NISK – Next Steps: 2024 & Beyond

0:08 Again, thank you all for joining us today for PowerNickel live event, NISQ, Next Step 2024 and Beyond. Today we have on the call Terry Lynch, CEO, Dr. Steve Beresford, Director and Technical Advisor, Duncan Roy, VP of Investor Relations, and Adam Finley, Vice President of Projects at GeoVector Management. Gentlemen, thank you for joining us today. I'm just gonna go over a couple of housekeeping items. This is a live event, so if you'd like to participate in the conversation and have any questions, please use the chat box in the bottom right corner of your screen. Also, this event is being recorded and will be available for viewing in a couple of hours. To lead the conversation, I'll hand things over to you, Terry, and I'll be in the back end with the audience. But best of luck, and we're looking forward to the conversation.

0:55 OK, great. Thanks for having us, and good to be here again. Apologies for the little bit of a rough start here. Ken Williamson, who's our VP of exploration, normally is a quarterback of these visual side of things, but he broke his ribs this morning, and unfortunately, and obviously can't join us. So that's why we're scrambling here just at the last minute generally we're a bit more well-prepared. Nonetheless, the show shall go on and we've got a great show for you this morning. We're basically gonna walk you through, you know, where we're at and what we see and where we're going. And I think it'll be pretty exciting for you. So without further ado, let's dive into it. I'll introduce my panelists in more detail as I pass off the screen to them. But for now, let's just sort of set the stage of where we're at in this world. So obviously, most of you on the call would be familiar that NISQ is a project that Howard Nickel is operating and exploring and developing and it's in Quebec and it's in sort of middle of the province really just south and a little bit east of James Bay so you can look at the map you can sort of see where we're at in the province, just a little bit less than halfway up.

2:06 And this is a very well serviced area, thank God. So we've got, you know, literally we can fly in to the Namaska airport, which is 8 kilometers away from the site, or we can drive up as well. The route north goes right to the property and it makes it very convenient for, you know, just supply situations and moving the drill rigs around, et cetera. So it's just been great that way. And one of the key facts of life in mining is, you can't pick where the mine is. And if you're lucky, you're blessed with great jurisdiction. And I think Quebec arguably is the best jurisdiction in the world right now for critical minerals. 3 big reasons, obviously you've got the infrastructure, which we're taking advantage of with the roads and the airports and hydro. We're literally across the road from hydro, Quebec's main substation.

2:58 And then of course, you've got the great work they've done with the First Nations who are partners on these projects. Quebec's done an admirable job of working with the First Nations and making them understand that, you know, the high benefits that they can gain in their community from having mining exploration and development take place. And we certainly have had a good relationship with the First Nations of the James Bay Cree. They're a very forward thinking group. They've been obviously doing this a long time with Hydro-Quebec, et cetera. So they're very advanced and they're great people to work with. And the third reason that's been such a spectacular success for us is our ability to take advantage of the many great financing programs available for exploration and development in Quebec. So most of the time we've advanced our project with getting 2 for 1 exploration for every dollar I've raised from investors.

3:51 We've been able to get $2 or so from some tactics we do, which is basically getting Quebec-based funds to invest at $2 and then they sell for, take advantages of the tax credits and the deductions, then immediately sell for a dollar to our end use investors. And they're out of it with a nice profit for them, like a reduction of their income tax from 54% to 40. And, you know, our investors getting in at a great price and then they have a double the amount of money that they invested working for them to de-risk the project. So that's what we've been able to use and we just did a very nice financing for 20 plus million dollars recently and we had some illustrious, obviously investors come on board, namely Robert Friedman was the main investor, over 50% of that round. Rob McEwen, who was a second round for Rob, he's been a fantastic supporter.

4:47 And then a couple of major mining funds, including Terra Capital from Australia and a major Canadian mining fund that wants to go unnamed for the moment. But nonetheless, our first real experience with the mining fund, so great, smart, I would say investors, and it's really encouraging to have them join the fray at this stage of our development. So why did they join? Let's sort of tell you that in short order here. So

5:10 when we acquired NISQ, it was generally a nickel sulfide project. So it was about 3.1 million tons of about 1.5% Nickel EQ, and what we call NISQ Main, which is down there on the left-hand side. And so we had a 46 square kilometer land package. And when we came in, We obviously mapped it out and identified some interesting anomalies to what we called at that point the Wildcat target, which is to the north and east of Nisman, a full 5 and a half kilometers away. And then we basically focused our energies on initially proving up our first, you know, resource which is a little over 7 million tons, 7.1 I think of about 1.13% nickel EQ.

5:58 So that was the main focus. And while we were doing that, we had drilled a, it had obviously the groundwork to lay that 4311 we had been doing about, you know, over the last couple of years. And then we had taken a shot at a nice EM anomaly that had been identified by our very fine folks at GeoVector. It was called the Wildcat target and it was a winter target. And that means it was in a bit of a marshy area. And so we had to drill it in the winter. So we drilled it, anticipating we're going to look for another NISC main zone, hoping that it was up there as well. We didn't find that at the moment, but what we did find was pretty exciting. We hit this discovery hole where we had almost 8 meters of what was about, you know, 1 and a half percent copper, but almost an ounce equivalent of PGMs, platinum and palladium.

6:50 So that's a pretty super hole. So that was exciting. But unfortunately, because it was a winter hole, we weren't prepared to do drilling like we are now. So we had to wait. So while we're waiting, we obviously proved up the 43-101 and made major progress on NISQ main and that's good. I think there's a lot more progress to be made there on the Nickel side of things. But of course, the excitement for the market was on this polymetallic. So this is a picture that we presented in February without the assay results. And we basically told our audience at the time that this was a material discovery, that we didn't have the assay results, but we felt confident in predicting this would be a force material change for the company. And it did. You know, it basically, as the assays come back, this is from a research report from Henan Partners, a good investment bank out of the UK.

7:43 They basically covered us now. And we had over half a dozen holes of 10 meters of 10% copper equivalent and some greater than 20%. I mean, these are truly epic numbers never really seen before, especially when the copper PGM coverage just doesn't come like that. And this is sort of what it looks like. Obviously it's just a screenshot of our perception of what we had learned at the moment. And it basically looks pretty exciting. So our current depth that we've talked about in the public was about 275 meters of depth, a width of about 225, but the core of that width is really about 100 meters. There's a bit of a minable halo, we think, of 50 to 75 meters on either side.

8:28 But so obviously, Historically, in the Archean belt, which is where this is at, these types of chutes, if the width is X, historically, they'll go 8 to 10 times that length. It's possible. It has extensive

8:43 possibilities underneath. This is certainly part of the next stage of the exploration program, but it certainly transformed the face of the company and the nature of the project. As we had done this, we realized that maybe we got something different than nickel sulfide. Maybe we got, you know, what has become now a polymetallic project. So in happenstance, and as luck would have it, my son, who's a pretty sophisticated mining investor and is a mintwits and in

9:18 at Twitter now or X, I guess, he had seen this video from a geologist by the name of Dr. Steve Beresford, who thankfully has now joined the cause. He sent this to me, he said, dad, you should look at this. He said, the guy's talking about NISQ, but he doesn't, of course, know us yet at this moment. He says, try and reach him. So, as luck would have it, I was relatively able to get to him through LinkedIn. I hadn't had a ton of benefit from LinkedIn, but I was able to send a note to Steve on LinkedIn and say, hey, I'm sure you're really busy and have no idea who we are, but here are these couple of intersections or a couple of essays that suggest to us that maybe we've stumbled upon your area of expertise and we'd love to talk to you about this. You know, and Steve got back to us, thankfully in reasonable time. And he said, so, you know, we've had a bit of a conversation. He said, what's your next plan? I said, well, unfortunately it's a winter target. So we can't really get back into it until January, but, you know, so we said, well, you know, let's stay in touch and let's see how you do.

10:22 And of course, we knocked it out of the park in January and we, you know, drilled 16 holes, hit on 15. And of course we got back in touch with Steve and sent him the data. Ken and I did a technical review with him and he says, yeah, I think you got something here.

10:35 So Steve came on initially as a technical advisor, came across and came up to the site and spent a week with the team and it was a great experience and we sort of realized at that point that he liked the project a lot, we liked him a lot. We thought, let's see if we can't deepen the relationship here. And so we were fortunate to get Steve to come on as a board member and a technical advisor. So the reason why it's pretty simple, this has become a polymetallic project. So polymetallics are super rare. They're super valuable. The world's wealthiest mines are polymetallic. And we think, you know, in terms of the Lausanne curve, we're very much at the start of the left-hand side, which is where it gets exciting in mining investing. So we thought if we're going to make a real push here on this polymetallic, while our current exploration team had found the project and done a great job, we thought let's get the best Intel and the best minds we can to help them. And so that's what made us reach out for Steve. And of course we're blessed to be able to get him to come. So I'm gonna now introduce Steve and ask Steve to sort of walk us through, you know, what his thoughts are, you know, what is different from a nickel sulfide project to a polymetallic and, you know, why joined and how he sees it going. So I'll pass over to Steve and I'll manage the PowerPoints that Steve has prepared for us.

12:03 Steve, over to you. Sorry, Steve, you are on mute.

12:15 Hello, everyone. Thanks, Terry. One of the first things that Terry asked me was how would we transform NISQ? And the answer is to find the polymetallic nature. So the first thing I probably need to do is explain what we mean by this term. So polymetallic obviously implies multiple metals. So the graph that you're looking in front of you, the triangle, is really how we look at nickel sulfide systems, the diversity of nickel sulfide systems. So 3 metals, Nickel, the PGEs, which is a group of 6 metals

12:49 and Copper. So in Nickel Copper PGE space, there are a bunch of deposit names that are on this graph. But one way to look at it is in the pictures that surround them. So Nickel dominant deposits In the left hand corner would be something like Voices Bay in Labrador. A PG system would be something like Marensky Reef in South Africa. And in the far right hand corner would be something like Sukkur, which is a magmatic copper system. They're not very common.

13:18 But the polymetallic systems are more than just nickel with credit metals or PGEs with credit metals. They're in fact equal value across nickel, PGEs and copper. And the real significance of that, next slide Terry,

13:35 is really illustrated here. We tend to think of nickel deposits as having, always having copper and PGs. And so this is a continuum, but one way to think about it is the copper PG rich nickel deposits with the high grade. We can have a couple of really strong examples. So the one that's got the slide there is Sakati, which is in Finland, which is a sort of a million nickel ton equivalent system. So it's very significant. And the granddaddy of them all is the Norelsk camp of which the significant deposit is Oktoberisky. And the thing to think about these deposits is we get nickel systems with PG systems with copper systems and polymetallic together. So NISQ tells us that there's a nickel sulfide system there. But what we were looking for with a polymetallic has a set of unique characteristics, characteristics that provide a really high unit value. So Octobrisky is the largest deposit of any metal type in the world. It's the largest of this type as well. And it just has really outstanding

14:39 unit values. What does that mean? It means by combining Nickel, PGs and Copper plus Gold and silver, we can end up with these really large copper equivalent grades. And that's the characteristic. So unlike, say, other copper deposit styles like porphyry or sediment hosted copper, which are relatively low grade, these systems are very high grade, very small footprint, very large grade, very high grade. Next slide, Terry.

15:06 So another way to look at them is in a periodic table format. And this is where the word polymetallic really comes in. So instead of having nickel, so if you look at the middle of the periodic table there, We've got nickel, cobalt and copper, which are really the metals that everybody thinks of when they think of nickel sulfides. But everything else in this graph is what's economic or in review or very strongly anomalous at Narell's and Saccati. And so you can see a host of other metals. So if you add that up, there is at least 11 metals there that are reasonable to be economic in a polymetallic system. So nickel, copper, PGEs, and of course, 2 that really catch a few people out are gold and silver, which are to be expected, especially at the top of these polymetallic systems.

15:52 You'll notice there's 1 really cheeky metal that's in there or element, which is carbon, a significant metal or a significant component of Narelsk is in fact the coal that's present. It not only is part of the oil genesis, but it is also part of the energy costs that are there. And of course, I wanted to string hopefully not a long bow to the fact that we're sitting in the middle of Hydro-Quebec here in the Lion Discovery. Now next slide, thanks.

16:22 So put that into like a cash cost curve or in this case an all-in cost curve, what this means is Polymetallic puts you in the upper quartile. So one of the problems in the current nickel market, as everybody would be aware, is the current domination of supply that comes from Indonesia. But in fact, it's irrelevant to whether we're exploring for polymetallic systems because the polymetallic system sit in a completely different part of the value chain. They sit on the far left hand side of the graph, entirely profitable

16:54 and still profitable at current nickel prices, let alone with the copper, with the PG's, with the gold and silver. So you might want to consider these copper-rich PG systems. But the reason why companies like Anglo American call them polymetallic is really to reflect the multiple metals of value. So something like Nereusk, only 33% of the value of Norilsk is nickel. So that's fundamentally different to the metals that are on the right hand side of this graph. Next slide, thanks. So here's a bunch of words, but it's really just to put this out to everybody as to what we're looking at. So equal value from a number of metals. It's not an academic nuance. It's straight economics.

17:40 And what this does is end up with what I call a periodic table like element suite. So something like Olympic Dam, which is a different deposit style, but you end up with many economic minerals, not just metals, not just credit metals, not just something that's along for the sweetener. The last or the Point number 4 would probably be important in here. One of the key things when it comes to looking for these systems and what I recognise from the work that had been done at Wildcat is what we call unidirectional metal zonation. So as the term implies, the direction of metal zonation is one way. So we end up with nickel at the bottom and copper at the top. And that's really, really important. So we separate out from in the nickel sulphide system from the nickel sulphides from the copper sulphides. And so as a result, we tend to find the copper sulfides first. And the discovery history of both Sokati and of Oktoberrisky is finding the copper long before we find the nickel. And it was my expectation, in fact, it was more than my expectation that we'll find nickel sulfides at line. And obviously we have. So the system is dominated by copper sulfides, but that's because we're at the top of the intrusion. This is exactly what we'd expect to find.

18:58 And really the significance of this discovery is not only that this is the economic part of the value chain, but we have this tendency in discovery histories to walk over them. We don't tend to notice them. And that's because there's 3 technical criteria that I've put in there for the geos on the call. The upper rocks that we look at, they don't look prospective. They look very unprospective. It's very challenging to use electromagnetic techniques, which is the dominant workhorse of Nickel exploration. And we tend to use things like IP to find the tops of these systems or very creative use of EM. And the last point is we tend to mistake them for other deposit styles.

19:43 So in the current copper market, people finding these things, but they're not necessarily understanding the significance of them. They're easily

19:51 confused for what we call Bechy style VMS systems or most commonly for iron oxide, copper, gold and iron oxide appetite systems and even for poor freezing sedimentary copper. So very, very easy to get lost. As geos, we tend to find what we're looking for. And one of the things that I do, in fact, the thing I've doubled down in my career, this stage of my career, is this is all I do. All I do is look for polymetallic systems now, simply because they are the valuable part of the in-mirror. I don't think people are doing enough to look for them. Our next slide, I think that might be the last. That's it, yeah. So one of the things, Steve, if you could explain, and it was one of the things we discussed when we were together and you were with the team, is my perception as sort of the business guy is that there's a couple of ways to approach exploration. Obviously, drilling a lot and hopefully chasing, you know, following your good leads and whatnot. And then there's a more systematic process and particularly, I guess, with polymetallics based on your vast experience of, I don't know, how many hundreds of millions of dollars you would have spent with your various groups over the years on polymetallic, but you've learned a few tricks of the trade and the process of how to do it.

21:09 So obviously we've decided to go with the process approach, but maybe just talk a bit about that for a sec. Yeah, so it's a good point. So another way of putting that is, what's different about polymetallic in terms of exploration. So

21:26 most nickel sulfides are explored by looking for the right kind of intrusion in the right geodynamic setting. So where we are is an excellent place to look for nickel sulfides right in the middle of the open arca basin. So it's technically an outstanding place to look. That's that's not in dispute. NISQ is right there as evidence of process already in terms of forming nickel sulfide systems. But when you go looking for polymetallic, you're looking not only for the bottom of the intrusion, but you're looking for the top of the intrusion. So one of my favourite quotes comes from an old CRA legend, Haddon King, which is that the surface is an accident of geography. And what does that mean? It means that as geos explorers, we find the easy things to see, but we need to remember that that's just an accident of erosion. That's not

22:16 the full 3 dimensional picture we're looking for. And one of the things we're very good at in nickel exploration is finding the bottom. That's where most nickel sulfides are, but we're actually not so good at finding the tops of these systems. So I call this the tip of the iceberg. The aim of the exercise is to recognize when you found the tops of one of these systems, not when you found the bottom. It's not that we don't want to look for the bottom, but the bottom is further away, it's deeper, and we'll use other methodologies to look for that. But the real key starting point, as with the discovery of Oktoberiski, as with the discovery of Sikardi,

22:52 is how do we start exploration? How do we get hold of the tail of the tiger? And that's a series of characteristics. So the first up one is using, being driven by the petrophysics. So what do I mean by the petrophysics? So the actual physical properties of the tops of the sulfides at the top. So in this particular case, we're talking about massive to vaniform copper sulfides. These are fundamentally lower conductors. In other words, compared with nickel sulfides, which are nickel ion sulfides, these are very strong conductors. It's very easy to lose that kind of detail. And it's very easy to think that I'm talking academic nuance, but in fact, I'm talking about as pragmatic as you could possibly be in terms of an exploration approach. We've got to go looking for something that would be in the noise of normal nickel sulfide exploration.

23:47 So in fact, we have to have a dedicated search approach, which is about recognizing this signature, this very distinct geochemical signature that's at the top of this system. The next thing we do is really understand what's controlling the distribution and deportment of in particular the noble metals. So the PG is relatively straightforward, but the gold and silver, it's not common to have gold and silver in nickel sulfide systems, but it is common when we understand the processes. And I don't want to go into a lot of technical detail, but to say that basically a good way of summing it up would be it's like a Goldilocks zone. There's sort of an ultimate threshold, if you like, of getting the optimum

24:34 value of all the metals forming these systems. So rather than trading nickel for copper or for PGEs, we can get these systems that have everything going for them, the perfect Goldilocks zone.

24:52 All right. So, Steve, thanks for that summation. I'm sure we'll come back to you in the questions. Adam, I'm gonna pass it over to you just to set the stage for how we're executing collectively the vision you and Ken and Steve have concocted and put together. This is a, I'll turn over to you and we'll walk you through these next few slides.

25:13 Yep, thank you, Terry. If you could hit that hide button, there's a window that says stop sharing and next to it says hide. If you could just click that hide. Okay, I can do that. Thank you. So currently we're drilling at both Lion and Nisk Main. We've got 2 rigs going. We started the program in this phase of drilling with a single helicopter supported rig. This part of the area on the NISC property is difficult to drill off in the summer months, just with the swampier and marshier lands.

25:48 What you see here with the kind of permitted drill holes is not only to give us flexibility for this season of where we could put a helicopter supported drill, but also going into after the moose break, which is a period of time where exploration activity is paused in Northern Quebec and James Bay due to moose harvest between the 15th of September and 15th of October. So right now, the mandates for the work that Dr. Beresford provided us with some targets as well as Ken Williamson. We want to increase the strike length, obviously increase the depth and understand the geometry of this and continue to step away from the success that we've had from the previous drill program and pattern and really just keep on testing this new zone.

26:42 You see here, in both orange and white, we have plenty of areas that we're interested in testing. Not all those are going to be tested before that September 15th period, but right now we're about halfway or just maybe 3 quarters through this phase of drilling before the, we have about 40 days, drill days left. And then we will look at the data that's come in along with other techniques that we're doing in order to put all these layers of data together in order to really hold it on additional targets.

27:17 So one of those techniques, Steve mentioned that EM can be tricky for the upper portions, but we're also looking for that deeper Nickel portion. We are running a concurrent ground EM program, which recently just started up in order to kind of delineate this kind of deeper or look for the possibility of deeper signatures. So in an earlier airborne survey, we did have some early off-time anomalies and some good data up in here, but we just want to refine those targets with a more detailed ground survey. So that's going now, should be done prior to that moose break. On a larger scale,

28:03 understanding both the NISC main area, the nickel that got us into the area, and then the new line area, one of the layers of data that Steve identified that we need to add to the story is gravity. Part of that reason is to develop the architecture below the surface and really tie it into all the other datasets that we have. Then once we understand this architecture, because there's some folding, there's some complexities in the geology there, it'll really help us to narrow in on additional areas to target with the drill.

28:38 This image is just showing what the previous drill pattern looked like at Lion. The first 2 holes, 30 and 31, just got us in there. Then the winter months, when we set back, and really we have lots of flexibility in the winter to test a lot of ideas. You can see here, while the grade and the intercepts we have are quite good, We still want to expand the strike length, expand the depth of this and really understand the geometry and what's really controlling where the mineralization is. The best way for us to do that is to continue to not only add layers of data, but also with the drill, you know, and really evaluate the geometry and what's controlling it.

29:25 And one of the things I understand we've done, Adam, is Steve and you guys felt that drilling some very long holes in dry ground or barren ground sort of parallel the structure, so that we could run a downhole EM on that this, this was all part of the strategy. These are fairly big holes. I think they're like a thousand meters. So not insignificant expense to us, of course, but knowing that there's no pay dirt in it, but it's really to develop the intel to advance the next stage of the program. Yeah, absolutely. So the second ring I mentioned is that in this main zone and these holes are designed to run parallel to the contact of the known ultra mafic unit and the hanging wall, you know, colloquially used, And then to run down a whole EM survey to light up in a nominal 500m radius to look for off-hole conductors.

30:27 And then again, you add that with the gravity, you add that with the existing data we have and the vast, we've done over, let's say 44,000m of drilling at NISC, obviously evidenced by the resource. Then it'll hone us into other areas to test. Again, at NISC Maine in the summer months, where we can set up the drill to really effectively target it is more challenging. So again, this is a way in this kind of period to provide additional targets that we can really go after later in the year and earlier into next year. And we've done it at Lion as well, right? This pilot program is going at NISC Maine now while we continue to do exploration style drilling at Lion. It's possible in the future that that technique could be employed, but it's mostly because of where we're at at the level of NIST main versus where we're at at line. Steve can expand on that as well. Okay, cool. Yeah, so this is, we call this platform EM drilling. This is something that happens in Sudbury.

31:34 It's something that's common in deeper systems. It's basically a cost effective way of exploring to depth. So nickel systems, in particular polymetallic systems, can be economic to very huge depths. So something like Nova here in Western Australia would be economic to 2 or 3 kilometers depth. So that high unit value encourages you to look towards where the geology is telling you to go. Something like NISQ, we really, it's not very cost effective to try and drill it through standard means. And so the lowest cost method is really to drill parallel to the contact itself. It requires you to know where the contact is, but that's the only risk that's associated.

32:19 Otherwise, it's the best way to light up the contact at depth. So it's quite a common technique, but usually only at depth. OK, fair enough. So, I mean, just wrapping up before we jump to questions from the audience and, you know, the big revelation from a business perspective, you know, the one I'm trying to communicate to the investors as I'm going around communicating the power nickel story, is the transformation from nickel sulfide to polymetallic is really incredible in terms of the value proposition for investors. You can see where, you know, the inverted triangle here, we're down at the bottom, you know, 150 million. I think probably these days it's maybe even less than way you're 130 or something just because of the summer doldrums or whatever the market sell off.

33:13 The good news is we're all cashed up and don't need to raise money here for a long, long time. So we're in great position, I think, to create value over this next 12 to 24 months. And it's really starting now, which is great. But you can see as these things get more understood that the value proposition is really amazing. You can go very quickly into the billions and the megabillion. So literally the world's most valuable deposit is the Norelsk deposit that Steve was talking about, and that is a polymetallic. And it's the only mine in the world that's had a trillion dollars worth of metal value in the ground. So, I mean, I remember when I was trying to, you know, talk to Steve about the project and I didn't really have an analogy.

34:03 I said, it's not like, you know, Voisy Bay because we've got the high-grade copper and the gold and stuff. And I said, it's not like a gold mine because of the nickel and the copper. He said, no, no, He said, I get what it's like. I said, so what's that? He said, well, it's like Norilsk. But he quickly said, I'm not saying you got the next Norilsk, but he said, if you were to find one, it would start out something like this. And so that's sort of what's exciting for us as explorers is that we feel like we don't know what we've got yet, but we're pretty excited with what we've found. And it certainly is, it's worthy of a lot more exploration and a lot more discovery. And I think we're asymmetrically set up, ready to develop a lot of value for our shareholders here with this approach.

34:52 And we're certainly looking forward to bringing that news to you over the coming weeks and months and years ahead. So that's sort of the wrap up this morning. Again, apologies for the little bit of a rough start. Ken would have been here and it would have been a lot slicker and we've been used to Ken's fantastic 3D skills and able to show us a lot of stuff on the 3D side of things, which would have been great. And maybe we'll, you know, probably, maybe, you know, before we start the exploration program in the fall, we'll do another one, because we'll have a bunch of data and we can bring it up to speed. But in any event, I'll go to the audience now for some questions and see where we're at on that side of things and go from there.

35:47 Okay. Kyle, did you have some questions from the audience? It might be easier if you hit stop screen share there, Terry. It just might be a little easier for you. I'm happy to moderate questions. It's really your decision. Are they in the chat box? Is that where they are? Yeah, we have quite a few questions here. I'll kick it off for you with Laura's question. Terry, you'll be at the Precious Meadows conference at Beaver Creek in September. Will it be just you or will there be others from the team joining you? It will be just myself and Duncan Roy. The team's busy working. We don't have a big team, so we have to sort of compartmentalize.

36:36 As needed, what we've done with the investors is, you know, bring in, if they want to have a technical review, we're happy to do that. We've done several high level technical reviews with the 4 investors that came in the last round all did that. And we're able to accommodate that. But in terms of presenting the case and storytelling, Duncan and I can do that while the guys get to their really important stuff of finding heaps more metal. That ties nicely into Jimmy's question. He's just wondering if you could touch on the hit rate as well as drilling and all in sustaining costs. Yeah, I can talk about the historic stuff. We were at 15 or 16 of the holes hit in the last round, probably 8 to 10 of those were material hits and 6 were exceptional hits.

37:31 You know, are we gonna be able to maintain that ratio going forward? Highly unlikely, because we're obviously ramping up the amount of holes we're doing. But it's safe to say, the public commentary, we talked about this beforehand with the team, is that what can we say, what we can't say. What we've said publicly is that we're very happy with, encouraged by the drilling progress at NISQ and at Lion Zone and maintain our smiles. So obviously, we're getting the assays in and they'll come out probably in September. We'll have some assays from the summer program and we expect that investors will be pleased with the progress we're making. The all-in cost is also a bit of a moving target.

38:18 I would say it's, you know, all in including overheads and everything is around $300 a meter. You know, that's, you know, it doesn't cost us $300 a meter to drill, of course, it's more like 200. But if you add in everything, it's probably closer to 300. Of course, it all varies upon how much meters you drill and stuff like that, but generally speaking, that's a pretty good rule of thumb. Certainly, And Jimmy just had a follow-up question. If you could discuss the pros and cons of contract drilling in your jurisdiction. Yeah, you know, Adam probably would be better able to answer that. I mean, on that side of the thing, we pretty much, we look to Ken and Adam to guide us because I'm just the storyteller and the money raiser.

39:15 I very much leave the science activity to the pros. Adam, why don't you comment on that? No issues with the drill contractors. We put out to tender. Quebec has a rich history of good drill companies, drill contractors. We're very satisfied with the group we're using, RJLL out of Hawaii. There's plenty of drill companies in Quebec and half a dozen are extremely good and we're very happy with the contractors and there have been no issues. Thank you. I'm just going to go down in which the questions were submitted because we are getting a lot of them, which is excellent Laura has a question here. When can we expect news on the drill program currently in progress in form of news releases?

40:15 Yeah, so we'll have we've got the last release from the winter program, we expect we'll get out next week, and then we'd expect to get assays out in September on the summer program. Starting, yeah. Thank you. It'll just keep on running, It takes about 12 weeks or so. Steve was wondering, I think an original objective for 2024 was to find a strategic partner for NISQ. With the discovery of Lion, is this still an objective? The Lion's Zone discovery changed things. You know, at some point, obviously there'll be, you know, industry investment into this company for sure. You know, we're obviously talking to a lot of industry folks right now.

41:02 It's certainly on everyone's radar. Financially, we don't need them at the moment. When we were at the nickel sulfide, it seemed on the nickel sulfide side of things, had we just been that, it would have been a thing to do. But now with, you know, moving to a polymetallic scenario, which much higher value, a bit of a different animal. So we need to understand that a bit better before we move down that path. Orin's question is rather similar. It's about the end game. You obviously just financed and are cashed up and your team are explorers. What is the end game? Do you expect to sell to a bigger mining company in the future? At what point would that be?

41:49 I mean, 99% of the time, that's the way it goes in junior mining, that you sell these things to a bigger developer, and that's highly likely. However, we're a little different in that we have been working with CVMR on a feasibility study for really on NISQ main and on getting into the refinery business of making nickel powders. So that creates a bit of a different animal for us. We could never do that because we obviously don't have the technical know-how or expertise or even team to build it. But we could partner with somebody like CV Mara and with other partners that they could bring to the table or we could bring to the table on that side of things. So the refinery business is highly attractive to us. We'll explore that. I would think you know the you know the polymetallic mine development would be a different animal and most likely that would be you know would be something we'd be looking to you know probably sell is my guess.

42:51 However you know we'll just see as it develops. But we're always looking at what's the best risk return for our shareholders. Fundamentally, we're all shareholders, big shareholders, and we're really just gonna be acting in their interests and whatever we think is the best value proposition, risk versus return, and that'll be what drives it. Thank you. Christopher, I would like you, Terry, to speak on 3 points here. Consolidated ownership in brackets 20%, further ground stake in acquisition of other prospects, and potential name change. You know, We'll see. I mean, obviously, Critical Elements has been a great partner and they have the 20% piece at some point.

43:45 That might be something that we could work with them on a pathway forward. There's not any additional ground to be had up there. It's all staked. It's possible that some ground will be acquired. We'll see how that goes. Name change prospects. It's one of those things that we've looked at. Nickel is a four-letter word to a lot of people these days. It reminds me a bit of uranium in January 2020. You couldn't get anyone to look at you if you're in uranium in January, 2020. And by December, 2020, everyone wanted to be in uranium. So I suspect Nickel will have that same moment. So we continue to be open to the concept of the name change, but we haven't been able to find anything really, that really hit the spot and we'll see.

44:42 So for now, We think we've accomplished a lot as Power Nickel and it's got a bit of a brand out there and it's not the worst and the nickel thing Will come and go I think you know, we'll see how it evolves Certainly Peter is wondering if you're still planning to spin off one of your projects and issue a dividend? Yes, so we're very close to greenlighting that. We're hoping to get that done and vote in our offering circle in the month of August. And it would be approved in, I think, late September, early October. So the plan is to spin off Golden Ivan, which is our project in BC, copper gold exploration, really great project and our projects in Chile.

45:32 So it's not that we don't like these projects, we like them a lot, but they are exploration stage, different animal. And the other reason we're doing it is that we have been beset by naked short sellers in our company, pretty much across the space. I think it's my positions on this is pretty well known with Safe Canadian Mining and others. It's a horrible thing, our regulators have that happened to us. But one of the ways we possibly might be able to turn the tables on these evil doers is to spin out a private company. And basically that would make it virtually impossible for them to replicate these shares, which that should force them to buy in. We'll see.

46:17 You know, it makes sense for us to do it because of the very different natures of the business and the different stages of the business. We want people to be focused on Power Nickel really for the NISQ project and for what we're developing there. And these other pieces, we'd like to flow them through and create value for our shareholders. We think this is the best way to do it. So that's happening, it's happening soon. Thank you. And Dr. Beresford, we actually have a question for you from Rock. And just a reminder, you're on mute here, but I know you talked about your excitement during the presentation but here's another opportunity to do some hand waving but how excited are you about the the potential finding a large large polymetallic resource at NISQ? Yeah so this these sort of systems don't come along very often. So I think you can tell that the first thing I did was pretty much get on a plane and go to Quebec and meet Adam, work with these guys and Ken and get to know these guys.

47:18 So yeah, I mean, I dropped what I was doing. So that, I think that answers that question. Excellent. Sorry, Terry, were you gonna say something? Yeah, I mean, I just made the next question stand so Steve's up. They're asking about the age of the hosting intrusion, the cenovolcanic or late tectonic. So it's- Yeah, I'm starting to recognize some names in the chat here. So some technical guys asking technical questions. So this is a well-known age intrusion, NISQ, it's intruded into a metasedimentary, a sedimentary basin, so it's late tectonic. Yeah, okay, cool. And you can see the following question is also directed towards. Yeah, so that's another loaded question. So one of the things that's really important to understand is you do get polymetallic low-grade systems that are dominated by PGEs. And so a great example of that is the Platte Reef in the Bushfield and the Stillwater is obviously very prospective as well. But specifically here I'm talking about high-grade.

48:25 So if we put that in a Bushfield context, I'm not talking about the Platte Reef, I'm talking about something like Enkomati, except something that's a little bit more copper and PG rich. So the reason why I make that distinction, and it's open to debate, obviously, is entirely economics, the economics of high-grade systems versus low-grade systems. So Terry's just talked about nickel's a four-letter word at the moment. I really do think the world's making a dreadful mistake at the moment. I'm about as biased as a human being could get, but I do think the economics of nickel, high-grade nickel sulfides is still outstanding. I think the economics of low-grade sulfides is what's going through trouble. And we need to understand the fundamental difference between them. So I don't think nickel should be a four-letter word at the moment. I think the world's got that completely wrong. They're missing, you know, the monies to be made basically.

49:22 I agree 100% with Steve on that. One of the slides we have in our presentation, we talk about North American nickel, high grade nickel sulfide. And it's a completely different animal from Indonesian nickel or African nickel. And you can make money right now with the current prices for sure. And people have always been looking for high-grade nickel sulfide for ages, from like millennia. Whereas if people talk about lithium, I'd say, well, lithium is really more of an operation story. It's a production story. If you're in production, you can make money and there's probably a pathway to a really good economic situation. But the world has never really explored for lithium and now they're finding it in lots of places. So it's a challenge now for the lithium guys.

50:09 But for nickel, they've been looking for nickel forever and it's bloody hard to find, as Steve would tell you, and especially the high grade. And the nature of things is that the high grade nickel deposits will make money this time and any other time, they just generally make money. Absolutely. Brandon has a question about the risk that a bulk of additional deposits may lie outside the claim boundaries. Can you discuss what's within your boundaries and what potentially may not be? So certainly what we're looking at right now as well within our boundaries and it seems to be if anything, it's growing to the north and east where we still have a lot of room to grow. So could it go off our boundaries? Yeah, it could.

50:55 Generally speaking, that's hydro-Quebec land and stuff. So it's nobody's land, really. So obviously we just have to sort of evolve with the deposit, see how it goes, follow the rocks, as it were. But there's not much we can do that we haven't already done to expand the boundaries. I'm not sure how to phrase this. The regional metamorphic grade, and the shear zone near the ore bodies. So regional metamorphic grade is middle to upper amphibolite facies. So all the rocks are strongly recrystallized and the metasediments are high-grade gneissos.

51:40 And we're immediately adjacent to a regional scale shear zone. So the ore body itself is strongly remobilised. So those who are technical, and I can see there's a few names on the call who are, the analogy would be something like Slevy-Pickaway or Thompson in terms of remobilisation. So what does that mean practically? It means it's going to have a large strike extent. One of the questions that we probably didn't address is there is a distinct possibility that NISQ and Lion are connected in 3 dimensions. That would obviously be a great upside. And that's one of the things we're trying to do at NISC, is really get underneath NISC and just work out whether it's got continuity. The nature of these ore bodies, if you have a look at a plan for some of them, is at this metamorphic grade, is they can have enormous strike lengths, huge multiple kilometers in strike length.

52:35 So that's one of the aims of the NISQ program. Are you able to share if there's any further pods or pipes found with the Ant technology? So one of the comments I can address, that's one of the comments that we probably could mention is that the reason why we're doing all these other techniques, the gravity, et cetera, is to maximize the benefit of the ambient noise tomography. So we haven't forgotten about the ant survey. It's really a case that we need these other data sets to integrate in. And the aim is by winter that we'll be revisiting this. Terry, can you touch on this fall's drill rigs? How many will be up? Yeah, so basically we've got 2 active right now and really, we're geared up to bring 3 and 4 on, but probably that's gonna be post-moose break. The whole idea is, while we've got, obviously, lots of money in the tank to ramp up the exploration program, the idea is to always spend it wisely.

53:42 And to do that, we need to do the groundwork that Steve and Adam and Ken, the team are doing right now, the ground EM, the downhole EM, the gravity, the reinterpretation of the Ant Survey with the new data, all the geochem work that we're doing and all the new drill holes that we've purposely done to better understand the architecture of the deposit. All that stuff gets compiled into these great mines and they'll come up with a bunch more targets. And then we'll identify how many rigs we need to execute on them and then deploy them. So we're not limited. We've certainly got an ability to scale up and ramp it up with the rigs. And we'll do so as quickly as it's pragmatic and fundamental to do so.

54:34 You know, we want, you know, always when you're, it doesn't really matter in any business, I guess, when you have capital, you gotta make your capital create, you know, more wealth for your shareholders, because that's what we're in the business for is we're probably kind of trying to create wealth for our shareholders. So to create value, you have to add value. So we're gonna add value through the drill bit and by using the drill bit appropriately. And sometimes you gotta walk before you run. So we're going at a pretty good clip now with 2 rigs, and we'll run with 4 or 14 once it's appropriate to do so. But let's get the data, you know, let's do it right. Excellent. Well said. Adrian's welcome, Steve, on board here, And he's just wondering if you could touch on if you're on other mining company boards and how much work and hours will be committed to power nickel?

55:28 So the answer is yes, I am an active explorer. With both private and public companies, I don't know what the percentage of working life is. I've just joined the board or about to join the board of Power Nickel. So that's a changing feast. Terry probably knows more than I do. I mean, the good thing is that the neat part about Steve and it was just one of those happy circumstances in life as he got over, I didn't realize he actually had been trained in Western mining. And they have a very specific Western mining for the Canadians, as they call it, who maybe eventually got acquired by BHP. But it was like the Inca of the day in Australia, right? Like a very traditional powerhouse mining company and trained a lot of the great next generation Australian explorers, including Dr. Beresford.

56:27 And it also, as it turned out, GeoVector, who has been our chief consultant, executed all of our drilling programs, and not just on the rig, but also the brain work behind setting up and where to target, is led by an illustrious figure in Canada, Joe Campbell. And Joe also was a Western mining guy. So as it turns out, Western mining has a particular approach to data collection and exploration, et cetera, that was in place at our project, not known by me because that's not my thing. But when Steve came over, of course, he recognized it right away. As it turns out, he and Joe were working at Western Mining at the same time, possibly even came across each other. I don't know if you guys ever got to the bottom of that, Steve, but quite funny that it should happen that way. But there's an approach to style of how to do business proven, sort of process oriented, great exploration techniques and that's what we're following.

57:26 We've got the capital to do it right, why would we do it wrong? My apologies, gentlemen. I should have asked this before going live. Do we have a hard stop? We are on the hour here, but we do have 3, 4 more questions in the chat. We could go for another 5 or 10 minutes, but then we should probably walk this guy to get deadlines. Patty is wondering what is the perceived value for power and nickel shareholders of the spinoff of non-NISK assets like a private illiquid company? Yeah, so just back in the day, these assets were trading probably at their peak, maybe 25, $30 million market cap. Today, valuation might be 5 to $10 million, just broad brush, you know, cause expiration assets have, you know, welcome to Canada. It's just like crap valuations. So that would be the range.

58:18 We've done some work. We had the ambient noise tomography down there in Chile and it identified some pretty cool targets for us. So we're quite excited about that. So we're pretty pumped about it. So yeah, the valuation would be in that range. And then it is private. It won't be private for forever. It'd probably be private for a few months just to see if this can play a role in impacting the shorts, but then eventually we'll take it public and people will be able to watch it like any other public company. Will you be providing a go-forward drilling plan with details of the drilling for the fall program via a news release?

59:04 Yeah, I mean, basically we'll be putting out, once we, we'll add to the update, the expiration update, this recording just to give people some sort of visual to listen to as well and some audio. And then we'll give them a bit of an update as to what the summer program is. And then later in the fall, when we have the chance to collect the data, process the data and have an outlook for the fall winter program, we'll put another update and we'll have another call. Were the ant one through 4 holes at NISC Main outlined in the January presentation drilled and if so the results?

59:53 The we've drilled we drilled 1 hole in each of the formations and and we I don't think we've reported on those yet, so I can't comment on those. As I recall, there wasn't any major sulfide intersections. I think there were some sniffs. And again, when you're drilling in these completely new areas, the initial, it often takes a few holes to strike the thing because you can just be off by being above it or below it or whatever. So we still have high hopes for these areas. And in fact, one of the reasons why we're doing the rigs that are on there now, doing the peril to the structure holes, is to run the EM and give us a bit more fine tuning on that.

1:00:45 So we'll definitely be planning to get back in there and gear up on following up on the ant expiration data Last question we'll take for today Terry recently hinted that you are looking at marketing nickel powder before actually mining Can you touch more on that? Yeah, we just came back from Korea with CVMR, met with some of the very key players for the third or fourth time, of the Korean battery metal complex. And they're quite keen to get IRA compliant nickel powder for 2027 and onward in North America. It's very tough to do that right now with the current setup of things. Obviously, NISQ won't be ready.

1:01:36 NISQ still has lots of exploration to do and permitting and everything. So, you know, we would be best case, I think 29, you know, so it's not that time horizon, but there's a possibility that we could do something with CVMR in a refinery in Texas and produce for 2027. So we'll have more details on that as the Q3 progresses. First thing that we'll do is we'll get the feasibility study out on the refinery, which I think should be quite exciting. We expect to have that after Labor Day. And then we'll get that out and then we'll talk about the plans at that point. Excellent. Gentlemen, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day and for everyone that attended and asked questions, clearly there was a lot of them. If you did come in a little late, this was being recorded so it will be on YouTube within the next couple of hours. So just check our YouTube channel if you came in a little late. I'll pass it back to you Terry for any closing remarks Yeah, no, I think that's that was great Kyle It was it was great to welcome Steve for the first time live live live with the banner on his head So and Thanks Adam for being on the show and hopefully Ken's ribs mend really quickly and when we're back in October we can bring his 3D skills to the table. Thanks everyone for attending and look forward to having a very exciting fall winter program with Power Nickel.

1:03:03 Take care and have a great day. Cheers.