Strategic Investments: Navigating North American Resource Development

0:05 Well, I am Nick Hodge. Happy Monday morning to you. Happy St. Patrick's Day. I hope you're caffeinated. I have with me 3 lovely companies here of which I am a shareholder of all of them. I run a letter called the Hodge Family Office for Digest Publishing. And I'm here on behalf of 6 to talk with Andrea Aranguren, president and CEO of MineHub Technologies, Jamie Levy, president and CEO of Generation Mining, and Julian Traeger, president and CEO at Kotech Holdings. You all had the same title, so it made it easy for me to memorize this morning. You're all CEO and president. We're going to launch right into this. Some people might not be familiar with your company. So let's do a 1 minute introduction, who you are and what your company is doing. And of course, ladies first. So Andrea, to you. Thank you, Nick. Thanks for having me. Good morning, everyone.

1:00 As Nick mentioned, I'm Andrea Aranger and I'm the CEO of MineHub. I've spent most of my career in physical commodities markets, primarily on the operations and logistics

1:10 side. I've worked in base metals markets, oil and gas, environmental commodities, spent time at large companies like Goldman Sachs and IHS Market. I've also worked with many different startups. I co-founded a company called Waybridge in 2019, and we sold to our biggest competitor, MineHub, in 2023. Minehub is a technology company. We provide a digital supply chain management solutions for mining and metals companies. So our platform provides real-time visibility into shipments, inventory management, trade administration and reporting. So we help our customers to more effectively and efficiently manage their operations to mitigate risks and to better coordinate and communicate with their counterparts.

1:56 And thankfully in the past 6 months have been really rewarding. We've gotten continued support from really key customers like Codelco, Southwire, Essex, and we have strong partnerships with Sumitomo and Avax Technologies. I appreciate you. It was perfect, Andrea. I appreciate you being here this morning. Jamie, off to you.

2:16 Thanks for having me here, 6. And Nick, For those of you, before I give an introduction to myself, Nick Hodge, for those of you that don't know him, he's a bit of a rock star. I mean, he might look like a Gen Zer or whatever they're called, but he's been around the mining business and investing business for a long time. So I highly recommend you guys publishing or listening to his podcast. He's again, a bit of a legend in mining. He's been around for, seems like a long time and I highly recommend you listen to him. I was just listening to a podcast that he was on, I think it was KER and just without the blue, he just starts to mention names that he likes. So again, he's a smart investor. He puts his money where his mouth is. He doesn't, what's it called, calls it as he sees it. He investigates and then invests. So he's a smart investor. So for those listeners, I'd highly recommend, or viewers, highly recommend you follow up with Nick. He knows what he's doing.

3:15 Anyway, back to me. I'm Jamie Levy, President and CEO of Generation Mining. We're developing hopefully the next Copper Play GM project built in the world. We're nearly fully permitted. We got 1 permit left to go. We're in a tier 1 jurisdiction just north of,

3:35 just east of the town of Marathon, but on the north side of Lake Superior. It will be again, a copper PGM project, critical metals, which is vital for technology, for electric vehicles, sorry, for the hybrid vehicles and electric vehicles for the copper. Unfortunately, as we'll talk about later on, we're in this penalty box in the Lassonde curve, but highly looking forward to getting that final permit, getting a financial investment decision and building the next project in Canada, a critical metal project. Great. I would have brought up the Lausanne curve as well, but you've secured some capital. We can talk about that later. Julian Traeger, off to you, please. Great. And thanks also, Nick, for having me on. So I'm Julian Treger, I'm effectively the founder of Cotech and its new manifestation.

4:24 I've been a long-term investor and active investor in the mining sector, so we invested about half a billion dollars, We made a 5x on that in different projects and when we realized the last one I thought what should I do next and there seems to be a huge gap in the sector in terms of implementing technology. So we are trying to invent the technological disruptor of the mining sector at Kotech. We've spent 3 years looking at 400 technologies. We've invested in 6, which solve major problems in the sector, namely hard rock, ultra-fine materials and low-grade, obviously not in every circumstance, but it's a real leap forward.

5:06 And we're now focusing on applying those 2 assets and particularly waste which is still very undervalued and where there's a lot of opportunity for recycling in the copper space in iron ore and in magnet recycling and also in manganese. I love bringing technology into the antiquated mining space. I think it is sorely needed and I think it's one of the things that helps answer the, really the dual-prong question of, why does this disconnect exist between mining company valuations and the commodity price? And also the question of, where are these millennial and Gen Z investors in the technology space? I think bringing technology in does

5:49 a lot of heavy lifting to answer both those questions and bridge those gaps and close those disconnects. The other thing that's doing that is tariffs. So we're gonna get right into it. It's on everybody's minds and tariffs are on everybody's minds. And as a result of that, medals are on people's minds. I hear people talking about Greenland and rare earths, like they know something about it. And I hear people talking about Ukraine and other places where medals are. And so no matter your opinion of the American president, no matter what you know or don't know about tariffs, it's good because it's fostering a discussion and a dialogue about the place where we all spend a lot of time. So Andrea, I'll turn to you first because Mindhub has put out a press release about tariffs and where Mindhub fits into the picture.

6:37 So I want to ask you all, how is your company thinking about tariffs?

6:40 Are they a benefit to you? Are they a negative to you? And as an extension of that, is it a general threat or a general benefit, or is there something specific in the tariff narrative or discussions that's a benefit or threat to your company?

6:54 Sure, I'll take that first. Part of our mission from the beginning has been precisely to help mining and metals companies with supply chain disruptions. So, I mean, back in 2020, COVID was a tremendous selling point for us and a place where we really sort of highlight our value. And whether it's been poor congestion or disruptions in freight markets, for us, this tariff disruption is another opportunity for us to really showcase our value because issues like this really highlight

7:24 the urgent need for digital solutions and tools like ours that provide much needed transparency into the supply chain, visibility into where inventory is, whether it's on a shipment or it's sitting in a warehouse, the ability to better communicate both internally or externally as information seems like constantly changing is more essential than ever. And so we're actually seeing a huge amount of interest

7:50 from prospects and I get emails and messages. I've gotten almost every single day for the last 2 weeks, a message from a customer or a prospect talking about how much we've helped them in the last 2 weeks with our tools. So from our perspective, it's a shame and the volatility in the equity markets isn't great, but it does really highlight our value proposition. Could you give me maybe a specific example of where Mindhub comes into play in the tariff regime? Yeah, sure. So we have customers. One of our customers is a very large aluminum manufacturer that purchases 90% of their aluminum comes in from Canada. And so they have been looking to assess what the risk is in terms of supply that's in route, calculating impact of tariffs on their margins.

8:43 They've been negotiating contracts with suppliers ahead of this. They've been redirecting materials. So in our platform, they book contracts, negotiate commercial terms, and then also have visibility into shipments. We have inventory forecasting tools that they've been leveraging to see when they'll actually run out of material and that impacts their negotiation with their suppliers. So it's really multifaceted, everything from contract management to seeing where the inventory is and shipments to forecasting when they're going to run out of material. Fascinating.

9:14 Julian, I want to kick it to you. So you have multiple projects in multiple jurisdictions and you also spend a lot of time in different jurisdictions. So I wonder the perspective that you bring given that you're dealing with rare earths in the US but you also have a partner that has a rare earths projects in Europe, you're dealing with copper, you're dealing with iron in Canada. What's your perspective on the current tariff situation?

9:38 Well, I think, Nick, it's part of a broader picture about the end of Pax Americana and American isolatism. And so from a European perspective, we now had a world which previously was 1 just in time, global 1. Now it's split into, you know, China and the US. And now in Europe, we're pretty much on our own. And Europe is going to have to spend vast amounts of money now on creating its own supply chain. All of these things are much more inefficient, but they will create more demand for our sector, particularly in the new strategic metals that we can talk about later. Because I think the definition of critical minerals is really changing quite fast in our new world. But just going back to Kotech, the technologies that we have, much like Andrea's ones, are in more demand at this time because the new process technologies are much more modular, they're much more nimble, they are lower cost, they use less heat, less water, et cetera.

10:45 And I think we're in an age now where mining needs to be more nimble. This idea that we are in this 20 year project that get permitting. I don't know how you do that in a world where tariffs change you know sometimes twice a week and long term planning is impossible. So I think it is a moment for technology. And then as far as Kotex actual assets are concerned, most of our assets are in the fortress, we're in the US.

11:11 Our 2 biggest projects are, creating this new magnet recycling business to supply 10% of the US's needs. Trump has put tariffs on magnets or rare earths coming into the U.S. There are some moves to ban the export of you know magnet waste to China. So all of that I think will benefit us. And similarly we have a big animal project in Minnesota which is an input into green steel in the US with the tariffs on steel. The domestic price of steel will go up and therefore the input

11:50 prices are going to go up. So both of those should benefit us. So we're well positioned. You know, we are a sort of China free company. And all of that is what you need to be today. It's been apparent to me for 10 or 15 years that the production and refinement and processing of metals and minerals was going to move from west to east. I've staked a lot of my career and a lot of my investment portfolio on it. And it's amazing how the discussion is starting to change now with these tariffs. Julian, you mentioned the 20-year timeframe, the long-life assets, the long permitting lead time. And Jamie knows a little bit about that with generation mining is getting to the end of a long permitting process for a large PGM copper deposit in Canada.

12:40 Some of those metals I just mentioned, Jamie, PGMs, we know there's not a

12:46 lot of production of those at the moment from North America and there's been some talk of obviously, you know, banning Russian imports and things in recent years, certainly in the past 3 years. Where does Generation fit into the North American sort of supply of critical metals? And how are you guys thinking about tariffs as you do exit

13:05 the permitting process and get into a construction decision phase? Just to follow up on Julian's comment, The focus a couple years ago was on battery metals and everybody was gung-ho on the lithium and the graphites and the cobalts and it quickly changed to critical metals and I think now the focus should be as Julian mentioned on strategic metals. How do we become self-sufficient and independent so we don't have to rely on the Russias, the Chinas,

13:37 and South Africa to supply PGMs in our instance, or copper from Indonesia, whatever it might be. Whatever it might be. So I think the focus on the tariffs are, hopefully the government will put their money where their mouth is and help with subsidizing some of these projects, whether it be in subordinated loans and grants or whatever it could be to help out on the cap structure for companies like myself or other companies that are looking for the funding that doesn't seem to be available in the capital markets right

14:10 now. Going back to what you mentioned earlier about the demand of supply of palladium, 40% is coming out of Russia. I know the governor or senator of Montana tried to get the G7 to sanction Russia. That never happened for whatever reason, probably because if we did sanction or the US did sanction the G7, sanctioned Russia, there'd be a structural deficit. There'd be no way to supply the catalytic converters for the cars. So we rely on Russia. At any point in time, Russia could cut off the taps and there would be no catalytic converters potentially produced in North America. China, you know, We know that they process most of the lithium and rare earths that are out there. So I think the government needs to, again, you know,

14:52 help out companies, whether it be in the processing, refinery, smelting in the future. You know, talking you're talking about Greenland and Ukraine or whatever might be for the rare earths, these things are 5, 10, 20 years away from ever being Being developed. I mean it's gonna take a long long time as we all know the The the time from discovery to an actual development is is 10 to 15 years maybe shorter somewhere else in the world, but

15:19 in North America, that's how long it takes. So I think the tariffs are a lot of noise. Again, I think we're talking pre-going live here. A lot of it's rhetoric from, I believe, the Trump organization or department. I don't know what to believe, whether it's from MSN or CNN or Fox or CBC, whatever the news you watch, but hopefully right now Canada can stick together and some of the government, whether it be the province of Ontario, the federal government of Canada can help projects like ours get over the finish line. One thing you mentioned there that's very true is the carve outs, right? We'll hear, you know, we're banning Russian imports of X and then, you know, the next week there's a carve out or we'll hear that, you know, we're slapping a 25% tariff on steel from this country. And the next day we hear, oh, it's going to be delayed, or there's a carve out because of whatever the reason is, like you say, because we're utterly dependent on it, right? And so we need these exemptions to allow things to come in. And you're right, it's a lot of talk, the whole tariff thing so far, It's very early days.

16:18 But the other thing you said there is you need you need support from governments. And there's lots of different ways that governments can give supports. The next question specifically is about permitting. And you're you're well on your way to permitting. So I wonder,

16:33 setting tariffs aside now, where has the government support been for generation in terms of permitting? Did you see an easing of the process or shortening of the process as these North American governments realized their reliance on the East and other countries for these medals? It's a very good question. We've had very good relationships with the federal government, Canada, the provincial government on the minister side, And they're certainly taking or making a priority for critical metals projects in Canada, but there's still a big bureaucratic, civil servant permitting arm. So it still takes some time. There still is a duty to consult, which is very important. So I know that they're trying to pick up the speed on permitting and I hope they can. They have done it a little bit for us but I think on the permitting side it's still going to take a long time whether it's in Canada or the U.S. There's still a lot of environmental work that needs to get done and I agree with a lot of the work that needs to get done they could Harmonize some of the permits so you could do them all together, which I'm gonna try to work with the new government try to

17:43 Help them on shorting the timeline, but still it's gonna take some time on the permitting side. So if they think they get a permit done in 2 years or all the permits done in a couple of years, I hope they can. But as of right now, there's still a lot of different departments that you need to get approved for your permit. So it's gonna take a long time for the companies after ours. We have 1 permit left to go. We got our EA in 2022, November, and we're about 2 and a half years later in the process and we're still waiting for one final permit. Hopefully we'll get that within the next month or so, but it takes a long, long time to get it done. Not only does it take a lot of time, it costs a lot of money with all the consultants and all the

18:23 work that needs to get done. But hopefully the timeframes can get shortened in the future. I'm not too optimistic by that, but maybe it can happen. Well, we're looking for it to change to a sense of optimism for sure. We're hoping that these things that we're seeing in terms of the need to secure supply tariffs, et cetera, put light a little fire underneath the bureaucrats, as it were. Are you seeing any of that in the U.S. Julian as you go down the road with this

18:51 magnet recycling and rare earth magnet production project? I know you've been in contact with the U.S. State Department. I know you're involved with or on a list for a critical metals projects that they have. What are you seeing in terms of developing that project in the US? Well, I think, you know, they will accelerate the permitting. And the thing that Cotex focused on is really waste recycling, which is somewhat different to primary metal mining. And so one of the things that we are pushing in different jurisdictions is for governments to be much more relaxed about providing permitting for effectively brownfield sites

19:34 where you shouldn't have to go through the original, you know, environmental impact assessment process. It should be a much faster route to get material to market. And it's one of the ways in which we believe the West can supply some of the deficits we've been talking about is by fast-tracking waste retreatment permitting and getting that done. So our projection on the magnet recycling business is to get into revenues within 2 years, which is obviously super quick for producing commodities. But it really is coming from a different space, more like e-waste recycling than than traditional mining. But there's a lot, there's a huge opportunity to do that in the US. You know, in Canada, there are 10,000

20:24 defunct sites with a rehabilitation liability of trillions of dollars, largely sitting on the provinces. In Queensland, there are 15,000 closed mines in Australia with tailings issues. And I think actually retreating waste is going to be one of the ways in which we can try to change the image of our sector because we can show that not only do we create big gashes in the Earth's crust, but with time and money, we can actually

20:53 shrink them, we can re-beautify them, and we can make them better. And I think that that will go a long way to improving our image. I agree. When we talk about these long life copper assets that are coming to the end of their life and how we're not finding large, high grade replacements for them, these sources of tailings laying around the world and new applications like SIBO that you have, I think are going to go a long way into helping get more copper out of the ground that's already out of the ground, if you will.

21:22 Andrea, your company clearly benefits from regulations, whether those are ESG related or climate and emissions related. My clever line here was, tell us why compliance is exciting and profitable, because you're also starting to generate revenue from this.

21:39 Yeah. So even over the last 6 to 12 months, we've been building at our ESG reporting capabilities, which is interesting because it's the situation where you're always looking for clear requirements on the market and there are certainly not clear requirements in terms of what's required from an ESG perspective. CBAM has been a big driving force for our customers that have been selling into Europe. And with the tariffs, I mean, you have the CEO of Tech Resources specifically say, you know, I'm going to be redirecting copper from the US to Europe. Right. So that kind of shifting of sources and customer base, of course, presents reporting challenges. Fortunately, we've been investing a lot in developing our reporting capabilities, making them super customizable, sort of regardless of what the template or the need is. So our core capability really starts with digitizing order and shipment data. And that's really the foundation for so much of the reporting requirements.

22:41 We have real-time tracking, which means that we know the origin and the source and the exact route that any shipment has taken, whether it's truck, rail car,

22:50 vessel. And so this has been incredibly helpful, especially in these times when customers need that kind of data and their reporting needs will change based on changing supply chains and contracts. The other thing, and this is a bit of a different angle, is as a tech company, we're constantly trying to calculate the ROI for our digital tools.

23:13 And you're seeing companies recruiting for people to actually fill in data for these reports. And you see companies facing penalties for inaccurate reporting. So under CBAM, you know, we've seen penalties estimated at $50 to $100 per metric ton. I mean, that's a lot of money. And so to give them tools to avoid those penalties, to avoid having to hire entire teams to do manual data entry that we already have digitized

23:40 is, you know, we're really well positioned in this environment as a result. So the next question is about bringing technology into the mining and natural resource space. And we'll go back around the horn, starting with with Andrea. So when I read your press releases, and when I scroll through your slide deck, I see the words, right? I see the digitization. I see the tracking of the supply chain. I see the integration of chat and things like that.

24:07 Can you maybe explain those technologies a bit more? And in some respects, I even see blockchain tossed around with Mindhub a little bit. Tell me about how important technology is to you. Obviously, it's very important, but the types of technologies you are using and how you're implementing them. Sure, I'll definitely touch on that. I just wanted to touch quickly on the original point about the collaboration between tech and the traditional resource company, because that's actually our core go-to-market strategy. So we believe that the most effective way to really drive technologies, whatever it is, whether it's blockchain or IoT devices or some cloud solution is really in partnership with key market leaders. And that's why we focused on selling market, you know, large enterprise companies, not because the contract values are higher, but because we believe they'll actually help to mandate adoption of our tools way more effectively than we ever could. And we really saw that. I mean our first customer was a company called Southwire and they mandated the use of our platform.

25:12 They brought on 26 different you know of the largest mining companies in the space, there's no way we would have done that in 12 months without their required to use the platform. So the point is that collaboration and partnership between key market leaders and tech solutions, I actually think is critical in order to driving technologies, whatever that is. It's interesting your point about blockchain. So mine have originally the founders premise the company on this. You know, blockchain was super trendy at the time and it was seemed like, you know, the be all

25:46 technology solution, really critical for traceability and maintaining security. I think that there probably aren't that many use cases where blockchain has really been critical or incredibly helpful. We do write certain aspects of the blockchain for a very commercially sensitive material, but frankly more because it's a customer requirement. We actually think that you can achieve a lot of the goals that you need from either a traceability or a data security perspective without blockchain.

26:13 We're AWS cloud hosted. We have a broad network of data integrations with so many different sources of data. We invested a lot of money in security and data privacy and that's really our core architecture.

26:31 So you are a technology company. I mean, you're a SaaS company, right? So moving over to Julian, he's more of a hybrid company, right? He's applying technology to mining assets where Andrew is using technology to track and audit in many respects, you know, commodity supply chain. So Julian, how do you talk about or how do you think about technology? And it's really an open-ended question because you have different technologies that you're applying to different commodities and you, like Andrea, also have tech partially in your name, Kotech,

27:06 and you're also hunting for new technologies. So, I mean, a couple of questions ago you said that, you know, one of the most important things to you was in fact applying technology to these old mining assets. Talk to me about collaborations with technology and how Kotech is embracing that. Sure, I mean the aim for Kotech which is a big ambition but it is a initially a 10-year project or commitment by myself is to try

27:31 and be like the eBay of the mining sectors. So the first couple of years we look for effectively the algorithms we've got. You know as I said we looked at 400 technologies we've invested in 6 and they solve major problems which bedeviled the mining sector in the past. And, you know, we believe that technology companies like MineHub are very good dealing with what they're doing. But our key success factor is that we are miners. We've got collectively

28:04 a century of experience. And so we've ended up really focusing on process new process technologies. And and then

28:15 The flip side of that is where can we most cheaply apply those technologies for the biggest buck? And that's really been mainly because of our focus on waste. So in the same way that eBay used algorithms to take things that were, you know, hidden away in cupboards and daylight their value, That is what we are using technology to do, particularly with these tailings and waste sites or e-waste. And we think it's the way in which we can invent a new model of a commodity extraction business. I don't like using the M word for the 21st century,

28:56 and redesign something which is like much more nimble and really integrates technology in a way in which the sector hasn't done before. Even though the majors have spent billions of dollars and decades doing research, they haven't actually come up with any huge silver bullets which completely transformed the way things are done. And the sector is very, very risk averse, particularly because of the historic emphasis on health and safety. So it's always been, you know, if it's not broken, don't try and fix it, Don't try and improve it. There's such skepticism, but it's why it's one of the few sectors left in the world which hasn't really been radically transformed by technology. And that's an enormous historic opportunity.

29:43 Well, there are no silver bullets is what I've come to learn. And I'm a bit of a hunter and it's a birdshot approach, right? You need many different pellets and not just iron pellets, Julian, but different pellets, you know, mining is tracking the supply chain like Andrea is doing, coming up with new ways to leach copper like you're doing, and then bringing on new assets that are produced in a clean and green way, Jamie. So the question is a little bit different for you, potential ways to collaborate with technology or technology companies. How do you think about that? And when I was thinking about it for generation, I guess that was scrolling through the deck and looking at your optimization study for, the CapEx and things like that. Are there technologies you're applying to reduce CapEx or to increase recoveries? Or is there a different way you think about technology for generation mining?

30:34 Well, it's a very good question, but to go back to Julian's point, there really has been no sort of technological advances in mining. I mean, the Caterpillar is still trying to come up with a battery electric vehicle or a battery electric truck that would work for hauling the distances that would be cost efficient for us. So we are looking at optimization that later on in the mine life we can bring in some electric trucks. We are looking at electric shovels,

31:00 electric drills sort of stuff. I mean, the processing side, there's been some talk of new technologies, whether it be SFRs or DFRs that are different than the old conventional cells, but really not much work has been done. And then in a project like ours, where we rely on lenders, they want to make sure that this project is going to work. So they don't want to really want us to use experimental technologies until they're proven to work. So unfortunately, I think that mining businesses have been a little bit of a laggard on getting those technologies

31:32 advanced. But, you know, we certainly look at optimization in the future to bring in some of those, whether it be a trolley assist. I know they do use that at a bunch of the mines right now, but until you have the ramps in, you can't really have trolley assist in there. So certain things get optimized later on the mine life. But as of right now, you know, there is potential optimization, but we haven't seen too much. Maybe I'll have to follow up with Andrew or Julian later on to see if they could help us on sort of advancements. But you know, the engineers that we have, they're all old like myself or older than myself. And the mining engineers are pretty stubborn if you know them, and they have their one way that works. And that's what makes the most sense. So we like to get a new sort of approach to that. It's a catch 22, isn't it? Everybody wants it clean and green. The governments have their mandates and yet the financiers and the banks don't want black box technologies in their feasibility studies messing with their IRRs and NPVs, etc.

32:30 Speaking of NPVs and IRRs, I want to ask a financing question because,

32:35 and before I do that, let me say that this is being recorded. I forgot to say that at the beginning, and there's a chat box that you can enter your questions as we get into the back half of this talk. I see some questions coming in and I'll start to get to them in a second. But let's talk about financing. So you have 3 very different approaches. The 3 companies we have here, Jamie, you just mentioned your lenders. I know that you have a piece in place from Wheaton and they're also shareholders. I know that you have a debt financing package in place. Talk to me about how generation mining has gone about approaching capital markets in the environment we're in. And given that you're about to get your final permit to construct a mine that has a pretty hefty capex there? So we are optimizing, we did put out as you mentioned, an optimization study in November.

33:27 Hopefully that should be filed in the next couple of weeks so everybody could see the final numbers. That was just more of a summary that we put out in November. Part of our capital structure, as you had mentioned, we announced a stream of weed and precious metals for $240 million, I think it was back in 2022. So that money will come on construction. We've already drawn down on 40 million. The other 200 million will come on construction. We do have mandate letters, term sheets with the syndicated banks led by EDC, Export Development Corporation of Canada, SoftGen and ING for upwards of $400 million USD. So we could do the conversion on that. Then we'll look to get some financing from Caterpillar. We have a little bit of a funding gap in there from our capital or CapEx of about a billion dollars.

34:12 So we're aiming to hopefully get some of those buckets that I was talking about earlier, some of the strategic critical metals, money that's available from the Canadian government, the provincial government. Once we get our final permits, then we'll try to get the final structure together and raise the final money to actually build this project. Hopefully it'd be non-dilutive, but we will see what happens in the coming months. Going back to some of the past financings, they've all been equity financings except for the stream that we've done before. We probably raised, I don't know, $70M, $80M in the past 4-5 years of this company. So, a very small amount of money that has been spent on this project. Or maybe it seems like a lot of money. But this is a billion dollar NPV you know short payback less than 2 years. I are in the mid 20s depending on the commodity prices. So good economics on this project, but more importantly, it is homegrown Canadian, North American critical metals coming out of the ground. So hopefully, that will resonate a lot more than getting some of the PGMs out of South Africa, which is getting more and more expensive to produce.

35:19 The cost curves for a lot of these commodities, incentive pricing to start these projects, we're not even there yet. So I fear that there's gonna be a supply crunch coming in the future. So I think now's the time for people to start really looking at investing in mining companies, especially development companies, because there's been no tier 1 copper project found, maybe philo, but that's still a long ways away from construction. So I don't know where all this copper is going to come from in the near future. So we'll be producing 20,000 tons, 40 million pounds a year. So not a lot of copper, but still enough copper that can make a difference. Yes. Some of these assets are are ways out there. Right. I'm thinking a big Argentinian and Chilean assets, one of which you just mentioned. And you also mentioned South Africa. So a follow up question, because when I look at your key shareholders, I see Sabaniyeh is sort of the largest institutional holder there at 13.9%.

36:14 And yet, I'm involved in some other copper projects that Sabani is involved in, and they're keen because of the current fiscal situation to allow themselves to be diluted out or just maintain their position, well, get diluted out without putting up any more capital. Is that what you're seeing from them in your project or do you have a different relationship with them? I can't speak of what they're doing with their other assets. They have been diluted down in the future, in the past. I mean, our shareholder or their shareholder base was from when we optioned the project for them back in 2019. We did acquire it for about $6 million and then we ended up giving them about $30 million worth of shares for 100% of the project. You know, I did actually speak to Richard Stewart, the CEO of Savanity down at the BMO conference last month. You know, they do have some issues from some of the South African mines and some of their other assets that they looked at. So when we do look to get this financial investment decision and try to finance the rest of the money, we'll speak to Savania, say what they like to do. But, and we're in communication with them, we give them updates because they're our largest shareholder but I don't know what their intent is gonna be in the future. Got it.

37:25 Okay, moving to Julian, you have a different model than Jamie with a traditional resource build. You and your CFO are large shareholders. I think you guys own something like 70 or a bit more than 70% of the shares of the company. And you've been doing loans from an entity that you can control, if I recall, it's called Queens Road Capital. So talk to me in the audience about how you finance Kotech and how you keep yourself under certain thresholds by using those loans, et cetera. Well, yeah, I mean, we as a board collectively own about 70% of Kotech. And fortunately, my interests are in a position to keep funding the business. But we also have huge tax losses. So I can't go over 50% personally.

38:14 So I'm doing a convertible loan. I'm actually at a premium, to the significant premium to the current share price and I can continue funding the business as long as necessary. We already believe we've created a huge amount of value at Kotech that it's worth many multiples of its current market cap And so our strategy is not to really get diluted at the holding company level. We want to minimize dilution there. Instead, what we can do is bring investors in at the asset level. So there are people who are interested in participating in our magnet recycling business in the US, where for roughly $150 million of equity, you will be part of a business which should have $1.5 billion of NPV.

39:01 And so that's where we are going to be raising capital at hopefully more appropriate pricing for the private equity market rather than the pricing that we're seeing in the public markets, which quite frankly, you know, is far from real. And I honestly don't understand why when there's so much attention being placed, as you said, Nick, on our sector, and everybody's talking about Greenland and critical minerals and the Ukraine and, you know, aluminum and copper and blah, blah, blah. You're not seeing the inflows that one would expect, even apparently with gold at $3,000, you're not seeing the gold equities revaluing in the way that people expect. And I actually think, you know, this is a secular change that we're seeing here. It is the end of, you know, the Pax Americana and what people have been used to for 70 years.

39:59 But the public markets haven't woken up to it yet. So it's a very interesting disconnect, but for the moment, thank goodness, we don't have to rely on the public markets because there are so many great projects out there which are just sort of dying because they can't move forward. And it's ironic at a time when these things are more needed than ever. Anyway, enough of that rant. No, I mean, you're absolutely right. I've been at conferences for, I'd say the past 6 months, but really it's been the past several years where the question on the panel always comes up, right? What's gonna close the disconnect between how many metals we need for the energy transition and the capital markets and the equity prices that are trailing far behind.

40:45 So when I come up with an answer, I retire. So you might not even hear it for a bit. Well, I mean, the other thing that we are doing is we're relying a lot on government funding. So we have applied for various programs in the US. I mean, there are also clearly big new pockets of capital coming out of the Middle East, which are starting to invest in the sector. So there are some, you know, bright lights, but it's certainly not the public equity markets for small caps. I agree. You know, one of the reasons I'm invested in Kotick is I do believe you're gonna get State Department funding for this rare earth project in Texas. So we shall see. Andrea, yet another different model for funding. You did traditional private placements until you sort of approached that runway to break even or dare I even say potential profitability.

41:35 But in the past months here, you've brought on a large strategic partner in ABAX. And I hope I'm saying that correctly, that's come in and bought about 19% of your company. And that's a company that a lot of, not a lot of people know about, but they're operating a new metals exchange out of Singapore, and they've got some pretty smart ex Goldman people behind them. Talk about how that mine hub has funded itself over the past 12 months. And if I might get a little bit of future out of you, how you expect to or if you need to going forward. Yeah, it was funny listening to Julian talk about the pain of public equity markets. We've definitely seen that in the past. We're listed on the TSXV, which is the Toronto Venture Exchange, which is a really interesting dynamic. I'll just say, not necessarily in the last 12 months, but since I became CEO in 2023, we put out these amazing press releases about like big deals and the stock wouldn't move.

42:32 And then we had no news, the stock would go up 30% or we had amazing news and it would go 20%. And it's like, what is going on? Just to your point about that disconnect, Julian, it's very true. So the ABAX partnership has been transformative for us, mostly because it has brought on a whole new set of eyes onto the stock and really helped to drive some liquidity, thankfully. As you mentioned, ABAX is a technology company. They have the exchange out of Singapore. They have an LNG contract, carbon, lithium and nickel. And they're really trying to bring different risk management tools to an ever evolving market. And for us, it makes a ton of sense because we're all post trade management. They have obviously pre-trade management. So they have this framework where their futures or their contracts could go to physical delivery.

43:24 So the basis for the partnership is this notion that we would integrate with their exchange and that any physical delivery gets managed on our platform. And the reason why I bring that up is because the Avax deal was not just a financing deal. It really is based on, you know, solid sort of principles around a future partnership potential, which we're already starting to explore. But it did bring fresh eyes to the stock. Appreciate, you know, we're happy to see the increase in the stock price over the last 6 to 12 months. And we haven't had to go to market with these private placements that MineHub had traditionally gone to market. We've also really changed our revenue model. So you know, earlier in MineHub's history, it was sort of this one-off revenue. We've moved to a more recurring model that the market's appreciated. It's also helped us to cut, burn, and really drive towards profitability, which we're on track for. So all of this is good, and we hope that it continues.

44:19 In terms of the future, I'll just say we're well-funded right now, but to some of the points raised earlier, there is a huge need for digital tools and we've actually seen a lot of digital solutions come to the market in sort of niche areas, everything from like AI tools to complete CBAM templates, to traceability reports, to IOT devices. And so we've been exploring pretty actively some M&A opportunities. So I'll just say broadly that, you know, should those materialize, then that would create sort of a rationale and opportunity for a larger financing round. Other than that, we're just sort of heads down on execution and driving towards profitability. That's really our plan. Great.

45:04 Good luck as you approach that. Hopefully it's in the near future here. I have one question left. Let me not ask it yet. Let me see what's in the chat box. There had only been 1 there. Okay, now there's 2. So let me go to reader questions or viewer questions, and then I'll answer my last question, which is about Catalyst for the next 6 to 12 months. So first question here from Gary Reeves. It says, when do we expect the government to fund the projects mentioned? Is it unknown or have they indicated intent and given a deadline? So Gary didn't mention a specific project but maybe we go around the horn starting with Julian who I assume it's for and just talk about any additional government involvement or potential funding for any projects you're involved with. Well, I mean, we expect to hear on the various projects that we've applied for, particularly with the rare earth magnet recycling in the next quarter or so, but it has been slower than expected because of all the turmoil in Washington. I think things that were on track to be decided late last year have now been put on hold etc. So I think there is this moment of turmoil where things are hopefully getting organized and then things will actually be happening more quickly than previously but certainly we expect to have some clarity on our governmental funding by the middle of the year.

46:34 Alternatively, we are also speaking to traditional sources of finance. You know, there are lots of banks interested in funding this. So that's the timing for that project. Okay, Jamie, I know you were just talking about funding, but any potential for the government to come in outside of the permitting process and invest in the project, or give a grant, or a loan, or any sort of capital involvement from the government? My fingers are crossed, I hope so. I believe being the only shovel-ready critical metal project in Canada, I believe. There could be other ones, but I think we're the most furthest advanced. I think that there will be some funding available. I don't know if it's going to be a dollar or hundreds of millions of dollars. So I'm speculating here somewhere between that. So I'm hopeful we'll get something done soon. As soon as I know, and it's definitive, There will be a press release out there. If I do have other information right now, obviously I can't share it, but needless to say, I'm quite optimistic we're gonna get some funding from either the federal government or the provincial government of Ontario.

47:45 Excellent. Andrea, while they were answering a question came in for you, so it's pretty direct. Do we think MindHub is close to profitability? Yes. Yes, we do. We've indicated that our goal is to reach profitability before the end of this fiscal year, and we're still on track for that. Excellent. A question here for Julian, and it says, USARE IPO'd last week at a valuation of 800 million. They're targeting 6 to 1,200 tons per annum of magnets. How do you feel about this in regards to a read across for HyproMag? Well, HyproMag's aim is ultimately to provide 3,000 tons of magnets, so it would be larger than that.

48:37 But the company which combined last week is a more complicated one. It has much more of a vertical chain in terms of producing rare earths from a deposit as well in the US. Our business, we think, is simpler because effectively what we do is recycle the muffin mix of magnets and remake the magnets. So it's a lower risk way of producing magnets. So we are very gratified by that valuation. And we think it provides a very interesting read across. But you know, Kotec has got so many of these and the market, as we said, can go down on good news.

49:23 That it's just another thing that we note. It suggests we're worth a lot of money, but we just push on and execute. All right. A bit of a political question here. Does anyone want to comment on which party would be best for your companies in Canada? No one wants to comment. All right. Sorry. What else here? I think that's it. Oh, one more for Julian. Any new technologies for Cotech before year end? I think you said, Julian, recently that you are investigating a couple. And it says you have 6 technologies and counting. Do you need more?

50:10 We don't need more because the last 2 technologies we announced were gravity separation technology, ultra high fines, which we've also got a license globally to apply to manganese. So, you know, between manganese, iron ore and copper and magnets, those are enormous markets and there's more than enough to do for the rest of my working career. But we are looking at some really interesting technologies if we could find them. So for instance a good use of sequestered carbon which can improve the world or how we can de-radiate radioactive material or how we can clean red mud. Those are ones which are big, big problems still for the sector. So we keep our eyes open, but for the moment, I think we've got enough on our plate.

50:58 Excellent. We're gonna wrap up here. We have 9 minutes left, so we can do 2 or 3 minutes per person. The question was going to be about which metals you're most excited about over the next year or 2. But I think a more poignant question might be, what you're most excited about with your companies and what catalysts investors should be eyeing or looking out for for the next 6 to 12 months. So maybe you hybridize that question and talk about a little bit of both what commodities you like and what catalysts investors should be looking out for. Andrea, we'll start with you again. Sure, for us they really do go hand in hand. So we've been very focused on copper and aluminum. Traditionally, this year, we have a key focus to really expand to adjacent metals markets. We're super interested in scrap, which may be surprising, but talk about a market that needs digital tools, that's definitely up there.

51:51 And we're seeing a lot of interest from our customers that have goals around increasing use of scrap for recycling and sustainability purposes, obviously. So expansion into new markets is going to be key. We're going to be leveraging our partnerships as expected. Sumitomo, ABACS, they just launched a nickel sulfate and lithium contracts. We'll be leveraging them to enter some of those markets. That'll be a key focus for us. And then the other obvious catalyst, what I alluded to, is some of these M&A opportunities. I do think there's going to be consolidation in the market. There are a lot of digital tools out there and it's only natural for us to consolidate. And Mindhub being this sort of core foundational platform that manages trade management is just sort of an obvious home for a lot of these more nuanced tools.

52:40 Those are the 2. I see Volkswagen already has a battery passport And I have to imagine there's some opportunities there with the companies working on things like that. Jamie, what's exciting you in terms of commodities? I have to assume it's PGMs and copper, but then catalysts for the next 6 to 12 months, given that you are just a month or so away from your final permit needed for construction? Yeah, so if I could just go back to the question about the technological advancements in mining, I think we should also look at how metals are needed for the future of life in the phones, in the computers, in the cars. Part of the narrative that originally I got involved in generation was because of the scarcity of the metals that we have, whether it's copper, PGMs, but it was also the need for PGMs or copper or whatever might be in AI chip. I mean, we all know we need copper and silicone and what else do we need?

53:45 Silicone, aluminum, copper, but then it's just the finer chips like gallium, germanium, palladium, that's also needed in that AI chip that people forget that all these people are like, okay, well, we don't need mining, then how are we ever gonna have a cell phone in the future? So I think a lot of the younger generation needs to realize that we do need to mine or we do need to recycle more. And you know I hopefully we could do recycle more or find out better ways than mining. But as of right now mining is the only way that we could have that AI chip that we could have the hybrid vehicle that we could have the catalytic converter. People want the battery electric vehicles, I get it, but until the copper grid gets better and range anxiety goes away, we're going to have to rely on plug-in hybrids, hybrid cars, or internal combustion engines for a long, long time until the government can figure out, I don't know what I heard in the US it was 35 billion dollars and they built 12 or 15 Charging facilities in the US so that there has to be better use of the funds going ahead But but going in the future Excuse me as we spoke about earlier.

54:47 We are in this Lassonde curve There's a mining cycle pure Lassonde's a billionaire for maybe that's why they named it after him. And we're in this sort of valley of death as he liked to call it, the killing fields, whatever it might be, we're at this bottom of the Lassonde curve. Once we get our final permits we get revalued. You know I think there's only upwards for the generation mining shareholders in the future. It's nice to be in this sort of spot where we are development story. A lot of the conference we go to there's a lot of exploration stories. There's a lot of obvious not not that many operating projects that are out there, but there's a fair amount. So we're kind of in the middle. And I think we're getting kind of shunned right now because of some of the funding and the permitting risk that there's involved. I think once we get the permitting and we get the funding risk subsided, I think this project and the shareholders will make some money in the future.

55:38 There's a bumper sticker over my shoulder here and it says, if it can't be grown, it's got to be mined. And I think that people increasingly realize that as we head into the future here for the things that you say, the AI chips and the phones and the data centers, et cetera. And I think it's happening. It just happens on the same time scale that some of these deposits are formed, unfortunately. And it goes outline that Robert Freeland used to say, Alice, the ham sandwich didn't come from the fridge. And so I think a lot of these kids need to realize that things just don't get made. That's right, you gotta kill the pigs sometimes, absolutely. Mr. Trager, to you for the next 6 to 12 months, catalyst for Kotech and any companies you or excuse me, any commodities you have a keen eye on.

56:26 So I think on the commodities, you know, as we said, What's critical has changed a lot over the last 3 years and with the slowdown electric vehicle sales and also the prospect that ultimately electric vehicle batteries are going to be largely coming from sodium. I think 1 should stay away from a lot of those commodities. And obviously, the Chinese are flooding that market. But I think what is critical is everything now that's more arms related, unfortunately. So I think, you know, titanium, manganese, tungsten, all those things are becoming copper, obviously, are becoming much more interesting, which is a slightly darker place to be, but it is what it is. And so I think people need to think differently about that. You know, at Kotec, we are in copper, we're in green steel, we are looking at manganese and we're doing magnets.

57:23 So I think we're well positioned in terms of the commodities that are going to be strategic. And we have lots and lots of catalysts in each different project. I mean, just in the Magnet project, we have these funding from the government, you know, the decision to go ahead with the project, announcements from feedstock suppliers on our business in Minnesota. There's going to be 43-101 feasibility studies coming out in April, May. So just lots and lots of news flow, whether it translates into actual investor attention is another matter, but lots going on. I think that's a perfect place to wrap it up. We've come to the top of the hour.

58:10 Andrea Ehrengerin from Minehub Technologies, Julian Traeger from Kotec Holdings and Jamie Levy from Generation Mining. I appreciate your time today, willingness to discuss the North American and in fact, global resource markets and how your companies play a role within them. Thank you. You