Virtual Gold Conference – Agnico Centerra Hemlo Kinross Oceana Osisko

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Hi, and thank you for joining us for our virtual gold conference. Well, gold was up 60% in 2025, making it the best year for gold since 1979. So, what's driving this outperformance for gold? Well, central banks continue to buy gold in record amounts, acquiring 25 to 30% of global production. and they're doing so to protect their US dollar reserves against never-ending inflation and a falling US dollar. Central bank gold reserves have overtaken US treasuries for the first time since 1996. Another factor contributing to the higher gold price is fiscal uncertainty associated with record debt levels. The federal debt is approaching $40 trillion and is growing by $1 trillion every 100 days. and interest payments to service this debt is at $1 trillion annually. So, where's the gold price going and what gold producers should investors consider? To answer these questions, we've assembled some amazing speakers, beginning with John Chapalia of Sprat Asset Management, followed by Jamie Porter of Igno Eagle, Paul Tormury and Ryan Snder of Centa Gold, Jason Kovac of Hemllo Mining, Michael Oliver of Momentum Structural Analysis, Andrea Freebro of Ken Ross Gold, Gerard Bond of Oceanic Gold, Sean Rousen of a Cisco Development, and we conclude with Joe Cavatoni of the World Gold Council. We would like to thank our corporate sponsors, Sprat, Inc., a global leader in physical gold bullion trust and gold equity funds. Keep in mind, we're going to have an open chat on the right hand side of your screen. So, say hello or ask a question or you can make a comment. We're also going to be running polls throughout the conference to get your views on gold, silver, and the markets overall. Before we begin the conference, I have one small request. Subscribe to our YouTube channel, Blur Street Capital, and also follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. I hope you enjoy the conference and thank you very much for your support. John, thank you very much for joining us today. Last year was an incredible year for precious metals with gold up 60%, silver up over 140% and here we are in the first few weeks of January, and it looks like the flow is going to continue on into these precious metals. Can you give us a sense of what you're seeing in the various products at Sprat? >> Yeah, I mean it's it's been about 4 weeks since uh we last spoke and the momentum has not slowed at all. We had an incredibly busy second half of December which historically does not happen um as a lot of market participants and investors kind of take the holidays um to themselves. But that that was not the case this year. it. We had an incredible December and it's the momentum has continued right through to January. And it's not just gold. We're seeing it in silver. We're seeing it in uranium. We're seeing it in copper. A number of commodities um specifically related to energy metals uh and and um alternative currencies as you want if you want to think about gold and silver uh as being alternates. the fiat currencies uh continue to have very strong interest from investors around around the globe. >> And you said there was an acceleration in the month of December. Why do you think that is? >> I think people are getting more and more concerned about some very unconventional, you know, let's call it policy. Um whether it's things related to trade, tariffs, Venezuela, Iran, um section 232 reviews. This is the strategic reviews the US is doing right now on a number of different strategic commodities that they deem to be of national security importance. Uh and I think as as some of these developments become um more and more in terms of pushing the the boundaries, I think investors are are thinking more about protecting their portfolio against potential shocks or market dislocations. And I think that's where gold is kind of coming in here. Um investors are shunning the historic uh safe haven of US dollars and treasuries. Those two things have been under pressure. The US dollar was off last year. Treasury yields um uh are just not providing the the level of return particularly on an afterinflation basis for investors and investors are also concerned about the very large US debt level and the treasury's inability to really extend out the term. Nobody wants to buy longdated treasuries. Um and so that's really forcing them to roll a lot of shortdated debt on a more frequent basis which I think creates some some rollover risk with that debt and and that is another factor that I think is in the minds of investors right now. >> And how would you characterize the the investors? Are they retail institutional? Are they Americans? Are they Europeans? >> Yeah, I think what's interesting is we're kind of getting a synchronized level of global interest in gold right now. you have the, you know, the the tried andrude stalwarts um in places like China and India. These are societies that uh like to put savings into hard assets like gold and silver. Uh that group has been very very active in terms of accumulating not just physical but also buying gold and silver in certificated form meaning buying it through exchange uh listed offerings. In both markets, we've seen very strong inflows into both those markets. In the Western world, last year was a real big sea change in terms of interest across all investor segments. You know, we saw about 45 billion US come into western listed gold ETFs last year. And that's a really big increase over the prior year. But when you put it in the context of just the flows into US ETFs last year at $1.5 trillion, 45 billion doesn't seem like a whole lot. So, a lot of return returning investors to gold, but it's still, I would say, a very small uh population. >> So, let's talk about some of the fiscal issues that you touched on. And I we we can't ignore the the federal debt levels which are approaching $40 trillion and they grow by $1 trillion every 100 days. These numbers are just staggering. And the interest payments on that debt is over a trillion dollars now. And so the the government's been very aggressive in trying to get interest rates lower because they want to I think they have about $8 trillion in treasuries that are coming up for renewal this year or that are maturing. So, of course, they want to get the interest rate lower so their interest payments are lower. But it sounds like the the Fed or the new Fed governor is going to take a very dovish stance and they're going to try to get interest rates as low as possible. Sometime like I think I've heard various people within the administration as low as 1%. But I want to get your thoughts on this and what you think that does to inflation. Yeah, I mean I think uh what we're concluding and we've been writing about this at Sprock for the last few months is this current administration in the US is very willing and open to run a very hot economy meaning a lot of fiscal stimulus, a lot of money printing and and and debt uh to fund all of these different programs that are being announced constantly. And also, you know, you have a lot of pressure coming from the president on the Fed to not just change the the the Fed governor, um, but also to push interest rates lower to ease that debt burden. And, you know, the the the flip side of that is around questioning the independence of the Fed and whether there's going to be undue influence on monetary policy. if that were to play out obviously you run the risk of much higher inflation in the economy. I think that's one of the reasons as I mentioned treasuries don't look as attractive. Um but it also I think you know speaks to the the the the days of this 2% you know inflation target that a lot of central banks have held on to for the last couple of decades. I I think that's that's kind of well behind us. The inflation rate is likely to run much higher. uh inflation is is not being helped by obviously tariffs uh which are inflationary and as well as disruptions that we've seen in in a number of different supply chains. So our our belief is inflation is is heading higher as fiscal policy remains uh very very accommodative and it looks like monetary policy is moving in the same direction >> and of course this is going to bode well for the price of gold but you touched on US treasuries. I've seen many reports saying that central bank gold reserves have surpassed central bank uh treasuries for the first time since 1996. >> Yeah, it's astonishing and I mean obviously it's it's a function of two things. one, the price of gold going up. Uh, and two, um, central banks, a number of them deciding that they want to have a higher percentage target of gold as their reserves relative to currencies and and and other sovereign debt. Um, and and this is happening with a number of of central banks. You know, the the most prolific, I think, rotation we're seeing is obviously in China, where China historically is has held hundreds of billions of dollars of US debt on its books. And what we're seeing is is a very clear deaccumulation of those treasuries and rotating a lot of that capital into other hard assets, including gold, including infrastructure that they're building domestically, as well as financing in other countries to secure supply chains, um, etc. So there is clearly kind of a ddollarization, you know, deaccumulation of treasuries going on and one of the big beneficiaries of all this has been physical gold. >> And to your point, the dollar was down 10% last year and it looks like that trend is going to continue. But if they continue to cut interest rates, I I can only imagine the dollar is going to go lower, which once again is going to bode well for the gold price. >> Yeah, absolutely. I mean um despite a lot of um job owning about you know wanting to have a strong currency I think the reality is when you're in a global trade war um the the the one of the direct consequences of that is weaker currencies across the board and I think that's why gold is basically being repriced higher if you know irrespective of whether you live in Canada United States or in the European Union or Switzerland the price of of gold is going up because your currency is becoming weaker as countries let their currency slide to basically mitigate some of the risks uh of of this trade war and obviously shifting world order that we're seeing in terms of you know trade policy >> and we can't talk about the gold price or the dollar without talking about the money supply and uh I know a lot of people are shaking their heads why do you want to talk about that but if you look at January of 2020 the money supply as measured by M2 was just over $15 trillion ion. Here we are 5 years later and now it's over $22 trillion. That's an increase of 42%. But this also speaks to why the price of every good, service, and asset class has gone up 30, 40 or 50% in the last 5 years. >> Yeah, absolutely. I mean there the inflation doesn't magically appear without a catalyst and and the the vast amount of money printing that really started with co and has continued unabated um has really you know repriced the good of all you know the price of every good and service in the world that is obviously being felt um particularly by younger people uh as we know who are who are caught um by that and you know it's it's it's it's it's going to be a persistent issue I think as uh unless unless policy starts to shift to be more fiscally responsible, um we think inflation is going to run hotter than it has for the last couple of decades, which is I think something that not every investor is thinking about. But if let's say you're an insurance company with very longdated liabilities, you need to think very differently about what those in, you know, inflation expectations look like over the next 10 years uh versus historical levels if you have indexed, you know, uh liabilities and obligations to your plan members. So I think for every investment capital pull you have to think a little differently about how it impacts you but I definitely think it's having a knock-on effect across the board. So John many of the factors that we have spoken about in the last few minutes they're all very bullish for gold the fiscal situation the lower US dollar uh ongoing money printing but if there was one concern that you have that might lead to a lower gold price here in the coming months what would it be? That's a good one. Um, it's it's it's hard to see what would cause a big pivot back to paper. And I I say that because I think people are very focused on holding real things and hard assets right now over paper assets. Um, and so it's hard to know given the signals that the market is flashing, China's willingness to take gold up significantly higher. we believe in in its reserves because of the the treasuries that it is slowly you know reducing on its balance sheet we think there's a lot of dry powder there we also see you know huge buying groups with very large savings pools and I'll just you know use one example of China you know the Chinese are obviously incredibly hardworking people and save a lot of their earnings you know well over $20 trillion of savings there and you think about If you were there, what can you put your money into? Well, let's talk about the property market, which has obviously been a huge source of funding for people's savings. Well, the property market has gone down for six years in a row there. So, people are not investing in real estate. Are they investing in stocks there? Well, the stock market's been really challenged as well the last few years. So, what can you buy? Can you buy foreign assets? Well, no. There's capital controls. You can't move your money offshore. So, what's left? Well, things like gold and silver. And that and I think that's why we see a very persistent bid uh by those groups of people. Um same thing with India. There's there's obviously a a long-standing tradition of of buying gold and as the price of gold has increased to levels beyond the reach of some people in India. We've seen massive substitution in the fourth quarter towards physical silver. you know, in the month of September and October alone, uh, India imported 85 million ounces of silver. That's a huge percentage of above ground stock piles. So, all of these all of these buying groups, you know, acting together, um, I think has put incredible upward pressure and it's it's hard for us to see in the short term what changes. Could a change in the administration, change the election, you know, in the midterms? uh maybe some of these things, but I think I think the genie is out of the bottle, so to speak. And that the the the secular changes that are underway right now are not transitory. They're not temporary in the sense they're going to last for one or two years. That these are moves, strategic decisions that central banks and investors are making in response to a breakdown in the global world order that we've had since the end of World War II. And I think it's going to take people a long time to change their view that we're going to go back to what we had. I think uh it's a bit of a a shock and off phenomena and and it's it's it's going to take time to to adjust back. >> So I understand why a country like India would be buying gold because it's a reserve currency. But why are they buying so much silver? >> Yeah. I just think as the price of of gold has uh become unaffordable for think about the the lower you know socioeconomic population grid which are largely unbanked still uh and still you know channel a lot of their savings into precious metals that silver has um has become one of the substitutes. We'll see if that continues now that the price of silver has you know almost uh well more than doubled since November. So we'll see if if that trend abates but um clearly there is a scramble for metals. There's been scarcity as well um by location and and retail investors as well as institutional investors uh all seem to be acting in uh in a coordinated fashion right now. >> Well John this has been a great discussion and I want to thank you very much for spending time with us and sharing your thoughts. Uh the one thing that SPRAT does very well is they provide a lot of resources for investors to learn about precious metals, base metals and many other products. If somebody wants to read some of this research, where can they go? >> Yeah, please come visit our website at spra.com. There you'll see an insights tab in the navigation menu and you'll see our blog reports as well as our podcasts. uh our market strategist Paul Wong um it puts out incredible research and thoughts on all of these markets um and his views have been I think really spot on the last uh few months. So please start there and um and please have a look at some of our funds. I'm very happy to to say that our funds have grown enormously over the last 12 months. I almost shocked myself when uh you and I looked at them right before this this call started. But uh we're seeing tremendous interest in our funds and we're really pleased that investors are entrusting us with their hard-earned capital. So thank you. >> John, once again, thank you. >> Thanks for having me. >> Hi, I hope you're enjoying the conference. Did you know that 80% of our viewers are not subscribers to our channel, Blur Street Capital? So please hit the subscribe button and also hit that thumbs up button. Thank you for your support. Jamie, thank you so much for joining us today. This year has been a record- setting year for Igno from an operational, financial, and also a share performance perspective. Can you just speak to some of the key drivers that contributed to Nico's success this past year? And what will be your priorities as we enter 2026 so you can maintain this momentum? >> Yeah, absolutely. Well, first off, uh, thanks for having me. I think, uh, you know, 2025 was a was a phenomenal year. We we we've seen, uh, uh, the the the level of increase in the gold price. I think it's good for the industry and it's been very good for Agniko. Uh, I think our success throughout the course of 2025 was was really based on just doing what we said we were going to do. Um, we had tremendous operational consistency throughout the year. um you know, we've hit our production targets and and despite the the the pressure on costs on on royalty costs coming from higher gold prices, uh we we plan to have have ended 2025 pretty close to our our the top end of our initial cost guidance. So, um we've really been able to deliver that margin expansion that investors expect when the gold price goes up, you know, by holding costs relatively flat. We've delivered tremendous margin uh expansion, corresponding free cash flow growth, and and we've been able to return a lot of that free cash flow to shareholders through uh our $800 million a year dividend and through record level of activity on on the share buyback. So, I think that's all been positive. Uh great year in 2025. The uh the gold price as we start 2026 is up, you know, over $1,000 relative to the average for 2025. So should be another good year from a financial perspective. Uh what do we need to do? We need to keep delivering and uh you know hitting our numbers every quarter. Um we need to keep showcasing the the value of our organic growth projects. So we're we're we're going to be advancing uh development of some some of that growth over the course of the next year. Uh a big catalyst for us this year is construction decision on our Hope Bay project in the northernmost part of None. that's likely to come out in in May. Uh and that's going to represent another 400,000 ounce a year uh producer uh and none of it for us. So So that's exciting. We plan to also be able to provide uh our investors with with more detail on our fill the mill strategy at Canadian Mardic and how we see getting uh total gold production at that complex up to north of a million ounces here. >> Great overview. So as a reminder to our viewers, Aiko has 11 producing mines in four different countries. But for the just for the interest of time, I want to focus on those assets which are going to contribute to the greatest amount of growth. And I want to start with Detour. Detour is Canada's largest gold mine. It's located in Ontario and it's on track to produce 700,000 ounces with a pathway toward 1 million ounces. How are the current operations at Detour and how will you grow production by 30% in the coming years? Yeah. So, that's that that's absolutely right. I mean, Detour is a is a worldclass asset. It's it's one of the largest gold mines in the world currently and and once it's fully ramped up, but will likely be in the top five or six largest gold mines in the world and and it's located, you know, within about a 10-hour drive of our office here in Toronto. So it's in a very stable uh region that uh um you know part of part of that regional center in in the abbot where we've got five operating mines that that together represent about 2/ird of our of our production. Uh at Detour as as you mentioned we've been operating uh you know around 650 700,000 ounces a year and we see the potential to ramp that up significantly. Uh Detour currently has 40 million ounces in reserves and resources. I mean, this is a this is a unicorn in in our industry to have uh a gold mine that that has a mine life akin to a base metal mine. Um and that 40 million ounces we've got there over the last 5 years. So, we've gone from 20 million ounces of reserves and resources to 40 million ounces over the past 5 years at a discovery cost of about $10 an ounce. So there's been tremendous value uh creation through uh through exploration uh detour o over the course of the you know the relatively uh recent past. Uh the plan at detour currently it's a it's a bulk mining it's a large uh open pit relatively lowgrade mine where we're mining and processing about 77,000 tons per day of ore at a grade of about.9 g per ton. So we could keep doing uh what we're doing. You know, we're generating tremendous cash flow. Um you know, the operation's going very well. However, if if we keep the operation as is, this mine life, this mine will still be going in in the year 2080. So the challenge is how do we bring some of that value forward? There's two ways you can do that. One uh is by expanding the the mill and your processing capacity. Uh, two is by advancing the mining of of the higher grade parts of the deposit. And we're really doing both of those things. We put out a study in June of 2024 that envisions uh going underground uh via ramp and underground from the underground sourcing about 12,000 tons per day of what will be 2.2 g per ton material. So instead of the 0.9 that we're getting out of the pit, it'll be 2.2 g, which increases production. In addition to that, we're going to increase the mill from a rate of about 77,000 to 80,000 tons per day. So, you put those two together uh and we can see production getting up to about a million ounces a year by 2030 and based on that study staying at a million ounces a year for over 14 years. Now, I always like to point out that study was done at a point in time based on drilling that was done to the end of 2023. you know, since then we've spent tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars on exploration and we've significantly increased the the size of the underground resource. So, so really a detour, you know, that that that was the plan as of June 2024. Uh obviously, we're looking at opportunities to uh to to do do more and and and bring that production forward even further. And Jamie, you mentioned that this mine will be in production for many decades from now, but maybe you can just put that into perspective for our viewers, how rare that is for a gold mine. >> Yeah, I mean, the average gold mine, I'd say, has has, you know, maybe a 10-year initial life. And, you know, if you're lucky, uh, you're able to expand that, you know, another 5 to 10 years. I think, you know, Agniko's fortunate that we have a number of these large assets that have multi-deade lives uh based on, you know, just what we're doing currently at Detour out to the late 70s or early 80s at Detour. At Canadian Mardic, we have mine life out to the 2050s. Um, you know, a great example is our Lauron mine. It was started 37 years ago with an eight-year life and has been expanded five times and and you know, is still going strong and has an eight-year life today. So um there are these unique long life assets within the the the gold sector. Uh but they are quite rare. Typically you know an open pit oxide deposit uh you're you're lucky to get 15 or 20 years out of. >> So let's move on now and discuss Mardic. This is an open pit mine in the province of Quebec. It is transitioning from an open pit operation to underground. How is the transitioning going? >> It's going very well. So this is this is a a significant uh project that that we started back uh in the early part of of of this decade. Um we are basically I mean if you just just in terms of history uh this was an underground mine back in the 1950s through to the 1980s was restarted in uh 2010 as an open pit mining the the lower grade halo around the historic underground resource. Uh but we're we're we're depleting those pits. So the Canadian Malardic Pit was mined out a couple of years ago. We've got a couple of years left of mining at what we call the the Barnard pit. Um you know, similar to Detour, this is this is a bulk mining relatively lowgrade operation where we're currently mining and milling about 60,000 tons of ore per day at a grade of 1 g per ton. As that barnat pit gets depleted, we're going to transition to 20,000 tons per day from underground, but at three times the grade. So a third of the the mill throughput at three times the grade means our ounce production stays basically flat around 550 600,000 ounces per year, but all of a sudden we've got a bunch of additional mill upside. So uh the the project's been going very well. We put out our our pea on on this uh in June of 2023. Uh we currently have ramp access down to a depth of about 1.1 km underground. Uh the shafts more than 2/3 done. It's down to about 1.3 1.4 km. And we will look to fully transition from open pit to underground in in 2028. Uh and then of course the challenge is uh filling that the rest of that available mill capacity. So you mentioned that in your intro. Uh part of the strategy at Malardic is fill the mill and maybe you can just speak to the strategy. What exactly do you mean by it? >> Sure. So again going from uh we have a mill that that currently processes 60,000 tons per day. Uh starting in the the first full year will be 2029. We'll only be filling 20,000 tons per day uh from the underground. At that rate of 20,000 tons per day, we're still producing 600,000 ounces a year. But we've got 40,000 tons of daily excess mill capacity. So, we're looking at a number of things uh to to to help provide mill feed and and support keeping that that hungry mill as uh as as full as possible. Uh we're currently evaluating a second shaft. Uh through that second shaft, we could we could look to uh mine and and ultimately process about another 10,000 tons per day from underground. So, that could give us another 200,000 ounces a year of production. Uh we also have the Marban deposit that we acquired through the acquisition of 03 mining uh last year. Uh we see that as having the potential to give us a you know about 130,000 ounces a year. We'll be able to truck that. It's uh within about 15 kilometers of uh of the mill. And in addition we have our Wasamac deposit which is uh about 100 km away. uh that'll be operated as u about a 3,000 ton per day operation could contribute about 100,000 ounces a year as well. So if you add up all of the component pieces we see a pathway to maybe 47,000 tons per day of uh of of milfeed. We're still going to have some excess capacity, but at just at that 47,000 tons per day, we're producing at a million ounces a year. So there's uh there remains tremendous upside there in terms of the the fact that we will have available capacity. We're doing more exploration work than we've ever done uh in and around that that mill. We've got 25 drill rigs currently uh active out of the 130 across the company. So we're we're exploring as uh as aggressively as we we can to try to source additional milfeed uh and maximize production from from that that infrastructure. But that that's really what what it's about in this industry. I mean, if you can leverage existing infrastructure, existing uh mill facilities, existing tailings uh and avoid having to go build uh brand new infrastructure, you you can generate very very strong returns. >> That many rigs go, the drilling contractors must be very happy with you. >> They I I I think they are. I think uh that the drilling contractors are are are doing well um across the industry now just given the the gold price environment that we're in. But yeah, I think we uh we work with uh upwards of 15 different drill contractors at any given time and we're keeping them very busy these days. >> Jamie, two other assets which will result in future growth for Upper Beaver which is located in the Kirkland Lake District or area of Ontario and also Hope Bay which is located in Nunibet. maybe you can just give us an update on what's happening there. Starting with Upper Beaver. >> Certainly. So, Upper Beaver, uh, again, at the same time we put out our study on, uh, on Detour Underground in June of 2024, uh, we we put out an update on on Upper Beaver. So, this is a uh, a project that's about 20 kilometers away from our Macass in Kirken Lake. It it fits in well with our, you know, that strategy of of regional consolidation. Uh what we're envisioning is uh an underground operation about 5,000 tons per day uh would produce about 210,000 ounces a year for for well north of uh 10 years. So we have uh we we've started to do a fair bit of uh the infrastructure work where we're doing some bulk samp sampling and and highintensity drilling just to firm up the the deposit before we make a a formal construction decision uh which is expected in 2027. But this has the the potential uh to be, you know, brand new production, a new mine producing in 2031 uh at a rate of about 210,000 ounces a year uh right next door to, you know, our existing operations. So, it's uh it's going to be a high return project and certainly in this gold price environment. As as the CFO, I'm I'm always interested in the uh the cash flow and I ran the numbers the other day at spot gold. You know, Upper Beaver, despite it being relatively small, uh will generate uh again at these gold prices about US 550 million a year and after tax-free cash flow. So, it'll be a significant contributor to our overall uh free cash flow from one relatively small but relatively lowcost operation. >> And why don't we move on now and talk about Hope Bay? >> Yeah. So, Hope Bay, as I mentioned, is a is a significant catalyst for us this year. Uh this is a project that we acquired from T-MAC Resources a number of years ago. Uh they had scoped it at at a smaller size operating around 2,000 tons per day. Uh and the reality in in in none of it you you need scale. Uh you you need mines that that can produce in a range of you know 350 400,000 ounces per year. uh because of the the challenging logistics and and and the higher fixed costs of of operating in uh in the Arctic and in that part of uh of Nunova. So shortly after aged the assets, it it was shut down and turned uh over to the exploration stage and we've really spent the last 3 years drilling it trying to get a better understanding of, you know, the scale potential of of of the project. And fortunately about 18 months ago, we we hit this zone that we call patch 7. Uh patch 7 has gone from zero to, you know, 1.7 million ounces in in in resources over the course of the the past year and a half. And we'll provide an update on on that resource at the end of this year. But, you know, spoiler alert, it it's grown even further. And why that that area is important, that patch 7 deposit is is important for the project is it represents a third mining front. So we'll be mining from uh what are called the Doris and and Madrid deposits but also from this patch 7 zone which is happens to be higher grade and some potential for for larger stove. So uh that's really been a gamecher for hope. We think that between Doris, Madrid, and patch 7, we can scale this project up at a rate about 400,000 ounces a year, which is which is really what what you need uh in order to be profitable to cover your fixed costs and and generate very strong returns in in in NVIT. So, we'll have uh an update on that in May. We'll likely host an an investor and site visit, and we may well have representation from uh we'll certainly be inviting members of the uh the Canadian government to attend as well. a very important project I think in terms of uh just Canada overall uh checks a lot of boxes for the Canadian federal government in terms of uh Arctic sovereignty, indigenous economic reconciliation. Um you know we we know how to operate there and we can provide uh uh you know a lot of benefits to uh that that region in northern Nibbit. So, let's move on now and discuss your balance sheet. With gold trading over $4,500 an ounce, Ignos is creating a lot of free cash flow. How much free cash flow are you generating and how much cash do you currently have on the balance sheet? Maybe you can speak to how you're going to allocate all that cash in the coming months. >> Yeah, certainly. So, in in 2025, uh you know, we saw a pretty significant increase in in in free cash flow. we had uh you know quarters approaching a billion dollars um of of quarterly uh cash flow. So that's that's excellent and and we we've put that to to work really in in deleveraging uh the balance sheet and and and strengthening our overall financial flexibility. Um we've we will have repaid about a billion dollars of debt in uh in 2025 and uh we anticipate we're finalizing the numbers now but ending 2025 with north of $2.6 billion of net cash. So um you know phenomenal uh financial strength and and dramatic change from where we were a couple years ago with a fair bit of uh of net debt. So we've used that free cash flow to strengthen the balance sheet while at the same time increasing returns to shareholders. Uh we pay an 800 million US dividend annually and in 2025 we bought back about $600 million worth of stock. So total returns about 1.4 billion um which I I I think you know is appreciated by our shareholders represented about 30% of our free cash flow. So it was a good uh healthy level of return. As we look into 2026, um you know, obviously higher gold price environment today from where we were last year. Uh we will be accelerating some of our capital spending. Uh we we're bringing Hope Bay online. We're looking at opportunities to accelerate our organic growth pipeline where we can. Uh we'll be investing a record amount in in exploration in in 2026. Um, despite all that though, I think there's an opportunity for higher shareholder returns again because the balance sheet's in such great shape. Uh, you know, we don't need as much cash flow to be directed to to that. So, uh, we'll obviously look at a potential dividend increase and we'll certainly consider, uh, doing even more than we did in 2025 with respect to the share buyback. >> And Jamie, a big part of Agniko's growth strategy in the last few years has been growing by way of M&A. Will given all the free cash flow that you have will you continue on with this strategy? >> Yeah, so we have uh we have what we call our our five key value driver projects and and we've talked about uh majority of of of them today. Uh you know detour and expanding that operation from 700,000 ounces to a million ounces a year. Uh Canadian Mardic transitioning to underground and filling that mill and getting production at that complex up to a million ounces a year. uh building Upper Beaver and having that come into production in in 2031, building Hope Bay and and last but not least u advancing our our joint venture project with tech uh called San Nicholas in the state of Zacatus in Mexico. So we have got a great organic growth pipeline that you know those five projects collectively represent about 1.3 to 1.4 million ounces of production. So we see the potential to grow our production by up to 30% over the next 5 to 10 years without doing anything at all. Um so that buys us the you know the ability to be very patient and very selective when it comes to external M&A opportunities. I mean obviously with a stronger balance sheet we have uh the ability to do more uh but we don't need to do anything. So we'll we'll we'll be uh extremely selective from from that perspective. And Jamie Anneo has always had a strategy of investing in juniors and helping them move along. And in the past year, Nikico has made investments in Foran, Osco Metals, and also Maple Gold Mines. What's the reasoning for investing in these juniors? And what traits do you look for when you make an investment? >> Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, that strategy has has been consistent and that strategy has led to uh many of the operating minds that we have today. So, you know, the idea is is is to get in and um you know, make an investment in in in these companies and and get a better understanding of of their project uh o over time. Uh you know, our overall strategy, Agniko is a a global mining company, but we focus on regions and and we we try to create a competitive advantage in those regions. So of the of of the portfolio companies that we've invested in, the majority of them fit within those those regional centers where um you know we we we look to create that competitive advantage. Uh I I would say uh the the the process of of investing in select juniors is is consistent with what we've always done. We're looking at exploration potential. So if if a project that hasn't been developed yet, we're looking for the geologic potential uh you know for a mine that that could go for decades and decades. For producing operations generally we're looking at optimization opportunities. I mean can we make the mine more efficient? Can we u you know ramp it up to a higher level of production? Those are the types of things that we we evaluate when we're uh we're looking at at these targets. We also take a lot of pride uh in being the partner of choice in the industry. You know, we partner with a lot of juniors where we we provide our our technical bench strength uh and resources to help them make their project better. Uh you know, at some point maybe we'll invest more or or buy them, maybe we won't. Um but you know, we're we we try to be as helpful as possible uh in terms of being being a partner in moving these projects forward. One measure of success that IO has always focused on is gold production per 10,000 shares. Maybe you can just speak to this and why you think this is such an important measurement. >> Yes, we look at everything on a per share basis. Uh we're evaluating, you know, an internal or external transaction. We we need to be creating value per share. Uh that that is key. If you go back and and and look over the lasth 20 years, go back to 2005, Agniko was was operating just the Luron mine in northern Quebec, uh producing about 240,000 ounces a year. You know, you fast forward to now, we're producing, you know, 3.4 million ounces a year from from 10 operating mines. Uh so almost a a 14-fold increase in production. But what's most important is that production per share over that period has increased by a factor of three. And I' I'd suggest that that's peerleading. If you look at many of our peers, production per share is actually flat. Reserves per share are flat. Uh so, you know, the owners of our company, investors in in in gold mining equities, they want leverage to higher gold prices, sure, but they also want leverage to more exposure to gold per share. And and we can do that by having success through the drill bit. uh we can do that by um you know expanding our operations and and and uh generating more more production on a per share basis and we've we've done a great job uh over the last 20 years and and and hope to do the same going forward. >> Well Jamie this has been a great update and a great overview and as we wrap up you've already provided a lot of detail and what you and your team will be doing here in the coming months but maybe you can just summarize for investors what they can expect in terms of news flow here in the next few months from Agniko. Certainly. So, about a month from now, we'll be uh providing an update on our Q4 2025 financial results and and with that, we'll provide our guidance for 2026. Um, you know, I think the market we we've had a lot of discussions with investors and and analysts and our our objective really has been to maintain stable production over over the short term until we start to see production growth from our organic pipeline uh start up in in 2030. and that's when we'll start to see a stairst step increase in in production. So, uh that's been our objective, stable stable kind of near-term uh production. Um we are obviously going to see costs increase because of the impact of uh higher gold prices on on costs and you know we've seen that across the industry. U but with the gold price where it is our our margins are are going to continue to increase. So so so that will be an update uh on on on our 2026 plans. Beyond that, the big catalyst for this year again is is uh Hope Bay and a construction decision on that project. Um that's that's exciting. I think we'll we'll announce that uh in May and and we'll be investing significantly in moving that project forward and and uh with a view to to getting it into full production by 2030. Um later in the year, we're we're hoping to be able to provide more information and and uh support for our fill the mill strategy. So, uh, potentially update some of the studies we have on, uh, our Wasamac deposit and our Marban deposit and how we're going to incorporate those projects into the the overall pathway to a million ounces at Canadian Mardic. So, it it should be an exciting year. Uh, we we've got, like I said, you know, lots on the go, uh, lots of very exciting, very high return uh, organic growth projects, and we'll be able to to provide meaningful updates on those throughout the course of the next year. Well, that was a great overview and I want to thank you very much for spending time with us today and I look forward to the next update. >> Thanks for having me. >> Paul and Ryan, thank you very much for joining us today. I want to provide a framework on where I want to take our discussion in the next few minutes. Paul, with you, I want to look at the overall operations at Centa Gold. And Ryan with you I would like to discuss the balance sheet and also capital allocation. So Paul why don't we begin with you for those who are not familiar with Centa Gold. Can you provide a brief overview of the company and its assets? >> Yeah thanks a lot Jimmy. Great to be with you again here. Um we we operate principally in North America and we also have an operating mine in Turkey. Our two principal operating assets are gold focused. Our cornerstone is Mount Milligan in British Columbia. It's a long life copper gold asset in production where we have some expansion plans. And our other operating mine is a gold mine in Turkey, an oxide gold heat bleach with several years of mine life and very high cash flow potential. We also have a very robust development pipeline. We just announced a pea on the chem asset which is in northern British Columbia north of Mount Milligan. It will, our hope is that it becomes another cornerstone similar to Mount Milligan, copper and gold with 15 years of mine life with lots of exploration potential. So what we're going to be doing there is shortly advancing to a a PFS. I'll I'll come back to the chem asset a little bit later. Also in the project portfolio, we are developing goldfield, a gold oxide heat bleach project in Nevada that is now well advanced, fully fully approved. Uh most of the permits are in place and we're making good progress on the ground. And then lastly, we have our Malibdum business unit which consists of the Thompson Creek project in Idaho, which is a mine reopening project combined with our Langaloth metallurgical roster in Pittsburgh. And the business plan here calls for reopening the Thompson Creek mine. We're well advanced on that project. We're about 18 months away from first production and then feeding the roster not only with uh direct feed from Idaho from Thompson Creek, but also supplementing it with third party feeds from from other mines to ramp up capacity utilization at that roster. So that's a quick tour through the portfolio. We're principally North America focused with assets in British Columbia, Idaho, Nevada, but also with a very profitable mine in Turkey. And then the last point I'll touch on is we have a very robust balance sheet over 500 million of cash and our entire project portfolio we can quite comfortably fund it through existing liquidity reserves and we can get into more detail on that as the conversation evolves here. >> So that's a great overview and I want to examine your assets in more detail now so we can see the growth potential and also the value proposition. And as you mentioned, you just released a preliminary economic assessment on KS and I want to look at this in more detail. Just take us through the highlights and what does it mean for the future growth at Centara? >> For sure. It's a it's a really important asset for us. It and our hope is that it becomes almost a twin to Mount Milligan where our cornerstone strategy is focused on copper and gold in British Columbia. ChemS is a past producer. It operated um profitably as a copper gold mine and it was put on care and maintenance. It has a very large remaining resource. And so the project contemplates a refurbishment of the process plant and the general infrastructure as well as the development of a new mining area located five or six kilometers away from the process plant. So we we've declared a resource here of 250 million tons of uh indicated and another 300 million tons of inferred material. A subset of that approximately 45 46% of that total resource will go into a mine plan here. And what we're targeting here is a 15-year mine life at roughly the same scale as Mount Milligan. 150 to 170,000 ounce a year of gold and uh in the range of 50 to 70 million pounds of copper annually. So in effect it becomes a mine very similar to Mount Milligan but most importantly it's unstreamed and uh Centur will have direct exposure to both the gold and the copper revenue. So just a quick note on scope here we're contemplating about 800 million of capital investment and that'll be split roughly between upgrades to the existing infrastructure in the mill. So the mill needs to be brought up to modern standards. The camp needs to be refurbished. And then the second large category of capex is the development of the new mining area. As I mentioned, it's located several kilometers away from the mill. And we have to develop tunnel drives for conveyors to access that area which is located on the other side of our ridge. In addition, the mine plan will be both open pit and underground. So there will be some capital allocated to underground developments >> and Paul as you mentioned uh KS was a past producer. So one of the big advantages is that the infrastructure is already in place including a 300 km long power line but maybe you can just speak about the infrastructure in more detail and what it means on a capex point of view. >> Yeah that's right. We we think that chem is a relatively lowrisisk project. Because I said much of the infrastructure is in place and some of the key elements of that infrastructure include that power line that you mentioned. It's over 300 kilometers long. We own and operate it and in today's market the cost of rebuilding that power line would be well over a billion dollars. So we have it and it's it's in good condition. In fact, the cost to build chemists from the ground up would be well over $4 billion in the current market. And that's a huge advantage having a pass producer uh where the the tailings are in place. That's another uh major uh foot in the door in terms of reopening it. Also importantly though, many of the permits needed to reopen chemists are already in place from past uh a past project scope that Cinta had advanced a number of years ago. And lastly, we do have an agreement in place with a number of the First Nations in the area. Both the permit and and the uh the agreements with the First Nations will require some amendments because the scope of what we're proposing here is a little bit different than what had been proposed in the past. But as you had intimated, it provides a significant de-risking that we have the infrastructure, we have a basis of permits and we have a framework for agreements with um local first nations. >> And what are the next steps at KS? >> Next step is we're moving immediately to a PFS. This will advance the engineering work, the understanding of the or body and we're targeting releasing that in the first half of 2027. >> So let's move on to Mount Meligan and this is your flagship project which is also located in the province of British Columbia copper gold mine. A prefeasibility study was released last year. Can you just touch on the highlights of that study and what it means for the mine? Principally the prefeasibly study solidified the mine as having multi-deade of potential. Previously the reserve was 10 years until 2036 of production. That PFS extended the mine life to at least 2045. And I say at least because we have a lot of mineralization to the west and the southwest that we will continue to drill and ultimately incorporate into the resource. And we we expect that the mine will have well more years beyond 2045. In fact, to illustrate the confidence we have in Mine Life Extension there, I'll note that the tailings dam that we are designing, engineering, and ultimately building here as part of this expansion will have capacity until 2070. Just to give you an idea of uh the extent of the mineralization as part of that project to extend the mine life, we're also increasing throughput capacity in the next couple years by about 10%. And uh as I mentioned the the major scope of works will be the construction of a new tailings dam seven eight nine years from now as the current dam reaches full capacity. So we're very excited about Mount Milligan. We have 20 years of mine life with line of sight to significant resource extensions beyond that. And again relatively low risk because it's an operating mine. Uh we've just received the the permits for some of the incremental expansions needed in the near term and we're to continue advanced permitting for the the ultimate 2045 mine life. >> And this is one of the things I love about these copper gold deposits is the long mine life. A typical gold mine might have a 8 to 10 year mine life, but as it stands right now, Mount Meligan will be producing to 2045. And as you mentioned, it could go well beyond that with exploration. and and that is really the centerpiece of our our corporate strategy focused on these two large copper gold pferies. Mount Milligan with a 20-year reserve life chemists with an initial 15-year pea life. Both of those mines have very significant potentials. So in effect what Satara will become is a very large copper gold producer with very long mine life in British Columbia. So let's leave the country of Canada and move to the country of Turkey where your second mine is. It's a gold mine. It's called Oakut. The current mine life is to 2029. Do you see any potential to extend that? >> Yes. So just a quick recap. This is a an oxide deep bleach, relatively straightforward. Uh Turkey is a great place to operate. We've had u a great track record there over the last three years. We've generated over 600 million of free cash flow from the mine in the last three years. We've recently launched a project to look at production life extension. The current reserve my life ends in 2029. However, we we now know that there's very significant potential for heap leech production extension because the grades in the heap are significantly higher than the resource model had initially predicted. And so we've kicked off this year a project to look at residual leeching which we expect could add two to four years of additional production. And we're also doing a comprehensive review of mineral inventory on the property looking for the potential for oxide mining extension and then also longer term down the road the potential for sulfide deposits. So currently the mine life ends in 2029 based on our reserve but we are ongoing with a project that looks at production life extension and we expect to uh provide results on that at the end of uh 2026. >> And Turkey has a very uh strong mining sector. Would you consider acquiring another mining asset there or another gold mine? >> That's a good question, Jimmy. I one of the things that uh defines Centa right now is an increasing focus on North America. And I think certain investors really like that profile. We we're not close to further investment in Turkey. But right now, our priority for capital allocation in terms of developing new mines, new projects is really focused on North America as evidenced by our project portfolio, KMAS, Milligan Expansion, Goldfield, and Thompson Creek. But we are not close to the potential for continuity in Turkey if the right conditions present themselves. >> The Goldfield project in Nevada is another growth opportunity for Centa. And Ryan, you're responsible for this. You completed a technical study on Goldfield which showed a very attractive economics. Can you just talk about the highlights of this project and why it's a good fit for Cintara's portfolio? >> Yeah, sure, Jimmy. As Paul noted, you know, we have the two uh longer life gold copper assets in BC and and in the KS PA, we're looking at a late 2031 first production in KS and so that's a bit more of a longer term play. Um but in the medium term, we're trying to get as much gold exposure as we can. And so in addition to Mount Milligan, we have good production out of Oxuit. And we we looked at Goldfield um restudied that project earlier last year, understood the resource a bit more and found ways to really augment the recoveries through a crushing strategy that are going to improve the recoveries at site and felt comfortable after doing a PFS moving forward with Goldfield that it's a really good project for Cintara. Uh it's a $252 million capital project. Uh we've already started that. We're into site establishment and some of the detailed engineering and it's a relatively short uh development time frame. We're looking at first production from goldfield in late 2028. So while we're developing these longerterm assets like KS, we are going to be getting more gold exposure in North America from Goldfield. Um when we put out the study last year and we used a gold price of 2500 and it had an NPV of 250 million and an IR of 30% at that metal price, obviously gold prices have zoomed well past that. Um, and at today's spot prices, Goldfield is an $800 million project, uh, a 70% IRR project, and one that's fairly simple. It's a it's a oxide heat leach. Um, fairly low, uh, capital risk, and one that we think will be in production relatively soon. >> And Ryan, can you just clarify when you say it's going to be in production soon, uh, what year? >> Yeah, we're looking at late 2028. Um, so, so we're into again site establishment now and some of the early works. Um it is not an overly complex uh project again in an oxide heap leachch. Um and we're quite confident we'll be in production by by late 2028. So giving us uh far more gold exposure in our portfolio relatively soon. >> So it's going to go into production at the same time oxuit is coming off or coming to the end of its mine life. >> Yeah, I'd say Paul Paul commented earlier that we do have um some positivity around extending that oxuit mine life, especially with the residual leech and looking for other material on site. Um in a perfect world for us it actually complements Oxuit and stacks gold production on top of additional production um at our mine in Turkey. But if Oxuit does end um you know towards 2029 2030 this is a nice plug the gap until KS is ready uh increase in production for the company >> and Jimmy I think that leads into a broader question where let's say you look at Centa a year and a half ago. It wasn't 100% clear where the gold growth was going to come from. we had launched on the malibdum project and I think that that raised some questions in the market is cent committed to gold and copper and we now find ourselves 18 months later and we've got three significant uh projects on the go in that gold copper space which solidifies uh a real growth profile in gold and uh if you add up uh the throughput expansion Mount Milligan the the goldfield project and ks as we've described we see a path here to 500,000 ounces of gold equivalent a year plus in the next five six years. >> Let's discuss your Molly unit now which includes two mines and a processing facility. Maybe you can just provide a brief overview of this unit and what's your strategy for these assets going forward. >> I'll give a brief overview and then Ryan can talk about the um the economics and how we're looking at the business case. As you said, the business unit from Libna comprises the two minds in the roster. But I I'll say very quickly off the top here that the Indacaco mine in British Columbia though it has a very significant resource yet in the ground. We don't have any plans to advance that project right now. We will remain on care and maintenance. So the core of our Malibu business unit strategy revolves around the reopening of the Thompson Creek mine where we are well advanced as well as the ramp up of capacity utilization at our roster in Pittsburgh. Ryan, why don't you talk about the business case and some of the activities that have been taking place over the last year? Sure. Yeah. And the focus really is on the US in a very constructive market for malibdinum right now. Um, as Paul commented earlier, mibinum prices have been appreciating and and they're they're currently, you know, higher than what we used in our economic studies. But really the the plan is to restart Thompson Creek. Uh, as Paul noted, it's about a $400 million capital project. We're about 30% of the way into that. So, we've sunk a good chunk of capital already and have that mine feed go to our processing facility Langworth in Pittsburgh. And so we're looking this as looking at this as a vertically integrated business. Um we ultimately sell the products out of laying off to to the steel industry mainly to the large US steel customers. And it it's a really exciting business. It's not gold or copper but we see really strong cash flows ahead for this business. Um when we put out the study around our malibdum business plans uh it was an MPV of 472 million at 8% um through this vertically integrated business proposition. But again, we're partway into the capital spend and metal prices for malibdinum are ticking up. So we see a pretty strong return from our investment in malibdinum. Uh first production from Thompson Creek is about mid 2027. So we're not that far off from turning this into a usage of cash for Cinta into a cash generating business. And if you go back even at our study prices, we're looking at 100 million plus of cash flow year from the combined asset. So, you know, it it's not gold, it's not copper, but it's a commodity that we think has a bright future and and we're happy to take that to first cash flow for the company. >> And Ryan, we should touch on the the environment in the US right now. The the current administration's policies around metals and manufacturing and a focus on the steel industry have created a very conducive environment for this business proposition in malibdum. We have a in effect a a US-based story here, mining mulibidum, processing it in Pittsburgh, and supplying the domestic US steel industry. And over the course of the last year, we've seen strong uh uptick in demand for malibdum products. And a quick reminder here, malibdum is a steel alloying metal that is used to make steel in effect stronger, tougher, more resilient. It's used extensively in energy applications everything from uh pipelines to um to nuclear but also heavily used in aerospace and defense uh in in ship building. So wherever you need stronger tougher steels you you see malibdum alloy steels and we have seen an uptick a strong uptick in demand on the part of the domestic US steel makers >> and given that centa gold is a gold focused company would you consider selling this division or spinning it out as a separate company >> it's something that that is always on the table we recognize that malibdum within the company is a bit of a strange fit for a a gold mining company but we love the business case as Ryan described it has the potential generate very significant cash flow. The malibdum market is strong. So what'll happen is it'll be a decision between well do we really like the cash flow? Do we like what it does for the balance sheet? What it does for our shareholders versus what it may look like as a standalone unit say through a spin or an IPO. So the answer to your question, Jimmy, is we recognize that strategically it's a a bit of an odd fit given what our peer group looks like, but it's also a great business, relatively low risk. So, we'll make that decision as market conditions warrant as we get closer to production. >> Paul, I want to ask you about your production profile. Now, you've talked about your organic growth pipeline of projects. Can you just speak to what Centa will look like as a producer in the medium to longer term? >> Well, our our immediate goal here is to grow gold production and with with we talked about the the overlap of Oxen Goldfield earlier. So we will have overlap production in 2029 at Oxuit and Goldfield. So that'll be the first big bump up in in our production profile. We're hoping to extend Oxuit as as Ryan mentioned. But with our PA here on KS, we we plan to be in production there in late 2031. So what you're seeing is a steady build in that gold in that gold base. So we've got Mount Milligan, a minor throughput expansion coming in three years. We've got Goldfield, we've got KST coming. So what centa is transitioning into say five years from now I think that's a good medium-term window to look at is if our plants come to fruition here on chems what we will have is two largecale open pit with a combined underground at chems uh production base of gold and copper in British Columbia supplemented by gold field. So the medium-term sees us growing strongly principally with uh chem and Mount Milligan operating in tandem and then as we discussed earlier both of those have the potential for multi-deades of production. >> I want to bring Ryan to the conversation now and discuss your balance sheet liquidity and also capital allocation. Can you just speak to your capital allocation strategy Ryan? >> Sure. Yeah. I'll answer it in two parts. Uh you mentioned the balance sheet. One of the hallmarks of Cintara is is a very strong balance sheet. As Paul noted, over 500 million of cash. We have no debt. U we have a $400 million revolving credit facility that's untouched. And so we do have a lot of internally available liquidity and we make very strong cash flows at both Mount Milligan and OXU right now. And in terms of capital allocation, we obviously want to allocate that capital to the highest return use. Um Paul has outlined our development plans for our our internal assets and and we see good strong returns and good irr on all of those projects. So KS Goldfield Thompson Creek and the Mount Milligan expansion and we are going to allocate our liquidity towards those assets. But even looking at those assets, looking at the capital sequencing, we're going to have excess liquidity just on our internal basis. And so we have been allocating that capital to shareholders. We do pay a pretty steady dividend about six years straight of quarterly dividends but we have been ramping up our share buybacks because given where we've been trading given our relative and absolute valuation we think that's a high return use of cash as well. Um I think our our goal in 2025 was about hund00 million of share buybacks which is a public number um and we ended up relatively close to that. So big strong buybacks for a company our size. That's about 5% of our shares outstanding and we bought back about 10% of our outstanding shares over the last couple years. So the dual goal of this company is really to grow our internal assets, increase that gold and copper production profile as Paul talked about while reducing our share count at the same time to give investors more torque to that that future production profile into a rerate that we expect to come from Cintara. I think the other point I'll make is we are a bit of a unique company like we have so much in front of us in terms of development. It's all in North America or predominantly in North America which is great but we're also a company that doesn't need financing to do it. We are going to fund this internally with our cash on hand and with cash flow from operations. We don't need to go to the equity markets and dilute shareholders to fund these projects. We don't need to do, you know, arduous financing streams or difficult debt deals. We have the financial capacity to build these assets, build these assets, excuse me, which makes them more real, right? And more credible that these will actually come online if you already have all the liquidity needed to do it. >> And I'm sorry, how much cash did you say you're sitting on? um you know over 500 million uh at the end of September which is the last public number it was 562 it'll end the year above 500 million as well and and so you know still setting on a a very strong cash base while we have been really spending a lot on buybacks and while we have been investing heavily in Thompson Creek because we've been able to keep our cash balance at a relatively high level while we're investing in our projects and returning capital to shareholders. >> And how do you put that cash to work? Yeah, I mean I think again while we have it uh we we we invest it, we make pretty good returns on it, but it is earmarked for for shareholders and for our projects. Um you know, when we look at at other opportunities, we think those two buckets give us the highest return on on our cash and and on our liquidity. And we're committed to to, you know, allocating the majority of our cash to those areas. And Jimmy, since we last spoke, we've also deployed some capital into investments in juniors, again to increase gold exposure, but also to potentially bring assets into the portfolio that makes sense for us. So, we we've got a half dozen or more 9.9% equity investments we've made. The two most notable ones are Liberty, which is advancing a project in Idaho, and then thesis, advancing a project north of Kass. And so the thought here is to look for equity investments in developers who have highquality projects where we believe there could be an industrial synergy with Centara's asset base down the road. I'm not saying we're going to take them over, but uh it provides that kind of optionality in the portfolio. So that's putting capital to work in investments with continued gold exposure in areas where we already operate. Paul, I want to ask you about valuation now because you are trading at a deep discount to many of your comps and Ryan did mention that you've been active with the buyback because the stock is so cheap on a NEV basis, but maybe you can just speak to uh the valuation and look at it from a sum of parts point of view. >> This is what we believe is actually one of the most compelling features of Cintara. Our market cap today is 3.3 billion US, give or take it. The market's been very active lately. As Ryan mentioned, we have just over 500 million of cash in the bank. So on an enterprise value basis, $2.8 billion. The PFS we released on Mount Milligan yields a value that fully accounts for our enterprise value, 2.8 billion at prices, commodity prices well below spot. Well below spot. So from a very simplistic point of view, our valuation based on our share price, enterprise value of 2.8 billion, that's Mount Milligan. And that's an operating mine. It it does not have a lot of development risk. Many of the permits are in place. We're advancing the other ones. Relatively low risk proposition. And then you take a spin through the rest of the portfolio. Our pea on KS shows a value of 1.1 billion at $3,000 gold and 450 copper. Then goldfield again pick your price but 500 million at prices below spot. UK in Turkey similar valuation 5 to600 million of prices below spawn so between chems goldfield and uh suit there's another $2 billion of value there and as Ryan mentioned the malibdum business unit with prices trading up on uh the commodity with capital being invested in in the asset um if you simply fast forward the DCF on the study they released you're looking at 7 8 900 million of value depending on the commodity price So we believe on the basis of what I've just put together there that there's almost an equivalent amount of value sitting in in the other assets over over and above where Mount Million is which leads us to view ourselves as trading at 0.5 times which is a very very low multiple when you look at the peer group and again this is a commodity prices well well below spot we can fund all of our development I think Ryan explained that very well we can quite comfortably fund our projects chem goldfield Thompson Creek out of existing liquidity. So there's no dilution coming on on on share issuance for for cash. So that's our fundamental value proposition deep on asset valuation some of the parts with a with a straightforward ability to fund our capital projects and I think we we butress that conviction in valuation with a strong buyback that we've been running over the last year and a half. So that's our compelling value proposition is that we we think we trade at a deep discount to the sum of our parts of our our asset values and um I think we've we've seen some recognition of that as our shares have traded up but we believe that there's a lot of room yet for the share price to run just to get up to even let's say 7.8 on our valuation multiple. Well, Paul, this has been a great overview and as we wrap up, you've discussed a lot of detail on what you and your team will be working on in the coming months, but maybe you can just summarize for investors what they can expect in terms of news flow here in the first half of the year. >> Well, we of course we're going to be putting out our year-end results and um we will be advancing the the development of the projects at Thompson Creek and and Goldfield. So throughout the year, you will see milestone announcements on progress at the reopening of Thompson Creek. As we've mentioned, we're heading to first production there in about 18 months. We are going to be advancing site establishment works at Goldfield throughout the year. So what you're going to be seeing is incremental investment capital being put to work in those development projects. I mentioned that at KMS we are moving into a PFS right now. We intend to release the results of that in the early part of 2027. And at UK suit as we mentioned we are working on a life of mine optimization study which is targeting production life extension principally through residual leeching but also potentially through new oxide or sulfide deposits and that study will be published at the end of 2026. So for all of our assets there's a there's quite a lot of advancement to take place over the next year and we'll be providing updates with each of our quarterly uh releases in the upcoming year here. Well, Paul and Ryan, that was a great overview and a great update, and I want to thank you both for spending time with us today and sharing the Centa Gold story. >> Jimmy, thank you for having us. It's always great to talk to you. >> Hi, it's Jimmy and I hope all is well with you. Before we get on with the interview, one small request. Please follow me on Spotify and Apple Podcast. Leave a rating, leave a comment, and if you have any suggestions on who you would like to see interviewed on the channel, let us know in the comment section. Thank you for your support. Now, let's get on with that interview. Jason, thank you very much for joining us today. So, you are the CEO of Hemllo Mining and Hemllo is the newest publicly traded gold mine in Canada, but the mine itself has been producing gold since 1985 and the mine was acquired from Bareric. Why don't you take us through the process of how you and your team acquired this asset and how did it all come together? >> Yeah, thanks for having me on. Uh quite a unique history to be quite honest. Um our lead director, uh Bob Cordam, reputation speaks for himself, mining hall of fame guy, was actually at Hemllo for two of the three discoveries uh back in the early 80s. So his affinity with the asset and his knowledge on a geological level is unparallel to to to anyone else in in the industry. Um so with that and his relationships with CIBC and Mark Bristo um he was asked to come into the process um in early April. um him and uh our other co-founder uh Jonathan Odd um worked together at Dakota Gold as you know um they contacted me and we we we built a really an amazing team uh around this high quality asset. Um the process was very competitive. uh started off with about 35 companies uh dwindled down into phase two around 10 and then the final process uh of around four people well four total um it was extremely competitive. We were the only call it shell company in the in the process. um everyone else was multi-billion dollar producing companies uh operating in the area or or elsewhere globally. Um we have a very unique skill set with our team. Um we pride ourselves on on on our operational excellence. We have a very very strong uh mining and engineering team uh that sees a lot of value in in in optimizing projects and has done that multiple times over over their career. Uh and then a unique skill set on the geological side that you know we see a lot of potential where others may not myself being a structural geologist by trade. So, um, all of that it was it was a a lengthy process, very competitive process. Um, you know, the bids were all stacked on on one another. Um, so we do not overpay for it. And it was, frankly, a very unique time uh to ink a deal when, you know, gold price was $3,300. It is now moved $1,000 in our favor. Uh but more importantly, you're inking a deal at 2600 long-term metal prices. Uh and never before in in in this market, as you know, have you seen such a decoupling from spot prices to long-term consensus prices. Usually around 15 uh 15% discount to spot. So, when you're talking about a 14-year asset that we see clear visibility and and potential to push over 19, 20 years, inking in at $2,600 uh is is is extremely um you know, value creative for our shareholders given the duration of of of the asset. >> And I didn't realize there was that much competition for that asset. So, good on you guys. But what was the final price tag? How much did you pay? So it was it it was 925 up front. So 875 in cash and and 850 in in in stock. All numbers we'll disclose and talk about today or in US dollars. Um you know it's is a a a very unique asset. It's a it's a piece of Canadian mining history. I I used to write papers on Hemla when I was in university. Uh and you know you could count on one hand how many you know we we believe the potential is 20 plus years. We believe we can we can have the potential to produce over 200,000 ounces per around 140 now. You could count on one hand how many assets are like that in Canada and and and frankly in North America. >> And you threw out a few numbers there I want to do a deeper dive on. You mentioned that the mine life is currently 14 years. It produces 140,000 ounces annually. What's the all-in sustaining cost based on the last technical report? >> Yeah, so the last technical report has an annual uh uh an all-in sustaining cash cost of of of $1,400 uh over the life of over the life of mine. Obviously, there's higher years and lower years. Um for example, next year uh the the technical report had around 1956. >> So very high margin mine in in these metal prices >> and one of the issues with Hemllo under barracks ownership is that it was under capitalized. Essentially they didn't care about the asset. They just wanted the cash flow and you and your team want to implement an optimization program focused on converting resources and also making improvements in the mind and the mill. So I want to touch on each one of these elements. So why don't we just touch on resources first. What are your plans in converting these resources into reserves? >> Yeah, you know Barrack's a you know very wellrespected company and honestly as a geologist I I I really idolize Mark Bristo. Um but you know when you're going to allocate capital as bareric and you know 100 125 million investment can push you from 150 to 200,000 ounces a year. You could do that or you could go drill off 10 million ounces at four mile. You know I could tell you what I would do. Uh and they they did exactly that. uh right it's sub 5% of barracks overall production profile. Um what we are doing from a resource and reserve perspective is launching one of the biggest drill programs in North America. Uh this year we're drilling over 130 kilometers. Okay. Uh a lot of that the in two buckets is high definition drilling and growth drilling. Um, from the growth perspective, you know, to put it into perspective, Bareric was doing about $2 million a year in growth because obviously they were just harvesting cash uh for four mile and rig. Um, we are spending $20 million on growth and uh, you know, I come from the OSCO group uh, where we like to drill a lot. Um, and uh, so we're we're we're we're very happy about that. uh and to drill off a million ounces in these types of systems costs anywhere between 20 and $40 million. So we see a lot of potential, a lot of value to be unlocked through the drill bit as it was completely underinvested, but I we understand why it was just so noncore to to a global giant like like Bareric. Um, so we understand why it was uh under capitalized, but you know, it's the story old as time where you look at, you know, what Jason Simpson did or Tony Mikuch did uh when you pull assets, non-core assets out of major mining companies and really give it make it a core focus for for the team. There's a tremendous amount of value uh that that that can be unlocked. And so you said you're going to spend Beric was spending 2 million, you're going to 20 million and >> just on just on growth drilling. So our overall exploration budgets around $40 million US. >> Okay. So why don't we touch on that also? So when you talk about exploration, you're talking about regional exploration. >> No. So the way we do it uh is what we classify as growth is bringing ounces into the inferred category. Okay. And then what we classify as high definition drilling is resource to reserve conversion. So inferred into indicated indicated into measured. We want to get to a point uh that everything we are mining uh is measured material. Right now we're about 80 85% of the material that we'll be mining next year uh is measured. We want to get to a point where 100% of the material is is is measured. And another part of the optimization program is working on the mine itself and and I guess making changes to the infrastructure. What do you have planned there? >> Yeah, you know, it was it was very interesting. Um, you know, we talk about a very underutilized infrastructure here at Hambo quite a lot. Uh, very similar to again muscle white and porcupine. Um, the hoisting capacity is at 60%. So, it can do 6,000 tons a day of war. There's a ramp that just broke through the surface that can do 2500 tons a day. So, you're talking about 8,500 tons a day that you can pull from the underground. Our current mining rate is 3,500 tons a day. Um, the mill capacity is 10,000 tons a day. So, you would think that that is an obvious strategy that that Barrett can execute. the the the issue around that um and you could see a slide nine in our our corporate presentation is that when you run it at a very conservative metal price of $1,700 for reserves, the stoopes are scattered all throughout the mine. And when you flex the metal price to still a very conservative number at 2100, you you see very discreet sectors that can you you put one team in that sector uh which will drive a much higher productivity and a lower unit operating cost that will support the lower grade cutoff. Um, but you can't see that at a $1,700 metal price. So, by doing that, we've redone the whole life of mine design at that higher metal price. Um, which will drive that hotter higher productivity that could fill the hoist, fill the ramp, and still we're at 85% capacity at the mill. So, it's it's a very unique asset with respects to that. And again, we're not reinventing the wheel. the mine was designed for success in tons of dam, right? Uh it was just um Bareric being conservative uh and and Mark doing a great job on preserving margins. Uh but we see that you know you in this metal environment still being very conservative still preserving significant margins uh this will allow for much better productivity and a more fitfor-purpose approach for this this mine >> and I'm sorry Beric was using 1700 what are you going to use >> uh so start up until last year in 25 they were using 1500 then they use 1700 uh we are just going back and forth with between 21 and 2500. So, we don't have a a set number for for reserves just yet, but it'll be between uh those two two numbers. >> And now, why don't we talk about the uh the mill because you also want to do some optimization changes here. What do you have in plan or what do you have in mind? >> Yeah, you know, they they did a great job. Um, that's one of the things when you buy assets from big companies like Bareric, uh, they do a great job of of when they they're 18 months ahead on their development rate. You know, commonly a junior would be six months ahead. So, they do a great job with with with things like that. And especially to go back to the mill like they run two parallel lines right now. So the sag in the ball mill on the front end, they'll run one line, shut it down, maintain it, run the other line, shut it down, maintain it. The back end of the mill with the uh Nelson concentrator, the tailing flotation cells and the cyanide detox tanks need to be upgraded. So from 3,800 to 4,800, there's no capital investment. from 4,800 to six to 6,000 tons a day, there's about a $10 million uh capital investment. And then to get to the full 10,000 um including the tenants around 32 million, which is all disclosed in the technical report. And so I want to talk about exploration drilling. Now, Bareric did very little, but you're going to do significantly more. What maybe you can just talk about that and what targets do you have planned? >> Yeah, there it it as a structural geologist it's quite fascinating and you know Bob Carter mainly loves his geology. It's amazing person to work with um and it's f hosted in in in two deformation events. There's an F1fold F2 fold. Um, so there's a lot of potential extending these fold closures at depth and there's multiple folds that have not been yet drilled. So the Ezone, Bzone, DZone, and Azone are areas of significant focus for for next year. And why don't we just touch on regional exploration because I don't think I mentioned this but the Hemllo gold deposit is located along the Hemllo greenstone belt which is a very prolific gold region. Maybe you can just touch on that and if you've identified other areas yet that you want to test or target. Yeah, you know, uh the answer is is we have not properly uh evaluated the regional land package. It's a massive land package and in an archan granite greenstone belt, it's around 47,000 hectares. to say that there's a oneoff deposit of call it 25 historically produced. We see potential to get push it well over 30 million ounces. To say that there's a oneoff 30 million ounce deposit and these types of rocks on a geological level, it's extremely rare. Um, so we will chip away at at at at the regional land package, but to be honest, there's so much potential uh just at the Hemllo Brownfield site proper uh that that's, you know, we're talking we see potential to get over 20 years. So evaluating the regional scale uh on on an accretion basis when you discount ounces back is is something that we're we're kind of pushing off to to the future, but we'll pick a way at it next year and then over the coming years to properly rank and value the the targets. >> And why don't we talk about the timeline associated with this optimization program because it currently has a 14year mine life and you want to take it to 20. It's producing 140,000 ounces and you want to take it to 200,000. What's the timeline associated with doing all of that? >> Yeah. So, it's going to occur over the next call it year and a half. Uh, by the end of 27, we'll be at that 6,000 ton a day runway, which will equate to about around 200,000 ounces of of of annual attributable production. Um, it takes time. We got to order equipment uh which has already been ordered and and staff up the the the site team. So it's not going to happen overnight. Uh by the end of this year we will be at that call it 48 100 ton a day run rate. So gradual increases um and we think we're conservative on those numbers. So, why don't we talk about your balance sheet now and how much cash do you have and how will you allocate that cash in the coming year? >> Yeah. So, again, when we inked this deal, gold was at 33 or $3,200. So, we overraised um when we were doing our financing uh because we were budgeting at $2,800 gold. Um, so right now we have about 140 uh million dollars US in cash. Uh, we have about 20,000 ounces sitting uh with our refinery. Um, so we depending on the metal price, uh, we see our cash position growing modestly even after, you know, investing. This year is a big investment year. We're going to put around $125 million back into the mine. >> And why don't we talk about your valuation now because you are a relatively new company. So a big part of what you have to do in the coming year is create awareness. But why don't we talk about the valuation? Where is it and where do you want to take it? Because you are trading at a discount to many of your comps. So how will you close that valuation gap? Yeah, I I I think we we just have to deliver on on on what we we we we say to be quite honest. Um you know, if you you look at our peer group, um with our resource and reserve base and our production profile, companies are trading, you know, around three three and a half billion dollars. Um and we're sitting at a a billion and a half. So, you know, what that would equate to is around 11.52 share price. Um, so we will close that gap. Um, again, to hit on the point that this is a very unique asset in Canada. Um, where we're talking about a 14-year mine life that we see potential going over 20. So, a lot of our NAV is clipped at a long-term metal price of $2,600. So yes, everyone has a lot of nav torque to higher metal prices, but commonly gold assets as you very well know are five to seven years. So we have significantly more nav torque than than any of our our our competitors given the duration of of our asset in in in Canada. >> And you have a lot of marketing lined up for Q1 of 2026. Maybe you can just touch on that just in case some of our viewers might be where you are and they want to come and meet you. >> Uh yeah, I I leave tomorrow for a threemonth trip. Um, so we're over in uh Switzerland, London, uh Paris, throughout the United States, uh over in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, uh BEIMO conference, TD conference, uh PDAC here in Toronto, uh then hosting a nice site tour for a few investors uh right after PDAC. So, it'll be a busy Q1. Jason, as we wrap up, you've already provided a lot of detail on what you and your team will do in the coming year to optimize the mind, but maybe you can just summarize some of the news events that investors should look for in the coming months. >> Yeah. So, what one of the big things is is we're going to be doing our TSX mainboard listing. Uh right now, we're the biggest company on the on the venture exchange. Um you know it looks like we'll have um some index inclusion uh on the rebalancing in March uh which will will be a major major catalyst. Uh we'll have an updated resource uh statement using a higher metal price um uh in in Q at the end of Q1 uh then we're just starting off 130 kilometer drill program. So you'll see a a significant amount of news flow coming from from the drill bit. Uh that will feed into the updated technical report that will be published in the middle of 2027. Uh and then in 2027 doing our NYSC uh American listing. >> Well, that was a great overview and a great update. This is a new company for me. So I want to thank you for spending time with us today and safe travels. >> Thank you very much. Take care. Michael, thank you very much for joining us today. Well, these politicians have really done it to us now. All these world leaders are over in Davos having a good time right now and you and I are here grinding it out and we're trying to make money and also protect our money. So, we have a lot to discuss here in a short period of time and I really don't know where to begin, but why don't we just begin with today's activities? What's your assessment of today's action? Well, the the key to watch, and we've been saying this for months, when we're focused on silver and gold, the key level to watch is the bond market because we know this time around, not like 2000, 2002, which is.com bubble. Okay, fine. Simple explain overdone sector or mortgages 2007 through9, you know, this family, that family, a lot of mortgages. Okay, this time it's a government bonds. They're the the Titanics of the world. Ours, the Japanese bonds, UK, you you name it. They're all in dire straits. And we know that. And it's not because just what's happening now. It's been what's building up and building up and building up. Okay? And now suddenly because of the events of the tariff versus, you know, the war between us and NATO and Europe and so forth, uh it's put our they want to dump everything. You know, Europeans sell all those bonds, etc. Fine. Okay, good. They should anyway, but heck. Um, but T-bonds technically, we've been assessing them continually. T-bond futures is what we look at. They're 30-year bond futures. Been around for decades. Okay, that does not influenced by the Fed's short-term rate cuts. In fact, they've cut rates, you know, for a period of time here. And the T-bond yields are nailed to the ceiling, high prices low. And if you slip those prices down much below where they are now, the T-bond futures price, two, three points below where they're trading now. They reached into the 113s today. Okay, I'll explain that in a minute. You could precipitate a panic where you don't just get a price drop, but you get a like a real quick couple day, oh my, you know, crash type fear. Okay, you can't have that in the bond market. It's bigger than this. It'll it stock market doesn't compare to the T- bond market. And it's not just us. It's Japan. We know that. Uh T bonds collapsed from 2020 to 2022. October 2022. They made a low. They dropped from 18090 on the TB bond price down to 117. Much of that occurring in the year 2022. Okay. Since October 2022, you can draw a line sideways on the price chart or across the yields on a high level. It's gone dead, staying at those levels, either side of that 117 price level. Right now, we're actually below it. There have been three bond rally attempts in that last couple years, three years where there have been rally efforts to try to get it up off the floor, dropped the yields, and they've not taken hold. None of the rallies have worked. None of the dips and yields have sustained. They gone right back up. Okay? If you slip down now much below today's low by a couple points and we'll get more specific we do with our subscribers you could precipitate a what we call at least a mini panic and I I know that the Fed will intervene because already in November Williams the head of the New York Fed announced or in a press conference stated that the U that the Fed was going to quote start buying bonds. Why? He said, "Oh, just because liquidity in the market needed more liquidity." Okay. Didn't say anything about the, you know, how bad they were anyway, but liquidity. Okay, fine. They've been buying bonds since November. It's evidence. You can see. And bonds have dropped from 117 116 and for the last couple months in the narrowest price range in T-bond futures history. Like they're dead. They can't rally, but they also don't go down. Now, suddenly today punched out that recent low in just below 115. We even got below 113 today. Now, we've got some trigger levels require a few more points, but if you do that, you could get this thing to start to puke. You cannot have that kind of event. Everything else is meaningless. If T- bonds start to go down, people go hands in the air. Okay? And same with the central bank. Well, what's the prime beneficiary of the central banks going berserk, printing money, expanding money supplies, playing games? Gold, real money. Silver, real money. And that's why today you've got this sharp down in the S&P based on the the news about the T-bonds, especially in Japan, having crashed and ours are behaving sick. Um, but gold's up sharply, silver's up even more sharply, and the miners are up. I thought the miners were supposed to go down with the stock market. Remember that, you know, sharp drop in the stock market, miners go down. Instead, they're up 3 or 4%. What's going on? Okay. What's going on is reality. The question is, do we get a further sharp drop in the T- bonds like real soon? Because if that happens, you could see verticality in silver and gold like you've not seen so far in this advance. I'll pause there. and we can go on with those later on. But anyway, that that's right now we're sitting on a potential tender box that could literally unfold in days in both directions. >> So, your big concern are the the bonds, the US bonds, and I always watch the 10-year and 10ear's gone from like 4% up to 430 call it. Uh I don't watch the 30-year. Where what's the yield on that? >> I I don't even keep up with it. It's like five or something. I look at the price, but the point is it's nailed at its ceiling. The yields haven't come down for the last several years since 2022 when they surged. And yet the Fed's cut rates are on the short end. They don't control that that beast. And that beast is too big to be to let go. Uh the now there's a very Yeah, go ahead. I was just going to say this is another big concern with the US government because they have $8 trillion worth of bonds uh that are maturing this year. They have to roll them over and they have to refinance them hopefully at a lower interest rate. >> But if things continue like this, they're not going to get those lower interest rates. To your point, they can't control the short end. >> The the long end. Yeah. The the long end they can't control. Yeah. Uh the the issue is though the speed of this event if we're entering like what Japan just experienced last night in their T- bonds their bond market uh which has been going up in yields and yields ongoing but now it's spiking. Uh we're starting to do if we start to do the same thing. Uh-oh. That's like a nuclear event especially for markets. And we know the central bank will go as berserk as they possibly can. They know what all kinds of tools they've had in the past. They'll use them all. all they'll invent new ones. I don't know what they're going to do, but they will have to panic because it's too big not to intervene. Uh the question then is our assessment of silver in particular. We think gold is and silver are going up a lot more this year. A lot more. Okay, multiples more. Uh but silver is going to beat the pants off of gold. Silver is very depressed to gold. We all know that. It's been depressed for a long time, so that hasn't worked. But the technicals that say it shifted into an outperform versus gold occurred in November at the close. By our metrics, we said, "Okay, game is on. Silver's going to launch versus gold. It's since it's now up to 2% of the price of gold. Early this year, last year, it was at 1% of the price of an ounce of gold. So, it's doubled in relative value over a year. And if you go back in history and look at where was an ounce of silver versus an ounce of gold as a percent and let's say the 1980 bull market peak when we hit 50 bucks, that old range, okay, was at 6 and a half%. 6 and a half, we're at two. Okay. And in 2011 peak when we hit 50 the second time, it was over 3%. We're at two. Our technicals show us that that spread relationship has broken out and we're likely. Think about this. Silver's been in a 50y year, half a century dull range, suppressed, whatever. Gold hasn't been. Gold blows the heck out of every prior bull high. Copper is not where it was back in the 1970s, 80s, 90s, 2000. It's four times that price. Silver, for some reason, has been contained. Whether that's manipulation or a combination of events, it made a mistake. And whenever markets make a mistake, they tend to compensate for it and quite often overcompensate in a tantrum. This has happened many times in markets. It's it's not usual, but it happens. Copper did it in 2005. Lead did it in 2007. It quadrupled in a couple quarters to a new reality. If silver does that, our projection is you could see silver this year $300 to $500 an ounce. Okay? Now, much of that should occur within the first couple quarters of that spread breakout, meaning much of it should occur by middle of this year in a thunderbolt tantrum move. Um, this event that's going on now with T-Bonds could help speed that up because it panics the central bank. And if you're an investor and you look at the horizon, what do you got? Do you want to buy the stock market? The world's selling it now. You want to buy the T-Bonds? Uh-uh. What's left? What's doing well? Well, what your buddy down the street told you six months ago that he did and you didn't do it. You know, you buy silver. Instead, all we're hearing on the internet is, "Let's short it. Let's short it. It's over. It's over." you know, uh I think this surge that we get in the immediate horizon if those T- bonds slip a bit more could take silver well past 100, which might be sort of a normal guy's expectation of where the doubling of the old $50 high, you know, and you get a midpoint stumble in this six-month explosion, which we do expect to get a midpoint fake out stumble. Where's it going to be? Is it going to be at a logical level or at some level it just turns people's heads like 130 bucks or something? These events that are now going on with T-Bonds could precipitate that. And if they do, watch out for the Supreme Court because if those guys come in and say, "Hey, we're going to step into history here. We're not going to let you do that." Or at least try not to. Uh and create doubt about whether he can do it. In which case, oh, panic's over, right? uh you could get a lot of volatility at that point anyway. Long silver over gold. >> So you're suggesting >> Yeah. You're you're suggesting Congress isn't going to do the right thing. So the Supreme Court >> they'd be too slow anyway. The Supreme Court could do it like they put their foot down and say, "Okay, we've already decided, you know, we got enough majority or whatever. Uh we don't want you to do that. Can't let you do that." And even if he goes to some alternate policy, which he says he's got, you know, and all this stuff, fine, good, okay, whatever. But the point is that would at least temporarily help put out the fire that we perceive to be of Europeans dumping our bonds, Europeans dumping our stocks, etc. It won't sustain a turn, but it could create that kind of, oh, fever's over. In which case, if that fever has been driving silver and gold o over the last few days, for example, uh then yeah, it might create a correction. But the question is where? Where do you go before you get that? And I'm of the view that probably you're going to be well past 100 before you even see a correction. You could say, "Oh, there's the midpoint of the time six month span uh where you get a wobble." Uh anyway, it's an important level because people who got calls got to be concerned about that, you know, >> and and so your point is if we do get a correction uh because of the Supreme Court ruling and we get a correction in gold, we get a correction in silver >> and it pulls back, let's just say 20 or 30%, given the moves, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see that kind of a pullback. But that's a buying opportunity. That's where you got to step in again. >> Yeah. No, this bigger reality is not based on the the things we see now that have just occurred. tariff, for example, that only became a market term in 2025. Before that, it wasn't an issue. We still had a bubble stock market well before we ever had tariffs. Okay? You had a 15-year bull that took the S&P up 10fold and the NASDAQ up 20fold over a span of decade and a half. Money printing, M2 growth, free money in the Fed funds rate. So, you already had a bubble. So this issue of the tariff coming going type issue is not really the factor. It's the newsy factor right now. But there's bigger issues. Same with the T-bond market. It's not in trouble now just because we have tariffs. It's in trouble because it's in trouble. Jamie Diamond has said that for months. You know, you can't keep playing this game decade by decade and and and you you've got to face the consequences pretty soon that you've got a spending problem versus the GDP. you know, etc. So, anyway, we're in that and don't run if you've got leverage positions like I do. I have some leveraged positions uh especially call options or an SLV for example, I'm keen to move those over and move more into unleveraged at that point because I the big move is still coming later this year after this jiggle whenever we get the jiggle. Well, this has been a great discussion and Michael, if someone would like to follow you or read more about your research or find out about your services, where can they go? >> oliversa.com. MSA for momentum structural analysis. Uh, and you you find my beautiful picture there and my email address. Click on it and ask me for some samples. I'd be happy to send some sample reports. >> And I will also include a loop below in the show notes. Michael, thank you very much for making uh this time, especially on such short notice with so much going on in the world. >> Thank you, James. See you later. >> Thank you very much for joining us today. Ken Ross operates six producing gold mines in four different countries and the guidance for 2025 is 2 million gold equivalent ounces. And Kenra just announced that it's moving ahead with the construction on three different projects in the US. And this is what I want to spend our first few minutes discussing. And I want to break down each one of these projects and look at what it means for future gold production. So why don't we before we do the deep dive on each project, why don't you just give us a basic overview of the three projects and what it means to future gold production at Ken Ross. >> Sure. Great question and happy to go there. We were really pleased to approve these three projects to move into the construction phase. Um we did that just last week and that was just on the back of positive exploration results and very robust studies. So together the projects contribute about 3 million ounces of production. They extend the mine lives at our Nevada assets well into the 2030s and they benefit our US cost structure for the long term. So the projects are are contributors to to that 2 million ounce production profile that you noted for 2025. We've given that for 2026 and 2027 as well. Um and we'll you know add another year when we uh when we report our guidance next February. So these three projects are contributors to that uh 2 million ounce profile starting in 2028. Um, and they're expected to deliver up to 400,000 ounces a year in the in the kind of highest years of production. So, I'll just give you a brief overview of a couple comments on the on on the three projects and then we can go wherever you want in in terms of getting into specifics. The two underground, so that's phase X at Round Mountain and Kuru, those really reflect the next phase of what we call our grade enhancement strategy. So that's a strategy that we initiated back in 2022 and has been behind many of the project advancements that we've announced and executed over that time. And then Redbird 2 which is uh at Bald Mountain that's really the next anchor pit and that's expected to deliver you know lowcost high productivity mining along with a couple more satellite pits and is really kind of just you know extending uh what we've been doing at Bald Mountain further into the future. So you know together the projects have really strong economics. The combined ASIC was 1650 per ounce. We put out numbers and and metrics at 4,300 gold last week. So conservative to where spot is today. Um and you know payback was less than two years. combined NPV of 4.1 billion IRRa um together the combined IRRa of 55 55% but the projects are all you know individually as well as together resilient at a range of prices so they still make a lot of sense at much lower gold than where we are today >> great overview so why don't we break down each one of these and and discuss the projects in more detail and I want to start with Round Mountain once again this is an open pit mine in the state of Nevada Ken Ross is moving forward with the development of the Phasax project as you mentioned and it's going to be if I understand you correctly it's going to be transitioning to an underground mine. Is that correct? >> That's right. So in the at the at the start of of uh when we bring Phase X on in 2028 we are combining um material from the underground phase X is underground. We're combining that with open pit material from phase S which we're currently mining and we get into sort of the heart of in the in the middle of 2026. So what we're adding is sort of lowcost bulk tonnage underground um to the production profile starting in 2028 and that extends based on what we've defined so far out to 2038 with average annual production of around 140,000 ounces over that time just from the underground. >> And so this is going to enable you to tap into this higher grade mineralization. >> That's right. which has a positive impact on costs of course. >> And what is the capex associated with this project? >> So initial capex we've defined at $400 million. So you know that's the investment which is essentially over about 3 years um uh to spend that 400 million getting us as I said into so that's over sort of 26 27 28 um we'll be spending that 400 million. So let's move on and discuss Kettle River and this is in the state of Washington and Kin Ross has had a long history of gold production within this state but the mill has been on care and maintenance since 2017. You're moving ahead with the development of the Kuru project. Once again it's another underground operation. Maybe you can just tell us the highlights associated with this. >> Yeah, it's a high-grade underground opportunity and it leverages as you noted the some existing infrastructure there. So the Kettle River Mill is a mill that was previously in operation and there's a historic Kuru mine as well as you said you know all of this is in Washington state. So what we're doing here is bringing online addition a new um high margin mine in the US to add to the portfolio and production there we've noted is expected to be around 100,000 ounces a year with an 11-year mine life also starting in 2028. And Andrea, what's the capex associated with this project? >> The initial investment there is a little bit higher than phase X, but you know, reasonable at 485 million. And that gives us an NPV of 1.2 billion and an IRRa of 44%, again all those numbers at 4,300 gold. >> And the one commonality between Phasex and Kuru is that you're building on existing infrastructure. So this is resulting in a much smaller or lower capex. >> That's right. I mean that's that's what's driving some of the economics um actually at all three projects but you know at at the two we've talked about already you know leveraging a mill that's already there in the case of Phasex already in operation and in in the case of uh of Kuru you know bringing a a mill that was previously operating back into operation. Um, so yeah, that that certainly contributes to the strong economics we're seeing here. >> So let's move on to that third project and this is Bald Mountain. Once again, it's in the state of Nevada. It's also an open pit mine and you are proceeding with the development of Redbird 2 along with five satellite deposits. So just so I have a better understanding of this, Redbird 2 is the current pit that you're mining from. So, we're currently mining um well, we approved Redbird one um back at the end of 2024 and so we started mining that uh right away and Redbird 2 is the same pit. It's just the next extension of that pit. Um and so it allows us to extend mine life uh extend that, you know, highly productive open pit mining um out to 2032. So Redbird Redbird one was a was the initial mine life extension. Redbird 2 is building on that and we've added as you noted some satellite pits along with that. Um so together this gives us a combined 640,000 ounces of additional production uh to that to the Bald Mountain mine plan. >> And Andrea, what's the capex associated with this buildout? >> Uh it's similar. All right. So, the capex for Redbird 2 and and the satellites is $490 million. Um, NPV of a billion dollars and IRRa of 58% all at 4,300 gold. And we're talking about an ASIC here of 14 of $1,465 an ounce. So, um, as I said, lowcost mining and and really the story at Redbird 2 is just extending what we're what we've been doing. We've been mining there for many years, open pit heap leech operation. So, this is just extending kind of more of the same uh at Bald Mountain in Nevada. >> And we should build on that too because Bald Mountain sits on a massive land package. So, there's also the optionality feature associated with this. >> That's right. You know, there's there's a significant resource already defined at Bald Mountain and lots of exploration targets on that large land package. So certainly, you know, potential upside uh upside there. But in fact, talking about all three projects, what we defined and and spoke about last week uh in our release was really, you know, the mine plan inventory as we sit here today. All three projects have significant potential upside. And the upside at um Curu and Phasex also comes with would come with lower incremental costs given we're spending the money for the ounces that we've already defined uh in terms of um initial capex. So any additional ounces would come you know at relatively low incremental cost. So, we're really excited not only about what we've put out uh last week in terms of the project approvals, but also the ongoing upside potential at at all three. >> So, that's a good overview of what's happening uh with these three projects and what it means to future growth. Why don't we take a look at your two largest mines and what's happening there? Beginning with Paratu. This is an open pit mine in the country of Brazil and it produced 528,000 ounces in 2024. What's the latest there? What's new? >> Katu's just really been a strong stable contributor for us. One of our anchor tenants um along with Tacia. So, you know, if we look back for the past seven consecutive years, we've had over 500,000 ounces produced uh from Paratu. So, it it's really just been a great uh steady performer for us. Um and you know we've got reserves of almost 5 million uh ounces there. So you know long mine life into the 2030s and just kind of steady as she goes more of the same in terms of extending potential extension beyond the current mine life. You know we have 3.2 million ounces of M&I resources there. So there is further potential and in particular if we're thinking about you know higher gold prices. So, it's another kind of stay tuned, but we've got, you know, we've got uh we've got enough there to keep going for now into the 2030s. >> And your largest gold producing mine is Taciius is located located in West Africa in the country of Moritania. It produced 622,000 ounces in 2024. What's the latest at Taciius? >> So, Taciius is is really the other anchor tenant for us as we sit here today. Um it's, you know, had a strong production profile. In 2025, the guidance was 500,000 ounces. So we went from over 600 that we produced in 2023 and 2024. And then 2025, 26, and 27 are higher stripping years. We're basically back at the at the top of the pit um at the start of 2025. So production down around 500,000 ounces for those three years and then we get back to the bottom of the pit. So in 2028 and 2029 we'll be mining from what we call um West Branch 5 and we'll be back up over 600,000 ounces uh for those years. We have the mine plan. I mean, the mind plan is out there um in the public domain and and so that's what it shows, you know, for 28 and 29. 2030 we're back to 500,000 ounces and then it drops down beyond that based on the mine plan today. But again, another place where we've got uh substantial, you know, upside um for mine life extension and we're studying that both additional open pit expansions as well as uh the the potential to go underground um in the main uh in the main pit and ta Atacius and then we're also you know exploring elsewhere on uh targets elsewhere on the on the property as well. And Andrea, one more project I want to ask you about is Great Bear, which is located in Northern Ontario. What is the latest? What's happening there? >> Yeah. Um, you know, the next projects in our pipeline, uh, are the two bigger sort of green field projects. So, Great Bear and then beyond that, Lobo Marte in Chile. So, first up, Great Bear. Um, we have that coming into our production profile in late 2029. So, that will be the next great enhancement. uh grade enhancement. It's, you know, high grade. Uh we put out the study last year that shows 500,000 ounces a year at, you know, $800 uh all in sustaining cost. So will be a a highly profitable mine. In terms of where we sit today, we're waiting on two final permits uh to get underground to continue our our drilling. So, in what we call uh advanced decline, AEEX, advanced exploration decline. Um, and so we expect to get those final permits early this year in time for the spring season to to break ground and get, you know, underground to to continue that exploration. Alongside that, the main project, um, you know, we're we're we're just advancing along, uh, in terms of all facets of that project, including the permitting process for the main for the main event, which is a federal process, um, as well as, you know, study work um, and other and other advancements. >> Andrea, why don't we move on now and look at your balance sheet and discuss capital allocation. And with gold trading at or near all-time highs, you are creating a lot of free cash flow. How are you going to allocate that cash flow in the coming year? >> Maybe it's helpful to look back at what we call our capital allocation framework which we've had in place for a number of years and has has really served us well. So we think about three priorities and balancing those priorities over time. Number one is reinvesting in our business. Number two is maintaining a strong balance sheet and number three is returning capital to shareholders. So I can comment on each of these areas and sort of how they've looked in the recent past and then maybe how we're thinking about them going forward. Um in terms of reinvesting in the business, our philosophy here is really that you know a well-maintained business is a safe and lowrisk business. And so we make sure we're spending enough on sustaining capital, but also on um non-sustaining or growth capital. And we're looking for opportunities to reinvest in in the business. And a great example of that is the three projects that we just talked about earlier. So um those projects, you know, fit within our fit within our our capital expenditures plans uh for 2026 and going forward. Uh number two, as I said, is financial strength. Looking back to sort of mid 2023, we were prioritizing uh debt repayment. So we repaid a significant amount of debt from 2023 through early 2025. Um and in Q3, just last November, we announced that we were in a net cash position finally. So that was a great, you know, great milestone to cross. And I commented on our call last week that we expect to be uh to be at a billion dollars of net cash when we report, you know, year end 2025. Um so that that's that's an excellent place to be. Our next debt maturity is not till 2033. So, we're not focused on debt repayment at the moment, but we do see this gold price environment as an opportunity to continue to strengthen the balance sheet, even if that means sort of building cash above what we would think about our our minimum cash balance to be. And then the third priority being return of capital. So, we've been focused on uh well, we've had a dividend that's been in place for a number of years. We see that as kind of there to stay for the foreseeable future. we increased it by 17% just in November. Um, and so we're happy uh for now at that level. Um, and then the buyback, so we've been really opportunistic with the buyback going all the way back to sort of 2021 2022. We were buying back shares and we just reactivated it at the start of uh last year. Just we we started right away in Q2 last year with a target of 500 million. We increased that to 600 million also with our uh Q3 release in November. And so we executed on that 600 million um by uh by the end of 2025. So returning a total of 750 million of capital to shareholders in 2025 and repaying about 700 million of debt in 2025. So if we look forward to 2026, we've already talked about capex. So with our release last week um we noted that our capex guidance for 2026 will be 1.5 billion. So that's you know a little bit more than the 1.15 we spent in 2020 or we guided to in 2025. Um and that's you know that increase is certainly manageable for us and comes right out of our operating cash flow with additional cash available to balance between growing cash on the balance sheet and returning continuing you know to return uh capital to shareholders. are thinking on that right now is, you know, we'd like to continue with the buyback um as well as the dividend, but we'll continue to comment on that, you know, in in upcoming earnings calls with the next one being uh in February with our year-end results and guidance release. Andrea that was a great update and I want to thank you very much for spending time with us today and shor you've already provided a lot of detail on what you and your team will be doing in the coming months but maybe you can just summarize for viewers what they can expect in terms of news flow here in the coming months from Kin Ross. >> Sure. Uh 2025 was was a great year for us and we've had a strong start to 2026 already with uh the project update that we that we provided last week um approving the construction of those three I've been talking about. So looking forward, you can continue to expect news flow on those projects as we continue next steps on them as well as on Great Bear and Lobo Marte, which are the two more significant green field projects that we have coming down uh coming down the pipeline. Um on top of that, we're you know focused on surfacing additional opportunities from our strong resource base. uh so bringing new projects forward and furthering our mine life extensions and then on top of that you know as we come out next uh next month in February with our year-end results and our guidance for 2026 uh we'll also provide some comments on on where we see capital allocation going this year. >> Andrea, once again, thank you and I look forward to future updates. >> Thank you. Gerard, thank you very much for joining us today. For those viewers who might might not be familiar with Oceanana Gold, provide a brief overview of the company. How many producing mines are there? What countries do you operate in? And what is your annual gold production? >> Sure. I mean, we've been operating for 35 years as a company. We have four producing mines in three countries. Uh the largest producer is in South Carolina, USA. It's uh at 40% of our gold production. We have two other mines in New Zealand uh representing another 40% of production approximately. And then our fourth mind is in the Philippines. Uh our annual gold production guidance for 2025 was 450 to 520,000 ounces. Uh we have near-term production growth and we have a really exciting long-term growth story as well. So, let's examine your various assets because I want to get a sense on this growth potential associated with oceanic gold. And I want to begin with hail, which is an open pit and underground mine located in the state of South Carolina. And I want to start right here because quite often when we think about mining in the US, we think about Nevada or Arizona. We don't think about South Carolina. So, maybe you can tell us what how that state is to operate in. >> Yeah. I mean, there's been gold mining in and around the area that we're operating for around 200 years. I think some of the first gold in the USA was discovered just near Charlotte. Um, so, you know, there is a good heritage of mining there. Um, it's a fabulous place to operate. We are very meaningful to the state of South Carolina. We're very meaningful to the local community. It's a drive-in driveout operation. What that means is that our workforce is residential and and that attracts a a different kind of person, someone who wants to put their roots down, you know, see their family at the end of every day. Uh um and people who really care for the success of the site. And so we have attracted a fabulous team. Uh and you know, our turnover rates are really really low relative to what you see um you know, out west. And I had no idea that mining has been going on in South Carolina for so long. >> Yeah. Well, as I said, I mean, if you go to the downtown uh main intersection of Charlotte, u you know, you'll see four gold panners um at the intersection there. That's uh you know, celebrating the heritage of mining um that started just near Charlotte. Uh we we uh our mine is about an hour south of Charlotte. So we're in the northern part of South Carolina and it's a beautiful country um around the the mine and near the mine and and as I said you know we it's it's a really great way to attract people to come and work in what is a fascinating industry the gold industry and you know live a for one of a better word a normal life in in in a in a a really attractive state. So let's do a deeper dive on hail. What is the annual gold production and what is your all in sustaining cost? >> Yeah, I mean our annual gold production guidance for 2025 was 170 to 200,000 uh ounces. Our AIC um is around $1850 um an ounce. So get we're getting that's the guidance. Uh we're getting great margins uh on today's spot gold as you you can imagine. um 2025, you know, it was a year that um you know, is producing around the same amount of gold that we did last year, but we're setting up for a really strong 2026. And that's coming from an open pit waist stripping campaign that uh we completed uh in the um third quarter of 2025. That has given us great access to higher grade or that powers a really strong fourth quarter and a really strong 2026 and beyond. And that's what uh underpins our growth uh in 2026 beyond. Uh additionally, our under on the ground mind there has uh really hit its straps in the uh in the back half of the year. >> And Gerard, a big part of hail is the underground expansion and last year you found a new discovery. So tell us about that new discovery and also what are your exploration plans at Hail? Yeah. Well, we announced in February of last year, 2025, um the identification of Pisces. Um it's a discovery and it's a discovery that sits between uh horseshoe underground that we're currently mining and we've had some really fabulous exploration results at depth. Um really high grades that we put out in the 2025. And uh about a kilometer away uh we have Palamino which we're going to bring into production in 2028. and Pisces was this discovery in between the two. Um, and again, we we'll do more drilling on it and look to potentially bring in it into the production profile in coming years. >> And gold mines have relatively short mine lives and so a big part of extending that is exploration. So maybe you can just touch on that. >> Yeah, well we have a fabulous exploration team there at at Hail. Um we spent more money on exploration last year at hail than we have ever done as a company and uh we the team there delivered some phenomenal results. Um you know we uh better defined what's under the lead better open pit that could be a new underground um or source uh given the the shape and the the density of of the gold grades um there um horseshoe at depth. We put out some tremendous drill results um you know extending potentially the the resource reserve of it. Palamine is well defined. Pisces is um a new discovery and in in September we announced um the identification of a new exploration target called Clydesdale which sits behind Palamino. Um so we're really excited about what sits uh um in and around the existing operation. Uh and outside the operation, we entered into a an earning agreement with a third party to explore a property that's about 13 kilometers away from hail called Brewer. Uh it's a gold copper py target. Uh and we're going to start drilling that this year. Um so again in in both the near mine and close to mine, we're excited about the exploration upside at hail. >> So we're going to move from the country of the US and move to New Zealand. And I want to ask you about McCrae, which is a gold mine. And this was your very first asset. And why don't you tell us about this mine? What's the annual gold production and what is your all-in sustaining cost? >> Sure. Yeah. I mean, uh, I attended McCrae's 35th birthday in March 2025. Um, it started life as having, I think, a 9 or sevenyear reserve life and, uh, it just goes to show that if you find yourself in a good district, uh, you can find more gold. Uh, and that's proven that. Uh uh in terms of production, its guidance is uh 135 to 150,000 ounces for 2025 year. Um and we're on track to deliver that. We confirmed that in our Q3 results. Uh and we expect production to be higher uh in 2026. That's as a result of an open stripping open pit stripping campaign uh that was well executed in 2025. It's all in sustaining cost is relatively high at around $2,000 an ounce um because it's very low grade that comes with being a 35y old asset. U but it generates really good free cash flow um particularly at today's gold prices. >> And in terms of your exploration plans, what do you have planned for 2026? Yeah. Well, we we have about 30 35 kilometers of strike and um um we're going to put a lot more money into exploration at McCrae in 2026 than we have done uh in recent years. A lot of the mine planning around McCrae has been done on our uh reserve price uh which for December 2024 was $1,750 an ounce. Um, and there's just so much in the way of mineralization around there. You can expect that we'll have a higher reserve price this year. We have a higher planning price as relates to um, uh, identifying and and and finding what's economic to mine in and around McCrae up and down that 35ks of strike. >> The next asset I want to ask about is the dipio. This is a copper gold mine located in the country of Philippines. And I love these copper gold deposits because it results in a much lower cost of production. So tell us about this mine and how many ounces does it produce and what is the all-in sustaining cost? >> Yeah, I mean Dipio is a fabulous mine and I agree with you when when you have a gold copper uh asset like this one is a gold copper preey. you you have the one process produces two metals and and you can generate a lot of free cash flow and the Dipio mine has long done that since uh it was built by Oceanana Gold. Uh it's a um an asset that we developed. Uh it's been operating strongly and well since 2013. Uh its guidance for this for 2025 was 85 to $105,000. It's all in sustaining cost is you know around the $800 an ounce. Uh and as you can imagine at um the prices that that were realized through the course of 2025, it's a strong free cash flow generator. Um you know, there's also plenty of exploration upside. We have a very uh supportive uh local community. We have a very uh supportive uh workforce uh and there's plenty of upside potential particularly as relates to unlocking uh value through improvements in the underground mining. And so you did touch on this, but why don't we talk about the large land package that you hold and also your exploration plans? >> Yeah, I think we have something like a 7,000 hectare um uh area near the mine uh that we are able to explore on and and we have um uh targets near mine as close as um 600 meters away called True Blue. Um another target called the Fox. We've been drilling an asset called sorry an area called Napatan. that's about 9 km away. So there's lots of near mine uh targets, but also the we haven't even defined fully the um uh the or body that we're presently mining from. It's open at depth. Uh and so you know we're going to put more drill in into that or body at depth and u you know that and that's that with a higher rate of underground mining extraction uh to make uh even more free cash flow than before. And the last asset I want to ask you about is why he that's also located in the country of New Zealand. Tell us about this asset. >> Yeah, this is an asset that we bought from Newmont in 2015. Um it's uh well and truly paid for its uh purchase price uh and and plus more. Uh its production guidance is 55 to 70,000 ounces for 2025. And in the third quarter results, we indicated that uh we expected its production for 2025 to be at the upper end of that range. Uh we uh are really excited about how well the assets perform this year. Um uh but but what really excites us for the long term is its proximity to the ferrakira ponga or body which is a high-grade or body um uh that we put into reserve uh 12 months ago uh and represents a fabulous source of long-term growth for the Wahhee operation. >> And that deposit you just referred to, don't ask me to repeat that name, but it's also known as the Wahhee North project or WMP. How far away is that from the processing or main mine? >> Yeah, so the it's uh 10 km north of the Wahhee operation and um what the Wahhee North project does is at around um 4 km north of the existing process plant um we develop a portal and a tunnel uh to access this mine from underground and then we bring that all um all the way underground uh the full 10 km back to the process plant. So it's it's invisible and has no impact on surface and that's important because it is a forest park and it's also topographically uh you know quite challenging. Uh but at the um 9 g per ton reserve grade that it is and 17 grams per ton resource grade that this or body is and with the exploration upside that it has. We're really excited about um you know what it can do and our technical report that we put out about 12 months ago showed you know it takes the Wahhee operation from it's you know today's 70,000 ounce production you know up to around 220 250 peak production um when the Wahhee North project is fully operational and with plenty of life extension through exploration success beyond that >> and you have all the your permits associated with this like you're ready to go and start producing. >> Yeah. Look, um, you know, the best Christmas present that I've ever received was, uh, received on the 18th of December, 2025 when the New Zealand government, um, uh, gave us the permits for that project in its entirety. Um, and so, yeah, we're really excited. So, we're, um, in the first half of this year, uh, we're in the process of mobilizing the tunneling contractor. Uh we're doing the bulk worth bulk earth works around that portal that I spoke of power upgrades. Uh and it's all uh a really exciting uh step forward to bring in ore from that mine into our production in the early 2030s. >> So let's move on now and discuss your balance sheet. And I'm sure with gold well over $4,000 an ounce, it must be very strong. How much cash do you have on hand and how will you allocate that cash in the coming year? Yeah. Well, at the end of the September 2025, we had $335 million of cash. Uh, and we have no other uh debt. Um, so we're debtree, I should say, uh, and and 335 cash in the bank. Um, and you know, obviously with the fourth quarter production coming into um, uh, the bank at uh, gold prices $1,000 an ounce higher than what we got in the third quarter alone. you can expect a strong uh fourth quarter addition to that $335 million cash balance. Um so with that cash position gives us enormous flexibility uh to allocate capital. You can expect that we'll do much the same as what we've done in recent years. Uh we'll continue to invest in high return organic growth. We'll continue to invest in exploration that's you know given us a tremendous uh return on investment. We have added, you know, millions of ounces, five million ounces, uh to our reserves at an average finding cost of around $50 an ounce. Um we'll continue to maintain a strong balance sheet and we'll return capital shareholders. In 2025, we doubled the dividend and we bought back $175 million of shares. And so that's our hierarchy. Uh investing growth, that's attractive, maintain a strong balance sheet and return capital. We're very focused on prioritizing shareholder returns. Proud of our record in doing so and we intend to keep doing so. >> And Gerard, one of the big trends we've seen in recent years is mining companies acquiring assets in the US or Canada. They're moving towards safer jurisdictions. Would you consider acquiring another asset in the US or acquiring an asset in Canada? >> Yeah. Um short answer is yes. I mean we are able to uh grow the business from the position that we're in now. Um you know we do scan what opportunities are available in those markets in those countries. We already operate in the USA. Um we're headquartered in Canada. Um so you know we believe we have the you know the IP and capability uh to grow in in North America. >> And as we wrap up there are many gold producers for investors to choose from. Maybe you can highlight some of the reasons why investors should consider Oceanana Gold. >> Um well, we have a strong lowrisk near-term organic growth profile. We're generating um tremendous free cash flow. Uh we have a history of unlocking value through exploration. Uh we have a history of returning capital to shareholders, whether that be via dividends or uh share buybacks, and we're well positioned to do so. And then finally, we're going to list on the New York Stock Exchange in April of 2026, and we think that will make it even easier for shareholders in the USA to gain exposure to this great growth story. >> So, I was going to ask you about what news flow investors can expect in the coming months, and I guess that's a big one. What other news flow can they expect? >> Yeah, well, um, we have, uh, two technical reports coming out in um, March. uh that relates to hail and mccrace and that's about 70% of our business. Um the the dipio operation will put out another technical report in the first half of the year. So we're going to give people a really good line of sight um as to um the flight path of all of our assets given that in we we only put out a technical report there a year ago. Um we will advance the Wahhee north project and then the as you say the listing on the New York Stock Exact. And then finally, uh, we've had, you know, tremendous success and regular, uh, success in reporting on exploration results, um, that will continue to provide good news, uh, for investors. >> Well, that was a great overview, Gerard, and I want to thank you very much for sharing the Oceanana Gold story with us today, and I look forward to future updates. >> Thank you, James. Appreciate your time. Sean, thank you very much for joining us today. Oiscoco Development's primary asset is the Caribou Gold project. It's located in the province of British Columbia. And as a lot has happened at Caribou since the last time we spoke. But before we do the deep dive on the project, why don't we first discuss your vision and your strategy for the company? What are you trying to achieve at Caribou and how does Caribou compare to its comps? I think Cisco development is one of those rare assets that I've seen. You know, I've been on a few big ones in my career. Um, that can be scalable, can be a world-class asset. And, you know, we're we're on the well along the way the path of the so-called Lan curve. We're coming out of the uh the value. We're in construction now. We're fully permitted. Um, the first phase of this company is to build a 5,000 ton a day mine, which will allow us to produce around 220,000 ounces a year to start. Um, we announced a 70,000 meter drill program last year. So, we're drilling on a few uh more of the extensions, but we have 2 million ounces of reserves, 1.61 million ounces of measured indicated, and another 1.81 million ounces of inferred. So, you know, we're not shy on ounces. We got lots of ounces and that's only down to a depth of about 1,000 ft or 350 m. Um, so things are pretty exciting. Um, you know, we're fully funded. We raised almost a billion dollars Canadian last year. Um so we're, you know, last announced we were sitting north of $480 million of cash on the balance sheet. Um and we want to continue to grow this. We think this is a mining camp. Uh and that this first of many successes that this property will offer up. Uh it's 1550 km. Uh so you know, we're we have our next three to four mine uh potential discoveries on the trend. Uh so we're uh we're dug in and uh we're we're settled into to a big project here with phase one being a fairly small mine at 220,000 a year uh to get us started and very doable uh in our scope. Uh we also have a project in Utah uh called Tintech which is now the number one jurisdiction in the world for mining investment. Uh we're about 40 kilome 40 miles south of Bingham. Uh so we think that that's going to be a pretty big story and obviously during the Trump era having an American asset. Uh not the worst thing. There are five previous gold mines that were in production there and 18 uh base metal CRD mines. So it's you know it's a it's a well-known quantity and it's got some pretty special part of the earth and uh we're pretty excited to see what happens there this year as we get to do some work on that as well. So there's a lot to unpack there, but why don't we do a deeper dive on Caribou? An optimized feasibility study was released last year. Can you just touch on some of the highlights of that study, Sean, including the annual production, the mine life, and also the all-in sustaining cost? >> De a starter package, as I said, only down to 350 m. It's about 4.4 km long or about 2 and 1/2 miles long. uh that we drilled off with 800,000 meters or about 2 million feet of drilling. Um the production is scheduled for 220,000 ounces a year uh and starting out and over 10 year mine life 180 190,000 ounces a year. The mill that we're building right now is a 5,000 ton per day mill. Um so very much within our our doability. We actually own the milling equipment is sitting in Prince George in the yard. Um and we started underground about a year and a half ago. So we're about uh over 2 kilometers of underground development into it. And uh we've drilled the deposit down to about 1,000 meters. So we're averaging about uh 1 and a half million ounces for every 100 meters we've gone down and overall resource. Uh so that's it got us pretty excited. We have two drills turning on the deeper drilling uh to see what we have underneath the existing deposit. It's an origenic system, so it goes pretty deep. Uh we've hit it as far as 1,000 mters down or or 3,000 ft. Uh so we know it goes quite a bit further than what we've got detail drilling on now. And then uh you know with the underground development, we have a cap capex item of about 881 million Canadian or about 5 650 million US. Um we raised that money last year uh with a total of $653 million in financings uh including $450 million US uh from Apen of which we've drawn 100 million uh and then we raised another 200 million in US and in uh in straight equities. Uh and we've got a 70,000 meter drill program outside of the known ounces on the go now. So, um, there's a significant number of ounces underneath us, which is underneath the permit. So, the per the ounces that we've got are permanent to the depth. Uh, we've only drilled off the 2 million, but everything that we find within that permit area is also the benefactor of the existing mining permit. So, uh, these are pretty special allowances that we're going to be adding this year with more drilling at depth. Uh and then we've got a big project underway in the drill program about two kilome three kilometers away called Proer Pine um which has the ability to be even bigger than Caribou uh from the surface footprint from what we can see so far. Caribou is 4.4 4 km long or about 2 and a half miles by about uh 600 m wide or about uh you know 1,000 ft wide and that uh that's full of it's got these vein corridors in it. Um and we see that sort of appearing as the same structure on the next fold down. So we got the caribou over here. We got an anticline and then we got, you know, the proer pine coming up on the other side where we have this anticleal structure that's opened up like an accordion. Uh and we've got these vein corridor systems that are sitting in there. Uh it's a sediment hosted system in a sandstone environment. So it's quite quite unique for the Canadian side of things. Um the closest sort of analog to geologically to this thing genetically is something like a miral which is Usuzbekistan for 170 million ounces. Um it's not quite the copy of that but it's in the same environment. Uh so these things have the ability to be pretty interesting and pretty big. This is an area that had discovery starting in 1859 um and produced aluvial plaster mining and underground mining of about uh about 4.2 2 million ounces in total historically. Uh a little over 3.8 million ounces from the underground. Uh essentially it's been continuous mining here ever since the mid 1800s. Uh interesting if you're a history buff it's a good one to do some history on. The original town is called Barkerville. uh and it was discovered by Billy Barker and it was the biggest city north of San Francisco uh in the late 1800s uh and became the focus of all the all the alumal miners prior between what happened with the California 49er discovery in San Francisco uh and then Dawson took shape in 1903. Um but for 50 years this was the king of the hill uh in terms of aluvial mining camps the entire Fraser Frasier Canyon um gold dump but uh Barkerville is at the headarters of all that. So it's it's been the source of a lot of gold in history and a very important place uh in mining history in North America. >> That's a great backstory. How many miners actually showed up to pan for gold during that time? They peaked at around 4,000 people and at the time that was the largest city north of San Fran. Um we've heard rumors it was as much as 20,000 people. Um it also had a big Chinese contingent and its own the Chinese took over mining there in the late 1800s through the 1920s. Uh so there's quite a piece of history uh with Chinese Canadians and uh and their work there and they brought technology and they developed the area in a different way and they were able to do uh quite a bit of different work and open up some different areas and they carried on uh where the gold rush fell off. They had a basically a second boom there uh and they mined in there for the longest period of time. And Sean, one element that can si significantly impact uh projects capbacks or profitability is the infrastructure, whether or not it's close to major roads, highways, and also its ability to tap into cheap power. Can you just speak to that and how that relates to Caribou? >> Yeah, so uh a good thing those pioneers came in the mid 1800s. They built a road through the canyon there. Um, so it goes, you go to the town of Quinnel, which is a town of 28,000 people. Uh, you hang hang a right and u we're 45minut drive out of town uh on a paved road uh to to the town of Wells. Uh, and Wells is a town of about 220 people uh on pavement and the town was was a company town was built for the mine. And you also have the Barkerville Heritage Site which is about 11 km away. Uh quite a famous heritage site for anybody in Western Canada. Still has 140 period built buildings. And in the summer there's over 100 period dressed actors there. and they get between 60 and 80,000 uh people do the uh do do the the the pilgrimage um all the way up through to the the well to the Barker the Barkerville heritage site and uh and the Bower Lake area. Um so you know we're working hand in hand there. We've we're we also have a a couple things in the tourism business ourselves around the town of Wells. Um so it's quite an interesting place but it is on infrastructure. We have 22 megawatts of power from the substation in Quinnel at 6.6 cents Canadian, about 5 cents US a kilowatt. Uh, and we're pulling a 75 km long power line in there. So, we have green power from site C. Uh, and we're underground. So, this is one of the lower impact mines. Uh, and we've taken a lot of steps to make this a very low impact site uh by introducing the ororder. Uh, and also we produce a gravity concentrate and a flotation concentrate. So we don't have any cyanidation on site. So it's a pretty straightforward mine. Um we get about 40% of our recovery from gravity gold which is fairly unusual and the rest from flotation. So all in all um I think it's a pretty uh pretty interesting project first especially for $4,600 gold. Um you know we have the benefit of 100 100 year 150 years of work here uh that went on before us. Uh so we've we've done a compilation of all that historic work. All those old mines are there's about 140 old mines on the property. Um different addits and shafts and things and alubial mines. Uh and there's still over 100 active uh aluvial mines, plaster mines uh in the property area. We're 1,550 km about 500,000 acres uh of mineral claims there. Uh so we continue to work on it. We're continue to drill and we've only explored 7% of the no and minimalized trend. The the overall trend is about 50 mi or 83 km long. Uh the main trend being where we are at Caribou Gold, the Caribou Gold trend and the second parallel trend called Yanks Peak Trend. Uh which is about 30 kilometers. You know, so there's quite a bit going on and we're looking forward this summer to doing uh some more scout drilling on some of the secondary targets that we haven't gotten to yet. Um, this land package was originally owned by thousands of different claim owners. Uh, and it was consolidated. We bought it with Eric Sprat back in 2015. Uh, shout out to to Frank Callahan for having done a great job of getting that land consolidation in. Um, but we I've never seen anything quite like this other than, you know, the last time I had a brownfield site like this was Canadian Malard Arctic, which as we all know is worked out pretty well. We had it at 14 million ounces when we sold in 2014. Agniko has gone on to add another 20 million ounces there and I think it's, you know, it's the biggest portion of the at the agide between that and the detour. Those are the two biggest mines in Canada. So, you know, we we know what big looks like. We've been there. We've done that. And this one feels pretty good. >> I'm curious, how long did it take to consolidate all those stakes? >> I think they spent about 15 years at it. We bought into this project in 2015. Um, and I was partners with Eric Sprout on it in the beginning. Uh, so you know, Eric and I, he was a partner with me and Canadian Martic as well. Um, and as you know, Eric, he has the nose for these kind of things and he got he were good partners on it. And, uh, he he's he's a no longer a huge investor in the company, but he was a founding shareholder with me when we we got into this. Uh and now we're in the mine building phase 10 years later. Uh we got our we the got our permit in this November of 2024. Uh so a freshly printed permit and uh we started construction of our water treatment plant which was a key to accessing the the main exploitation target and uh we're on track to have a pretty big 20 uh 2026 and 2027 with looking for production at the end of 2027 early 2028. Um, and uh, yeah, it's exciting times. And uh, there's I say there's four drills on surface uh, starting January, probably the end of this month. They're all there, but they're not started yet. And then there's three drills underground, and there's a mining crew underground with one portal complete. Uh, we got two more portals to go in, but this is going to be a very big underground mine from what I can see right now. >> And Sean, the drilling you have going on underground, is that for infill drilling? Yes, that's infill drilling in the low heat zone. Uh we're doing some highdensity drilling on on shorter centers. The original resource was drilled off on 12 1/2 to 25 m centers. So, we've tightened it up to see what our what our grade reconciliation and mine design is going to look like uh with tighter drilling. So, we had 13,000 m scheduled to go into the underground right now uh in this one zone in Loi. And we'll be announcing the results for that continuously. We put out about three press releases on that drill program. uh last year and we'll have some coming up here shortly. But uh you know that's as we cross over the loi into the cow mount into the main port of the deposit um you'll see more and more drill results from the underground uh as well as the surface drilling uh throughout the next 12 18 months. Um actually I don't think we'll ever actually stop drilling here. Sorry about that. Um, we've got some we did a rough calculation. If we if we drilled every target we have on the property, we would probably have about 400,000 mters in the first pass. Um, and then the second would be 5x that. So, uh, we've drilled about 850,000 mters here so far and we've only drilled off 7% of the near surface resource. >> And Sean, you mentioned earlier that you have roughly 2 million ounces of reserves in the mine plant. And can you just speak to the conversion potential and how much more can you grow those 2 million ounces? >> Sure. So we've we've got the 2 million ounces drilled off uh on surface with the mine plan and developed on that. Um there's the resource there is the 1.61 million ounces of measured and indicated. We expect the conversion there to be somewhere around 60 to 70%. And then the inferred ounces is another 1.81 million ounces. uh we expect that conversion to be between 50 and 70%. So we got the upside here to add between 1.5 to 3 million ounces. I left the door a little bit wide there because obviously with this this gold price um I would error on the side of a lot of that will be in the money. Um when we drilled this the gold price was 1,400. Um you know last feasibility update we did was April and that was conservative at 2400. Uh, so today's 4,600 and just before we got on, I looked at the goal price. We were sitting right on $4,600 goal and of course that changes everything and I think the trailing average for modeling now is going to be in the 31 to $3,400 an ounce range uh in Q1. Um, you know, so those are pretty big effects on this deposit. By by lowering the cutoff, we pick up significant amount more ounces if we can lower that cutoff down as we get further into this gold price. It's amazing how that gold price has changed just so much in the last few months. >> Absolutely. Yeah. We're pretty happy that we went through everything we've gone through in the last 10 years. We're in a pretty unique position. We're one of the few fully permitted uh and fully financed uh underground mine developments that's on the go. And this is a rice market to be building mines in. Um, you know, I think in uh if you look at fully permitted and and financed projects in Canada right now, we're in a pretty small group. I don't think you have to take your other glove off to count them. Um, it's a it's a pretty elite group to be in. So, I'd say I, you know, I say to shareholders, this is one of the companies that has run a bit. We're probably sitting about a $ 1.3 billion market cap today. But the peer group would be, you know, if you look out at something like a G mining where it was 18 months ago, you know, it's it's gone it's had a great run. Uh if you look at something West Dome, that would we if we were in production right now, we'd have a similar production of them, they're trading about 3.5 billion. >> And Sean, the Caribou deposit, as you mentioned, it remains open at depth and also a long strike. And you have a slide in your deck comparing Caribou to the Young Davidson and also Leon. Maybe you can just speak to this and why do you think Caribou can has the potential to become a mining camp? >> So if you look at our strike length, it's about 4.4 kilometers. Young Davidson's an interesting mine. It's about has a headrade of about 2.2 g. Um and it produces around 175,000 ounces a year at 8,000 tons per day. Our headrade is 3.62 grams. Um, so we're more than a 50% uh grade above where Young Davidson is. Uh, we're online to produce about 220,000 ounces a year in the early years. Um, so that, you know, that's one mine. Um, at 200, you know, 200,000 ounces, we have more than double that 2 million ounces of reserve sitting in the resource. Um, so that's a conversion drilling from underground. So we know where the second mine is here. So the ability to double the mine really involves the conversion of what we call the blue ounces because the reserves are in our model as the pink ounces. So the 2 million ounces are pink when you look at this at website. And then the resource that we've defined um is in the blue and the all all we have to do to really have a second mine and double uh potential production is is hopefully convert those ounces and then increase the feed that would come from that development. uh it's you know all that's conditional on further further infill drilling and speculative in nature. So I am making a forward-looking statement on on that issue for clarity. Uh we have not achieved that yet and the infill drilling that we're going to do over the next 12 to 24 months uh offers the opportunity for that. So that's why I say the G mining one is not a bad analog to look at. They started out with one mining about 175,000 ounces a year in Brazil. They're building their second mine in Guyana. uh we have the second potentially a second project right in our permitted footprint. Uh so that's what we're working on right now. And they've gone from about at our stage they were about an $800 million market cap uh and they're now over over $9 billion market cap. So we think that's not a bad one for you to have a look at. It's on our it's on our in our our presentation. Uh you can see a slide that shows us G mining uh the 10 the $9 billion mark cap. Uh the West Dome story. Um it also shows you know the the the leader of the ball is Londine which for 400,000 ounces trades at $ 24 billion. So they trade at about $5 billion per 100,000 ounce of production. Uh West Dome trades at about $1.7 billion per 100,000 ounce of production. And then Alamos, which is a combined production of about uh 650,000 ounces a year, which is they own the Young Davidson. Uh they have a market cap around 24 billion. Uh and they traded about $4 billion per 100,000 ounces. So right now, you know, we're we're trading uh roughly $500,000 uh per 100,000 ounces of production uh if assuming that we achieve production right now. So there's on all metrics that you would look at, it's a very good, it stacks up very good as a a comparable that has quite a bit of upside given people might feel like they missed the gold price, but um I think the development story still offer some upside uh on that and we're probably the leader of the pack uh in terms of developers that are that are going to be here in the near coming into production in the near term, you know. So it's a pretty interesting time for me. I've been through this cycle a few times as you know. Um so pretty excited about this one and you know everything's lined up for us now. We just got to keep doing what we've been doing and um the execution's there and the drill bits our friends. So Sean, you have often said in the past, build it and they will come. And you continue to derisk Caribou. At what point do you think somebody will come in and knock on your door and make a bid for the company? And I know I'm putting you on the spot here, but I'd love to hear your views. Um, I assume that we're in play every day of the week. Um, this is a fairly rare resource with a permit on it. Uh, when you net out our cash and you look at the enterprise value is extremely cheap. Uh, we'd be trading the the resource itself is, you know, it's 2 million ounce of reserves, another 32 million of resource. Uh, and the enterprise value right now net of cash is about $700 million. Uh, so it's still very very cheap. Uh, and you know, I I wake up every day, I assume that I'm in play. Uh, and I bring that intensity to the work and anybody that works with me will know that, um, my fear is always that we will, uh, get taken out before we have a chance to do the drilling to finish off the resource like what happened at Canadian Arctic where we drilled off the main pit area and we' made the Odyssey discovery uh, and then we got put into play and we had to sell the company in 2014. But that Odyssey discovery is now 18 million ounces. Uh you know they've gone ahead and built a shaft there for 25,000 tons a day. Um but if you look at collectively we had daylighted about 14 million ounces and they're coming up on 30 35 million ounces at that project and it's been a you know a big cornerstone asset for Agniko and I feel like we're in a similar situation here where the market hasn't really grasped how important this story is. Um, but we're we're in jeopardy every day. I mean, anybody that knows the Cisco team, we're well known for, you know, drill twice, mine once. And, uh, our internal program is called Suds. Uh, and it's over top of my door in the office, which stands for shut up and drill, stupid. Um, so that's that's what we're doing. And that is my fear is that uh, this company could well be in play before we get to finish the first pass drilling even. So >> well Sean, this has been a great overview and a great update on what's happening at O Cisco Development. As we wrap it up, maybe you can just summarize for investors what they can expect in terms of news flow here in the coming months. >> Yeah, continued milestoning on the evolution uh of the Caribou mine build. Uh so earthworks construction, all that sort of stuff is on the go. Power lines going in this year, next year. Um the completion of the infill drilling uh from surface to document the at depth ounces below the main deposit is underway. Uh so that offer quite a quite a significant piece of ounces upside on the permitted area. So that permit is covers 4.4 km strike length. The overall strike length here is 83 km or about 50 mi. We're going to drill test some of those targets, but the bulk of our drilling on the outside of the the mail pyramid will be uh on the Proine area. We announced a 70,000 meter program for that and that dep uh we raised $32 million in charity flow through program last year. Uh so that is fully fund that drill program is fully funded with that. Uh and you know we've we've got pretty good go drill prices up there. Obviously, the Canadian dollars uh at a discount to the US dollar in a significant way right now. So, drill costs right now are running about $200 US a meter. Um so, pretty reasonable compared to what we're spending in the US for the same meter. And we see a significant amount of upside coming out uh of those deposits. And as we get further in our confidence build um the ATD depth, you know, development here is important. We wanted to get our per we focused on getting our first permit. We got our first permit in November of 2024. Um and then we'll be looking to extend uh those permits as the rest of the project comes together. The more infield drilling creates more and more opportunity for shareholders. And uh yeah, stay tuned and uh love to have anybody wants to come to site there. We have an RV park and everything up there. Uh it's a great place if you find yourself in Western Canada uh to bring the wife and kids uh or or the husband and kids, whichever way uh you want to do it. Um and uh we'd be happy to see you on site. Uh and it is a chance to visit a pretty cool mining project. It's in the mountains. We're up at 4,000 ft uh in the Caribou Mountains, which are quite spectacular. Um so it's it's a great place to look and I'm very proud to be doing this project at this time. Um, and you know, we got a great great team on the ground and uh great host community and our First Nations communities have been extraordinarily supportive on Taco Donnie and Williams Lake and uh we're working uh hand in hand with our other groups. Um so we're one of the groups I think that's most lined up for 2026. >> Well, that was a great update, Sean, and I want to thank you very much and I might take you up on that site visit. >> Absolutely. Bring a paddle. We got some great some great kayaking or canoeing if you want to at the Bin Lake system. >> Once again, thank you. >> All the best. Did you know that 80% of our viewers are not subscribers to our channel? So, be sure to subscribe to our channel, Blur Street Capital, and also hit that thumbs up button and leave a comment below. Thank you for your support. Joe, thank you very much for joining us today. You are a market strategist at the World Gold Council. And for those who might not be familiar with the World Gold Council, what exactly is it and what is its mandate? >> Jimmy, thanks for having me back. The mandate of the World Gold Council is pretty simple. as a as a global organization with offices in China, Singapore, Japan, the Middle East, the headquartered in the UK and the US as well. Our mandate is to educate and actually work to improve the overall understanding, trust, transparency, and adoption of gold worldwide, all of its forms, and in all of the markets where people can actually access it. Whether it's in the form of jewelry or in the form of investment, we're really here to give you insight, data, research, help you understand the market. So, as you mentioned, the World Gold Council does a great deal of research and it's trying to educate various stakeholders, but I want to look at gold and what's been driving it here in the last few years from a demand supply point of view. And why don't we just take a top- down approach and begin right there. So in 2024 total gold produced from mining was 3,645 tons. Do we know the number yet for 20125? >> The number is yet to be released but we are trending towards because through third quarter of this year we were hitting record levels in terms of both dollar value and tonnage value. But we're trending towards what looks like it could be yet another year for record demand. And I think what's important about people's understanding of the gold market is that it simply breaks down into four key components in terms of the demand profile. The first is investment. Second is gold as a central bank reserve asset and portfolios. The third is a very large and historical important market of jewelry and consumables. And then last is industrial use, which happens to be the smallest but a consistent and ongoing use of gold, which averages around 7 to 10% of the overall demand profile. But those first three are the ones that I think are probably the most significant and important to understand when it comes to the gold market. Now they're all driven by either wealth creation, savings, spendable assets that people can have in their personal disposal or concerns around how investments might be performing in the market and then it takes on that nature of safe haven. So over the last few years where we've seen the most significant and most pronounced growth has been both in the central bank demand profile adding gold as a reserve asset and we'll talk a little bit about that. But secondly, an increasing level of interest and adoption again of gold in the form of an investment as part of a broader portfolio because right now we have a lot of very interesting things developing around the globe whether it's economic, geopolitical or even trade related activities. These are causing questions, concerns, and challenges for investors to value up their portfolios and really get an understanding of how risk might develop over the next 6 months, 12 months, and even further out. >> All right. So, let's talk about central banks because, as you mentioned, they've become very large buyers, especially since 2022. But can you just quantify how much are they buying now and how does that compare to before 2022? >> Sure. So before 2022, what we were seeing is about a 15 to 16-year trend of net purchases by central banks. So when we look at the number, you have to remember there's buying and selling across the board of all central banks. And we're looking to track whether it's growing or declining in terms of the overall profile. The last 16 years, we've had net purchases across all central banks who are adding gold to their portfolio of reserve assets. So that's actually been a very positive trend. That's post the global financial crisis. Many used the gold during those days to actually access, you know, the need for liquidity, the need for stability of a re reliable asset and actually keep things uh in good order in their homegrown nation. Now we're actually moving into a world that's actually seeing record setting flows. So over the last 3 years, what we've been seeing are central bank reserves growing at about a,000 tons a year. Whether it's record setting or near record setting, this is the pace with which central banks are actually picking up gold as a component of their reserve portfolio and driven for a lot of different factors and reasons. You know, we run an annual survey with uh 70 plus central banks where we ask what's behind it, what more is there to know about it, what do you continue to see growing, etc. And over what we've seen over the last 5 to seven years with that survey report is that they have questions around their own, you know, issues around inflation on the home front, a need for a stable asset that they could use in liquidity context in terms of keeping things stable in the home front, but also an increasing concern around where their reserves sit today and how they might behave over time. as an example, dollar or dollar based assets. What could play out with those in terms of weakening, strengthening or actually behaving in a way that they can trust when they need it when they need it most? So, you've been seeing most of these emerging market and developing market central banks increasing the overall level of interest and the level of holdings and actually been a big driver. They've been a big driver of what's been going on in terms of the demand profile. often buying the dips but actually being very engaged when the markets are even higher and going up not slowing down at the pace maybe a bit in 2025 but we'll see how fourth quarter tallies up when we release our G our gold demand trends report our GDT report but for the most part what we are seeing is a level of interest for both homegrown protection and global protection gold being considered the key reserve asset of growth at this stage >> and so you mentioned that central banks are acquiring about a thousand tons of gold annually now. But what was it before 2022? What percent is that if you look at total gold mind? >> Yeah, it was it was trending up from a very low level in in the early days of the 15 16 year trend where it was 10 12 to 15% of the overall demand profile but over time it's actually come up to that near 25 to 30 to 35% of the overall demand on an annual basis. So they've grown quite substantially. I think on before the the thousand ton averages that we were seeing, I think it was averaging around 150 to 200 tons. And now you're actually looking at a much more substantial level of increase. And again, in the context of how geopolitics are playing out, the risk of sanctions, the risk of trade related activities, this is actually just overall increasing the level of awareness around gold and actually the level of interest in it. I think at this stage we're hearing a lot about whether or not gold is passing the level of treasuries in certain portfolios. I think it's safe to say that it's probably somewhere in the range of about 25% maybe a little bit north of that of overall reserves held by central banks. Some are up but the 75 to 80% range and some are low lower than the 25 but on average I think it's ranging in that 20 to 25% range. >> Yes. And I'm glad you brought that up because I've been reading many reports saying that central bank reserves of gold have overtaken overtaken reserves of uh US treasuries and I think I saw one report that said for the first time since 1996. >> Yeah, I I think that that number is being floated around that. complexity but that number is um understanding exactly what US you know rate instrument is actually being held and tallied effectively against a reserve portfolio and actually some of the challenges that we face we have official reportings that come through the IMF in terms of what gold holdings are actually in place but we also know that there are some unreported numbers and when you get into the world of central banks and their reserves it can be a little more of an art as well as a science in terms of tallying up the numbers what we report out is something that we're very comfortable and competent in and actually it might fall into the official reserve portfolio or very near to official portfolio and it's ultimately um a moving target and um I think what's important is that reliance on the euro or just the dollar or just dollar assets is actually the trend we've been noticing substantially which is diversification and I think that that's the key message for for anyone listening to the program is understanding that this level of interest in gold is likely to stay and continue with the central banking community. >> And you mentioned that central banks have been acquiring approximately 1,000 tons of gold annually, but could that number be significantly higher? Like are are central banks able to acquire gold or not just central banks, maybe it's governments uh able to acquire large amounts of gold without anyone knowing? I think that's a really good question and actually the challenge that we often face is the entire physical gold market is over the counter. So we look at the imports and exports for different countries for example China. We know the level that's moving in and out of the country at any given point in time. We see what's being reported officially through the IMF channels as official reserve holdings. But nothing is concrete. And often what we find is there are delays in certain information and we do our best to give the most accurate and complete picture which is actually probably the best that we can get in the market. We do that in coordination with a firm called Metals Focus. Very strong analysis and research into the reporting and very very reliable numbers. However, what you're hitting on is an interesting dynamic because if you look at some of the developing nations, how they set up the government control over resources and and and funds, they often run a central banking portfolio of reserves. They often run investment portfolios. They often run different opportunistic portfolios. And some sovereign wealth funds may be involved in what what the government is deciding to do with its funds, but it might not qualify or clarify itself specifically as a reserve asset. But it's interesting because it's in that context that we're hearing more and more levels of interest in gold, levels of gold being accumulated and adding it to not only reserves but other different size of different sides of the portfolios. So it's very much an investment that could be earned, owned and invested in beyond reserves, official characterized reserves. Uh and it's likely to be the case. But in in in the context of what we track, we try and give everybody as clear a picture on it. Um but you know many governments are actually quite open and out in the market talking about what they're doing and how much they're looking to accumulate. A good example is the recent news with Poland who announced that they were going to go to 20% in terms of their holdings of gold against their reserve portfolio. They quickly got to that level with the price appreciation and their speed of accumulation. They upped that size and now they've upped it again. So these governments are actually active and many of them are actually out there talking about what they're doing. But overall to your question, definitely yes. Many governments could be buying and many governments could be buying through different vehicles like central banks and other portfolios like sovereign wealth funds. >> Yeah. And I bring that up because you you raised a good or an interesting point earlier is that because gold is so expensive now, let's just say it's approaching $5,000 an ounce, a lot of especially retail investors can't afford it. So you only have a very small group that can afford to pay that kind of money for especially for a large amount of gold. But I think the other I'm sorry, what were you going to say? >> Well, I think that's actually really um an interesting thought you have about the affordability of gold. So what I would say to it is that investors in particular or those looking to accumulate gold, it's probably been most impactful in the jewelry context. And again, if you think about the nature of that market, it's a market where fabricators hold stock in anticipation of cycles and and and and moments of the market when things increase and slow down, seasonality, holiday seasons, different auspicious times of the year. So they stockpile the gold in anticipation of those moments. But then they also have to fabricate it into a shape and a piece of of jewelry itself which is not as nimble or quick as maybe an instrument that gives you access to gold in the context of like a financial instrument. So an exchange traded fund you could have a an ETF that gives you the ability for $180 to $200 make an investment in gold. So it's as little as that. And actually there are also other forms of it that could actually be used. I think that there are many firms that offer online purchasing of gold and they'll actually digitize it out for you or tokenize it out for you and they'll give you smaller denominations. So retail isn't really held back from it. U what I think retail has to deal with is understanding what size and shape they're buying and understanding that purchasing power. Now you're right to point out that me mentalities take over and sometimes people will say hey it feels expensive. But I think there's a mix between affordability and thinking maybe that the the prices is, you know, getting up to its highest levels. And I think that that's when they start looking at other assets, maybe silver or something else. And again, you're seeing that play out, right? where silver in the retail spaces is actually flying off the shelves and and um but it's not hindering the gold to be consumed in particular in retail that's actually organized in very institutionally organized ways where like platforms or or aggregators of retail accounts like warehouses in the US they can access financial markets and give people plenty of access to gold and we're continuing to see that by the way >> another factor that's been driving the gold price in the past year is this formation of stable coins and also gold back stable coins and Tether is the largest such stable coin with over $ 160 billion in total supply, but it's also been buying gold and it 2025 it acquired over 116 tons of gold. It's probably significantly more now, but can you speak to that? Has the World Gold Council done any sort of research on Tether and these other stable coin supplies? Yeah, I'd say there's there's there's a couple of things to take into consideration and keep keep in terms of thinking about the space. The first is that Tether is one of a number of different um organizations that in has introduced token access to gold. And what that simply is is a digital form of access to the gold market. Um and and we we see the total size of that market cap for that token to tether gold at about 1.9 billion. Um there's a couple of others. Pax G is another one about one and a half to 1.6 billion. Um but look, these numbers are are coming from un you know just like unofficial sources and but but what we're gathering is that there's a level of good adoption. um but we're not seeing it at the level that you would see either in the futures market or in the ETF market on a global scale. So some level of adoption and some level of success. Now in the case of Tether again this is a company headquartered out of Switzerland doing a lot of different things. They've made it quite clear that they're actually quite interested in not only gold but stable coins and you know this whole revolution and and and evolution of digitization of assets and the transformative uh nature of the industry that comes along with the technological advances and I think what they're actually getting involved in which is owning a lot more gold than what is required behind the asset that they have on on on on the digital platforms tether gold they're actually interested in in owning gold. They're actually interested in the leasing market. They're actually interested in the lending market. They're actually interested in the production side of things because they've even talked about where they're getting involved along those parts of the supply chain. So, I think it's a larger interest in in anything and everything that could potentially be behind this construct of, you know, new form of money or a new form of stable coin or a new way of saving. And I think that their interest goes beyond just offering the access to the product. I think they're actually using it in the context of a broader business application which is very interesting. Now it's been meaningful in that it's getting a lot of attention. Um but I don't think it's been the principal driver of what we've been seeing on a global scale in terms of the overall drive of growth and demand. the investment landscape which is about 35% of the overall demand on an annual basis and central banks that's what's driving our overall growth in terms of the gold price and that's what continues to be at the heart of it within that tether's part of it they're investing they're actually investing for themselves they're investing for their tokens but they're a component of a pretty large space worldwide um that includes physical markets and and actually that's what's been driving most of what we've been going through in terms of the overall price appreciation and trading today like you at 4,600 plus uh rapidly approaching this 5,000 number and and literally up about another 8% year to date mid January as we as we do this discussion. >> Yes, it's hard to believe. So 2025 was an incredible year for gold and the gold price. How do you think things look for 2026? You, as you mentioned, is already up 8% on the year, which is a crazy number, but >> yes. So if you look at consensus view on where the price could get to most analysts in the market who are better positioned to call the price than we are be we we have uh uh you know an interest in talking about the demand profile. We lead the analysts to call the price level. Uh most we're talking around you know 4500 to 5,000 level and we're at 4700 roughly. Call it 4,600 in terms of a stable level that we're holding on mid January of 2026. So what we like to make sure people understand that are the conditions which are actually very well understood that are in place that gave us that performance in 2025 look likely to persist into 2026. So you have questions around the um disruptive policies that the US have been actually introducing and implementing. We have two weekends in a row where we've had uh disruptive behaviors that have actually sent sent investors in particular and the markets in particular questioning the value of the dollar, questioning the value of US assets, questioning the future of the economic impact of some of these announced policies that are just again very disruptive but but what are they going to mean for the US economy? Um, in addition to that, you have geopolitical tensions that go beyond the US alone that are still persistent and actually continuing to play a key role. And under all of that, you have an economic condition and a debt level of sustainability that's still in question. Now, the US have done a lot to tackle this down with the introduction of these very um unexpected tariffs. was once the president was announced um he said he was going to introduce it he's introduced it now we're looking at whether or not it's revenue producing or not seems to be helping but it's still a far cry from what the US has to do in terms of sustaining its overall debt level so that means what starts to get questioned is whether or not bonds and equities and other risk assets will perform as we want and expect them to when you know the ability for this debt to be you know pushed into and cycled into and held by investors around the uh starts to be questioned. So I think that that undercurrent of economic condition, debt sustainability by the US and other nations as well uh is still out there. This is all adding to risk and uncertainty and questioning whether or not risk assets are at a point where they need correction. And I think that that's going to persist throughout 2026 for sure. So on a conservative estimate, we think that a moderate level of growth will likely be achieved. But, you know, it's very difficult to call this market. And actually, right now, if we continue at what we're we're seeing in terms of this pace, we could be on record for seeing another very strong year for gold. Um, the only headwinds that I think that we would likely face, and there are some hints of this is the US economic conditions particularly coming out stronger than maybe we were expecting. Maybe we do have this economic landing that we're looking for. Maybe we do have a strengthening of the dollar and a rate environment that's more favorable and risk assets that hold water. So that's that's our headwind right there is risk assets, economic conditions performing better than expected. Um but for now we still see an interest in particular uh an interest on the institutional investment side for diversification and that's why we're going to continue to see a strong support for gold even if it slows down a little bit over the course of the year. >> Yeah, you are certainly right. There are a lot of crossurrens and this is what makes financial markets so interesting. Well, this has been a fascinating discussion as always Joe and I want to thank you very much for spending time with us today. As you mentioned, one of the things the World Gold Council does well is providing a lot of research for investors to consume and learn the benefits of gold and looking at it from a supply demand point of view. If somebody wants to access this information or this research, where can they go? >> They can find it at gold.org or or goldhub.com. That's where we produce our our quarterly uh gold demand trends report which I would encourage everyone to take a good look at because that gives you a picture of where and how people are actually consuming the gold uh around the world. Uh we also have monthly production on gold market commentary as well as ETF flows and anecdotal color that we will share on central banks, jewelry, retail markets and even in response to certain market trends and activities. For example, I just published a blog on what the likely outcome and impact could be on the gold market if the sen uh if the Supreme Court comes back and makes a decision that the president stepped beyond his powers to implement tariffs. So, a little bit of color there as a good example, some other color on the the supply side, which we haven't talked very much about, but you know, suffice to say, we've got a lot of data on that as well. >> And you also have a podcast if somebody wants to listen to that. Where can they go? >> We most certainly do. Unearthed. I co-host that with my uh counterpart in the European market, John Reid. We'd love for people to take a listen. We cover everything that's timely and interesting on a monthly basis for the gold market and have featured segments that we do regularly over the course of the year talking about growth areas, interesting market updates. We're about to put a piece out on China. I would encourage everybody to take a listen considering the significance of China and the role it could be playing not only on a geopolitical front, but in the gold market for 2026. Joe, once again, thank you. >> Thanks for having me, Jimmy. >> Well, that concludes our virtual gold conference, and I hope you found it useful. If you did not have a chance to listen to all the presenters, you can check it out anytime on our YouTube channel, Blery Capital, or you can listen to us on Spotify or Apple Podcast. Don't forget to hit that notification button to be kept up to date. We have some amazing content coming out here in the next few months. I want to thank you very much for your support and good luck in the markets.