The Case for Copper: Building Exposure to Rising Prices

0:03 Quickly I'll say good morning, good afternoon or good evening, depending on where in the world you're watching this from today. I see quite a few time zones represented, so I really appreciate everybody's time. Very excited for today's conversation. I've got with me today Barry O'Shea, CEO of Highland Copper, Brian Boss, CEO of Coupani Metals, and Jeff Ackert, CEO of Cascade Copper, to discuss the topic du jour, the case for copper. So I think to some degree, the price of the metal makes its own case. We still have a lot to talk about today. Keep in mind, as we go through this conversation, none of what's discussed constitutes personal financial advice. But I will say Barry, Brian, Jeff, how are you today? Doing well, thank you. Doing great, thanks Ramil. Awesome, so some boring housekeeping before I get into the good stuff. I got a couple questions for these luminaries of mine to get the conversation started. But this is an interactive event, so please use the chat button on the bottom right of your screen to ask questions throughout.

0:48 If they are on topic or fit into the conversation, I'll weave them into the best of my ability or sneak them in at the end. I'm probably not going to get to questions about individual securities today. That being said, please feel free to ask them. I'm going to go ahead and send those questions to the relevant speakers and their teams afterwards so they can get back to you at their leisure. Just probably won't be able to get to them in the conversation today. But like I said, feel free to ask them. Last piece of housekeeping. This is being recorded and will be available for replay probably in about an hour and 15 minutes. We're pretty fast on replays lately, but they'll be able to share them as soon as it pops in your inbox and it'll also be on Six's YouTube channel. OK. Boring stuff through. I want to get into the Copper. So the varying 2026 Copper price forecasts. Goldman Sachs saying 10,000 to 11,000 per metric ton range. There's surpluses to JP Morgan's 12,500

1:35 peak in Q2, driven by structural demand. My question is, and Barry, I'll start with you. How could all the factors that are leading to the Copper price, supply disruption in South America, tariff uncertainties, What does it mean for the Copper price and for people wanting to build exposure to those prices? Well, listen, I think it's well documented that there's a substantial deficit in 2026 and certainly beyond. There's a convergence of demand across a whole host of categories. I think we'll deal with those as we go through here. And of course, there's ongoing supply side issues. And those supply issues are real. And of course, impact supply as we move forward here. I'm going to take a slightly different angle to the view on copper price. I mean, of course, there's many prognosticators out there that will tell you how high copper price can go. And I think that is critically important and important. All of our companies naturally will have leverage to change as in copper price. But the slightly different angle I'll take is just looking at some of the floors that I'm seeing.

2:31 So as you take a look at the larger banks, JP Morgan's, Citibank, Bank of America, so on and so forth, you're starting to see floor prices that are approaching 5 dollar copper. And that's what becomes really interesting for explorers and developers like us that need capital and also need to be robust at lower copper prices. You know, thinking about if you're going to

2:52 build a project and drive cashflow, if you have a floor approaching $5 and of course upside to 6 or 7 or $8 and beyond, and you can have that discussion, It really sets up an environment where companies like ours can take advantage of positive capital markets. Of course, the tailwinds, particularly in North America for corporate developers

3:13 and really build our companies. I do think developers in particular are going to see some sunshine here through 2026 and it's exciting for all of us. That's certainly good to see some sunshine across metals. Brian, I'll throw it to you for the same question. Look, you get 3 heads here on the screen and everyone's going to take a slightly different angle. Barry has known me a long time and he knows I love to question authority. So I'll go with what does JP Morgan or Goldman Sachs know that makes them a reliable indicator for the commodities prices? I mean, I've been following shops like that put out their forecasts in January every year for copper prices, nickel prices, silver prices, gold prices.

4:00 Bitcoin, They're not particularly informative. Right. There's 2 kinds of good indicators in economics. One is a reliable indicator that's accurate, which they're not. And another is a reliable indicator which is reliably inaccurate. So you always know how to adjust for their result. They are not. None of those places saw the gold coming to basically $4,500, certainly not in a way that would have allowed anyone to get ready for it. And so The situation I'll say is, as Barry points out, there's just not enough material around. And there's certainly not enough material in the parts of the world that governments now want to get their material from.

4:45 And you're going to be in a situation where, you know, the futures price might be whatever per ton, 10, 11, 12, 13. But is that the price that someone, to Barry's point, is going to put equity into a mine build? No.

5:04 Right. That's a different market. That's a That's an equity market, a financing market, a debt market. People might sit on their hands until, and I'll put it in pounds, you might sit on your hands until $10 copper. And at that point, the economics on these projects becomes so fantastic that people will put their money in. But the price move, the price motion sets the narrative. And we're only now in year 2 or 3 of probably a 7 year upside price move. And the narrative will change every year, but it will always be a reflection of the price motion and the price motion is bound for higher. And you know, if you're listening to Goldman Sachs, hey, good luck. But you have to also be listening to Robert Friedland. You got to be listening to the people who are

5:52 more in the ground, sorry, more on the ground with those supply and demand calculations. No offense to my friends at Goldman, but yeah, That's not your house. That's not your speciality. So, Robio, I haven't really answered your question. I've really just gone off for a bit. Sorry about that. And I'll hand the microphone back. No, I appreciate it. And somebody funny in the comments yesterday said, if analysts knew what they were doing, they'd work in mining themselves. I thought that was very interesting. That's right.

6:18 I enjoyed that comment. It came up yesterday. Jeff, I'll throw it to you for your perspective on that first question. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, the reason I got into the Copper business and we saw the writing on the wall that, you know, the copper prices were going to be driving higher over the next decade just because of supply and demand. So years ago, like 5, 6 years ago, we could see this happening. So it's not a surprise to see the price going up. And we expect that, as Brian and Barry say, it's gonna happen and it's gonna continue to happen probably over the next 7 or 8 years. But what I'd like to see as an explorer because we're so far away from any kind of production or development at our stage, at least at Cascade, is I'd like the buzz that is created by the analysts and whatever information they're getting and how they're able to do it, but to give numbers that seem extraordinary, 13,000 in fact, well, we passed that already.

7:22 So that kind of buzz and that kind of information that's out to the public is drawing the attention to our sector. And what it's doing for us as an explorer is it's people saying, geez, maybe I should get into the market now if the prices are gonna go that much higher, if they're gonna go even higher. I think they see the same thing with gold. People predict gold prices and then they quickly surpass them in the market. So I think for us,

7:53 the underlying demand is there. Then there's these little bits and pieces of noise that are creating even more buzz like tariffs and a little bit of the AI thing. Who talked about AI and data centers 2 years ago? So it's all these little things that are sort of adding on to that basic supply and demand chain are good for us. It's creating a buzz, it's creating interest in the market, and it's saying, okay, to the investor, let's get in now and let's look at the explorers that have got good projects and are moving them forward. So That's where it's helping us. I appreciate it. I do want to talk about all those demand factors because we've all kind of touched on it already, but there are really accelerating structural demand vectors. And like you said, Jeff, it's the AI data centers, which are growing faster than I think anybody anticipated.

8:46 Electric vehicle adoption, which is perhaps going slower

8:48 than some lithium companies I know would like. There's also grid modernization, defense spending, 1 million reasons why copper's long-term demand trajectory keeps going up. So what I'm curious about is, 1, are those the biggest factors? Am I missing some? And what does this imply for the market's path towards structural deficits over time? Brian, I'll throw it to you first.

9:07 Yeah, if I'm going to point out 1 on the list that wasn't there and maybe should be, you got to look backwards and look at the amount of money that actually gets spent on exploration per year. And arguably, exploration spending peaked in like 2003 in terms of real inflation adjusted dollars. And So we're spending less money than ever on exploration. I mean the world or the industry as a whole, not these 3 companies on the screen.

9:41 The world is spending less money on it. The world cared about it so little for 2 decades that we now have to live with the deficit or the surfeit or the lack of exploration success for the last 20 years. And these are not light switches, right? Even if you wanted to find a new project today from 0,

10:04 you'd have to hire up 10 geologists, 3 helicopters, get some land, get a pile of money. You might go 7 years without finding something, if ever. So for me, the biggest issue is, and I'm a finance guy, so I'm gonna put it in finance terms. There are industries that go through huge capital allocation cycles. And by huge cycles, I mean 15, 20 year length. Airlines would be a perfect example that I want people to think about. Today, and I'm a Canadian, North American, kind of the same thing, there's 345 airlines that are really serving everything.

10:43 20, 30 years ago, there were 789, 10 airlines that were trying to serve everything to everybody. They couldn't all make money. Half of them went bankrupt and disappeared. The other half went through bankruptcy and restructured. And now there are so few of them that airline ticket prices are way higher Planes are always full. Customers have less power.

11:06 OK. And that's the new stability. That's the new stability. And it's going to stay that way for a very long time. Exploration has been the same. Mining has been the same. There's been a choking, a throttling, a cutoff of money into the sector for so long that the power balances have changed. There's no way to bring on supply and the people who are trying to get from place 1 to place 2 metaphorically by building out a new power grid or get a new car, they have to pay more. And that's the new future. I know a lot of people I talk to outside of the industry, They do think it's like an on-off switch. Like, oh, copper prices go up. You can just turn on a copper mine. Yeah, it takes a minute. You've got to really front load it. Jeff, I'll throw it to you for the same question.

11:55 Are we missing anything about what the supply is coming from? What does it mean for you guys? Well, I think I'll just quickly go back to the basic fundamentals and that underlying,

12:07 you know, increase in demand over time. And I think people forget about

12:17 other countries and their demand. I spend a fair amount of time in Africa and I see the development of Africa through sort of a developing country. And I see the demand for housing and I see the demand for, you know, almost what you call gentrification where people are saying, well, you know, I want to build a house, I want to have a washing machine and I want to have indoor plumbing and all that kind of stuff. And that's really, I think, is what's driving that increased demand over time. And it's not just the continent of Africa, it's, you know, it's India, it's other developing nations, South America. So That basic demand, I think we can't forget about that. I mean, that is really the underpinning of the whole cycle. And like I said before, these other things like AI and grids and EVs and so on, they're just adding an increment, a small increment to the full demand.

13:19 So I think that's important to keep that in mind. And you know, if anybody travels and they can see how other parts of the world are developing, I think they'll understand that incredible amount. Yeah, there's a question in the chat on Chinese demand that we'll get to at the end. But Barry, I want to throw the same question to you before I get into some specific Highland Copper stuff. Yeah, maybe I'd give mention to one of those final buckets of demand that you spoke about, which is defense spending. You know,

13:44 there's increased geopolitical tensions and all countries worldwide are looking to secure themselves. So it's another area that I think we continue to see demand. And it's really the convergence and additive nature of all of these things that are driving such a demand overall. But I'm going to touch back on some of the stuff Brian said. There's been obviously meaningful underinvestment over the past 2 decades on exploration, but that underinvestment has also been the case from a development perspective. New mines just haven't been built. Certainly smaller companies who haven't had access to capital have challenges building their projects. But even if you look to the larger companies, those kind of taking a full go at their multi-billion dollar projects have also been quite slow.

14:29 I'll also touch on that investment cycle. It's real. It does take 15 to 20-years from beginning to end to put a mine into production in the US. That's been proven out. Interestingly, and I'll talk a little bit about our company later, we happen to be extremely advanced with permits in hand and geology complete and all of that stuff. But quite candidly, we're at about year 15. So even we're not bucking the trend, we just happen to be at the right point in time here to take advantage of things. So yeah, this supply and demand imbalance, It's economic, it's real, and I think it's understood and coming to the fore. That never hurts to hit good timing at the end of a 15-year journey, for sure. Barry, I want to get into some of the details of Highland Copper, if you don't mind. So I know following, I think, your most recent news release, there's a definitive agreement to sell your 34 percent interest in White Pine North for US$30 million to Kinterra.

15:21 So how does this transaction strengthen your balance

15:24 sheet, but also focus you in on the Copperwood project in Michigan?

15:29 Yeah, thanks for the question. So we had a non-controlling interest of 34% stake in what's called the White Pine project. It's a good long-term project. It's controlled by Kinterra, but really our focus is taking our near-dated and fully permitted Copperwood project to production. So, in some instances, you have to make the right sacrifice. We've sold our one-third stake for US$30M and we're able to take that capital and put it directly into our Copper project, really focusing on that near-term development cycle. And the before and after is pretty stark. Before we did that transaction, we had about US$7M in cash, about US$12M in debt and of course, 2 assets to fund. And that's challenging, as you might think about it. As we stand here today and acknowledging that transaction needs to close in the coming weeks, over US$25M in cash, no debt and a single asset and a single focus.

16:22 And there's real strategic value to that cash consideration for us. Having that money in the bank puts us fully funded to a final investment decision at Copperwood at a really good time where we're still in tailwinds for U.S. Domestic developers. So that drive toward building a mine and of course the cash flows that we'll see certainly at the higher Copper prices, I think is going to be of great value to our investors. Great. I got one more specific to Highland, if you don't mind. So I know you had the recently the phase 1 engineering wrap up at Copperwood. What opportunities do those developments open up for the project's progression, but also value creation with the Copper prices where they are? Yeah. So, you know, Despite the fact that there is obviously movement in the Copper price, as a developer, you still always need to make sure your project is robust to lower Copper prices. And the nice thing is through leaner times, and we've seen Copper at US$4 or below in the past decade, it means you do the work. You make your project ready. A great step that we took last year is we introduced Ultrafine Filtration Technology, Janus and Cells, to increase our Copper recoveries by about 2 percentage points.

17:25 So a really nice

17:27 additive piece to our project that just makes it increasingly robust at US$4 and US$5 Copper prices and of course, remaining leverage. And one thing that's interesting, and I'll acknowledge this about our project, at a US$4 Copper price, the margins are modest. But what you know though is that when you have modest margins at US$4, every dollar added at a US$5 or US$6 Copper price really is just incredible torque and leverage. So, as an example, at US$4 Copper price, our project is about 170M

17:56 NPV. But as you step up on Copper price, it's not linear from a returns perspective. At US$5, we're about a US$500M net asset value and pushing towards $900M at a $6 Copper price, where Spot is today. So, relative to our $80M market cap today, I think it presents a real opportunity and as it will for other companies. So we're excited about that. Awesome. It's good people to understand how that leverage works. It's really not linear as the price goes up, the bucks get higher. I want to turn to Cascade Copper for a second. So Jeff, I know the January 8th assay results from your centre field fieldwork got those 2.86% Copper, 2.84g per tonne Gold and 15.7g per tonne silver. How do these findings validate the project's potential and inform the planned Q1 drilling program, the 3D inversion, all the stuff you got going on now.

18:48 Yeah, thanks. Well, I think I'll just sort of step back a little bit and talk about the company's philosophy in projects and in jurisdictions and so on. We've got 5 projects, 4 of them are in British Columbia. And we thought, well, we better diversify into another jurisdiction just in case there's any issues with politics or First Nations or anything like that. But luckily we haven't had that issue in BC. So we went to Ontario and we looked at sort of traditional Copper

19:20 areas, Copper-Gold areas, and we saw that there was, in that northern part of, northwestern part of Ontario, there's VMS style deposits, which have Copper, Gold, Silver, occasionally Lead and Zinc. So we identified this project, got into it fairly easily. It was an option in, but to earn 100%

19:42 modest expenditures and that kind of thing. So it was a pretty good deal. But we liked the historic data. We liked the area. And when you first get in a project like this, it hasn't had a lot of work, a little bit of historic data, you've got a sort of a model that you've got in your mind of, okay, what kind of deposit are we looking for? What kind of numbers do we expect to see? So, after doing some of our on-the-ground work, some geophysics, and then starting to sample and trenching, and we're getting these numbers that we thankfully we're expecting to get and so it does validate the model and what it does also is it gives us the success that we need and the confidence we need to go to the next steps, which are, as you mentioned, inversion modelling of the geophysics, which gives us a bit of a 3-dimensional idea of what's happening.

20:41 And then it gives us targets for drilling. So we put in some permitting for the drilling at Centrefire with the confidence that we've got these numbers on surface and we've got widths and lengths and strike length and quite a significant footprint that we're seeing these numbers. So

21:03 it all builds, right? You're building your confidence, you're building your models as you go, because drilling is an expensive process, as everybody knows here. So we want to make sure that we're going to be drilling in the right spot, The amount of drill holes we want to put in. Do we have the money to do it? Yes. And so forth. So it's a process and that's based on success. So seeing those numbers it's been sort of the icing on the cake. So we're ready to go for a drilling program there. Awesome. Yeah. And last question about Cascade. I know your recent oversubscribed private placement raised funds for this, like the 2026 campaign and you got the ongoing asset processing as you said from the Centerfire season. What strategies do you have right now to accelerate target refinement and testing at Centerfire?

21:51 Yeah, well, I think that's what I'm going to talk about at Centerfire basically goes through most of our projects. So what we like to do is use our shareholders' money the best way we can in order to create value for the company. And creating value these days, it's not really sampling on the ground, it's not geophysics or inversion modelling, it's drilling. So, we've really got to focus what our priorities are and the priority would be to head towards that drilling program at Centrefire. But what's interesting is that with the last private placement we did, just as an example of how the interest in the market, the interest in Copper, interest in the junior exploration business, is that we were able to announce and close the financing within a week to 10 days, and we were oversubscribed. So I think that is a bit of a bellwether on what the market is like and what people are paying attention to, not just the juniors, but the developers and the producers at this stage. So it's all a good sign. And I guess our job now is to reward our shareholders for that commitment and investment. And we'll do that by drilling, not just at Centrefire, but at 1 or 2 of our other projects as well.

23:13 Awesome. And rewarding shareholders. That's the fun part. Brian, I'm going to turn to you. So I know Kupany Metals clarified the historical resource at Blue Lake and recognition that most mineralized zones remain open. I love talking to your Geos because they get so excited about that. I think it's really cool. My question is, what steps are planned to verify, upgrade or expand this mineralization through 2026 drilling?

23:37 Yeah, thanks. That's a jump off question. I can probably give you 3 or 4 directions, but the main one, as Jeff just said, is the market respects drilling results more than it does

23:51 magnetics or geophysics or sampling. So we have this 4.4 million historical at 2.3% copper. That was done by, sorry, that's an equivalence. It was done by somebody else decades ago and the project sat untouched from the 1980s, basically until 2023 when we got control of it. So we kind of have a really good situation. It's like a time machine. Our geologists get to go back to 1987 and ask themselves, what is it that the guys who were here last, or the gals who were here last in the 80s, didn't know.

24:35 And what does that mean for where we should go looking? So really that's not a single, easy one word answer, Romeo, like, but that's what we're doing in 2026. We're following that new set of theories, a lot of stuff that's come up since the 1980s in geology and You know the other guys will know about this like for example in 1987 although it held sway it was not fully accepted that continents moved. Right. Plate tectonics. Not everyone accepted that. Now it's obvious. It was also not obvious in 1987 because the Raglan Mine in northern Quebec, which is owned by Glencore, and that's what we think we're gonna end up with, hopefully if we're lucky, wasn't open.

25:21 Their mineralization was known about, but how mother nature laid it down and how to find that mineralization, not known. So theirs and ours

25:34 is basically a river of magma. And the copper, nickel, platinum, palladium that we have has fallen out of the river and built up on lenses at the bottom of the riverbed. So that means that our 4.4 million tons is across 9 different lenses. They're all within a 3 kilometer by 3 kilometer box, and they're all close to surface, and they're all lying the same way. But in 1980s drilling, they didn't understand any of that. So when they went to find more, they literally drew a straight line on the map 100 yards away and went and drilled 8 holes along the line to see if they could find more mineralization

26:17 But they didn't know about the river. They didn't know how the sediments were laid down. They didn't know the chemistry that was involved. And so they didn't drill the right spots. So now we have to take the learnings from raglan and how it was found, how it was tallied from small to huge in terms of its mineralization and apply that for us. So yes, we are going drilling, Romeo, but I'm bringing it full circle. Yes, we are going drilling and our first drilling Job is to prove the following sentence the magmatic river that created our historical

26:54 Continues for 12 kilometers and nobody's ever looked at it. So we're going to go drill adjacent to where our historicals are along that same river.

27:06 And first is to prove that it is the same magmatic river. And then from there, figure out where in that river we should be looking for more lenses, more deposit. OK, great. I want to kind of follow up. I know you already touched on it, but building on that identification of the new 12 kilometre high potential corridor at Blue Lake, along with I do want to bring up also Chuck Gauthier's leadership as VP Exploration for the company. What exploration priorities? I know the goal is to prove the sentence that you just talked about, but what kind of catalyst are you personally anticipating from the current winter drilling and field work campaigns to get that district scale discovery that you're looking for on the property?

27:46 So first, Jacques Gauthier, fantastic. There is a well-known rule of thumb in geology that 80% of the economic deposits are found by 20% of the geologists. And he's one of the 20%. He's already got 4 under his belt and he thinks there's a good chance we're going to get a fifth here. So

28:06 What am I looking for in addition to the drill results? Is that your question Romeo? That's right. Yeah, okay So one of the things I'm looking for that isn't drill result related although obviously I'm lying awake at night wondering how those are going to turn out, when we're going to have them as results, is the logistics. So our site is 60 kilometers, 65 kilometers from the town of Shefferville. Shefferville is a mining town built around iron ore open pits in the 1950s and 40s. Those pits are still running. There's a railway that takes the iron ore down to the Atlantic Ocean at the Port of Sept-Îles in Quebec.

28:45 And so, you know, in the summertime, when we send geologists out, we get them up to Shefferville by plane or by train or whatever the case may be. And then we chopper them out or we float plane them out to camp. But in winter, as part of the drilling season, we're gonna be exploring over the ice and over the land logistics.

29:07 How much weight can we drag out behind a truck or a caterpillar or whatever it might be? The reason why I care about that, Romeo, is because if we can figure out our logistics, let's say we bring in all of our fuel for the summer use during the winter, that saves a lot on logistics in the summertime. And that's shares that, you know, money that doesn't have to get spent, shares that don't have to get issued. So myself as a businessman, that's what I'm looking for this winter, just as much as I am the drilling.

29:45 It makes sense. I've got one question just based on recent news and it's reflected in the chat. Barry, I'm going to throw this one to you first, because the question in the chat was addressed to you, but I'll make it a question for everybody. So Amazon this morning, I don't know if you guys have seen, has invested in Rio Tinto's new copper mine. They're scooping up all the copper for their AI data centers, basically. My question is, do we think we're going to see more of these direct

30:12 deals with these kind of giant American corporations? And do we think that the American government is going to get more involved in funding Copper projects? Barry, I'll throw it to you first.

30:23 So I think the short answer is yes. But you know, it's a varied path. I mean, quite candidly, 2 or 3 years ago, you saw some real movement from the car manufacturers to step into mining. And I wouldn't quite say it's fizzled, but it didn't kind of catch on, arguably, as expected.

30:41 But really, with the supply-demand fundamentals coming increasingly to the fore, with geopolitical tensions changing and growing, I do think companies, corporates, not just countries need to think about how they secure supply. Very specific to us, we operate out of Michigan and the likes of Ford and GM. And, you know, they have taken some steps into mining investment, but naturally they have a lot to learn, as will Amazon. But I think it's going to be an education process over time. But I think that investment will come.

31:16 Countries are taking greater steps and, you know, the US most specifically has, you know, learned its lessons and they're tough ones. They are a solid 10 to 20 years behind other countries, most particularly China, in terms of critical mineral strategy. And now they're looking to catch up as quickly as they can. And at the end of the day, if you want to secure your own demand into your region, you have to have supply domestically.

31:46 So that is ensuring that countries are now putting money towards mining, certainly in the way that China has been doing for some time. And the U.S. Is getting aggressive and I would say creative, not just debt, but grants. And also you're seeing federal investments into both Canadian and U.S. Mining companies that are operating domestically. I'll speak for us. We received a letter of interest from the U.S. Export-Import Bank, so that's the United States Export Development Credit Agency for about US$250M. That represents 60% of the capital that we need to build our project. When debt like that is underwritten by a federal agency, it's naturally at better terms than you might see on the private markets.

32:35 And that's really important for companies like us, where access to capital across the private markets has been challenging. I think that will alleviate to some degree. But the benefit of nations stepping in to underwrite and assist and also just demonstrating that endorsement that they want mining and of course, they want the minerals. I think it's going to be very positive. Great. Let's move north. Jeff, I'll ask you a similar question, but more Canadian bent. Do you think we can see this from American companies looking for Canadian source copper? And what do you think the Canadian government's going to do to support copper projects? Yeah, I think at our stage, again, sort of stepping back a little bit from the development side and into the exploration side, I think we won't see private industry that are associated either with data centres or EVs or battery centres that would get involved with an exploration stage. I think they will be further down the road. But having said that, I think our candidates for investment at our stage in the development of mineral projects is still the mid-tier to the major companies.

33:48 And I think there's still, like Barry said, like the cycle of development takes 15 or more years to get things up and running. The big companies don't have the bandwidth to do that organically. So they're going to start looking at companies like Brian's company at Campani, at our company, maybe even Barry's company that, oh, geez, you know, you guys have got something really good. You've got it de-risked to a certain level. We want to get involved. So I think that's what we're going to see, at least at our stage, where investment might come from. And then the other thing that you mentioned too is the Canadian government and so on. And we're seeing that even right now with the Ontario provincial government, they've got a program called OJEP, which is a junior exploration grant system basically. So I've talked to a lot of people that are applying for it and just about everybody is getting some money from the Ontario government for that. And it's early stage stuff, but it certainly helps. And it shows that government's commitment into critical metals and especially Copper.

35:02 So we're seeing different levels. I don't think we're seeing, we're not seeing the Amazons at our stage, but we're seeing other investment levels and entities that understand what's happening, the current environment, and then how long it's going to take to get some of these things up and running. Awesome, appreciate it. Brian, we'll move a little bit east and talk about your project in Quebec. Same question, but if you want to talk about Quebec government support generally for mining, I'd love to hear that too. Quebec's best jurisdiction in the world, hands down, bar none. Sorry Barry, sorry Jeff. Things can get built, things can get partnered. Exploration where we are in the above the 55th parallel and in critical minerals.

35:56 You know, if we spend a dollar in the field, we get 45 cents back from the government next year. And that's fantastic. And to really answer the question, so no, I hadn't seen that Amazon had bought into, so what are they doing? They bought into a Rio Tinto critical minerals sleeve. Is there a purchasing the supply? Yeah, like access for the AI centers. So first of all, 5 years ago, that was unfathomable. Right? Amazon, 5 years ago, was a poster boy for, you know, green funds. And, you know, that really was another way of saying capital light businesses instead of capital intensive businesses. And now Jeff Bezos, smartest guy running a company in the world, has figured out, I need to get into this capital intensity.

36:48 Otherwise, my capital light business is going to be Impinged that's huge because what he's doing today Other people will now feel emboldened or allowed to do 2 or 3 4 years from now So you probably see a lot more of these. Jeff's right when he says, you know, neither Jeff nor I are going to get a call from from the Bezos team saying we want to own your exploration company. But that that money pushing into Rio Tinto is now going to make Rio Tinto be the one to call us and say, look, we've just essentially sold forward a pile of our supply for the next 20 years, 10 years, whatever the number is going to be. And the dirty little secret about being a mining operation is every ounce or pound you bring out of the ground, you have to replace.

37:34 Because if you don't replace, your business is shrinking. And if your business is shrinking, you have a really small stock price. So that is how that cash is going to get funded through the industry down to us. People are gonna call exactly like Jeff said, and the words are perfect. You've de-risked this enough. It's obvious that there's something here. We wanna climb on board in order to have a foot in the game when the results come out. You know, when our industry works a lot like, I'll say the biopharma industry or the drug industry, right, there's a handful of companies that are making and selling the drugs, but those companies are not necessarily good at inventing the drugs. There's 100 other smaller companies that are in the invention business.

38:22 Jeff and I were in the invention business. We're inventing deposits through science and spending. And Barry's finished his invention and he's going down to the road for cash flow. The other point I'd say is governments are one thing, but Canada, let's pick on Canada for a second. The federal government has pledged to increase defense spending. I'm told that one of the first ways they're increasing defense spending is by taking other types of spending and including it in the definition now of defense spending. I think it's the Coast Guard. Coast Guard used to be on its own. Now we're still spending the same annual budget on the Coast Guard, but we're counting it as defense spending. That shows you there's a long way to go for the federal government to catch up to its commitments.

39:09 How long will it be before the federal government realizes, hey, if we start stockpiling copper, nickel, things that an army would need. Every pound we buy, we can count as defense spending. That's gonna be huge. Yeah, it's interesting. I have a friend who's an officer in the Navy. He said This is the first time in Canada in his 15-year career that he's gotten more money than the previous year. It's like it's been less for a long time. So now there's money flowing to the fence. Interesting. So Brian, I'm going to stay on you. I've got 2 questions. The first is talking about attracting institutional capital, and the second is going to be mergers and acquisitions. But I want to get everybody in on institutional capital first. How do companies, I know Barry's going to have a slightly different answer obviously than the Explorers, but how can companies right now use financing, project de-risking, etc. To attract institutional capital to pull it to the next level? Brian, I'll start with you there, but I do want to get everybody in on this one.

40:06 So you're starting with Barry. I'm starting with you actually, Brian, if that's OK. So how do we attract institutions? Is that it? Yeah. So first of all, go back to the 20 year dearth of financings for these explorations. That had a huge knock on effect in the number of institutions that existed to fund those. I have a long-time colleague who used to run a fund at AGF, you know, the gold fund and the exploration fund. Those closed 7 years ago. And I don't think that that it ever got reopened or replaced. And then the industry kind of changed. Royalties are more the thing now than straight equity. That will probably have to change again because there's only so many projects that are royalty ready then the number of institutions has dropped, but the number of, I'll say, family offices or quote, people who have made a pile of money on other exploration stories and are recycling into next, what's next, that is coming alive in the last 2 years.

41:14 Right. You know, We have a financing underway right now. It's, I think the stock is trading at 14 and a half cents. The financing is at 12 and a half cents. And, you know, I've got a pile of orders of people coming in, but they've asked me to close it in January because the companies they bought 3 years ago all got bought out in December of 2025. So, they'll be liquid in January and they're ready to redeploy. That's where we're getting our fresh money, our hard dollars. Flow through, well again, critical minerals top up on flow through, so that's good for us. But our shareholder base is largely driven by insiders. I'm the largest shareholder. I've got 23%. Insiders total up to about 40% of the total share count still.

42:02 And so I expect we'll have institutional ownership, but the definition of institutional ownership is not the same group of people it used to be. The RBC Gold fund doesn't do anything below $200M to my understanding right now. And maybe in 3 years they will. But today, the definition of institution is not what everyone thinks it is. No, that's fair. Jeff, I'll throw it to you also in the Explorer category. Yeah, I think, you know, Brian's hit the nail on the head is that the institution as we used to know it is no longer there. And the point being, and we're seeing it in our case, that the investor, the larger scale investor is the private equity groups or the family offices and that kind of thing. And then just recently for us, And we're at a bit of a disadvantage at this stage in our evolution of the company is that our market cap is relatively small, over 5M.

43:09 So that kind of excludes Cascade from even some of the larger flow-through funds or the charity flow-through funds and that kind of thing. So we'd have a little bit of a smaller pool to go to, to get that kind of institutional investment. But I think our mandate then for us to attract that down the road is certainly to grow the company. We've got to get value there, get our share price up. One of our mandates at Cascade was try to keep the share structure tight. In our last financing, we went from less than 50M to just about 60M shares. So on the big scheme of things, we're still pretty tight.

44:00 Insider trading or insider ownership is about 20% to 25%, so not quite as good as over at Cupani. But yeah, the institution is sort of something that we're trying to achieve down the road through value creation, higher market cap, and then de-risking again some of our projects and then getting some partnerships in maybe at the joint venture stage that might attract the institutional, the larger investor at that stage. I appreciate it, Jeff. And yeah, 50, 60 million shares in the ASX, you'd be the tightest ship in town. I've never seen a show like that before. Barry, I'll throw it to you for what's the institutional support look like when you're a developer or near-term production? Well, Brian and Jeff are both right. The institutional landscape is really changing. The amount of wealth that sits inside family offices and smaller funds is pretty staggering at the moment. And it's in places that you don't necessarily see.

44:56 It's not necessarily in the New Yorks and the Londons. It's in smaller cities, mid-market cities. And you see it anecdotally as you go to conferences and kind of meet the people that are more emboldened and candidly don't have some of the jackpots that the larger institutions do have. So I think that is certainly a direction that we're taking as we look at institutions. I do think, though, for the larger institutions and certainly you think about the scale of the drawdown of funds in mining over the last 10 or 20 years is also staggering. And all of that money has gone into other sectors, which, candidly, at this point are quite heavily, fairly overvalued, you can name it. And if you look then to the other side of mining, you know, where we're at the outset and a range of commodities have some really long cycles, starting from low valuation points, I think we're gonna see some of those generalists and arguably larger institutions come back in and play.

45:53 So I think there's some real opportunities that we also have to keep an eye on the debt providers. At the end of the day, what facilitates the equity returns is that the debt providers come back in. And that is why I do speak sometimes to those floor prices. Debt providers candidly don't really care how much the equity investors make, provided they get paid back. So when those debt markets are alive, which they are now, it begins to facilitate some of those institutions coming back in. Awesome. That's helpful. In the interest of time, just a couple of questions I'd love to get to from the chat. One thing I wanted to do is ask each of you, really in simple terms, I encourage you to pitch here. I usually say, try not to be Canadian, be aggressive in your pitch. But I'm curious for each of you to just as we're looking ahead, as we talked about all today, Copper's kind of structural bull market bull market evolving this year. What's up next for your company and how are you positioning yourself for success in these metal markets?

46:49 I'll start, Jeff, we'll go with you first. All right, thanks for that. Yeah, so I think the real key point for us is that a couple of things I've already mentioned is our tight share structure, our relatively low share price, our low market cap gives us a lot of room to move. We've got 5 projects, Copper-focused projects across BC and Ontario. 2 of them are drill ready. 2 other ones are at the mid-level stage where we just need to do a little bit more work to get those drill targets ready to go. We do have 1 actually that's in BC that's more Gold-centric, but it's also got Copper and some other critical metals like Tungsten and some Antimony. So, our philosophy is focus on the Copper, focus on getting some drilling ready to go and done in 2026, get our market share and our market capitalization up through appreciation and value and try to keep dilution down. So That's kind of where our focus will be. And that's how we're going to take advantage this year.

48:05 Awesome. Appreciate it. Barry, I'll throw it to you. Well, listen, mines need to get built today. I think we're all going to enjoy this cycle, but what the world needs most at the moment, and specifically the US, is mines to be built. The Copperwood project, which is our 100% owned project, I characterize it as one of the most advanced Copper developers in the US. Geology is complete. I like the way Brian said it. Our invention is done. Across all categories, we have 3.7Bn of Copper defined at a 1.5% grade. A really great starting point. Fully permitted to build and to operate. Feasibility study complete. We've actually started our early site works, initiated detailed engineering alongside DRA, a very reputable mining firm.

48:54 And really there's true fundamental underlying value as we step towards a construction decision in 2026 and production of copper in 2029. Tailwinds are particularly strong in the US, particularly when you think about unlocking the debt component for smaller companies. So very excited about, listen, our prospects as we step into 2026 and value that we can create for our shareholders. Appreciate it. Brian, I'll throw it to you for a pitch. 2026 is going to be huge for us. We spent 10 years putting this land package together, getting control of that historical 4.4 million tons. Then we spent a year and a half, 2 years learning how Mother Nature made it. Now we're going to confirm that learning with drilling. And then it gets sexy, because the historical is in a 3km by 3km box.

49:47 We have 682km squared of exactly the same type of ultramethic rock. We locked up the entire region. There's nothing around except what we own. So if we unlock the key in 2026, then we go look everywhere else for exactly the same setups. And who knows what we're going to come out with, but it'll be more than what we've got now. That's for sure. Awesome. Appreciate it. So one question from the chat that I find interesting, I'm going to throw it to the explorers first and then I'll end it with Barry. This question is really, it's interesting. It's when you're doing, you're building your portfolio. It's like if a company takes 20 years, 15, 20 years to develop, why not invest in near-term production rather than exploration plays? So I'll throw it to the Explorers to give the case for having exploration in your portfolio.

50:35 And Barry, I'll give it to you for the case for kind of that near-term production that he's talking about. Jeff, I'll throw it to you first. Yeah, it's a good question. And I think it's all about the entry fee. And it's also about the expertise that the company has. Explorers are a different group of people and I think what drives me anyway is finding something from not necessarily nothing but something like a little clue And then you take it and you build something from that. So it's a philosophy, it's a passion and the cost of entry is certainly much, much less. You know, you can, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but usually the cost of exploration or the cost of discovery per pound of Copper is generally pretty low when you start from scratch and you do it systematically and properly rather than actually going and buying something?

51:37 And that's where we create the value in the company, is that we spend X number of dollars to produce a deposit of 500Mt or 35Mt and then we sell it to a bigger company. And that's really our exit strategy. You sell it to a bigger company for a multiple on what you've spent already. So that's the philosophy we're going after. And that's our knowledge base and had experience doing that in the past and been successful. So it's a good recipe to follow for us. Awesome. Appreciate it. Brian, good, quite a packed house today. I'll throw it to you to give the case for Explorers after Jeff. So the question is, why should I own Explorers instead of producers, dividend payers?

52:29 Well, look, I'll be frank. I own both. You've already heard I've got a big chunk of our company, but you know, I've owned Agnico Eagle for 25 years. Right. And you see a great management team can build a great company in a commodity business. I love that investment so much that when we named our company I ripped off their name. We just went to the elemental table and pulled out letters and made a word from it like Agnico did. But the answer to the question really is linear versus nonlinear. Gold prices going up helps Agnico. Gold prices going down doesn't necessarily hurt them, depends on how much. But you can't get an 8 bagger, 10 bagger, 100 bagger out of a producer because a mine, once it's producing, is a factory.

53:22 But unlike a Nike factory, you can't move it to Bangladesh for lower costs. And you can't control the pricing of the thing you sell. So you're locked into some variable box, right? Can't get out of the box. But when you look at the mining industry, the people who have made, well, the super successful investors in mining, they own a mix, but they'll tell you they've been using the dividends or the cashflow or the small gains to fund their lottery tickets in exploration. That's how you do it. That's what I'm doing. I know that that's what Barry does and Jeff does. And you have to have a mix, absolutely. I appreciate that. Barry, I'll throw it to you for the case for near-term production.

54:09 Well, listen, there's room for all of us, room for explorers, developers, and producers. Candidly, That's what makes the mining industry. But it is that leverage at the lower end of the cycle that really gives you the opportunity for the multibaggers that Brian refers to. Development though is an interesting case right now. I mean, Even in the past, call it 5 years or so, when explorers through the drill bit have continued to have success and let's say joy from a capital markets perspective, developers haven't really. And when you look at the development universe, like the scale of the price to net asset value discounts, again, are quite staggering, particularly as you look at the movement in copper prices. When you also couple that with a capacity for us, certainly in the near term, to get to cash flows and, you know, When we get into cash flow multiples, the Copperwood project, as an example, can flow US$300M a year at a US$6 Copper price.

55:10 The type of valuations that you can get yourself to are pretty staggering. I think that that underinvestment has put us in a place to really move through 2026 and enjoy the tailwinds. You know, when I think about it, mining and certainly development, it's no longer a bad word anymore from an investment perspective. I think capital is going to flow in. Awesome. Now, the audience doesn't know this, but 1 moment before the event started, I said the one thing I'm not going to do is ask you guys for price targets. And yet somebody in the chat, first thing out of the gate as soon as the event started, said, what's everybody's price target for this year? So I'm going to put you in the exact position I promised I wouldn't. I apologize, gentlemen. Jeff, feel free to answer. It's the best of your ability or not at all to your preference, but looking for your price target for this year. Okay. I love this because, like I said before, the higher the number, the frothier everybody thinks about the market. I'm going to shoot high. I'm going to say $5,500 for gold in 2026.

56:10 And I'm going to say $8 a pound for copper. Bold. Love it. Thank you. Barry, I'll shoot it to you. You know, one interesting thing that I read when I was preparing for today is that there is some inelasticity when you think about copper. You know, 1 stat I saw was that copper actually makes up a relatively small amount of the total CapEx needed, for instance, to bring AI into fruition. It's less than a percent. But it's critical, right? So you can't build without it. But there's going to be an elasticity as a result from a pricing perspective. And just given the ongoing fundamentals, I certainly see beyond $6. I don't like to prognosticate on that, but certainly $7 would be my target for this year. Appreciate it, Brian. I'll give you the last word for a price target.

56:57 Isn't it fun? I know, right? Okay. I'm sure this math doesn't work out, but I'll try it. It'll go up and down, but I'll say 550 for a low, 850 for a high, and an average of 690. Perfect. Gentlemen, thank you so much for playing ball with my crystal ball gazing. I appreciate it. But Barry, Jeff, Ryan, this was a great conversation. I really appreciate all of your insights. I think it was great. I know the room was pretty packed today. I appreciate everybody writing in. A couple of questions I didn't get to, but I'm going to make sure the teams that are relevant get those. But thanks, everybody, for joining me. I hope everybody has a wonderful end of their Thursday.