Transcript
Automated transcript · Written by software from the replay's audio. It can mishear names and figures; the replay is the record.
0:04 Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where in the world you're signing in from today. I've got with me Matt Schwab, CEO of Stallion Uranium, to discuss recent events on site and also get into their upcoming drilling program. Matthew, how are you today? I'm doing well, thanks a lot, Romeo. Good. Here's how today's going to work, just for the folks in the room. It's a pretty simple format. I've got some questions I'm going to ask Matt about both the recent incident, but also the drill program, as I discussed. This is an interactive event, so there's a chat button at the bottom of your screen. You can click that at any time. Chat window will pop up on the right. Please do feel free to ask any questions you'd like during today's event. We'll try to get to as many of them as we can. If for whatever reason I don't get to your question, it's off topic or we ran out of time, it's gonna be a relatively short event today. I'll make sure that the Stallion team still gets that question, so don't worry if it doesn't get answered necessarily on today's call.
0:52 The other thing I'll note is there's a request meeting button at the bottom of your screen. If you hover over your mouse, you'll be able to see a pop-up at the bottom. Please do feel free to press that If you'd like to request a meeting with the Stallion team, I'll get them in touch with you following today's event. Only other thing I'll say is this event is being recorded and will be available for replay. Likely end of day today, Eastern Time. It'll pop up in the same URL, but it'll also be on Six's YouTube page. But Matt, if you don't mind, I'm going to get right into the meat and potatoes here. I'd love if you could explain the recent on-site incident, but also what's been the team's response and what steps are being taken by Stallion to ensure on-site safety moving forward.
1:31 Sure, Romain. I can elaborate a bit on that. This was unfortunately a freak accident. It was brought on by a combination of highly unlikely factors that were all in the same place at the same time. In the end, a large scale fire broke out on one of the drilling rigs on our site. Because of this, 2 contractors were very seriously injured and needed to be airlifted from site to both Fort McMurray Hospital and Edmonton's critical burn unit. Our team and the team at base drilling reacted amazingly. I couldn't have asked for more to be honest. But since the incident, we've gone through additional investigations with the mines inspectors from the Saskatchewan Occupational Health and Safety Division. And following up on that, we've put in place a variety of corrective actions, both in our safety policies, mechanical
2:18 fixes on the rigs, etc. So that we can ensure that similar incidents will not occur again in the future. Great. And obviously from the SICS team, wishing the contractors the speediest recovery possible. I do want to get into the drilling program because now we're kind of on the restart. I do want people in the room to get a better sense of where we're going. Where are you at right now with the drilling program? I know mid-February, you announced 4,000m will be drilled using 2 diamond drill rigs. Where are we at with that at this point? As of today, we've drilled roughly 1,900m of the announced 4,000m.
2:53 It's been a very challenging season, but our team has pulled through and we're back on track to complete our initial goal and hopefully more. We are down to 1 rig right now, but that was actually always the plan to continue through summer with only one rig on site. I think we'll make up for lost time at a pretty consistent pace now in a safe manner with great quality control measures in place.
3:15 From a geo standpoint, what can you determine from the drilling so far? Are there any insights for upcoming drilling, just for the investors that are in the room today?
3:26 Simply put, we've hit all of the geology, alteration and structural features that we interpreted from our geophysical surveying and analysis. We've intersected fault zones over 100m wide. We've intersected massive desalicification over hundreds of metres, strongly faulted graphitic shear zones, intense hematized clay alteration. Every characteristic that we were hoping for, even including the signatures of the combination of oxidizing and reducing fluids, which is critical for Uranium mineralization. We are in the right place. We just need to keep pushing through. Something I told one of my larger shareholders the other day was that this is the best drill hole I've seen in the Athabasca Basin without high-grade Uranium.
4:11 Now that you have restarted again, which is great, when do you expect to wrap the current program And when would you commence the next program? Just so everybody has a sense of the timeline coming up. As we kicked off today, at this point, we're back underway and we're working out of a supply-prepared operational camp. Our teams are ready. We're fully funded with just under $20M in the Treasury to continue moving forward through 2026.
4:36 Right now, the scenario is that we're going to continue drilling from now through till August, is our expectation, before pausing until the following winter. It's going to be an exciting summer, I hope. It'll be a more relaxed pace and we should get some really great results coming off the Coyote targets. I really look forward to sharing more as we continue to progress. Great.
4:57 That is it for my questions, but there are a number of questions that came in over email and they're continuing to come in so I'm just keeping track of those but for everybody in the room feel free to also use the chat rather than email it's actually a little easier for me to check if you're emailing me please please feel free to use the chat but somebody wanted to know when you drill are you looking for liquid uranium or do you have to extract it from the sandstone?
5:18 So there's multiple different extraction methods for uranium. There's in-situ recovery, there's hard rock mining. What we're looking to do is hard rock mining, more or less. What you do is you extract a hard mineral called uraninite, and Then it goes through a refining process. Other companies in the basin like Denison, they use in-situ recovery where you pump down acid and then you bring it up in liquid form, but that's not what we're looking to do on this site.
5:44 Great. Thanks. Somebody wanted to know what cost per metre of drilling is in the base in the summer?
5:49 Rough numbers fine. It's quite variable. Winter drilling, I'd say from the companies I've talked to, including our own, it's anywhere from about $600 to $800 per metre. In the summer, it's probably closer to $700 to $900 per meter with helicopter support. That's what you can expect from most companies. Great. Thank you. Someone wanted to know, can Stallion apply for federal or provincial funding for critical minerals? And at what point during development does that take place? There's nothing available at the moment, not in Saskatchewan anyway. Other provinces do offer that subsidy. We're hoping that something comes into place. Typically you have to have a feasibility in place before you get that kind of funding. But if it becomes available, we'll definitely be interested in applying for that. Great, no, appreciate that.
6:36 This one, you already answered it, but somebody did ask it, so I just wanted to throw it to you again for a quick reiteration. They'd like to know the current cash position of the company and how long it'll last. We just filed our annual financial statements yesterday, I think, and it was just 19.9% in the bank, not including our equity positions in other companies, which we're exercising.
6:56 Great. Thanks. I appreciate that. One last question that came in over email. Somebody wanted to know what your relationships are like with local groups, so stakeholder groups and business groups, basically folks in the region.
7:09 We keep in pretty constant contact with the CRDN, the Clearwater River Denae First Nation. I think we have a pretty solid relationship with them. We hire employees from their communities, we use their contractors as much as possible, and we continue to try to work together as much as we possibly can as we progress through our program. I would say we're in a pretty good standing with our communities.
7:31 Great. I appreciate that. I'm going to give everybody one last chance to ask any additional questions by throwing 1 at you. What are you most eager for this summer? What would what would you think wrapping up the summer would be the best position possible for Stallion right now? Discovery. There you go.
7:47 That would be the ideal situation. I can't wait to see more holes on that main Coyote target. It's a straightforward answer. I told you it was a challenging season. It's been pretty tough with the rock conditions, but as I've told people before, the more challenging the drilling, the more potential there is for Uranium. If you look at that drill table in the press release we put out this morning, you see a couple of lost holes. That's because it's terrible rock, but that's what we're looking for. Now that we're back on track, the drilling crew knows what they're dealing with. We can bring in the right mud systems and accommodations, and we should be able to push forward pretty aggressively to get some meters in the ground. I can't wait to see the results coming off Coyote. Awesome. Exciting. Thank you for being so candid about the incident running through Upcoming drill program and looking forward to seeing what has rested what's in store for the rest of the summer So Matthew, it's great catch up and hope to talk to
