I Asked 15 Mining CEOs How Not to Waste Shareholder Capital

Summary

• Capital Efficiency: The podcast emphasizes the importance of spending shareholder capital efficiently during bull markets, particularly in the mining sector, where inefficiencies can easily arise.
• Drilling Focus: Many CEOs, like those from Relevant Gold Corp and Maple Gold Mines, stress that the majority of capital should be directed towards drilling, as it is crucial for resource expansion and value creation.
• Team and Talent: Investing in building and retaining a strong team is highlighted as a key strategy, with companies like Riverside Resources focusing on leveraging skilled personnel to maximize project potential.
• Marketing and Visibility: While some companies plan to increase marketing spend to stand out in a crowded market, others, like American Eagle Gold Corp, prefer organic growth and strategic communication to attract investor attention.
• Strategic Partnerships: Companies like Awali Resources and EMX Royalty discuss the role of strategic partnerships and joint ventures in enhancing project development and securing additional funding.
• Government and Community Relations: Maintaining good relationships with government and local communities is crucial, as seen with companies operating in jurisdictions like Kazakhstan and Côte d'Ivoire, where regulatory support can significantly impact project success.
• Financial Health: Many companies, such as Kutney Silver and Aerys Minerals, report strong cash positions, allowing them to fund ongoing exploration and development without immediate need for additional capital raises.
• Market Timing: The podcast underscores the importance of timing in capital raises, with companies like Meadows discussing the strategic decision-making involved in raising funds during favorable market conditions.

Transcript

Thank you for watching Resource Talks and welcome to the Precious Metal Summit here in Bic Tree, Colorado, where I'm combating sleep deprivation and jet lag with a very specific diet consisting specifically of caffeine and protein bars. I think I'm going to need it though because I'm here to ask junior mining companies how they plan on not wasting any shareholder capital during this bull market, which as you can imagine is not going to be everyone's favorite topic. Luckily though, I don't care about what their favorite topic is or isn't. I care about spending shareholder capital efficiently and bull markets are notoriously the perfect breeding ground for inefficiencies. So what should they be spending their capital on? Is it more marketing? Is it more drilling? Is it better dinners with strategics to get those bigger bucks in? Lobbying with the government, higher salaries for management to attract better talent. I don't know, but I've got four days and I think over 40 meetings booked. Uh and I'm hoping I'm going to be able to figure it out. Hopefully I'll get some of them to get in front of the camera with me and talk to me about that. And of course, as always, taking you along for the ride with me. But before any of that though, please pause the screen right now and read the disclaimers that are going to be shown on there because your capital is at risk. This is venture capital and nothing is guaranteed. In addition, consider me having a conflict of interest with all of the companies interviewed herein because I either own shares or I have a relationship with the management. It's either going to be a business relationship or a personal or sometimes both. So, take the time and read those warnings. Heat. Heat. N. [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] All right. So, my first meeting is in uh in about 5 minutes. It's with Relevant Gold Corp. They are a $356 million market cap uh Explorer Co. based in the state of Wyoming. Actually, not too far away from here, just a couple of hours drive, I believe. Um, yeah, 36 million market cap. They recently raised just under 10 million bucks, I believe. And they've also been getting some government money on top of that as well. So, it seems like money is not an issue for now, but is spending it going to be the real challenge? Hopefully, we'll figure out. All right, Rob, just uh kicking the door in immediately. What do you think is the best way to spend shareholder capital during a bull market? What is it that you you should be buying off the most? I guess. >> Sure. Well, I think the the probably common answer you're going to get and obvious answer is drilling, right? Drilling moves the needle. But what I would say is most important in a group like us that focuses on execution is our team. Um, in a bull market, you have a unique opportunity to build your team, to pay them the right wages, to attract the right talent. uh and that's one of the most powerful things you can have to be able to execute appropriately and protect shareholder capital through proper execution. >> What do you think that ratio should be then? Um let's call it GNA to drilling. I call it the exploration to administration ratio. How much money should be going into the ground versus again uh incentivizing your team? >> Sure. Well, I think the team incentives come from, you know, it it goes up congruently with the scale of the drilling. So, for example, we're drilling 5,000 mters this year. We're hoping to ramp up to 20,000 meters in 2026 as we continue to ramp up across the portfolio. Uh with that, you need to grow the team congruently. So, uh the ratio doesn't change much and our ratio is typically 65 to 75% goes into the ground almost every year. If you look at our financials, uh we average about 12 to 17 1.5% in GNA costs over the last 5 years since the uh inception of the company. Uh, and when you talk about protecting shareholder capital, that's something we're actually really proud of, uh, as the largest shareholders ourselves, uh, co-founder and chief exploration officer, Brian Lent, and I, um, you know, we look at preservation of capital as preserving our own capital and getting everything we can out of it. So, for example, in the 5 years that the company's been around, we've raised about 23.8 million Canadians. Uh, we've raised that money at a 1% cost of capital. Uh, total finder fees, warrants, and cash is 249,000 on that money. Uh that's really unheard of. Um and that's your GNA doing work for you as a shareholder. Uh and then if you look at the way we've spent that money, it has been in the ground and that's even in the down market allowed us to go from inception to a $40 million market cap on $23 million and what was maybe one of the worst cycles we've seen in a long time. So we're really excited about where we're sitting today because of that good management of capital for the last 5 years and putting us on what we think is a springboard going into a bull cycle. Do you think you have to spend more money on marketing during a bull market because there's more active companies and so on and so forth? There's just more noise and so in order for you to stand out, do you spend more or how do you do that? >> Yes, I think we would spend more because as you know, our marketing budgets are very thin. Uh in general, we we typically uh try to get a lot of organic coverage and a lot of um organic traction in the markets. But I think as you go into a bull cycle, there is more money coming in. So there's more ability for other groups to put that kind of fuel on the marketing fire. Uh so you still have to stand out in the crowd. You still have to do that. But we like to do that by data. Uh you know, we like to let the results do that. Uh Chris, who's our marketing guru who you know well, he always says the the rocks and the data are the best form of marketing, right? And so we really look to put that money into the ground and market off the backs of quality results. Uh and that's really what we've done so far. And as the bull cycle ramps up and more money is available, sure, we would certainly be ramping up the market marketing congruent with the ramp up and growth of our business. >> Is lobbying going to be part of your spend as well? Because it seems like governments around the world and definitely in the US are waking up to the fact that we need more mining and they need to incentivize that. But you also have to make sure that you're there to receive that money and they know of you. So is that something you're going to spend money on or is it just effort? Well, we already are receiving that money and haven't spent any money on lobbying. So, uh, we're operating in Wyoming. It's recently in the last Fraser Institute publication moved to the number four mining jurisdiction globally. Um, that's a pretty incredible feat. I believe the year before it was 28. Uh, that's a huge jump. Uh, and that's evidenced by the support and the streamlined permitting that we're seeing with regulators there and the support we're getting from the government. We just received a $226,000 US grant uh US dollar grant from the state of Wyoming with their energy matching funds. Uh specifically going after our Apex target and our Bradley Peak project. So we'll be flying an airborne V time survey over the Bradley Peak project and half of that will be covered by the state of Wyoming through one of these grant programs. So, I would argue that the lobbying uh is a component of the industry for sure, but where we're at and we're operating, we have good fortune of not feeling a a huge need to necessarily deploy a lot of capital in that direction because we're already operating in one of the best jurisdictions where that money is flowing in effortlessly. Now, uh so I think that's kind of the reality for our playbook because of our depth in the industry. We also have a lot of unique connections in the US uh regulatory space, right? Um we've had a consulting firm for 15 years that has worked for the biggest mining companies on earth and that's really given us exposure and access to a lot of the government officials meeting with the different policy makers on a regular basis helping our consulting firm has actually helped to guide uh Congress in the past and been our chief geologist has been on C-SPAN uh to testify in front of Congress about strategic and critical minerals. So I think that there's more to it in the US than just hiring a lobbyist and going the lobbying route. Um, I think that that's that's a tool in the toolkit when you think about government affairs. Uh, but I think relationships is really where it's at and those come over long-term fostering of those those critical relationships and that's what we've done. >> You're breaking my dreams. I was hoping to become a lobbyist uh in the US was my plan. >> Oh, I think you'd do great. Yeah. Yeah. They uh they would love that, you know. >> How much money do you have right now? I think you recently raised what? 10 million bucks. How much uh Yeah. How much do you have left in Kitty right now? How far is that going to get you? >> Yeah. So, we raised 8 and a half. Um, and you know that was in a a pretty incredible financing. We were at a 20% premium to market uh with no warrant. And this was really before things started to turn and we were able to upsize that twice and close that 8 1/2 million. Uh we've got about 5 1/2 in the bank. We've been actively drilling our 5,000 meter program at Apex as well as doing our our exploration work. So we're in a very comfortable cash position. Uh we're just about to wrap up the drilling in the next month or so and we'll have results imminent. So, uh, going into kind of the turn of the year with a with a strong treasury and a lot of catalysts upcoming. >> So, when you think you're going to have to raise again then sometime next year or is it something that you think maybe comes this year? >> Well, I think we're as as we always are, we're flexible. Um, you know, we like to raise money when we don't need it. Um, but we also want to raise it at the most aggressive share price we can get. So, uh, with upcoming catalysts, we obviously would be waiting for those results to come out and then from there it'll be kind of market derived. uh because we have a good cash runway as well as some warrants coming in uh in the future that are due and we expect hopefully that those will get executed. Uh we really see kind of a long runway for our current cash trajectory managing our burn. Our burn our base burn is only about 100 grand a month. Uh so you know we try to keep that pretty low so that we can be methodical in how we finance when we finance so that we can do it in the best way for our existing shareholders and new shareholders coming in. >> All right. So I've got about uh 20 minutes between now and my next meeting. just enough time to uh shake a couple of hands and uh down a bucket of coffee or something. Uh or maybe a couple of buckets. I'll see. Uh and after that, I'm going to be meeting with Kieran Patanka of Maple Gold Mines. They're 50 $55 million gold explore developer with assets in Quebec's abbey greenstone belt. Recently raised about 5 million bucks including some money from Michael Gentile. So that's that's an interesting angle that we might touch upon. But also 5 million bucks, not all that much money relative to uh the size of the project there. So they're going to have to be efficient with it. And hopefully I'm going to figure out how they plan on doing that. All right, Karen, what is it that you just raised some some money, 5 million bucks, uh relative to the market cap and the size of the project? Not an incredible amount of money, but not nothing either. So you got to be efficient with it. What is it that you're going to be spending that money on in order to uh generate shareholder value? Well, we we did announce and we're closing a $5 million financing today. So, we do always focus on value enhancing uh exploration and development with our projects. Um the plan with this $5 million is to do focused exploration as we have been doing following up on success that we had in our winter program at Dway. We've got targeted exploration 5,000 meters uh in the NA zone where we had a great success uh hole 338 which was one of the best intercepts ever drilled down plunge extensions high-grade uh and similar um down plunge stepout success at 531. So 5,000 m there uh this fall as well as a maiden program at Jutell which is a past producing high-grade gold mine complex that was you know shut down in 1993 at far lower gold prices than where we are today. So, we think with the combination of those two um drilling activities plus we've got a forthcoming mineral resource update and an internal scoping study and um engineering trade-off study which is really going to get us you know a little bit of two you know the bang for the buck here on two fronts with exploration plus focused development I think is what's really going to create value for shareholders over the next couple months. what percentage of your money is going to go toward that versus the rest which is running the company, marketing the company, making sure that you're keeping strategics happy and potentially talking to others or not like so yeah, what percentage of that what's that split going to be? Well, I'll take it a little bit reverse. Strategics are very happy. We had ano participate in the last financing round and we've got a great partnership there. I think your audience knows that. Um, in terms of how we split the money, um, you know, we raised $3.5 million worth of flow through. Um, we also raised a million half dollars worth of hard dollar. Um, I set out as a goal with this company two years ago when I took over. Obviously, we've completed the reset of the company now, but we've kept the GNA at or around $2 million a year, $150 to $175,000 per month. I don't anticipate expanding that because again, I think we've optimized um how we spend money as a company. Um, we're at or near the low of what it takes to be a public company in Canada. Um, obviously the shares have been outperforming. I think we've got a lot coming. So, I think the majority of what we raise plus what we have in the till, we've got about $8 million uh all told with this completed financing. Um the majority of that is going to be going into the ground. I would say at least this fall, it's going to be $5 million minimum. Being at or near the low in terms of GNA, which includes your marketing as well, is that the right spot to be during a bull market though? What I mean by that is everyone's going to be trying to be loud, right? And so the amount of noise in market is going to be the average is going to be higher than normal. So, in order for you to stand out, how do you stand out? How much money do you spend on marketing and how do you manage that spend? >> One of the ways I think we really stand out is when everybody else is being loud. Maple has a history of also being loud. Uh not necessarily just in a bull market. We under promise, we overd deliver, right? We consistently execute as we've done for the last 2 years since I've taken over as CEO. Um we continue to spend um minimum amounts as needed on marketing. Obviously, we're here at Beaver Creek. We've got a full schedule. We're presenting here. We've got a we don't push water uphill when the markets aren't there. we're not spending money on unnecessarily on uh marketing and road shows and things like that when we have no news to to share with the market. But in this case, we've completed a major reset of the company. We have been talking about that for the last 2 years. But this last announced transaction with the financing with the roll back which we just completed yesterday with new, you know, the board refresh with some great board members joining us um and a lot of catalysts coming up. It's a perfect time for us to be out talking to the market. That said, um we don't anticipate dramatically improving or increasing our marketing budget because we are getting very effective marketing where we are and that's evidenced not only um in the the the inbounds that we've had from investors on the news flow that we've had. We've got people in the seat paying attention um but certainly the share price has been performing. So, you know, we want to see that continue. We like the slow steady march upward um as opposed to the hockey stick type spike. Uh and I think you know the the targeted investors that we have are really we've got this great network of long strategic high net worth and institutional shareholders that we're building. Um so the retail is certainly someone that we focus on but it's really for trading back and forth. I think as we build the long-term business marketing is going to be a big part of that but it's not really going to be a massive part of the budget relative to focused exploration and development. The other part of your GNA is paying salaries to management and staff. As everyone is going to start making more and more money with a bull market, as it typically happens, are you going to have to increase management and and staff salaries in order to keep everyone happy and incentivized enough? >> I certainly hope not. Uh I I came in here with a with a mandate to really bring in and rein in um waste and you know, we we've got a smaller, leaner, meaner team. We've got a focused team. Um they buy they bought into the vision uh that I've articulated. Uh so you know people have uh they benefit from um exposure to other things like as the share price appreciates you know we have um sharebased compensation and incentive compensation things like that. Um there are smart ways for us to make sure that our team is properly incentivized to you know to drive shareholder value uh and aligns with shareholder interest. Um, I'm certainly one of the largest, if not the largest, uh, uh, shareholder on the insider group, uh, besides Agniko. Uh, and I want to see our money spent in the right way. Um, we obviously need to retain the great staff that we have and attract new talent. Uh, but I don't see massive blowouts in terms of our GNA and our salaries, uh, because we do have a very focused and dedicated team who's doing great work. What about your personal salary and KPIs and and bonuses and stuff like that? Are you going to make more money if the company does better? uh preferably and I think shareholders this should be music to their ears. I make more money when the share price performs. Um and that's because I have exposure direct exposure via my share ownership position and equity and options and things like that. Um in terms of the salary, I wouldn't expect that to be you know dramatically increased. Uh you know we we did do a whole exercise you know where we've actually instilled as well um better KPIs, better corporate governance practices, benchmarking, compensation, etc. encourage people to take a look at where we stand visav our peers. Um but you know one of the things that we look at when we when it comes to CEO compensation as with all of our seuite and other people within the company is you know we can always reward outperformance via bonuses right and you know at the end of the day that's ultimately at the discretion of the board the independent directors the compensation committee but we've got a highly functioning um very aligned group that's focused on the corporate governance aspects of the company um and aligning compensation practices with peers but also with uh you know the alignment and advancement of shareholder interests. All >> right, so I'm just rushing here from uh door to door. I've got about 10 minutes uh between this and my next meeting where I'm talking to John Mark Study of Riverside Resources. They're a $13.5 million uh explorer/prospect generator/royalty generator and they've historically not had to tap into the market all that often. They still have a couple of million bucks in cash uh that I remember from my last conversation with John Mark. So, it'll be interesting to see if they're going to change that strategy for this bull market and um let's go and see what they're going to be spending that money on. All right, John Mark, I want to talk to you about spending shareholder capital during bull markets. Uh and maybe just briefly to start off, what is it that you're going to be spending on? What do you think is the most efficient way to deploy shareholder capital during bull markets? >> Bull markets for us are the best times because we can get other people's money to spend on the assets that we have. So, you say, "What are we doing with shareholder capital?" We have the same amount of capital this year that we had last year. We have not had to finance in over 7 years as Riverside since pre-COVID. So what are we doing right now is lots of deals. People are coming to us for assets. People are coming to us for technical team. One of the things in a bull market is you don't have skilled people. We have those skilled people in Riverside. So with Riverside with our business model, we love bull markets because other people the projects can move. So we're sprinting. So we're working every day as a Monday progressing multiple projects and we really love these times because it's when the projects themselves can be transformed for the communities, for the society and for the assets that we continue to own. >> What do you do on Sundays though? >> Sunday is a great day. It's a religious day. Sunday is the morning basically from 5 to 6:00 in the morning every day. That's the time for myself, for my family, and particularly for creating what's what's next. And it's a lot of fun. What what is it that you're going to be doing with your own money though? Uh when you're not looking for deals, like when you're when you have to go out there and market or or something like that, what is it? What is it? I think you have four million bucks right now or something like that. What is that money going to be spent on? >> So, we we're consistent. We have spent 17th of our budget during good and bad times. So, we're not spending a lot more money. We're not trying to compete. We're not really trying to market. We're always about assets, getting assets so we have capital. We're making decisions now at this when the capital is easy and when people can get it, we can still get our projects and we continue to acquire those projects and complete them. So maybe we acquire a few less projects in the short term when people are buying projects, but we do due diligence. So what we're definitely spending on is meeting with people to get deals done. What we're also doing is completing the option agreements. We're different than most other companies. When we option a property, we have more than 50% of the time completed that option to actually earn into it. So we've looked at instead as a staged purchase, not really an option in the sense of the overall generally people option a property with a very low probability of completing that option. So with our capital, we continue to make those staged payments which are very limited and keeping the properties in good standing ready to do the next deal and getting drill permits. Getting those drill permits is makes it turnkey. So, we love this conference because at this conference we have people coming looking to deploy capital and we can deploy it with a drill permitted project. That's unique and that's what Riverside has done and that's what Riverside has as a portfolio. >> Last time you and I spoke I asked you what the most fair criticism has been of Riverside and you said that some people are saying uh it's it's it's too boring is what you called it at the time. Is that something you plan on changing during the bull market? like are you going to go and and I don't know do two capital raises within 12 months and is that are you going to change your your capital market strategy essentially? >> So our capital market strategy is getting deals out the door and particularly one of the things we can do is get the next deal out the door. Secondly getting blue J financed very well. So does that really help Riverside? Yes, because those people that have survived the boringness of Riverside are owning. And now when those things go up, Capitan Silver, I've had already nine people come and say, "Hey, congratulations." That was something that took us 5 years to be here today as a 10bagger. And so our shareholders are doing great and I'm delighted to be involved in that. And I so I think with so during right now with this time, we are not raising money. No, we are actually have the capital and capital's flowing to us. Yes, we're definitely able to make it less boring by making announcements about fast getting steps done. So, it's not boring now even with Riverside because we have people coming be able to launch new businesses out of Riverside right now. So, it's a great time to own and participate in the upside. John Mark, you and I have talked about this before, but retaining finding finding um talent and retaining them is is a big part of your business strategy as well. Is that something you're going to spend more money on now that it's a bull market and it's probably getting harder and harder because they might be getting better offers someplace else. So, are you going to spend more money on staff? >> So, what we do is we definitely give people bonuses about results and we definitely are glad when we actually get OPM other people's money into Riverside that they actually get part of the participation. Secondly, we do education. So, I don't know other people we brought our technical team from Mexico up and they got to do a week-long course at the University of British Columbia. We're actually doing a lot of courses and education for our staff. So, we're very different in that we're not simply paying money. We're giving opportunities of learning. We're giving opportunities of other jurisdictions, letting them come and work in different places. Something they don't get in other companies. Other companies offer a single project, a single place. the people that have left Riverside, most many of them have come back and said, "I wish or I'd like to come back or I like working with Riverside because the diversity of opportunity, education, knowledge is golden, learning, and having a chance to be more involved more than just one project." >> What about marketing? Uh, even noticeable here. I mean, there's noticeably more people here than they were here last year, if I remember correctly. So, are you going to have to spend more money so that you're louder than the majority in terms of marketing? I don't think we can outscreen other people. I'd rather have outquality the people. And so people that are looking for quality, we're here. We're solid. We've been going 18 years. We only have 75 million shares out. So when there's all the noise and everything, let people come back home to the quality. When that happens, when the tide goes back out, we'll have our swimsuits on or even our wets suit on and we'll be in a good position. If you use that Warren Buffett analogy of what happens when the tide goes out, you can see who's wearing a a swimsuit and who's not. So when in a bull market like this, we're glad to have our assets get advertised. We're glad to have our projects and we're happy to have our partners advertise about what we're doing, but ourselves, we don't try to outscreen other people. We try to have consistency. We show up to the same things and build the relationships with our share owners. We're about share capital and share ownership, and we love to keep up with them. >> It's been pretty fullon. Uh, a couple of meet these I couldn't get filmed, but I'm talking to Bob Archer next of Pinnacle Silver and Gold. I think he's going to want to get in front of a camera. They're um smallish company, so about 10 million market cap. Just raised some money. Not a lot, about a million and a half, I believe. Um, and they're going to have to be spending it in Mexico, I believe. So, they're going to have to be efficient and uh they're going to have to know what they're doing with their money. So, I'm going to go ahead and talk to him and see what he's got to say. All right, Bob. So, we're talking about uh spending shareholder capital efficiently. you just raised some, not a whole lot. So, how do you make it, you know, go a long way? What do you spend it on so you make it worth it for the shareholders? >> Well, essentially, uh, because, you know, the development of the project is going to require more than what we just raised. You do this in stages. So, it's really, you know, to get us through to the next stage. So, obviously, we want to try and be as as efficient as possible with money that we've raised, um, and try to spend as much of it as we can on the project u with the guys working there. And we're hoping to be able to start a drilling program um this fall sometime. And so just talking to the environmental um authorities right now, you know, to try and get uh approval to commence that drilling program. So uh if we get that uh in the next little while then we'll be um we'll be moving ahead with with that and um doing a bit of metallergical testing uh preliminary uh at this stage but uh give us a good uh good insight as to you know what we might expect down the road. Uh so basically just you know trying to move the project ahead as much as possible. How do you manage the ratio between what gets spent on G& and what's get what gets spent on exploration though specifically in your case because again smaller company which means um you know smaller budgets but being a public company has a level of expense already as is. So you got to be doing marketing and um and everything else around it. So how do you manage that ratio? >> Well for us uh I mean our GNA typically is fairly small anyways. Um we don't have an office for example. Everybody works remotely um and try to keep salaries down that sort of thing but uh we try to spend as much as we can on the project as I say. So because our GNA is relatively fixed uh you know that ratio will change depending on the availability of capital. Um so the more we raise the more we can spend on the project because the GNA is more or less fixed. Um so that ratio will change according to what's available. Given that this is going to be a bull market, are you going to change something in the way you spend money? Do you think you're going to be spending more money in marketing? Uh do you want to maybe spend more money on on salaries and staff so that you can find and retain better talent or how do you see that? >> Well, as the project grows, we will have to hire additional people. Um you know, that's for sure. I've just uh engaged a project manager, for example, that we didn't have before. So, there will be some additional costs like that. Um but uh again you know those are all project related expenses that we would need anyways. Um we'll be spending a little bit more on marketing but there is a limit there uh you know as to how much we were willing to spend and um you know I've certainly learned after 45 years in this industry what works and what doesn't. Uh and you know times change uh um what do you think works in a bull market in terms of marketing and how much should that cost? Well, I think things have changed over the last, you know, 10 years or so that we've been going through a bit of a bare market. Uh, just in that time, we've seen the rise of social media and and videos and doing interviews like this and, uh, that type of thing. So, there's much more emphasis on that type of thing. It's it's not just going to conferences and standing at a booth the way you used to do, you know, 15 20 years ago. Uh so you have to change with times and we're trying to do that and uh still traveling uh quite a bit. Um you know it's much more of a a global exercise. A lot of our funding is coming from Europe now. Uh so we have to cater to that market to some degree as well. Uh but uh but yeah that's uh just keeping up with the times basically. >> Do you think you're going to have to raise capital again this year to sort of keep up with the the tempo of a bull market which is also different than what you would do during a bull market? uh during a bare market. Yeah. >> Yeah. It's I mean it's quite likely uh just given the tempo of uh of the market right now and what we're seeing uh I found that uh you often get windows in the market where uh it's possible to raise money and depending on how things are going you know the last few months have been very very good uh but uh other times that window can open and close very quickly and sometimes you just have to take advantage of it. So you can only plan to a certain degree. I mean you know that you're going to read fun need funds at some point. Um but sometimes you might have to raise uh the money sooner than you expected to just because the opportunities there. So uh you know so we're always uh always aware of that sort of thing as well. >> Right. Quite a busy first day actually. I still have uh a couple of meetings and hopefully a couple of interviews. Next, I'm talking to Anthony Marorrow of American Eagle Gold Corp. About $100 million the market cap just raised a whole bunch of money with uh strategics earlier this year. So, last time I I went to site actually. So, cough wing, go ahead and watch that um site coverage as well. But they're going to have to be efficient with that capital cuz we talked about them potentially and and potentially is an important word here, but potentially not having to raise capital again. So, um although things are moving with tech and everything that's going on there. So, yeah, I'll go and talk to Tony and see what that's going to result in. All right, Tony, what can you spend the money that you have right now? Cuz you have quite a lot of it. Uh, what is it that you're going to be spending it on specifically during this bull market so that you make sure none of it is wasted and it's all like people say shareholder creative. I suppose >> it's just about putting the money to the ground. Uh, you saw with our latest latest financials, all the GNA and marketing that we have, it's covered by our interest payments. So, you know, we're sticking by the same plan we had before this, I guess, gold bull run happened. It's we have a $15 million program. If we hit it out of the park and our stocks at $2 or $3 and the cost of capital is low enough, we'll think about doing a drill season throughout the winter. But right now, it's just putting those meters in the ground, those dollars in the ground, and sticking by the plan and, you know, being fully funded for 3 years. Well, and is that where the best value is during bull markets as well, or do you think you're going to have to go a bit heavier on the marketing? Because you and I have talked about that before. You said you're hesitant to work with too many groups. You want to do a lot of it inhouse. So, how do you think about that side of the business? >> Well, I'm not a technical guy per se, like self-taught, but I'm not a geologist. I let the geologists, we have very talented ones, do their job. So, my job is to market, and I think I'm pretty good at it. Very good at it. So, I'm going to use my expertise, the free money for the company. You don't have to spend money on marketing and I'll do it and I'll find the right people that will help us. But a lot of the stuff's gorilla stuff I do on my own. Uh we do our own Twitter, our own videos. We have enough following for the last 2 years of marketing that if we have good news, people will hear it. So, that's kind of the key. But you can waste a lot of money. We're not the first company with $40 million. So, it's just about making sure you follow the plan, you have your three years of funding, and if things if things change, you have some good luck, then you know, you change your plan. But I think our marketing strategy will pretty much stay the same. But there's a lot of people with their hands out right now on the marketing side, on the conference side. And if you don't look after your pennies, you know, the nickels are going to be gone as well. So, that's one thing we're kind of focused on. The people in these big uh gold rushes, do you know who made the most money? The people selling the pots and pans. and the people in this gold rush right now who are making the most money. It's the marketers. It's the lawyers. It's the bankers. So, we got to look after ourselves. >> Yeah. Does that include the people who did that new hairdo in the stash? >> That was uh that was my own. We saved company dollars. I I combed it. Uh I did have my bartend my uh my barber trim it for me, but it's it's a new thing. I try to look like a cop. >> Uh talk to me a little bit about staff here, too, because I know you do or you think a lot about that in within the or group. Do you think you're going to have to pay management and staff more during the bull market because maybe there are better opportunities elsewhere where they can make more money, but you don't want them leaving you, right? So, are you going to have to pay more money to retain your talent? You probably have to pay them a little bit more, but it's not crazy. So, like a 5 10% increase in salary isn't going to break the bank for us. It's about continuity. But the main thing for employers, it's how you treat them. And I think if you treat your people well, you have a good workplace, you offer good benefits, uh, and they want to stay, I think that's the most attractive thing right now. I worked at IM Gold and people got great bonuses there. But the thing we always heard the biggest feedback from were two things. They had they had Mexican day, they had Chinese New Year day, and it allowed people to have a week off during Christmas, and that really made a big difference. So, IM Gold had a great culture. I know Ken Ross, Nico have a great culture, too, and people tend to stay there. Um well, you're mentioning um some of the bigger companies here and that's reminding me of a joke that I made at the for my introduction when I started the the coverage here and it was about oh our company's going to have to spend more money on dinners with their strategics to keep them happy because everyone's going to have more money and want to buy more expensive dinners for their strategics. There's an interesting angle to one of your strategics though with tech. Is that something you might have to spend more money on or, you know, expect them to be giving you less money or less attention or something if the supposed merger goes through? >> Well, the dice is cast with tech. They gave us our our money. They uh they invested three times in 2023. They can't get it back. They are lending technical expertise, but Tech's another company with great culture, great people, and they're not asking for more than anyone else's. All they want is communication. So, that's what we're doing for them. any comments that you can provide on what what's happening there or have you spoken to them since since kind of the rumor or >> Well, I've been meeting with them at Beaver Creek. It was very interesting news. It kind of caught me by surprise a bit, but I guess just wait and see. I I think for us, I think it's going to be status quo again. We we have the money that they invested. If you look at it, I kind of spin as more of a positive. We have another bigger company actually looking at us that needs more growth and also possibly some of those legacy assets like Shafts Creek and Galore Creek. Now there's a bigger company Anglo involved be able to take a more strategic look at it. Maybe those won't be the projects that they want to work on because they have huge capital uh expenditures at the very beginning and maybe they want to look at something with Knack. Maybe they have things in their pipeline. They actually give them production within the fi next 5 years that replaces Glor Creek. And they look at Knack and they say, "This is something gives us production in the next 5 to 10 years that we can build it." And guess what? It's at sea level. There's no trees. There are trees. There's no mountains. We can actually build it for probably a quarter of the cost what you can build Galore Creek at. So maybe those new eyes will put bring new attention and that could be good. H uh so so you don't expect them to be dumping chairs in the market if it goes through or something like that? >> No, not at all. They're they're big supporters of us. Again, I I said we're meeting with them tomorrow. They're coming to site. They still love the property. And if we hit what we're supposed to hit, even if they sell shares, so people will be very happy to gobble them up. All right, so beginning of day two, starting to look a little bit more human. Uh had just a little bit more than 6 hours of sleep, which is actually amazing. And uh kicking off today with a hopefully an interesting conversation with Dr. Ewan Webster of Thesis Gold. Uh they're a $400 million gold developer with assets in the Tudan district of BC. Recently raised over $27 million with a strategic and they're currently working on their PFS which they hope to have out I believe by Q4 of this year. So is that going to change how they spend money or not? Well, I'm about to find out. All right, I want to talk to you about um making shareholders capital worth it during a bull market. How do you essentially not waste any shareholder capital in a time when capital is maybe more readily available? So yeah, what is it that you're going to be spending your money on? >> I think for us, I mean, we we had a great plan in place for this year um coming into the summer. So really just sticking to that and kind of optimizing what we have in place maybe. Um so yeah, as you said, it's been a good year for raising capital. We raised 24 million with Centa in April and then I think 27 million in June all mostly flow through to help fund our exploration program that's underway and that's about 15,000 mters of drilling. Uh most of that's exploration drilling on the ranch project really to kind of test new targets both epithermal and perfery and you know maybe with that extra capital we can do additional things to help support the drilling like IP like ground work to kind of refine um the targeting process as we're as we're actually drilling and then um think a bit of a combination beyond that you know pushing forward with the project um trying to accelerate the timeline line. Uh obviously cost of capital to shareholders is important. So if we can do anything like the drilling we did this year at lawyers actually was about 3,000 m of drilling and that was really just to give us a 6 month head start on a feasibility study. We didn't need to do it this year. We had the capital but it helps move the project forward. Um so maybe that's a good example. And then I think really just hitting the conference circuit hard as well. Um getting the story out there to potential new shareholders. A lot of generalist capital coming into the market. really seen that. Um particularly next week we're going to the gold show and Colorado Springs and a lot of new meetings with uh different accounts. So that's kind of exciting to see. Um and then really just and you know to back up a little bit to the field program again just pushing ahead with the completion of the baseline work. um feasibility study is going to be out in end of October uh early November probably sort of the prefeasibility study and we're going to begin permitting this year as well. So a lot of things happening that that capital is going towards. Is there a ratio that you're targeting uh from you know exploration to let's call it I call it exploration to administration really but it's exploration to GNA. So everything with marketing and salaries and everything there. >> Yeah. And I know that you've done like even in our last meeting you went through this and I thought about it a bit more and I think that's a it's a very good ratio for exploration companies. Um but as we're transitioning into development um I think like it maybe not so as applicable because a lot of our budget this year is really going to things that aren't even like flow through eligible for example. So they're not necessarily exploration um for you. So the baseline work doesn't apply all the engineering work uh metal energy um feasibility level work. So I couldn't give you a great ratio for that. Um but we have a separate budget in place for like our GNA is probably about 3.5 million a year and then our marketing that includes um a lot of the marketing budget as well. So we're very conscious of how the dollars are spent. Um but the line share of everything goes in the ground. Um, and I think that's, you know, been our kind of MMO for a long time. >> Talk to me a little bit more about that marketing that you touched upon earlier. You said you're going to, but it's a bit of a the Denver Gold, so it's a bit of a bigger show, so that's where the producers are. Uh, and you mentioned generalist Capital. I actually don't hear that a lot. I think you're maybe one of the few companies who who gets more attention or gets attention quicker from generalists. How are you going to be targeting them? What are you going to be spending your marketing dollars on? Yeah, I mean I think the the generalist funds I I started to see this happening probably the first half of this year um particularly with some um marketing trips to uh the US they're kind of maybe a little bit ahead of Canada but precious metals heating up and um people that we'd reached out to before just wouldn't take meetings with us and now they're reaching out to us and I think that's partly the stage of um the development that we're at with the project where it's we're not a producer But we're kind of one step below that where the asset has been kind of derisked substantially for that. So for them coming in maybe not knowing too much about the sector. It's probably pretty appealing because they don't need to know all the jargon. They don't necessarily need to know the particulars of the project. But if they want exposure to gold and silver then the developer space is pretty attractive I think especially cuz it's been overlooked for a long time. So really kind of a bit of focus on the US to be honest. >> Yeah. As you're moving into development, I can imagine you might need some changes or additions to your staff members. Um, is that something you also plan on spending more money and also the existing staff, would you have to essentially pay them more so that you can retain talent in a in a market where maybe there's better opportunities or we'll hire paid opportunities, let's call it, elsewhere? >> Sure. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's a good question and we've been actively um growing our team and I mean this year we added a new chief geologist Evan uh Kina has a VPIR we've we added a new director project management we're about to add uh new VP sustainability and permitting so as we kind of embark on um this kind of growth phase I guess a lot of people joining the team and then in terms of retaining people um I think you know fantastic project to be working on which helps. Um secondly, I think we've got a great team of people that all work very well together and being able to kind of nurture that environment is uh for me is very important to kind of making sure that everybody's happy. We all work well together and I think that goes a long way in retaining staff. >> How much money do you have right now after the raise you did with Centurion? How far is that going to get you in terms of uh maybe timing but also milestones? kind of fluid at the moment with all the work that I just described ongoing. But what I would say is that by the end of this year, um, going into 2026, we probably have about 20 million in the treasury. So, we're very well cashed up at this point. It is actually the middle of day two. I haven't had much success with getting people in front of the camera. I am getting a little bit some some better food actually, some meat and potatoes. Uh, no longer only protein bars. Point is, I'm going to be talking to Craig Perry of Visa Copper. They're a $40 million copper explorer. They just made a porefree discovery in southern British Columbia. So, supposedly a lot of drilling ahead. They have some money. Not an endless amount though. And obviously Craig's not one to shy away from raising capital. So, I'm going to go talk to him and see what he's planning on doing. >> All right, Craig. I want to talk to you about not wasting shareholder capital during bull markets because that seems to sometimes be a challenge in bull markets specifically. So what is it that you with Fisler Copper but all the other companies that you work with or have worked with before? What is it that you spend capital on during bull markets so that it goes to good use? You do have to be very very careful and and you know it need you always have to have a very considered approach to what you're doing in a bull market. You you know 14 years of this downturn and learning to be very careful with our dollars is good training. Um but you know you stick to your knitting. really have to focus. You got to be careful. You know, conferences and things cost money. You tend to bring more people to things. You just you really got to watch your bottom line. Watch your dollars and cents and remember how hard it was to raise dollars, you know, not that long ago. Um I don't know whether I can say anything more than that. Of course, costs go up, drilling costs, uh acquisition costs of projects and properties go up. You don't want to get carried away on that front if you can. Um but it is a tricky thing to manage. For sure. For sure. We've done it before, but um I you've got to be very very cautious. >> Yeah. >> What about for you specifically as as Visa Carper? Now you made that new free discovery there. So I suppose drilling would be the the the value bringer essentially for you. Is that what you're going to be focusing your money on or is it is it is it a different combination of drilling and marketing or Yeah. How do you see that? >> Yeah, look, it's a a good point. And of course, we've got this fabulous new discovery. It's shaping up to be a real really serious discovery. We've now drilled sort of uh we put out a drill result there a couple of weeks ago, a month ago now. Um 300 m at about4% copper equivalent, but over a bigger broader intercept of about.35% copper equivalent from surface importantly, and right next door to the road between Houston and Huckleberry that has grid power on it. Huckleberry, of course, is is on pause. They would love I'm sure to find more or so we'll be talking to them certainly. Um so we're thrilled with that. Um for us you know and and and this is important. The other just to go back to your earlier question and then come back to what we've discovered there. One thing that we are looking at going forward is that, you know, public markets have been so problematic for people for so long and some of the success stories that we're investing in personally, you know, Aquitane's a good example. Donald McGinness's Island, Passage, they're keeping those companies private and funding them that way. And and I think there's merit to that because you spend so much of your time as a CEO, not managing a company, but out here doing what I'm doing now, promoting and and uh and marketing and talking to investors. you know, it's much better if you can, you know, you can have a tighter team if you can do things privately. So, that's something we consider all the time. We're not in that position, of course, with Visa Copper at the moment. Um, but yeah, I can tell you we're thrilled with what we got. We put out a drill result there yesterday. Uh, a well, a slew of drill results, but one of them mimicked that last hole nearly well, I think 270 m at 43% copper equivalent again from surfers. Um, and what that tells us is that it's a big system. So, this is where it gets tricky because now we, you know, we've got a couple of more results to come out. So, I'm excited about that. We we've realized that we haven't found the margins of the thing. It's 800 m long by 400 m north south. Could that give you 500 million tons at that sort of grade? Probably. Um, but could it be bigger? We know that Jibralta is just up the road. That's a sort of 1 12 billion ton beast at about 0.25% copper equivalent. That's what it's starting to look like to me. So, I'm excited about that. The majors are very interested given the scale potential there. So, but the other exciting thing is that it's in a an 8 km by 4 km alteration zone. We've got two other targets that could potentially be puries there, but there's certainly no way that that that alteration zone can be related to just one pfrey system. So, we think it's going to be much bigger um and and more discoveries to come. So, we're hopeful for that. So, that's very good. Um and then in terms of you know how we spend our shareholders dollars and our own dollars as shareholders is what's important. So now we need to down tools look at that data look really deeply at what we've got and then work out the best path cuz we will have to raise money at some point late this year to fund the next stage of drilling. That will be a resource drill out. You know that sort of grid drilling almost and they're expensive things to do. um you know, do we want to raise that much money at this price or do we just raise a smaller amount that gives us a good program? May not prove up the full resource but gets us on the way to doing it. And so, you know, there all those sorts of, you know, it's a bit of a matrix type of thing. There's all those sorts of considerations before you launch back into the next phase of exploration on on this project. Do you think you might have to pay your staff more money during a bull market because there are better opportunities elsewhere maybe? well or better paid opportunities. >> Look, retention of staff in these sorts of markets is tricky. Of course, vast amounts are being of money are being raised at the moment. There's a lot of drilling going on. You know, LA, as an example, um labs are massively backed up. Uh so, so you know, it's something that you have to consider. I think what we do and a lot of companies will do is is pay more in equity and people are pretty you know sanguin comfortable that that their their net worth growing as you drill out or make a discovery and drill out a deposit. So um and you know we're very very fortunate that we've got a group good group of loyal people who love working with us. So you know it's not been an issue for us but it could well become one. So yeah, it's something to consider. If you go back, you know, when I first uh when I first started, we were in a downturn, but um during that last boom when I was at Rio Tinto, you know, we were paying people double what I was getting paid when I started at Rio just to get them out of university and onto the book. So yeah, costs do cost pressures are an issue. >> What what about marketing? To go back to what you said, like you're here, you're there, you're traveling and doing some marketing. Do you have to increase marketing spend during a bull because other people are being loud and so maybe you try to be louder than them or not? How do you see that? >> No, it gets easier. I I I think you know in my experience we probably done less marketing in a bull market cuz you you know people are watching the space more closely. People are more familiar more eyeballs on a story during a bull market. um you know during this downturn like really over the last if you go back a year you could spend as much money on marketing as you wanted whether it's digital campaigns or mailouts or whatever uh interviews all of those sorts of things um and that wouldn't be reflected in your share price at all so there's a sort of balance there I suppose what we're seeing now is that there is a return to bang forbuck for marketing you see an improvement in share share price so it's sort of you know muddling your way along trying to sort of weave your way through the path and figure out, you know, what's the best approach, but always with a very cautious eye on the bottom line. >> When I did uh my introduction here, I I joked about it. Should companies maybe spend a little bit more money on, you know, more expensive dinners for strategics so that you can maybe get the actual big bucks in. Is that something you have to spend money on or more money on during bull markets? >> No. No, I don't think so. Although, you know what I can tell you is that some, you know, other costs go up. We've got a slew of companies going up to Popppler in the NE over the next month. Um, so you've got to fly all of those people up there and pay for all of that. No, you don't spend more money on dinner. Although I do notice that Neil and Nikki Ads Head have got that uh you know they've taken I think it was an Aussie company that came up with the resource clock cycle and they put inside that um you know the quality of swag goes up. When you start seeing people wearing Arcterics jackets for junior companies is probably a good time to sell. >> Yeah. All right. So, what kind of Visa Copper merch are we going to see sometime soon? >> Oh, yeah. That's a good question. We're sort of trying to avoid it. The um the uh Visa Silver, though, I can tell you we've got a wicked line of merch. You know, Mike Connet, the CEO there, my business partner, he um he he's got a sort of, you know, skating background. So, I think we've got some of the coolest merch and it's not expensive cuz it's, you know, generic clothing printed to look sort of uh, you know, skate skate brand cool. Um uh yeah, not not Arcterics or Patagonia jackets. And I can tell you I'd never put anything on a Patagonia jacket ever again. Those guys hate mining and they hate oil and gas. They're not our people. All right, just coming out of our backtoback meetings. I think six or so some impromptu meetings, which cool as well. Nothing to be filmed though. Unfortunately, uh some of you guys are coming to shake my hand, which is really cool. Is always very welcomed. And now I'm going to be talking to Darren Clink. He's a president at Aerys Minerals. They're about a $100 million copper exploration company with assets in Kazakhstan. They've also got plenty of money right now. I went there on site to see the projects as well. So, Kofkov, wink wink. Go and watch that movie if you haven't yet. Uh, but yeah, will what they're doing right now and and the drilling success that they've had in Kazakhstan, is that going to change the way they spend money? Well, hopefully I'll find out. All right, Darren, I want to talk to you about spending shareholder capital and how you do that efficiently, specifically during a bull market because things could be different. What do you think is going to be the best value for ARIS shareholders? Um, what do you Yeah. What are you going to pay me on? >> You know, I think you still have to be very meticulous and and sharp um about what you're doing. I mean, is, you know, just because it's maybe easier to come by and and companies are raising more money doesn't mean you need to be spending it. Um but but no doubt I think when you've got more eyes on the screens and more you know more groups are paying attention and we're seeing that here you know at the conference where we've got a lot more um investor a lot more sort of interest then it's also your time to you know add extra drills and get more results out and kind of push those projects forward where you know couple 3 years ago you kind of want to hunker down and and and protect your your share structure I think right so for sure >> so you think it's it's more drilling that you're going to be spending money on it's not going to be more expensive dinners with tech or something like that. >> Well, to to be honest, tech normally pays the bill and they're not normally that expensive. >> No, absolutely not. I mean, you you definitely want to have the word out. I mean, I I think there's you got to differentiate yourself and, you know, there's hundreds of companies here for sure. So, you have to make sure that you're communicating clearly and uh and differentiating what you're doing, particularly when you've got, you know, real projects and and you're, you know, making real gains. Um, but at the end of the day, it's the results that are going to push things along, right? And um and so I think yeah, we're heading into a good spot here now. I think you know the world needs more copper. The world seems to be really interested in precious metals uh at the moment and um you know it's a finite resource, right? It's hard to find these things. So >> yeah, in your case specifically, what's interesting to me as well is that Kazakhstan is getting gaining popularity. So you see more and more companies coming in there. And so I'm thinking are you going to have to pay more money to your staff to retain talent in that case? Uh for two things, bull market and also just more interest. So, and specifically for your local staff, but also maybe talk about management and and sort of your your VP of X and and so on. Do you think you're going to have to spend more money on uh staff and management? >> Yeah, I think you know, Aerys is pretty competitive. You know, like obviously we try and strive and get, you know, really good people. I I think um you you know, we're arguably an employer of choice. Uh you know, where we're at in Ecubast and and in Kazakhstan, we've got some great people that are all sort of on the on the same team rowing in the same direction. And so we, you know, we strive, of course, when it comes to compensation and and incentives, of course, to make sure that we're fair and equitable and and making sure everybody wants to row in the same direction and be successful. So, uh, yeah, I I don't see that as being an issue. I think definitely when you get into marketplaces where there's more there's more work happening, um, you know, and and of course that could be anywhere, then you're you're going to see more pinch on, you know, technical stuff. But, you know, Kazakhstan's done a great job. I think um there's a lot of great geological schools, mining engineering schools, and it's something actually that we don't have in the west as much. There's not as many kids and students over the last 10 or 15 years that are growing up and want to be mining engineers. It's starting to change. Um but in places like Kazakhstan, that is a very well, you know, sought after career, very respected career, and there's some great schools, and we've got a great team of of Kazak sort of professionals um that are trained in Kazakhstan and are doing great work at Aerys. >> What about lobbying? Is that something that that's going to start forming in Kazakhstan? Do you think you might have to spend any money on on lobbying for, I don't know, government grants or or anything related to permits or anything just jurisdiction wise? You know, the government's our biggest, you know, proponent and supporter. Um, so yeah, I think again we're we're fortunate. We're not having to kind of try to convince anyone that this is a good thing to do. I mean, they're they're telling us this is a good thing to do and encouraging us to find things and then asking us when are you going to build a mine? So, uh, yeah, there's not too much for lobbying. There's a lot of team approach partnerships with, you know, our government partners and, um, different than some jurisdictions where you still got to kind of convince folks that this is needed and and it's a good thing. >> When are you going to build that mine early yet? Let's let's try and find some big deposits and then we'll figure that out. >> Are you going to have to raise any money anytime soon? How much money do you have right now? How far does that get you? >> No. So, we're um we're in great shape actually. I mean, Kazakhstan's one of the lowest cost jurisdictions in the world. So, um it's uh it's very different than if you've got helicopters zinging around and and having to, you know, spend thousands of dollars an hour on on moving things around using uh aircraft. Uh we've got between 15 and $16 million Canadian in the bank and we're well financed to do all the programs we're doing this year and and well into the back end of next year. So, no, we're in good shape. It's it's a great place to be in and I think you know we've had really good support from our shareholders and they continue to support us and they want us to keep going and and keep finding things. So yeah. >> Right. So next up is probably one of the most interesting interviews actually from this conference cuz I'm talking to EMX Royalty and they've recently proposed a pretty interesting deal with Elemental Altus. I don't think we're going to have time to deep dive on that, but I know Dave and I will be sitting down for uh hopefully Fred too for a deep dive sometime soon. As always, all questions are welcome to put them in the comments here or just message me or or wherever you can find me. But now I'm going to go and talk to Dave and see what he's going to be spending shareholders capital on. All right, Dave, you're probably my most interesting interview right now. And I'm not saying this to flatter you, but it's because after the merger that you're doing now with Elemental, it's probably going to change the answer to the question. And and the question is, how do you spend shareholders capital during a bull market so that you can generate the the most out of it essentially? And with you with that scale, what do you do? Do you do do you do more deals, more marketing? What is it that you're going to be spending money on? >> So, a suit allocation at capital is the most important thing that we do, right? And historically, EMX royalty and and going forward with uh Elemental Royalty Corporation, our business model will be the same and that is certainly we love gold and gold's in a bull market, but it's only recently been in a bull market with respect to how the stock prices have moved, right? And um but to to to really dive in on the question, we also love copper, we love lead, zinc, silver, malibdum. We're across the metal space. That gives us multiple uh bull and bare market curves to work with. We like to take advantage of downturns in the market to acquire prospective mineral rights part and partial to our royalty generation business and then sell those in times when capital flows are strong such as they are right now. And then with respect to um purchasing existing royalties, we've been more active on the copper side of recent because those have have traded uh at valuations more palatable to us. We like to think we're the value players on the block. That being said, we're always, you know, desperately trying to turn over stones to find assets to buy at reasonable prices. That same ethos will carry forward in the merge co as well. >> Okay. Uh would you have to market differently though? I I I imagine you sort of your your competition just changed. I mean, you used to have other competitors and now you've kind of leveled up essentially. So, will you have to match their marketing spend in order to stay, you know, top of mind for investors? That's an interesting question. So, our market cap will essentially double with this with this uh merger and um there will be forced index buying because we now be uh you know put into different indexes around the world, which is good. That's a good thing. um that will um drive becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Actually, with respect to marketing specifically, I might be naive, but I think to some degree it's actually a little bit simpler because now we're a billion dollar market cap company. More people, more banks will do analytical work on us and advertise on our behalf at no cost to us. Not that not that we're not going to go out and do marketing ourselves, but it does change the equation from that perspective. And I'm happy to admit that, you know, it'll be a learning curve for us to take in the lay of the land and think about what will work best. >> What about retaining talent? I know that's a big thing as well in in specifically mining definitely within the royalty space. Do you think you're going to have to pay higher salaries or offer better packages for your staff in order to attract and retain better talent? >> Yeah, I think that salaries will inch up over time as they have throughout my career. Um, I'm not particularly worried about that right now because we are merging and EMX had uh trimmed our staff a bit prior to this merger as had Elemental. Um, and I think that the bringing together of those two teams are very synergistic with respect to past experience base and educational and what our skill sets are. It merges together really well, which is why we've been discussing this possibility with Elemental for nearly two years. and uh just got a huge amount of respect for David Baker and Fred Bell and and the and really looking forward to working with Juan Centuri who's our chairman now or chairman of the incipient company. I think that there's excellent synergies there. I'm not worried about hiring new people. Just want to make sure that I keep these strong players, A+ players from both sides together working efficiently to create value. Right. So, it's the beginning of day three now. I am kicking it off early on with a um meeting that I'll do with Matt Manson. He's the CEO of Rison Mining. They're 20 call it $20 million gold developer with a historically producing asset in Quebec's Abby Tibby Greenstone belt. I know they'll be doing a lot of drilling. I think they have about $50 million in cash if I'm not mistaken or had during their last uh or at the end of their last quarter. I'll be asking Matt about that though. And the question is really what are they going to be spending that money on? I suppose there's going to be a lot of drilling in there, but is it infill? Is it stepout? Is there anything else in between? So, yeah, let's go and talk to Matt. All right, Matt, I want to talk to you about spending shareholder capital during a bull market specifically because a lot of money does get wasted during bull market. So, how do you make sure you're not doing that? How do you what do you spend your money on so that it it it's worth it for the shareholders? >> Well, I think about 90 or 95% of our money right now is spent on drilling. So, you know, we we're doing a big 50 to 60,000 meter drill program and uh I think that's the best use of capital in a bull market. I think that's what you know investors are looking for stories that have quality and that are have momentum and are going somewhere and and um you know companies can raise capital raise capital efficiently in the bull market and the best use of that capital is very much putting it into the ground. So, so um we've uh you know we've done recently a PEA. So we did spend a little bit of money on engineering and consultants and and uh and uh environmental baseline work has started as well but but predominantly for us it's still at this stage uh drilling in the ground. >> Yeah. Talk to me a little bit more about why you think that is because 95% still means that maybe you don't have that much money left for marketing and in a bull market everyone's trying to be super loud with their marketing. So how do you stand out in that case? Is it just the news releases and delivering on the business objectives or Yeah. How do how do you stand out? >> Well, you know, do you you know, I think if any mining company is spending a material proportion of its annual budget on marketing, um no offense, um you know, cuz this is this is the world you're in. Um you know, something's wrong probably there, right? Um so, uh everything's a balance, right? You don't want to have no presence. You know, we do a lot of uh of online, uh interviews like this one I'm having right now. Um we we uh we get out in the roads as much as we can. We come to things like this. So we are spending money on marketing. Um but at the end of the day I think the people we are marketing to want to see you spending money on the business right and the core business and the core business for us are Rison at this stage in our development and with the success we're having with the drilling and the core business is drilling for sure. >> Yeah. What about retaining staff and maybe maybe taking on new staff as you're moving into this development phase here? Would you have to spend more money on on staff and management so that you have the right people to keep pushing the asset forward? >> Yeah, that's for sure. And that's that's part of our go forward. We're actually hiring right now. We're adding a couple of key people in the um uh uh we're looking at bulking up a little bit on the engineering side. We're looking at bulking up a little bit on the environments and community side. Um and that's with a view because our business has got to the stage where with this pea out we're now giving the directional guidance to the market as to where we think our project is going. So on one hand we're still drilling. We're still making the old body bigger. We're having great success below the old minor obine the O'Brien project we're talking about of course and below the resource. Recent drill results are showing again we're pushing that resource down. So we're making the project bigger. But with the the first engineering study with the pea, we're we're showing that path that lies ahead of us, the best way to develop the project. So we've already started now moving that ball down the field uh uh towards project development and at this stage that means yeah putting in the right people for sure, right? And I've done this before and I think having the right team in place early on is important. So we're a small team at Rison and it's been a team that's been primarily focused on geology exploration um the logistics of our business. Um uh but yeah I think at this stage uh bringing in the right people uh is very important and of course this has been a chronic challenge in the mining business for a long time now is uh is is is people is HR right is having uh the right people at the right time dedicated to the mission. Um we have a chronic shortage of professionals in the mining business at every level of the business I think right. So u getting ahead of that issue early on is important. When I did my intro here just a couple of days ago, I joked about it. Oh, our company's going to spend more money on more expensive dinners with strategics because everyone's trying to get the strategics to look at their projects, especially during a bull market. Is that something you're going to go after? Essentially lobbying with some of the bigger companies. Is that something you want to spend some money on? >> I don't know if it's a question of lobbying uh with the bigger companies. Um and and the junior companies really pay for the dinners, by the way. So, we're we're saving shareholder uh you know, capital that way. Um uh no I look I think I think uh everybody knows everybody else right the senior companies have a mandate they've all got corporate development teams here right and they've got a mandate to keep tabs on what's happening with the smaller companies and with the projects that are coming up and so there's there's there's there's constant dialogue and engagement um at events like this but also regularly outside of events like this right um so and We all know each other, right? And in many cases, people have worked together at other companies. There's a lot of familiarity. So, it doesn't really the engagement between companies doesn't take the form of expensive dinners and lobbying efforts, right? It's uh you know, Joel, how's it how's it going? You know, I want to get cash up in what you're doing and uh let's take some time and uh and in many cases, of course, a lot of these companies will have NDAs and they'll have due diligence processes going on. There'll be major companies keeping tabs regularly through data rooms on what these companies are doing. That is a culture within the within the mining business for sure. And a lot of that's going on in the background that you don't see, right? Um uh but a lot of it you are seeing here because all these companies have corporate development teams and they're all going in and out of different meetings. >> Yeah. How much money do you have right now? How far is that going to get you? When's the next time you're raising capital? >> Exactly 14.9 million at the end of June, end of our second quarter. And that's a healthy treasury. Uh we did a financing in May that was very successful. Uh stock price has doubled since our financing more than doubled. Um and that will be that gives us uh fully funds our drill program that 50 to 60,000 m you know well into next year. Right. So we got heads down right now on the drilling four rigs going. We could do more. I mean we're very encouraged by the progress of the project. We could we could easily double that and really go hammer and tongs with the project at this stage. but diligent for rigs, these deep holes, pushing the resource down and and well financed to do that um you know going forward. >> All right, so just coming out of my meeting with uh Matt. Interesting talk, but I'm headed straight into another meeting in just a couple of minutes here where I'm going to be talking to Jeff Swenogga of Exploits Discovery. They now have assets in Quebec and Ontario, but they're also currently trying to transact their Newf Finland assets into New Found Gold. About a 10 million market cap company. So, as you can imagine, capital is not self-explanatory there. Although, if that deal goes through, there might be more liquidity. And so, they got to have to figure out a way to spend that money efficiently. So, let's go and talk to Jeff and see what he wants to do with the money. All right, Jeeoff, I want to talk to you about uh not wasting shareholders capital during a bull market essentially. How do you do that? What do you spend your money on to make it worth it? And and especially in your case because you've had a bit of a restructuring right now. So, talk to me about that. >> Well, well, thanks Antonio. Honestly, you're doing a great job. Keep it up. Uh for us, we've had a quite a tra trans transformation over the last um five months. We picked up uh almost 700,000 ounces of gold and we've also um u monetized our new fing claims new found gold. So in terms of you know gold prices going up, you know, we've got new properties. Uh we're putting new people uh like we just hired Natalie, a great go loves the Hawin project in Ontario. So in terms of saving money, I I think what we're looking to do is accelerate these projects. And actually we did this non-dilutive um you call it like a financing by monetizing our our Newf Finland uh properties and that gave us you know an overall value of the deal is about $10 million in my opinion because we have that 1% NSR. So so we're really getting things going. We we've been setting the stage for a uh a high gold price and actually getting gold ounces in the ground. Like we talked 5 months ago we would have no gold resources because we had lots of gold zones in Newf Finland. But now we're very fortunate to be in a situation where shareholders can participate with a rising newfound uh share price uh rising gold price and also we're we've restructured our team to your point about reducing cost to make sure that we're doing the relevant programs that make sense for each of the projects and and and we do have the question we do get is how are you going to manage four projects now? All right. So it's going to be very important how we allocate capital and do we have the right people on the job to do the right programs like we're doing we're not drilling yet. We will be drilling hopefully soon in the fall, but putting in uh programs for example like geohysical programs to really understand where these anomalies are and where those characteristics line up with existing resources. So so that's not that expensive but it's very important to kind of understand uh the geology first, right? So so we want to do that first and then we want to start drilling at some point. How do you manage that ratio there between what you spend on the project and what you spend on the corporate stuff uh retaining talent as well as telling the story? >> Yeah. No, great question. And and for us being in in transformation, I like to think of it as new exploits or exploits 2.0. Uh so we do have to get out there and tell the story. Like right now, if you look at our ProForm cash and treasury with the shares we've got from Newfound coming soon, uh it's about 101 million and our market cap's only 910 million. So there's a valuation gap right there. We're getting no credit for almost having a million ounces in these uh well historic ounces uh in these projects. So it's our job to get out there start telling the story doing interviews like this for example you know is very important. So we do have to spend money to to communication you know to shareholders get out there and talk to people going to Beaver Creek for example. Um and so it is a lot of work to do that but the key thing is putting money in the ground like you said and making sure that we're not just drilling in areas that just to drill the current resource. You know what I'm saying? because there could be something bigger and better out there, a long strike or down deep, right? You want to make sure that uh we're not just building ounces to say we've got, you know, instead of 700,000, we've got a million ounces, but you know what? We want to make sure that we're going into a multi-million ounce um exploration company. That's what our goal is. >> Yeah. How much money do you have right now? When's the next time you're going to be tapping into the markets? >> Yeah. No, great question. Um last reported we got 3.6 million, all hard dollars. uh the valuation of this newfound deal is about 10 in total but uh $7 million in new found shares another 1.8 if we deliver certain claims so still proform of about 10 million uh and but we do have to have a shareholder vote for it and we do have a hold period for about 4 months afterwards so um right now 3.6 6 million which is great. Um and that'll be useful for us and then we'll get into um what we do next year with shares. >> On the topic of talent and raising capital, what is your um staff compensation going to be tied to staff and management? Is it having raised capital? Is it tied to your share price? What are your KPIs there? >> Yeah. No. Um mostly it's um for key people that um like Natalie for example, uh she's a great PhD. U she was actually the former VPX for the company that had the Hawkins Project in Ontario. This is a 60 km land pack which is big, right? So having someone super smart like that. Uh she's on retainer. She doesn't have an hourly rate as well. So it's variable that way. Uh we also have a person Mark Rich Christian working on our Quebec properties. Uh he's on retainer as well, but also variable with respect to uh per hour. So as things gear up, uh they will get paid more. And as uh if we do have a loss for whatever reason, then we could pay less. Yeah. So we can that's kind of the new structure going forward for us. We want to be highly efficient, do smart exploration, and deliver a lot of value for our shareholders. >> All right, so I've actually had uh about an hour and a half to just chill in the sun, go to the pool, have a cocktail. No, I'm just kidding. I've had four coffees and non-stop shaking of hands in the last hour or so, but that means I'm ready to go and talk to Mr. Andrew Chub of Awali Resources. They're a $60 million gold explorer with assets in Code Devoir. They recently got some money from Fortuna Mining, which is an interesting deal given that they rarely take equity positions, but that means they're cashed up. And my question is, what are they going to be spending that money on? Is it the 100% stuff? Is it something else in in between? So, yeah, let's go and talk to Andrew Chub of Allian Resources. All right, Andrew, I want to talk to you about uh spending and essentially not wasting shareholders capital during a bull market. What does that look like for you? What are you going to be spending money on so that it goes to good use? Um for us it's all about um I guess breaking away from being seen as a joint venture company. So we've got lots of other we've two/3s of our project is actually 100% a while. So we're deploying our capital into our 100% ground and uh looking to make discoveries on the 100% ground in the new year. So we're in a in a uh target generation phase. We've just flown mag. We've done stream sediments and we'll be compiling that data towards the end of this month. Then building targets and where the budget we've got set aside is to drill at least or the best six targets uh in the new year. >> What what is that budget and what's the split going to be between money going into the 100% stuff versus uh money being spent on the corporate stuff? So GNA marketing and everything else. >> Yeah. Okay. So we we've got an $8 million budget and between now and the end of 2026 and the bulk of that goes in is in the ground. So more than 6 million is going into the ground and uh so yeah that's that's how it is and we've got a we've already got a $15 million treasury so this is Canadian dollars and so you know we're not we're in a comfortable position at the moment. Um, we're we we've got support from Fortuna and that's where we're deploying the money that Fortuna put into the company is into that 100% ground >> and that's you deciding where the money goes then or is it does Fortuna get a C or does anybody else get a se into where you spend a while's money on? >> Um, no. We've got a tech committee with uh with Fortuna but effectively that's for us to keep them informed of how we're deploying the money. So, we've proven that we know what we're doing in the district. We've made we've made multiple discoveries and our neurology is the discoveries that we have made within the joint venture. So, we've got high confidence that we'll be doing the same thing in our 100% ground. >> Are you going to have to uh take on or find more talent to take on? So, so new staff or do you expect having to pay higher paychecks in order to um retain current talent? >> That that's something that does happen in a bull market. Um, look, we have got an excellent team and we work well together and we've got a really good culture. So, I always want to look after our people. Um, and but I, you know, so but in a bull market that can happen. So, you know, salary levels can can sort of reset during that time. Um, we've already increased team to make sure that we can still operate the joint venture which is becoming very much more of a brownfields kind of play. there's going to be a lot of uh resource development drilling on the joint venture, but we've now got our green fields team and and they are, you know, dedicated to to discovery and then we've got a brownfields team which is dedicated to more feasibility kind of work and looking to put out our first resources uh towards Q2 next year. >> What about upper management? Is is is your guys' paychecks going to be going to be tied to any specific KPIs like the share price or a new discovery in the 100% stuff or something like that? >> Yeah. So, um the so opt so new options and and RSUs and things like that. Um the ones there are ones coming out soon and they're going to be tied to our first two mill the first two million ounces that that we uh we have as a company and it it is us that's discovered that 2 million ounces and people deserve to be rewarded for that because it's that's significant right. So that's a really big thing for us. So that's that's what they're going to be tied to. >> Kivor is about to have elections not too long um in the future from now. Do you expect a change in government and would that mean you having to spend maybe more money on lobbying or something like that? >> Um, no. Look, I I you know, sure there's going to be an election, but you know, our regulatory framework, we don't envisage that any any of that changing. So, it's just stays status quo. Um, and and we let the election happen. That that that goes through and but it shouldn't it's not going to affect our business or any of that regulatory framework. >> Okay. you don't expect having to spend uh money on better dinners now that you have two large companies working with you? >> Um no, I think we just uh uh operate the same way. Like uh one thing that we've proven and and it's one of the things that we got the feedback from when Fortuna came in, one of the key things that their team came back to us with is they were extremely impressed with what we had managed to do with the budgets that we had. So we we really get a lot of bang for our buck because we put all that work into geology and making sure that when we're spending the big bucks on drilling that the targeting's really done well. So you know that's that was really nice feedback to get from Fortuna. >> One of the uh criticisms I suppose that I've seen about a is the speed of the assays. Is it something that you can do? Could could you pay more money and and get quicker assays? Because again bull markets are all about speed. So is that something you can influence? So look the there is only a few results that we haven't got right now. We've actually published most of the results. So every now and then something in any system something might fall over and with our things the the the multi-element uh samples um the the the system just fell over and it just fell over badly and it's take it's we've had to send new pulps and do do things and and so that just it just happened to us. that might have happened to another uh you know another company and not happened to us this time. It just happened to us. And so you know we we build good relationships with our service providers and and we continue to do so. Yes, you can pay more to rush samples if you need to, but generally we've had a good turnaround time. Like so all throughout this year we've generally had a good turnaround time. We've been publishing results as we said we would. It's just right at the end of the of that of that drill campaign. Um the we've just had a it's just fallen over. So, but it'll it'll all pick up again and be fine. So, we've got we've got the RC results coming through for for like what we call the BBM satellites and then it looks like the deep drilling that we've done the turnaround is on target. So, so we'll yeah we'll keep putting out results and it's all okay. Well, on the topic of operationally, I know you recently spent some money on on uh getting your own lab on site uh up and and and going. Is that all is the cost made or do you expect having made any more expenses on that one to get it? >> No. So, that's that's that's that cost is done and and we've actually just spent the last 6 months optimizing that process, right? So, you know, it's new equipment. We need to understand and have confidence in what we're we're seeing with it. So we've actually done cross analysis between it and the lab and and how long we need to roll the samples for and do that. So we've been optimizing the system. We're now comfortable with the system so it's ready to come into its own when we when we're launching into our 100% uh 100% ground. So yeah, that's that's going to be good for us moving forward. Don't forget everyone that it's not an accredited lab. It's for our internal use to accelerate things and move them faster and also pre-select samples that actually do go to the lab. So, we still need to send samples to the lab as well. Um, it's just for accelerating our our expiration process. All right. I didn't have much success filming um many of the last couple of meetings. I had a bit of a break in between lunch and everything. It's basically the end of day three now and I'm going to go and talk to Kutney Silver. They're about up 100 million. call it 115 120 uh market cap company, Silver Explorerico with assets in uh Mexico and they're moving along with that asset. Um yeah, it'll be interesting to see what they're going to be spending the money on given the fact that they're in Mexico, right? So maybe a bit of political lobbying, maybe something else in between and hopefully it's all small. So uh let's go and talk to him. Right, Ken, I want to talk to you about spending shareholders capital during a bull market, which I know you've been through a couple of those. So what's the most efficient use of shareholder capital? How do you make sure you're not wasting money during a bull market? >> And Antonio, that's a a great question. And uh uh given our current environment, I still think we're at the beginning of this market uh in the early stages. Uh but as for spending shareholder money, uh Coupney did a financing in June. We announced 12 million. Uh we quickly raised that to a 20 million bot deal. And uh with those funds, we're looking to spend uh the money in the ground. and that'll be at Cola. We have a 50,000 m drill program planned. Uh Columba has 54 million ounce resource, silver resource. Uh and it is our prime uh focus is Colomba. We're drilling 50,000 mters. Uh so spending the money is important. Put it in the ground is where you want to go. >> What are you thinking in terms of ratio between how much goes into the ground versus what you spend on running the company? Exploration versus administration essentially. Well, you want to run as a lean a team as possible. We we have a small office in Vancouver. Uh really staffed by two or three uh individuals uh primarily our finance side. Uh Jim McDonald works out of Calgary and also is down in Mexico the majority of the time. And our group in Mexico uh is out of Hermaceio and also out of Chihuahua. So uh the focus is uh men on the ground spending money men and women uh spending money in the ground uh on a yearly basis. Our company has been around Cney has been around for over 20 years. We've raised $160 million. Uh we've spent uh at any given time on grassroots exploration uh 500 to a million dollars a year in grassroots. Uh but when you have flagship properties like Colomba, Alanra, Promontorio and Las Sagara, we have four major projects in Mexico that consist of more than 325 million ounces of silver equivalent. Uh 200 million ounces of silver, pure silver. So spending the money in the ground is critical and uh that's what we've done over the years. Seems like the winner is sending us some kind of a message. Let's move uh let's move around the corner and continue the conversation. All right. Well, now that we're uh in and away from the elements, I suppose uh I wanted to talk to you about uh yeah, just continuing the conversation about what are you going to be spending shareholders capital on to make it worth your while and and that ratio between exploration and administration. Why I ask you about that is because I'm wondering are you going to have to spend more money on uh staff so that you can retain attract and retain talent because maybe there's better paid opportunities during a bull market for your geologists or even some of your some of your management. Is that something you want to spend more money on? >> Well, we'll always increase the staff when it requires such as uh um Cola, the drilling. Uh we've got two active rigs right now. We have 50 men on site, men and women. And uh in order to increase the drilling, that's going to require additional staff. But our core team that's been with us for well over 15 years plus, uh we involve them in every aspect of the company. we each uh employee and each member of the team is involved in uh in options uh restricted shares and and DSUs as they would call them. So we give everyone a little taste and a little bit of a interest so they feel the ownership of of the company and and that's important and uh we haven't had a difficulties retaining staff and in fact uh um led by Jim McDonald um the staff uh are extremely happy with his leadership. Uh he's constantly on the ground in Mexico and also in Canada. >> Yeah. Talk to me maybe a little bit more about how you reward staff and and management and again specifically with that idea of a bull market. Are the are the KPIs going to change? Are you are you going to, you know, pay better bonuses for better share price performance or something relative to your resource or something like that? Well, I think as a company does better, the majority of incentives uh with a publicly traded company are are in the market and uh and those are all publicly released uh uh incentive plans and uh as we uh advance the projects as we have more success as an example cola 54 million ounces in the ground we're drilling now we feel that we can double that resource that's going to increase it by potentially up to 100 million ounces Plus, uh the market is going to react. Uh the share price will increase and uh employees and team members all benefit, >> right? Uh what about marketing? Uh bull markets are notoriously loud and noisy when it comes on to marketing uh especially within venture capital. Is that something you plan on spending more money on this year? >> Well, I think we've always been out marketing and and our approach is to get out in person uh to go to the various events. We're at Beaver Creek this week. uh we attend many of the mining conferences that involve uh industry uh specialists uh fund managers and investors and so on. Uh so this is a continual project and uh activity and and again that's led by Jim McDonald, Raj Kang and uh others in the in the management. Uh is there is there something else that you think you might have to do in terms of lobbying uh specifically being in Mexico? I understand it's underground and not an open pit and that's where most of the challenges are right now. But you think you might have to spend money lobbying in in Mexico. >> Well, uh again I'll speak to our leadership. Jim McDonald's has been in Mexico for over 25 years. Uh started his career uh in in Mexico with various projects. Uh most notably National Gold which merged together with Alamos. They developed the Mattus project, put it into production. Uh so Jim has uh a lot of experience. We were meeting with some uh Mexican representatives today, one of the major mining companies that also uh puts together a conference uh a special conference in Chihuahua where we're working with with Colombia. Uh and at that meeting just an hour ago, they invited Jim to come down and speak and be a key keynote speaker to talk about uh our project uh the success we're having and uh the involvement of of all the team members in Mexico and Chihuahua and also Sonora where we're we're stationed. >> Speaking of u money and spending capital, how much money do you have right now? When do you think the next time is going to be the you might have to tap the market? >> Well, as I mentioned, we did a financing in June. We announced 12 million. We went to 20 million. We're sitting on approximately 19 million currently. We have 7.5 million worth of warrants that are in the money right now. And I would expect that those will be exercised over the next couple months. Uh so we're looking at somewhere in around 25 million plus. uh with a program that's fully funded and uh expectations that uh we'll hit 100 million ounces of silver on on one project. That'll push our overall resource up to 375 million to 400 million uh if we're successful. And we expect uh all the success in the world. All right, it is uh day four. I'm I'm tired, boss. We're averaging 30,000 steps actually. I was looking at that. normally don't look at that type of thing, but it's um tiresome, but happy happy that anyone wants to talk to me. Um and I'm going to be talking to King Fisher Metals here first with Dustin Perry. They're um copper gold explorer Co with um a big land package in the Golden Triangle, British Columbia. I visited the project this uh summer. So, wink wink cough cough again. If you haven't watched that, go watch that. They just had some assay results. So, is that going to change how they spend money during this bull market? Let's go and find out. All right, Dustin, I want to talk to you about spending shareholder capital during bull markets. What is it that you're going to be spending your money on so that essentially it doesn't get wasted because bull markets are notoriously the perfect breeding ground for inefficiencies. So, how do you avoid those? >> Well, luckily, I've spent almost my entire career in a bare market. So, I don't think it's actually going to change anything. Uh, you know, we're still going to it's not going to change the way we explore. Obviously, we might have more access to capital, but it's we're not going to go dilute more at a at the same price or whatever, you know, like we're going to take like lower cost of capital. Sure, we'll spend more, but it's not going to change the meth like the methodology we go about. Still going to be systematic. Um, yeah, I don't think it's going to change anything. Like, we've been very aggressive during a bare market and if we hadn't been, we wouldn't have the ground we had today. M well shouldn't it change something? Shouldn't you maybe be spending, I don't know, more money on retaining talent or or finding finding people who might have better paid opportunities elsewhere and and and you just make sure you keep them because again that's that's kind of the lifeblood of this. >> Well, that's what we did last year. We we kind of didn't spend a ton on exploration. We worked on tying up ground and building the team to set us up for now. Uh so we do have an incredible team and if the scale of the company increases we will look to scale that up as well and luckily in BC you know between our whole network we we know a lot of people and we're respected for what we're doing. Uh there's not a lot of companies that are doing this type of systematic exploration. So I think we can retain more talent. Um yeah it's a it's a thing you'll scale up when needed but right now we are fully capable of handling the type of work we're doing which is still pretty aggressive expiration. >> What do you mean by if the scale of the company changes? Uh is that did you you I mean are you planning what expanding it or are you talking about better intercepts or what are we talking about? Yeah, all the above. You know, like if if you've got more access to capital, uh, and good capital at a higher price, um, you know, with a better market with good results, all the above. uh if we have more ground, all these var variables, uh you might need more people, but right now it's not a huge, you know, we're forward thinking on all of this obviously and and it's we and trust me, last night my VPX and I were talking about different people who we might want to poach in the future. Um and uh it's always in the back of your head, but immediately there's no need to do anything different. And if we do need to, I I'm confident we can pull it off. >> Yeah. Do you think uh you might have to spend more money on community relations during a a bull market just simply because others might? >> Um well I think we're already ahead of the curve on that. Uh as of I I gave a pres presentation to the tel 10 first nation which is our indigenous partner. We're entirely within Tel 10 territory. uh give a presentation uh at the MEBC roundup last year and uh up until that point 78% of our expend I think 78 76 78% of our expiration expenditures had gone into Tel 10 companies uh which was higher than tech resources >> uh marginally but it was higher and uh you know we've we've got expiration agreements with them we we're very good about being transparent monthly updates with detailed information um you know we've we've brought on Paul Gruner who is formerly the CEO of the Talon Nation Development Corp. on our board. So, that's one place I I would hope that we're not going to make any missteps uh where a lot of other groups probably will. Uh we are in a changing climate as especially in BC. Uh but it's great being in Talan territory. They're a very educated and sophisticated group and you know, we've done what we can to foster a good relationship and I hope it will continue. Would any of the KPIs have to change or any of the uh how should I put yeah when you decide to spend money would any of those thresholds have to change whether it's on staff or or on just operationally the business or on community relations would any of that change? Would you for example reward staff for different reasons based on the share price instead of geology or or vice versa? >> Um there's a lot of factors that go into that. Uh you definitely want to retain people. Um and it's all those things depend on your cash position. Um what you think your future cash position will be, how your company does relative to others, but also the progress you're making on the project, running a program safely, like all the above. Um it's a difficult question to answer, but uh the key is you do need to retain good talent and treat them well. And uh expiration is about a team. like it is if one person isn't there, it it's not going to work. You know, every every there's a lot of key people involved. >> On the topic of how much money you think you might have, how much money are you going to have when the program is done, which I I think it's either coming to an end or it has been ended already. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, we'll we'll put out an update uh about the end of the program uh next week uh with a couple updates on our final holes. Uh last hole was a longest hole the program into into Hank. I'm pretty excited about that. So, will be good to provide some context for that. Um, I I believe we'll have around 2 million at year's end and a lot of news flow going through the winter and we've already we've had warrant money coming in, so I haven't even accounted for that in my math. Um, but yeah, we'll be in a healthy position and everybody I've talked to here who's a shareholder is really happy with what's happening. Um, you know, it's we've been able to amass a very large project and a very soughtafter district uh for low a low valuation >> and we've really de-rised it this year and I'm really advanced it and um there's still a lot of news to come but I'm also really excited for how we will keep going through the years on this project. Hope hopefully not that many years though. >> How many years? >> Like my goal is a like a two to three year kind of time frame to to find something very significant. Um, and that's, you know, we we we we're in a pretty good direction right now. Um, but part of why we did so much screening across the project is you never know where your best area is going to be. Um, I think our focus is going to be in the that Hank Williams area, but uh there's a lot of other irons in the fire and uh yeah, things are look I'm I'm very pleased with how the program went. >> All right. I'm uh on my way for my uh last meeting, well, last official meeting for the conference. There's going to be lunches and dinners after that. There's a October Fest in Vale apparently. So, I'll go to that. You might see some footage of that, although I doubt it. But before that, I'll be talking to Alan Set of Motes Meadows. There is $75 million copper explorer on the border between Chile and Argentina in the Vikunia district, so close to Fileo as well. For people who followed my previous conversations with Alan, you would know that they're about to be drilling sometime soon hopefully. Uh, and uh, does that mean they're going to be spending more money on telling the story while they're drilling or are they going to be doing something else? Do they need more people, more lobbying? Let's go and find out. All right, Alan, I want to talk to you about spending shareholder capital during bull markets specifically. What do you spend it on so that it doesn't get wasted? >> Well, the main thing to spend it on is obviously your core activity which is exploration. You know it's been 3 years of the market I would say two years at least of the market not rewarding you know good exploration work you know particularly drilling now that the market is rewarding drilling >> that's what you got to do >> you got to go what you know do the thing that will generate the most value for your shareholders and I think that's what it is >> when are you going to be drilling >> we're going to start drilling in probably middle of October it's possible that it slips because of weather but that's our plan at the moment >> are you going to need to take on new staff or or pay better salaries to current staff and management so that you know during b markets there might be better paid opportunities elsewhere. So would you have to pay them give them more money or incentivize them in a different way? It's not other companies we're competing against. We have a very good culture. We've had our staff for 3 years and they're they're very strong technically and they know the project well. So we've bolstered the the group with some very good exploration geologists uh and and one one a senior addition as well to the team to get ready for this moment. The problem with us is more inflation that we have to counteract and exchange rate dynamics and so we have had to increase a bit of pay in in country but nothing egregious. >> Yeah. >> Would you have to spend more money on marketing and I know you and I have been talking about that before as well but now that it's a bull market everyone's trying to be loud. >> Are you going to have to spend more money on marketing? >> Your favorite topic. So yes, we're spending more money on marketing because the scope of our activities has increased significantly and the size of the company has increased significantly and our budget has increased significantly. Having said that, I'm always high return oriented on marketing spend. So, I'm looking for the things that will convey, you know, the the pros of our of our company and what we're doing and will bring something to the company in return rather than just, you know, spending willy-nilly. I'm I'm pretty focused on spending on things that, you know, return money for the company. >> What is that ratio going to be or what are you targeting in terms of what goes into the ground versus what goes on GNA and marketing? Um just doing the math quickly, it'll be singledigit percentages. Um I I I can't do it right off the top of my head, but small a small amount relative to exploration expenditure for sure. Back to the topic of um incentivizing people to work for you. Do you have to change your KPIs during a bull market? Is it that you say like, "Oh, we need to outperform peers on the stock price. That's when you guys get bonuses or something like that." Or is it geology related or anything like it? KPIs vary. I mean, we're an exploration company, so it's difficult to, you know, you you do your best. You find the, you know, the targets and you work systematically, you do scientific work, but it's a lot of it's up to lady luck and mother nature. >> So, we don't hold our geologists accountable for discovery, but we will reward good work post discovery. Okay. The way we do that right now is, you know, options that that have a a strike price that if the company made a discovery was tremendously more valuable that would have rewarded the team that get that that works on that, right? So, and it also aligns them with the company's outcomes, the shareholders and there is a little bit of outlay that has to be generally put out for those options. So, I like that um structure a lot. But individual contributors who do well will be assessed based on their contribution. It varies. It's very difficult in exploration work to to individually kind of say who did what. It's a team game. So options is a good one. >> Yeah. What about lobbying the government or maybe community relations? If if if it's a bull market and and everyone's starting to wake up and people are starting to spend more money on it, could the government or community request, you know, more engagement or or more payments or something like that? >> Yeah, certainly. I haven't seen it yet though. Yeah, maybe next year as as as the money and the payments. Look, it's highly localized the question you're asking. So, it would depend on the local stakeholders, but so far I haven't seen. >> Not for you? >> Not yet. Okay. >> How much money do you have right now? >> Personally, very personally, yeah. What's your net worth? >> How much money do you have? Give it to me right now. Uh, no. The company has about 25 million Canadian dollars in the bank today. >> Yeah. No need to raise before we see some assets. >> No, no, no. Yeah. Well, it's the end of the conference, so I can imagine you're tired. You've been running around. So, I'll let you do your thing, but thank you so much for your time. >> Thank you so much. Have a great one. >> 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. If you find that I have failed in asking a question that you would have liked to hear an answer to, which will happen as I'm not an experienced interviewer, please let me know and I will try to correct that mistake in a future interview. As mentioned at the beginning, please understand that mineral exploration and development is an extremely risky business. Losing money is the norm and should be the expectation. 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