The Next Wave of Critical Minerals

0:03 Hello everyone and thank you for joining us today for this panel discussion on the next wave of critical minerals. With recent developments dominating the headlines, the timing of this conversation couldn't be more relevant. But we'll dive into that shortly. First, let me introduce our panelists. We have Ali Haji from American Tungsten, Mike Garbutt from Clean Air Meadows, Stephen Rentschler from Nevada Lithium, and Kit Mars from Alaska Silver. Thank you for joining us. Before we begin, a few quick housekeeping notes. We encourage you to submit questions throughout our discussion using the chat feature in the bottom right hand of your screen. The session is being recorded and will be available shortly after we conclude. So gentlemen, thank you for being here today. To kick things off, I'd like to ask each of you to briefly introduce the critical minerals your company is developing and explain why these specific minerals are strategically important in today's landscape. And I'm just gonna go from left to right of my screen. So Ali, we'll start with you.

0:58 Thanks Kyle and thanks for everybody that's dialed in. American tungsten is focused on tungsten. It's one of the most strategically important and misunderstood critical metals. It's used in aviation, in armor piercing, armor aerospace, semiconductors as a recent sort of development in AI. Advanced manufacturing, but importantly, it has a very high melting point at 3400 Celsius. It is also the hardest metal on the periodic table. In fact, only diamond is harder than tungsten. We have not had any production in North

1:28 America for the last decade, And it is our focus and our mission at American Tungsten to bring production back online shortly. Great, excellent, nice and concise. Mike, what critical minerals are you exposed to? So at Thunder Bay North Project, we have 6 payable metals, but 4 of them are critical, and those being Platinum, Palladium, Copper and Nickel. Platinum, Palladium and Copper make up 90% of the value of our asset. I won't get into Copper. Copper is well understood and the big driver is global electrification. And so There's long-term

2:04 demand and strong fundamentals for Copper. For Platinum, and Palladium has pulled into this, It's a precious metal. Sometimes it behaves, but they got good industrial use. The key part with Platinum and Palladium is a very small market. Platinum is about an 8Moz market and there's an 800,000oz deficit already. Its primary uses, as people know, they're noble metals. They're used as catalysts. 70-80% of the use is in auto industry and catalytic converter. But the big thing is they also have use in hybrids and plug-in hybrids. In fact, there's higher loadings of platinum-palladium in hybrids than there are in the combustion engine. So, big use in the auto industry, but also used industrially because of their catalytic properties.

2:57 And then the emerging hydrogen economy is a big driver for future platinum use. Definitely. Steve, tell us about the Bonny Clare project. I'm with Nevada Lithium Resources. The Bonny Clare project has a PEA that's based upon 2 critical minerals, lithium and boron. The revenue split there is about 80% lithium, 20% boron at the assumed modeling prices that we used. Very, very large resource, very large lithium resource there. Second largest in North America. The use is lithium well-documented. It's really the main uses with electric vehicles, the batteries, the dominant lithium iron phosphate batteries look to be the core going forward.

3:44 But of course there's stationary storage, right? Grid backup, all of these things. And I would say that what's evolving with artificial intelligence and the need for backups and power smoothing, it's a piece of the lithium demand pie that is really, I don't think, being properly taken into account. Boron has got many different uses, everything from agriculture to ceramics, to hardening properties. But the other thing that we were finding very recently at Bonny Clair is other critical minerals that look to be basically in the same target mineralization that we would be taking out according to our mind plane that described in the PEA. And these include minerals such as cesium and rubidium, which have uses because of their atomic properties,

4:33 optical properties. And then even more recently, we found that in fact, we have sort of this suite of rare earth oxides, they call them TREO, so light and heavy. You know, not these are not tremendously high PPMs, but they are there in the you know In the overall dirt that we would be taking out and we would be taking a significant tonnage about 3 million tons out and so all of this would build up to for a potential supply chain of what I'm starting to think of as possibly being a producer of a suite of critical minerals. And one of the things that I like to tell people about, in particular, the rare earths, because I've been around the block for a while, is that, you know, if you go back 15 years ago, People didn't know what they would be able to do with a lot of these newer rare earths. And they develop products based on the characteristics. There have always been limitations because of supply.

5:25 So we're all familiar with magnets that are in the windmills and things like that. But I am very, very confident that there will be additional products that will be developed as basically we unleash a larger supply chain of all of this type of mineralization going forward. Thank you for that, Steve. And last but not least, Kit, tell us about Alaska Silver. Sure, thank you. So Alaska Silver has a suite of critical minerals. Our Waterpump Creek deposit is principally silver, zinc, and lead. But most importantly, in the zinc concentrate is quite rich in gallium. So the 3 main critical minerals that we have would be probably lead by gallium, which is number 1 on the list. Zinc is becoming more and more important. And then Of course, silver was added not too long ago, has quite a few uses. So gallium is very interesting. It's not really an economic driver in our deposit or really in any deposit in North America.

6:29 It's a byproduct. So it's a function of what else you produce. And so we're very fortunate that we have one of the highest grade silver deposits in North America. So silver is the, and zinc are the 2 dominant economic drivers. And then the gallium will come along with that. So gallium is very important. We can get into all the uses of later, but really the 2 main drivers there are the military.

6:56 It's used in what are called active radar displays, which are critical to the F-35 fighter, which, of course, is the frontline fighter for the U.S. Air Force and all guided missile systems. And then the other big importance of gallium is in chip manufacturing, and I'll touch on that in a few minutes, but the movement of chip manufacturing to the US and especially in Arizona, I'm talking to you this morning from Tucson, the use of gallium is gonna increase about 5 times in the next 5 or 6 years, and mainly due to chip manufacturing. I'll stay with you, Kit, and you touched on my next question briefly here, but now the audience knows what you're all exposed to in terms of critical minerals. Building on the previous question, What are the key demand drivers for these minerals over the next 5 to 10 years? How do current market trends and long-term forecast shape the outlook?

7:54 Well, I'll stick with what Gali mentioned. It's really a critical component in chip manufacturing. I think there's 3 or 4 large chip manufacturing plants under construction now in Phoenix, led by Taiwan Semiconductor. They receive, I think, $2 billion from the U.S. Government for that plant, one single plant. And so that is going to increase the demand about 5 times when by 2031, 2032. And then I mentioned the military use for gallium. So the gallium is, you know, the price is, it's almost irrelevant to the Department of Defense. McDonnell Douglas is the main purchaser of gallium.

8:40 And it's, the cost is inconsequential when you come to the need and the use in a set of active radar displays. And I missed on the first question really to talk about the, in all these critical minerals, the export, first export controls and export bans from the Chinese government. They're really, really expert at playing this game. Go back 10, 15 years at Mountain Pass when it was producing rare earths. Chinese drove the prices down and it went out of business. Now it's back in again. So they change.

9:18 Gallium is a good example. For a while it was an export control, then export ban, then negotiations with the current administration. Suddenly that ban was dropped for 12 months and then it's going to come back again. So they play a lot of games with the market. They still control it. For sure. Steve, demand drivers for the next 5 to 10 years? Sure. And I'll concentrate on lithium here is it's really, you know, as I said, 80% of the revenue, the revenue that contributes to the total value in our PEA. You know, 4 or 5 years ago, as the EVs were just starting to basically get going, you know, nobody really believed them. And I would see, you know, looking at demand profile that was starting to say 400,000 tons of lithium carbon equivalent. That's the way we sort of talk about it in the lithium industry.

10:11 You know, looking out to 2030,

10:13 which was sort of the target thing, the end of the decade, you know, somewhere between 1 and a half to 3 million tons needed, which is a compounded growth rate needed at, say, 20 plus percent every year. Building an industry out, a commodity industry out at that rate has never been done before. And today, 4 years later, we're sitting somewhere around 1 and a half million tons a year of production slash demand. But the thing is, is now what would look like sort of The high side outliers for demands seem to be mainstream. Say 3, 3 and a half million tons is what I see with a lot of the banks. And a lot of the low hanging fruit has basically been picked. You can easily double off of a smaller base, but In particular, in a world of bifurcation, where you have China versus non-China, what's allowed, what's not. And of course, we'll be talking about the recent news of the US government establishing certain vehicles to protect prices.

11:13 This is far more complex than anything that's ever been faced before. On top of that with the EVs, which the Chinese clearly have illustrated that they're capable of building and bringing this technology. In my opinion, the US consumers want it, but to protect the auto industry in the US, you're not going to be able to get it until there are JVs in place with US auto manufacturers. Well, the Chinese continue to basically dominate that. But what we have is this whole AI craze that's going on globally. And the power requirements, not only for, you know, just being able to get the power, which I would argue are suspect, but to back it up, to condition the power, to make sure that when these data centers go into learning modes, et cetera, all requires lithium. So from my perspective, that the high side of the lithium demand profile is there. Now you've knocked out essentially a lot of the world, all of the Chinese processing, which is 80% in lithium's case, what goes on, or primary resources.

12:12 And the US currently produces 5,000 tons a year at a little place not far from Bonnie Clare in Nevada called Silver Peak. There is a whole set of big clayed coasted deposits that is going to have to come on stream

12:27 in Nevada. You see Thacker Pass that is, I would assume, the poster child that most of us know about going forward has US essentially backing through loan guarantees and direct investment. Now, if you believe in EVs, if you believe in battery storage, all of this And in our particular case, just everything else from my perspective is gravy. But if you believe in the dominance of those stories and also the strength, the persistence going forward, then you will have to have things like Bonnie Clare built. Prices for lithium have undergone a stealth rally since the end of last summer when the Chinese basically shut down one of their mines. I think Kim was just mentioning that, you know, we know that games are always being played. The U.S. Government has acknowledged that with what they've just come out with in terms of getting these vehicles that are going to be built to basically protect domestic mining.

13:22 All of this is a way again of saying that the price of lithium that is needed to bring these on, to bring these new projects on is much higher than what the spot price is, even though the spot price has had a tremendous recent surge. I believe it's going to be much higher than any sort of a target floor the US government can try to put in place. But for all critical minerals, these are great first steps. And I think at this point in time, I'll let other people talk. But for lithium, it is a very rosy outlook.

13:52 No, appreciate the thorough overview for lithium. Mike, tell us about platinum, palladium, copper. So I'll, I'll Stick to platinum. So from a demand perspective, I did mention about, a large portion of demand is driven by auto sales. Now, I'm not even sure we were back to pre-pandemic levels in terms of auto sales globally, and that includes hybrid, plug-in hybrids, and the internal combustion engine. But nonetheless, tariffs certainly don't help with that. But outside of that story around auto sales, which certainly are going to come around and anything that strengthens the economies will improve auto sales.

14:38 But a large demand for jewelry in Asian markets, industrial use in chemical production as catalytic properties, tremendous. And then the growing piece of that is the hydrogen economy, both the production and the turning of hydrogen into useful energy. Platinum is a key component to that. So that's the industrial, the practical use side of Platinum. The investment side of Platinum is what's really taken off and what's driven the price. So It is increasingly seen as a lower cost store value to gold.

15:21 And recently exchanges in China have opened up physical trading for Platinum and Palladium and some of these other precious metals, which has driven the price up, but also increased volatility. But we've been talking for the last couple of years about the fundamentals of the platinum are fantastic. And finally, we're starting to see some of that come to fruition. And Ali, what are the key demand drivers for Tungsten in the next 5 to 10 years? Well, the state that we find the world in today is of course a little weary at best. I think the geopolitical situation that we're seeing makes it look like we're on the brink of conflict. And tungsten's use primarily in the defense sector, allowing militaries around the world to have military dominance or superiority, makes it an extremely critical metal.

16:13 The geopolitics are helping to drive the price. It was about 350 in May last year. Today's price is about 1385. So we've had a threefold increase in the price of tungsten over the last year or so. And that does continue to trend upwards given what we're seeing in Rotterdam and what we're seeing in China. The spread between the 2 prices is quite small. And that usually leads to us believing that the scrap market is non-existent. Tungsten by its characteristics, being the hardest metal on the periodic table and a very high melting point, is not like an aluminum can or copper wire that tends to be recycled quite often. And as you start to build these militaries that have

16:53 the potential to stand off against each other, be cold or otherwise, you will require additional tungsten. So we're seeing a lot of demand being driven from the militaries of the, sort of, call it every nation on the planet, quite frankly. And with NATO's mandate to spend up to 5% of their GDP on defense, you can imagine that is driving demand equally. To touch on some of the points in terms of energy storage and of course the data centers that we're seeing in the AI boom, tungsten is a vital ingredient in those data centers, in those microchips. In everything that we're seeing around the world with respect to growing our economies be it in developing nations or developed, a building cannot be built without a tungsten carbide bit. You cannot have mining that we're all talking about here today without those tungsten carbide bits that drill our cores for us to go after these resources.

17:45 Now you have the developing nations of the world with double digit GDPs growing their infrastructure, looking to have their own militaries as well. So the demand for tungsten is anticipated to more than double over the next 5 years. And I suspect if we remain on this track of a very uncertain political environment, it would do more than double. Thank you. I want to make it a little more dynamic now, and we won't just be going back and forth with the same questions here, so feel free to chime in where you can. I will stick with you, Ali, though, because if I'm not mistaken, your company is the closest to production on the panel here today. But how are geopolitical factors such as China's dominance in processing and export controls influencing supply chain vulnerabilities?

18:31 And what strategies are North American producers adopting to build a more secure domestic alternative in the US and Canada? Similar to the rare earths that we spoke about with Kit, in 2015 China decided to flood the market with cheap tungsten. As a result, North America, which was one of the largest producers and processors of tungsten in the world, mothballed all of their operations, including Canton, which was the largest producer in North America. Since then, about 3 years ago, China decided that they would issue export restriction certificates to individuals that were selling tungsten. So if you were selling it and it ended up in anything that would harm China, they had the ability to restrict your sale. As of January this year, they've now cancelled agreements with various nations that were deemed friendly in the past, so they're no longer supply. They're simply stockpiling. And yes, they have the ability to move the price in any direction at their whim, as they have done over the last few decades, playing the long chess game, as I like to call it. But where we found ourselves today is, you know, we've got the resources, we've got an administration that's highly supportive of us restarting these old brownfield assets as well as discovering new

19:40 assets within North America. We have government incentives being deployed to ensure the production can come online, and we'll talk about the vault and all the other sort of government agency items in a second here. But I think importantly, what can be done to bring supply back online is twofold. 1, we need to look at things that are brownfield, do not require dewatering, can be easily permitted on private patented land, which is what we have at American Tungsten. But start small. There are a number of projects out there that have a $2 billion capex, and that is ultimately 7 years away from production. We have a 25 and a half million US capex on our equipment, and we plan to produce by the end of this year. Now, 1 might say, you know, with 25 million capex, what are you going to do in terms of making an impact to that demand in North America?

20:28 The advantage we have with American tungsten is we have 0.63% tungsten, which is extremely high grade, roughly 3 times higher than the average mine that is operating globally. We've got 2 ounce per tonne silver to hedge us against any movement in price. And then you've got this narrative and this infrastructure that's being built around the processing of tungsten. So you have GTP with their plant in Tawanda, Pennsylvania. You've got Kenna Metal in Alabama, and you've got the British Columbia government touting the idea of a potential ABT in Surrey. So we're reaching a position where we're saying we're gonna manage our own market, we're gonna have our own buyers, our own suppliers and set our own price, which I think we're going to get to later in the conversation. But my advice to get there and bring production online quickly, start small, be nimble and impactful.

21:14 Well, as somebody with a 2 billion dollar CapEx project, I just put a little caveat in here, is that obviously it all depends on the market that you're in. But from the perspective of what North American producers can do, I think that you have to take into account now that you need an integrated, basically fully vertically integrated scaled approach to this, meaning the closer that you can take your primary, you know, form, your concentrate, or your ore, or whatever, to a final product is better, right? Because you're not gonna have access to 80% of the world's processing capabilities, which is virtually the number for almost all these materials, because they're in China, right? Or with basically with entities that are associated with China. And you're talking about a world in which you're, it's clearly divided between US and China, just to make it, see it be it simple, with all the associated distortions, price and everything else, let alone can you, will you be able to obtain some of these elements from 1 hemisphere and take them to the other because of all the restrictions that are put in place.

22:21 So to me, if you have a small brownfields project, that's great. It's going to take all of these things being brought into production to make a dent in the supply chains, which simply don't exist right now in terms of emanating from the US from friendly countries. But the dollars in all are gonna be big. From my perspective, having been around natural resources for 30 years, a $2 billion CapEx project is certainly not onerous. Go into the middle

22:47 of the Gulf of Mexico slash America and put a $10 billion deep water well, then I get it. That's a lot of that's a lot of lifting that only a few companies can deal with. But there are a lot of companies with multi-billion dollar CapEx projects that will take 6 or 7 years to get here, but there's no way around that. We could try to fill in incrementally with little bits, recycling, brownfields, etc. Some of these are very small industries in terms of the rare earths. Again, we would probably have more use for them if we actually had more product. So it's sort of a dog chasing its tail. But in the particular case of lithium, these need to be built and it will take the amount of time to do it. Prices will be distorted, just sort of like where you see in silver you've got a comex price. You've got a price in China That's 40% higher. You're gonna have the same sort of thing here but that's what's gonna that's what the world that we're gonna live in and As long as people understand that going forward because there will be opportunity because of that valuations watch obviously fluctuate, etc Capital fund, you know the ability to finance can be more difficult because of that. However, as we'll talk about in a sector with a vault and all these things, these are the kinds of things that are now finally being recognized as problematic to bringing these types of production streams online in the US. So I just want to throw that in there.

24:09 And Paolo just going to the I agree with both of those concepts are water pump Creek deposit is a little different because it will be an underground operation. It's very high grade so you don't have such a large capital outlay to put in production. It'll probably be in the 200,250 million range. But it's also you can start smaller and gradually build up the production. We'll be looking at that in the next few months. Hopefully haven't started the process, so not ready to announce a PEA on Waterfront Creek, but we are certainly looking at the economics that are driving that. The gallium, as I said before, is really not a huge economic component, but it's very important from a permitting standpoint.

25:00 And permitting has been the bugaboo of mining for the last 50 years. And that is really what has been changing in the last year, year and a half. So we see a lot of support from the federal government towards permitting. We're quite unique that our deposit and proposed road is all on state of Alaska land. So very few federal permits that we have to get, but the need of the government to be involved in things like the infrastructure for gallium production is critical. There is no known gallium processing knowledge in North America. Right now we've done a lot of research on it. There's one of the major Japanese zinc refiners that does have a process.

25:48 And there's recently been an announcement that US government is bringing Korea zinc into the US to possibly upgrade the NYSTAR plan in Tennessee. But That will still

26:01 take years to do. So in the meantime, we want to move ahead with putting the water pump creek in production driven by the silver and then the zinc. I do want to mention it's a little quite a ways from the critical, from a number of the critical minerals we're talking about here, but the zinc prices have been very strong lately, and that's really interesting. It's part of the London Metal Exchange, a base metal basket of commodities. And it really shows the sea change in attitude towards investing in commodities that didn't occur a couple of years ago. And that is now starting to be a driver, whether it's in London, New York, Shanghai, elsewhere.

26:48 There's been a lot of talk on this discussion about the smaller markets with manipulation in price. And maybe I'll bring you into the conversation here, Mike. But yesterday, on February 4, for the listeners that aren't aware, Vice President JD Vance proposed a preferential trade block for critical minerals with allies, including coordinated reference prices, price floors, and forced via adjustable tariffs to prevent cheap imports from distorting markets, aimed squarely at countering China's leverage. What are your thoughts on this approach and how might it affect North American producers, investment or supply chains? So price floors in itself, it's not necessarily a bad thing. Certainly I'll talk from our perspective with volatile prices, it's lowering risk to building capacity.

27:40 And if you look at the challenges, and I'll speak to North America overall and maybe switch to copper for a bit, but, you know, all right, I'll talk to platinum and palladium. So having these open trading opportunities with allies is great. It's reversing a bit of the de-globalization that we've been experiencing. It's actually floating the metals markets for the most part. But if you look at North America, and I'll talk to Platinum Palladium, roughly 85% of The US and Canada combined has an 85% import reliance on Platinum and Palladium.

28:26 I think 80% Platinum and Palladium comes from South Africa and Russia. Most of it's from South Africa. I'm not entirely sure they're going to be included in the mix here, but nonetheless, I think the idea of having those is great. But the reality is we do have to do things, and we're going to talk about vault to actually build capacity in North America. And on the copper side, the last copper smelter built in the US was 1995. In Canada, it's 1927. Refinery, I don't know the number, but I think there's only a handful left. We have this virtual signaling and trying to create trade with partners. The real solution is to put money into it, get things built, focus on North American supply.

29:23 We're talking about price floors. That's a great thing. That'll allow for some assurance to investors to invest in projects because we're getting our lunch eaten right now

29:39 by China on artificially lowering the price. The only other option with building, there's not a whole lot of assets in North America available to be built. Stillwater Montana is kind of the big area, but Northwestern Ontario where I am up in Yukon. But the only other option is to figure out recycling. There is an opportunity to recycle platinum palladium. It's at a 15-year low and it costs a lot of money to get that going. Before anyone else jumps in, if they want to have a commentary on JD Vance's proposal here or anything, just 1 second. There's an individual in the chat and we have all been mentioning this vault program. And some people in the audience might not know what this vault program is. So if one of you could please explain to the audience, what is this vault program? And Scott's specific question in the chat, Can we get an update on how you anticipate your company's participation in the vault program?

30:37 So take it away, anyone, whoever. I would look at the vault just as simply it's a stockpiling. The government's going to purchase critical minerals, don't know which ones, what quantities or whatever, and essentially, you know, put together a strategic reserve, just like sort of think of it like the SPR, the strategic petroleum reserve, but for critical minerals. I think they've allocated 12 billion dollars for it And it's part of sort of the overall philosophy of how now this new administration is trying to attack the supply chain deficiencies. Certainly, I think we'll all go back and try to say, hey, we want to sell into the, you know, just into the into the vault. But to me right now, it's very, very opaque as to exactly what it means. But if I could just back up for a second and just say is I don't think you can overstate the importance of what has been coming out of the U.S. Government over the course of the past 2 or 3 days with the vault and also this ministerial thing that they put together.

31:45 This is Secretary of State J.D. Vance was there. I think they had 50 countries there, in which they're essentially saying we're going to have a non-China block, right, of trading partners for all critical minerals. I mean, when you listen to this, and I just want to take a second, this is literally the remarks coming from JD Vance, right? We see telltale signs of a market distorted beyond recognition, 1 that punishes strategic investment, punishes diversification, punishes long-term planning. They clearly recognize what the problem is. The guy who's going to run, like as a special assistant to the director of whatever, natural resources, says, I believe over the next few years, the US government, between debt and equity, will deploy hundreds of billions of capital into the mining sector, between debt and equity, right, to get projects going. We're frankly doing things the government's never done before, etc., etc.

32:38 These are the kinds of things we've been sort of watching as an evolution to this tit for tat that's been going on between China and the U.S., let's just say the semiconductor wars and the export controls on certain critical minerals, the gallium, the geranium and everything. I've been arguing in the particular case of lithium that in the end, we might see the Chinese decide that they're going to put controls on lithium, right? What better way they control that? But what's really happening is now, right. I think you've gotten there by the same place in this in the same to the same place in a different way for lithium. Clearly, the Chinese and I would argue you see this across all the critical minerals Because you look at the prices that are going up, they're buying everything that they can to use for their own domestic manufacturing. De facto, the US are gonna have what's left over in the rest of the world, or they're going to have to develop themselves.

33:29 The question is How quickly can all of this get done? If you look at what the Biden administration was trying to do, I talked many times about you looked at the opportunities for funding. If you had a battery plant, you had a recycling plant, it was great, but there was essentially nothing for mining. If you were near to production like Thacker Pass or Ioneers, Rhyolite Ridge, you know, something like that, you get construction guarantees, loan guarantees from the US. Totally, totally necessary and important. But what's really necessary now, And what I hope that we're going to see is a spreading of investment dollars and participation, all of these things, all the way down to the pipeline, to explorers, to advanced developers, people who are near-term production, because that's how this whole thing needs to be created, right?

34:17 The risk profile in natural resource development is not linear. Yes, you technically de-risk over time, but the reality is it's more like an S-curve, right? It's basically the odds of probability of success. They're very, very, very, very low. Then all of a sudden, right before commercial production, they're very, very high because anything can happen. This is the most complex stuff, I would argue, on Earth. So this is very, very good news for the entire sector. And we're just getting We're just getting going. So, you know, Nevada Lithium, we're obviously going to try and find the people that we need to talk to, try to get ourselves participating in all these types of things. Hey, can we sell to the critical minerals vault? You know, we're finally seeing things in terms of grants that look like there's something that we could apply for that would make sense. And we are doing so. It's so it's a whole new world out there is what I would try to tell investors. So and it's a it's a good shining light. You're not looking at a train coming your way. You're looking at a good light at the end of the tunnel in my opinion.

35:18 Just to touch on that, Stephen, I think great summary. With respect to the vault, I think the biggest benefit that we're seeing here is these critical metals are no longer being looked at as commodities. They're strategic assets. So they're stockpiling these strategic assets, not commodities, that they will then ultimately use to ensure that they have, or we have, what we need to be successful. So it is a bit of a shift in strategy. I think the government's doing a lot of things to ensure that we're able to come online, irrespective of CapEx or production profile and what stage we are at in terms of our mining journey. But importantly, you know, we've had these conversations. American Tungsten's been in DC. We've talked to the congressmen, we've talked to the senators, we've talked to DPA, DOW, DOE and the various different agencies. We've also received an Ex-Im letter of interest for 25 and a half million US, which is ultimately our CapEx. So the government is putting their money where their mouth is. They are moving fast.

36:11 They've talked about fast tracking permitting with the Speed Act in Idaho, fast 41 in terms of federal permitting. So to echo what Stephen said, and I think it is very evident that the administration and those that are behind or hold the role of ensuring that these critical metals have a home in the U.S. Government and a stockpile has been created, are certainly acting in the best interest of all of us as a mining industry, not just a particular critical metal or otherwise. If anyone else has any commentary about this week's news, feel free to jump in. But there's also news on January 30th, President Trump nominated Kevin Walsh as Fed Chair, with views often described as hawkish on inflation and Fed balance sheet management.

37:05 We are all publicly traded companies here. So what potential impacts do you anticipate from his perspective leadership and how might these influence demand for critical minerals, if at all? From my perspective, I'll just start. I think it's, you just obviously, when you're talking about an economy in which there's a more dubious stance on interest rates, it obviously acts as something that lifts everybody, right? The tide lifts all boats. From the perspective, I would say in our particular case as a development company, you know, the reality is I think other things are more important than that are going on, such as the things that we just discussed. Financing, in my opinion, continues to be the most critical thing for any company.

37:55 Some of my colleagues who are really invested and have bitten the bullet in precious metals for a long time, they're finally getting their day in the sun. I would argue copper, people don't realize just how much of a bullish run copper has been on, but they're also getting some love. Others of us as, you know, lithium, which saw a price break 3 and a half years ago, that kind of a thing. And even though, as I mentioned before, we've had a bounce off the bottom of well over 100% and up over 20% this year so far, the love hasn't spread as far. I think that obviously in a lower interest rate environment, just in general, that will help for that love to spread to it. But one of my colleagues here earlier mentioned that starting to see, I think, more interest in general in commodity investing, certainly than what I've seen in a very long time. And I think that obviously all of this, that what we're talking about, the critical minerals, the spotlight that comes to us, is it's as important as the actual, let's just say investment metrics that are associated with the price of lithium going from $10,000 a ton to $25,000 a ton, right? Those of us who can say we're involved with critical minerals It brings a gravitas because there is sort of an unquantifiable Impact from this How much does the US government or governments aligned with the US, how much is the impact? What will they do to try to help us come to production? Permitting,

39:27 research grant, whatever the deal is, it's a lot more that's available now. And I just think that the overall environment is much, much healthier than it has been in a very long time. Yeah, the interest rate component is really what the Federal Reserve has got responsibility for. So I think that lower interest rates, obviously, as Stephen just said, will really help financing of projects. Ultimately, we'll be needing to build a 28-mile road to the Yukon River, which we've already done the engineering on and starting to look at the permitting, that is a capital expenditure that needs to get financed. Ultimately, it would be some kind of toll road similar to the very successful one that is tech has with the Red Dog deposit in far northern Alaska.

40:16 It's been paid off about 3 times through a toll mechanism. But so financing is probably the key. I don't think the Fed will really get involved directly in any critical minerals projects. That's really the, going back to the Department of Defense is probably the place that will really land and where all the effort and financing will come from. So it'd be nice to see some lower interest rates on the horizon, but then the US debt is really a big overhang, and that is what's been driving the investment side of the gold and silver market over the last year. And that's not going to change anytime soon, so I think that's going to be one of the key drivers is the US.

41:04 Once we crossed that mark, which was I think just a few months ago where interest payments exceed the defense spending, that's really a watershed event in our history. We have about 20 minutes here and I composed a question for each specific company. I just want to address them and as well as some that came in upon registration. I'm going to start with Mike here from Clean Air. With the Thunder Bay North projects, recent PEA highlighted strong PGMs, copper and nickel for clean energy and emission reductions. What are the key upcoming technical permitting and development milestones that potential investors could be aware of or should be aware of? Our PEA was focused on a toll milling option for our asset.

41:57 We are in the vicinity of an underutilized processing facility and so That seemed to make the most sense for 2026. We are going to take a twin-pronged approach. We're going to do a little more work on metallurgy, proving up the toll milling opportunity, but we also are going to work towards a technical study on a standalone mill. In the region we operate in, there are a lot of perspective PGE assets that would fit nicely into more of a regional producer, regional processor. So we are going, that's a big part for us. In terms of permitting, we had applied for advanced exploration permits.

42:43 So we need to do a bit of work and get our closure plan out and get the permit in hand. And what that'll allow us to do is drive a ramp. So it's a fairly short ramp to access our deposit within about 4 months here at the top of the deposit. So it'll have a permit for a ramp and allow us to take a bulk sample. So that would be the number 2 item. But third on a project development standpoint is we're working hard with our local First Nation communities regarding potential participation. But what that does, particularly what they're bringing to the table is a lot of know-how, particularly around land access permitting, sustainability. So developing this asset in a sustainable way with the First Nation partners as actual partners on our project.

43:36 If I had to put it in 2 or 3 prongs, those are the priorities for this year. For American Tungsten, most of the questions are in regards to your uplist. The questions I have are regarding timelines. How has recent underground progress at the IMA mine in Idaho positioned the company to advance supply chain security goals? And what's the updated timeline toward production? And then feel free to address everyone's question if you're on schedule for the uplist in this month. Absolutely, thank you. So, you know, it's been a busy sort of 8 months or so. We've completed our first financing in July, our second in October, and come December, we had and still do 30 people on site working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

44:22 So there is a lot of activity on site. The rehab on all the portals has been completed. We've got some land cleared for additional accommodation for our staff that are working there today. We've also got 5 drilling stations with 2 rigs turning currently as we speak. So we started our drilling program in December. We've done just about 4,000 feet now and the assay results from those holes will come out in the following week or 2. We should expect them back here immediately. One of the advantages of course is that we're drilling underground and most of the other people that are at higher elevations or in colder climate cannot drill outside so we can continue to drill year-round. Assays to follow, In terms of our plan to be the first producer of tungsten in North America, that's very much on track. So our first product sale will happen this year.

45:09 We have 3 off-takers defined. We've met with government officials in Boise, in Idaho as well as in DC to assist with any permitting that would be required, including government grants and incentives that would offset our taxes, but also help us invest in the infrastructure necessary to bring up the community of Patterson, Idaho. Last but not least, I should say in terms of our uplist strategy, again, very much on track. So the TSX will happen in February and the expectation for us to jump onto a US exchange is slated for May this year. Excellent, thank you so much. Steve, for Bonny Clare's large scale US lithium clay deposit and emerging rare earth potential, making a standout for domestic supply chains. How do these attribute boost its overall value and what are the main next steps for Invence and Bonnie Clare?

46:00 Okay, so Bonnie Clare, for those of you who aren't familiar, right? Very large lithium boron project in Nevada, right? Best mining jurisdiction perennially in the world. We just completed a PEA about 6 months ago. Again, $2 billion CapEx, but net present value $24,000 lithium, which is essentially where it is now of almost $7 billion. So you always want to look at these things comparatively, which your NPV is to your CapEx. A very large project, 60-year mine life, over 60,000 tons of lithium carbonate coming out a year, 125,000 plus tons of boric acid a year. And we've only explored a very small portion of the overall land package, which is bigger than the size of Manhattan Island.

46:47 There is no value attributed currently to other critical minerals other than lithium boron in our project. This is one of the interesting things. And I've always talked about optionality with our investors. Cesium and rubidium, 2 other critical minerals, which we first identified at Bonny Clare. It's interesting because we found them in the Coral Assays, but we've also found them in what's called the Pregnant Leach Solution. The way to think about our project is when you bring the material up, you're going to process it by basically hitting it with sulfuric acid. And that's how a lot of these clay projects are going to be processed going forward. And you create essentially a solution that has, in our case, the lithium, the boron, and a lot of other stuff in there. And part of the other stuff that's in there is cesium rubidium, which means that those elements have survived the initial acid bath, which means when you talk about total recovery, you're much farther along the way than saying, hey, we know that we have the minerals, right? So we know that we have them at the back end of the process. We don't know the economics.

47:53 We're starting to determine that right now by basically doing some ion exchange work, things like that, in which we can get a recovery factor. So that's very, very interesting and exciting for us. But as of yet, there's no value at all attributed to Bonnie and Claire because of that. With the rare earth oxides, we also know that they were present in our drill assays. And frankly, it was a bit of a surprise. We found them in the clay stones, which is how you often hear these projects in Nevada Defined as you know sediments or clay stones so we found all of these rare earth oxides in the same stratum as What our lithium and boron is And the way you should think about Bonnie Clare is this is a huge blanket. It's not thin. It's literally hundreds of meters thick of very, very high grade lithium. Frankly, we have the highest grade in all of Nevada. I'm willing to go to the mat with anybody on that. And boron and everything works together. That's why our resource is so large, tonnage, but still at a very high grades.

48:54 And that's where the REEEs are. And we're just starting to do work to see how we can separate them. Again, no value at all. Plus there are other critical minerals like potassium that we haven't really even started looking at. I think that you're going to see that we're not the only project with this kind of sort of profile going forward. A number of these minerals occur in clusters. You don't necessarily go looking for them at the beginning. In our particular case, we didn't look, we weren't looking for boron. We were looking for lithium. We kept drilling deeper. We found higher grade lithium. We found boron associated with it. One thing led to another, to another. You know, what will we be doing going forward? Right now, we're basically looking to see is what is the proper course of action, the next steps in the context of this newer information. We will continue to look at metallurgy that will include the cesium, the rubidium, all of the rare earth, other rare earth oxides to see potentially how they could fit in. Could they be shipped off to other places? Could we develop circuit circuits of our own that basically are plugged or played all of that kind of stuff? Our mining method is something called borehole mining. It is something that's not been used in Nevada for lithium before. Cameco is the poster child for using this, in which we essentially put a drill string down and we rotate it with high pressure water. And because we basically got clay down there, it turns to mud. It already is mud. We pump it to the surface and we process it.

50:18 We're now evaluating third-party independent evaluations of what we already know. We think we know, I should say, from the PEA. And looking to see are there adjustments that may be needed for that. We don't know right now, but we're looking to get the outcome of that. And then we'll put this all together in terms of a work program, which would still need more drilling. We have an inferred, we have a small measured and indicated resource, But as you progress, remember everybody, these are very, very long structured types of developments, resource, PEA, PFS, feasibility study, all of this. And there are more and more requirements, advanced metallurgy at a larger scale. You need to have a higher level of geostatistical confidence in your resource, that means more drilling, a closer spacing, those kinds of things. We'll put all of that together as we advance towards PFS, because that is the logical inflection point. Even though I've been talking to potential opt-takers for a long time, When's your PFS? When's your PFS?

51:19 Now, I think things may have changed. And this is what's going to be interesting as a consequence of these developments for the US government. If people, in my opinion, take and look at a proper portfolio approach, where what you're really saying is, I want to maximize the number of winners here, right? It's not just look at the people who are close to production where you think that the risk is less. You need to spread the wealth around to make sure that this pipeline continues to advance. I think we'll see more opportunities like what we've recently seen with funding, where we'll see if we were successful with the DOE grant for borehole mining, things like that. So there's a lot of news that's coming up. That news is going to generate the next steps for us. But in general, think about us advancing towards pre-feasibility study and getting to that really major inflection point that everybody traditionally associates with an assignment of more value. That's the way I would think about us.

52:13 Thank you so much, Steve. Kit, I do want to give you an opportunity to discuss Alaska Silver for potential investors that haven't heard of the company or haven't looked into it for a while. What are the key upcoming milestones at Waterpump Creek and the Silver Sage prospect? Thank you for that intro. We had a very quiet year in 2025. We did complete a limited drilling program, but for a number of reasons, we needed to become a full reporting issuer to the SEC. So we started that process in February of last year, thought it would be a nice, not short, but shorter than it turned out. 8 months later, we went public in the US along with our TSX listing, but that required us to be quiet from a confidentiality standpoint with the SEC.

53:05 And that was difficult where we couldn't talk about our program. But the benefit is now we're fully funded for 2026 program. We'll have about a 6,000 meter drilling program starting the first week of June. We'll split that half at our extensions for the Water Pump Creek resource. We'll be continuing drilling to Water Pump Creek South. But the Silver Sage discovery that occurred in June, July, It's about 4 and a half kilometers due south of our Water Pump Creek resource. It's a whole new zone that was previously unrecognized and it's about a 500 meter long zone of some very high-grade galena and silver. So we put some of those results out last week or the week before during a roundup in the fall. So that's gonna be very important and we're gonna have a parallel to that with our funding. We're going to push ahead with our de-risking studies offsite, work on the permitting for the road, and really add a pre-development angle to the company.

54:16 Be a strong exploration program and also a very strong pre-development program looking at economics. If all things continue as it looks like, I would hope to have 1 or possibly 2 Preliminary economic analysis come out this year on both the Water Pump Creek and the Illinois Creek Gold Deposit, which we did put another resource, an updated resource out on on January 20th, I believe, And that was very significant. We haven't really received any value for the last few years on our gold deposit. So looking at all options and a lot of things that will be coming on board this coming year.