Northern Shield Provides Market Update

0:04 Hello everyone and thanks for tuning in for another live Northern Shield Market Update. If this is your first time joining a 6 call, please note this event is being recorded and you can watch the replay at SIX.com or on our YouTube channel shortly after we conclude today. Also, we encourage participation, so please feel free to submit your questions using the chat feature, which can be found in the bottom right corner of your screen. We are joined by Ian Bliss, President and CEO. Ian will first go through a quick presentation, then we'll open it up to questions. So with that said, Ian, the floor is yours.

0:33 Thank you very much, Kyle. And good afternoon or good morning everyone, depending on where in Canada or the world you sit. And a particular welcome to those Labrador Gold shareholders who may be joining us for the first time. The presentation is an update on the Root & Cellar property in Newfoundland, an intact epithermal and porphyry gold system. It's very similar to the presentation I gave at the CIM Mineral Resource Review Conference in St. John's last month. Before I start the presentation, I do have to bring your attention to the forward-looking statements as this presentation will contain forward-looking statements. So Rutland Cellar is located in the Avalon geological terrain in southeastern Newfoundland.

1:18 The property is explored for epithermal Gold, Silver and Copper porphyry. It's strategically located on the island of Newfoundland. I say strategic because most Copper porphyry deposits around the world are located on the Pacific Rim. This will be one of the few that are located on the North Atlantic seaboard. So it's very easily accessed. It's about a 3 and a half hours from St. John's, the capital of Newfoundland and only about 10 minutes at best from a deep water port. And we'll have a closer look at that later, but it is in an area called the Avalon Terrain, broadly similar to perhaps the BC Golden Triangle, but just a lot less explored and much more accessible. So the Ruta Sala estate is located in a very distinct topographic low within the Beerim Peninsula. This is one of the sort of features that, you know, prior to auctioning the property, we took cognizance of, because as I say, we're looking for features that perhaps suggest that Root & Settle was a little bit different than the surrounding other epithermal deposits in the Avalon terrain.

2:21 We see this very distinct break in the topographic map, as you see on the right-hand side. It's basically a lowland here. The property sits on a little bit of a ridge within that lowland. And we see the very same break in the magnetic signature. So we believe that was actually an extension regime. Most of the Avalon terrain was created by collisions of rocks coming apart. But at one point, we believe there was a bit of an extension or rifting. And That's important for our epithermal and porphycopyrite deposits because it basically creates greater magmatic activity. If you create greater magmatic activity, you have the ability to also create greater hydrothermal fluid flow. It's very distinct from the surrounding rocks. When we look at the geochemistry, they're bimodal at root and cellar and that's very conducive to an extension arc regime and that's potentially where you get larger Copper porphyry systems as well as epithermal mold. Right from the bat, from the get-go, there is something very unique about the geological terrain surrounding Root & Cellar.

3:28 I said that Root & Cellar is really being bookended by 2 main commodities, that is Gold and Copper, as I say, because it is a related epithermal Gold and porphyry Copper system. These things are related. I say it is bookended by those commodities, but we also have significant Moly, Tellurium, Silver and a little bit of Lead and Zinc as well. This model is a general model of an epithermal and porphyry Copper system. The porphyry Copper typically sits on top of some sort of intrusion at depth and you have your various low-sulfidation deposits intermediate and then low, lobing usually the furthest away or the highest above that intrusion that's supporting the Copper porphyry. This is what we believe is happening at Roon Siller. We have all the components from a low-solidation announcing the evidence of a Copper porphyry. But they are in members of the same magmatic hydrothermal system.

4:23 The unusual thing is usually the Copper porphyry. If you're seeing the Gold, then the Copper porphyry is typically several thousand metres deeper than the Gold, in which case you don't see it. But for various reasons, you get telescoping or other features that now sort of project or telescope the Copper Porphyry onto the Gold bearing level. So it's a very unique circumstance and we believe that's happening at Root & Seller. I mentioned Tellurium. Tellurium is a significant component at Root & Sell for a variety of reasons. Tellurium is actually a critical metal and a key component in solar panels. It's probably actually one of the rarest of the critical metals. And you really only find it in economic quantities as a byproduct of these type of epithermal Gold and porphyry Copper deposits. Currently, about 90% of the world's Tellurium is produced in China.

5:13 We have seen significant Tellurium at root and cellar, both extensive low-grade in and around the conquest zone in the centre, 10 to 20 ppm, but we have it up to 700 ppm in some zones and 300 ppm associated with the Mollie and the Preston Copper showing. Very, very extensive and good grades of a Telerium mineralization. We see that in several minerals, Hesite with the Silver, and more recently when we were drilling for Gold, somewhere we came across what looks like Crenorite, which is a Gold Telluride associated with the Coliform, Crustiform, Banded Coarse veins. But it's important because not only is it a critical metal but often when you find it in this setting, it is indicative of very large epithermal Gold and porphyry Copper systems. So, just a quick overview for those that are not familiar with the Root & Seller property. It really is composed of right now 5 Gold showings over about a 6km strike length.

6:10 Along the northern flank of the uplands, we have drop zone, windfall and Braxton Bradley. These are really characterized by very high Silver to Gold ratios, so they're Silver-rich and also generally very Tellurium-rich. In the centre of that we have the conquest zone where much of our work is focused to date. There's also Tellurium there, though a little bit lower grade with Gold right now actually about 111g per tonne Gold in a boulder. This is where most of the work is focused to date. But the really recent developments are on what we call the Creston Copper Zone, which is a very large anomaly consisting of soil and rock samples in the southwest portion of the property. Most of this presentation will really focus on that Copper-bearing zone. But Northern Shield is the very first company to explore this project. The only portion of it that's been explored by another junior company was Braxton Bradley about 20-years ago and The furthest they got along was about 100m of drilling and 3 wingeaters holes. Not much exploration. This was discovered by a local prospector and we're the first company, as I say, to conduct methodical exploration on the project site.

7:18 Having a quick look at the conquest zone, it's a very large footprint, about 4 square kilometres that's composed of both rock samples, anomalous and Gold, represented by the squares. And then the dots are anomalous soil samples. So In some areas you see very distinct dispersion trains following the trend of the ice direction. That suggests there's another source of Gold up in this area that we've yet to find, but most of it's in the Southern conquest zone, say up to 111g per tonne Gold in boulders. We haven't found a source of those specific boulders yet. They don't come from where we've been drilling and they're certainly very, very local. Any boulders that we find on the property have typically moved tens of metres or maybe a few hundred, but it's very short transport distances. So a very big footprint of Gold mineralization, still a lot of drilling to do. We've only drilled, I think, 34 drill holes on the property since optioning it in 2019.

8:12 And we generally believe that the conquest zone was probably linked up to windfall, somewhat depth through a vein system. These hash marks are IP anomalies and you can see again in this IP anomaly, we seem to get Gold with an IP anomaly outcrops on either side of this ridge up in here. So a lot of work to do on the Gold side and that's only one of the real 5-Gold project Gold occurrences we have on the property. The other thing about Conquest Zone, there's considerable visible Gold that we're finding there, both in, we see them both in drill core and in surface sampling. Just having a little bit of a closer look at the Southern conquest zone, I see where most of the drilling has taken place to date, including a drill program earlier on this summer, really the best result in that program was 4.3m of 3.4g per tonne Gold with some Tellurium.

9:05 But interesting, that was the first time we see what we call Gingero banding in these Coliform, Clusterform banded quartz chains. These are very indicative of epithermal Gold systems and They tell you you're getting into the boiling zone. It's in the boiling zone in epithermal Gold, which is where your better Gold grades are expected. All the sampling to date, including the drilling up in this area, was basically very shallow in the system. In fact, we know in this drilling here, we're at the very, very top of the epithermal system, essentially equivalent to Yellowstone, a park where you have that geyser coming out. 500M years ago, you would have had a very similar geyser gushing out hydrothermal fluids here. And When you're in that zone, you're actually above the boiling zone, so you don't typically get a lot of Gold, but we are seeing a lot of Gold and that bodes very well as to what we may find deeper down in the system.

9:56 This year too, we jumped quite deep down to the 300m or 400m level, mostly hit alteration. We did hit a few spots down in the South where we're hitting the structures at depth, but most of the Gold so far is contained within about 40-50m of surface. This was actually the deepest part of the vein we've hit to date at about 100m below surface. We're following up on this intersection in the next drill program at Utenziller. Now moving on to the Creston Copper Zone, which is a very large 2km diameter copper anomaly in the southwest portion of the property. The green dots are soil samples anomalous in Copper and the green are all rock samples, surface samples collected. You can see some very significant grades, including 10.5% Copper. That was from this chalcocite bearing sample, so that typically represents what we call supergene enrichment. After the mineralization formed, other fluids sort of flushed out some of the sulphides, enriching it in the metals.

10:58 But most of the Copper to date are found around this area here. Again, still very good grades up to nearly 9% Copper. And they're found in these quarries that are being operated by third parties, which we'll now have a closer look at. And I say these quarries are basically what they're doing. They're acquiring these what we call diatrine breccias. And these are important in the understanding of these porphyry Copper systems too, because they are formed by basically explosive eruption where hot magma interacts with the cold water table and creates a steam explosion that fragments the rock and that gives lots of opportunities for Minoan flusens to then come up these cracks and fill around these voids. And so they're third party. There's obviously a difference between quarrying rights. We have the exploration rights and the mining rights, but a third party has the quarrying rights.

11:47 They like these things because they're made up of rhyolitic fragments. Rhyolitic is very hard, so it's good for real gravel, but they fragment naturally along those boundaries. They're quarrying these diatom britches and in doing so, it's like pre-trenching for us on a giant scale because they're exposing a lot of the mineralisation. Again, all these green squares are Copper bearing samples collected by the prospector very early on in the process, some of them before Northern Shield got involved. But this year in particular, they've been moving westward and as they move westward, they've been exposing some new mineralization and rock types, which will show you which is very key to the evidence of this Copper porphyry system and what really changed things around partway through the season. But a rare and kind of a unique opportunity where we're having essentially a third party making money off of what we hope is removing the waste rock to a Copper porphyry system.

12:44 Moving closer into these quarries, we came across 3 critical pieces of evidence, mostly this summer, but throughout the exploration program at Root & Cellar over the past few years. We'll have a closer look at that. That is copper mineralization hosted in the diatreme breccia itself, some hydrothermal breccia veins and some fragments that host actual what we look like copper pore free mineralization. So starting with a breccia hosted copper, as I say, this is very chunky chalcopyrite forming in either veins or large void fillings around some of these fragments. Most of the Copper appears to be near what we think is the wall, the wall rock of this diatreme breccia. Obviously, that's where your weakest structures are. Any mineralized fluids are going to be able to rise to surface much more rapidly along that contact of the diatreme pipe. We think the Copper we're seeing is mostly near the wall rock or contact of the diatreme pipe with the surrounding rock.

13:46 But because this is hosted right within the diatrium breccia itself, this tells us that this mineralisation is coeval or formed at the same time as that diatrium breccia did. But we'll move along now to the some of the porphyry Copper mineralisation And here within one of the fragments within the dietary breccia, we're seeing chalcopyrite, a little bit like more mineralization along these little fractures and is a very solicified and potassium rich rock. There's also a lot of disseminated chalcol. It's a little bit harder to see in this image, but we see both disseminated copper mineralization as well as their vein mineralization. And this fragment looks quite like it's probably primary copper porphyry mineralization. But because it's hosted in the diatreme, we now know that that mineralization was actually formed prior to the formation of the diatreme pipe itself.

14:39 And then we also see similar looking chalcopyrite bearing quartz veins, but these actually transfers both the fragments and the matrix of the diatreme breccia. And so that tells us it's actually formed after the diatreme breccia. The reason that's important is because when we now see copper mineralization before the formation of the diatreme pipe, during the formation of the diatreme pipe, and now after the formation of the diatreme pipe. That tells you it's a very active system and long-lived system. That's what you want to see as potential for a very large deposit, or any deposit, because large deposits are grown. They're not formed in sustainably. They're grown. So the longer they live, the bigger they can be. This photo too also shows some native Copper.

15:25 We see that quite regularly in small amounts. This is one of the biggest little blobs of native copper that we see also within that diatreme pipe. Then one of the key discoveries this summer was this hydrothermal breccia within the diatreme pipe. And we see that as this very sort of black sooty looking rock, very siliceous, made up of what we call silica ooze, and then brecciated with a lot of pyrite in the matrix. But we see a lot of these banded fragments, and so that tells us that these were actually tiny little pools of water that would have formed around that geyser as it ejected to the surface. So 500 million years ago, this would have been the surface, the paleo surface. You would have had something like Yellowstone geyser gushing out the top and that formed a little pond.

16:15 And so When we see these fragments, we know we're right at the very top of the system within this diatreme pipe. This is basically hosted within the diatreme pipe, so again, we know it came later than at least 1 phase of the diatreme. It's a very active system. This is anomalous in Gold, Moly, pathfinders like arsenic and Tellurium. These are the classic SAE indicator minerals you're going to get, especially at the top of these systems. Later on, I follow this thing down at depth with drilling and geophysics. Just have a little closer look at these rocks. Here's more, a larger fragment with a lot of these banded sediments. So these are basically veins forming, silica forming on surface, hydrothermal silica.

17:01 And then you're getting a little bit of sediment as as you know the thing erupts you shake things around a little bit of sediment pours down and you're getting interlayer silica along with along with sediment to create these bands but it tells you you were on surface at the time this thing formed. This is a very interesting picture and it's a rock sample that caught a lot of attention at the resource conference in St. John's last month, attracting a lot of attention by geologists and obviously Lab Gold. But it's interesting because we know that it's actually a hat or form prior to the main diatreme, but in this case, we actually get another phase of the diatreme cutting it because we actually see fragments of the hydrothermal breccia within that. So again, indications of a very long-lived hydrothermal system, which is what you need to grow a large Gold or Porphyry Copper deposit.

17:54 A few other features that say that it attracted attention, number 1, these very weird rocks. This one we think is obviously Porphyry. And when you deal with Copper Porphyry, you need a Porphyry stock. So These are the intrusions. Sometimes they're felsic, sometimes they're mafic, often they're both. You need these intrusive rocks on which your Copper porphyry has then formed. We're now seeing those evidence. We never really saw porphyry rocks on surface at root and cellar and that was always one of the sort of negatives is if you have a copper porphyry, where are your porphyry intrusions? Well, we now see that. And then we also have in this case, what looks like a B vein. B veins are known to be very diagnostic of copper porphyry systems. And this one actually has a tiny central line with chalcopyrite or copper sulfide minimalization down the surface. So, you know, there's never one particular evidence that points at a Copper porphyry, but these are some of them and some of the more clear-cut ones of a porphyry system.

18:58 And so to sort of summarise what we have, We're obviously now seeing the evidence of the complete system at Brutus Cellar. We have the Gold-bearing zones, both the low-sulfidation at Conquest, the intermediate-sulfidation at Drop Zone where we have very high Silver ratio, Tellurium as well as Lead-Zinc. Now in the pits, we're seeing more evidence of hydrothermal breccia and obviously a lot of copper mineralization both hosted within the pipe and now fragments that are presumably been brought up from the depth. And this is ultimately what we want to be targeting for the Copper Porphyry. We see these fragments of Copper Porphyry, but they've been blasted up by the diatreme pipe. And so you assume the source of that is somewhere below the diatreme pipe. But you never know whether, you know, in this diagram, you know, the intrusive stock is right below the diatreme breccias.

19:48 That's not always the case. It can be off to the side. That's why you want to be a little bit careful about running in and strictly drilling right underneath the diatom breccias or the quarries in this case. So again, just taking a step back, because this is actually a diagram we had a few years ago when we first optioned the property and it kind of just reinforces the measures. We knew there was a copper porphyry potential then and now it's really beginning to come to light. And then when you step back and look at, again, some of the other early evidences, you know, we have here this very large copper anomalies as we've already seen, then on the flanks of that with these orange dots are what we call shoulder anomalies. Often in these copper porphyry systems you'll get very anomalous arsenic, antimony and a few other elements on the flanks of the copper porphyrin not within it. And we very clearly see here a distinct zonation. You are getting your copper and then your arsenic and your antimony and your pathfinding elements on the side.

20:45 And again, the blue dots here, these are tellurium soil samples. So again, it clearly seems to suggest that there's some structures in here that are leaking up tellurium. Tellurium can be converted to a volatile phase very, very readily. And so it sort of vaporizes so you can get it transported up through faults quite readily and then it's trapped in the soils. And then as you continue that into the conquest zone, which is here, here in the again, these blue squares are the Tellurium rich samples are getting along with the Gold and it happens to sit exactly on these structures that we're then seeing

21:17 tellurium and all the soil samples to the southwest. So that kind of relates that both the Gold and the Porphyry Copper system together, but a classic signature for Porphyry Copper where you're getting your shoulder anomalies and then a very stink zonation of Copper plus or minus mineralization in the centre. These things, Epithermal Gold and Porphyry Copper are related as we've just seen. Here's a real-world example of the preserved Epithermal Gold. This is called the Panto in the Philippines. They have both the Gold-bearing zone along these flat-lined structures, then at depth you have the Porphyry Copper stock. It's actually all within reach of surface.

22:04 So, you go back to the exploration models, as I showed you before, these are models, but they do actually occur in real-life scenarios, as exemplified by the Panto, where you get both the Gold and the Porphyry. When you explore these systems, you never know whether the Gold is the main commodity or the Copper Porphyry, or perhaps like the Panto, they're both. We still don't know that at Northern Shield, but there's absolutely no reason why we don't have a similar situation happening here at Moon Cellar, where we have both the Gold and the Porphyry Copper. We have been focused on the Gold, but all summer when we were driving back and forth to the drill rig at Conquest Zone, we were passing these pits where they're blasting and exposing the dietary and breccias. After a while, we just could not sit back and simply bypass what we were seeing. In fact, we had several majors on the property throughout the year and the last few years, and they too were saying, you need to be focusing underneath these dietary breccias because they're pretty significant.

23:08 They often host some of the world's biggest Gold and Porphy Copper deposits. We're beginning to see signs of that right now. Current plan work, we were initially going to rush in there and do a drill program either before Christmas, if we got the permits, or after. Now with this financing and with further insight, we're going to step back and do some geophysics in that area of the Creston Copper target because we don't know whether the porphyry is off to the side or right underneath. Instead of just rushing in with the drilling, we will do some geophysics, probably MT or Magneto-Tellurix or IP.

23:47 And the more internal mapping of these diatom breccias with the aid of a specialist in Copper porphyry. We've completed a soil sample survey over Braxton Browdy, which is at the northeast end of the project compared to Creston, but it does show some similarities to Creston in that there's Copper there and also Tellurium along with Moly, Lead, Zinc and Gold. It's sort of like the mirror image of Creston. We wanted to get a better understanding of what was happening there, so we just completed a soil sample. We also have numerous samples that are in the shop right now that have been collected from quarries and in around that area. More samples were collected just the other day by the prospector after a recent blast in the pits and these will all be sent in for assay.

24:34 Again, For those of you that are unfamiliar with Root & South, one of the really impressive things about it is not just the geology and the technical information, but its location. It is right off a paved highway. You hear the pitch right here, just a few hundred metres off the highway, even the conquest Gold-bearing zone, you can literally get to it in driving in a 2-wheel drive Beetle if you want, and then you just have to walk the last few hundred metres. So Access is quite incredible for an untouched epithermal Gold and porphyry Copper system. These are always often halfway up the mountains. If you look at BC or Chile or in jungles, if you look at the Southern Pacific Rim, but we got a deep water port at Maristown underutilized and just off the highway. So, you know, access to a room so it really doesn't get much better. So on top of all the technical data that's supportive, it's in a really, really good area. And it's, you know, it's ice free or snow free. Most of the time We are getting snow quite early in the winter this year, but generally the Bering Peninsula is fairly warm and snow is not a problem.

25:42 So just to summarise, we have ongoing mineral discoveries that are proving up a camp scale opportunity for both porphyry Copper and epithermal Gold. We have the strategic advantage in this area as being the first mover. There are other epithermal Gold systems in the Bering Peninsula and the Avalon, but we're probably the most advanced right now on the understanding of the system, at least in that area. Certainly, Root & Cellar compares many characteristics with other world-class Copper and Epithermal Gold deposits. Some of that's to Taurium, which is very rare, But it's also just down the road from Root & Cellar is a Fluorite mine. If you go to places like Nevada, there's a lot of Fluorite and a lot of Tlurium. Of course, you have some of the largest epitome of Gold deposits in Cripple Creek.

26:32 Great similarities between some of the world's biggest Copper and Gold districts with Boone Cellar. We know both on the Gold side, we've hit the centre zone or the Giza sediments and same in the Creston Copper zone. We see the very, very tops of the Copper system. This system is completely intact, even though it's 575M years old, it's still intact and that's rare on its own. Obviously, you've got high grades of Gold with up to 78g per tonne in outcrop and significant Copper values. Of course, as I say, Root & Cellar owns 100% of the project. As I said, it's on the Atlantic seaboard, which is strategic itself, I think, and it's minutes from a paved highway and deep water port. So we think when it comes to the technical side and the access, early stage opportunities like this don't get much better.

27:27 And so I would like to conclude with that. Happy to answer any questions if there are any. Thank you very much. Great, excellent presentation Ian. I think we can kick off the question section now. Ian, you just announced a significant $1M strategic finance with Labrador Gold. What are your thoughts on this partnership and why is this the right deal at the right time for Northern Shield? Well, in simple terms, it gives us the money and at a premium to the market price to conduct more thorough exploration on the property. We raised some back in October, November, which gave us enough to do a planned drill program that was rushing in to do the drilling. Now we finally have the money, or most of the money, to sit back and plan a full year of exploration, not cut corners, but do the proper geophysics and get the proper experts involved.

28:17 The idea is to now start building up towards a 5,000m drill program. That may be over a couple of drill programs, but instead of just rushing in there and doing a small 1,500m, 2,000m drill program in the core areas, now The idea is to build up to 5,000m on both the Gold and the Copper porphyry, but do the thorough work before that. But also, if we take a step back, the management of LabGold have decided to undertake a change of business and that's into a sort of a hybrid junior-minor stroke investment fund. But where specifically a portion of the funds are aimed at undervalued early-stage projects. And these are, you know, early-stage projects are always higher risk and so It's been harder for Northern Shield or any other company to access those funds, but there are also opportunities in early-stage projects. That's where big discoveries are made.

29:12 Roger and his team have recognised that opportunity and found a niche market in the early-stage projects that are undervalued. Secondly, our own colleagues in the junior mining industry are often our greatest critics or sceptics. When a fellow CEO comes up and says, I like your project, I want to invest, you listen. When other geologists at the show are interested in the project, you sit up and take notice because they often are our greatest projects. So when they like it, it's a strong stamp of approval

29:55 to the market for a start. And it means we can tap into their expertise. I mean, Rogers is well-known, well regarded in the industry, so it allows us to also tap into their network and their technical background. They are very technically inclined. They know Newfoundland and Lavender Geology very well. They've been focused on this part of the world for some time. They recognise the significance of what we have at Root & Cellar, which is just what I showed you, in that we have an intact epithermal and pulverized Copper system. Those are rare to find intact and we have one that is extremely accessible. It's a matter of now trying to drive it forward. But despite all the indications we have, it's still sometimes been hard for me to sell the idea because Newfoundland is not well known for being a Copper, Porphyry or Epithermal district. It shares very similar geology to parts of BC, like the Golden Triangle, parts of Nevada, but there's no geological reason why it shouldn't be there. We know they're there.

30:57 We see these epithermal deposits and if you have epithermal systems, the Porphyry copper are somewhere underneath. Whether you can reach them, you don't know, but a perfect copper there. So the potential isn't very much here. It's always been a little bit of a struggle to convince people here that, or anybody that basically have a new district. But, you know, Roger sees the opportunity there. He's a geologist, so he understands the geology. And so when someone is willing to take that risk of an early-stage project and think outside the box, I mean, we thought outside the box to explore this tract of land, which I say wasn't well known on the radar screens for epithermal Gold and porphyry Copper, but it has the geology that supports it. Roger recognised that.

31:45 It was innovative thinking on our behalf to set that off down this road in the first place and they now them sort of recognizing the opportunity. Now, the financing structure is quite unique. Subscription receipts, technical advisor rights and preemptive participation rights. Can you walk us through why you structured it this way? And we know they're interested, but what strategic advantages does this partnership bring beyond just capital? Yeah, well, it's not about we structured it this way. A lot of it was on behalf of Labagool because, I mean, the structure, what you mentioned, subscription receipts, et cetera, et cetera, that's more to the fact because they are now doing a change of business plan and that requires sharehold approval and filings with the TSX. I don't want to get too much into it because that's their realm, but it's a change of business plan. So there's a timeframe between signing the subscription agreement essentially, and then receiving the money because it has to go through their shareholder approval and there's all those notices involved, timeframes to get there.

32:45 And so it's a little bit unusual circumstance, That's simply because they're going to that change of business right now. There's a little bit of a risk to that for Northern Shield because at the end of the day, Labgold shareholders may not approve this. But if they don't approve it, it might, again, it doesn't necessarily mean they don't like to sell the property, it just means that they may want Labgold to stay as a junior miner and not an investment fund. And so there was a risk and that's why we got a premium to market at $0.06 when we were trading at the time at 4 or 4 and a half cents when we were discussing it. So that's why there's a little bit of an odd structure to this. But the advantage is we share some technical expertise. Then We can also tap into their network on IR and a natural background to who they're connected with. There's the technical side, there's the IR side, but it's important for us to have someone that recognizes the potential of a room seller. Yes, as I said, we've had some majors interested in here, but it took Roger's credit.

33:59 He moved quickly. We want to move this thing forward rapidly and this money gives us that opportunity to come through. As I say, we tend to think outside the box and I think Roger finding this sort of niche market of under explored early stage explorers was also thinking outside the box. And, you know, sometime fortune does favor the brave. And I think it's a good partnership and I think we can both drive this forward collaboratively very, very rapidly in 2026. And that's our plan. I just want to take a moment to remind people to feel free to submit questions in the chat. There are a couple here. Charlie's asking, and I'll just read it verbatim here. Hi, Ian. Thank you for the presentation.

34:47 You may answer my question throughout the presentation though. You mentioned both 300 and 400 meters at Root & Cellar and also 100 meters. I'm assuming you probably meant 300 to 400 meters plus 100 meters. In any event, there's a compelling evidence we are not yet at depth. How deep will we drill during the next drill program? Secondly, will this drill program start soon? There's a bit of work that needs to be done at Creston before drilling, and I'm interested to know if drilling will commence shortly after Root & Cellar. Yes, so the drilling in December did go down to the 300m to 400m depth range. I forget whether that was a vertical or down hole, but it was roughly around 300m, perhaps a little bit deeper.

35:34 Most of those deeper holes hit alteration that was consistent with epithermal Gold and or Porphyry Copper. We did hit some of those structures underneath the conquest zone, a few hundred ppb, which is still significant. It's not high-grade, but it's telling us the structures go down at depth. We did hit mineralization deep underneath the Creston zone. The deepest we really hit, sort of the higher grade, was that crust from Van der Korts, which is clearly epithermal, and that's at 100m. That's kind of the deepest true epithermal mineralization we've hit in the conquest zone. The stuff we get at 300m or 400m, it's mineralization, it's disseminated pyrite, it's probably related to the epithermal system, but we don't really know for sure. But the stuff I mentioned at 100m depth, that crustiform bandit with the ganguro bands in it, that is really the deepest we've hit true epithermal mineralization in the conquest zone at least. So we will be following that in the next drill program. So what we're going to do is do some structural surveys, downhole structural surveys, have someone come and map and look at the core a little bit better, and maybe some new geophysics at Conquest, but I think we're probably good there. But it's really looking at having a better look at the structure and determining, do we continue to chase this much deeper down at 300m or 400m, or do we just go back to that 100m depth and follow it? Because again, it may not be a vertical thing. Like Lepanto, you always tend to think in Gold, especially

37:05 when you're used to Arkene, that these are sub-vertical structures, but they can go laterally a long way, as is the case with Lepanto. So we want to be careful about chasing it too deep right there because there may be a sort of a slant either back towards the Copper porphyry or perhaps to the east for a variety of reasons. We think it may be something may be plunging off to the east and there might be another porphyry Copper off to the east as well. The plan is to go back and do some more drilling in the conquest zone, follow up on that Dingoril banding, how deep we go. We may be a little bit more cautious and follow it slowly this time rather than jumping to depth, unless there's some reinterpretation on the structure that tells us, but we will at least go back to that ganguro banding and try to follow where that goes. It's actually a pretty good width.

37:57 The quartz drain sometimes were fairly small, but it was all over about a 4.5m-5m width of quartz draining and that's the most quartz draining we've seen to date on the property as well. That probably hasn't disappeared that quickly, so it's a matter of following it in the right direction. A follow-up question from Charlie. Is Northern Shield planning to engage a company like Apex Geoscience in order to help identify drill targets? We're engaging a number of specialists in the epithermal copper porphyry world that's forced to map some of these rocks and look at the drill core and the alteration. So yes, we will be, I'm not going to say who we're going to use, but we are tapping into some worldwide experts on these Porphyry Copper systems. The alteration here is pretty complex because we have the Gold and the Porphyry and there may be 2 different ages of mineralization where we have over-printing alteration.

38:56 That's what's creating some of the fog. It's a good problem to have because it means there are multiple systems there, but it's making understanding it a little more complex. We are going to be bringing in some experts on these systems to help us better understand the geology. But again, with the geophysics, we're going to have a geophysical expert look at first advise us on what type of geophysical survey to use. At the moment, that's between MT and IP. We're going through the steps right now of determining what that will be. We should have a conclusion on that very soon. Then, once we get the data, getting the right people in to interpret that. So you said at the Mineral Resource Review Conference in St. John's, you noted increasing interest in Avalon Terrain Porphyry Systems.

39:43 What's driving this industry attention and what makes the RuneSailer project stand out in this context? It's the rocks. It was the pictures I just showed you. They were largely sitting on a desk and I gave a presentation and essentially the same presentation that I just gave here. The conference here is more of a technical conference. It's other academic, it's other geologists from other mining companies. It's not investment orientated though an investment did come out of it through LabGold, who I'm sure have been following the project for a while, but I don't think we can point to 1 individual body of evidence to say that was a tipping point. It's just a cumulative.

40:30 The diatreme breccia is on their own. These things tell you how you have an active interaction of magma and water, so you're getting explosions. That's a good thing. They're often related with some of the world's biggest Copper, Porphyrin and Gold deposits. Then we're slowly seeing more, Crossbreaker found Copper mineralization in the Breccia pipes before, that was more that vein style. We weren't sure what that was related to, but now we're starting to see what looks like primary Copper porphyry mineralization. We're seeing these porphyry intrusive rocks, which need to be there for a Copper-Porphyry. We're seeing more things like Moly, so this is not just a Copper-Porphyry. This is probably a poly-metallic Copper-Moly Gold-Tellurium system. That adds value to it and its location.

41:25 Then the hydrothermal breccias, we found late in the summer, probably the one thing that excited us the most was that because it clearly shows we're active plumbing system. It tells us that we were at the top and it has all the classic pathfinders that we want to see. With what we're finding on the surface, things are changing very rapidly. Just a little bit of expansion of the pits and further prospecting on our own in the pits and outside the pits. We're seeing quite rapid changes in mineralization. There's been a recent blast and the prospect has been in there and we'll have a closer look at these rocks, get them assayed and disclose those as soon as we have a closer look at them. But things are changing rapidly. I think it was just an accumulation of evidence that excited both geologists, the academic world, the mining industry and of course, lab gold.

42:30 We have all this mounting evidence and you just can't, just like we in the summer, we couldn't sit back and pass this copper when we weren't to the gold anymore. When you start seeing these rocks, like, okay, we have to pay attention to them. And it just became a tipping point that, there's overwhelming evidence there that there is a proper 4 phase system there. Now we just gotta do the thorough work of geophysics to follow that depth. Now, you probably already addressed the sad nauseam, but I'm gonna ask it again, just in case there's something we're missing here, but Northern Shield is known for its model-driven exploration approach to reduce early-stage risk. How has this methodology specifically guided your work at Roon Seller? What gives you the confidence you're on the right track? Well, I think the confidence we're on the right track.

43:20 Almost daily we're finding more either mineralization or other rock types which may not be so sexy and press releasable, but there's rock types we're finding there that help keep saying, yes, we're heading in the right direction. If we were to get in there and stop finding what we're looking for, which is mineralization or evidence of hydrothermal activity or the right rock types, we'd walk away. But what gives us confidence is we're constantly finding more samples and exposures that are telling us that we're onto this system. We do follow a model-driven approach and we were focusing on the Gold and now we're coming back to look at the Copper and it does seem to be an intact, complete or free and epithermal Gold system.

44:17 When money has been hard to come by, as it has been the last few years, especially for the early stage explorers, we have to cut corners a little bit. So we kind of veered away from our model-driven approach, to be honest. But that's why we want to get back to And we like to have that funding in place for a full year of exploration because it does allow us to pursue it in a proper fashion. To reiterate, what makes you think RuneSeller could host a large, well-preserved, epithermal Gold and porphyry Copper system? We see the tops of both systems. We see where these things would have gushed to surface 500M years ago. We know we're at the very top. We know both on the Gold side, the Gold bearing, it's unusual to get that amount of Gold at the very top, but we're seeing that. And now we're seeing the same thing in the quarry, that breccia, the hydrothermal breccia, that sort of blackish-grey rock, that's a hydrothermal breccia and that's also showing signs that it was in a little geyser pool.

45:22 We know that's at the very top of the system. We know it's intact because we're seeing the tops of it and even though it's 500Moz old, for various reasons it's been preserved. We can tell by the stratigraphy that it's relatively upright too. It hasn't been pushed on its side. It may have been tilted a little bit, but it's not up on end. Now the only thing is, is it big and does it continue to depth? Only drilling will tell, but certainly when you look at the Creston Copper target, which is 2km diameter of soils and rock samples, that suggests it's big. I'm not saying the whole target is that big, but it's a big footprint to start with. And then you've got what I call the circumstantial evidence by being on that extension area, something weird is happening there. That person, the portion of the Burin, we have the Tellurium, those are often associated with big systems. We have Fluorite down the road, which again, a lot of people, some of the other majors have gotten onto that. But you know, we go to Colorado, Nevada, the Fluorite is nearby to some of these big Copper and Gold systems.

46:28 So yeah, it's clearly intact and we see the very tops of it. The only worrying thing is, first, when we knew we were at the top of the epithermal Gold system, was the Copper going to be too deep to get through? But clearly, we're seeing mounting evidence in the quarries that Copper mineralization and Lead-Zinc, which you often get, is more mobile, so it's often associated with the flanks of the top of a porphyry system. We know we're at the top and we know it's minimized And now it's just a matter of finding exactly how big and how deep it goes. Ian, as we wrap up here, looking ahead to 2026, what are the key milestones and value inflection points shareholders should be watching for? What would define a successful year for Norganshield?

47:15 Well, First of all, we would like to close the transaction with Loverook Oil, which will happen probably sometime in late February. If that doesn't happen, we have a lot of other interest to partners, but it's to get the funding in place. We've nearly got it all in place for the full 2026 plan program, but we'd like to drill into some Copper mineralization. Now, the only thing is how we're going to drill into the Bretschitz style Copper mineralization or the porphyry, but we'd like to get well into either the Gold system or the heart of the Copper porphyry. Hopefully, with a 5,000 plus metre drill program, we can do it, but it's going to be staged. It's getting the rest of the financing. The geophysics, I think it's going to be really exciting when we get that done.

48:01 We haven't done any geophysics of the magnetics over the Copper porphyry. We've done it over the Gold. We haven't done it over the Copper target and that's going to be very interesting. Probably the first really big turning point. But We're moving ahead. We've already put in an application for drill permits. We may have to change that based on the geophysics, but it's having this strategic partnership with Glad Gold and perhaps even another company like This deal doesn't restrict us from partnering up with other investment opportunities. We've got interest. We think we've got the winds on our back here, which is quite often in Newfoundland, and the mounting evidence.

48:51 A lot of that is also due to the very hard work of the prospector who lives in Marystown, so he's out there as much as he can. Even when we don't have fatal crews on the ground, He's out there poking around. He's excited. He hasn't shoved any shares in the company and he's doggedly pursuing this thing as well. I think with the partnership with LabGold behind us, both financially and with their technical support. It's a great shot of confidence to have somebody in the industry want your project. As I say, often we're our own greatest sceptics, but A lot has happened there at Ruttenzeller and it's beginning to be overwhelming evidence that we're onto something and hopefully this year we can push forward to fruition.

49:44 I think a good drill hole into the Gold portion or the Copper, but we are going to focus on the Copper initially. It's a bigger target and maybe we've even hit the Gold, but there certainly seems to be something down there. We have one more question that just sneaked in here. Ian, Are there any concerns regarding shareholder dilution? No one likes to dilute, but without dilution, without raising money, we're sitting here. We think it's better to try to keep the property intact ourselves and others not option it out. If it's big enough, if it's big enough, it is a little bit of dilution we're taking now I don't think will be overly concerning.

50:30 But of course, no one likes to dilute. In reality, the market, especially for the juniors in the last few years, I know they're improving now, but it takes time for it to trickle down to the early-stage explorers. It is a concern. We had a robust discussion on it at the board level, but we felt that we needed to take on Root & Cellar properly. There's offer for the financing to plan for a full year, and we thought it was the best to take that and hit it quite hard. We're doing a lot of work at Root & Cellar, a lot of desktop studies, not only on the ground and it's all very encouraging. We thought, though no one likes dilution, getting out there and doing some work was a better option than sitting there and doing nothing and waiting for something to happen, or rushing in and drilling a Copper porphyry target without doing geophysics.

51:32 It doesn't make a lot of sense. I know we were looking to go down that road just to avoid dilution, but in the end, we thought it was better to conduct proper exploration and follow proper exploration steps. Excellent. Ian, thank you so much for the market update. It's great to see root and sellers finally garnering some interest here. But we look forward to hearing some more updates in the new year. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you everyone for submitting questions. Thank you, Kyle. Have a good night. Yeah, you too. Take care, everyone. Bye now.