Wallbridge Mining: Updated Fenelon PEA Results

0:04 As folks are coming into the room, I'll say good morning or good afternoon, depending on where in the world you're signing in from today. I know it's a bit of an international audience, so I really appreciate everybody's time today. I'd love to welcome you all to a very special 6 webinar featuring Wallbridge Mining's management and team to discuss the recently published PEA on the Fenelon Gold Project in Quebec's Aditivi. They will also be joining us today. We're lucky enough to have a couple of external consultants who worked on the study. With us today from Wallbridge we have Brian Penny, CEO and Mark Peterson, senior geological consultant. We also have Mike Mayhew, founder of Mayhew Performance, along with Pierre Rook of Rook Engineering. Let me tell you how today's gonna work. So the format of today's webinar is gonna be a 20-ish minute presentation delivered by Walbridge, to be followed by an interactive discussion with the team. So I've got some questions that are built to some degree from the questions you've already submitted via email, which I'm very appreciative for. But then we'll jump into live questions from the investor audience here in the room today. There's a chat button in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen. Please use it at any point during today's presentation. You can ask questions and we'll try to get to as many as possible.

1:03 If for whatever reason we don't get to your question, hope we don't, hope we do. But if we don't, I'll make sure the Walbridge team gets all your questions and they'll get back to you as soon as possible. Today's event is also being recorded and it will be available for replay in the early afternoon Eastern time. So keep an eye out for that in your inbox. But before I turn it over to Brian and Marc, who I think folks on 6 webinars are familiar with, Mike and Pierre, I'd love if you could give us a brief introduction on yourselves and your roles as advisors in the PEA. Pierre, I'll start with you if you don't mind. Sure. Pierre Roch, mining engineer since 1986. I worked in northwestern Quebec, actually not too far away from where Finelon is located. Then moved on to Northeast, Northwest Ontario, BC, South Australia, and then back in Oakville where I've been freelancing for the past 6 years.

1:54 I did receive a call from Brian a little while ago to assist with the delivery of this PEA, so here we are.

2:02 Awesome, thanks Pierre. Michael, turn it to you for a quick intro Yeah, good morning. Everybody Mike me you founder of me who performance mining engineering Specialized in PEA studies as well as M&A and operational readiness, such as Pierre spent some time in the operation. I was part of the Kirkenlake Gold team, also heavily involved with Discovery Silver and worked

2:32 in Chile and Mexico and joined the team here with about a month ago or a month and a half ago and going over the helping Brian and the team for Wallbridge. So thank you. Awesome. Thanks Mike. So let's get to the protein of today's event. Brian, I'll throw it to you for the presentation.

2:51 Thank you very much, Romeo, and thanks for all out in cyberspace that are attending. We appreciate you joining this update session. It's a very exciting time for Walbridge and we're pleased to share this information with you. Just a little bit on Pierre and Mike. I'm a CPA as you all know, I'm not a technical expert. So Pierre and Mike are not QPs on the file. I hired them as an independent person to work with us to review. And with their experience, particularly in, you know, the porcupine area in Crookland Lake in the Abitibi they were a great they had a great knowledge base to draw upon just to make sure that everything going into the study looked reasonable So a little bit of background on that.

3:48 On page 2 we start off with our cautionary notes and then of course we have our QP statements and some NOM and GAP measures that we have to reconcile too so they're there for you to review at your leisure. Moving on to page 4, you know, this slide is common to our decks. We're in the northern Abitibi. You can see past production since the 70s, about 15 million ounces. Southern Abitibi is over 200 million ounces. Great geology, great location. We're seeing the same geology as the south. However, there's 10, 20, 30m of overburden that we had to plan and explore through to find what we have today. It is a bit remote and as a result it's a little bit behind the south.

4:39 Our share structure as of today, you can see our trading ranges. Yes, we do have 1.1 billion shares outstanding and we close the year with about 21 million dollars of cash in the bank. Biggest shareholders are Eric Sprott owns 15%, Agnico Eagle owns about 10% and William Day Construction out of Sudbury owns about 5% and they've been a shareholder for a very long period of time. Covered by 2 analysts, BMO and Paradigm. Here's our board. Tony is our chairperson, I'm the CEO, Brian Christie, he's the Agnigo rep on our board and he was a long-term analyst on Bay Street, Danielle's a professional geologist, Jeff is a lawyer, Michael is a retired partner from KPMG and Janet is an HR specialist. So we've got all of the disciplines covered by our board and you know our leadership team you know Mark he's a consultant but he's our de facto VP exploration. Mary's been with the company for 17 years. She's our CFO, and she's the steady hand we need in the room there.

5:53 Tanya just joined us. We welcome her and it's really fun to work with her. Carol runs our HR group. And then Guillaume runs our health, safety and environment. He came to us from Rio Tinto, a great addition to the team. And Sean's our corporate secretary. A little bit of history for anybody new to the story. You know, we started off buying a postage stamp property, 10 and a half square kilometers from Belmoral for about 3 million cash. We explored it and in 2019 we had the discovery of Area 51, Tabasco, Cayenne and contact zones. In 2020, we liked what we saw so much we did a capital markets track section and acquired all of Melmoral. 25 years ago Walbridge started off as a nickel explorer in the Sudbury Basin. We had a bunch of properties in Sudbury which we did this divested from so we can be totally focused and gold totally focused in the Apatibi and you know with 1 very large property of 830 square kilometers you know there was by divesting of the nickel assets there's no question what our focus was going forward.

7:03 Earlier this week, yesterday, we published a new resource report for the Finland and Martinier projects. The numbers are on the screen right there. Included was an updated PEA on a 3,000 ton a day scenario We're running it at 2200 dollar gold just so happens. That's 900 dollars below spot price as we speak Good economics good annual production in the first 5 years is up to 127,000 ounces a year very quick payback 4 years at 2200 gold and at you know the $3,000 scenario is 2 and a half years initial capex is down a little bit from the last study but the life of mine capex including sustaining capex is down about 200 million dollars and a better after-tax IRR returns than the last time.

7:56 So digging a little bit more into those numbers you know life of mine 107,000 ounces a year 120 million of free cash flow, initial capex of $579M.

8:11 We would have expected it to drop more but we've taken a conservative view when it comes to the tailings management. We have put in a dry stacked tailing system and desulfurization because it's the right thing to do and considering we're in the far north it's a prudent way to manage it. So it did increase the cost, but overall, it went down from the last study. And that's amazing, considering, you know, the whole study last time was put together at a, based on October 22 costs, because you know, the resources came out in January and the PEA thereafter. We've got more than 2 years of inflation and yes, it's a smaller size mill. The reason why we focused on this less moving parts, It helps us better manage the permitting process.

9:02 So we have to only deal with the Quebec regulators. And who knows where the permitting process is going in today's environment. But I think things are going to get more manageable, not more difficult. Great cash costs, good all-in sustaining costs, and this all-in sustaining costs is a clean calculation. You know, cash costs is based on your production costs. All-in sustaining costs, sustaining capital, and everything from commercial production going forward is treated as sustaining capital. So, you know, there's nothing left behind. And then again you can see the numbers. Our resources. I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about this because Mark is on the line. We have an appendix to the presentation which Mark will probably walk through and you know I'll turn it over when we start talking about Martinier. So I will just pass on this.

9:53 Other than the grade in this year's is higher than the 1 3 years ago. Yes, there's less tons, but Mark can talk about some of the geological constraints we've learned in the past 2 years and put into the model. Our PEA approach is, going back to first principles, Pierre Roque, and he was a rock star in the process. He provided guidance, looking at unit costs, saying we'd whack this together. He said, that seems a little high or a little low. It was great to draw upon that expertise as we put this thing together. We went to first principles and used a Deswick Stope optimizer.

10:41 The mining method is transverse and long-haul mining. We did various trade-off studies.

10:53 The CAPEX is all integrated. The power costs are a little less because it needs less energy at 3000 tons a day. We did look around and see what others were achieving as far as unit costs. As you know, I'm a CPA and I like to run checks and balances and everything checked. The picture you see on the right-hand side is the layout. We will not build a shaft at 3,000 tons a day. We do not need a shaft. In this process, we'll mine out about 52% of the overall resource and at some point in time you know you could look at an expansion opportunity.

11:39 Ideal time would be after payback but it all depends on what the gold price is you know after payback which could be you know 6 or 8 years from now. So the phased approach, pre-production is a year 1 and 2. We actually in late year 1, most of year 2, We are working underground. There is some development in Anur, so that material will be stockpiled. Then there's some early stoke mining. That material will be stockpiled. By the time we get to the production by ramp in year 1, we've got a stockpile that gets us, you know, 345 months of startup muck to manage the risks with starting up.

12:28 And then, you know, we ramp down at the end. You know, 1 would say, why you have this open pit opportunity? Why would you put it at the end of the mine life? Why don't you start up with it? Well, the open pit is around the where the portal is now and we just don't want to jeopardize that if we start this, that something happens and we have to start a new portal it's just looking at the risks and being a prudent operator. The power line is unchanged from last time it's about 28 kilometers all in all It connects us to the James Bay hydroelectric system. We need to advance those discussions, but we need a study to go to the next phase of those discussions. And we need to complete a pre-feasibility.

13:14 So that ties into where to from here discussion. The tailing, the surface infrastructure is there on a picture as well as the camp. We're using all the stuff we have at the camp and we're just expanding it to you know to save costs of that. And then, you know, the interesting thing about the waste rock management is we'll start off and we'll start off with a small waste pile. We will use material underground to backfill the stopes and then it is a paste backfill as well. And sort of at the end of the mine life, the remaining material on surface, so that is kind of like an overflow stockpile, will go underground. And so it helps us with our reclamation plan and all that work.

14:02 And again it's the right thing to do. Metallurgy hasn't changed other than last time it assumed an underground crusher with a shaft in the early years of production. This year the crusher will be on surface. Same recoveries, nothing's changed other than desulfurized dry stack tailings. The various cost components you can see the initial capital of 579 sustaining capital of 449 You can see how we calculate our all-in sustaining costs and our cash costs and you know I think they're very well researched and we're very comfortable with the end results. I love this chart you know this is our annual production.

14:49 You know, in the first couple of years, our production is higher because we start off with that stockpile. So it helps us make sure that as the mill starts up, we have built into it about a three-month wrap-up. You know, there's plenty of material, and if there are any little hiccups underground we've got it covered so again but the exciting part is first 5 years averages 127,000 ounce per year and you know that's that helps us with the quick payback as well. There's your after-tax annual cash flow. It averages about $120 million a year. It drops off in year 15 and 16 because that's when we get into the small open pit at the end of the mine life. It makes sense to do it but you know it doesn't add a whole lot to the future but it's a it's a very simple small open pit.

15:43 I believe the strip ratio on that is 3 to 1 but there's a lot of runway between now and then as we figure that one out.

15:52 This is the real exciting side is our sensitivity to our internal rate of return, our payback period, and our NPV at various prices. Today we're about $3,100 gold. I think we're nominally over that just before I got on the call. At $3,000 the NPV is $1.4 billion at 34% IRR and a 2.4 year payback. Very, very exciting and we have to figure out the path going forward. We have a plan for this year. We announced our plan in January to continue to explore Martinier. We need to take a bit of time after the study to scope out what exactly we need to do to take us to a pre-feas, you know, do some additional work on what resources do we need to do that and come up with a plan you know probably late this year on how we go forward.

16:56 Some of the comparisons to the 2023 PA and I'm starting to run long so very passionate about this but you know I thought I'd provide this. Yes the gold price is substantially higher. Yes, the exchange rate is in our benefit. What we did with the model is we've raised for the resource estimate, the cutoff grade is very similar. For the mining parameters, we increase the cut-off grade with the goal of mining the highest margin ounces in this plan. We wind up mining and I know you're not supposed to add the numbers together, but we mine and process, and again, this is a PEA, these are not reserves, these are resources, about 52% of the life of mine. So there is ounces left for expansion at some point in the future. So you can see, you know, our cutoff grade is 2.25 grams and 2.5 for area 51.

17:55 That leaves us with an average mining grade of 3.34, you know, a half a gram better than the last time we looked at this less tons mine mine life improves and that's exciting being a financial guy because if you're talking at the base price assumption of a four-year payback you've got you know 12 years of tail after payback So as you're arranging project financing and stuff like that, it's attractive for lenders. So that's kind of cool. And there's your average annual production again.

18:31 And the rest of the numbers we've all talked about the IRR and other things. The team involved, you know, MB Consulting, Mauro Basotti, who I've known for years, is our resource estimate consultant. Inovexplo or Nortes Stelo dealt with the mine design rock mechanics, all of the mining part of it, as well as

18:58 the environmental and underground electrical infrastructure. G-Mining supported us with the process design. BBA on infrastructure and tailings. Those are all QPs on the technical report. We filed the technical report yesterday morning as well, so everything is in the public domain and then Mayhew Performance, Pierre and Mike you know helped us you know I call them as a you know a third-party reviewer helping us make sure that we haven't missed anything from the company side. So we here we have a hub to unlock a district scale opportunity. You know our focus on exploration as a material, the Martinier, We need to figure out how this all fits together at some point in time. But to date, historically, you have 600,000 meters drilled at Fenelon. That's why we're advanced in that study and probably some around 150,000 at Martinier, so it needs a lot more work to catch up at some point in time you know that could be considered but first we need to drill drill drill we have a nice after-tax NPV strong cash flow you know As you can see from the model, great leverage to gold prices because the only thing that really changes in our cost profile is the royalty. A 4% royalty on $3,000 an ounce is more than a 4% royalty on $2,200

20:31 an ounce. We continue to de-risk it. We want to continue to advance the project. Can't have a better location to do business than the province of Quebec with their refundable tax credit regimes and others. They've been very, very supportive. And we have opportunities as we electrify and get on to the James Bay power grid. This study is basically underground LHD, some electrical equipment. But we have to do additional work to see if we can maximize the benefit of our green power that's provided to the operation. With that, I'll turn it over to Mark and he'll talk a little bit about Martinier and then we'll come back and he'll walk through the resource table briefly and then we'll come back to the Q&A period.

21:28 Mark. Okay. Yeah, thanks Brian. And thanks everyone for joining us, taking the time to catch up with Walbridge and all that we've got going on. We do have a lot going on. On, as Brian mentioned, our focus on the exploration front continues to be at the Martinier project. Last year we drilled, I think approximately 24,000 meters total across the entire Detour-Fenelon Gold trend. And The vast majority of that was put into Martinier. We're just picking up where we left off last year. This year, we have about 15,000m of drilling planned.

22:14 Through the course of last year, we were putting out results. We put some out in mid-summer and then in November for our phase 1 and phase 2 parts of the program last year. And one of the takeaways as we were moving through that program was that the bug lake trend, which is shown kind of in between those reddish pink dash lines, that's really the center of action within this overall gold system. And what really impressed me along the way, I joined Walbridge a year ago, so I was at the bottom of a learning curve then, but I made a lot of progress forward, is that

23:01 Our program around Bug Lake, especially phase 2, we were stepping out around the known resources at the time on 4 targets. And we had positive hits on all 4, which I was impressed by right away. But in particular, 3 of the targets, Dragonfly, Horsefly, and the Martinier North zones, which were in anywhere from 100 meters to up to a half a kilometer outboard of the defined resources from the 2023 estimate, we were getting positive hits. And it became very clear, can we go to slide 24, please? It became very clear that this system is still, even though most of the drilling has happened up around the Bug Lake North, Bug Lake South parts of the system, it's very much an under drilled, under explored gold system.

24:00 At Dragonfly, we had some positive results. We've had some initial gains with some resources. Those are outlined right under that label, Dragonfly area.

24:13 Likewise, in the Horsefly area, we had some positive results. It's a little bit behind this section in plan view but a little bit to the north but also at Martinier North. So we just started drilling. We went back out there with the drills. Our field crews dug through 2 meters of snow to set up the first drill pad. And we're currently on our third hole, that's a hole 113 on Martinier North. We've got the first one down at hole 111, and then 1 in the gap in between Dragonfly and Bug Lake North resource. We've got hole 112. And these holes are still really within the upper 200 meters from surface.

25:01 We do have plans to drill farther laterally outward along strike, but also it's a results-driven program. But as we move along here more toward phase 2, Our intent is to start testing some of these deeper down plunge projections of the geology that we're seeing in the drilling. So I'm very excited, very excited getting back out there to Martinier. And we do anticipate to be putting out the first results from this year's program later in Q2. I know we're a little bit pressed for time, but if we could just advance to resource statement.

25:49 Okay, This is the new mineral resource statement. It's a consolidated statement of our mineral resource estimates done for Fenelon and for Martinier. The technical report that Brian mentioned earlier that has been filed and is available to anyone who's interested in getting more into the details has more detailed tables on the mineral resource estimates for both deposits. As Brian mentioned, yes, the resources have gone down a bit at Fenelon, but our resource grade has gone up at Fenelon. It's remained largely unaffected at Martinier. The big change is with the additional drilling that was done between the last estimate and the end of last year, 20% more drill data at Fenelon and 25, 26% more drill data available at Martinier to inform those estimates.

26:53 We also, just like the PEA, we've taken a first principles approach toward really looking in detail at the geology and the fundamental controls to the distribution of gold mineralization. And we realized we saw some opportunities to improve the estimates for both deposits, improve the modeling, the geologic modeling, and how we develop the mineral resource volumes to estimate within. And yeah, the net effect of that was less tons, but the systems, both systems are still as prospective as ever. It's just as Brian said earlier,

27:34 we need to just keep doing more drilling. I see a lot of upside at Martinier, still in front of us and likewise at Fenelon. It's just, that's not where our attention is right now. So I'll break off at that at this point now and maybe turn it back over to Brian. Now I you know the last slide was you know a platform for growth talking about a strong technical team, great location again ESG focused. So with that I'll thank everybody for attending and then open it for questions. Awesome, thank you so much Brian for a great presentation. That concludes actually the presentation portion of the webinar. So I do have a few questions for you, Brian, if you don't mind a bit of a grilling.

28:22 I will. Perfect. First of all, I will say congratulations, obviously, on that positive PA. My first question is, how long did it take you to complete? And this is a question I see reflected in emails too. Could it have been out sooner? Well, there are 2 things that reflect that. Yes, we started doing it in the fall of last year, but we wanted a really good cutoff for our resources that go into this study. If you look at the last study we did, and we published it in mid-2023, the cutoff was October. We were doing a lot more drilling at that point in time, but there was still a significant amount of drilling that were not in the study. This time,

29:07 with the smaller programs, we had a good cut-off. In the case of Martigny, all of the drilling completed last year is in our models and our estimates. In the case of Fenelon, I think we're missing 4 holes that were done in the last part of the program, and they would be outside of the resource model anyhow, so it wouldn't impact anything that we've disclosed. So a good cutoff, and I can tell you, the team has been working their heart out. They've been putting going above and beyond and it just took us this amount of time to get it done. There was no opportunity to start it sooner because we needed all this data to be in the model. I appreciate that. And why not do it as a combined PEA with Martinier?

29:54 Well I kind of answered that earlier. If you look at the historic drilling,

29:59 Fenelon historic and anything that Walbridge is about 600 kilometers, Martigny is a hundred and a half. We need some catching up there. You can see the size of the resource at Martigny. We need to grow that to ultimately come up with a positive PEA. So you know that is our forecast. If we try to do something right now, it's too early and it would not be very helpful.

30:25 Yeah, no, I appreciate that extra context. One thing, I know you're certainly not the only company for whom this is true, But why have specifically for Walbridge, cash costs increased so much? Well, you know, there are a couple of things. 1, the mining method is, you know, last time it was underground bulk mineable, similar to a Young Davidson. This one is more traditional long haul and you know, some of them were treat money. So it's a little bit different, but we must appreciate that between 2022 and today is 2 and a half years in a pretty highly inflationary environment. So if you take what was done last year, you know, add 15% for inflation, it kind of ticks to where we are today. So I am not concerned about that.

31:17 And the model today is, the team has done a great job with the help of Pierre and Mike. We've really dotted the I's and crossed the T's in our review process. Great, I appreciate that. Now, one thing is I certainly noticed, I think a lot of people did, a pretty big increase in the volume traded before this news came out. Curious if you have any commentary or notes on that. The only thing I will say about that is There was not a leak. I can guarantee that. There's nothing to do with that. But the chatter was, oh, Walbridge isn't going to meet their deadline, whatever. And, you know, when I was interviewed at PDAC, I reiterated, absolutely, we're going to publish by the end of the month. And I think, you know, by the time it got to some of, you know, our shareholders, they finally took notice of it, we're going to hit it. There weren't, you know, being the naysayers.

32:17 And we hit it. Sure, no, that makes sense. I'm curious, and I see this a bit reflected in some of the chatter too, what is the timing on permitting from here? Well, the way I think this project could go forward is we have a plan for this year, we have our money and so you know starting at December 31st of this year. I think it's A22 and 2. 2 years to do all the work necessary to complete a pre-fees, start the permitting, start the IBA negotiations, all that stuff and you know get that going. 2 years to complete a feasibility which include you know concluding the IBAs, getting the permits in place, getting the electricity signed up for and then based on the study a two-year build program.

33:06 So in very, very rough early stage numbers, we need to take some time this fall to go back to the component parts just to make sure that this holds, but based on the recommendations provided by the QPs involved, that seems to be the way we would go forward. I appreciate that. And I think you touched on it, but I'm curious, what's up next? You starting a pre-fees or feasibility study right away? What are the next steps here? Well, the next steps is we need to figure out what exactly we need to do to get us to a pre-fees. And that will be scoped out further between now and Thanksgiving. And we need to find the resources to pay for this.

33:57 But it's a very exciting project and you know our goal is to get out, market, tell the world, help educate the world on how great an opportunity this is. In the meantime, figure out exactly what we need to do to get us to a pre-feas and then execute. Great. I know you mentioned it early in the presentation, but this is something I think just bears repeating so we can have it a couple of times in here. I'd love if you could just explain again the rationale on taking the approach to design a smaller mine. It's from a risk standpoint. You know, we're a small company. We have a small balance sheet. We had to put this together on the basis that if we continue to de-risk it, we may have to build it on our own.

34:45 And ultimately, that's what we're planning to do. If somebody comes in halfway through, taps us on the shoulder and says, I've got an opportunity, we think we can do a better job, here's prime plus whatever percent. We would have to consider it at that point. It's not our company. We're the custodians of the shareholders company. Sure. So, you know, there's that, but the whole scenario is based on managing risk, managing the permitting process, you know, Smaller, less surface disturbance is in everybody's best interest. It helps us with closure. It helps us with our First Nations partners. So just taking a top-down risk approach to putting this together.

35:32 And when do you anticipate there might be an expansion? Well, I don't know. It all depends where gold prices are. You know, what I'll tell you is that if everything goes according to plan is built, we hit payback and gold is at $2,200 an ounce, you may be very happy that you have a 3,000 ton a day plant. If gold prices are still where they are, you would consider expanding it at that point in time, but it all depends where commodity prices are. I've been in this business for a very long period of time. I say this all the time, but I remember when gold was $250 an ounce in the late 90s. And, you know, I don't think we'll ever see that again. But it is a volatile commodity. And that also plays in the risk portfolio to start off smaller and grow it at the right time for the right reasons.

36:25 I appreciate that. I got a strategic question for you. I know we didn't see a rollback with this big announcement. Can investors expect 1 in the near future? No. Great. That was an easy answer. I'll throw it to you, Mark, actually for the next one. I got one here for you. Could you just generally speak to the changes in the mineral resources at Fenelon Martinier, just so people can get a sense of where your brain's at. Yeah, no, happy to do that. Just to get into the details to the technical report, especially the end of section 14, we're kind of get, take a deeper dive on that. But, but you know, to keep it at higher level, as I mentioned, more drilling, especially infill drilling, it always increases the resolution that you have on your geology, on your distribution of gold grades, et cetera.

37:21 And it's a real rarity to see a resource grow in size when you're going into an infill phase. You know, the rule of thumb I've picked up over the years. And I've been in the game, frankly, I think as long as Brian, I won't say how long, but long enough to be able to say that as a rule of thumb infill drilling, specifically infill drilling, typically, you know, 50, 60% of your resource might convert to indicated or stay as inferred. That's just the nature of resource estimates and resource classification. So that's part 1. Part 2 is We came into this program a year ago, really recognizing that there was a lot of opportunity to really take a closer look, first principles, closer look at the underlying geology that's driving the distribution of gold grades. And, you know, at the end of the day, miners are mining rock, you know, they're getting gold out of it, but they're mining rock, they're mining volumes of rock.

38:31 And what we've done differently this time was really took a very close look at what are the rock volumes that are carrying the structures that are carrying the gold, which is a little bit kind of looking more at the forest rather than the individual trees. Because again, these gold systems are complex, especially gold systems of this variety. And even at a 40 meter, a nominal 40 meter drill hole spacing, which is what we have in the heart of Fenelon, which is supporting the indicated resources, even at that drill hole spacing, it really is tough to link up narrow high-grade structures between holes that far apart. But what we can do, and we see it in the drill core, and we do see it in the data, but just looking at the drill core, what we can do is we can define the overall package of deformed rock that has the collection of those high-grade structures within it.

39:40 So that's just a fundamentally different approach to the geologic interpretation. The other aspect I think, and there's a few layers to what's driving these new mineral resource estimates, but another aspect that we really brought to bear and to leverage against our data set was, and working with Mauro Bassati, who Brian has known him for a long time. I, you know, I worked with, I hired Brian, or I hired Mauro when Brian and I were together at Newgold. We really brought to bear some kind of high, I would just say, more in-depth, more sophisticated geostatistical approaches to work with the datasets.

40:33 When you define a larger volume, you have more samples informing what's going on in that volume, which is a positive thing. And that opens the door to just different approaches and how you estimate what's going on within those volumes. So kind of to sum it up, we tried to strike the right balance between the size of our data sets and the resolution we have in our drill plan as it stands right now. And just, you know, what can we realistically interpret in the geology? How far can we project things out along strike or down dip and so on and so forth.

41:20 So, so I think, you know, fundamentally it was just, we went back to first principles and brought a lot more geology into this thing and we leveraged geostatistics, I think to a, to, to the next level up. Awesome. Mark. Thanks. I always appreciate a peek into your brain. So that was really helpful. Brian, I'm gonna shoot it back to you. Now the results of the PA are out, no rest for the wicked. I assume that you and the team are gonna be doing a lot of marketing and communications. Any plans you wanna share with the folks in the room? Well, yeah, no, clearly our prime directive is telling the story. Saturday evening, Mark and I are on a plane flying to Zurich for the Denver Gold Show event next week. So we'll start off with that. We're planning one-to-one sessions. We're attending the Quebec Mining Conference in Quebec City in June.

42:12 We're reaching out to all of the banks out there and brokerage firms to hopefully do desk presentations and doing some retail marketing in various parts of Canada and the United States. And then one of the one-to-one conferences actually in London. So trying to hit European markets, Canadian markets and US markets to tell the good news about the new turning point for Fenelon. Awesome. I appreciate it. Now, we have received some queries from investors, Kevin over email for Brad, specifically wondering how much the stock you own, have you been buying, especially when they saw some pressure to the share price? Well, I own about 3 million shares.

43:00 I've bought them over the years. I have no founder stock. Every share I bought, I went into my pocket and pulled up money to pay for it. I've been blacked out for a period of time here for obvious reasons. I will look at what to do from here. Great. Now, zooming out, I know it answers to the best of your ability. There's some crystal ball gazing involved, but you are located in excellent company, the project with some big players. Is Walbridge open to entertaining offers? You know, I can't comment on that, but if somebody taps us on the shoulder and they've got a better plan for us, we will consider it. Sure, I appreciate that.

43:46 Last one before I go to some of the great questions that are in chat, which I'll try to get to as many as possible today. We do have a hard stop just at the hour. But what are the company's streaming and royalty commitments right at that current moment? Well, that's a very, very good question because, you know, the Fenelon project goes back to the 1980s. There are some royalties that have been around for a long period of time. You know in the study you can see we have a 4% royalty, 2% is with with gold royalty, 1% with Franco and 1% Eric has. These all go back to the Belmoral days. So we inherited all of these. But you have a 4% royalty commitment on the property. And I believe what's behind that question is, can you write more royalties to generate cash to advance the project?

44:42 4% is probably the upper limit of a royalty you want on a project like Fenelon. What is the preliminary strip ratio? This is a tiny open pit at the end of the mine life. I think it's somewhere around 3 to 1. It provides 12 to 18 months of additional production. And that's why it's at the end of the mine life. Oh, that's great. And I'm gonna jump into some of the questions from the chat. Now, I know a couple of them were covered specifically while Mark was speaking earlier. So I'll try to go to some of the fresh content. But Bayer from the chat asks, what's the timeline for converting the inferred resources? Specifically to Fenelon, we haven't set a fixed timeline on that. We're really focused on our program in 2025, but I would think that just looking at Fenelon and the volume we're talking about, we could probably get a fast-tracked infill drill program done in the course of 1 year, that would be multiple drills.

45:54 Clearly we'd need to go raise enough money to be able to support that. But right now, in terms of what's right in front of us, a program, and this is just surface drilling, drilling from surface, probably get that done in about a year. But piggyback on the back of that would be the need to get underground for reasons more than just infill drilling, but for reasons to really let the miners and the engineers get up close and personal with the rocks to really start to look at this thing up front rather than in sticks of drill core. Great. Snow from the chat says they may have misheard but thought they heard a reference to an existing stockpile that could be drawn from for mill feed during ramp up. Curious if we can elaborate on that.

46:49 The plan is we will build a stockpile during the construction phases that we can draw upon in the first year. It helps us with a simplified ramp up. We're not turning the key on January 1st of year 1 and expect to feed it with 3000 pounds a day. We will have the surface stockpile that's generated through the development because there is some development in ore that will accumulate and be ready to help us. You know, mining startups have the ebbs and flows. It just gives us flexibility in how we start up. Great. No, I appreciate that extra context. GK from the chat has 2 questions. So I'll talk to them one at a time. Yes. First, what's the amount of potential upside to resource from today at Phenelon?

47:39 Oh, I would say, I'm not gonna put a number to it. But But what I would say is, there's a lot of upside. And actually I can address that question, maybe even a little bit better, a picture is worth a thousand words. If we can put slide 11 back up on the screen, I can speak to that and I think I can get at that. You know what Mark, I can't do that. Cause I've shut it off. That's okay. That's all right. All right. This presentation will be on our website. But if you look at the diagram that's on slide 11 for those that want to go follow up. Again, the Fenelon project started out on a zone that's called the Gabbro zone.

48:28 And that was Cypress Canada. This is going back to the 1990s and early 2000s. It started out on a little zone called the Gabbro zones. A lot of drilling was done on that. The small open pit that exists out there is on the Gabbro zone. And the reason it started there is because that was what was exposed, sticking its head up above the surface. It wasn't until really not very long ago at all, when after Walbridge acquired the project from Balmoral. And they started out, you know, stepping off where, where the last people had left off on the Gabbro zones. But as they stepped back and they started working on, you know, more, more further afield, they tapped into area 51. This was in late 2019 with the 51st hole that they had drilled, hence area 51.

49:22 When you look at the diagram, and I'm looking over here on my other monitor, you can see that really the whole center of gravity of this fenelon deposit is covered by overburden. Not real thick overburden, but enough that you just can't see the geology. So, you know, once upon a time, you know, the perception or the knowledge was off to the side or what is now the side of the Gabbro pits, which when you look at this now, Gabbro is really a satellite to the main event. Fenelon has deep roots. The deepest hole drilled at the project has a very positive hit down plunge of the main contact zone, which is the main high-grade zone of the system, 500 metres below the currently defined resource.

50:17 So, yeah, it's still alive and we're in the Abitibi. All of these gold systems in the Abitibi, for the kind of gold systems that they are, have very deep roots. And when you go look at bigger districts like Malartic or Deetor Lake, we're not there yet, but I can't see why, you know, my grandkids might be looking at a big pit or a big mine, you know, here. They all started out as small, smaller mines, kind of of this scale and look at them today. And, you know, sitting at the chair of the board of, of our company, Tony McCooch, he's the guy who really first brought that to my attention. And if you just think about it, it's, yeah, you know, this is not all she wrote by any means. And I'm an explorer. I love, I love taking things through their, through their paces and getting them across the line to commercial production. I've done that a few times.

51:14 But, But at the end of the day, I'm always looking over the fence. Where is that next discover going to come from? Where are we going to get the new ounces that are going to replace the ones that we've already produced? That's a bit of a long answer to your question, but there is still a lot more exploration upside at both Fenelon and Martinier and along the overall trend. Awesome, I appreciate that extra context, I think that's great. The second part of his question was, really he's asking if it seems the strategies to fund a modest mine at Fenelon, but will the physical plant created set you up to harvest what you find at Martinier as well? I would say possibly, but only time will really tell. We need to get Martinier more fully fleshed out as Brian pointed out, there's about 25% the amount of drilling at Martinier that we have at Fenelon.

52:18 But, but yeah, you know, down the path at the end of the day, it's what makes the most commercial sense. When it comes time, you know, when you have everything in front of you to make a decision. So, you know, we started out last year thinking, thinking we could, we could bring Martinier in. But real quick, we realized, no, there's a lot more than meets the eye to this thing. And we need to just keep moving forward with Fenelon. So we kind of uncoupled them. And Martinière remains an exploration stage project with considerable prospectivity still in front of it as well. Great. There's one comment in the chat. He mentions it's great deposit and a good team. It's a comment on the financials. It says the contingency is perhaps too low at 10% and should be instead 20% for PEA, noting that the camp size, in his opinion, is too low. Curious if you guys have any thoughts on that.

53:12 Well, you know, a PEA is, you know, the overall writing, it's plus or minus 30 to 40%. That's sort of the scoping rules you use. You know, certain components have a 20% contingency, like the mill site, which is where your biggest risk is. And so, you know, like the mining equipment, there's no contingency because, you know, we have quotes on it. So every line I'm in was looked at individually. And it seems reasonable. Great. Appreciate that. As well, this is an interesting question. I don't hear this one often, but Dean from the chat asks, has Walbridge ever explored partnerships or offtake agreements with non-traditional buyers such as sovereign wealth funds or central banks looking to diversify their reserves?

53:59 Well, sovereign wealth funds and central banks, I think is off the table. We're just not big enough. But that's the thing that we have to look at, is how do we take it to the next step? And we have to look at opportunities like that. We have to work closely with the Quebec government. They have incentives for electrifying equipment and stuff like that so we've got a lot of work to do between now and Christmas to advance some of these conceptual ideas. Sure that makes sense. So we're running out of time, so I'm just going to throw a couple of quick ones at you. EBL consultant asked right towards the beginning of the presentation, I want to make sure we got to them. What is the size of the current portal? Pierre, do you know that?

54:45 Yep. So the current portal is 5.5 by 5.5 meters. That's located in the gabbro pit that Mark was referring to. From there, there's a ramp towards Tabasco with the same dimension of 5.5 by 5.5 and for area 51, it's 4 by 4. Now in this 2025 PEA, the other ramp we're going to create is going to be a little smaller, going to be 5 by 5, which is going to be the dimensions of also the access and haulage levels. And when it's in stoke development, those will be 4.5 by 4.5. So smaller equipment again. Awesome. Appreciate it. Now, I know I didn't get to every question today. I think we did pretty good, but I just got one last quick 1. And then all the rest, I'm going to send to the Walbridge team.

55:38 They'll be happy to dance them to the ones we didn't get to. But I'll end with the question, are the Fennel and Gold Zones still open at depth? Absolutely. Perfect. Love ending on a quick yes. Gentlemen, Brian, Pierre, Mike, Mark, thank you so much for the presentation and for running it through today. I know there are tons of people in the room. I appreciate all your time. I saw you were all across the world today. So thank you for joining in on the chat, asking questions. If you have any follow up questions, please do reach out. I'll make sure the Wallbridge team gets them or you can always reach out to them individually. But gentlemen, thank you so much. This was great. Thanks everybody and enjoy your weekend.