Prospecting Progress: Advanced Gold Exploration's Annual Review and Vision

0:09 Hello everyone and welcome to Advanced Gold Explorations live event. We're joined with our CEO, Jim Atkinson. Today we're gonna be looking back at 2023 and discussing what we can expect moving forward in 2024. And rather than it being Jim sharing a corporate presentation, we thought it'd be best to just have a casual conversation reflecting on last year and what to expect in 2024.

0:35 Just as a reminder this is being recorded so if you want to re-watch it you can do so on YouTube in the coming days. There's also a live chat feature so if you look to the bottom right corner of your screen Feel free to submit questions in the chat and I will try and incorporate them in the most logical sense throughout the conversation. Jim, thank you for joining us today. I know you spent many years in the industry. Looking back in 2023 and the mining and exploration space specifically, how would you sum up last year? Well, I'd just say a happy new year to everybody and wow are we glad that year is over. We have been through some times as you said I've been around the business for a few years and we see cycles, cycles come and go. But last year was, and 2022, were particularly tough years. The funding for junior exploration companies was very limited

1:32 and it was, along with everybody else, We had similar type of struggles to get funding. The only bright spot last year, as we know, was lithium and we decided not to get into that space because we thought, at management, we thought it was kind of a bubble and you know only the early adopters kind of do well in a bubble. So we decided to focus on gold and copper and later in the year as we know interest began to rise in both gold and copper. So it was a bit, I think it was a bit of a good timing on our part that we, you know, we changed our name, put gold in our name to try to make people understand that that's where we'd like to focus. But I think a quote from Kitco is very appropriate It says if you told investors in September of last year that by the end of 2023 The price of gold would be closer and higher than it was all year I think you would have been dismissed out of hand at the time gold was trading around 1640 but by the end of the year it was up to over 2000 and hit 2040 it touched 2100 a little bit I think You know people are talking about it being up to 2200 this year. So I think, although last year may have been a challenge, I think next year going forward it's going to be a little bit, let's say a little bit more exciting

3:02 for the gold space. Now, as you highlighted, you did change your name to Advanced Gold Exploration. I'm just wondering, you also mentioned the rise in the gold price. I'm just wondering if it's the right commodity for the next 3 to 5 years. It already had a significant run, so how do you see the metal overall performing in the next 3 to 5 years?

3:24 Well I think gold is going to be something worth being involved with for the next 3 to 5 years for sure. You know, the most, let's call them letter writers and pundits that you talk to are talking about $2,200 gold this year, probably $2,500 in the next couple of years. So I think, you know, we saw the potential for gold in advance and we listened to a lot of smarter people actually. And that's why we decided to change our name and put gold into our name. We did that in September. In that effort, of course, we changed management a little bit, and we got a new CFO, controller, and some new directors. So, kind of a new direction for the company, as well as a new name.

4:14 I think it's important to actually elaborate on directors. They don't get looked under the microscope as much as the management team, but they are important. So tell me, who were these directors and what specific skill sets did they bring into the table?

4:30 So our new director, so we got a new controller. She's not a director, but she's very important in the money management side of it. Her name is Vivian. And we also got a new chief financial officer. His name is Radovan Dalinsky. And Radovan is a very experienced, let's call him executive, he's a CEO of a junior exploration company or 2, but he has a lot of education and experience in different areas, not only including finance, you know, having worked as a in sort of brokerage firms, but also in just in what I would call corporate things, like he's used to filing documents and taking charge of corporate documents.

5:18 That'll help us a little bit perhaps save some money because that's those are those are tasks that we don't have to have our legal team do. The other new director is Rodney Ireland. Rodney is well known in the Toronto area. He has a Wednesday morning executive coffee meeting, which is great, meet lots of great people. And he also has something which is called Bay Street Radio, where he talks about investing. And he has a lot of connections and let's call it experience in raising money and in the financing side. So those 2 new directors will help us. And of course, Walter Henry, who's one of our continuing directors, very experienced director. He's a registered director from the International Institute. He's CEO of also of a couple of juniors and knows the industry very well, comes from the banking side.

6:18 So I think our directors are really going to help us out a lot and and help me or help me direct the the efforts of the company going forward, right? The other thing that the new directors have helped with Rodney or especially is that we've we've been working to clean up our balance sheet and by reducing our debt through shares for debt agreements and other arrangements. And this will continue into 2024. And we hope to have a much better financial

6:54 statement at the end of the first quarter. Thank you. Just as a reminder for people that are just trickling in now, this is a live Q&A session. So feel free to ask questions if you'd like, but let's move on to your properties. And I know your team's excited about Doyle. So what was completed at Doyle in 2023? And Do you have any further plans for this project in 2024? Doyle is one of the projects that we definitely would like to do, and will be doing exploration on in 2024. We have to do some drilling there. There are some really, really exciting targets. And in fact, Doyle was planned to be worked on in 2022 and 2023.

7:43 However, because of some issues with property ownership, not on the Doyle property, but on adjacent properties, which are owned by private individuals and companies. And that blocked our access in a lot of ways, but we have been discussing

8:00 this item or this idea with our with our neighbors and I think we have something worked out if worse comes to worse and we can't work out an access agreement with with the neighbors we actually can access the Doyle property from the the Montreal River which is a very large river. In fact, they're right there. It's actually a lake which which accesses the north part of the Doyle property. We'll be able to access it by by the ice and then, you know, access the property from there. So, we have plans in place to actually do drilling in 4 areas at Doyle, including some of the areas which had past gold intersections, and also some areas which emerged from a LIDAR survey which we completed in 2022-23 and that highlighted some major through going structures associated with the known gold.

9:00 Those structures in some cases have not been well explored. Certainly some of the intersections of those structures have not been explored. So that would be where we would focus our attention at Doyle going forward. Now you're saying if you can't come to agreements with the neighboring property owners you would come through the north and that would be via the lake when it's frozen over. So that is that February? Are you talking about like this winter like within this? Yeah we yeah we talk about this winter probably February you know mid to late February, March would be the ideal time to do it,

9:40 when the ice is, you know, when the ice is sufficiently frozen. It has to be sufficiently frozen to get the equipment in there. You know, once you're doing skidoos, it doesn't, you know, you don't need so much ice, but you need a fair amount of ice to get the equipment in. I guess one of the options would be, would be to fly the equipment in by helicopter and then access the property along by lake with snow machines. So, I mean, there are some options there. I'm still having discussions with the property owners here, especially the property to the west. And just to give everybody a little idea of what the issue is there. So the property to the west, the whole township is actually owned by a forest company.

10:31 They're not a logging company. They've actually sold the carbon credits on that property. And so you can fully understand that they don't want any destruction of any of the things that are growing there, trees or whatever. Now what we've been working to make them understand is that all we want to do is use the existing roads that are there. We won't be, you know, disturbing any of their trees or any of vegetation.

10:59 And I think the problem in some respects is when we first started talking to them and they heard the word mining, that got them upset. But since I've been talking to them and trying to make them understand, we are not going to be really damaging any of their property and we won't be jeopardizing their carbon credits in any way. So I think coming to an agreement with them would be pretty reasonable and pretty easy. I've just kind of held off on doing that until we get our plans all in place and we can talk in a meaningful way with them. Definitely. And thank you for the clarification there. Let's move on to the Buck Lake project. It's your only Copper focused project that I'm aware of in your portfolio, right? So how much is known about this project and what are you looking to do with that in 2024?

11:56 Well, Buck Lake, as you said, is a Copper project, so probably our main focus there will be trying to get a partner to come in on that property. As I said, we're trying to focus on Gold. Now, Buck Lake was drilled in 2022 and we have defined a massive sulphide resource there with high-grade Copper. The resource is open to the North and South, so it has potential to be expanded. The other thing about the Buck Lake property is it has a multitude of other mineral occurrences on it that really have not been explored since the 1980s. That property was expanded in 2022-23 to cover all or most of these known occurrences. A lot of them have copper, some have copper-zinc, other base metals.

12:48 So that's a big project that would require, I think, a lot of work. We're hoping to have a partner come in on that. I've talked with, you know, I've talked with some people, I think, with copper, again, sort of looking a little more interesting in 2024, I think we might be able to find a partner, joint venture or solid or you know something to get that project moving forward that we don't have to really do any more work on it. Right, thank you. So next one I have written down here is Pink Lake Road. What's going on? Sorry for interrupting. Just let me say one more thing about Buck Lake.

13:30 We actually had a 43-101 technical report done on Buck Lake and that would help, that helps facilitate supposing a company that's just a, say it's a shell or say if somebody wants to do an IPO, we already have the expenditure done, we already have the technical report done, so it would make it a lot easier for a company to actually take that property, take it forward as their property of merit. And that's one of the things we did this year to, you know, to kind of enhance the Buck Lake property. And that was a resource estimate?

14:07 It's not a resource estimate, it's a technical report. Okay. But that's what's necessary for an IPO say, or for an RTO. Sure, definitely. So yeah, please thank you for clarifying, but go ahead and discuss Paint Lake Road. Any plans for that in 2024? Yes, we do have some plans for Paint Lake Road. It's an interesting property because it sits between a property that's owned by Angus Gold and subsequently just a little bit farther to the east by West Dome. That property contains West Dome's open pit which they call the Michie Open Pit. And then to the west, we have another property that's owned by a company called Bold Ventures.

14:53 And Bold Ventures has been actively exploring their property. One of the things that emerged from that exploration was the fact that there's a major structure that trends across

15:09 the bold property onto our property. And that structure, you know, but based on sort of interpreting of topography, LIDAR, those kinds of features appears to continue all the way to the Michi Pit. And if you look, you know, this is again getting a little geological, but if you look at the sort of northwest end of the Mishi Pit, you'll see that there's a big structure there and we think that structure continues all the way onto our pain Lake property. Now, what we plan to do in 2024 is we plan to do some prospecting where we think that structure crosses our ground. But even more importantly, Bold Ventures is talking about doing an airborne survey, a detailed airborne survey to try to understand this new structure that they've identified.

16:07 And if they do that, we'll tack on our small property onto their survey and therefore save us a lot of money on mobilization and those kind of things. The other thing is that if they decide to do this work or other work in the next summer, then we'll be able to hopefully utilize or share the helicopter time to get our crews in and out and get their crews in and out. So, there's a opportunity there for some joint, you know, some joint activities in that area. Now, the thing that road property is a joint venture with with Frontline Gold which is Walter Henry's company and we've been very good at cooperating and Walter's been very good at cooperating. So we see that as a cooperative project going forward.

16:57 And we think there's some potential there. Again, it's a gold property, we think, but Bold Ventures to the west does have copper on their property. So, we're not exactly sure, but we think it's a gold property. The other interesting thing, getting a little bit geological again, is that We examined the government Lake sediment sampling survey so the government takes samples of the material at the bottom of a lake analyzes it for metals and one small lake that sits right on that structure has copper, very high copper. In fact, one of the highest copper numbers in the whole area, right in that lake is which associated with the structure. So that structure is becoming more and more interesting the more we kind of learn about it. And like I said, we'll probably try to have prospectors in there in the summer to try to, you know, pick around and see if they can find anything. But yeah, we think it's a gold property.

18:00 Before we circle back to Buck Lake, there's a question in the chat regarding it. You're saying Paint Lake is a JV. Who's JVing the project to who?

18:11 And could you talk about the terms of that? Well, it's a 50-50 joint venture with Frontline Gold, which is Walter Henry's company. So we've done all the work we've done on it has been 50-50 and Walter and I have worked very well together on that project. Okay, thank you for the clarification. William Love in the chat, like I said, we'll circle back to Buck Lake for a second. He's just wondering about any airborne surveys at Buck Lake. There have been airborne surveys done there in the past, you know, in the 80s and 70s, and they have outlined quite a number of anomalies, some of which have been followed up. Some of the ones that were followed up had base metals, some of them had graphite, so a combination of those. And if I remember correctly, I think they, when Hadbe did their work, I think they identified something like 30 airborne anomalies.

19:11 I would say that that project needs an airborne VTAM survey, you know, a modern geophysical survey just to try to get a better handle on these EM anomalies and with a corresponding mag of course, and just try to get a better handle on what targets of those 20 or 30 need to be followed up. The overburden there is quite shallow and there's a fair amount of outcrop. So prospecting is something that's very useful there. And our prospectors have discovered new showings north of the Buck Lake deposit itself and in other areas on the property. So we know that that's a, let's call it a very profitable way to explore this area. But like I said, it's a big property, it needs a big survey.

20:05 Right. I think the last property we have to touch on is Landrum. What can you tell us about Landrum? Well, Landrum is a property that we acquired in 2023. It's a property in South Carolina, Gold property. It has a resource of about 28,000oz in underground workings. It was worked back in the late 1800s up until probably the First World War. The interesting thing about South Carolina is a lot of people don't realize, but the very first gold rush in the United States was actually in the Carolinas. And the first gold discovery in the Carolinas was made in the 1790s. So there's been a long history of gold in the Carolinas, the North and South Carolina, some in Virginia, even in Georgia.

21:00 So it's a large area with multiple gold showings. There have been 5 producing mines in the Carolina Gold Belt, including the Hale mine, which is still in production, has about half a million ounces of resources in proven and probable and some probably some in also in inferred that they don't really report. The interesting thing about that hail deposit and why we're so excited about Landrum is that although the main deposit that they mined in the past by open pit was a low-sulfidation epithermal type deposit which was disseminated sulfides in the sediments, they have also now discovered what they think is the feeder zone for

21:49 that deposit and that's much larger and much higher grade. So at Landrum what we have is a series of shear zones with quartz veins and alteration in sediments close to the contact with some volcanics. That area, you know, has been drilled in the past and we have some good intersections. So we know it's got good grade. The average grade of the historical resource is for almost 5 ounces, 5 grams per ton over a width of around 8 meters. So it's not a thin type vein type deposit. The other thing about that's interesting about Landrum is that when we optioned or we yeah, we optioned the ground.

22:35 We asked for a 5 mile area of influence around it and the vendor agreed and that 5 mile of area of interest included another gold deposit called Faulkner Mountain and Faulkner Mountain is a well known highly altered intrusive but interestingly enough, a drill hole that was drilled in 2018 actually intersected epithermal gold mineralization of over 28g over a metre and a half in an epithermal type vein, and that's never been followed up. So we have 2 very good targets on the Landrum-Faulkner project,

23:13 and we'll be following up with some more, probably in February. February's not a bad time to work in South Carolina, actually. So probably in February or late February, early March, we'll be doing some work there. We're just in the planning stages right now, so we're not exactly sure what work we'll be doing. We think we'll probably be doing some groundwork, some geophysics, and probably some prospecting, but one of the other things we're doing there is we're actually doing, having a look at some of the surrounding lands to see if we can expand the footprint of Faulkner Landrum.

24:00 So that's something that's ongoing right now. Most people don't know, but in South Carolina, well, mostly Eastern United States, for that matter, the property ownership is really private land. You have very, very little public land. So, you have to make these arrangements with various private landowners, and that's kind of what we'll be doing next. Okay, thank you for that overview. I did say Landrum was the last project, but I think I missed 1 based off my notes here. At the end of the year, you were able to come up with the proceeds to meet your obligations for Melba, the Melba's property. What made you come to that decision on keeping it and maybe touch on Melba a bit? Well, Melba's a property in the Kirkland Lake, a Gold area.

24:49 We decided to keep it because for 2 reasons. First of all, there's a lot of activity going on in that area, okay, that's one thing. But secondarily, we did drill there in 2022. We had some high grade hits, gold hits in the veins. There are 4 veins there on surface that we know about. The veins occur in a, let's call it an outcropping in the middle of a swamp and has never really been explored, you know, along strike to the, in this case, to the Northwest and Southeast because of the swamp. So that's one of the reasons why we kept it. You know, we think there's potential to extend the Nolan veins to the northwest and southeast, but also during our drilling in 2022, we came across a new kind of gold mineralization on the Melbourne property, and this is gold related to disseminated pyrite in porphyry dikes. And although we didn't get anything that would be considered ore grade, all of the intersections in these dikes, say across the 6 or 7 meters, were anomalous in gold.

26:00 And we think there's a potential there for following these dikes, exploring them more, trying to understand even where they are on surface, because they haven't really been well described before. Nobody sort of recognized the potential, because they were busy working on the high-grade veins which have visible gold at surface. So that can be distracting. But we think that's a tremendous potential to try to understand these wider zones of mineralization and try to explore them to see if there's any maybe increase in gold value or more potential, right? Thank you. I would also mention about Malba that we did sell a 5% interest in that property to a third party.

26:51 And I think that's becoming a little bit of a focus of our methodology going forward. You know, if we can get partners in on our properties, that saves us funds for exploration but also allows us. I think to to tap into other minds and other ideas and this would be for instance, exactly the model that we used at Painted Lake Road. You know, the model at Malba and there's probably other places And as I mentioned before, we'd like to get a partner in on Buck Lake. So I think going forward, that's one of the things that we'll be working on, trying to get our projects advanced without doing major dilutions through share issuance at these really low prices.

27:42 That actually led into my next question, because I was going to ask about for a company of your size you have many projects in the works and maybe too many projects for a company of your size but if you're looking at JV and a partnering of other individuals and companies fund the projects that makes sense. Yeah I wouldn't I wouldn't say we're a project generator by any stretch of the imagination, but certainly that model has some benefits to it. And that's something that we'll be looking at for some of our properties. Certainly, Buck Lake, as I said, which was one of our largest expenditures in 2022, will be something that we'll be trying to join venture or option or get a partner in to continue the work on that project.

28:31 I think the same could be said for, well we have done that for Melba, but Melba going forward to get work done, and you know, same could be said for all of our properties and and that's one thing that we're going to be, we're going to be looking at. You know, I just, Just as a total aside here, I kind of look at the oil industry. In the oil patch, sometimes there's many owners on an oil well. And if the potential is great enough and the potential benefits or win if you want to call it is great enough, then having some different partners is not a negative thing. I don't fall in love with my properties. I just, we have good ones, let's figure out a way to get them done.

29:20 Yeah, extract some value from them. So covering all this, what is the key takeaway that you want listeners on this call to understand about advanced gold exploration? Many irons in the fire, but if you were to focus on a small focal point, what would that be? Well, I think, you know, you hit on it before. I think our focal point will be Doyle and Landrum. I think we have a plan in place for Landrum. You know, we still have a bit of challenge with Doyle, but those 2 I think will be our focus. Obviously, other things we'll be keeping an eye on. If, you know, if Bold Ventures, for instance, does an airborne survey, we'll tag onto that.

30:05 And in the meanwhile, we'd be also trying to find, you know, some partners for Buck Lake. So, but I would say Doyle and Landrum will be our main focus. You know, We don't really have any work commitments on Melba. I mean, I would like to do some work there, but it's not like we have to do work because of assessment or whatever. We own 75% of that property outright. So, you know, we can think about that one a little bit, I think. Definitely. Jim, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. And for the audience that tuned in, thank you for joining us. If you did come in a little late, this is being recorded and you can watch the replay within the coming days on YouTube.

30:53 Any last words you want to say for the listeners out there, Jim? No, I just would say 2 things. First of all, I think focusing on gold as we have done with our name and with our ideas is something that's going to be very, very profitable coming forward in 2024 and going forward because I think Gold is going to be having a run this year and hopefully over the next few years.