$700M Gold Producer With 4 Assets Across 3 Jurisdictions | Mako Mining CEO Interview

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Today on a CEO barbecue, we're looking for gold production in Nicaragua, Arizona, Nevada, and Gana together with Mako Mining. For a bulletoint summary of this and all other CEO interviews, please go to resourcealks.com and subscribe to our free weekly newsletter. The company you're about to hear from has not paid us for the production of this interview, but this interview is still intended only for experienced speculators because this is venture capital and mining is a very risky industry where failure is the norm. All conversations are general and impersonal in nature and they contain forwardlooking statements. I'm not a licensed financial adviser and my business sells content producing services which also makes me biased. So before continuing on, please talk to an independent investment adviser with a good long-term track record because your capital is at risk. And also visit setterplus.ca where you'll find the company's official filings. If you're not 100% sure you understand all the biases and the disclaimers that I just showed you, please go to the last section of this video and do not consume this content unless you fully understand and agree with everything said herein. That all said, Miko is a small gold producer who sold close to 8,000 equivalent gold ounces last quarter, uh, which was mostly gold actually. The operational foundation for the company is the San Albino mine in northern Nicaragua, which has been the company's key cash generator since production began here in 2021. This is a very high-grade operation, but Maker believes both the open pit and the accompanying mill have more to offer. So, they think there's more exploration potential and maybe there's more expansion potential for the mill as well. So, that's something I'll be asking about later on. It's not the only asset the company has, though, because in 2024, Maker moved to merge with Gold Source Mines, adding the Eagle Mountain Development Project Ingana as a potential next growth leg. And again, we'll talk about that as well. And then in March of this year, they completed the acquisition of the Moss Mine in Arizona, giving it the potential for um a second producing base in the US. And then most recently at the end of last month, Mako entered into a definitive purchase agreement to acquire the Mount Hamilton Gold Silver project in Nevada from Selfish Royalty, which by the way, Mako CEO is on the board um as a as an executive chairman of of Sailfish Royalty. So, as you can imagine, that will be part of the conversation and I will have some questions around that as well. Mako is listed as MKO on the TSXV where the average 3-month volume is about 112,000 shares. The stock's 52- week high is $8.76 and it 52-we low is $2.72. With a market cap of just under 670 million Canadian dollars and just over 87 million shares outstanding today, this is a $7.70 stock with a 50 and a 200 day moving average at respectively 7.69 and 5.72 which means the stock is now trading above both of them. Moving on to the share structure. Um, an important thing to note here is that over 50% of the shares are owned by Wex Ford Capital. And how and why those shares were acquired will be discussed later on as well. Again, uh, just over 87 million shares outstanding. There's no warrants and there's just under 2 million stock options as well as just over a million RSUs and DSUs combined, bringing the number of fully diluted shares to just under 90 million. That means an increase of just about 3.3% in shares outstanding could happen if all the dilutive securities get exercised which would then result in a um about a 3.2% ownership dilution if and that's always a big if but if all dilutive securities actually get exercised. Talking about Capital, I'm now going to be going through their latest financial statement, which shows me the numbers as of September 30, 2025, which is almost three months ago now, and thus covers up until the end of Q3 of 2025. Now, at the time, the company had in total just over $56 million in current assets, 27.7 million of which in cash and cash equivalents, and uh the other large chunk, 22.5 million, was in inventories. In terms of liabilities, I'm seeing 20 million in current and 33.5 in non-current liabilities with the largest chunks um respectively or in current being the $19.5 million account payables and acred liabilities. And then in non-current, the largest chunks are um just provisions really. So provisions for reclamation and there's also deferred income tax in there as well with a um term loan standing at about 5 million bucks on the books. And uh that loan carries a 10% interest rate perom compounds semianually and it recently uh was extended to mature on March 31st 2029. Notably that loan is payable to Wex Ford again the company's largest shareholder. So that will be part of the questions as well. Also worth pointing out uh this um financial situation or snapshot is is again for September 30, but Mako raised $55 million at $8 per share at the end of October this year, which wouldn't be reflected in these financials yet. And I suspect their cash position is um over $60 million right now. Moving on to the P&L for the three months that ended on September 30. Again, unlike most companies I speak to, Mako actually has revenues. They were recorded at about 27.5 or $27.6 $6 million to be specific for the 3-month period. That's an almost double uh double the amount recorded for the same period last year. And that revenue came from the sale of $7,830 gold ounces produced at an average of about $2,500 gold, leaving about $9.5 million of gross profits, which is more than twice the uh $4.5 million of gross profit for the same period last year. The operating cash flow sat at about $4.3 million, which is a 52% increase yearonear after selling gold at an average realized gold price of $3,454 versus $2,49 last year for that same period. I'm looking at operating cash flow here again. So this means that Mako made about $550 or $551 an ounce in operating cash to be specific. Whereas last year that number was just about $435 an ounce. Looking at the cash flow statement though given the um secured debt investment and the uh expenditures that are that were made for P& and so on the change in cash for the quarter was actually a drop of um close to $900,000. Talking about expenses, normally for an exploration company, I like making the exploration to administration ratio, which would show me how much money goes into the ground versus how much goes towards what I call bankers, lawyers, and management. But uh here I think it makes more sense to look at how much of the revenue is spent on GNA. And for MO that number is just about 10%, 10.4% to be specific. Now, is that going to stay the same or could they grow the bottom line without growing the corporate office? and how stable is the financial situation under the current assumption, this gold price and the jurisdiction and everything else. Those are all questions that I hopefully I can ask later on in the conversation. But in the meantime, I would also briefly like to remind you that mining businesses can change relatively quickly. So these numbers may not be entirely representative of the current situation for Mako and I might be seeing things wrong as well. So it is your responsibility to try to get up to date uh by going to setterplus.ca. Now, I mentioned a couple of times that I have some questions for later on in the conversation, but for this to actually become a conversation, I'm going to have to shut up already in a kiba. I'll give you the word here. But first of all, thank you so much for sitting down with me today. >> All right. Thanks, Antonio. Appreciate it. >> The pleasure is mine. And um I don't plan on wasting too much of your time today. Maybe a little bit though. Uh but this is the CEO barbecue, so I'm going to have to ask, how do you like your steak? >> Um the steak is growing, right? So I think we probably had like a little small cut maybe a couple years ago, but really starting as you kind of laid out uh in February of of last year, we embarked on our our acquisition strategy. So Mako is a completely different uh company today uh than it uh than it was 18 months ago. Uh we now have four assets, two producing mines uh the second which of which is in Arizona, which will be in steady state, let's call it commercial production in uh the latter half of Q1 of next year. So, it's in production, but not not commercial at this point. Uh, and then we, as you pointed out, we also announced a definitive agreement, but for all intents and purposes, we now control the Mount Hamilton asset in Nevada, fully permitted as of about a week ago. Uh our guys were over at site uh last Wednesday and Thursday uh to do a lot of the uh the kickoffs for the pre-construction activities and we do intend to start constructing uh Mount Hamilton uh in around April of next year uh for first gold production in the first half of 27 and then we're in the advanced stages of getting uh our GY asset Eagle Mountain permitted uh with the idea that we're going to be uh constructing that towards uh the uh the the middle of uh of 2027 for first first production on that in the first half of 2028. All funded with uh with cash on our balance sheet inclusive of that uh Canadian $50 million raise or US $37 million uh raise net of fees, costs, commissions, uh plus the uh the cash flows that are coming from our two and soon to be three assets uh within our portfolio right now. >> So we're we're in great shape. Um, Mako is now what I would consider to be um a significant uh company where before I would view it really as a mom and pop uh organization where we actually did like to uh to yours our our team to go and build these these high-grade highly profitable minds. But now we're definitely more uh more substantial company where where I do think we have a lot more relevancy uh for the uh for the public uh investing community uh today versus what it was even even just a few months ago. That still doesn't tell me how you like your steak, though. >> So, in terms of like how I like to cook it, I like my steak to eat medium rare. I would I would consider Mako having gone from the rare to the uh to the medium temperature at this point. >> That's actually uh that's a safe option. I'll take it. So, you like it a little bit red, but you don't want to take too much risk with blood there. Um, jokes aside though, Ka, and what since this is your first time on on the actual barbecue yourself, we'll have to go through what I call the smell test first, which intends to understand more about what the incentives in the track record of management are. Starting off with yourself and your track record. Who are you and have you made more money for shareholders than what you've spent during your career so far? >> Sure. So, my my career is is twofold. one is on the the investment side and then one is on managing companies before um which I'm doing right now exclusively. Uh so I started uh my career after business school um initially for uh a small South African uh project finance bank for the for the mining community back in 2006. And I left that group uh to go uh start a new hedge fund. Uh I was employee number three within this larger hedge fund group called Redkite. Uh and then we helped get um the the mine finance funds uh off the ground which eventually became the Orion funds, the largest mining private equity funds uh in the space these days. I left uh Redkite at the time before they they changed the name to Orion, split the company uh in 2011 uh to go and take over the mining portfolio of another hedge fund and private equity group called Wexford Capital. So as you pointed out earlier in this is that Wexford does have nearly a 50% shareholding in Mako. They own about 47% right now. And I did two things for them. one was to manage a pretty well diversified uh portfolio of uh of public companies and and to a certain extent some private ones as well. And then starting in 2012 uh we put together the initial bones of what eventually became uh Mako. So the track record is really twofold. one was really just on the the public portfolio uh side of things uh which we really won't get into and then secondarily it was the creation of the predecessors of Mako one was a company called uh Maron Gold which was developing a an asset in Mexico and then frankly was not a financial success. Uh so this was a deposit in Mexico that ran through a lot of challenges associated with it. And in 2014 uh to really transition and really lay the groundworks of what uh what eventually became Mako uh we decided to start the uh the pivoting uh from where Marlin was uh to to eventually where where the company uh is today. Uh we did that initially by starting a an affiliated royalty company called Sailfish Royalty Corp. Uh which you uh you did highlight earlier as well. Uh Sailfish was established as a subsidiary to Marlin uh initially in 2014. Uh it put on a large encumbering stream on the Nicaraguan assets uh that we're currently mining right now over in Mako. And over a period of about four years, uh it was really my intent to use that stream as a mechanism to to really merge the two companies together between uh between Marlin and the predecessor, a company called Golden Rain Resources. Um it did not happen. We had a a board on the other side that didn't see eye to eye with us, management teams of of a a variety, if you will, that also didn't see eye to eye. Uh so after a period of about four years uh we finally negotiated uh an agreement with them to merge the two companies together uh that also required a restructuring of the stream to make it a lot less encumbering than it was back in 2014 as such that it's effectively a 2% net smelter return royalty right now. Initially I gave up my job as interim CEO of uh of Marlin. took over as as interim management in 2015 when we were having some some operating difficulties over the mine and I really wanted to take uh more control of the situation at that point in time and then after that happened at the end of 2018 uh the management and the board still didn't see eye do eye uh and eventually we flexed our muscles a little bit where I took over as management in the summer of 2019 uh populated uh the uh the the board with uh with our guys if you will uh brought brought in the management team, Jesse Munoz, and the wholly owned EPCM firm that his family used to to operate to to really take control over uh at management. And that really was the uh what I view as the beginning of where Mako is today. Uh so we did raise capital which allowed Wexford to take majority control of the company at that point in time. uh to get San Albino up and running uh we raised a total of uh US $40 million uh and two $20 million financings. One in the summer of 2019 uh and then another 20 million in the summer of 2020. Uh there was an additional US $15.15 million of debt capital that was also issued by uh by Wexford uh to get the company uh to first uh gold pour at the beginning of 2021. And then we took a third party debt piece of about $6.4 $4 million to a third party in February of uh 2021, which was the last time the company raised any net capital of any sort until we announced the uh the equity deal of uh of a couple of months ago uh after we announced the acquisition of the Mount Hamilton project. So since San Albino turned on on the back of that US $40 million of equity capital and then the the $21.5 million US of uh of debt uh we were able to finance uh expiration both expensed and and capitalized. So a little bit different than the numbers that you were quoting before uh in excess of US $40 million over the course of the last 5 years. We were able to to mine the uh the mine profitably. We're able to repay the entirety of 21 and change million dollars of debt that sit on the balance sheet to such that we actually don't have any debt uh on the balance sheet right now. Uh we grew our cash balance from zero. We were running on fumes at certain points in 2021 to the roughly US $70 million that's on the balance sheet today. And that's after a US $37 million net equity capital raise that we did last month. uh and then we use that really as a platform uh to go and build out the uh the company uh making these three acquisitions. Now the other aspect of track record are really uh the two uh what I view as the differentiating aspects of of makeo. The first is the is the controlling shareholder. Wexford has been extremely successful uh investor over the course of the last 30 years or so. uh for your audience, probably the most um high-profile and and successful investment that they they made was the establishment of of Diamondback Energy. All right, so Fang on the NASDAQ, it's a member of the S&P 500. Diamondback was uh was effectively started in a very similar fashion to uh to Marlin and Mako initially privately back in 2006. There was initially operating issues associated with it, very similar to Marlin. And then there was a in in the private sphere a pivot uh where new management did come in. We populated with with best-in-class management uh went public uh with that in 2012 and then made a series of highly accretive acquisitions in and around the the Perine and Delaware basin to really grow that company into the the company that it is today producing nearly a million barrels of of oil equivalents uh per day. one of the largest independent oil producers uh globally. Um and all of that really does have a very similar template uh to the to the business that we're building out of Mako. Actually, even Diamondback has an affiliated royalty company called Viper Energy Partners. It's a royalty company uh that's a multi-billion dollar market cap that thatffect effectively functions as a as an affiliated royalty vehicle to the uh to the producer. So there's a lot of um of Waxford DNA that is in a lot of the the portfolio investments that that we invest in and how we manage the business. The other aspect of this is that Mako is unique is that from inception it was set up uh to acquire and operate multiple mines at the same time. We wouldn't be able to do what we uh what we do without actually having our own internal EPCM firm that's capable of uh of running that for us. So, my COO, Jesse Munoz, I I've worked with him uh really going back since uh since pre-waxer days, back when I was over at Redkite was the first time that I met Jesse. I guess it's now about 16 years ago. Uh I met him when he was doing the uh the original procurement and construction management work for uh the original Silverest Mines. So, Silverest, if you know the story over there, started with an open pit heap leech in in Sonora, Mexico. so called Santa Elena. Jesse actually was the one that uh that built Silverest uh back for at the time the CEO of the company was Eric Fear uh who's our our non-executive chairman over at MOO. Uh Jesse and Eric uh met each other for the first time. Then I met Jesse very soon after after that meeting and and Silverrest was always kind of a template for how we were going to be running our business from a successful perspective. uh they transitioned from a from a relatively high-grade open pit heap leech mine to to an underground uh over at Santaena. They were acquired by First Majestic and then there was a spin-off company uh called Silver Crest Metals that was also acquired for in excess of a billion dollars recently to to core mining. Uh so Eric's had a a tremendous amount of success uh on exiting uh a variety of of assets and companies that he's been involved with. Uh so we do like to to kind of use everybody's experience and track record uh to try to establish best practices for how we build uh these companies and eventually how we how we exit these uh these investments. >> I know you as you mentioned you hold a position of executive chair at Selfish Royalty. Um but outside of that do you currently do anything else? You hold any other executive or board positions with other companies? >> No other board positions. I still I still technically consult for Wexford on an on an unpaid basis. So I usually just uh use that as an opportunity to get yelled at by by Wexford every now and then. So it's important to keep uh keep channels and then also anytime that they have a particular uh investment they're looking at not affiliated with uh uh with with Mako or Sailfish. Uh Chuck from from Wexford usually runs it by me as well. >> How do you split your time between all that Sailish and and a little bit of Xford here? W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W Wexford there and um yeah, how do you how do you split your time between all that? How much of your time goes toward Mo? >> Yeah, I view everything as one and the same. So I I do multitask. I I would say because operating companies are inherently uh more uh time involved. I I do wind up spending the vast majority of my time associated with with No. This is kind of an important characteristic because we we actually do get a lot of commentary and have gotten a lot of commentary and really now the the 13 years since we've been involved at least from from the public side of things on the uh on the mining side. It's like well how do you manage all of this? We we think of everything the same. It's like we we don't really view um investments that we're making in the mining space as different than investments that we're making in the public market side of things. Maybe with a with a couple of caveats to that. Obviously, if we're going to be buying an asset, uh we do need to own it for for a long long period of time. At least that's how we're going to underwrite it. Whereas uh on on equities, you do have a little bit more flexibility on how you um on how you exit uh small and minority sized um positions, but we just don't think about the world like differently. is that we don't we don't don't pay too much attention to what's on uh on on the screen in terms of unless you're talking about the the actual valuations of of things. And if something actually looks really attractive to us from an asset perspective and looks at attractive to us from a from a risk perspective and we feel comfortable enough on executing on it, how we manage that thought process over at Mako is the same as how we manage it over at Sailfish. It's the same as how we manage it through through Expert. It's like it really is the the the DNA and how these companies are are managed and you can see um how that impacts us. It makes us I think a little bit different than some of the the mining companies and the royalty companies that you may be involved with. Uh but everything that we look at is all right. How do we how do we generate good investments? And the way that we define good investments is how like every investor really should is right how much money you put in and how much money you taking out and how long is it going to take you to do that >> relative to the risk that you're taking. >> I might go a little bit more in depth on on this further on in the conversation. While we're on this topic, you know, there's one one thing is managing the time between the different companies and the other thing is is how do you manage a conflict of interest here in a situation such as the current one where again um you're essentially buying an asset off of off of Sealfish. So, how do you manage that conflict of interest? >> So, two two things. one the the the last two acquisitions that we did uh with with Moss and and with Mount Hamilton, it happened to have been that that Wexford was instrumental on how it was financed, how it was structured, but Wexford had nothing to do with the actual like ownership of of either asset. Uh so we'll go over a little bit with the with the Moss one and then and then a little bit about all the the the connectivity on the Mount Hamilton and then I'll go back to your your specific question about like conflicts of interest in general. Uh so Moss was uh was was an asset that was in in bankruptcy uh by this this Canadian basket case of a company called Elevation uh Gold. Uh they declared bankruptcy in July of of last year, 2024. Um and uh it became clear that we we had a pretty advantaged situation in that bankruptcy. We we were very familiar with the asset. Uh like I I view our operating headquarters to be in Tucson, Arizona in the southeast side of the state. elevation happens to be or the Moss mine happens to be in the northwest part of the state. We've made multiple site visits to it over the course of the last 10 years. We were intimately aware of their financial situation um and we actually told a bunch of their adviserss that uh it was really nothing to do, but if you ever go through a restructuring, we're definitely going to be particularly interested in it. Uh so I did feel very optimistic uh that we were going to be uh the winning bidder uh in uh in that bankruptcy process towards the tail end of 20124. Um if you went over Mako's financials at the time especially at the end of Q3 uh because I think this I think this year is actually the third year in in a row we've had a particularly weak Q3 and then a particularly strong Q4. 2024 was not not different. So if you look at our financials at the end of uh Q3 of 2024, so last year, we had like all of about five or six million bucks on the on the balance sheet at the time. Even though I was planning on having a pretty strong Q4 and I kind of understood that the the clearing price of this bankruptcy would be in the in the mids singledigit million dollar range, I was not comfortable about uh having Mako uh underwrite a uh a an acquisition like that given where our financial resources were at the time. So, we actually had Wexford, uh, an entity that they created, uh, Denovo, uh, acquire the Moss mine, and we closed that on December 31st of like New Year's, uh, New Year's Eve of last year. And then there was a an agreement that once that happened is that uh for Wexford's cost so including legal costs which was just about $150,000 or so minus any like gains that they would get through I mean even though this was mining stopped in the in the fall of 2024 was still producing gold through this residual leech. So all of the benefits from that gold cash flows would transfer over to Mako. So net of all uh cost, net of all uh equity uh contributions, but um uh but also for the benefit of Mako the the cash flows that it got through the residual leech in that 3-month period of time that it took to acquire the assets uh Wexford would have agreed subject to um to the the regulatory approval to sell the asset back at at their cost. uh which wound up happening and because of all the cash flows that that Mosh generated in that intervening three-month period of time, the net acquisition to Mako was only about US $2 million to acquire the asset. So here was one where we used Wexford really to to do a couple of things. One was to to obviously rent balance sheet a little bit, right? So they had the financial resources to do it where where Mako didn't didn't really even though uh by the end of 2000 uh by end of Q4 of 2024 we did have the ability to to to execute on that and then secondarily which actually became I think it was something that that definitely crossed my mind but it actually was the more important of the two is that Moss was a mess like it absolutely was was not a an operation in tippy top shape when we acquired it um going through Wexford in that particular particular structure was essential uh in doing this because we didn't have to wait for any regulatory approval on this is that the bankruptcy judge approved the bankruptcy at 11:00 in the morning on uh New Year's Eve and we took it over at 11:11 11 minutes later we got the keys and we spent the next 3 months just kind of like fixing all the issues that that really really were frankly like unsafe and to a certain extent operating that that asset in that intervening 3-month period of time. Uh so so Wexford was was essential from from a tactical perspective, but I wouldn't exactly call that a conflict of interest. That was it was only a positive side of things on that basis. Uh the Mount Hamilton one is is similar and a little bit different where here was a situation where I was pretty uh the the asset was owned by a third party private equity group uh named Waterton uh out in in Canada. I actually originally tried to acquire uh Mount Hamilton back in 2014 when we were kind of going through that that operating pivot if you will over at uh at Marlin um for it's another long story that we can go over in in a longer uh interview as to why we were rebuffed in 2014. Uh but this third party private equity fund uh managed to be the the winning bidder of Mount Hamilton in 2015 uh for an acquisition of uh of US30 million plus uh the the assumption of about US $10 million of uh of effective liabilities that came with it. So about about $40 million uh plus holding cost was their acquisition uh cost. Now I knew Water didn't want to advance this. Um they tried to uh vend it off to another private company back in uh 2024. So, we were in discussions with that company for well over a year uh in one form or another to try to acquire it through them. And then when that company uh lost the uh the option agreement uh in the middle of of this calendar year, I then approached uh Waterton with a a cash uh a cash deal. Now, in this particular circumstance, um Mako didn't have the clearing price on this was was US $40 million. one, Mako didn't have US $40 million on the balance sheet, so it would have required a capital raise to do it. Likewise, Mako didn't really have like a great stock price, right? So, it had assets that were doing really well. San Albino and then through this this pretty sharp acquisition over at at Moss that we completed in in March of last year. And myself, the board and and especially Wexford had no interest in raising equity at the level that Mako was trading at. So, anytime that somebody says something like that to me, you can't do this because your your stocks uh your stock's too cheap, I do have the ability to to kind of think of creative alternatives. So, one of those creative alternatives is like what we actually have an affiliated royalty company over here. The affiliated royalty company actually has a uh an asset uh within it that I know I could sell at a really high price at an attractive valuation. So, why doesn't Sailfish take a bridge loan from Wexford, the amount of US $40 million, use that $40 million to acquire it from Waterton, complete that transaction, repay that bridge loan through the sale of that of that asset, which is is a royalty on something that Mako is not involved with, the Spring Valley uh project that also h coincidentally happens to be owned by Waterton. um and then vends the Mount Hamilton asset to Mako, the operating team. It's effectively the same family, but the Mako is the operating part of this business. Vend it in return for a 5year gold stream. So 4,100 ounces per year at 20% of the spot price of gold subject to an effective cap at $3,700 an ounce such that at today's gold price it would be less than 4,100 ounces a year. Then once that five-year gold stream is complete, then Sailfish will be entitled to a 2% net smelter return royalty. So, if you actually think about how this was structured is that Mako wound up buying uh this this really attractive uh two-stage project, which is a uh a 60,000 ounce a year roughly uh um producer fully permitted in Nevada, 600,000 ounce updated resource, although we think uh with uh with pretty uh clear exploration success, we can get this to about 1 to 1.2 million uh ounces uh in this oxide heat bleach uh asset. And then on underneath this, which we can go over a little bit in more more detail later in this conversation, there also happens to be this uh this this very large scale uh and high relatively high-grade critical metals tungsten uh deposit situated spatially about 150 mters below uh the gold asset. And he did this without issuing any equity capital uh at the time. Right? So here, Mako was able to acquire this asset without actually having to to issue any relatively cheap equity. And we did that because we actually had all of the connections within the family working together. Uh you had Wexford who was there that was supporting this from a from a bridge loan. You had Sailish, which was there, which had uh a variety of assets that were leverable uh and the ability to to sell them to eventually repay that that that bridge loan and then some. And then you had the Mako side which has the the operating structure with at the time uh three uh other assets uh two two effectively producing mines albeit moss was not in commercial production at that point in time. Uh and then the the the G development asset over at Eagle Mountain all acquired in in in a very very um uh sharp way over the course of the last uh last 18 months and then uh acquiring this fully permitted project uh in Nevada without having to issue any any equity capital. I don't think there's another mining company that would be able to pull pull off something that we pulled off here. Now, to your point about conflicts of interest, there there's actually a lot of of conflicts when when you think about it, right? So, so I do think um when when we get in these discussions about about conflicts is that conflict, no conflict is not the same decision process as good and bad. Right? So they and some sometimes sometimes a conflict can lead to a bad decision because people are are looking after their own pecuniary interests as opposed to to to shareholders. But they're not they're not necessarily the same thing, right? So it goes back to our our DNA like the only thing that we care about are are good sharp investments. We're not embarrassed uh to be using tools that are available to us because of these conflicts. Uh and we do this in in companies like MAC. do this in with companies that are that are $50 billion market cap companies like uh like Diamondback who have a they they also have a lot of conflicts with their their affiliated royalty company called uh called Viper. Uh but they manage through that because the the DNA of these organizations are to do good deals. Now how they're they're actually managed within the the company from a from a governor's perspective yet we do have special committees like uh I I definitely give uh kind of guidelines on both companies that this is what I think Mako can accept. this is what I think Sailfish can can accept within these parameters. You guys deal with uh with with the specifics within those parameters and I do I I do give uh give enough space to to both both special committees to to go and negotiate uh on that basis. That being said, if you're an investor for whatever reason, you don't actually trust us, believe us that that's going to be the case, you can't invest in these companies. like if I wanted to do things that would be bad for my own personal interest uh against the benefits of shareholders, there's no there's no governance structure that we can put in that would prevent that from happening. Right? So the there there is an element over here where uh I actually respect investors saying look we we we need to be in situations where there's there's clear-cut bright lines in terms of how we we manage this because I can't go over the the the details for every micro cap uh small cap I guess we've now graduated from the micro cap space to the small cap space for every company in my my portfolio looking at this. So I I I can't invest in like that. I get it. The the other side to that is the it goes back to this um to to the tools in our toolkit is that we have more of them than other companies. And that's access to capital, access to engineering experience, access to kind of understanding how to navigate through through bankruptcy, how to navigate through uh through through through acquisitions and deals like this. And and we use it to to to our advantage. and >> we've never never been embarrassed to to do that. >> Yeah, I like the in-depth answer there and then it's something that that might keep coming back here as we start talking a little bit more specifics. Um, I do want to move on talk about skin in the game management and insiders are noted at about 4% of the company. In general, when I look at again exploration companies that that isn't all that much in absolute terms, you're an almost $700 million company. 4% is not nothing. Um, but are there any plans to increase shareholder alignment here? >> Yes, so the uh I personally own outright uh a little over 1.4 million shares and then with RSUs uh that uh that are close to being vested that takes me up to about 2 million shares uh in aggregate. So as you said on a fully diluted basis this is a roughly 90 million uh share count company. So, you're dealing with something that's uh that's just over over 2%, like 2 and a quarter% for for for me personally. the uh what I've I I could tell you I could tell you flat out that that's actually enough uh uh from a uh from me being in a position where it is going to make a difference from my my my personal financial situation that if Mako is a a success that actually will flow down to me in a way that I'm incented to do that. Now I've uh of that uh that 1.4 4 million shares outright. Uh the at one point between the uh the Maron shares and then uh once we took over management in 2019 and then subsequently I actually went out into the market to buy uh outright close to to a million effective shares. We were in a different we we had a a 1 for 10 reverse split. So it's close to 10 million shares of of of net purchases uh both through Mako and then through the predecessor company to to to get the the bulk of that position. Um the what I've noticed in this uh in this industry the and and this is it's probably um I think similar to to a lot of the micro cap side of things but but I think different to I think like a lot of other industries and especially more developed companies. People spend way way too much time um looking at uh I would say insider purchases and and insider sales in this industry. I care about the the the business. I I care about how it gets developed. Um these are stocks. Every investor that invests in Makeo should have an expectation that they sell those shares. We set up our company through underwriting. um uh views that we don't anticipate our company being sold. We don't mind it like if somebody wants to come in and and buy us at a premium, we're we're happy to uh entertain that. We do not structure our company uh with that in mind. Which means by definition management would effectively be wasting their time if it wasn't going to be at a certain point that they sell and monetize. Otherwise, we view equity compensation as that as uh as as as part and parcel to to incentives and and uh and and and compensation for what it is. So I do think because there's so much sensitivity to what insiders do, there's like a perverse incentive that goes on in in the space where if there's a hesitancy of investing in a management team that's not going to be selling their stock, what the the the prudent thing for management teams given those incentives to do is to put yourself in a situation where you never sell your stock, which basically means you have to sell the company. So the perverse incentive is you're now incented to sell your company at a level that's likely lower than what it would wind up being if you just spent the time and rolled up your sleeves to go and develop uh the portfolio of assets like we're doing over at at Mako is that we we never want to be in a situation where the incentives that were being presented by the market are interfering our actual with our actual business decisions. Um so like with with me like I said I I probably acquired over a million shares uh in aggregate uh between the predecessors and uh and and through Mako initially I think I wound up like selling I think probably somewhere in the neighborhood of about 300,000 shares of of that like in subsequent years the amount of benefit that uh that I viewed on uh on the the street credit if you will on the on the million share purchase in those those years was a tiny fraction of the negativity that I got on the selling of the of the 20 or 30% later on to the point where I it almost got to the got to got to the the point where the the incentive structure that I was getting from shareholders was such where you're almost forcing me to to develop this company to sell it and it got to the point where that I I'm just not going to be responding to uh to incentives like that. So I do I do purchase the stock every now and then. I do sell the stock every now and then. Um uh the the position that that myself and and management and insiders have, we're all well incented to make sure that uh does well. But one thing that I try to avoid is you can't manage your business via huristics. You can't there are no shortcuts to basically what are the assets? How are the being how are they being developed? What are the returns on capital that you're generating? >> Is your stock price cheap or expensive relative to how that that goes? And you can't look at other stuff from the outside that interferes with that because you wind up making cloudy investment decisions. And I think it it forces people to make very unhealthy choices in terms of how their portfolios are developed. So, I mean, I can I can actually think of a few a few examples where where I I would I would notice management teams would actually go into the market and and buy stock like uh and and people say, "Wow, that's good." There's only one reason why management teams are buying stock is because they think the stock is going to go up. Answer is no. It's like when you're dealing with with micro cap stocks, management teams sometimes are incented because they get the the feedback from the investor group that they're buying stocks because they want to actually have some sort of resent tear to raise capital later on or put themselves in position where they have like a uh a better more attractive currency to do uh a potential bad deal to to to kind of grow their empires. And we we we just don't play we just don't play those games. Really don't. >> What's the average cost that you've paid for your shares? Do you know that? >> Uh I would uh I don't know exactly. I would guess that they were that they would probably be in the in the high ones. Uh so probably somewhere in the like uh you could probably like recreate that. But I would say if I had to have guessed like between 18 and two, right, >> is it would probably be where it shakes out >> because really what I'm asking here Ka is that essentially you're saying, you know, trust me and and you have to trust management and I agree, but I add to that trust but verify and and so really what I'm looking for here is that um game and and I'm really looking to try and understand how important the financial commitment is is for you especially given that again you do have diversified interests here and there. So, how important of an investment or financial commitment is Mo to you? >> I would say Mako and Selfish like as a percentage of my net worth, it's uh it's high like like I would say the the vast majority of it uh are are tied up in uh in those two groups. So, it's it's it's definitely from a uh from a personal perspective um way way in excess of 50% of my uh of my net worth. >> Mhm. Um the to go back to to trust but uh but verify it's we we we have a this company it's been like so in in one form or another it's been around depending on how you count uh from 2012 I I like to count it from 2019 which is really the first time that we we had this uh this unencumbered company with the board working in the same place with with me in control of management and the board with the financing to move things forward. So I I I I view our inception date really to in uh in in the summer of 2019, but even with that, we're now we're now operating this thing for for 6 and a half years. Um we the the two equity financings that we we put in, one was a rights offering, right? So it was uh it was backs stop by Wexford. Wax going into that rights offering had a 37% ownership in the combined company, but because they took 73% of the rights offering in in July 2019, it got them uh into into the low 50% threshold. I think that took them to about 52%. And then the the there was an equity raise that was done at uh at 4x the price one year later in the middle of the pandemic to to complete the uh the construction capital for for San Albino of which Wexford took uh took 60% of of that deal uh as well. So throughout all of this in terms of when and they put in 15 of the of the $21 million of debt as well during the 2020 and 2021 time frames as well. So all of this was was actual capital coming in from the the controlling shareholder and and me at at that point in time. Uh to to your point about trust but verify, we didn't we didn't need anybody to trust us. We didn't need anybody to verify us. uh because it was it was our own capital and really since that time we now have enough of a track record in the space on how these uh these assets are developed that uh after we announced the the Mount Hamilton acquisition and kind of this rigor strategy on how we used Sailfish and Wexford to go and acquire it um our stock uh responded well enough uh and then we we did a a very well marketed uh deal to to to go and and raise um it was $40.25 million Canadian dollars going to uh to outside investors and and $15 million going to Canadian Wexford dollars. So in aggregate that was uh about US $37 million net of fees that went in. And all of the people at I think there was 27 different institutions that came into the the 40 million Canadian deal. All of them had very similar questions and and the way that I answered them is like this is what we're doing. These are the four assets that we have right now. Uh this is our our track record for the for the last six years. And if you you want to come along for the ride, great. If you don't, that's actually okay, too, because we don't actually need to raise capital right now. We have cash flowing minds. Um to the extent that uh that that Wexford wants to put in more uh Chuck can, we don't we don't need your money. Um but if if you want to come along for the ride because you like what we're doing and and you like the track record that we had, you like the marketplace positioning in the portfolio, great. wonderful to have additional shareholders along the way. >> But the way that we've managed this company from the beginning is this is what we do. Like if if if you like it, great. H happy to be partners with you. If you don't, that's actually okay because we we can actually develop uh develop our business uh without anybody's support. um either through uh through financial capabilities uh from from July or uh to the extent that it's been really the case since 2021, the ability to finance our growth objectives uh within the four corners of of Mako, the ability to generate cash for these assets to grow the business kind of uh kind of with our own internal financial resources. >> Mhm. This might actually be a good point for you to talk to me a little bit more about Wexford as well because again they they own quite a lot about half the company actually. Um, and they also own a significant part of your other company, Sailfish, if I'm not mistaken. So, again, it goes back to that partnership that you're describing there. So, what is what is that relationship really? How did that how did that come to be? And I guess more importantly, where is it going? Because they're going to have to make money on this investment eventually as well, or at least they're hoping to. So, yeah, where where did it come from? Where is it? Where is it going? So where it came so I guess a little bit about Wexford. So Wexford um started in uh 1994 uh and then even before that uh um the CIO of Wexford has been a a very uh well-known successful uh investor going back since the the late 1970s. So he's been around a long long period of time. I joined Wetzard uh at the end of 2011 uh after I left Redkite which uh which eventually became Orion at least on the part of the organization I was working for uh to to help start take over their their public uh portfolio of equities and what often happens within the the the Wexford portfolios is to the extent that there are industries that are are particularly attractive uh to Wexford, they like getting um information. They like seeing what what works and doesn't work uh out there in the public space. Uh to use that kind of as um as as a way of developing and and managing the uh the whether it be private companies that they develop or or control investments uh from from a from a public uh side of things. All all of those happened. Uh so when when I started over at Wexford in 2011, we're kind of going over it was like what what works in the mining industry, what doesn't. Um what's replicable, right? So it's not uh I mean to me I think there's like two um two motifs if you will uh that that that make money in the uh in the mining space. Uh the first one is really on on the exploration side of things, right? So, can you buy something um make a discovery and then develop the the discovery to uh to to a certain extent that somebody buys you out at a substantial premium? And we actually made quite a bit of money uh doing uh things like that in the public portfolio, but at least from a control perspective, it wasn't like us that were the the best suited uh to be making those kinds of green fields um exploration bets. uh it would it was always a much better idea to invest in companies that are actually set up uh to do that. Um and then likewise there was also a subset of companies where you tend to invest in low capital intensity projects uh and then develop along the the development curve and you can make money that way. Now there's there's nothing wrong with either side. Both of those have both examples and counter examples of what works and what does not work within those motifs. But it was it was very clear that in terms of uh what was available to us from our our network of people that uh that wanted to work with us, our skill sets, uh what we kind of understand from from an underwriting perspective, how do we how do we replicate uh that type of of business? it was clear that we were going to be on the uh on the second motif, if you will, the uh the kind of like the low capital intensity, quick to return type projects, getting things into in into cash flow. Um there were uh I think a lot of mistakes that were made uh on the uh on the original transactions that created Marlin. So, uh, a lot of lessons that were were learned there, but the fundamental thesis behind the types of assets that we were looking at over at Marlin are are not different than than what we're doing right now is that uh it really required, I think, a lot of g getting getting spritzed with a cold shower in terms of uh of some of the things that we needed to do um and and do better on terms of developing the portfolio. But the types of assets that we like to look at which are how do you get things into production pretty quickly and then know that your your main reason why you're there for the assets are not at this for this small scale mine but really to kind of like grow organically from the exploration side with the cash flows that you generate. So L Trinidad over Mexico was not a success from a uh from an investment perspective from from an operating perspective. That being said we are creative. we know how to get things done and the creation of of Sailfish and eventually the the acquisitions that went with it, the the merger that created Mako, the three subsequent acquisitions. If you take a look at what we've done, the actual like business model that we were underwriting back in 2012 is almost identical u to what it is now. The difference is we're a lot smarter, lot more gray hairs uh that that that come with it. Um, so this is now using that uh that thesis but with a with a with a a lot a lot smarter way of of doing things. So um and by the way I I think that the almost identical uh situation happened with Diamondback. The difference between Diamondback and uh and and Marlin/Mako is that the transition that Diamondback had to go through prior to even being called Diamondback was done in in the private uh markets where the the company in in terms of how most investors looked at that was really only after it transitioned to this this really really high quality management team and and and growth trajectory that uh that that happened since 2012. What we're going through right now is a almost identical situation to that. The only difference is that we had we we basically structured everything uh everything kind of with an open kimono in the public space over the the course of the last 14 years since we've been involved in the original the original investment that uh that created Mako uh to where it is now. Mhm. Does having so much of the stock in one party and and and one that's not really trading a lot right now is is that prohibitive in any either operational so business or or market way? >> So there's uh so the the the clear net negative is uh arithmetic right. So if you have uh a 48% shareholder, whatever our market cap is, don't expect it to have uh liquidity of uh of somebody of a similar size. Really have to look at it as as like a float adjusted from a liquidity perspective. So we trade like a a uh $250 million company and not a not a $500 million US company. Um so so definitely just from from basic arithmetic it it inhibits your liquidity and liquidity is important to a lot of investors. Now the the liquidity in terms of where we are today versus where we were 5 years ago it's it's night and day right so and it's going to increase over time. The the unequivocal net positives is that uh this is um is an industry which has a lot of complexity associated with for what it was for what it is right. you're generally dealing with relatively small companies but high levels of complexity. Uh and what we've noticed is that because we we we actually have our our fingers in different areas um at the at the same time that level of uh of control simplifies things, right? So the creation of of Makeo, so the merger between Marlin and Golden Rain Resources was was effectively a four-way uh transaction. Um, three of the sides happened to have been controlled by by me and Wexert, right? So, uh, it was an extremely complicated transaction that created Makeo at the end of 2018. Um, but because they were involved in everything, it was actually a very simple negotiation. We were just waiting. I remember like by the way like the the merger between Marlin and Golden Rain I thought was going to happen in 2014, right? So I was trying to like come up with structures in place to try to get the the two companies merge and they brought in new management and they they wanted nothing to do with it. And so I I was proposing like different different alternatives and different creative ideas like like do this do this do this do this and then it was at the the beginning of 2018 and it was the CEO of Golden Rain uh called me up and said I want to meet you in New York for lunch. Uh, so we we have lunch and he goes, "All right, I have this idea. I think we should do this, this, and this." And I kept my mouth shut and I said, "Okay, I think I think we can work on it." What the CEO said to me, "We should do this, this, and this was exactly exactly what I was trying to get him to do for like the the previous four years." But as uh as soon as he was able to to mentally say, "You know what? This is what needs to be done." deal was like that like we were able to negotiate the the finer points on on the transaction within 24 hours after it was done. even though it was a high level of complexity um so long as that that one side that was not in our control was able to to say yes uh then it was able to to be pretty pretty simple and then likewise on this man Hamilton transaction if you actually count the sides uh involved there's five of them right and four of which are are involved with uh with myself and uh and and Wexford right so you have Sailfish is acquiring it from from Waterton and Sailish is borrowing from from Waxford Sailfish is engaging with an adviser to sell this other asset not affiliated to Makeo. Sailfish is selling the asset of Mount Hamilton to Makeo in return for uh for for a stream and a royalty along the way. The the the one side that was not in our control was was the the owner, right? So So as as as soon as we as soon as we kind of understood what their clearing price was, all right, it's 40 million. All right, here's $40 million of cash. Let us handle the complexity. Right? So, that part's simple is that a check was was given like Sailish was able to borrow $40 million, $40 million went to to to Waterton, and then uh that part of the transaction got complete, and all the complexity we were able to to handle um with with everything that we're involved with. So, we use the complexity to our advantage. Um and we try to keep the things that are not in our control as simple as possible. And that's kind of our our MO on how we we look at things. And I would have every expectation if you're you're investors in in in either side on on the on the make and salish side that we want to do more than that than what we've done in that capacity. We think it's a good thing. This is kind of like a a strategic advantage for for us to be involved in in multiple things at at once. It's a a good thing in terms of how we we pull out off deals of of of this sort. Now the other thing is kind of like I think a lot of people look at at a large uh shareholder and say all right what's the what's the overhang are they going to be selling and what's what's going to what's their their motivation over here um Wexford is has held on to to investments for nancond they they participate in in in public markets they have like very active uh macro funds and equity funds that they they they trade in and out of uh uh in in very very short periods of time. I've seen Wexford hold on to investments for decades, like literally decades. Uh since inception, uh Chuck has not sold a single share. In fact, he's like he's bought uh along the way, usually uh substantially uh during financings and uh tactically in in the open markets to the extent that he's he's capable of doing that over over time. Uh so he's been probably the most supportive shareholder that you you can possibly imagine. I I used to spend a lot more time kind of trying to convince people this is a good thing and five six years ago it's like oh like everybody was very concerned about that fact. I think now we have enough of of a history over here that that those conversations actually don't don't happen often um anymore because I think people kind of recognize just what a valuable asset it was to have to have a shareholder like that in place. What is their endgame? Did they ever talk to you about that? Like how how do they make money on the on the 50% that they've gotten here >> without crashing your stock? >> The uh so I mean we're talking about like Makeo and and Selfish to a certain extent because I do I do think the the the exit strategies are are different, right? So So Sailfish uh acquired a bunch of of royalties. Uh the the first one being uh uh the the royalty on on San Albino. So Sano's necroen mine. Uh it bought a royalty from a a private owner of a royalty on the token Zeno mine which is uh got developed by the G mining folks in an excellent fashion. Uh that royalty was sold couple years later. Um so we sold that royalty in in 2021. I think we purchased it in 20 end of 2017. Um and okay at the beginning of 2017 so it was it was a high return in terms of what we we had. I think the royalty would have been worth a lot more more today giving away where gold prices are and and the success of G mining. We purchased another royalty uh in 2019 on the Spring Valley mine over at Sailfish for an aggregate US 31 million bucks. Um, and then we've publicly uh disclosed that that Sailfish is going to be in in the process of selling uh that royalty. I think most people can infer uh that that royalty will be sold for for a large multiple on uh on what uh on what we we acquired that for. In fact, the largest royalty gold royalty company in the space, Weaten Precious, just put uh in a subordinated royalty to to Spring Valley uh to us uh for for $670 million a few weeks ago. So, people can use that as kind of a reference point where we think uh pricing may may wind up being. Uh but who knows? We're running a process right now. Um so, the exit strategy for Sailfish was actually fairly simple is that you you buy royalties and you sell them. You can sell royalties individually, you can sell the company. Uh it it's pretty pretty straightforward in terms of exit strategies. The fact that that Wexford owns 70% of it is almost uh in in irrelevancy. Uh to the the extent that we actually have minority shareholders over at Sailfish and we do have substantial minority shareholders inclusive myself, a couple of other large investors, we do pay a pretty high dividend as well uh to to kind of like pay people to wait until the the exit strategies take care of themselves. Mako's different, right? So, make it goes back to kind of like those uh those two motifs that you have in the in in the mining space. The uh the first motif, which is you're in investing in exploration, you make a discovery, then you advance it to a point where it's salailable to a large company. I already said is that there's nothing wrong with an investment strategy like that, but it's just not what we do. That's not our our DNA. we we like to invest in it, but for for people that are much better equipped than than we are to making those types of investments. Um, but one of the the positive aspects of that that that motif is that there's a defined exit strategy there. You're investing into something. Hopefully, it pans out from the geological perspective and then there's a a uh a network of larger gold companies that that are are are coveting assets like that. The problem is is that I think people have a little bit of a survivorship bias on on that approach is that they always look at at the winners on the exits and they don't look at like everybody that's been kind of like left left in the um in the desert uh if you will, especially when we were dealing with with a bare market in the space. For our approach, it's a little bit different, right? because we're in that second motif where we have um low capital intensity, high uh high return uh cash flow type uh type investments. And if you think about the types of assets that we have, they were always in terms of what if you actually wanted to optimize your portfolio for what quick to develop, quick turnaround, um high return assets. uh if you want to optimize your portfolio on something like that, it tends to be smaller assets. Smaller assets, they they tend to be easier to permit. Smaller assets tend to require less there tends to be, believe it or not, this economies of scale when it comes to capital investments. So the the the larger projects tend to uh to have more per unit capex than the smaller ones. So not not always, but but often. Um so it's almost ironic in this industry that there are dis economies of scale. So they tend to be small. Um they tend to be uh things that that can be developed quickly. Um the the downside to that is that those are the types of assets that the mid tiers and the majors don't necessarily want all the time. Sometimes they do, but not all the time. I think all the time they want really attractive expiration assets that that every every one of their geologist friends love. They always like that. What they tend sometimes they do in certain markets. They like the the portfolio of of smallcale assets uh but not often. Um and if that's the case, you cannot underwrite your investment strategy predicated on you being sold to a larger company. And I think this is where people fall down is that they said, "Oh, if only we get to 200,000 ounces a year or 150,000 ounces a year, but by stringing these assets together, of course, somebody would would come and and take me over." The the reality of of that is that that may have existed as a replicable investment strategy uh back in the in the 80s, the 90s, the s uh and then to a certain extent um 101 15 years ago. There just really aren't very many examples of of companies that have um have developed assets of the small scale nature and then sold themselves to a major for a clean exit. So, we're operating on the basis that we're going to be doing good investments. We have four assets within our portfolio right now. Once we backfill with our team and our capabilities of handling these assets, once we're we're well into construction over at Mount Hamilton, we're going to be looking to do for uh more of these. And if we get to the point where we're actually at scale where a larger company would take a look at us and and kind of like the part of the market where where sometimes that that happens but often it doesn't. Great. We we have no objections to do that. We don't underwrite the business on that. We we always underwrite the business on is the investment that we're making generating a high return on capital. And this is where where I think people fall down with honest numbers. Right? So there's there's a lot a lot of a lot of companies that say ah I really want to to invest in this small scale asset with madeup numbers. Um they like the the spreadsheet math. I remember like um interesting anecdote on on on that is that uh when when I my my first job in this this business was straight out of business school. I I knew nothing even though I am an engineer by training. I was not in the uh in the in the the resources industry before this. So in 2006 I would come in and was like all right this the smart arrogant kid from business school you're looking at it and it was like it was clear all development assets are cheaper than producing assets. Right? I'm looking at all of this this sellside research and it's it's very clear that if you look at things on a price to NAV the developers are cheaper than the producers. Uh the reality couldn't be further from the truth. almost invariably development companies are more expensive than producing companies. Um it's just the the numbers are made up where it makes it look cheaper. And if you actually think if you take uh off your your mining hat a little bit and just think from a practical perspective, well, of course that's true. It's because the the if there was like a good project, it would have like a higher probability of it turning into a mine, right? It's like the it's the the the lower quality assets are the one that's stuck in the in the development cycle over here obviously with uh with with rare occasions with discoveries and new projects coming along. But I I do think people like fall into this trap where they they look at something on on a spreadsheet. They look at these 43101 reports. They look at sellside research and said, "Oh, these these look cheap on on paper." But it's it just you can't look at the world like that. So we underwrite our investments on the back of can we develop it? Can we do it quickly? What are the returns that we're generating using real numbers? Because we we just don't we don't like partake in in mining math. We we like partaking in real math uh in terms of generating uh the the returns that uh that that that we need to generate. It's just the fine investments that we make. >> Yeah. What about um when you maybe a bit further to a point you made earlier when I asked you how do they make money on on on on the shares? What is the goal for Mako here? You talked about that as well. You said like you know if people care about the shares and and whether you're buying or selling they're kind of forcing you to build a company for sale. Do you want to keep growing it into a mid-tier and then kind of run it indefinitely then potentially bigger or are you kind of packaging assets for sale in the near future? How do you see the future of the company? >> No, the the I do think that having a platform is is helpful, right? So having um a uh public vehicle with clean balance sheet and an operating team that's capable of managing uh multiple assets at the same time with uh with potential sources of capital external to what we have within the four corners of Mako are useful uh when it comes to looking for for other assets, right? So having something within Makeo or having like the Makeo platform there uh means that we can do something with with other assets more effectively than just looking at individual assets uh by themselves. So it's it's helpful to have a platform uh which means there's a lower hurdle rate for us to to look at things um that can potentially be plugged in to to what we have that uh that makes sense. That being said, there's no set number, right? It's the we'll do things that that make sense. Um the more the the marketplace gives credit to it, the the easier it is for for us to do things. If you if you actually take a look at um and even going back like I often got like I like talking about Mako, I don't like talking about Marlin because Marlin wasn't wasn't a successful investment in the end of the day. Even going back to Marlin, Maron wasn't a um wasn't a good investment uh because of the mistakes that were made. But how we pivoted from there to where we are right now, I think was fantastic. It was it was like a master class on on horse trading on getting from where Maron was to vending it into Mako taking control to the asset and portfolios that we have right now. So the my objective is given the constraints that we were operating under some that we put on ourselves and then uh and then uh certainly some where where the the the markets were putting us on because as you pointed out it's like people did not want to give us the benefit of the doubt in the uh in the buildout over here. Given the constraints that we were operating in it, we actually pulled off pretty darn accretive transactions on the back of of Gold Source, uh, Moss and Mount Hamilton. To the extent that those constraints get removed, that just makes my life easier, right? So the types of assets that we were able to pull off uh was what was available to us given the constraints that we were operating in which meant that we were actually looking at a very very narrow window of things that we could do. And then to the extent that that the handcuffs come uh come off, if you will, it actually just means that we we're we're able to to use our our creativity to to do more stuff to make it uh more likely for for us to do better quality deals because we'll we'll have access to to different types of capital at different different currency within than our share price. This uh everybody like is talking about vicious cycles in bare markets, but there there is the other side in bull markets on on the virtuous side of things. Um, so we'll always look for for more in that regard, but it's not to get to a a specific size. It's to get to a a point where we do more smart deals, right? And like it could be on the buy side, it could be on the sell side for that matter as well. Just so we we just look at at at the world as I guess what do we have available to us? What are our constraints? And then is there something smart to do given the constraints that we we operate in? If the answer is yes, we'll do more. If the answer is no, we have we have no issues uh sitting on our hands. >> Would a strategic partner possibly be part of that? Yeah, the uh I think I think there's uh a little bit of a difference between um normal assets in the gold space versus normal assets in the in the energy space for instance where uh just because the nature of of what they are I think uh the interesting thing about uh about energy investments that they tend to be like front-end capital loaded and then uh and then very very high returns on on cash from there. Whereas whereas mining, it's kind of like this weird weird situation where actually a lot of capital needs to be spent before you actually make like the real capital decision and then even after that there's potentially further capital needs that come come later on which makes it not ideal for uh for partnerships. Um but like uh there are there are certain circumstances where where sometimes th those do make sense. Um so it's not like we're there may be like a bias against that for the types of assets that we have but it's it's just a bias because of the type of of industry that we we operate in. And if something actually makes sense on paper with with real numbers then then great. I I have no issues uh no issues with that. But I I do think JVS in the mining space for relatively small small scale assets are are not they tend not to be great like in the mining space. I haven't really seen like a replicable uh fashion of of strategic uh investors at the project level coming in that would be of for the for the benefit of the uh of the Marty company. Sometimes it happens but it's not not nearly as frequent. it it but why I asked that key was because I was thinking whether there really even is room for a strategic partner with again Wixport at 50%. Oh, that part's different, right? So, the the the room really is about the the size and scope of the assets that we have, right? The um the if a partner comes in with like a really attractive uh capital uh program, but like like those are the types of deals that that Wexford Wexford loves. And in fact, I would say like Wexford is is more inclined to do that than uh than than I am. Um the so I I it goes back to having a large shareholder there. There certain things where it uh potentially can complicate things. It could it could potentially obviously reduce your liquidity. When it comes to actual decision processes on deals, it it only simplifies things. It it really does. Um so so that that's not the the reason the the the the reason why there's a bias against potential JVS is just uh the the size and scope of the assets we have versus the people that would be coming in with uh with with balance sheets that are that like we have a pretty pristine balance sheet right now. So people that have even better balance sheets and more access to capital that we have, the types of assets that we have, it's it's hard to see somebody coming in um at the project level for for a deal that uh that that would really make sense. At the corporate level, great. Like somebody wants to come in, fantastic. Uh and at the project level, somebody comes in with something fantastic. Even though we have biases, we're we're also capable of of recognizing that um and and can evaluate it on on a case- by case basis. When is the time going to come where you no longer even have to think about needing a partner in the first place? Like how long before you no longer need outside capital in the first place? >> Yeah. So, it's it's interesting on the the Mount Hamilton transaction that we we really did not need to raise capital. And this was I actually did um I actually came to Wexford's office and I was doing the proverbial bang on the tables that I actually do think we need to do this because the alternative was we could wind up uh getting the cash flows from Sanino the cash on the balance sheet. So it's before we did the the capital raise we had 28 million bucks on the uh on the balance sheet um and and Mount Hamilton will likely require about US $85 million to build. So we had 28. We had an operating mine uh in San Albino that was generating cash after particularly weak Q3. There was going to be a strong Q4 uh for the foreseeable future after that as well generating cash. Moss was in ramp up mode. So by Q1 it would be in commercial production. So those two assets over time would generate $85 million to to build over at Mount Hamilton. um in order to do that effectively in that bootstrap basis, I don't think there was a circumstance where that wouldn't cause a a delay to Eagle Mountain. Uh so we're expecting to get full permits on Eagle Mountain by the uh by say the the very end of of next year. Uh so uh once Mount Hamilton is in uh trailing off on on its construction um we we could either delay the the construction of of Eagle Mountain from let's say the first half of 27 to maybe the the end of 28. So delay it a year um and then not be in production until 2029. Or uh what I told investors is we could raise a little bit of money. It it didn't need to be more than US $40 million max. So we raised US $37 million like straight down the uh the middle and in doing that that gave us enough uh capital where we don't have to make that decision to delay Eagle Mountain at the back end because the three assets at that point in time would provide enough cash resources to easily develop the uh the hundred some odd million dollar project that that Eagle Mountain will be starting in uh in the beginning of 27 from a construction uh standpoint. So even now we had the types of assets uh and and the ones that we were specifically coveting and looking for were assets that could effectively be bootstrapped. Right? So within the the uh the internal capabilities of the company and even in this particular circumstance. So I got some criticism. I used to have a tagline on my presentation is that makeo mining we uh gold growth in the Americas without having to issue equity capital and then lo and behold we we issued $37 million of equity capital. Well yeah we issued $37 million of equity capital but we didn't need it. like we we could have bootstrapped it, but I do think in the context of this market, it it made sense to to accelerate the timelines on on uh on on Eagle Mountain uh from that perspective. But certainly the types of assets that we were looking at were where we were looking at it given the constraints that we were under is that um given the fact that we didn't feel like it was an attractive use of our uh of our of our equity to be issuing stock to to buy things that are that are out there. what are the types of assets that we're we're look that we we can do given the constraints that we operate in. Um I I used to get this uh this criticism. I was very vocal about our acquisition strategy going back since 2019 from the beginning and then the stock performed well in 2020 during the pandemic and then we actually did have some some operating issues over at at Sanino and the stock did draw down pretty significantly from 2022 to 2023. And I was still talking about M&A and then when people were were saying, well, why are you talking about M&A? Don't you want to don't you want to fix your stock first? It's like the answer is like we're not going to do anything that is dilutive, right? So, it's like our stock might be down and might limit our abilities and to pull off transactions that are out there, but given the constraints that we're in, we we actually were engaged with other with other companies that had that had larger draw downs than what we did. Uh so I I started talking to Gold Source uh in in Q122 uh about uh about M&A and we didn't uh we didn't pull the trigger on it until two years later when we announced it in in February of 24 the even though our stock had a had a draw down associated with it the original the original terms that I I gave gold source was was actually better than for them than what it wound up being at the end. Right? So even though our stock had a draw down, we actually did a better deal for for our shareholders perspective. The now because we're in a bull market and some of the constraints are are being removed uh is that we do we do have more opportunities at this point. So it's like we were looking at assets between Eagle Mountain, Moss, Mount Hamilton and things that we can advance with our internal resources. To the extent that we actually have a currency uh to do something, which it's debatable about whether we have one right now, then great. It just means we can look at at at more things. The only thing that matters to us is that using honest math is a deal of creative. Um, and if the answer is yes, then and and we're capable of handling it uh within within the the human resource constraint that we that we have and then the longer term capital constraints that we have, then great, we'll pursue it. And if not, not we won't. >> Yeah. Aka, I know you don't have too much time left here and and I do want to talk about uh some of the money that you've got right now. What did you say? Close to 70 million US. >> Yeah. Uh we're we have a gold shipment out by the end of the week. So including those we be about US70. >> Uh then we >> What are you going to do with that money? How far does it get you? What does it buy you? >> So we do all of our assets have uh what I would consider to be big boy uh expiration programs. Um so we do like to have our assets in cash flow first and then uh invest in it uh on expiration. And so San Albino uh so I think you you highlighted earlier in this like relatively low expiration number that's just our expensed expiration. If you actually look at our our capitalized expiration our our land purchases that go with it the GNA associated with our our expiration team we spend probably about $9 million a year in in Sanino. Um uh over at uh at Moss, we have uh between our exploration program and our our capital investments like increasing leech uh leech capacity uh leech pad space over the course of the next year. There's probably going to be capital investments in in the 15 to20 million range uh over at Moss. Both of those numbers are are a tiny fraction of what what each individual mine is capable of uh of producing from a free cash flow perspective. So both of them are are going to be uh very easily uh self-contained units within what they need organically. Then everything else is going to get earmarked to initially Mount Hamilton. Uh so we'll end the year at uh let's call it mid mid70 million as a number on on the balance sheet. uh us between that and the cash flows coming from net of exploration expense from from San Albino and and Moss, we'll have more than enough uh to to invest in the $85 million capital development for Mount Hamilton. And then we should have enough of a cash buffer that as soon as we're we're capable of moving our EPCM from Mount Hamilton to uh to Eagle Mountain in Guyana, uh because hopefully we'll get full permits on that by the end of next year. So, let's call it, but when Mount Hamilton's towards the tail end of its construction in early 27, we'll pull that team off, move to Guyana, and then use the cash buffer and the cash flows coming from those three assets to go and build out uh Eagle Mountain, which should be roughly a US $100 million capex uh build on that um with the resources that we have, cash on the balance sheet and the cash flows coming from those uh those three assets. Uh so, we have we have more than enough. I mean this uh the capital raise that we did like I said we didn't need to to to do that but by pulling the trigger on the capital raise it gives us all the flexibility where we don't think we need to delay any of the projects to develop enough internal cash resources to go ahead with any of our our project developments at this point. Mhm. Um I guess many things to follow up on there potentially, but what do you what what do you think will be the biggest challenge in the process of of u spending that money or deploying it wisely? I suppose >> uh the from an exploration perspective, I haven't seen anything at San Albino that I wouldn't invest it. Right? So, our constraints really weren't our expected returns on dollars spent on exploration. It was really on what is our team capable of of handling? Can we actually get get rigs? Because the end of the day, it's like uh if you're managing if you're managing uh six or seven rigs, it's not just six or seven rigs and and having the the drill contract. You need to have like each each rig needs to have at least two geologists on it with the the shift work that that needs to be done. So, by by managing that, you're actually running a a very large exploration uh services group like logging and just basic uh uh data management at that point in time. and then and obviously the data evaluation that comes with it. So really for the last 5 years we've never been constrained by opportunity sets in Nicaragua. It's always been constrained with uh with human resources. Even when we were running on fumes, all uh all exploration capital was basically getting invested just because the expected returns were so high. Um MOSS is a little bit of a of a different situation where uh this we we bought this asset from a company that was insolvent. So they they cut down to the to the bone in terms of their operations. So there's a lot of things that needed to be followed up on for the last eight years that just haven't been uh from the expiration side. So there's uh but we're we're fairly disciplined in how we do this is that we need to get moss like up and running in and steady state by the end of Q1. We just started uh we've just engaged our our outside uh geologists work to do some some pretty high level geocchem work on uh on near pit uh expansion plans over here. Um likewise we're we're working on permit amendments with the uh with the federal government right now to to give us some some more flexibility on what we actually can do uh at this point. And so but Moss will have like a very substantial exploration budget uh for for what it is. um we're going to need to to upgrade our our staffing on that uh as well. Now, in Hamilton is in a little bit of a different situation is that our uh our our very near-term stuff uh that we we obviously spent the last six months kind of redoing that resource estimate. So, just getting something that that we can build a mine plan around. So, that was number one. Now, we have to go and do the the infrastructure type drilling. condemnation work, uh confirmation holes from from infill, uh metallergical holes to make sure that we're we're make make sure that we have uh all of the information that we we need uh in building this this plant. All of that's what's going on. There's some very very lowhanging fruit on the expiration side of things, but we do need to be able to finance that through cash flows coming from the individual assets. Uh so um I think a lot of the uh the the the expansion type expiration work at Mount Hamilton is going to to wait. Uh with one caveat is that we we are sitting on top of a very large scale critical metals uh potential deposit uh previously a deposit that if the government actually wants to to help us advance that uh quicker then we're all ears for opportunities that may come along uh uh that route uh as well. But without without government support, I think that actually is going to be pushed off um a little bit. And then with respect to Guyana, the way we've been managing that since uh since the beginning of last year is um is quite a bit of drooling, but that was focused on on the infrastructure work. So geotechnical hydro geological stuff, little bit of infill work, metallurgical work that went with it um in order to submit our our permit application so we can actually start constructing this thing at the beginning of 27. Mhm. And also if maybe we can take it step by step kind of and and go through some of these things. I guess Nicaragua is the most important part here for you. What about political stability down there and kind of jurisdictional risk given that a lot of your current strategy does depend on Nicaragua? How stable is the political the fiscal and and the permitting environment down there? >> Sure. Uh so the the big the biggest risk any mining investor takes is jurisdiction. Can't move your mind. Like so that being said uh going back to how investments are underwritten and how your portfolio is optimized because of that is that if you are in motif number two which is low capital intensity quick returns on capital you need to be in jurisdictions where you can do things like that. Um, so I I would when we we started out, I mean, we were involved with uh the predecessor company in Nicaragua going back since 2014 when people would would criticize us for being in in Nicaragua. And he says like, "We can't invest in you because you're in Nicaragua. We only invest in in good mining jurisdictions like the United States and Canada." And like they say, "All right, that's that's a very interesting point you have." hang up the phone and then just laugh laugh my my you know what off because they they really just did not understand how difficult it was to make mining investments in in the United States. So we were talking about this the Spring Valley asset before that Selfish has the uh as the royalty on that was the first EIS of a primary gold mine to be delivered in the United States in 11 years. Right? So the the United States was not a good mining jurisdiction until until the new administration came in and kind of I I would actually include that in in in the previous Trump administration as well. It's but specifically things have changed where you can actually get things advanced uh further. Um so Nicaragua happens to be one of those juris happens to be one of those jurisdictions uh as well. Uh Mexico is not a jurisdiction like that now. It used to be like 10 years ago where where you could get things done quickly. that's not the case anymore. Um the so you do need to have a little bit of of a grounding in why are you making these investments is that you're not making these investments because um it's where you like to go on vacation even though Nicaragua is a wonderful place to go on vacation, right? Beautiful beaches that that come with it. Um I think most people's criticism about it is is the is is the government, right? And from from the government's perspective, the the there's a lot to criticize and the government does not have a good relationship with a lot of um uh a lot of the countries within within this hemisphere, right? So there's there's definitely elevated risk that comes from that. Nicaragua was put under uh three stages of sanctions by the the US and Canadian governments uh going back from the original Trump administration. uh and then uh for and then twice under the uh under the Biden administration, one of them um that the initial reading on those sanctions were actually pretty severe. It turned out we actually didn't really have any operational issues associated with it. But the way that I like to describe it to to to folks is that uh the the probability of moving from sanction three to sanction 4 is higher than moving from sanction zero to one. Right? So the the seal, if you will, has been been broken. There's definitely an elevated uh geopolitical risk that comes from that. Um and uh it wasn't the primary reason why we went on uh for for a geopolitical diversification strategy. I think they it really was driven by what what opportunities are are out there. But at the end of the day, it's like there there is an optimal number of mines you want to you want to run as a mining company. Uh it's not one It's not 17. So, but it's probably probably somewhere in between. Um, for for a whole host of reason, not not just for geopolitical issues. It's like for uh for for weather issues. I mean, we've gotten hit by some pretty substantial storms in our our construction development. It be nice to be in in different areas with a level of diversification that comes from that just from a risk management perspective. So uh I get I get the the the people who are making calls on uh on geopolitics in general. I think I think those are fair. Uh the what I what I usually push back on is that well what exactly are are are you investing in as an alternative. Don't come to me to to criticize the the geopolitical uh risk that that Mako has when you're investing in the GDX like for instance, right? the GDX has a lot more geopolitical and and bad government governance than than Nicaragua, right? In terms of what what some of those very large cap companies go through in terms of some of the jurisdictions that they operate in. Um, and then likewise have some sort of grounding as to what what you're actually investing in. And given the fact that we're in this motif too, like these uh these relatively uh high return quick to production type assets, you really do need to be in jurisdictions that allow for uh for you to do that. And the jurisdictions that we operate in are that right. So I I view Nicaragua as a country where you can do things uh quickly and responsibly. Uh I view Guyana as as a country where you can do things quickly and responsibly. I view the United States now as a jurisdiction where you can do things quickly and responsibly. That was just not the case 5 years ago. Not the case two years ago. Not the case one year ago. >> Yeah. What about safety? How's safety and security on the ground? Like if I visited, could I go and you know go for a walk after dark? >> Yeah. So actually that's the one thing about uh about Nicaragua that's that's interesting is that from from a safety and security persp like I from a personal safety and security perspective. Yeah. And it's it's great. You can walk around. We do often sometimes ill advisedly at 2:00 in the morning. Uh coming from a from a local bar and because we're actually we have a uh we effectively uh employ about 15% of the entire um community of of of Elhikaro and probably if you you factor in touch points it's probably closer to 40 or or 50% indirectly as well. So we are a company town. We don't have like a man gap. actually in in the town and the mine is about six kilometers away from the uh from from the town. Um Guyana has always had sporadic um like random criminal uh activities here and there. It's it's been pretty okay for the last 15 years, but 20 years ago there there was it was kind of a problem. Like one of our our directors used to be the CEO of a company that was developing an asset in in Guyana. He he actually had some some personal security issues uh back in the in the early as uh I think to to a large extent that is uh that is definitely uh calmed down. Um and then the the US is the US. Bullhead city is a lovely town in in Arizona. Uh Ele Nevada is lovely town in Nevada. San Albino is also located if we you know keep talking about Nicaragua here it's located in the hilly area of the country making the the potential I suppose discharge and leech pad management I suppose more challenging or not you can talk to me about that but really what I'm wondering about here is within the context of government so that does the government expect you to be doing something different or more from someone who operates in a in a more flat terrain. Um so the the decision was made uh I guess specific to tailings management. Um the decision was made to make this a a zero discharge facility number one. Uh and then number two we're the only company operating uh within Nicaragua that has a dry stack tailings um filtered and drystack tailing storage facility. You don't need to do that in Nicaragua. Um but uh it certainly uh buttressed our uh our credentials uh when we we suggested that to the government um and then they approved it and now they actually look at us um to uh as as a nice template for for what to do and then probably to needle some some of the other the other companies there to see that they can actually transition to to uh to filtered and dry stack tailings as well. Um the the the hills that we have actually are helpful is that we we we actually put the the TSF within uh within a little valley between some some hills. This is not like like like our the the biggest hills that we have like in in Sanino wind up being like 120 m high. Uh and then out at elevation uh the top of our mine is like uh 640 meters above uh sea level and then the bottom of our mines they go as uh as low as maybe 400 flat above sea level. So this is not uh hold your breath oxygen super peak South America type type mining. This is actually pretty uh pretty easy to deal with. Uh there are uh um areas of sensitivity is that we uh the most productive areas that we have within San Albino uh are tucked between two uh relatively large rivers um San Albino and the uh and the the Susakan River. So we're uh like all of the mines that we've developed have been between the two. Uh so we we don't mine within uh within uh 200 meters of of those rivers. Uh like I said, we have uh zero discharge. Uh we did get hit by two major hurricanes um uh back in uh in 2020. There was no no discharge at that point in time. Uh rainy seasons have been been manageable. So fortunately, we've not had any uh any discharge uh uh necessity since that time, but we do have protocols in place in case that that may happen. >> Uh Diana, yep. >> Is there enough water? I mean, now that you're talking about uh rain, again, water is a big thing everywhere really, but definitely Nicaragua. So, what's the water situation for you? Uh it rains uh on average about one and a half meters a year, which I thought was a lot until I think it was I think it was like after we um certainly after we we we had a handshake with with Gold Source, but it was it was late in the process where where somebody actually said, "Hey, Kev, do you know what where it actually rains in Guyana every year?" Um so so Guyana is like I think about pushing close to four meters of rain uh per year. the difference between Nicaragua and Guyana. Like Guyana has no hurricanes, right? So, it's like just constant constant like dribbling of of rain a couple hours a day. Uh their their dry season is not dry. Their dry season, it it still rains. It just rains less. Uh Nicaragua has like two very distinct uh seasons and especially the the front end of the rainy season, the back end of the rainy season, which we're just coming through right now. like if you want to go to Nicaragua or Costa Rica on vacation, this is the perfect time to do it because like it's it's not going to rain anymore until until May. Um the in terms of access to water, we have more than we we need. Uh the in in the United States, water is is sensitive for the uh for the other side. Uh so in uh in Bullhead City, one of the things that we did during that that three-month period of time where where Wexford owned this prior to to make owning this is that we did improve the uh the wells uh system there. So we do have access to to groundwater uh and and we think that's going to be sustainable for uh for a long period of time and then uh we we closed the first part of the transaction on Mount Hamilton uh a week and a half ago, right? So we we actually took formal uh delivery of the the keys to to the mine last uh last Wednesday and so we were down at site over Thursday and then one of the things that we super super top priority for us uh was to make sure that uh that we uh we we rehabbed and and protected those wells. All right. So to make sure that nobody's going to be dumping anything in that that's now our responsibility from an environmental perspective. So that's taken care of. Now we have security on site and um and and we're good and we we should have more than enough uh uh groundwater to to to run our operations also as a as a zero discharge uh in both uh in both Moss and uh and Mount Hamilton as well. >> How much life of mine do you have left in in Nicaragua if we I know you're going for exploration. You're hoping to find more, but what if we I mean just right now the way things are right now, how much LOM do you have left? Yeah. So, we uh we updated the resource. This goes back to the comment that I made about um uh that we we care a lot about math, but the but with real numbers, right? So, back when uh when the predecessor company was running this uh golden rain, they put out a a 34 year 34 year mine on the back of San Albino only uh albeit running at a at a pilot uh plant rate of 250 tons a day. So about a 900,000 ounce all category resource was just complete BS uh in terms of some of the assumptions that they made from a modeling perspective. Now I've seen worse resource estimates in this industry. It's kind of like a common theme amongst the uh the the market and it's not just within the juniors, it's within the seniors as well. Um but this is a complicated geology. You really need to get the modeling down right. Uh so one of the things I'm actually most proud about uh with uh with with Sanino got a lot of criticism for is that one of the first things that we did was was redo the entire geological model and restated the resource uh back at the end of 2020 took that 900,000 resource down to 270,000 ounces uh which uh institute which basically meant it was about a 4 and a half year mine life 2020. Um although that that resource was done with painstaking details that I was 100% confident that we were going to positively reconcile inclusive of our inferred ounces. Uh we redid and that resource then included our second mine loss at the end of 23. Uh so even after 13,000 ounces of depletion uh we added 110,000 ounces net. Uh so there's a 370,000 ounce uh resource uh 380,000 ounce resource on the books uh that's been depleted since the end of uh of 2023. Uh so if you wanted to do that redo that net of depletion inclusive the open pit and underground probably have about three and a half years left. Uh we expect the underground mining permits to come imminently as as early as today. Uh so I think there's a high likelihood that we're we're going to be getting them uh this calendar year. I'll put out an update uh by our our Q1 operating update. So by the third week of January uh if and when that comes out. And then um the thing about our underground is that really since inception there's been very very few drill holes that were put in deeper than than 100 meters from surface, right? So our our entire resource database is limited by data. Um, so if we can prove that the underground mining is uh is is economic and and robust and we think it is, that just opens up the door for uh for pretty substantial increases in mine life because then we can focus on underground drilling and then expanded. I think San Albino is very analogous uh to narrow vein high-grade mines where you basically run at at a three or four year mine life that that keeps getting replenished. So in 2020 we had a four and a half year mine life. 24 years later, we have we have a four year mind life and I think it's going to be analogous to that uh over time. It's just the nature of the beast with the geology that we have in Nicaragua. Uh moths is different. Uh we're going to be um redoing our resource uh the first half of January and then we'll have an update reserve in life of mine plan that will be out uh 6 weeks after that. likely early March. Now, we'll show a pretty substantial mine light that we have, but really on on just the postage stamp on our property. And then one of the things that we're doing on site uh starting this week is to kind of like uh prep uh prep our our exploration team to do some some near mine exploration work. Uh and then Mount Hamilton and and Eagle Mountain are a little bit different is that all of the drilling uh that are essentially done between those two assets are going to be focused on the mine buildout, making sure that the the mine plan and resource and metallergy and for for Matt Hamilton and then for for Guyana over the last year our geotech hydro geological work was taken care of and once they're in production then we can start taking a look at at expanding those mine lives. Whereas the delineated mine life for Mount Hamilton right now is about seven years. Although we do think that there's pretty uh lowhanging fruit to to get that that gold oxide to a to a 10 to 12 year uh mine life. And then for Eagle Mountain, we have a we have a a 14 and a half year mine life. And we do think that there's quite a bit of upside to that as well. >> Mhm. Yeah. I I know we won't have the time to go in depth on the geology here, but maybe you can talk to me about that. What keeps you up at night from a technical perspective? Um given that given the fact that you're mining again highra but narrow veins here. So really what I'm looking for here is or would like you to talk about is is geometry. I mean there's pinching and swelling and all that but how easy is that to manage and and yeah what else keeps you up at night from the technical side? >> Yeah. Uh so actually when we were doing the the the equity deal there was like an an investor I think in in Asia that uh it was it was a question that was it was really intended as a as a criticism and they actually had a good point with it is that it's like how it seems like all of your geologies are are different right which is true the like so you have Sanino which is this like narrow vein orogenics of this meothermal system over here where uh super high-grade super narrow like the average uh width of the the vein is is only running about 80 cm. Uh sometimes it pinches and swells to five or six meters, but uh but on average you're talking about 80 cm. So for the geometry on that, it's uh it's it's it's complicated to to get um to get continuity to develop a resource around that. And likewise we have added complexity with respect to to to metallergy because the the host rock is in in a carbonacious shist where not all of it is pregrobing but some of it is and you can't tell the difference between one and the other just visually. So everything needs to be sampled and and the protocols that we have for keeping everything in control are I don't think there's another mining company that uh that is mining the way that we are uh in in San Albino. Uh with respect to Eagle Mountain that is an an intrusive system. So you're dealing with an or body that's probably about 30 to 40 meters wide. Uh lower grade so you're dealing with in sappery about a 0.9 g deposit in in the hard rock you're talking about like 1.2 1.3 uh the type of geology that this is is is pristine metallergy. So super super simple super clean completely different what we have over over at San Albino. uh in in all aspects except for one which is at least in the open pit parameters are actually being mined in fairly similar fashions. Very very um shallow dipping horizontal in the case of Eagle Mountain and then uh 20 to 30°ree uh subh horizontal at uh at San Albino. Um and then if you think about kind of like my my second motif point is that horizontal or lower bodies you tend to to to get into quicker, right? for for for obvious reasons like it's near surface. So that's kind of why our geologies are are are different because that's not what we're optimizing for. We're optimizing to quick returns. We're not optimizing because we have like a particular geological thesis here or there. And then uh for uh for moss I would say it's straight out of the textbook uh low selfodization epiothermal deposit um in this this very large regional caldera. Uh we do think that there's there's definitely areas where you have this uh this disseminated uh low-grade or body and then occasionally you'll have these these structures in place that will have high-grade uh quartz hosted uh type uh type deposits as well. And then you have Mount Hamilton which is kind of like another oddball which is you have this uh the scarn uh geology where at least the the upper part of the scarn was was overprinted by this this gold silver epiothermal deposit. Um and then but if you think about all all all four of them they have a lot of similarities in terms of how they're being mined the the quickness of time to to turn these things around. But literally all all four of them are are completely distinct from a uh from a geological genesis perspective. >> Metallergy you're partially dealing with carbonacious or graffitic rocks. Is there a a pre robbing behavior in the cyanidation circuits or what's what's that looking like for you? Yeah, this is something where uh I mentioned earlier uh where we had our draw down in the stock from 20 uh late 20 early 22 to late 22. Um we've had two significant draw downs on Mako's stock during the bare market. One I thought was fair by the market which was was then uh where we knew that when we were going to be in fresh material there was going to be some issues with uh with dealing with the with the pre rob. And then there was another one which was which which I thought was just silly which was in 2023 where um we we had a scheduled week uh week Q3 and and people didn't like what the stock was doing and then >> Q4 was strong and I just bought as much stock as I possibly could at that point in time. But the 2022 draw down was interesting in that uh even though we we we knew that it was coming I I think we were a little bit overconfident on on dealing with it. So the the nature of the beast is that uh when you're dealing with pregrob uh material you you you basically do three things. one is before it gets into the mill because the the end of the day the our our the high grade part of the or body is is hosted by these uh these quartz veins um and then most of the gold is within it and then the host rock the hanging wall and foot wall and the host rock is within this carbonatious shist where potentially that can that can be be bad. So first order of business just mine this selectively try to get as as as much of the good stuff and as little as as crap as as possible into into the system. So we we have very very detailed mining um protocols in place. We control dilution on either side of the vein to to less than 25 cmters. There's no other mining company that's doing this on an open pit basis as selectively as we are. Secondly, try to recover as much as you can gravity. Uh so before uh before anything uh goes into your your CIL tanks, uh just pull it out from a from a gravity perspective. Uh so we now kind of run our our Nelson's. We have probably over capacity on our uh on our gravity uh circuit just to pull as much as we possibly can. So we cover uh 38 to 40% of our our gold via via gravity recoveries. Our our system is is is pretty fine grained as well. So we're never going to get like super high gravity recoveries, but but mid mid to high 30s is is is doable. And then the most involved bit is make sure there is no active cyanide in the system before it hits those CIL tanks. So in 22 we had a couple of issues, right? So the the the first issue is we designed the system to have a uh cyanide detox um protocol uh like called an an inco2 normal processes nothing is like super advanced but none of our guys actually uh the the local Nicaraguins group work with that before. So, we were not getting our our cyanide because we're a zero discharge facility on the on the front end of our mill down to zero. Like 0.1 ppm is not good enough. You you get this down to zero like uh when all is said and done. And when you're actually putting in like 8 n 10 ppm cyanide, you're going to have some issues. So, we we actually had to pivot where like actually it goes back to to kind of like working in in Nicaragua is that so think about this. we got permitted for this uh this detox system over here for this uh sinko SO2 that wasn't working. So while while we were figuring out our problems, we asked the government, could you actually change our our protocols in place and then just change our detox to it's a much more simple process of of of putting sodium hypocchlorite effectively like Clorox uh into the system in place. So Sanino for like 6 months smelt like a swimming pool. But uh during that time we actually had a changeover from the like our permit where the government in a matter of a few weeks just like signed off on it and said it was fine. You you would never get you never be able to do something like that in in the United States. It would require like a complete change in the permitting protocol. And then finally we we figured out our uh our our detox protocols where we're actually have a much more advanced based system than than an inco2 process to detox our cyanide uh in place. But it is um uh it is is it is a metabisulfate based detox approach where right now we have zero going through the system. So under uh so when we're in oxide which doesn't have any pregrobing components we we'll recover 93 94% of a gold. When we're in like high preving parts of the uh the plant ideally we'll get like uh like 81 82% type recoveries. you blend those two components together, you'll get like 84 85 ideally. In 22, there were certain quarters that we were in the 60s. Um, now everything is ideal like we're we're straight down the fairway at 83 84% for our combined >> combined approach. The other the other assets don't have any like metallergical issues. So, like keeps our keeps our our metallergists uh just focused on a more just >> plant optimization instead of the science experiment that that Sanino was. Yeah, but we've been at this for um almost two hours now. Uh and I still have plenty of questions, so it might be worth it to schedule another conversation. I don't want to waste your entire day. As I promised at the beginning, I was not going to waste too much of your time. >> I don't think I've kept that promise too well, but it it has been a good conversation. What's your most fair criticism of um of of Mako right now? What's the thing that you hear about the most >> on on the on the fair criticisms or or just the criticism in general? >> I would say on the on the on on the fair side of things, >> uh the the people need to know what they're investing in, right? So um and I I do think because of uh the types of investors that are are in in the industry and then the um the types of successes that have happened. I think most investors have the expectation that this is going to be a a first motif type type asset like I i.e. you you basically make discoveries and sell to a larger company where that is just not it's not the nature of of Mako right now. So there there's this this timing issue where where I do do think it required a lot of uh almost training uh for for our investor base where I think a lot of our our investors were in this because they thought it would be sold at a at a high price when in reality we were building a business. So the types of assets that we have um uh for people that are looking at having clean exits uh within their portfolio, it's just not the type of company that's set up uh to to do that. U the assets that we have are on the smaller side of things. I think there are complexities with the assets for for different reasons. San Albino uh we spoke about very complex geology, very complex metallurgy. We're going to be going underground as well next year. So that's going to be added complexity associated with it. The other side, it happens to be off the charts grade. I mean the average the average grade of our veins are running 17 grams. So that's huge positive, lots of negatives that come with it. >> Um and the other types of assets that we have, each one has its its own its own idiosyncrasies. uh like moss being low grade, uh Eagle Mountain having this this kind of like weird dynamic with a critical metals deposit as well as this uh this pretty pretty bog standard uh heat leach opportunity as well. Uh and then Eagle Mountain also has this uh this two-stage process where it has a very easy to process sapperite and then uh you're going to have uh a higher cost or be a higher grade operation for the hard rock as well. So every single one of our assets have idiosyncrasies associated with it and there needs to be the expectations because of those idiosyncrasies that things might take longer than than anticipated and and certainly we've had our hiccups in the past. Um the the the plus side to that is that there are very few companies that have set up themselves um with the types of of economics that our our assets are are capable of of generating relative to the amount of capital that's been on the this business. Uh there are we're not we're not the only one. actually other examples of this which actually won't speak kindly to to our competitors but there uh there are examples of this and I do think it's important for investors to to actually like especially for operating companies look at the financials right like the and and I think everybody wants to to to have like shortcuts on uh on on these investments because they they're they're investing in these these complicated businesses sometimes it it just it's easy to look at at the numbers and what they can do. Don't just look at the the the balance sheet and you see like this company has actually look at what kinds of returns are these people generating. Uh what kinds of income are these people generating? What kind of cash flows relative to the amount of capital that's been in in the business are these people generating and can you put something together that doesn't require a lot of external capital uh requirements. So the the the biggest thing that we could say is that we we put together this portfolio with really without the need uh for external capital since 2021 and then this $37 million raise that we did was not needed. What that did was it it really helped butress the balance sheet. So it takes off any any real delays for for getting our our fourth asset up and running. It gives us a great runway runway to go through. But if you look at how this company's developed, it it it it got developed without without the need for for the for the market's support. So goes back to like the irony is that we don't have any analysts covering us, right? Like for instance, it's like well people complain like well makeo don't you have any like analyst reports to look at? Well, we don't have any. The reason why we don't have any is because we didn't need capital. Like so we actually you need to pay people to to actually give you your you research reports over that. So I just tell people follow what I say, what I what I do. Um follow our financials, what we do, take a look at the assets, take a look at the stuff that we acquire and and most importantly how is how is acquired, how the trajectory of our balance sheet has gone over time. And what do you see is that this this this company is uh is very very different than than the vast majority of our competitors out there in the space. again, I think um there's a lot more that we could get into here and I'm sure I'm I'm forgetting a lot of important stuff, but I'm most assured that people watching and listening will let me know what I'm forgetting so that we can target it at a at a future conversation. But I really do appreciate you being so generous with your time. Thank you so much for doing this. >> All right. All right. Take your answer. >> And as always, thanks to everyone for watching Resource Talks. I have a couple of more things to say, though. The fact that this company was interviewed here today does not mean that they're necessarily a good or a bad company. I'm not here to endorse nor attack anyone. I am simply here to ask some questions. 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