North America's Premier Undeveloped Salt Asset

0:04 Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where in the world you're signing in from. I've got with me today Nolan Peterson, CEO of Atlas Salt. Nolan, how are you today? I'm good. Thanks, Romeo. Awesome. Here's how today's going to work, just for the folks in the room. First Nolan's going to be so kind as to walk us through a brief presentation talking about the Atlas Salt story. For those of you who are already aware of the story, we'll be getting into questions relatively shortly afterwards. I've got some questions for Nolan, but then also this is an interactive event, So please use the chat button in the bottom right of your screen to ask questions at any point during today's event if for whatever Reason we don't get to your question either a little off topic or we just run out of time which often does happen I'll make sure the Atlas salt team gets that full transcript of the chat So ask them anyway, and I'll make sure the team gets them, they'll get back to you as soon as they are able. The only other piece of housekeeping I'll throw at you is that today's event is being recorded and will be available for replay, probably looking at about 4 p.m.

0:55 Eastern. That replay will be at the same link available here. I will also be publishing it on Six's YouTube channel, so you'll be able to see it at that juncture as well. But without further ado, I want to get into the protein of today's event. So Nolan, I'll throw it to you to run through presentation. Thanks, Romeo. Yeah, so I do have the full deck here, but I'm not going to go through it in detail. I'll just keep it to the highlights because I think, you know, the best value for everybody would be to hear the Q&A and ask their questions and make this very interactive, as you mentioned. So, yeah, so I'll kick it off. So we're, I'm Nolan Peterson, CEO of Atlas Salt, as mentioned. We're developing the Great Atlantic Salt Project on the west coast of Newfoundland, and this will be North America's first new salt mine built in nearly 3 decades. So just to give you an idea of who I am, my background is engineering.

1:43 I spent the early parts of my career in project development on the consulting side. I built projects major involved at the senior level in 3 major construction projects, Rainy River, New Afton, and Hope Bay. Primarily in the gold space. My entire career I've been in gold before this, gold and copper. During that time I got an MBA and a CFA, transitioned into corporate finance, executive management, budgets, planning, strategy, M&A activities, was the CEO of a junior copper development story, had a fair bit of success, left there when the market kind of went south in 2023, took some time off, came to Atlas Salt, basically attracted by the very strong fundamentals of the company and the project that I didn't think that the market was really aware of. I certainly wasn't. And so my task for the last 5 months since I joined in June has been to make sure that the market is aware of the great story that we have at Atlas Salt and to attract as many new investors as possible to the story that can share in the upside that we see.

2:56 So I'll jump into it. So we are developing the Great Atlantic Salt Project and as I mentioned, the first new salt mine built in nearly 30 years when it's in operation. And there are no other salt projects on the horizon. Now, the first question people always ask me is, Nolan, why has there not been a new salt mine built in North America in the last 30 years, if salt is a very attractive commodity, as I'm implying it is? Well, to have a viable salt mine, it's an industrial mineral, it has different characteristics than say a gold or copper mine. To be a viable salt mine, you need a strategic location and a world-class resource, right? So let's start with the world-class resource, which is what we have. We have a shallow, high-grade, homogenous, and thick resource.

3:48 The key here is the shallowness of the deposit. The shallowness allows us to access this deposit in an easier and more cost-effective and faster manner than typical salt mines in North America. Our mine is about 2, our salt deposit is about 200 meters deep, whereas many salt deposits in North America that exist today that are in operations are about 600 meters or more deep. That completely changes the mining methodology. So instead of accessing it through a horizontal drift like we would, they access it through a shaft mine and then they go horizontal underground. This is a much more costly endeavor, not only in the development timeline, development costs, but timeline, but then in operations as well. So we overcome that by being a shallow deposit. But being a shallow deposit is not enough.

4:41 You need to have a good location, right? You're moving a large scale bulk product at relatively low margins compared to other projects. Products, a week's supply of salt fits on a boat, a week's production of gold at a mine fits on it in an envelope in many cases, right? So that's the contrast there. So what we have, and this is what also makes this mine viable, is proximity to an existing deep water port on the west coast of Newfoundland that is in operations today and that has the capability to move 50,000 ton Panamax vessels, boats filled with salt into our key markets. And so our salt is used for de-icing purposes. It's for road salt in the Northeast US, the Midwest, Ontario, Quebec, and the Atlantic provinces.

5:33 These are all areas accessible by sea. It's salt that's used for safety and infrastructure security, and it's a strong, stable commodity. Now, our salt, by putting it on a boat, allows us to sell into these major markets in a cost-effective and strategic manner. And that is what separates this project from any other potential salt mine, which again, there aren't any because they don't have this infrastructure component. Now on top of that, on top of the shipping piece, we have proximity to a substation called near St. George's, which is a town we're near. So less than 2 kilometers away, we have a tie-in to Newfoundland Hydro. Less than 10 kilometers away we have the Trans-Canada Highway and then less than a minute away to the north, actually within the town limits, is the town of St. George's of about 1000 people and then through the northeast we have a town called Stephenville of about 10,000 people. So when you're thinking about a resource project, you have the resource, and then you have the strategic location and all the key infrastructure required to build a mine like this. We have that in place. And while I will also point out is that because we're tied into Newfoundland Hydro, this site will be 100% battery electric when it's in operations, which will mean it will emit essentially 0 greenhouse gases when it's in operation, less than 4 Newfoundland households

7:04 when we're in production. So going back to the main slide, we have the strategic location and we have the world-class resource. The next step is a feasibility study That has been completed. We have 2 feasibility studies on this project. A first one that was produced in 2023 and an updated one which we published a month and a half ago that increased production and economics by about 60%. The economics are very strong on this project. We have an after-tax NPV at 8% of $920 million Canadian, but the particularly attractive element here is the life of mine post-tax average annual free cash flow of $188 million Canadian. And this is a steady year over year cash flow for the 25 year mine life of this project.

7:54 In contrast to other resource projects that are targeting a first 5 years or first 10 years and hoping that they hit a high price commodity window, we don't need to worry about that. We have this steady cashflow year over year. It attracts investors who have a long time horizon in addition to shorter time horizon who wanna see the uptick as the project gets to the value where it should be in the market. But when it's in production, they're looking at a dividend, a cashflow payout, and that's what we offer here. Now, on top of that, I mentioned the 25-year mine life. I want to point out, we also have an additional potentially 50 years of salt in resource that can be added onto that mine life taking the mine life from 25 years to potentially 75 years.

8:43 Now this is the nature of salt deposits once you build them you have get over that initial hurdle of construction, they are in operation for a very long time and produce cash flow for a very long time as well. Now, on top of all of this work that's been done, we have an environmental assessment completed as well. I can't tell you how many projects on the resource sector are stymied or stuck in the EA phase. They're trying to appease stakeholders, they're waiting for the governments to go through their bureaucratic processes. All of that is behind us. It took 2 months to release this project from E A. And it's complete all stakeholder management, all indigenous relations. All of that is settled and done fully supportive in the region.

9:30 And on top of that, we have already received permits from this EA, including early works permits, which will allow us to start construction immediately on some of the key activities we need to develop this asset. And we will be, we just completed a raise about a month ago now, a little over a month ago, $9 million that will allow us to start to act on that, those early works permits and put this mine into the construction phase and development phase, which is very exciting for the project. That's the high level view. I'll talk a bit about the market because this really underpins why this is also a very attractive project. So salt is a global commodity. It's used in many different purposes beyond de-icing, which is what our application is, as I mentioned. But we've chosen de-icing because it's a strong, stable commodity and it's very conservative.

10:22 When you're putting together a feasibility study, you want to be conservative. You don't want to be saying we're going to be competitive in 6 different markets at 6 different prices and having to explain the basis for that analysis. We chose 1 market with the lowest margins and the bulkiest tonnages that we sell into. We can see here that the North American salt market is a robust market. It's about 30 to 36 million tons per year of production of demand. And we would produce at full production from our updated feasibility study, 4 million tons per year. So we're not we're not trying to corner the market or anything here. We just want to be a market participant here. Now what people don't aren't fully aware of and don't understand They don't really give salt much thought I would imagine is that salt We do not make enough salt in North America to satisfy our demand not just for de-icing salt but for all salt usages on the continent in general.

11:23 Right now, we import a significant amount of salt from Chile and Egypt primarily, but other foreign countries, but primarily Chile and Egypt, where cost of production is low, very low, in many cases, essentially 0, but balanced by the cost of shipping, which is a barrier that can never be removed, right? It's always going to be there. It's always independent of how low they can get production costs and in any type of uncertainty or disruptions to global trade can put our salt supply in a precarious position. North American salt, as I mentioned, cannot keep up with production or demand. Sorry, there hasn't been enough new mines built for the, because it's too hard to find good deposits, too costly to develop them, and they're not in the right location, which is what we offer. So we can come in here and be a salt mine on the West Coast, putting boats into key markets and be competitive on a cost basis with local producers and on a cost basis with foreign producers and being very competitive on shipping with foreign producers as well. And that's our aim is to disrupt and displace foreign production and then ultimately to be a fairly competitive with the local market as well.

12:41 I want to jump ahead here. Again, I don't want to skip over or talk about in detail. There's plenty of time for questions. I want to leave plenty of time for questions. So yeah, here's some key ultimate results of the updated feasibility study. And this is where the story becomes very intriguing. By looking at proxy companies and proxy valuations and precedent transactions. Our EBITDA or pre-tax operating cash flow is $325 million in our updated feasibility study and our average annual post-tax cash flow is $188 million. First of all, our market cap today is about $70 million Canadian. So, you know, when your free cash flow is twice what your current market cap is, that's a pretty good sign. Second thing is there's 1 publicly traded salt company in North America. It's called Compass Minerals, CMP, trades on the New York Stock Exchange and has an enterprise value, market cap plus debt of about $2.5 billion Canadian when you convert it.

13:50 And they own Goderich, which is the largest underground salt mine in the world in Goderich, Ontario. Our salt production is smaller than theirs. About half of it would be about actually 40 to 50% of theirs of the company. But looking at our EBITDA and free cash flow, both of these numbers would be superior to the entirety of Compass Minerals if we were in operations today. And they're a $2.5 billion Canadian enterprise value company. That's one thing. In 2022, a company called Stone Canyon, a private equity group, consolidated a large portion of the North American salt industry. It's a private company. In the private markets, they executed a transaction and they purchased the salt producing assets of K&S, a German conglomerate in the Americas for $3.2 billion US. And they paid 13x EBITDA.

14:47 And the normal transaction in the gold or silver space or other resource sector, you might be lucky to get 6 to 8, but 13 is unheard of. And you can do the math on our $300 million EBITDA and 13 times that. There's a precedent transaction and a proxy for where we think this company should be valued or will be valued once it's in production. We have to get over that hurdle though of the initial capital of 600 million dollars and we're working with a financing group, a debt broker out of London called Endeavor Financial that believes that they can raise up to, or find us 60, up to 60% of our financing needs through debt from large reputable debt providers that typically do not lend to resource sector companies, right? They view this asset because of the cash flows that we talked about, the same reason why somebody would pay 13x EBITDA. They are attracted to those cash flows, the strong stable production, and it allows us to access capital from sovereign wealth funds, export development credit agencies, major infrastructure banks who view this type of project like a subway, like a hospital, like an airport, like a power plant, right? It's a year-over-year steady cash flow return.

16:11 And you can see that here in the cash flows. First of all, this line here shows how we improve the cash flow from the original feasibility study to the updated study, but you show a steady cash flow year over year for the life of mine. And we would expect this as we add that resource in as well. On this slide, I want to show you in contrast to typical resource sector companies, you know, you oftentimes hear about the challenges that they have on water, on tailings, on siting. They need a large space. We have a nice, tight footprint here. We mine all of our product underground, all of the processing is done underground. It's put onto a conveyor to a transfer and then taken to our port. The entire conveyor run, No trucks running product on the surface is about 5 kilometers from underground to the port.

17:06 What you'll also notice here is no open pit, no tailing storage facility, no giant waste rock piles, no cyanide usage, no heat bleach pads, no sulfuric acid, no drilling and blasting. None of these components that typically can create risks for a project or environmental concerns or challenges that need to be overcome or costs that need to be accounted for. None of that exists on this project. We have a nice tight footprint ready to go when we're in operation. Significant local community benefits to the project, which I won't go into detail on, verification of the low greenhouse gas emissions of the project.

17:52 I want to talk about strategic agreements which we have in place, including an MOU with Scottwood Industries, which is the largest distributor of packaged retail de-icing salt in the US. Their major clients are Home Depot and Walmart. This is the type of salt you or I could go and get at the store. We sprinkle on our driveway or our road, our sidewalks, things like of that nature. They've already committed in an MOU to take up to 1.5 million tons, but this was done during the initial feasibility, after the initial feasibility study. They've expressed the potential to take more. We're also exploring the opportunity to bring in other off takers as well to expand our customer base. And of course, we could ultimately market our salt ourselves, no concern there.

18:39 Sandvik is our equipment supplier. They've already come to the table and committed in principle to supplying 15 to 20% of our financing needs, which is, of course, supporting their equipment purchases, which will be used in our operation. So another great name in the industry to be partnered with. And then just 2 weeks ago we engaged Hatch to be our engineer to lead our construction and detailed design. They have significant experience in soft rock mining. And they more importantly, in my mind, maybe not something that's easily apparent, is they had 2 years to review the work that was done by our feasibility study engineer, SLR, also a reputable, a very highly reputable engineer.

19:25 They had 2 years to review all of that work, and they are very comfortable taking the torch of the project over, which I think is a very good validation for the project as well, our thinking and our methodologies that we've put in place. So now the exciting part for the investor, you know, many of you are probably familiar with the Lassonde curve, and this company has followed that to a T for the most part. In 2019, this company had what I would consider or have been calling the market debut at 5 cents. And for many of the people who follow have followed the story and are watching this webinar, they'll know that during COVID, the stock ran up to over $4. So that's an 80 x return. Now that was a mixture of good marketing, and also COVID exuberance, right? A lot of day traders were created during COVID time. Everybody was putting money into the market. Now in the interim period, the management team was very successful at pushing the project forward on the feasibility studies, the environmental assessment and advancing the project. But unfortunately, the share price was not defended.

20:38 There was not enough work done in the marketing side of the story. And that's where I've come in now. Obviously on the development side, I had the ability to push this project forward, but I have significant experience managing and running public companies, understand the need to do interviews and webinars, to build our relationships with the banking communities, which allow us to raise money in the future, which allowed us to raise money just recently with teaming up with Raymond James and Ventum to put money into the company. These are things that the company has is starting to do that were not was not done before and we've seen significant improvements in the past few months and we want to build on that momentum as we advance the project forward. So, what are people asking, you know, what are we expecting in the next 6 months to a year? Well, we will secure that financing package. Endeavor is right now working through the due diligence package and will be going to market with our package to the lenders. We'll have an idea of what that looks like. And then at that point, this is a financing secured project. And if you follow the Lassonde curve, many projects in the resource sector get at least a 0.4 P to NAV ratio valuation at that point. And I'll remind everybody that our NAV on this project from the updated feasibility study was 900 million.

21:58 So I'll let you do the math on that one. We are aiming to engage additional strategic partnerships. In our last financing, we brought in our first strategic investor. We're working on obtaining remaining permits, potential for additional off-takers, and we will start construction, and then ultimately leads into finishing construction and unlocking the full value of this project. Other things that investors may want to see is share count. We have less than 110 million shares outstanding, so fairly tight. We have over 40% insider ownership, no warrants overhanging the company, including no warrants in the financing that we just completed. And we have about $10 million in the bank or so. We'll be announcing our Q3 financials shortly.

22:47 And then we also have a clean balance sheet so we believe that this company is very strongly ready to move as we build momentum and we want everybody to be a part of it as we go. That's I'll leave it to questions for now and yeah happy to take them now Romeo. Awesome and thanks Don for running through that presentation. I Appreciate all the new investors in the room. I'm sure it was helpful. Now, I've got a couple of questions that I wanted to run. You can come to the chat, and some that came in over the mail. Please do keep them coming. We've got time today. So hoping to get through as many as we can. But I wanted to flip a couple at you just to start. So I know given the consolidation and the salt industry in this continent, particularly Stone Canyon's acquisition of KNS Americas and the challenges with those legacy mines like Cargill's assets.

23:36 How do you see Atlas Salts entering into the market, changing the competitive dynamics? What kind of strategic advantages does being a new entrant provide? Yeah, so let's talk about some of those events first. I didn't touch on this slide, but I'll point it out now. So in 2001, the last new salt mine, new salt mine to open North America was constructed, American Rock salt. I think it's in upstate New York near Rochester. This is the largest salt mine in the US. They make over 3 million tons a year for de-icing. Since that time, as you mentioned, there has been consolidation, but also closures. So Cargo closed the Avery Island salt mine in Louisiana, which had been operating since the mid-1800s. And they closed it primarily due to environmental concerns. They breached the lake that this mine sits under and flooded into the mine, and it actually caused a couple of fatalities.

24:33 So they closed the mine. They currently have 2 of their mines up for sale. Both of these sit under lakes as well and have the same operational challenges and cost challenges. So a mixture of cost and environmental concerns could shut these mines down. That would take additional supply out of the market in a market where demand is growing and where supply is not growing to keep up with it. We have to supplement and as we buy more and more foreign salt the cost of shipping becomes higher, the cost, it just becomes a market where the cost is gonna rise tremendously and that we can come in and benefit from that. So we see an opportunity here. We're not gonna be tremendously disruptive to the industry, but I believe by the time we're at full production, once we've ramped up, which will be in about 8 to 9 years, that we will be slotting in very nicely into a market where a number of mines have shut down, where demand is steadily increased, and where foreign production is limited by shipping as it is today.

25:40 So yeah, that's where we view the competitive environment. And I also want to point out that it's not just me going out there and looking into the market. The salt market is highly complicated and very complex. So, you know, we have engaged a number of market research firms who know the market much better than we do, although we're quickly learning. And we've talked to a lot of the offtake suppliers and partners like Scottwood Industries and other players to understand it. And that is what has informed us into our understanding of the market and the prices that are used in our feasibility study. So I want to give people that assurance there that, you know, it's not just Nolan saying that he can make this much money based on selling salt. All of the market understanding is verified and compiled from independent third party sources.

26:32 Great. No, I appreciate that very much. One thing I wanted to know, just a bit more of your perspective on. So you got that MOU with Scottwood Industries for the 1.25 to 1.5 million tons per year. Your nameplate capacity is that 4 million tons per year. So Can you walk us through the strategy for securing offtake agreements to the remaining capacity? One thing I'm just curious about is, are you seeing an increased interest from buyers looking to diversify away from imports? I would say, just to point out, remember, we did the initial feasibility study, and then the MOU with Scott Wood was signed. And this was purposely limited. The tonnages here were purposely limited by the company, by Atlas, the previous management team, because they felt that the company might want to market some salt themselves, ourselves. So we retained some of that supply.

27:28 That is not to say that Scott Wood and us are not potentially looking at expanding that number to be closer to the full production that you just mentioned, 4Mt. Again, we're in discussions, we're always in discussions. To your broader question, not only with Scott Wood, but many other offtakers and distributors who've come to us, and in many cases intermediaries as well have come to us. So not just the final distributor but maybe the intermediary like the shipping companies or transportation networks who see an opportunity to upstream integrate or downstream, well, we would be downstream integrating. So these types of discussions are always happening right now.

28:16 Again, I've only been on the job for the last 5 months. We've had a strategic pivot to be more open to all these different concepts, right, as we focus on what we're good at, which is mind development. And then we can partner and work with groups who are good at what they do, which is distribution and bringing that salt to market. Sorry, I'm not sure I answered the full extent of your question, can you remind me of it? If I could. Yeah, the piece that you might wanna touch into is if you're seeing increased interest from buyers looking to diversify. Absolutely, yeah. So the key thing that people always say to me is on paper, Egyptian salt or Chilean or foreign salt, it looks good. Price looks attractive. I will be clear, our salt will actually be cheaper all in than Egyptian salt, first of all, which is surprising. I know many people think that their salt would be cheaper just because foreign production is cheaper. But outside of that, it's unreliable.

29:16 You don't know. I've had supplier or offtake buyers tell me this, you don't know who you're dealing with, you're not guaranteed the quality that you purchased, right, because they can sell you, they can say they're going to deliver this and you never know what it's going to get. You will send a boat there and you don't know if that boat is going to be sitting in the port waiting for the next boat to load or the last boat to load incurring costs. You don't know how long it will take for that boat to load. And then you don't know if they'll make their target on getting it to the continent where you have reserved a berth for it. So all of these challenges and instabilities in supply make it even more intangibly difficult to purchase salt from foreign providers, not just Egypt, but others, especially in large quantities, and especially when you want to build a business around it. Now, if you go and you look at a price assault, though, you can say, I can fill 1 boat and I don't care when it comes or when I need it. You can get it for a pretty attractive price, still more than our cost is what I would say.

30:20 But when you factor in all of that in the quantities we're talking about, it's a no brainer. Many groups are coming to us and saying, listen, we want your salt. It's strong, it's stable, it's consistent, strategically located, and we're dealing with local suppliers who we could come and have a chat with and know how to do business on the continent already, and are familiar with that. Awesome, hey, no, appreciate that extra context quite a bit. One thing I want to get into, like it's reflected in questions in the chat and over email, I do want to talk about financing really quickly. So with Endeavor Financial engaged for Project Finance and the equipment financing already in place, it's clear that you've made significant progress. What I'm curious about and what I think folks in the chat are looking for is what opportunities are you most excited about as you work to finalize the remaining components of your financing package? How are conversations with potential strategics evolving and what is really what is the path to close look like from here?

31:15 Yeah, so Endeavor has been working on the project for the last year or so, but we kind of put a little bit of a slowdown in it when we engaged in the updated feasibility study, which was important for us because we wanted to demonstrate to the market the true potential for this operation. But what that also means is that debt lenders who look at the project are saying, get, make sure you get your full package, tell us exactly what you're going to do, and no changes expected after that. And we said, okay, after the updated feasibility study, this is what the project's going to look like. So we've just completed that recently, relatively recently on a debt lender scale. And Endeavour has also worked on with other due diligence partners, including the marketability of our SALT, the engineering, and the environmental and permitting angles, as well as the economics to put together a financing package, like marketing package that will go to the lenders. So I'm very excited to start those discussions in the coming months, in the early new year, to start to say who's interested, what is it going to look like, what can we put together. I'm also excited, as I mentioned, to start working with the equity side of the community. So the investment banks who have previously not been engaged on this project, have not been interested, or have not, their interest has not been stoked by the company. And that is starting now as well,

32:46 right? We're coming with a project which is ready to go, right? We just need their assistance in raising funding for it. We've done a lot of the legwork and they get excited about that as well because of course they see the opportunity to make money just as we do. So I'm excited about those discussions, building and heating all the time. And I'm very excited about strategic partners and potential strategic partners who come to us and say, we've been following your story for the last 2 to 3 years. And you, Nolan, bring a breath of fresh air to the company. And we've seen like the work that you're doing, you're building the momentum necessary, you're demonstrating that you can raise money for this project. And then more importantly, you can put shovels in the ground. They're starting to come out and say, you know, before, you know, there's no point in discussing because, you know, are we convinced that the project is going to advance? Not necessarily.

33:41 But now they are starting to see that, as all investors should, as I saw when I joined the company. And yeah, all of these things are very exciting. It's just a lot of positive, upbeat environment in the company that's surrounding it as we go back into the market and build that support necessary. Awesome, Now I know the project draws pretty heavily on the proven design from Irish salt mining's Kilroot Mine. What specific operational lessons or design modifications from that operation have been most valuable in de-risking Great Atlantic? Are there any aspects where you're innovating beyond that reference case? Or is it really a kind of blueprint as much as possible? Yeah, these are great questions, Romeo, by the way. The Kilroot mine has been in operations for decades now, I believe.

34:30 It's an underground mine. Again, it's an underground conveyor system, same as us, soft rock mine, and it takes the product to a port which is shipped for the de-icing market in Europe. So a lot of analogies here strongly informed our design elements that went into the updated feasibility study. A lot of the engineering that went into the updated feasibility study on ground support and the structure for our underground conveyor system, the drift accesses, was incorporated thinking from the Kilroot mine, and we included engineers in our study who did design work for the mine, and we also visited the mine. Not me, but my senior engineers who worked on the updated feasibility study and all of our engineering for the last 2 years visited the site as well.

35:28 It's a kind of a sister slash cousin mine that we draw a lot of inspiration from. And all of this, more importantly for the investor, is the understanding that incorporating this thinking has significantly de-risked the mind that we put forward in our updated feasibility study. Cool. No, thanks. Honestly, more curious than anything else. My next question is, I know the feasibility study is based on those 95 million tons of probable reserves over 24 years. But you do have that kind of eye popping additional 868 million tons of inferred resources. So what's going to happen technically and commercially to convert a real portion of those inferred resources over and potentially extend mine life, increase production rates? Is this a 2030s problem or is this something you're going to be looking at earlier than that?

36:17 Yeah, so first of all, I would say we've got, yeah, it's mostly a 2030s problem, actually even probably 2050s. We're very confident the way that salt mines work that the salt is there. It's just when you're talking about a 43-101 and a resource statement, there's limitations in your ability to say that it's in reserves or it's in resource, unless you have adequate drilling. But when you've drilled out so much salt that you can fill a mine to full capacity for 25 to 30 years, 35 years, which was in the original feasibility study, there's no reason to go further and add more. The incremental marginal value of adding more resource to year 50 or year 60 just isn't there, right? It doesn't make sense. So in reality, what will happen is that we will get to the first salt level and we will continue to mine horizontally, probably past the reserve, probably past the resource, and probably into greenfields where there's been no drilling because that's how salt deposits work. And I say this all potentially and probably so I don't get into any trouble for this, but that is different than, and it's important that I mention this because it's different than our current mine plan, which

37:47 has us going vertically because of limitations of our reserve structure and our block model. So, an astute investor would realize if they keep going horizontally and they're not going vertically as much, that'll lower our sustaining capital costs, it'll lower our development costs, it'll lower our operating costs as well, because we're moving more horizontally. All of this cannot be incorporated into the updated feasibility study because we're limited by drilling, which I don't necessarily think reflects the realities of salt deposits, but we play by the same rules as every other mining company. Just a little something for people to keep in mind though. I certainly appreciate that. I know a lot of the audience are precious metals investors for the most part. So yeah, it's really good and important, I think, to understand how these deposits are different.

38:36 My last one, and I appreciate everybody in the audience giving me a bit of space to run through these. I will get to the audience questions in a second. If you mind throwing up the Lassonde curve slide that you had up, Because I know Atlas is clearly in that development permitting phase, famously where all the important work gets done and investors tend to hate it. That's the fun corner of the curve. But as you think about catalysts that could drive a re-rating towards those production multiples, what milestones are you looking at as the most critical for investor perception? Is it final permits, construction commencement, first production? What do you think is going to be the big re-rate moment? Yeah. So first thing I would say is you're right. Investors get bored during that period of time. But there's a lot of new investors who are on this call and they're probably realizing like, wow, I have the opportunity, like I get to skip all of that. It's already been done. I don't have to bear the heartache and the stress.

39:30 Like myself actually, when I joined the company, which is why I joined it, it was like so much work has been done here. It's a no-brainer. It's a slam dunk, right? So but there's still work to be done. And yeah, so the biggest thing I would view, biggest 2 things is starting construction, right? Which I think is important for any project is you can talk about it all day long. I talk to many gold companies or hear many gold companies, they get asked, oh, when will you be, how long will it take to build? Well, yeah, 3 years. Well, that sounds very good. But it's like, when are you going to start construction? Well, you know, it's going to take us 2 years to get our EA complete and our permit. So it's always 3 years on top of whatever it takes to get, which is the big question mark, which we don't have right now.

40:17 So I would say, starting construction, demonstrating that we are ready to go, everybody's on board. When we first do that, I think will be a huge milestone. And then securing the financing package to make sure that this is an investable project for equity investors, right? It's much easier to write a check for $1 when you know that 234 dollars are guaranteed to come in behind it, which is what a debt package looks like. At this point in time, investors are making it based on the strong belief, I believe is strong and a low risk belief that that package will come in. But certainly there are other investors who are waiting to see that. And I think that will be a huge catalyst as well. Awesome. Appreciate it very much, Nolan. I am going to get to the bunch of audience questions.

41:05 There were a couple that came in in advance over email, so I will tackle those first and then I'll get right into the chat. One person asked, are we in a position now to start early works and ordering long lead items from a cash perspective? That's right, yeah. So the money that we raised recently was budgeted, a large component of that was budgeted to start a lot of the activities that will, including long lead purchases of equipment, some equipment and not all of it, excuse me, primarily related to electrical, getting electrical access to the site that maintain our schedule as much as possible as we secure, excuse me, sorry, as we secure the larger financing package. So yes, we will be starting that and we will also be starting Earthworks and site prep work, which is of course, it's all part of the critical path. You can't start doing your drift development till you have a site ready to start that activity. So all of that, a lot of that, all of it was included in the updated, or in our financing that was just done.

42:11 Awesome. 1, we've already touched on it, but good to reiterate, I think, is that, Are there any more regulatory government environment or other approvals needed for development to commence? Yeah, so there are permits that we need to, part of the process is you get your environmental assessment and it lists out all the permits that you need to receive and any conditions you need to receive those permits, right? And so that is what we work through and you need to get those permits, you need the detailed design, and that all comes in advance of construction and during construction. So those are technically required, but I wanna point out that 90 to 95% of the work or the risk is in the EA. Getting that on board is now we're just dealing with the permits and it's say, here's our design.

42:59 We followed everything you said we need to do. And then they say, yep, you followed everything you said we need to do. And then they say, yep, you followed everything you said we need to do, check mark, you're good to go. And I wanna emphasize that by showing, these are all the permits that we already have included, you know, environmental assessment, early works, environmental protection plan, waste management, anyone who follows the resource sector is very familiar with a lot of these. Water management plan, all of these have been approved already. There are still other permits that need to come, but very low risk of not getting them at this point. That's just the reality of it. Great. I appreciate that. And yes, I've seen something like this list in many decks before, but it's good to see a lot of them have dates 2 years out, right? I've seen some of the 2 years I've heard quite some time.

43:44 Jumping into the chat here. There's 1 great question, Raziel, that I honestly I think I asked every executive at some point on some webinar. What are the implications of US tariffs on this project? There are no implications right now. There are no tariffs that we are aware of on US-based tariffs. Ultimately it would be, you know, we hear about tariffs that it's ultimately just a tax on Americans, they're going to pay a higher price, And that's the case. There's just not enough supply in the United States or Canada, and certainly not in the US without Canada, supplementing them of local salt, of local production of salt.

44:31 So if they were to put a tariff on, they would just have to bear a much higher price. And I don't think that the cities and states and municipalities who are the primary purchasers would be comfortable with that. They might be able to submit more pressure in a more concentrated manner than individual consumers would. And so that's why I think maybe there are no tariffs at the moment. And also I would say that by the time we're in production, which is 2030, there will be government changes expected. Trump can't be in power according to the Constitution past 2028. There's a joke there as well, but I won't touch on it But that the all indications are that you know There's probably no expectation that any tariffs would be past that but who knows right at that point I'm very sensitive. I don't want anyone Trump to be like, hey, Atlas Salt says I'm not going to tariff salt. I'm going to tariff salt now. Like, no, I don't want to bring that smoke, right? So.

45:41 I usually call that the Trump question because there's always 1 that sneaks into these. As a kind of sideways, in addition to that question, and I know you've already said, look, there's just not enough supply already in the USA and Canada for what's available. But Raziel from the chat asks, is there a viable market outside of the USA and Canada, for example, Mexico or Europe? Probably not Mexico. They would be a net producer of salt right now. They do supply some salt into the US, not for de-icing purposes, but for specialized salt. They also supply a lot of high-purity salt to China. That's where the margins on high purity and you need that specialization there. Europe is a potential market. So there has been an offtaker. You asked earlier about strategic partners or offtakers who've reached out to us. There is an offtaker who reached out to us from Europe, I've mentioned them before, called Maxi Salt.

46:36 They have expressed interest to purchase some salt and move it into Western Europe. And more importantly, I mentioned this because this is not a market that was ever contemplated by the company before. We always felt that probably moving salt to Europe was not cost effective, but they've come and expressed interest there. So yeah, there is the potential there and it demonstrates that there is further markets for our salt than what we've already talked about. And also we have, we believe there's further markets outside of de-icing in North America. But again, for us to put that into a feasibility study takes more work than it's worth at this point in time and opens us up to more questions than we want to answer at this point. So, but it's something that people can keep in mind as other potential upside into selling it to higher margin markets.

47:27 Perfect, thanks. And just for folks in the room, we only got 10 minutes left and there's a lot of questions. Really appreciate everybody's participation. Anything I don't get to, I promise I'm gonna send to the Atlas Salt team and they'll be able to get back to you but I'm gonna run through as many as I can in these sneaking through these last 10 minutes. One is, if possible, can you comment on the strategic partner that participated in the life offering and how much they own of the company right now? Yeah, so that's all confidential and anonymous at the request of the participating company, as any investor has the right to their privacy when they invest until they become an insider. They are a company that has been following Atlas Salt for a long time. They were starting to see that real progress is being made. They liked the management direction that the company is taking.

48:16 And they saw, when we opened up the financing, they saw the opportunity to take an initial position. They are an active participant in the salt market in North America. I won't say on what side of the fence or component they are, but they have a vested interest and desire in seeing the project built. And they potentially view the project strategically going forward as well. And they, you know, at this point, I would say that They are establishing an initial position and looking to see what they will do to expand that in the future. Great. Appreciate that. We're very, very happy to have them in the register now. Awesome. Next, I'm going to be combining a couple of questions. So if you feel like I didn't get to your question, maybe because I'm trying to combine them into one to save time. But basically, a couple people are curious where you think the current gap is with the recently depressed share price over the last couple of months and where the project's at de-risking wise?

49:18 I think, yeah, it's always a good question. Ultimately, the market does mysterious things and it's hard for me, right? If I knew the answer, I would be, you know, for not just my company, but others would be much more actively trading. I would look at the market and say that I wouldn't be actively trading salt as an insider. I just want to be clear on that before someone misinterprets it. But the market had a big run up in August, September, early October, not just our market, but gold, right? There is exuberance in the market, starting to get interest rate cuts. Economic news was starting to look okay.

50:05 I would say in the last couple months, or last month or so, the gold market generally, the TSX Venture gold market has been weaker. For good or bad, we get caught up, you know, we love it when we get caught up in the exuberance that pulls us up. You know, you have to take your licks when it goes down by the same token, right? So I think there's a bit of that. I think there's always market uncertainty and then you get into year end and there's all sorts of trading, tax loss selling, people who are locking in gains from earlier in the year. I don't think there's a whole bunch of tax loss selling because as I mentioned, the stock was much higher earlier and there's been 2 years where the stock was down on the year and now we're kind of flat to up from where many investors would have gotten in if they, as our volumes have picked up recently.

50:57 I'm getting very complicated and these are all the things I see that kind of coalesce, pushes and ups and downs. It's hard for me to say exactly, but I would just say there's nothing, there's no real clear explanation. I don't think that the market is accurately pricing in risk or the work that's been done on the project. I just don't think that that's the case. And I don't think that there's enough awareness in the market to get full price discovery, right? Because we are constantly finding new investors and new interests who've never heard of Atlas Salt, never heard of the salt industry. You know, we see it on this call, you told me the numbers of attendees for this webinar is significant. The follow-up interview or follow-up one-to-one request is significant.

51:44 This is, You know, until we have full saturation and everybody is aware of the story, it's hard to say there's full price discovery. We don't have any analyst coverage, so people are doing their own risk analysis and therefore I don't think that the risk analysis is fully priced in either. All sorts of things like that. I just think it's the market conditions right now are weighing down on the stock. No, thank you. It's always fun to speak to the animal spirits of the market as much as possible. Yeah, and read the tea leaves and sacrifice some goats or something. Sometimes feels a bit medieval for sure, especially in the middle of the summer. Delvin from the chat asks, are you in talks with, it's the best of your ability to answer this question, are you in talks with Carnie's government and possibly taking a stake in the project? We are actively exploring government interactions and supports.

52:35 You know, most companies don't want a stake per se in their company by the government, but we would not say no to any type of support financially or politically. We don't need a whole lot of political support, but that actually goes broadly to a message that I have been trying to deliver and have been actively delivering to government and pseudo-government organizations and those funding groups that are attached to the government, like, you know, Export Development Credit Agency or other funds, there are a lot of projects out there that we hear about in the news that face opposition from communities, from Indigenous, from whole provinces in many cases, and yet we're putting our heads down and trying to power through it and throwing money at it with no certainty that they're gonna go anywhere. And the government gets a good message that they're advancing a project that's in the nation's interest, for example. I'm not saying we shouldn't be pursuing these projects, but what Atlas Salt is, is a project that has all sorts of support. It's an easy win.

53:40 Nobody does not want this project built. Everybody wants it built. So if you're looking to support a project, if you're a government agency or pseudo government, or you know anybody at the government, this is the message that I'm trying to deliver is that this is a project that is low hanging fruit, easy win, let's start creating some jobs immediately, not if all goes well and we get everybody on board and we get all the permits we need in 2 to 3 years we can start hiring some people. I could start hiring people tomorrow with full-throated support from various government agencies or the broader investment community And that's what we're working to get that message out every day we can. Awesome. One quick 1 from Brent. Have you pitched this project any resource funds?

54:27 Yeah, of course we have. We've pitched to a number of funds as part of the Endeavor work, as part of our general investor outreach. Many of them took part in the last financing. So small components, you know, there are others that want to write bigger checks. And, you know, one thing you mentioned earlier, excitement, I forgot to mention, we talked about getting debt to 60%. Many of these resource funds are very familiar with subordinate debt or mezzanine financing. And you know, they may be they invest traditionally in gold, which doesn't even have a lot of time, senior secured debt till they're in operations. They they've expressed interest in taking us beyond 60 percent to 70 or 80 percent by by bringing in additional unsecured debt or subordinate debt. So, yeah, these resource funds and groups we were in active discussion with all the time. Great. There's 1 that I asked for some clarification on, but they asked, are there any deleterious elements of concern? I would ask for follow up, they mean like arsenic, for example, in a gold project, or is it mostly just straight pure salt?

55:32 Yeah, so no, our salt is 96% pure. And just going back here, yeah, 95% is for the whole resource, 96% for the reserve. For the most part, entirely salt, nothing like arsenic. I'm sure there's small, small, small, small amounts of arsenic, but nothing of significant concern like a gold project like that. Other things like potash or other salts, anything that you find in the ocean, that is how this salt deposit was created, you'll find in the salt deposit, but the vast majority of it is salt. Perfect. Thank you. One quick 1 from Tony. Can you speak about salts holdings and triple points? The other half of this question would take too long, so I'll email it to you.

56:18 But I'm curious of your perspective on salt holdings and triple points. Yeah, so we hold about a 15% interest now in triple point resources, which is a salt dome to the south of us spun out of Atlas Salt. I think it was in 2023. The idea was that this project was, you know, Atlas Salt would focus on the development of salt as a commodity, whereas a salt dome, which is the official's book, Salt Dome, held by Triple Point, is more suitable to energy storage or well, primarily energy, whatever form it's in as if it's a liquid or a gas or something like that as an energy storage deposit, very supportive of their development. We want to see them advance as well as a shareholder as well. And as a participant in the region, in the market, very positive there. We are in active discussions with them all the time as an active supporter.

57:12 We did own 30% until recently when they did a raise that took us to 15%, but they're using that money to advance the feasibility study, I believe. So it's a positive for all shareholders. And yeah, we want to see that project advance and we're supportive of it. Awesome. So in the last second before we jump, I always like to ask, what are you personally most excited about in the upcoming year for Atlas Salt? Yeah, so I think very excited, as I mentioned to people, I started in June, so kind of the middle of the year. Starting in January, a full cycle of marketing, you know, the marketing routine that a company goes through from January to December, excuse me, to hit that ground running in the new year, get past the market stuff that happens in December, excuse me, and then start the work with Endeavor in the discussions with Endeavor and the banks, as I mentioned.

58:11 I don't know why. And then starting construction. There's just so much stuff that's really going to happen in the next few months that I'm really looking forward to really getting into, keeping myself even busier than I already am and the team is. And I know we're all excited as well with the raise that we just did that allows us to do all of this. So yeah, it's a great time for investors to get on board. And that's also exciting as well, to talk to new investors and tell them about the great work and the great project we have here is always evergreen for me. Awesome. Hey, Nolan, thank you so much for both presentation and letting me in the audience grill you for a good 40 minutes. Not everybody's up for that, so really, really appreciate it. I know a big audience in the room today. I know it didn't get to every question. I tried to get to as many as I could. I'm gonna send the ones left over to the team so that they can get back to you. But thank you all for joining, taking an hour out of your day. As always, appreciate it very much. Nolan, looking forward to chatting soon.

59:04 Thank you. Thanks, Romeo. Thanks, everybody. Enjoy the rest of your days. Cheers, everyone.