Why Today's Overlooked Commodities Are Tomorrow's Winners

0:04 So good morning, good afternoon or good evening, depending on where in the world you're signing in from today. I did notice quite a few time zones. So obviously, as always, thanks for taking some time to spend with us today. And I am joined by executives with projects outside of precious metals, despite the gold mania of this year to discuss a slightly more contrarian approach to investing, but why to not overlook some overlooked commodities. So I've got with me today Steve Rentschler, CEO of Nevada Lithium and Jeff Hackert, CEO of Cascade Copper. Gentlemen, how are you doing? Awesome. I will say, unfortunately, Tim Fernbeck of Grid Battery Metals was unable to join us because of a last minute personal issue. So I know some of you are here just to talk about Grid or get questions from Grid. Please do ask questions in the chat. I'll make sure that the Grid team still gets those questions. So I'll make sure they shoot out to the correct team. That being said, today's event is interactive, so if you do want to use that chat button at the bottom right of your screen, please do ask questions at any time during today's event.

0:56 We'll try to get to as many of those questions as possible. If they are really specific to an individual stock, I might skip them today and just send them to the relevant teams, but if they're anywhere near on topic I'll try to get to as many as I can today. If you do think of the perfect question to ask right after the event ends, which I often do, please do feel free to send in and I'll make sure the correct executive gets it and can get back to you as quickly as possible. Last quick piece of housekeeping, today's event is being recorded and that recording will be available in the mid afternoon Eastern time. It'll pop up on the same link, but also be available on Six's YouTube channel. With all that out of the way, I'm gonna let these gentlemen introduce themselves. I would love if each of you briefly explained your background, but also what drew you to your current company and project. Then we'll kind of get into today's conversation. Steve, I'll start with you. Sure. I'm Steve Rentschler, CEO of Nevada Lithium Resources.

1:43 My background has been an institutional investor, dedicated to the natural resource space basically over the course of I don't know 30, 35 years. You know what drew me about 5 years ago to the lithium space and then ultimately to the metal lithium was a fundamental outlook on electric vehicles And basically they're taking their role in the transportation industry over time and the role that lithium would play in that as a sort of a fundamental investor very attracted to big mismatches in supply and demand, even though sometimes they take time to manifest themselves. But essentially, that's always been the core of my investing philosophy. And so that and a lot of other project attributes that we have at Bonnie Clare, which is our lithium boron project.

2:31 That's what drew me into my current role here at Nevada Lithium.

2:35 Appreciate that Steve. Jeff, I'll throw it to you for the same question. Sure, Jeff Ackert, I'm the President and CEO of Cascade Copper and my background is a geologist. I started probably 35, 40 years ago, mostly in Canada and in precious metals and gold and silver exploration. I ended up doing some work in West Africa early on, like in the late 1990s, early 2000s, and discovered some very good gold projects there. And then that evolved into looking at other places in Africa so I do have a little background there but then around 2010 2011 I came back to Canada and started working on Canadian projects and started up a company called Karube Copper which ended up getting some projects in Jamaica of all places but one of these places it was sort of overlooked And I think that's kind of my little bit of raison d'etre is same with West Africa, a lot of people weren't there.

3:39 So I like to identify these maybe overlooked, not only commodities, but also projects. And so the Jamaica 1 turns out to be a very good project. The company that survives, that is called C3 Metals and they've done extremely well with that. And then continued with the copper vein, no pun intended, but we ended up starting up with the company that we're working with now, Cascade Copper, about 2 or 3 years ago. So we've sort of driven the helm of that in the early stages and then picked up quite a number of projects and probably tell you a little bit about those later on. So

4:20 that's kind of my story. Awesome, and Jeff, I'll stick with you just for a second. I know you do have that extensive geological background. What made you specifically pivot from gold to focus on copper with Cascade Copper? Was it interesting in the commodity? Was it specific to the project? Where was your thinking on that? Yeah, well, I think, as I said, 2010, 2011, I looked at copper projects and copper companies and pure copper companies, and there weren't that many around. And I really did see that the fundamentals for copper were really, really strong. In other words, the supply demand ratio. So we're just seeing that, like, like Stephen said, you know, the demand for electric vehicles, electrification and reducing of carbon, moving away from fossil fuels, which really means, you know, electric generation, not just in vehicles, but also in households and that kind of thing. So really the fundamentals made the choice for me. I said, look, copper is going to be a really growth commodity over the next decade or 2. So, and I think it's really played out. So early, you know, early identification of that in 2010, 2011. So that's when we started working on stuff.

5:37 I appreciate that. Now, Stu, I know you come from institutional investing. So get into kind of the protein for today's event. How do you see lithium fitting into institutional portfolios compared to or alongside precious metals? And then as a kind of sideways question, why do you think lithium is overlooked right now? Well, first of all, I think that the way we should all think about it is that this shouldn't be an either or kind of a choice. A lot of that has to do with just sort of the way that I think the industry, meaning the investment industry has evolved over say, let's call it the past 20, 25 years, where a lot of institutional knowledge, which, and that's just a nice way of saying, old guys like me, you know, retired or lost or whatever, as in particular the American investing base sort of turned away from natural resources.

6:24 This was a consequence of going towards biotech and, you know, other things, just technology, all this kind of stuff. So a lot of the knowledge from the portfolio managers, the analysts, all that kind of stuff has frankly just been lost. And I think we're just starting to see a rebirth of it. With regards to precious metals, I've always been a gold and a silver bug, frankly, and I don't apologize for it. And so in that context, I think

6:52 that whole area has got a long, long way to run. And so I don't advocate sort of, well, wait your turn, try to time when the cycles are going to change, etc. Because I've seen too many times how easy it is to miss that. But to look at it as sort of an instructive kind of a thing, which is that the reason that we're involved in these sectors should be is because we're not playing for S&P 500, you know, rates of return on these. These are the kinds of areas where you want to try to get in early and I would advocate you take a portfolio approach and that you understand that the cycles that are basically going to drive all of these types of commodities sometimes are going to be coincidental, sometimes they're going to negate each other. But by and large, the cycles are driven by the same sorts of things, which is at times lack of funding, at other times having to go through intense periods of work where there's not a lot of news flow, times where supply comes on

7:48 more quickly than anticipated, times when I would argue with copper right now where you're stressing the system on essentially mature industry which makes it harder and harder just to get an incremental bit of supply to meet demand out there. And you see consequently what happens to prices. So lithium is not going to be any different. I think that all commodities are going to do well. Lithium right now is it's overlooked or it's obviously people are holding their nose at it I think right now because the pricing that people saw, as an example, 2 years ago,

8:20 let's just say when it was $80,000, $90,000 a ton for carbonate, has come down to $10,000 or lower. And people say, well, Steve, why did it get that high? And I would argue, well, it never should have. But this is often what you see at the beginnings of a very, very nascent industry. And since it is so nascent, I would say that the institutions should look to the companies like mine and others, should take a portfolio approach, should look to understand the funding cycles that are necessary here, and then you can take basically small positions for you as a fund, but large positions, relatively large for a company like mine, but even if, say, it's 3, 5, 7 percent or whatever, and you'll be there at the beginning. And if you're there at the beginning, that's when you really get the bang for the buck, right? If you miss the first 100, first 200%, I know people say, oh, you know, you make it up later. You really don't.

9:15 The compounding effect that takes place if you're there at the very beginning is astounding. And frankly, it's what made the performance in many natural resource portfolios back in the late 70s, et cetera, that kind of thing. And I think we're gonna see that kind of thing again. So that's the way I look at the whole sort of, institutional investment segment and how they're going to eventually get involved here. Maybe I can just pop in there too, Romeo, if you don't mind. Just the institutional investor, I think it's the malaise of the market that nobody really wants to be the first in. Everybody sort of follows the crowd eventually. So I think that a lot of funds are driven by their performance at the end of the year compared to their sectors and that kind of thing. So nobody wants to stand out one way or the other. So I think they're all kind of following the herd at this point, but I think, you know, really we're in a general, I think a stealth

10:17 commodities market. I mean, you look at the price of copper, you look at maybe not so much lithium right now, but you look at a lot of the other commodities and they're incrementally going up. And the companies that are producing them and the explorers that are looking for those commodities are sort of lagging behind. But I think as Stephen says, if you wanna make the 200% or the 10 bagger, You know, people have to get in now. They have to get in early in that cycle. And the writing is on the wall. And I think it's just a matter of smart money going after the right time of the cycle. Yeah. And if I could just add further on to that, you know, as an example, commodities themselves obviously look at gold in particular look at silver,

11:08 copper obviously going on. I'd argue that these the companies really haven't seen the kind of performance as investments that you would hope to see and again this is a lack of institutional knowledge. We all have heard about the underinvestment as an example in gold. That's always the easy one, like 1 half of 1% in the portfolios. But as the producers, you know, start to generate the cash flow, right? And the earnings are not gonna come through arithmetically the way that the prices of the commodities go up, right? You double the price of the commodity, your earnings are going to go up way more than double, right? Just a function of the math. But typically everybody, the institutions, because of their assets under management to take a significant position, we'll start with the bigger producers. And I understand that. But my point about the whole thing is, is that we've seen in the past, uranium is always 1 that's looked at as you can see sort of the wild rides that you can get.

12:00 We're not playing for, you know, and I didn't mean to apply this 100 or 200 percent, right? We're playing for 10s, 20s, 50s, baggers kinds of thing. And my point is

12:09 that the cost of missing that first 100 percent off the bottom, the first 200 percent, is the kind of thing that cuts way down on you ultimately getting that multiple bagger. So you want to be in early in here and to me you want to be in by basically taking an allocative approach because

12:27 basically the rate of success for a natural resource project from the very beginning to the very end production is very very low. So what do you do. Well you try to spread that risk around a little bit understanding that the potential size of the reward is is what's going to make this all worthwhile in the end. So I just wanted to add that. No I appreciate those perspectives very much. Now one thing I'd be remiss if we didn't talk about recent news. We're talking copper and lithium today. Obviously, as recently as yesterday, Trump mentioned that there would be or there's likely to be a 50% tariff on copper imports. And somebody in the chat, Rock, asked, is there any chance that lithium will be subject to import tariffs and will that have an impact on the commodity? So I'd love to have just a quick conversation about tariffs. Jeff, I'll throw it to you first on how do you think this might impact both the copper price, but also Canadian copper miners? Yeah, We've already seen what the effect of just an announcement of a potential tariff can do on the Copper price. It's up 10% just over the last 24 hours.

13:26 And why is that? Well, the only speculation I have is that it's building in a little bit of a buffer there for the producers to work into the US markets with their imports into the US. So I think it's also

13:44 putting the pressure on copper. And I think the ultimate goal for the Trump administration obviously is to get domestic supply for the copper industry. In the past, Canadian oil and gas at least has always been considered a domestic asset for the US and maybe it can help us in the Canadian industry too, for Canadian sourced Copper. So anyway, we'll just have to wait and see how that goes. But certainly, the tariff issues have created a volatile environment that has created the right storm for Copper prices to go up. And I think the fundamentals for Copper are still strong, as I mentioned. We've seen this incremental rise in copper over the last little while without the tariff issue. So I think, you know, it's all relatively good for us as copper explorers to see that price rise.

14:44 Great. And Steve, just as the question in the chat asked, any chance that lithium is going to be subject to import tariffs and what impact do you think that'll have on the commodities prices? Yeah, I think that there is a chance. And I know we've done some videos in the past where we just sort of talked about this potential as sort of an evolution of the other tariffs or export restrictions that you've seen in other critical metals coming out of, in that case, China. So here we have a twist, which would be, Would the US in particular be the one who would put the tariff on rather than the Chinese restricting it and you would get sort of get the same effect, which would be the price going up? What I think is a little bit strange here, though, as we've seen sort of the what's been going on with the Trump administration over the course of the past 4 months, is that clearly there's an intent to try to foster U.S.

15:38 Domestic production, or I would even say, allied, friendly nation production of all of these types of minerals, not just critical minerals. Copper I do consider to be critical, though it's clearly more mainstream than anything else. But in an effort to basically get away from, I would argue, the Chinese supply side sort of stranglehold that they have in so many things, whether or not it's the actual resource or the upgrading, the processing of that resource. In lithium, I think what's going to be interesting is, I think that demand has got to come through on its own now, in a little bit more of an evident way before we see potentially this same kind of thing coming from the Trump administration with regards to tariff. And here's sort of my thinking, because there have been mixed messages that have been coming out and this is very, very early on after basically the reconciliation bill that you see you saw put through the House and Senate in the US, which is essentially the budget bill for the next 10 years.

16:38 So, you know, there were the EV mandate, you know, the $7,500 tax credit was taken out, which obviously on its face is not the best thing for EVs, but by the same token, there were production credits that

16:54 had previously been installed for critical minerals of which lithium was 1, which would have given you a 10% basically production credit going forward. And those have been now phased out after a few years. To me, those are counterproductive. And I don't know if this is just because, you know, there aren't enough people who are basically assembling this language when these bills go through. At the beginning, you understand how mining works,

17:18 and the long lived basically type of not only assets that you're talking about, but also the development of them, right? It takes 15 years, basically develop the average copper mine, nobody really knows what it is for lithium, because there just haven't been that many developed, that kind of thing. I think what we're going to see is the car, basically the auto industry, which I think is going to be the main driver of lithium demand going forward. It's not going to be missiles or anything like that with the germanium and all that kind of stuff. It's going to be what is going to be the reaction of US car makers basically to the understanding that the Chinese EVs in particular are of such quality, have such features, are of a lower price, etc.

18:04 That they want to get that into the hands, and let's just stick with the U.S., of U.S. Consumers.

18:10 And it appears there are a number of different ways that they're starting to think about that now, one of which seems to be that there's been a tremendous stockpile of Chinese EVs going into Mexico, which were ostensibly sold as new cars in China to get the Chinese basically subsidy, but could be sold here as essentially new cars with 0 miles on them, Weird stuff like that. My point in saying that is that those that kind of chicanery etc isn't going to last in the long term right. Right now there is very much the feeling in the US that essentially

18:45 all of the all of the the financial incentives should be directed towards production of not only the materials that go into these products, but the end products themselves. I believe as a consequence of the Trump administration coming in and basically the export impacts, meaning the tariffs on the Chinese industries, that you will see partnerships with US auto manufacturers

19:13 in the domestic states in the US, probably JVs 5149, because it's not going to be like it was before I think the Chinese are going to resist at first because they don't want to have their Technology taken much in the way that it has been the reverse for all companies that have gone over to China It's well documented in terms of the technology and the secrets that have been lost. But that will be the way for the US car companies. And I would say friendly country car companies as well to access the US markets on preferential terms. That will get the demand in the US going. Chinese penetration rate is already, I think, 50% or damn close to it. And there's arguments about whether or not it's been mandated, whether you can register gas cars easily, all that kind of thing. But the reality is That's the largest car market. The second largest is the US.

20:04 The US still remains to be the most affluent. Everybody knows that these cars are good cars. They want to come into this area. And I think that as soon as we see something concrete, some sort of a production agreement, anything along those lines, that will be the dam that will bust

20:22 basically lithium prices, let them move up. I think right now the Chinese are actually happy to let lithium languish. And the reason is, is because right now they're the ones who control 80% of the supply. But as soon as it becomes a real impediment to the US consumer getting the product at once, I think you're going to see the same sort of production from

20:45 the Trump administration that you saw with copper, all of which is just my opinion. No, no, fair enough. Hey, we're looking for your opinions here. Now, I'm gonna jump to a couple of the questions from the chat, because I think they're right on topic for what we're going through right now. Somebody has a question about lithium, and then I'll do 2 for copper. Both of you feel free to answer whichever 1 you'd like. But I'll throw it to you, Steve, the one on lithium. Advance from the chat asks, with the big beautiful bill being passed and a carve out for solar only with storage now supported, will the demand for home storage and industrial grid batteries potentially overtake EV demand in terms of its impact on lithium price? I don't think in the near term it will.

21:22 The demand for home storage and grid storage has had higher growth rates than projected for the EVs. But I think that in, again, I go back to the qualities of these cars that are coming out. And also I'm looking at this on a global, I'm talking about demand on a global level. And that's because even though the U.S. Consumer hasn't gotten into the EVs as much as other areas around the world. Wherever there has been access to those Chinese EVs, I think that the rate of penetration has been very, very great. But by the same token, people are taking advantage of these low lithium prices for, in particular, domestic off-the-grid storage. It's been a tremendous value. I think one of the most overlooked areas when you sort of do the calculations about whether or not it makes sense to go off the grid, get solar in your backyard, all that kind of stuff, is not only just the energy, right? So in other words, you bind it off the grid and whether or not your particular area of the US, you're powered by natural gas, coal, or whatever, people would always point to the power component as sort of the main component, and that's what you would be insulating yourself from when you made those calculations about whether or

22:35 not you should go off-grid. There's other charges, though. I mean, when I look at mine, and you look at the distribution charges, you look at the taxes, all of that stuff has gone up. And so I think it looks tremendously attractive

22:49 for the home consumer, as well as off-grid, just because the uninterruptible aspects sort of of the battery storage, to continue to make the lithium demand move very, very quickly in those areas. But in the end, I still think that this is really about the EVs. And I think that's I think that's the way we should look at it. Great, no, appreciate that. A couple of questions on copper from the chat that I did want to jump into. So 1, I've been reading about this a lot lately, and this is asked by Peter Epstein in the chat, with the unusually large difference currently between the COMEX and the London Metals Exchange copper prices. It's gotten significantly divergent. How did junior miners think about the copper price for PEAs, PFS, etc.?

23:28 What is the copper price, I guess, is part of this question. Jeff, I'll throw it to you. Yeah, well, first of all, we're an explorer. So we're not really tied or not really concerned about the copper price as it stands today. We do look at copper prices when we, for instance, might do a copper equivalency on a copper gold silver moly project just to give it a sort of a baseline so that you can compare it with other deposits in the area. So, typically what we do is we look at a conservative price. So, we look at like a five-year price going back 5 years. And I really can't say why there's such a difference between the ComEx and the LME.

24:13 But I'd certainly like to see the higher price right now, just to attract attention to the sector. But, you know, getting back to your question there, we just look at a 5 year historic price for being a conservative estimation. Sure. Do you want a little bit of a, just a sort of a, I can give a little bit of additional color. It has to do with lithium, but I think it might apply also in a certain way to what Jeff just mentioned, which is that, and this is because we're more advanced, I think, at Nevada Lithium. We're in the process of coming very close to finishing an update of a PEA. So this is a topic that is something that's very, very fresh in my mind.

25:00 When you think about these technical reports, okay, that come out, obviously you've got essentially I would say a bunch of engineers who are writing all of these different areas, right? So you've got metallurgy, you've got resource, you've got

25:15 your mine production, all of these sorts of things. And when it comes to price forecasting, this is not there, you know, this is, you shouldn't expect it to be their

25:28 chosen profession, that it's something that they're naturally, inherently talented at doing, nor that they want to do. It's a very hard thing to do. It really used to be, and I would argue still is, you know, the crux of what investment analysts do on any of the major, you know, in any of the major investment areas, whether it's New York, London, whatever, Toronto, that kind of a thing. Very, very hard thing to do, obviously predicting supply and demand and future prices. You can have backwards looks that can be all distorted. Look at lithium. 2 years ago, it was $90,000.

26:02 3 years ago, maybe it was 25. The last 18 months, it's been 15 down to 10. Does that kind of thing make any sense when you're talking about just again a nascent industry coming out? And I would argue that companies really have to sort of get involved in these areas because mining engineers, you know, they're going to look for a research report like some of the big ones, you know, whatever it is, to basically just be able to corroborate whatever stance that they take this. Now, obviously companies are gonna always wanna have the most optimistic forward-looking prices as possible because that's gonna give you a higher valuation when it comes to the economic model. But you can tell a lot of things, right? You can look at peers in different areas of the world who are doing similar things. Are the IRRs coming out in similar ways, using similar price forecast, etc? Do they indicate enough of an economic return that that would be an incentive pricing to bring the projects on, all these kinds of things.

27:06 So my point, and just adding a little color, it's a very, very difficult kind of thing to do, even in a mature industry like copper, which has recently been distorted by the tariffs. So the one thing I would say going forward is that backwards looking price forecasts, in my opinion, are probably very, very conservative. And when you plug your own numbers into these projects to see about the potential economic benefits,

27:33 you're probably actually coming closer to reality. And that's just a consequence. The world is getting harder and harder in terms of, for many reasons, to bring on additional supply of almost any commodity. And that's just the reality of what we're facing. Sure. One thing I wanted to step back and talk, because I know there's a lot of precious metals investors in the room, and precious metals obviously have had a strong run recently.

27:59 And I'm not asking you to call the top for gold here. I'm really not. But I'm curious if there are any specific indicators that you guys are seeing that suggest to you as an investor as well as an executive, that it might be time to consider rotating some of the gains from precious metals into some of these overlooked commodities. Jeff, I'll throw it to you first, if you don't mind. Yeah, well, I guess I'm certainly a gold bug too. I've been in half my career has been in, or more than half my career has been in, looking for and mining gold. So I really do like it. I think it's always the first out of the gate on any kind of bull market.

28:39 So I think what I would say to a smart investor is to say, Look, gold has probably

28:47 done its incremental hockey stick climb. We may only see incremental, small incremental amounts going forward, depending on geopolitical situations and that kind of thing. So I would say that, you know, again, be ahead of the curve, come into commodities like copper that are, you know, in the stealth mode, they're basically, you know, the prices have gone up, but you're, you know, the investment in the industry hasn't followed. Same with lithium, I think, and a few other of the critical metals. And I think one of the things that perhaps is an indicator of this, and more so because of the mixture of the type of companies that are listed on the TSX-V.

29:41 If you look at the index, the TSX-V index, it's sort of, I would say it's probably at the bottom of its of its range and it's slowly

29:51 starting to creep up. So I think that might be a bit of a bellwether to say that, look, it may be it's time to, you know, look at some of the other commodities of the other companies that are looking for the critical metals

30:07 and shift some of your portfolio to those. I appreciate it. Steve, same question to you. What indicators are there that might be time to start shifting some of those precious metals games? Well again going back to I'm also I've been a gold bug for a long time, silver bug for a long time, so I personally think there's a lot more to go. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be investing in all of these other commodities And I don't mean all. I mean, obviously, I mean, lithium, a big copper bug as well. But what I think is, again, is instructive is you just say the reason that you're involved with the gold and silver investments, precious metal, that you are is because of the potential for outsized returns. I still believe that the equities have severely lagged the overall commodities.

30:55 So even though gold, I don't know, I'm a big believer in physical demand and what we've seen a shift in physical demand to the eastern hemisphere, all of this sort of thing, and we're playing catch up in the West, that kind of stuff, you know, there still could be multiples on the money, I think, on the equities. So the point I would say, again, in my opinion, is just as you pick off on an individual level, on an individual equity, areas where you think you've hit areas of resistance,

31:27 where there have been milestones that have been achieved, that have been rewarded with equity gains or whatever, that you start to peel off some of that and just allocate, again, distribute this portfolio allocation. If you try to wait for when things roll over, the other thing I would mention is that in so many times, the correlation of these assets becomes very, very high. What's the reason necessarily the gold and silver might roll over at the same time would it necessarily be independent that reason. From anything else or is everything going to roll as well. The point is that some of these areas such as lithium are so ridiculously beat up. That you can get and if you understand sort of again the value of the actual asset. If you believe in the demand profiles that are still out there regardless of whether or not there's a US EV tax credit.

32:15 If you think that the technology is something that is going to continue and you look at the valuations, you can get relatively big hunks of companies for small investments.

32:26 And again, if you wait for the first 100,200,300% where all of a sudden that blip has gotten a little larger and it looks like oh everybody else is getting invested, is being invested in it. That's the kind of behavior, performance in your portfolio that will severely restrict your overall returns. It really is an opportunity cost. So my point is being a contrarian investor doesn't mean that you're just saying let me invest there because everybody else isn't looking there. You do have to believe. I mean, I believe that EVs have turned the corner. I mean, the battery technology is there. It's getting better. The cars are getting cheaper. Much like at the end of World War II, when you went from piston-driven engines, driving propellers to the jet, which was actually much simpler, It's that kind of thing that's going on. I mean, they make cars basically with 2 pieces of metal that are stamped out.

33:21 So trying to get cute, it can cost you a lot, I think, in the end as an investor. Personal experience, I'm obviously laying that out there. It's happened to me. I just think that, you know, when you see that we're going into, I think, a period of inflation, I think it's marked sort of around the world, commodities are leading the way. And I believe lithium is something that is just so downtrodden right now. It represents a perfect time to start to take a position in it and not wait for the relative performance of other commodities to give you that signal. Again, all in my opinion. Well, I think don't get too cute. It's probably timeless advice. I appreciate that. Now, I do want to talk about, and this leads into what both you just said, but also a question from the chat. Somebody in the chat asked, does China still run the price of copper, which is kind of one of those interesting broad questions. But where I want you guys to talk about it is, And this speaks to, I think, what Steve just said of, you know, what is the story that you believe in? Is how do you see global infrastructure spending creating sustained demand for both copper and lithium that could outpace the current precious metal cycle?

34:28 Jeff, I'll throw it to you there first. I guess the simple version of the question is, does Chinese buildings still run the price of copper? Well, it certainly did in the past. I think our last big run up in copper a couple of years ago was certainly driven by the demand for copper in China. And I think there's still a very big portion of the price is created by the demand there. The problem is it's hard to predict what it is and what I've seen in the past is that typically you don't know what the demand is until after it's happened. So I think it's certainly a component of what's happening. It's probably slowed down quite a bit. But like I said, I've traveled in Africa and I see the demand

35:14 in other parts of the globe as really emerging. You look at India, you look at the continent of Africa, even parts of Eastern Europe, the development of what would you call it, the middle class and people with money to spend. Over in Africa last year, the big topic was housing demand. And it's no different than here in Canada or in the US. The housing is a problem And they have to build more houses. And of course, when you're building houses, you're building infrastructure, you're building lots of things. And the demand for those commodities like copper and aluminum and steel are extraordinary. So I think, Yes, China is a part of that equation, but I think less and less so. And I think that continent of Africa and the country of India and other emerging nations will take over that real strong demand. And that's what's going to drive us going forward for 10 years or more.

36:17 Appreciate it. Steve, I know you just talked about the story you believe in with EVs, but is there a broader lithium story that leads you to believe, just globally speaking, that the price of lithium is jumping back up? Well, I think the EVs are the key globally to the whole lithium thing. I think somebody had asked the question earlier about whether or not grid or off-grid storage would basically supplant the EV demand. I don't think it will, but I do think it will be significant, but to me really the story with lithium is about the EVs. But see, there's a similarity here to the copper story in my opinion. And the big way, the way I think about copper right now too is the fact that Chinese demand clearly has been an issue since you know 2000 whatever when the entrance into the World Trade Organization.

37:09 And I'd argue you know a pretty big distortive effect in a lot of ways. But like anything else it's sort of people forget that just in the world of natural resources, as the base gets bigger, you know, to add the same incremental 1%, right, means sort of a whole different thing. Meaning if your base is 2 million tons of something, then you've got to add, let's say 10% to make it easy, that's 200,000 tons. If your base is 4 million and you add 10%, that's 400,000 tons. So that kind of thing. You know, we're at the point with copper, copper basically grows global GDP plus or minus 1%, a little bit more sometimes. You stress it out any more and you start getting price strikes, spikes, because it's so hard to produce copper, right? You stress all sorts of things, whether it's transportation, at the mine, shipping, refining, whatever it is, And that's the kind of thing that happens with a mature industry.

38:03 My argument with lithium has been starting, you know, 3 years ago from, you know, I don't know, 400,000 tons of lithium carbon equivalent to where they were predicting in 2030 anywhere from, say, 2 to 3 million tons. It's the kind of thing you were demanding a compounded annual growth rate of say 25, 30% a year. You just can't do it. You can get hunks of it at the beginning. Somebody brings on a big mine or 2, you know, all those kinds of things. And then people think, oh man, look how quickly this is gonna continue to happen. But your base has gotten bigger. So to add that incremental 10%, like sorry, I just illustrated, becomes that much harder to do. And that's the kind of thing we're still facing in lithium. Again, whether or not EV penetration in the US slows down a little bit or not, whether Chinese have been lying about their car sales or not. I mean, there's been enough evidence to show that the demand is there.

38:56 So I think that China is going to play a big role, continuing big role in terms of demand. But I think they're going to play an even bigger role, frankly, in the supply side of things. And that you're going to have this bifurcation in the markets where what's the Chinese price, what's the non-Chinese price. And that's really going to be the price that I think we're talking about, because we're trying to do at least in the US a couple of different things, which is basically lend security to our supply of all basically all sorts of commodities, but also produce jobs. So that's going to be the Chinese impact that I think is going to be on both sides. It's going to be very, very interesting to see how it manifests itself. But I think it's going to mean higher prices for all commodities going forward.

39:42 Interesting. Now, I know, like in all commodities, There are things comically out of our control that can massively impact prices. And those geopolitical risks, obviously, risks and opportunities, I think, apply pretty clearly to copper and lithium. What just as we're crystal ball gazing here, what are some events, geopolitical events that you see in your sectors that might make copper and lithium more attractive over the next several years? Jeff, I'll throw it to you if you've got an instinct there. Yeah, it's a good question. And it's certainly the copper doesn't respond as strongly to geopolitical risk as say gold and silver do. Copper is a product that you make things out of, not as a store of, at least historically, not a store of wealth or of safe haven, that kind of thing. So I think the real effect of geopolitical risk on copper would be for some of the big producers that are in Latin America, for instance, Chile, Peru, Argentina.

40:50 And I think that risk of potential nationalization could be an issue when some of the biggest mines in the world, the biggest production are coming from places like that. And of course you have to also mention DRC, the Congo in Africa. So jurisdictions that someday could just turn the other way, nationalization could happen, production could stop, so the supply chain is interrupted, that kind of thing, which makes places like Canada and the USA good jurisdictions to have your copper production and mine and exploration in. So I see that that is probably the biggest risk geopolitically for us.

41:39 Appreciate it. Steve, same question. Yeah, it's an excellent point. People forget about nationalization, and I think A lot of it is due to people's ages. And they forget, as an example, Chilean copper, Codelco. Those were all American mines, many of them back in the 1970s. It's always a very real risk. And it certainly exists for lithium. You look at the lithium triangle down there, where so much of the world's lithium comes from. But I think, you know, specific to lithium, the big ones would be obviously tariffs or export restrictions coming either from the Chinese or from the US government if they decide that in a very streamlined way that they want to basically foster the growth of domestic production of lithium, which I think they'll eventually figure out. I do believe that that's the case.

42:33 But the other thing that I think is particular again to lithium is because if you if you think of EVs as sort of an alternative transportation or 1 that's going to supplant gasoline diesel engines over time it would be geopolitical risk to oil supplies. I think about domestic US production a little bit differently than a lot of people, which is that I think in an effort to politically get people on board with hydrocarbons, you'll hear very much of the administration say, drill, baby, drill. And I think there's every reason in the US to drill. But the reality is production costs for US oil are higher than they were 30 years ago, 10 years ago. I'm not sure that we're ever gonna see gasoline prices that I saw as a child growing up ever again or even remotely close to it. I sort of have a feeling that we may be getting rather close to what it is now, barring recession, just because US production is unconventional and these unconventional oil fields, and natural gas fields, they've got very high cost. They've got hyperbolic decline rates and then they've got fat tails on the end. And so, you know, the days of finding big, you know, conventional types of reservoirs seem to be over in the US.

43:53 And that means, you know, that the days of really cheap oil and gas, cheap gasoline and diesel, for purposes of our illustration, I think are over. So if they're somewhere around where they are now, then you're just talking about the potential going forward of just basically higher price spikes. And often it used to be as a consequence of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico down here, that kind of a thing. But obviously with what you've seen in the Mideast, it's called Hormuz, anything could change at any point in time. So I would point to that as a potential, you know, catalyst for higher lithium prices as well because it's just going to shine the spotlight on the alternative, which is just a better and better EV that's being developed around the world. Sure. One question from Rock in the chat, I think is doing research while he watches. He notes the Nevada lithium seems to have lots of boron. So he's curious for your perspective, Stephen, what the future of boron is as a commodity?

44:47 I think boron, it's not nearly as demand driven as, say, lithium or copper. But I think it is going to grow, from what I've seen, anywhere from 3.5% to 5% a year. The one thing I will say is that there are constantly new things being developed for boron, particularly with regards to the defense industry and composite armors and things like that. So I don't think it's going to be a barn burner kind of commodity going forward. But I do think it's going to be of value, let's put it that way going forward. Sure. I got one for you, Jeff, from Peter in the chat. He notes that Robert Friedland and other pundits say that $6.80 a pound for copper is the magic incentive price that'll get many greenfield projects into production? Just curious if you have a view on that.

45:37 Well, any increase in prices is predicted for sure. And I think it's just the fundamentals again, you know, the supply is short, the demand is high. I don't know if that's the magic number at $6 in whatever change you had mentioned there, but at 550, I mean, today's price, I mean, There's a lot of companies that are making a lot of money from copper. I saw some of the production numbers for some of the major companies like the BHPs and so on and so forth. They were like $2 a pound, the cost in, like the all-in sustaining cost, if you want to call it that, for production of copper. So, you know, if you do your PAs at today's prices with these kinds of things, you know, the IRs are going to be huge. So I don't know if $6 and change is the magic number, but certainly the rewards will be high at that price.

46:36 And I'd still say that even at today's prices, the industry is going to be making very good returns, those that are in production now. Great, I appreciate it. Now, I know we've talked extensively today about why investors might consider lithium and copper, but I'd love to get you guys to explain why investors should look at Nevada lithium and Cascade Copper specifically. So I'm going to give you both an opportunity to talk about why the investors in the room and those watching on the replay should take a look at your company right now. And, Steve, I'll start with you. Well, I would start again with the lithium fundamentals and the fact that, you know, you'd be hard-pressed to find something that is so disliked right now rather than lithium. And yet, despite some of what we see manifesting itself in U.S.

47:23 Law, I would say that the sheer impact of the technology that has been coming into these EVs, which is manifesting itself again, in greater range, shorter charging times. The quality in, I would say, foreign manufacturers right now, and I'm excluding Tesla, honestly, to make it fair, but specifically the Chinese EVs, that that entire package of attributes really is not something that I know US consumers have seen, lends itself to basically believing the demand profiles that we saw 4 or 5 years ago. And that again, if the accelerated penetration rates aren't there, it still really isn't going to make a difference because the lithium supply wouldn't be able to get there in time for those increased penetration rates.

48:15 So what do we do again? And when downtrodden commodities are in place and fundamentally you're comfortable with that argument, you look to your individual projects. Nevada Lithium has got a massive, massive lithium slash boron project in one of the best mining jurisdictions, if not the best in the world, which is Nevada. Which obviously works to our advantage in many ways at both the state level because the state of Nevada is considered to be number 1 or to number 3 perennially as well as being in the U.S. We have all the attributes that you would want to look for, many of which I'll be able to talk about more fully when we complete a PEA, and we are getting close to that. I actually hope to have it done at the end of June, but We need a little bit more time but essentially the attributes of our project will show up based on very very high grade, very very high tonnages that are still open in a continuous manner for a massive distance, you know, kilometers in some directions.

49:17 And this is all because of a huge footprint that we have, which is essentially right next to State Route 95, and it's about 2 1⁄2 hours to the northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada. So we're not in the middle of everything that's going on, say, up at Thacker Pass or down a little bit lower. You know, in the center of the state, we have our own basically hydrographic basin and our nearest neighbors honestly in terms of towns or anything like that are 30 miles away. We've got area 51 to the east about 20 miles. We've got Death Valley to the west about 15 miles away. So we have this beautiful piece of Nevada that we can explore and potentially develop something by ourselves. I do not for any, any, you know, Any part of me believes that existing lithium prices will allow any of the projects to go forward in Nevada, and I don't really care how far advanced they are with regards to construction.

50:12 I think incentive prices are somewhere between $20,000 and $30,000, and again this goes back to a comment that I made earlier. When you look at sort of the PEA's, PFS's, feasibility studies that come out from, you know, people in similar areas who have similar types of projects, and you see clusters of IRRs that are fairly close, It tells you the kinds of numbers that you need the input numbers that you need to make the whole thing work. We have a very very strong set of strategic shareholders who've been involved with lithium before through different cycles and they are big believers. We have an excellent technical team backed up by floor who's been doing our metallurgy. They're well known in the world and have been involved as QPs in other projects, numerous projects such as Thacker and Rhyolite Ridge, and we're very comfortable with what they're producing.

51:01 So all in all, we're the kind of project that you want to look at that we can really have a bang for the buck, not only for the individual investor, but also for strategic investors, should they wish to get involved. And that is, you know, those are the types of people to whom we're also speaking and have been speaking for a while. And I do believe that despite all of the sort of discord that's going on right now in the world, this will get sorted out sooner rather than later. And basically then you will be able to see a project's very nice investment metrics, which I hope to show relatively soon, you know, come to the fore again once the noise clears itself out. So that is really the story we have with Bonnie Clare and Nevada Lithium. Awesome, thanks Steve. And Jeff, Why should investors take a look at Cascade?

51:47 Yeah, I'll just run through a few of the metrics that I think are quite appealing to an investor in an exploration company. First of all, the company is relatively new, so we don't have a huge share structure. Right now we're sitting about 43 million shares issued in outstanding. 23% of that is held by management and insiders. So really tight share structure. So any kind of expiration news and success we have can really drive the stock up. So I appreciate anybody that wants to come in now. I think they're making the right decision. One of the other things, the other metrics we have is the jurisdiction. As I mentioned, you go on other places in the world and you could run the risk of nationalization and so on. But being basically in Canada, Canada-wide, with projects in British Columbia and Ontario, we sort of covered that safe jurisdiction issue.

52:45 4 projects in British Columbia, and BC is really the place to go for looking for any kind of copper, copper system, copper porphyry systems, that kind of thing. Let me just turn that off, okay. And then the rocks and the geology are important for us, obviously, as well. So all of our projects are in areas that have had or are very close to copper and gold and moly systems. British Columbia, as I said, is a great jurisdiction for that. And then, you know, just our management team has been around for quite a while. I've been in the business for 40 years or so. VP of exploration has been involved with copper exploration and discovery and started in the Sudbury Basin and then did some work in British Columbia early on. So he's really our expert on the ground and knows these systems quite well.

53:37 So all in all, I think the whole package creates a great opportunity for an investor at this stage. And I think we have to remind the investor and most people understand this, but just to remind them that you don't have to wait for production for a company like Cascade Copper. You can make your 10-bagger during the exploration cycle, any kind of exploration success and so on. And the commodity sector is down. The junior market, the junior exploration market is certainly depressed. The value of the assets that we have should really give us a market capitalization of probably more like 50 million than 1.5 million. And there are big companies that understand that.

54:25 So we've actually had, this will be my last sort of comment here. We've had big companies coming to us and saying, we'd really like to see what you've got. So we've signed CAs, we've had, and are having people visit us on the ground. So it's, you know, those are the people that really understand the market and the lead time for getting projects in place. And if they see the bones of our projects as being very good at this stage, I think we've got some very good days ahead of us and exploration success and share price of appreciation. Awesome. Well, Jeff, Steve, thanks so much for today's conversation. I found it really interesting. I always like when I feel like I learned something after this. So appreciate both of your time very much. Everybody asked questions. Thanks for joining us in the room. There are a couple that I didn't get to, but I'm gonna pass them to the respective executives. So they'll get back to you