that work when it comes to debt providers, just maybe the relative lack of knowledge of SALT as a resource?

32:30 I wouldn't say I'm forced. I have the opportunity to enlighten people as to the positives of SALT. Again, I joined the company a year ago for those that know and I knew nothing about SALT before that, but it's been quite fascinating learning about it. So, I've become a bit of a salt profit wanting to spread the good word. But yeah, really, at the end of the day, let's think about what lenders want. So just more so than, you know, equity investors are looking for upside, but lenders simply want their capital to be paid back at the end of the day. So for them, it's all about a risk question. Are they gonna get paid back? What's the risk of not getting paid back? And in many ways in the salt industry, it's a lot easier to answer those questions because it's a non cyclical commodity. You're selling the cities and governments, right? You're not selling directly to consumers.

33:20 The cities and governments buy the same amount year over year in just a steady state winter. When winters are bad, which are good for the salt industry, They buy more, but it's not something that they're trying to micro adjust by 10% less this year and try to save tens of millions of dollars on their budget. They just buy until their yards are full and that's how it goes. So it's a very good industry to sell into as a commodity. So the lenders, once they see this, they start to say, yeah, you know, this makes sense. This is more infrastructure. This is more, as I like to say in presentations, it's more like investing into an airport or a power plant or a hospital for them than a typical resource sector place. So we're actually talking to lenders who are very familiar with industrial minerals, very familiar with infrastructure, very familiar with that hybrid overlap with the resource sector investment.

34:16 And then we can start talking with other investors who primarily deal in the resource sector. But yeah, overall, it is a compelling story. It's one that doesn't take a long time to explain and we have done a lot of the background due diligence for them to help them understand the market and that really goes a long way as well. Very good. Consumable infrastructure, Yeah, exactly. Well, to keep the infrastructure safe and secure. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, and so final question from me and then like I say, I'll transition over to the audience. There's still a few there waiting. But I'll, and so Sean, I'll let you lead off here and then Nolan, you can follow up. But I mean, every CEO, right, your companies are undervalued and that's part of your job, right? Just make sure people can, like you say, kind of preach the gospel for people a bit. But what is the biggest thing? And Sean, I'll let you lead this off. What is that single biggest thing that you believe the market is getting wrong with your company right now? And then kind of as part A, part B is what catalyst do you think is going to force that re-rate to happen for you?

35:15 Yeah, great question. You know, I've been working very hard to at least get this opportunity and story in front of people. Prior to raising the drilling money earlier this year, we were all about doing the systematic steps of consolidation, data compilation, and then geophysics survey Meg and VTEM on the entire property and further consolidation. That's been a lot of work to really get this drill ready and really de-risk the project to the point where we have a lot of confidence going in with the drills. So I just feel, even being on the road for 5 weeks in Europe, you know, meeting over, you know, presenting to hundreds of European investors, it's not about going out there and hopefully translating that into buying, bringing the share price up, market capitalization up.

36:16 Obviously, that's the main priority, but I believe the drill rigs are what's going to do that. Drill results, again, drill results in other provinces and jurisdictions, the turnaround time is long, But our lead time, I think, after we start drilling is going to be 3 to 4 weeks for the first batch. And then continuously after that, obviously, we've got to put the technical story together. We might batch it out, we might do single holes. But really, you know, what I said earlier in the last couple of years, I've really noticed, you know, when companies are hitting 100m over 1g or 25m of 7g outside of known areas, you know, the share prices are reflecting that and investors are taking notice. And I guess it's the low hanging fruit.

37:08 Last year, a lot of the investors, a lot of my friends and stuff were really selecting the advanced projects, the development stage projects. And then they started going down the totem pole. I believe we're at that stage where once these drill rigs start turning, we start telling the market exactly what we have. That's when the excitement starts happening. So I'm, you know, being on the road, I'm just really setting the stage. You don't need to buy, just watch. And as we continue to have news flow and build that story up, and be able to talk about the historic estimates and how we're gonna expand it, I really think that's gonna change the view of where we are today. Yeah, perfect classic, right? Discovery driven re-rating, absolutely.

37:55 And then Nolan, as for you, right? Same thing, kind of part A, part B. What do you think the market is not fairly or fully valuing for Atlas, and what do you think it will take to re-rate from here? Yeah, I would say, first of all, of course, one of the reasons I was brought on was to improve the profile of Atlas Salt, because really the market just wasn't aware of the company that exists. We don't benefit from being caught up in other commodity cycles like gold and silver that have done quite well over the last year and a bit longer. So we have to kind of raise our own flag and get everybody to pay attention to it. And it's a lot harder for that. And so you see, as you know, I've done extensive marketing as well. I've been on the road for the last year or so.

38:42 And the share, I will argue, we're actually starting to see the results of that quite favorably. If you can check our chart, we've been doing quite well. But other than that, I would say that I think that the market is aware of it and that has taken a look at it, is overvaluing project financing risk compared to everything that has already been de-risked on the project or would never even exist on a project of the salt nature, like exploration risk, geological risk, metallurgical risk, et cetera. I think people expect juniors to have all these risks. You know, most juniors that they see, they expect them to have some sort of EA struggle, right? Some sort of indigenous relationship that's a challenge, you know, where are they gonna put their tailings dam or something like that? That is a challenge that still remains a risk. We don't have any of those risks that are in the simply the last thing is project financing.

39:39 And as I like to say, there is a lot of money in the world out there. It doesn't seem that way sometimes, but there are a lot of sources for capital. And that means that there's a lot of sources to the solution for that risk. And that should give investors very comfort that that risk is not actually that significant. Because if it was making sure that a government ministry was satisfied, there's only 1 or 2 people that need to be satisfied. And if for some reason they don't like your project, you're not going anywhere, right? That's a huge debilitating risk that we don't have to worry about. If a financer doesn't like my project, there's 10 others behind them that their money, they want to deploy, especially in this market. General resources is hot and the money is looking to be spent right now. So yeah, that's what I would say, you know, awareness at the end of the day, we're working on it.

40:30 Excellent. I guess that's why you're here today, right? So, and I'm on to the audience questions here, gents, as I warn. And so I think, Nolan, you mentioned, you just referenced Indigenous groups, and maybe I think that's a good, just a jumping point here for Mauricio. He's asking just, can speakers, both of you tell us which First Nations or Indigenous groups, what is the consultation process? Are you in agree, or you have signed agreements with local First Nations, local Indigenous, and just maybe are there wrinkles to the consultation process that are unique to Newfoundland at all? Yeah, was I supposed to go first or Sean? Oh, sorry, I did not clarify that. Sorry, Nolan, if you don't mind, then yeah. Well, maybe Sean should go. He's been in Newfoundland longer. Sure, sure. Sean, you go first. No, I like that idea. Kick it over to him.

41:16 Yeah, okay. I am not the one to, I'm not the boots on the ground. David Copeland, Tanya Taller, David Copeland and Tanya both live in St. John's, Newfoundland and are Newfoundlanders. I believe it's the Kaikuts. I'm going to butcher this, so I shouldn't even attempt to do so. But communities, I just want to backtrack it to communities in general in Newfoundland. The majority of them, especially up in the areas that we are like, I know Nolan's project is an hour drive south of Deer Lake Airport. We're an hour north of Deer Lake Airport. And majority of these communities, especially around our area, is mining established. Like when you go into these communities, like we have 3 communities.

42:09 One of the communities is Polar's Point and they got like 20, 30 houses in this community and we're gonna have 2 or 3 of those houses for our own camp. When you go in there and you talk to these Newfoundlanders, they're amazing. Communities are amazing. A lot of them are telling you stories about their great-granddad finding gold up in that hill. They're very mining-centric, mining-focused, mining-friendly. It's more focused on communities. Hill and they're very mining centric, mining focused, mining friendly. So it's more focused on communities. There are I think 4 First Nations in Newfoundland. The thing with Newfoundland, at least the island of Newfoundland, not Labrador, but the island of Newfoundland, there are no First Nation land claims.

42:54 There are First Nations and there's communities that obviously we support and we employ and we train, but the land claims aren't at least on the island itself. So it's really more focused towards supporting community, hiring community, training community, building essential necessities such as a house or something or helping with one of the trails to a park and stuff. There's a lot of recreational stuff from hunting, fishing, that kind of stuff. So supporting them, working with them, being good neighbors as we say. But yeah, really in 14 years of going to Newfoundland, there hasn't been really any scares.

43:47 Like in BC, Quebec, Ontario now, there's a lot of worries. I think that's gonna kind of slow things down in those provinces, but Newfoundland, I think it's the best province to work in, at least for the next decade, because of these factors. Yeah, I'll add on to that. That matched me. And maybe a bit of a, you know, the first question, I was surprised. I actually grew up in Nunavut in the Arctic. I'm not Inuit, but I grew up there and I saw mineral development and of course the relationship with the Inuit there. So I was surprised when I went to Newfoundland and how they have the, I'm not surprised I guess, but I was heartened to see the same approach that they take with, as I saw in Nunavut, where everyone's supportive of the project, like, let's see how we can leverage this for education, for opportunities, to help secure our way of life in a modern context as well.

44:44 And so that was really good to see in Newfoundland. We have a strong relationship with the indigenous around us. The important thing too in Newfoundland is they're very integrated, at least, again, I'm not an expert on indigenous across Canada, but very integrated. A lot of mixed race, Indigenous and white, and you won't even tell the difference. Some communities are 50% Indigenous. So yeah, they're there throughout, whether just being an Indigenous group block or being part of the community or being a part of a stakeholder group or being a part of a stakeholder group, or being a part of a recreational group or whoever who might have concerns in the region. So we're constantly in discussions with them. And it's a very good natural process rather than to satisfy this land claim agreement you need to do this.

45:37 It's much more like how can we be partners and both benefit and 1 plus 1 equals 3 in this relationship. Again, changing topics here a little bit, Jacqueline is asking a unique question for each of you. And Nolan, she's asking if you can provide any additional color on the financing, just an update on where the conversations are, what's happening. Yeah, financing of course is the big one for us because it is the last kind of major block, not block, but major step. We went to market with Endeavor about 3 weeks ago. We completed extensive due diligence in advance of that. So we did all of our work, and then we have to do the lenders due diligence, right? So that they don't all have to do 10, 20 different due diligence packages themselves. We do one for them with trusted partners that they all have seen before and they trust their work on, centralize that, open that up to the data room as we've created the relationships over the last few months with Endeavor and saying, you know, are you interested? Do you want to be in here? Sign process letters, all that kind of stuff. We're starting to get feedback, very positive.

46:48 We hope to have some announceable news in the coming weeks on that. And then yeah, the process is, trust the process, we're working through it. It's all looking very good right now. And then Sean, what she has for you, just again, around exploration, right? Recent holes plus the recent AI targeting work, what does this tell you about where the first season's drilling lands and what does base case success look like for you? What are your hopes for it to come out of it? Yeah, we're doing a three-pronged approach, 3 pillars. We'll start at Thor. Thor has so much potential for expansion. Essentially, Thor is a 43101 of 50,000 ounces, 1.5 grams starting from near surface. You got to keep in mind, just as a little education for anyone that isn't aware, throughout the Newfoundland Islands there's overburden, you know, a metre to 5m of overburden.

47:48 So that's another reason why I see this as the last frontier where prospectors didn't have a chance unless they outcropped. But essentially, Thor is very special, But prior seasons, there were 20 different companies that owned pieces and parts of this property, but the majority of the drill programs were very small, 1,000m here, 2,000m here. Not focused on the discovery-focused, orientated holes or getting aggressive. So our second pillar is doing that regional exploration where we're drilling these mineralised slates that are Gold-bearing on surface that haven't seen a single drill hole, that reach as far as 10 or 12km away from the fault.

48:38 We have multiple potential to really capture the market. Really, I think the base case is Thor, if we can easily expand that. Keep in mind Thor is a resource of a small area, but the mineralized splays that have been identified, Transect and a lot of these minimalized splays, there's a triangle that goes around Thor that wasn't included at all in the resource estimate. That's a great opportunity to really potentially expand on that pretty easily and pretty quickly. So Again, Rory coming in as VP of Exploration, he understands how to systematically build ounces like what he did at Coffee and a couple other projects to Feasibility.

49:26 So really just systematically making drill holes along these displays. The best case result is, A, we get a new discovery along these displays that are kilometers away from the known areas. That would be great. In regards to the AI targeting, really it's machine learning. It's just another data layer for us, but I would personally love to have a separate team outside of our drilling-focused team to then go ground-proof these potential targets and hopefully make some new grassroots discoveries based off of this machine learning information. So, yes, 10,000m focused on these 3 pillars.

50:18 If you look at our historic intercepts, they are impressive, but we're not interested again in what we know, we're interested in what we don't know and how do we expand that or at least show the market that this can be expanded greatly in a very short time. Very good. And one last question here, and I guess last call for anybody who was on the fence about getting 1 in here, but just a question from Barry. His concern basically I think is around infrastructure or the presence or absence of physical infrastructure, just the building of roads. I mean, his question just, I mean, do your projects involve building a road? Yeah, do you have to build roads? How big, how much work is required? I mean, how much work is required to get your project kind of plugged into the rest of the province, so to speak, when it comes to that. And Nolan, I'll let you lead again and I'll pass to Sean. Oh, sorry, I thought it was only for Sean. Yeah, we're 10 kilometers away from the Trans-Canada Highway.

51:12 We are 100 meters away from a town road. So yeah, that's not an issue for us. We could have, yeah, we're right in there. One of the advantages that makes our project so spectacular for a salt deposit and in many ways required is to have all that infrastructure in place already because there's not a lot of margins in SALT, so anything you can do to increase your margin, lower your costs and having all the infrastructure built and ready to go already and just tapping into it is helpful. Yeah, certainly when you're measuring in meters, that's a good start. So, Sean, what about you? How much work do you have to do to plug into the rest of the network of Newfoundland? I'm going to share a little story, and I hope the mining department of Newfoundland or someone in the Association of Mineral Exploration of NL or CIM or something is on this call because the late Clyde Childs, back in the 80s and 90s, He would literally follow the Newfoundland government as they're building roads for the electrical access and stuff. And so Clyde would follow the excavators as they're building the roads to do free prospecting.

52:28 So that's what he did on this property in the 90s and made some new discoveries. But essentially, we're right above the Trans-Canada Highway and we have a road that goes from the Trans-Canada Highway through the middle of our project all the way almost to the top of our project because they're building a hydroelectric facility in between our projects. And so, for the last 10 years, that was essentially, this project has been road access. The limitations of that in the last 10-years is because of budget constraints or whatever you want to call it, it was very, it seemed very limited to our programs and literally driving up this road and going on that side of the road and just drilling, hoping to get some results, to get some market interest to hopefully raise some more money.

53:23 Obviously, now we're in a different type of market. So I'm really excited to get aggressive with this drilling. Going back to the question, we don't need to build a road. We got one in the middle of the project, but we do have these splays that go, you know, 10, 12 kilometers away from the fault structure that will need to be supported by a helicopter. I imagine of the 10,000 meters, probably 80 to 90% of that will not be heli drilling. Essentially, we don't need to build any roads. We most likely will need to build probably 2 or 3 bridges across water just to make it more safe for our teams. But our driller contractors, that's where we've selected, they also are in the industrial business, in the aggregate business.

54:12 They build infrastructure, they build bridges, roads, etc. So they're a one-stop shop. So again, I think for both of our projects, both Atlas Salt and Gold Hunter, what people need to realize, and I'm sure Nolan has it on his presentation and stuff, but they've got a deep sea ports facility right in Stephenville, right by their projects. We've got 2 up by us that are only kilometres away from us. We've got mills that's both Valentine, or Valentine has to drive up 80km up a road from the centre of Newfoundland. Newfound Gold has to drive, you know, again, you could question by Barry because when Newfound Gold 6 years ago, when they made that discovery, the Newfoundland government will allow them build roads directly to their drill targets. So they're literally driving, like they built a road off the side of the highway to access their drilling areas.

55:11 So that's what's great. Another thing great about the Newfoundland Government is that Newfound Gold is going to have to drive 140km to where my project is, where the ports is, where the mills are. So we're very lucky, both Atlas Salt and the Great Northern Project, because we're surrounded by infrastructure. So really, at least for our project, we don't really see any major infrastructure needs. We got power lines going down the middle of the project, the road, etc. So yeah, we're in a good spot. We check the boxes in that front. GoldHunter. So yeah, Nolan Peterson, CEO Atlas Salt.

56:02 Sean Kingsley, CEO of GoldHunter. Thanks for your time, gents. And yeah, good luck in both your stories. Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Sean.