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18:26 the printing of money is not going to stop anytime soon. The fiscal imbalances will not stop. So I think we're probably exposed to a longer cycle than previous cycles. Because when you look at previous cycle to silver back in 2011, it was just basically a spike. But now might have a bit longer of a cycle like 2, 3, 4, 5 years. Why not? Because we're talking about gold at 3,500, but who's telling you that gold doesn't go to 4,000 or 5,000, right? Think about that scenario. And I think that the physical buying of silver will be the game changer here. And that's about to happen. Yeah, certainly. I'll kick off the next question for you, David. How have junior silver mining companies responded to this price breakout and which types of junior for developers or producers are predicting to benefit the most?
19:19 Well, you know, the whole market was having a pretty nice rally up until October of last year. And then there was an election and we saw a big a big downdraft in all the all the stocks, all the silver stocks for the most part. And you know, only now are you kind of seeing, you know, so it took it took pretty much 6 months. But we're now seeing, you know, some of these companies getting back to back to where they were. And, you know, I would say like every other market, the larger companies tend to lead the cycle and they get the they get the lower risk money first, because, you know, if you're if you're new into a sector, you want to buy something that you can turn around and sell tomorrow because you're not really sure you want to be able to change your mind. So money tends to go into the bigger stocks first.
20:14 And then as people get more comfortable, more bullish, it starts trickling down into the smaller and smaller companies. Haven't seen, you know, and I think, you know, for my I follow a pretty broad group of silver miners and explorers and That's what I'm seeing. The other cool thing that's very interesting in our in our little subsector is been the M&A activity. So we've had pretty 3 big, high profile M&A deals in the last 6 months. So Coor took over Silvercrest, first Majestic took over Gatos, and then the most recent one is Pan American taking over Mag Silver. So all 3 of those were producing companies. All 3 of those were cash flow positive.
21:05 So they were all bigger producers, all 3 of them happen to be in Mexico. But that's probably because most of the producers are in Mexico, frankly, most of the public companies that produce silver are in Mexico. So I honestly wouldn't read anything into that. But yeah, anyway, but it's been good. It's interesting because it means there's actually fewer places for people to play, especially on the larger cap end. And so I think you're going to you're seeing companies like, you know, that are more in the mid tier in the hundreds of millions, like Dolly Varden, for example, we'll get some of that. And then, you know, we'll see some of that money coming into smaller companies like Kuya very soon, if not already. Definitely. Sean, what are your thoughts on how the silver juniors responded to the recent price breakout?
21:57 So I've got a I've got a page on where I follow my stocks, where it's a dedicated silver page. And I was just kind of scanning, and it's got companies that are micro caps, it's got companies that are, you know, your big producers. And I was just kind of scanning the list. And I was looking at the producers, and they're all trading very, very close to or at 52 week highs, the producer category. And then if you go into some of the, and really I'm surprised actually my list is this long because I was convinced there was only 10 primary silver producers, but I've got a longer list here. So the large producers are trading at 52 week highs. They're getting that bump. And to David's point, though, there's 2 pre-producers, Vizsla and Abra, that are also kind of moving up to that 52 week high and then the rest of the basket.
22:53 We're kind of in the middle between our high and our low for the year. So I think the juniors are lagging, which is totally normal and natural. But to David's point, the larger the market cap, the more advanced the company, the closer to the higher end of that range. And so yeah, typical, typical what you see in these markets where you've got your, you know, your royalty companies, your senior producers that are the first to move and then your unfunded developers and your advanced explorer category lagging. And Jose, I would love your opinion. You're the only silver producer on this panel today. Oh, where's told producer to thank? Yeah No, I agree with what is being said I think obviously we feel as a junior that we are lagging behind.
23:50 I agree with David that money goes to the big producers first and will start flowing towards us. We've seen an anomaly, which is an increase in volume. So I can see larger groups, let's say funds or hedge funds, taking positions in smaller companies like Silvex. And that's happened over the last just 3, 4 weeks. So that's a good indicator, I believe. So I'm really looking forward to it because not only because as a producer, we think there's a huge leverage for us, right? We have a big resource, small production, there's a ton of upside, but really what we need is a bit of that activity, money coming from, let's say, not investment in the majors, but investment in the producers. I think that's a great thing happening for us in the next few months, really. And Kit, do you have any further commentary before we move on?
24:38 Covered most of it already. I think the takeover of MagSilver was very important. MAG really turned into an excellent deposit, you know, discovered by Dr. Peter McGaugh. And that really showed the value there. It's interesting when you look at it. It's a cash and share transaction. Pan American went down the next couple days just as normal. But boy, all those, both the stocks have gone up since then and are trading much higher. The thing I've been following at Core and Hecla from my work in Alaska, etc., for many, many years, and just like to point out that Hekla still has a ways to go to get back to the share price that they were 10, 15 years ago.
25:26 Core is getting there. They're getting pretty close. But if you look at the leverage those producers have, CORE came out with their earnings first quarter and it was up 10 times from the previous year. Now they have a lot of things going on, new projects that are finally becoming cash flow positive. But those companies are still have a ways to go to get back to where they were years ago. So I think that shows you're still in the early to mid stages of a market run. And then the juniors are Sadly to say the last ones, but they also have quite a bit of leverage. Most people on the panel here aren't at their all-time highs, so that's something that we look forward to and getting back to that.
26:14 So that'll be a good sign that the market has finally turned our way. And sticking with you, Kit, we'll move on to this next question here. What specific criteria should investors use when evaluating junior silver companies? There's not many out there. So what should people be looking at? And what potential red flags should they avoid? Well, we like to talk about high grade. So I think grade is very, very important because it gives you a lot of protection, downside protection from pricing cycles. So look at the quality of a resource that a company puts out, and go ahead. And if you want to be serious, you need to dive in and actually read those documents, take a look at it.
27:03 We are silver, but also polymetallic. So that is that is a little bit of a buffer. And so those I think jurisdiction, Mexico was mentioned, I used to work in Mexico, it's a wonderful country, country, laws keep changing there. And taxation is probably, you know, you're not going to see some of the takeovers of you saw 100 years ago, but taxation will be a, is becoming a big factor. But investing in some parts of Africa is pretty risky right now. So I think looking at the Western Hemisphere, North America, Central America, South America, where you have great deposits and stable governments for the most part. And I'll open it to the floor for anyone that wants to contribute red flags or or what you look for in a silver junior company.
27:57 I'll jump in and just you know, I started my career as an equity analyst covering gold mining companies and covering actually a lot of the silver companies that are some of which are still around today. And you know the thing that I always found was was a you know was a winner especially in a bull market was to have to have as much to have, you know, kind of a GARP growth at reasonable price kind of structure to it to a company. So, you know, I find I'm more of, I guess, personally a value investor and I've had more success with that. And and you can kind of look at, you know, mining companies and juniors the same way. You know, there's always like the flashy one that that you know, the the sexy one kind of thing within any group. But usually those are overvalued.
28:49 And you know if you don't trade them right you get burned. You know something like you know like the way we've set up our company. You know we're just started production. We're ramping up our mine so that we have cash flow. And then really where the growth is going to come from with Kuya is going to be from, you know, exploration, being able to drill with our own cash and expand our resources because we know where to drill. We don't have it yet. We just need time and money and we'll get there and we could probably, you know, have huge, huge resource increases over the next several years. And then and then as we do that, then that allows us to now look at increasing production. So you get growth from resource growth that you get growth from production. If you can do both at the same time, that's like the magic formula that you, you know, that's how that's how stocks, You know, again, going back to my gold and silver days in the early 2000s, you know, I covered some stocks that went up, you know, 20X, 50X, and they usually have that combination of exploration and production growth going simultaneously.
30:00 So we're really we're really trying to set that up with Kuya. And I think, you know, if you get it right, it can be just a huge winner for everyone. Yeah. I agree with Jack. I agree with David. I think you want to look for a quality resource. You want to look for companies that are able to grow resources over time. Just perhaps making a mention of Silvex, but I think we've grown our resource by 4 times since going public, which is 4 years, you wanna look for a management team that is able and capable to execute, right? Especially if you are a producer, which is not easy. And in terms of jurisdictions, obviously you wanna be in a jurisdiction where it is not complicated to build a mine. And I think, for instance, Peru is one of those.
30:48 Now, I wanted to talk a little bit about Peru because we've said a lot about Mexico is the largest producer of silver. Peru is the second largest. And obviously, many of the silver projects that we see in the public markets and will continue to see coming up are in those 2 countries, of course, other than Canada as well, the United States, Chile and Poland as a byproduct. But reality is that you're going to see a lot of Peruvian projects coming up. I just wanted to highlight some news because other than the 3 big M&A moves we saw recently in Mexico, there was a relatively large or medium-sized producer, which is Endeavor Silver, coming into Peru the other day, just a couple of months ago. And we basically share our district because we are operating at one of these massive vein systems, a bithermal system in Huachacolco in central Peru. And we own basically half of it. And there was a private company owning the other half. Basically, our concessions, Our tenements are literally overlapping.
31:48 And therefore, Silver paid a good price for that company. They paid basically 5 times our market cap with a similar resource. They are more invested, more developed in terms of capacity, 3 times the capacity. But at the end of the day, you buy the resource and the potential. And that was great news for us, for both as a company and also as a country, because that interest is now switching to Peru again. And I think that David and I are going to benefit from that because we both are in central Peru, Indeed. I think we're going to see that happening this year as well. I'm glad you mentioned that, Jose. That's another very interesting deal. Yeah, for sure. Sean, do you have any comments on red flags or what to look for in a silver junior? Look, I think I need to understand the investor, you know, in terms of what their goals are and what they're hoping to achieve. And, you know, you really have to know yourself.
32:42 And so probably the safest thing is just go buy the SILJ and it'll give you great exposure to a basket of companies. Just depends what you're trying to achieve. And it depends on if you believe what we're talking about on where silver could go. You know, I've seen in previous bull markets, it's the projects that are some of the most challenging. Some of the projects that have the lowest grades, that have the highest costs, that are in the worst jurisdictions, those are the companies that are gonna perform the best in a rising bull market. But again, not every investor has the stomach for that. I definitely don't. I've always stuck pretty close to home, high grade, keep it simple, be in places that you're wanted. So I think it really depends on what you as an investor can stomach and what you're hoping to achieve.
33:40 Thank you. I want to learn more about the men behind the companies now. Silver bugs have been frustrated for years watching this metal underperform expectations. So you must have experienced that frustration frequently with the underlying commodity for some time. What made you decide to commit to building businesses in the silver market despite those challenges and we'll start off with Kit. Well, it's not often a direct choice. In our instance, we were working around the Illinois Creek Pass producing gold mine, which is gold and silver, quite a large Silver component and sort of what we call the rediscovery of our Waterpump Creek deposit. But some of those first drill holes just returned some spectacular intervals of over a kilo of Silver, plus the lead in the sink.
34:31 So the grade is really what moved us ahead that said, this is something we want to focus on and build a company around. Because you know, the grade is very significant, and it really offers you all that protection. And the other thing is in being in Alaska, the political climate is changes very good. Alaska has always been a pro mining state, you know, starting from the days of the Kennecott copper deposit over 100 years ago. And just last week, there was an energy conference in Anchorage. Most of the focus, a lot of it was on the proposed Alaska natural gas pipeline. But what was very significant is 3 cabinet-level secretaries from D.C.
35:17 Were participated and stayed for multiple days. And It really is turning the focus on Streamlining permitting in the US that has been difficult in many states in the past that I think is changing And so the attitude towards mining is improving quite a bit. And that is going to carry over into more streamlined permitting. So that goes back to the jurisdiction we talked about before. And so jurisdiction and grade I think are what pushes us forward to on the projects that we have now. And David, what got you into the silver industry? Yeah, so in My early career, I was really focused on precious metals.
36:04 And so it was gold and silver. And, you know, geologically, they're closely related as well, as well as as well as financially. So I did quite a bit with silver mining companies in the early 2000s. Heck, Lacour, Pan American, Burst Majestic, when they only had 1 mine, Fortuna, when they had just their mine in Peru. You know, and these companies have become much bigger with different mines and most of them actually have veered into more towards gold. And then some of them are veering back towards silver now. But but, yeah, so I've watched this whole I've watched this industry, you know, for 20 plus years, 25 years.
36:49 And and so when I did when I was when I did kind of stumble across the Bethania deposit looking for, you know, somewhere to invest my own money, I felt quite comfortable with what I was seeing because I feel like I know the precious metals and the silver space very, very well because I've been doing it my whole career. So when I feel like I can identify a kind of a diamond in the rough, a huge opportunity when I see one. And I saw that with Bethania. So that's where, you know, that's kind of how we started was I put my own money in. I did a deal with the former owners. And then, you know, 3, 4 years later, we became a public company. So. Thank you for sharing. Sean, why Silver?
37:38 So it's funny, David was actually a mining analyst. He was covering a Gold company that I helped build in the 2000s. He was the first analyst that picked us up and I think he picked us up at a $10 or $20 million market cap and we went on to go on to getting up to about a billion for valuation. I personally had made more money speculating in silver stocks in 6 months than I did building a gold mining company in 6 years. So for me, the lesson was the next time I thought we're going to come into a precious metals bull market, I need to have a stronger weighting towards silver. And it's why in 2000 February 2000 2020, excuse me. I came on as a CEO at Dolly Varden, you know, it was a couple of pie grade past producing minds, a safe jurisdiction and company had a 20 million dollar valuation in 5 years ago.
38:35 We've grown since And so the idea was silver is going to outperform gold, but you've got to be there early. And that was the motivation, is my experience during the last precious metals bull market. Interesting. And Jose? Well, other than being troublemakers like most miners, It was 2017, 2018 and silver was what? $13, $14? Something in that range. We really got into silver because we saw the opportunity to build again or to rebuild a historical mining district And to actually build a very relevant silver play, that's how we thought.
39:22 Honestly, at the time, we thought it would take shorter to actually reach this level of 33, $35, okay? So we've been under the water for a number of years. But we really saw that opportunity because for a number of reasons, geographical, political, financial reasons, you still find these old historic districts that have been overlooked for decades. You know, we're talking about Silver X, Cuya, Alaska Minerals, and obviously Dolly Barton. It's the same case for the 4 of us, right? So those deposits have been dormant for a long time and that's the opportunity. Again it took a bit of maybe too long but We're happy to be here after 7 years. I'll leave this next question open to the group.
40:07 I know I like what Kit had to say about maybe the price running too hard too fast, but what are the biggest risks that could derail silver's current momentum and how should investors position themselves to protect against the potential downside? My biggest fear is that the futures market just catches on fire and goes too quickly. People that invest in futures, the leverage is phenomenal. Sometimes it's a 10% cash. So there's a lot of volatility there. I just like to see the industrial demand continue and be steady and look at the spot prices and a nice gradual increase. It doesn't always work that way. But so what I guess what I worry about is a super spike that is short-lived, and that can create some damage in the investor sentiment market. So slow and nice and easy, I guess, is what I would like to see.
41:09 Anyone else? I think for me, what Scared me about being early in the silver market considering where we are globally with debt levels and and all the risks that are out there is historically if you get into a recession or heaven forbid a depression, silver isn't going to perform well. It'll perform really well coming out of 1, but if we're going into one, silver is going to perform more like copper than gold. And a risk is US dollar strength. That's a risk. I'm not worried about that risk today because the dollar seems to be weakening.
41:57 But to Kit's point, you know, big moves up are followed by sharp corrections. That's a risk. And then I think a risk that I observed, I've studied risks, but 1 that I observed in April of 2011, the last time the Silver price ran up to close to a record high there. I think it got up to 49 and change. There was some regulations that came in that curbed the momentum. You know, if you think about where most trading occurs, You know, Jose talked about, you know, physical demand. I totally agree with him. But what I'm seeing is most of the trading happens in the digital market or what's referred to as the paper market.
42:45 And what had occurred was, and Kit had mentioned this a little bit earlier about the leverage. So the margin requirements on COMEX were raised 4 times in a 24 hour period in April of 2011. And so that's what took the air out. So another risk is regulatory and policy change. I think we covered everything here today. So I really wanted us to have the opportunity to talk about with the limited selection of quality Silver plays available, why should investors consider your company? What are your main takeaways for 2025 and beyond? We'll start with you, Jose.
43:31 Well, excellent. SilverX is a Peruvian company. We've been listed since 2021. We are growing a very large, high-quality resource. We are producing north of a million ounces of silver a year, but we have plans now to actually grow beyond 7 million ounces of silver with the resource we've got. So, if you want to look at SilverX, especially as a producer, you are going to continue to see a good resource coming up every few months, but more importantly, over the next few years, you're going to see production growth. We want to become a mid-tier company. Again, from this small production, actually going to take it at least 4 or 5 times. We are not working heavily on that. So I think that's going to be the great news you are going to see regarding SilverX in the next few months. Thank you. And Kit?
44:18 We have our deposit, Waterpump Creek, is what's called a carbonate replacement deposit. And it's really become in the vogue with the help of Peter McGough, who's a good friend of mine and been a close advisor for the last 4 or 5 years. So those tend to be big systems. We have a very nice high-grade resource at one end of that. Our past producing gold mine is really just an oxidized portion of a gold-rich, copper-rich part of a carbon replacement. But we have about 8 kilometers in between that we're just starting to explore. So scale is very important. And once you find these deposits, they tend to last for many, many years. And of course, the classic is Sant'Eulalia, where Peter Magad did his PhD dissertation and that was mined for 300 years. So those are the kind of things that give us a lot of downside protection.
45:11 And we just need to increase our drill rate. So we can drill up the budgets that Sean Cookin has, and he's a little bit ahead of us, and as a drill production, we'd like to get that up and really expand the resource. So, and that is something that I see with the market the way it is now that should enable companies like ours and others to really up their exploration efforts and move the resources in quicker. Thank you, Kit. And David, why should people consider Kuya Silver? Yeah, so we are a silver producer just starting up in Peru. We just so so so some similarities with with us and SilverX for sure.
45:59 You know going back you know 3 4 years ago we've been in a pretty bearish market. That's that's the reality. The in terms of the silver equities especially, it's been a really, really tough market for a number of years. So we had to make that decision several years ago about whether to focus on exploration and drill and drill and drill, which we could have done. But we decided to restart production and be a little bit different. There are very few silver primary silver producers out there, 3 of which have just been taken over in the last few months. So there's 3 fewer than there were. We do get 75 to 80 percent of our revenue from silver. So we we are we are heavily, heavily weighted to silver, which again doesn't seem to matter right now. But when the silver price gets really, really bullish, people will, I think, flock to Kuya to get more silver exposure.
46:58 We've got a big land package around the mine. We've done very, very little exploration over the last few years, but we do know where the veins are and where to drill. So as we start to build more cash flow at the mine, as we continue to ramp up towards the end of this year and into 2026, we'll start allocating more and more cash towards drilling. And then that should allow us to increase our resource, in a big, big way where our historical discovery cost is 20 cents an ounce. So, you know, the next, you know, the next $20 million, let's say, that we can put into the ground over the next few years, Should, you know, if we continue with that kind of a discovery rate, we that'll give us 100 million ounces.
47:53 So let's let's obviously we can't guarantee that, but that's that's what we internally are looking to do. And And that obviously would be just an absolute game changer in terms of our our valuation. I mean, we're we're trading at, you know, almost close to close to 1 times cash flow in terms of what we what we expect to make as we ramp up to our initial production rate. So, you know, in silver companies, you know, the larger peers, they can trade at 10, 20, 30 times cash flow, depending on the market's perception on their growth and exploration potential. So there's I see massive upside. That's why I'm a big shareholder. And I have actually, you know, invested more money in Kuya this year so far.
48:41 And Sean, why should people consider Dolly Varden Silver? That's a good question. So when I started the journey at Dahle 5 years ago, we were a $20M company. Today, we're valued at $400M. We announced financing this week. Once it's closed, we'll have about US$55M in cash. And as Kit pointed out, we are going into a very robust drill program where we currently have 4 rigs turning 24 hours a day. In terms of the Y Dolly, this has been a business that we've built from 20 million to 400 million. And despite it being a difficult market that David has described, because of our shareholders, We've got these shareholders that have been super supportive and we have not had to do a down round of financing.
49:39 So we've been able to keep bringing money into the business, growing the business. And My vision for the company 5 years ago was to try to increase the mineral inventory, to try to get as much high-grade silver. And so when we started, we had a couple past producing mines. We went on a process of listing the company on the NYSE American exchange to increase liquidity, to really bring in the US investor as we're moving into this next phase of the bull market. As we've seen volumes pick up, we've actually seen our share price move up quite dramatically over the last 45 days since listing. And we've leveraged that into making a series of acquisitions. So we've now gone from having 2 past producing mines just in the last 60 days to having 5 and to locking in a total now of 100,000 hectares of Persep active ground in the Golden Triangle.
50:37 My real vision for the company is to take these high-grade deposits, our new discoveries, and to direct ship them into what is a very hungry mill, a 3000 ton per day, brand new mill that's currently on care and maintenance. And so that's the overarching vision and the catalysts that are gonna continue to build and grow this company are discoveries. But we've had a long series of accretive M&A transactions. So it's a company that's fully financed. It's liquid. It's got some great shareholders. It's got a high-grade resource in a safe jurisdiction. Sounds very exciting for everyone's next few years here with the silver movement. I would like to thank you all for joining us today and everyone in attendance. Just a reminder, this is being recorded and our team will have the replay up here shortly. But gentlemen, thank you so much for your time.
