Silver Shortage is Driving ‘Explosive Growth’ – and Just Getting Started
Summary
Investment Focus: The podcast emphasizes the strategic importance of silver as a key investment, highlighting its dual role as both a monetary and industrial metal.
Market Dynamics: There is a noted shift in investor sentiment with large funds increasing their allocation to precious metals from 1% to 3%, driven by strong performance of companies like Agniko and Newmont.
Silver Market: The current silver market is characterized by a shortage, with consumption outpacing production, creating potential for significant price surges.
Investor Profile: The discussion highlights the involvement of young, sophisticated investors with a long-term horizon, focusing on strategic and sustainable investments in the mining sector.
Company Strategy: Dolly Varden Silver's strategy involves expanding its asset base and increasing production capacity, with a focus on high-grade silver projects in safe jurisdictions.
Industry Insights: The podcast discusses the role of smart money and strategic investors like Eric Sprott in supporting and financing mining projects, indicating a positive outlook for the sector.
Future Outlook: The podcast suggests that the current market cycle for precious metals is in its early stages, with significant growth potential as more institutional investors enter the space.
Operational Developments: Dolly Varden Silver's recent activities include a major expansion of its land holdings and a substantial drill program, aimed at unlocking further value for shareholders.
Transcript
If you said to me, Sean, you can only own one thing. What's the one thing you would own? It'd be silver. The investors that have been following people like yourself, following Rick Rule, putting money to work, were patient, are seeing their portfolios explode. This is J. Martin. Sean, it's good to have you back, man. Thanks for having me. Okay. Uh, it's always a pleasure to talk to you. And there's a handful of different directions that I want to go today. I always appreciate your perspective on the gold and silver market. Sitting here on kind of a unique day, right? Gold's at all-time highs. Silver fundamentals are strengthening. And a lot of my audience is asking like, is this sustainable? Are we overdue? Is the market getting too hot? And that's a relative question, right? Too hot relative to 6 years ago, two years ago, but relative to what? So, what's your take? I mean, you're always on the road chatting to investors, raising money. What's sentiment telling you? But what's the background fundamentals that you have confidence in or that make you a bit uncertain? Yeah. So, uh, from my perspective, I just took some investors to the Dolly Varn project up in Northwest BC. We organized a tour that was going to give these Dallas and Boston uh, LPs exposure to the treasures of the Golden Triangle. And this group uh managed $9 billion. So there was four advisors and so $9 billion assets under management USD. They had a 1% waiting to commodities, precious metals, okay, mining codes. They were looking to increase their exposure from 1% to 3%. Okay. So that $9 billion that translates into about $180 million US that was looking to get more exposure. So we started our tour off at Dolly Varden. Uh we went through some of the other projects that are in the area. Um some of them are owned by their companies, but we wanted to give them uh a a look at the different geological aspects um and mines that were both in production, in development, advanced exploration. And um the reason I bring this up is I've been listening to people like Rick Rule talk about, you know, the percentage of allocation from the generalist investor. I witnessed it firsthand on this trip. These are four investors. You know, we're talking about a 40 $50 million per investor allocation to the space. And I think as a result of the leaders, the Agneos, the pneumont $200 a share, $100 a share, that is now attracting generalist money. So it's begun. Why I feel like it's early is the indicators and the relative value. I'll give you an example. The silver to gold ratio still being at 90 to1. If silver's price appreciation was accelerating and drastically outperforming gold, I would be cautious and concerned. Look, I can't time short-term corrections. Are we overdue for a correction? Possibly. Jay, I thought we were there in March and what have we done? We've just gone higher. 50% higher in the metals in in the shares. Hundreds of percent higher. So, are we overdue for a correction? Anything can happen in the short run, but because we came from such a undervalued position. I talk about the venture exchange a lot because that's the index a lot of the micro caps live on. The venture exchange is at a 52- week high, but it is only at 850 points, right? That's an index that we wouldn't even consider financing a company a decade ago if the index was below 1500, right? So the index would have to double just to get to back to a place where we'd feel comfortable where as issuers, as shareholders, we're not diluting our companies. Uh the venture exchange has seen highs of 3500 points. So we would have to go up almost five times in value as an industry to get back to previous highs. And that's not factoring in inflation. Those are just nominal highs. Yeah, that's important. Okay, I appreciate that context and I just want to unpack these this investor group a little bit. Um 9 billion collectively under management. They're moving from an allocation of 1% to 3% probably because they're watching the share price performance and the earnings of companies like Agniko and Numont. What can you tell me about their mandate? like what kind of money is this from a time horizon standpoint? So, this is um university endowments. Okay, this is uh pension money. And what surprised me was when I heard about the trip being organized, I would assume I I had uh an idea in my mind of what these investors would look like, and they looked nothing like what I thought they'd look like. What do you mean? Um well, they were they were young. I was expecting some older, more mature gray-haired fund managers. These were money. Yeah. And um so it was it was a young group. It was a group that understood mining. It was a group that said, "Look, we know the volatility. We know the cyclical nature. We have a stomach for this. We're not investing for a quick return. This is, you know, pension money. This is looking out years, if not decades." And what's interesting is um they have an appreciation for how why this industry is so rewarding. It is because it is so tough and having smart, sophisticated, long sticky money like that enter the space versus what you typically see at the end of a cycle is the masses of retail investors. This is still stealth. This is smart money. This isn't a calculated bet. This is not I need to come into any deal. These are people and and what the other thing I saw was uh recently there was a deal that got put up in Nevada uh Diane Garrett's Highraftoft $60 million US financing investors 66% of the issue taken down by Eric Sprat. The other 34% by Tribeca which is Jeremy Bond's fund out of Australia. What you're seeing here is participants in the space like Eric, like Jeremy have been so rewarded with these share price appreciations that they're able to take really big bets and support names. Uh the old Allied Nevada, which were these highc assets, I think the peak valuation in the 2000s was close to 10 billion. They're coming in at probably a sub $150 million valuation for what was a $10 billion portfolio. So, Smart Money, who's, you know, you look at some of Eric Spence, Discovery Silver, America's Gold and Silver, these companies are up four times since January. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, he had a lot of exposure and has a lot of exposure to these companies. So the investors that have been following people like yourself, following Rick Rule, putting money to work, we're patient, are seeing their portfolios explode. I'm talking to friends and participants that are saying things to me and these guys have been around for decades. Their net worth has never been higher and the price appreciation to their portfolios on a daily and weekly ba basis is significant. So I know it feels frothy. I know it feels like there's a lot of activity. I know it doesn't feel sustainable, but I'm not considering the quarter. I'm not considering till the end of the year. I'm looking at this as a cycle and it I'm telling you based on relative valuations and all the ratios, it's early days. This is I don't even think it's the third inning. Okay. Yeah, I appreciate that in that expansion. And then I just want to ask again back to this group of investors because 1% allocation is not much but it is something and it makes me wonder are they still the outliers and the minority when it comes to those generalist funds. They're looking to move from one to three but are they still would you say like the smaller group and these are generalist funds. They're still the smaller group that are looking to make this move at this point like they're maybe the first movers in the generalist funds. Yeah. like like I've been financing companies for 22 years, right? And if I were to examine that 22 years of experience and you know I could study history but when studying history and living it and breathing it and being on the front lines those are two very different things. So if I were to pinpoint the hardest time I've experienced in this sector, it was the years from 20134 to in and around 2017 18. That to me was the most difficult part of my career. Okay. Okay. I just to give you some context here, the difference for me from 2010 to 2012 is the $130 million bot deal I was facilitating at a billion dollar valuation at $5 a share. That $130 million deal, I was struggling to arrange a $400,000 financing at sub $10 million valuation. So, $130 million versus 400 in an 18-month period. That's the difference. That's the contrast. So, my my point in all this is what we've done as an industry, okay, is we have relied on the generosity and the speculation of serial investors like Eric Spratu. You go back to those lean years, I think it was 2017 where Eric invested about a4 billion dollars into small caps. Eric probably represented anywhere between 25 up towards 50% of all money that went into the venture exchange. Um those lean years we relied on corporates like at the time Gold Corp, Bareric, uh Ago as 50% of our funding. The balance there was no retail or very little. The balance was hedge funds. Hedge funds that were clipping warrants that were short-term oriented that saw this as a predatory opportunistic trade. We are starting to see some fundamental long accounts like the Franklin's of the world up their allocation, up their bet sizes in financings. But to answer your question, like this is we're we're starting to see some really big money allocate peanuts to the space. Mhm. And it's just starting. But really, it's, you know, when I look at exempt lists, you know, I've got dozens of companies in the office um in the Fior group. When I look at exempt financing lists, it's the same old names. There's very few new participants. I saw more new participants in 2019 than I'm seeing today. It's just the bet sizes because of the capital appreciation for those participants has increased. That's interesting. I mean, my first thought was and and that's why I wanted to ask about what kind of money this group was. You mentioned the hedge funds that you know back then were more quick turnaround and I'm somewhat surprised that obviously the market was far harder 2013 to 2017 the hardest tenure of your career. I'm sitting here and I'm like, "Yeah, but you got way more on your shoulders today." Like hard's relative as well, right? Different mission today, but better market, better network, more experience, all those things. And just because you mentioned the Fury Group, I want to unpack that a little bit because I think it's one of the most important. I love finding groups like Fior because you guys incubate several deals all at once. But why that's important is because you can borrow each other's brain capital, resources, capital networks, workshop ideas, solve problems together, right? And it gives each one of those companies a massive advantage. And when I look at Fury today, it strikes me as an organization that has a lot of chips on the table, right, in early stage, mid-stage production in gold, silver, copper. And so the sentiment in the office, obviously led by the chairman, Frank Gustra, who as I have watched him is very specific with his timing. Right. walk me through what's going on in Fior today and and how the organization works. Yeah, so there was an an article in a local Vancouver business paper in 2002 and it was uh it was a a still image of Frank and his back and the caption was Frank's back. Okay. Okay. So Frank has been around the sector for over four decades and he has got a reputation for being able to time entries and exits into the sector that great rotation, understanding when the sector is on its knees, understanding when the sector is frothy. And so going back to 2002, if you if you examine where gold was, you know, sub 300, if you examine where gold equities were, um, if you examine where other sectors were like tech, that was the time, that was the best time. And if you look at the companies that he built and, uh, you know, the endeavor minings of the world and and so on and so forth, it was it was great timing. The reason I bring up this point is 20 years later, 2022, Frank once again came back and that's when I partnered with him and Rob Mloud and Ryan Wayark and Gourd Keep uh who's been with Frank for you know o over four decades and we came together and what we're trying to do is we're trying to attract talent engineers geologists capital markets We're trying to take advantage of the discrepancy between commodity price and equity price and more specifically the valuation of mining projects and we're looking to put our capital and our shareholders capital to work to unlock these opportunities. And um so look it it is something where our competitive advantage as a group is we've got 75 people in the office. Okay. Okay. on the 31st floor um where we've got the engineers, we've got the geologists, we've got the capital markets professionals, and we're sharing ideas and we're helping each other accomplish these mutual goals. And it's uh in my opinion led to some outperformance of our companies. And it's and again uh we've taken risks and it it hasn't been easy. And in some of the cases, it's taken longer and more money than we would have originally forecasted. But we stick with it. We work through it. And you know what I've if there was one lesson that I've learned over 22 years, it's people. If you bet on the right team, that's the key. And I think Frank has an ability to identify, attract, and retain talent. M and that talent, you know, mining is a tough business. You get into a great project, it's a depleting resource. You've got to replace it. It's this constant ongoing process of evaluating, buying, divesting, financing. But once you're around it, you have that competitive advantage of knowing the projects, knowing the people, and and then if you're innovative and you're creative, you're you're using cutting edge technologies to unlock processes, whether it's in metallergy or or whatnot. I love that. And is there like would you say there's a definitive style in the companies that you guys build at Fior? I know some of the biggest businesses that Frank has built have been sort of the buy and build and buy and build strategy. Uh but not all the companies in the Fiori office seem to be uh on that sort of same philosophy. So is there a similar model or is it like CEO we support your vision? That's a really good question. Look, I I think there are core Fiora files, there are non-core. Um, it's a it's a fluid environment. It's a case-byase situation. The the driving principles are, you know, stakeholders and shareholders and investors first. Um, because, you know, Frank is often the lead investor. And so, it's it's it's a really it's a focus on ROI, but it's a challenge to try to evolve to do something even greater than that. And I'll give you a couple examples. Um, you know, you look at Nation's Royalty, which was launched on June 21st, 2024. It is today Canada's largest indigenous owned public company. We're developing a reputation to be great purchasers of distressed assets and turn them around by bringing the appropriate capital and technical uh to those opportunities. What we've done in in a new initiative, Selkerk copper, is we've taken the distressed uh asset purchase which was the Mento mine um and we worked with the Selkerk First Nations, Selkerk First Nations bought the mine out of bankruptcy and will be approximately a 20% shareholder uh going forward after uh you know somewhere which will fall into around a $40 million capital raise. And so my point here is working with communities, putting communities first. Historically, indigenous groups were given a small tax sharing, you know, maybe in generous scenarios, maybe a 1% royalty. Why not have equity participation where the First Nations has 20% of the business? So that's not just great ROI for your shareholders. That's inclusion. That's having indigenous groups that have never been a part of capital markets being part of the process and sharing in the prosperity of the projects. But it also ensures that in an environmental and a socially responsible way, the project moves forward and advances responsibly. So it's aligning all of those interests. I love it, man. Okay, I want to um pivot to silver a little bit. You got a lot of companies in Fior. You're the CEO of Dollyard and Silver, obviously. So the question came up at dinner last night with some friends. We can understand why gold is hitting all-time highs because people are losing trust in the US dollar. Their purchasing power is being eroded. Central banks feel the same. There's a lot of highlevel factors playing in there. What's behind silver's rise? Is it the same sort of monetary elements? Is it the industrial capacity? What's from your perspective right now, Sean, what's supporting that? So, I just want to start off by saying if you said to me, Sean, you can only own one thing. You can't you can only own one thing. What's the one thing you would own? It'd be silver. And the reason for that is, you know, to really understand silver, you have to understand history. And for 5,000 years, silver and gold were together as money. And what has occurred is as uh the fiat currency of the day dominates uh the zeitgeist and in and today that is the US dollar. We have gone away from gold and silver being our monetary base. You know what was once convertible into US dollars is now convertible but at $3,500 an ounce. And so to understand how silver's role has changed like if we stopped mining gold today and in in by some scheme lost all the gold that we had on planet earth we would be okay but it would be highly disruptive if silver was taken out of the equation. There is no substitute for silver. It is one of the most special strategic critical elements on planet earth. And it's so special that it has lost its historic monetary base. It is transformed from being money to now being both money and an industrial metal. You know 100 years ago 10% of silver was used in industry. Today it's over 50% and growing. Right? So I think what's behind silver's price surge is twofold. It's the monetary aspect, but it's also the industrial aspect. Look, we're living in a world right now where we there's a shortage of silver. Okay? We're consuming more than we're producing. It's that simple. And what's really exciting as a silver centric investor and speculator is the fact that if somebody went out and bought 50 million ounces of silver and stood for delivery tomorrow that the squeeze could be on. And you know, we've already seen the price surge from $25 in April. Mhm. Uh it's got over $41 an ounce. If someone were to take delivery tomorrow on a mere 50 million ounces, we'd be at new all-time highs in US dollar terms. We're already there in here in Canada. $56 silver. You're seeing it in every other currency. It's only in USD. It hasn't broken out of the $50 price high. That's how tight the market is. Yeah, that's how tight the market is right now. We're 50 million ounces away. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Now, this group of investors that you were showing around and touring the Golden Triangle where your project is based, Dollyard and Silver, uh, for somebody who's maybe got fresh eyes on what you're building. Sean, walk us through the super high level and then I want to get into some recent catalyst with the company. Yeah, look, my experience brought me to Dolly. You know, uh, being around gold, building gold mining companies. I saw how silver reacted during the last great boom in 2010 2011. We went from I don't even know where the silver price was in in September of 2010. I know where it went in April of 2011. It went to $49 and it was a surge. Uh so let's just say sub 20 to almost 50 in short order. And so I've never seen anything that explosive. And I've seen uranium booms and I've seen some pretty, you know, exciting explosive, you know, commodities are quite volatile. But my my best thinking said, I need to get silver exposure for this next precious metals move. And so in 2018, I really started studying the silver market. Like I had studied the gold market from ' 04 to 2018. Okay? And so I've been all in on silver since 2018. that led me to unearthing Dolly Vardarden and taking over in February of 2020. What I what attracted me was I found an asset, a high-grade asset, two past producing assets in a safe jurisdiction. It had grade and it had safety and it was trading at 37 cents an ounce in the ground USD. And I knew from previous bull markets these ounces will be valued at $3.30 an ounce USD in a bull market. So I thought there was a 10x to be achieved for my shareholders. Sure. So I I came into the company and what I've tried to do Jay is I've tried to build out our base. Okay. and we were what my strategy was this year specifically is I felt like we were coming into the beginnings of a market. Mhm. So I listed the company's shares on the New York Stock Exchange on April 21st. I went to the biggest market in the world. I went to where over 90% of North American capital is centered. That resulted in a 38% price appreciation in Dolly Var shares. I use that price appreciation to execute three M&A transactions in the month of May. We had the most active quarter of the company's history in Q2. Um we went onto New York. We went from 15,000 hectares to 100,000 hectares. We went from two past producing silver mines to five, including some of the richest mines in the Golden Triangle. We raised on the back of that just under $30 million enhancing our treasury to over 50. We did that at an all-time high in terms of share price and minimizing dilution. And then we launched a 55,000 meter drill program. So we've been we have been busy and you know what I've been telling shareholders is at 5 and a half years of Dolly as the company's gone from 20 million to 500 million. Those first four years I was playing defense. I'm now playing offense. And we are into a situation right now where we are into the biggest drill program we've ever seen. Mhm. The ambitions that we have as a company is to create the next cur, the next pan-American, the next heckla. That's the goal. Success for me is to come back here soon and lay out that plan on how we transform to complete that vision and to continue to come back as this company continues to grow. What I'd love to see here is production, a development pipeline, exploration, and a portfolio of marketable securities cuz not everything that we acquire is going to remain in the mothership. You know, we want to start generating value. I'll give you an example. One of the transactions we did, we bought a 35% interest in a very, very high-grade property in the Golden Triangle. Our cost on that 35% interest for our shareholders is $9,000. Jay, I'm confident I'll be able to get more than $9,000 of value from that project. A lot more. And so, you know, that I just think we've gone through this period and we're still in it where there's a lot of management teams that are a lot older than me. There's a lot of companies that don't have what Fior has. They don't have technical. They don't have access to capital. There's a lot of projects that even today are trading at depressed valuations. Yeah. It's my job for my shareholders to unlock those opportunities to we have a high bar. We want the best grade projects. We want to be in tier one jurisdictions. We're a silver coat, right? Yeah. Um so there we have certain criteria primary and that's m that's remained the mission. But the truth is, okay, the secret truth of our industry is if you dissect and interrogate and investigate the 10 primary silver coasts, some of them only 28% of their production is derived from silver. And so it wouldn't be out of character for us to consider other metals to achieve our ultimate goal, which is giving investors exposure to silver. So look, we bought Homestake. You had me on, we we really got to know each other after the Homestake acquisition back it was announced in 2021. It was closed in early 2022. That's a gold deposit with a silver byproduct. Yeah. But it was so wildly accretive for us and and the cost was right and and if you look at the company prehomestake, we were trading at about a $50 million valuation. We're 10 times that value today. And so we need to trust our experience and our expertise and be very bold in the decisions we make. That's how great companies are built. and we have the building blocks and the ingredients to create a great company and we're working extremely hard and we've been in the space a long time. And so, look, there's we have no debt on our balance sheet. We have over $40 million in the bank. We just put out the best drill hole this project's ever seen. So, we've been blessed with great geology, which is what you need. I've got a great team. So, all the ear marks are there for a very successful company. Okay. So, postNYSC listing April 2nd, you use that new currency, that share price appreciation to effectively like 10x the land package, right? Uh, more or less 15,000 up to what is 110? Six times. Yeah. Yeah. Six. Six times. Thank you. Fill up the treasury, 50 million in the bank and launch. The 55,000 meter drill program is colossal. That's really, really big. Five rigs, 24 hours a day. Serious. Okay. And just because you referenced your uh drill results, your recent drill results from the Wolf fame, correct? This thing has become a bit of a growth engine for the company. So, walk me through what you've uncovered thus far in this program and what we can expect next. Yeah. So, the tough thing in our industry is primary silver. Like silver is a byproduct. Uh 75% of it comes as byproduct. So, when you get into one of these primary silver systems, it's special. It's the one in four. And so if you look at Dolly, which was the richest silver mine in the British Empire, if you look at Torit, which was Canada's third largest silver producer, these are some of the best silver mines ever in Canada in terms of grade, in terms of quality, in terms of minability, metallurgy. You know, you start ticking the boxes. These are great minds. Um what wolf represents is a vein and a deposit that can be classified with torit with dolly. And so what wolf represents is growth of that history okay on the property. And so we've what started as a little surface expression is now over a kilometer of strike length and it's demonstrating you know we drilled 1,422 g of silver over 21 m and it's open it's highra that's not a silver equivalent and it's 21 m very wide so all the credit goes to Amanda Bennett Andrew Hamilton, Rob Van Eggmmont, Rob Mloud. We've got the right mix. We've got a young team that's also in the field that are looking for the next Wolves. You know, we've got a couple of veins in Moose and Chance, Musketeer, and other showings that we're going to be putting uh more information and data out on. Uh so no it's an exciting time but you know the the the secret truth at Dolly Varden right now when you have a 90 to1 silver to gold ratio the rigs all five rigs are up at home stake okay they've moved from Wolf and they're up at home stake okay okay and look we the only assays I have are the Wolf assay we put out you know we just started essentially drilling at home stake but I bet you the numbers we pull out at home stake are going to rival what we do at Wolf if not exceed them and and it's because of that ratio. It's because gold is valued at 90 times more than silver. And uh despite us having 64 times more silver than gold, uh the economics of the project today are on the gold side. Yeah. Because of that ratio at present, right? And home stake, depending on what you find, may drive that further. We'll have to wait and see. Yeah. Okay, Sean, you've been incredibly busy, man. And it's been fun covering the story since that homestake acquisition uh which has now been three or four years and you continue to increase the ounce count, deliver on what you tell shareholders you're going to do, which is an anomaly in this business. So, thank you for that. That's that's going to look like a small deal for what we have in store. I like it. I like it. Hey, I I believe it, man. And I can't wait to see it. Yeah. So, I'll stay tuned for NewsFlow. It's always good chatting with you. Thanks for coming in today. Thank you. All right.
Silver Shortage is Driving ‘Explosive Growth’ – and Just Getting Started
Summary
Transcript
If you said to me, Sean, you can only own one thing. What's the one thing you would own? It'd be silver. The investors that have been following people like yourself, following Rick Rule, putting money to work, were patient, are seeing their portfolios explode. This is J. Martin. Sean, it's good to have you back, man. Thanks for having me. Okay. Uh, it's always a pleasure to talk to you. And there's a handful of different directions that I want to go today. I always appreciate your perspective on the gold and silver market. Sitting here on kind of a unique day, right? Gold's at all-time highs. Silver fundamentals are strengthening. And a lot of my audience is asking like, is this sustainable? Are we overdue? Is the market getting too hot? And that's a relative question, right? Too hot relative to 6 years ago, two years ago, but relative to what? So, what's your take? I mean, you're always on the road chatting to investors, raising money. What's sentiment telling you? But what's the background fundamentals that you have confidence in or that make you a bit uncertain? Yeah. So, uh, from my perspective, I just took some investors to the Dolly Varn project up in Northwest BC. We organized a tour that was going to give these Dallas and Boston uh, LPs exposure to the treasures of the Golden Triangle. And this group uh managed $9 billion. So there was four advisors and so $9 billion assets under management USD. They had a 1% waiting to commodities, precious metals, okay, mining codes. They were looking to increase their exposure from 1% to 3%. Okay. So that $9 billion that translates into about $180 million US that was looking to get more exposure. So we started our tour off at Dolly Varden. Uh we went through some of the other projects that are in the area. Um some of them are owned by their companies, but we wanted to give them uh a a look at the different geological aspects um and mines that were both in production, in development, advanced exploration. And um the reason I bring this up is I've been listening to people like Rick Rule talk about, you know, the percentage of allocation from the generalist investor. I witnessed it firsthand on this trip. These are four investors. You know, we're talking about a 40 $50 million per investor allocation to the space. And I think as a result of the leaders, the Agneos, the pneumont $200 a share, $100 a share, that is now attracting generalist money. So it's begun. Why I feel like it's early is the indicators and the relative value. I'll give you an example. The silver to gold ratio still being at 90 to1. If silver's price appreciation was accelerating and drastically outperforming gold, I would be cautious and concerned. Look, I can't time short-term corrections. Are we overdue for a correction? Possibly. Jay, I thought we were there in March and what have we done? We've just gone higher. 50% higher in the metals in in the shares. Hundreds of percent higher. So, are we overdue for a correction? Anything can happen in the short run, but because we came from such a undervalued position. I talk about the venture exchange a lot because that's the index a lot of the micro caps live on. The venture exchange is at a 52- week high, but it is only at 850 points, right? That's an index that we wouldn't even consider financing a company a decade ago if the index was below 1500, right? So the index would have to double just to get to back to a place where we'd feel comfortable where as issuers, as shareholders, we're not diluting our companies. Uh the venture exchange has seen highs of 3500 points. So we would have to go up almost five times in value as an industry to get back to previous highs. And that's not factoring in inflation. Those are just nominal highs. Yeah, that's important. Okay, I appreciate that context and I just want to unpack these this investor group a little bit. Um 9 billion collectively under management. They're moving from an allocation of 1% to 3% probably because they're watching the share price performance and the earnings of companies like Agniko and Numont. What can you tell me about their mandate? like what kind of money is this from a time horizon standpoint? So, this is um university endowments. Okay, this is uh pension money. And what surprised me was when I heard about the trip being organized, I would assume I I had uh an idea in my mind of what these investors would look like, and they looked nothing like what I thought they'd look like. What do you mean? Um well, they were they were young. I was expecting some older, more mature gray-haired fund managers. These were money. Yeah. And um so it was it was a young group. It was a group that understood mining. It was a group that said, "Look, we know the volatility. We know the cyclical nature. We have a stomach for this. We're not investing for a quick return. This is, you know, pension money. This is looking out years, if not decades." And what's interesting is um they have an appreciation for how why this industry is so rewarding. It is because it is so tough and having smart, sophisticated, long sticky money like that enter the space versus what you typically see at the end of a cycle is the masses of retail investors. This is still stealth. This is smart money. This isn't a calculated bet. This is not I need to come into any deal. These are people and and what the other thing I saw was uh recently there was a deal that got put up in Nevada uh Diane Garrett's Highraftoft $60 million US financing investors 66% of the issue taken down by Eric Sprat. The other 34% by Tribeca which is Jeremy Bond's fund out of Australia. What you're seeing here is participants in the space like Eric, like Jeremy have been so rewarded with these share price appreciations that they're able to take really big bets and support names. Uh the old Allied Nevada, which were these highc assets, I think the peak valuation in the 2000s was close to 10 billion. They're coming in at probably a sub $150 million valuation for what was a $10 billion portfolio. So, Smart Money, who's, you know, you look at some of Eric Spence, Discovery Silver, America's Gold and Silver, these companies are up four times since January. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, he had a lot of exposure and has a lot of exposure to these companies. So the investors that have been following people like yourself, following Rick Rule, putting money to work, we're patient, are seeing their portfolios explode. I'm talking to friends and participants that are saying things to me and these guys have been around for decades. Their net worth has never been higher and the price appreciation to their portfolios on a daily and weekly ba basis is significant. So I know it feels frothy. I know it feels like there's a lot of activity. I know it doesn't feel sustainable, but I'm not considering the quarter. I'm not considering till the end of the year. I'm looking at this as a cycle and it I'm telling you based on relative valuations and all the ratios, it's early days. This is I don't even think it's the third inning. Okay. Yeah, I appreciate that in that expansion. And then I just want to ask again back to this group of investors because 1% allocation is not much but it is something and it makes me wonder are they still the outliers and the minority when it comes to those generalist funds. They're looking to move from one to three but are they still would you say like the smaller group and these are generalist funds. They're still the smaller group that are looking to make this move at this point like they're maybe the first movers in the generalist funds. Yeah. like like I've been financing companies for 22 years, right? And if I were to examine that 22 years of experience and you know I could study history but when studying history and living it and breathing it and being on the front lines those are two very different things. So if I were to pinpoint the hardest time I've experienced in this sector, it was the years from 20134 to in and around 2017 18. That to me was the most difficult part of my career. Okay. Okay. I just to give you some context here, the difference for me from 2010 to 2012 is the $130 million bot deal I was facilitating at a billion dollar valuation at $5 a share. That $130 million deal, I was struggling to arrange a $400,000 financing at sub $10 million valuation. So, $130 million versus 400 in an 18-month period. That's the difference. That's the contrast. So, my my point in all this is what we've done as an industry, okay, is we have relied on the generosity and the speculation of serial investors like Eric Spratu. You go back to those lean years, I think it was 2017 where Eric invested about a4 billion dollars into small caps. Eric probably represented anywhere between 25 up towards 50% of all money that went into the venture exchange. Um those lean years we relied on corporates like at the time Gold Corp, Bareric, uh Ago as 50% of our funding. The balance there was no retail or very little. The balance was hedge funds. Hedge funds that were clipping warrants that were short-term oriented that saw this as a predatory opportunistic trade. We are starting to see some fundamental long accounts like the Franklin's of the world up their allocation, up their bet sizes in financings. But to answer your question, like this is we're we're starting to see some really big money allocate peanuts to the space. Mhm. And it's just starting. But really, it's, you know, when I look at exempt lists, you know, I've got dozens of companies in the office um in the Fior group. When I look at exempt financing lists, it's the same old names. There's very few new participants. I saw more new participants in 2019 than I'm seeing today. It's just the bet sizes because of the capital appreciation for those participants has increased. That's interesting. I mean, my first thought was and and that's why I wanted to ask about what kind of money this group was. You mentioned the hedge funds that you know back then were more quick turnaround and I'm somewhat surprised that obviously the market was far harder 2013 to 2017 the hardest tenure of your career. I'm sitting here and I'm like, "Yeah, but you got way more on your shoulders today." Like hard's relative as well, right? Different mission today, but better market, better network, more experience, all those things. And just because you mentioned the Fury Group, I want to unpack that a little bit because I think it's one of the most important. I love finding groups like Fior because you guys incubate several deals all at once. But why that's important is because you can borrow each other's brain capital, resources, capital networks, workshop ideas, solve problems together, right? And it gives each one of those companies a massive advantage. And when I look at Fury today, it strikes me as an organization that has a lot of chips on the table, right, in early stage, mid-stage production in gold, silver, copper. And so the sentiment in the office, obviously led by the chairman, Frank Gustra, who as I have watched him is very specific with his timing. Right. walk me through what's going on in Fior today and and how the organization works. Yeah, so there was an an article in a local Vancouver business paper in 2002 and it was uh it was a a still image of Frank and his back and the caption was Frank's back. Okay. Okay. So Frank has been around the sector for over four decades and he has got a reputation for being able to time entries and exits into the sector that great rotation, understanding when the sector is on its knees, understanding when the sector is frothy. And so going back to 2002, if you if you examine where gold was, you know, sub 300, if you examine where gold equities were, um, if you examine where other sectors were like tech, that was the time, that was the best time. And if you look at the companies that he built and, uh, you know, the endeavor minings of the world and and so on and so forth, it was it was great timing. The reason I bring up this point is 20 years later, 2022, Frank once again came back and that's when I partnered with him and Rob Mloud and Ryan Wayark and Gourd Keep uh who's been with Frank for you know o over four decades and we came together and what we're trying to do is we're trying to attract talent engineers geologists capital markets We're trying to take advantage of the discrepancy between commodity price and equity price and more specifically the valuation of mining projects and we're looking to put our capital and our shareholders capital to work to unlock these opportunities. And um so look it it is something where our competitive advantage as a group is we've got 75 people in the office. Okay. Okay. on the 31st floor um where we've got the engineers, we've got the geologists, we've got the capital markets professionals, and we're sharing ideas and we're helping each other accomplish these mutual goals. And it's uh in my opinion led to some outperformance of our companies. And it's and again uh we've taken risks and it it hasn't been easy. And in some of the cases, it's taken longer and more money than we would have originally forecasted. But we stick with it. We work through it. And you know what I've if there was one lesson that I've learned over 22 years, it's people. If you bet on the right team, that's the key. And I think Frank has an ability to identify, attract, and retain talent. M and that talent, you know, mining is a tough business. You get into a great project, it's a depleting resource. You've got to replace it. It's this constant ongoing process of evaluating, buying, divesting, financing. But once you're around it, you have that competitive advantage of knowing the projects, knowing the people, and and then if you're innovative and you're creative, you're you're using cutting edge technologies to unlock processes, whether it's in metallergy or or whatnot. I love that. And is there like would you say there's a definitive style in the companies that you guys build at Fior? I know some of the biggest businesses that Frank has built have been sort of the buy and build and buy and build strategy. Uh but not all the companies in the Fiori office seem to be uh on that sort of same philosophy. So is there a similar model or is it like CEO we support your vision? That's a really good question. Look, I I think there are core Fiora files, there are non-core. Um, it's a it's a fluid environment. It's a case-byase situation. The the driving principles are, you know, stakeholders and shareholders and investors first. Um, because, you know, Frank is often the lead investor. And so, it's it's it's a really it's a focus on ROI, but it's a challenge to try to evolve to do something even greater than that. And I'll give you a couple examples. Um, you know, you look at Nation's Royalty, which was launched on June 21st, 2024. It is today Canada's largest indigenous owned public company. We're developing a reputation to be great purchasers of distressed assets and turn them around by bringing the appropriate capital and technical uh to those opportunities. What we've done in in a new initiative, Selkerk copper, is we've taken the distressed uh asset purchase which was the Mento mine um and we worked with the Selkerk First Nations, Selkerk First Nations bought the mine out of bankruptcy and will be approximately a 20% shareholder uh going forward after uh you know somewhere which will fall into around a $40 million capital raise. And so my point here is working with communities, putting communities first. Historically, indigenous groups were given a small tax sharing, you know, maybe in generous scenarios, maybe a 1% royalty. Why not have equity participation where the First Nations has 20% of the business? So that's not just great ROI for your shareholders. That's inclusion. That's having indigenous groups that have never been a part of capital markets being part of the process and sharing in the prosperity of the projects. But it also ensures that in an environmental and a socially responsible way, the project moves forward and advances responsibly. So it's aligning all of those interests. I love it, man. Okay, I want to um pivot to silver a little bit. You got a lot of companies in Fior. You're the CEO of Dollyard and Silver, obviously. So the question came up at dinner last night with some friends. We can understand why gold is hitting all-time highs because people are losing trust in the US dollar. Their purchasing power is being eroded. Central banks feel the same. There's a lot of highlevel factors playing in there. What's behind silver's rise? Is it the same sort of monetary elements? Is it the industrial capacity? What's from your perspective right now, Sean, what's supporting that? So, I just want to start off by saying if you said to me, Sean, you can only own one thing. You can't you can only own one thing. What's the one thing you would own? It'd be silver. And the reason for that is, you know, to really understand silver, you have to understand history. And for 5,000 years, silver and gold were together as money. And what has occurred is as uh the fiat currency of the day dominates uh the zeitgeist and in and today that is the US dollar. We have gone away from gold and silver being our monetary base. You know what was once convertible into US dollars is now convertible but at $3,500 an ounce. And so to understand how silver's role has changed like if we stopped mining gold today and in in by some scheme lost all the gold that we had on planet earth we would be okay but it would be highly disruptive if silver was taken out of the equation. There is no substitute for silver. It is one of the most special strategic critical elements on planet earth. And it's so special that it has lost its historic monetary base. It is transformed from being money to now being both money and an industrial metal. You know 100 years ago 10% of silver was used in industry. Today it's over 50% and growing. Right? So I think what's behind silver's price surge is twofold. It's the monetary aspect, but it's also the industrial aspect. Look, we're living in a world right now where we there's a shortage of silver. Okay? We're consuming more than we're producing. It's that simple. And what's really exciting as a silver centric investor and speculator is the fact that if somebody went out and bought 50 million ounces of silver and stood for delivery tomorrow that the squeeze could be on. And you know, we've already seen the price surge from $25 in April. Mhm. Uh it's got over $41 an ounce. If someone were to take delivery tomorrow on a mere 50 million ounces, we'd be at new all-time highs in US dollar terms. We're already there in here in Canada. $56 silver. You're seeing it in every other currency. It's only in USD. It hasn't broken out of the $50 price high. That's how tight the market is. Yeah, that's how tight the market is right now. We're 50 million ounces away. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Now, this group of investors that you were showing around and touring the Golden Triangle where your project is based, Dollyard and Silver, uh, for somebody who's maybe got fresh eyes on what you're building. Sean, walk us through the super high level and then I want to get into some recent catalyst with the company. Yeah, look, my experience brought me to Dolly. You know, uh, being around gold, building gold mining companies. I saw how silver reacted during the last great boom in 2010 2011. We went from I don't even know where the silver price was in in September of 2010. I know where it went in April of 2011. It went to $49 and it was a surge. Uh so let's just say sub 20 to almost 50 in short order. And so I've never seen anything that explosive. And I've seen uranium booms and I've seen some pretty, you know, exciting explosive, you know, commodities are quite volatile. But my my best thinking said, I need to get silver exposure for this next precious metals move. And so in 2018, I really started studying the silver market. Like I had studied the gold market from ' 04 to 2018. Okay? And so I've been all in on silver since 2018. that led me to unearthing Dolly Vardarden and taking over in February of 2020. What I what attracted me was I found an asset, a high-grade asset, two past producing assets in a safe jurisdiction. It had grade and it had safety and it was trading at 37 cents an ounce in the ground USD. And I knew from previous bull markets these ounces will be valued at $3.30 an ounce USD in a bull market. So I thought there was a 10x to be achieved for my shareholders. Sure. So I I came into the company and what I've tried to do Jay is I've tried to build out our base. Okay. and we were what my strategy was this year specifically is I felt like we were coming into the beginnings of a market. Mhm. So I listed the company's shares on the New York Stock Exchange on April 21st. I went to the biggest market in the world. I went to where over 90% of North American capital is centered. That resulted in a 38% price appreciation in Dolly Var shares. I use that price appreciation to execute three M&A transactions in the month of May. We had the most active quarter of the company's history in Q2. Um we went onto New York. We went from 15,000 hectares to 100,000 hectares. We went from two past producing silver mines to five, including some of the richest mines in the Golden Triangle. We raised on the back of that just under $30 million enhancing our treasury to over 50. We did that at an all-time high in terms of share price and minimizing dilution. And then we launched a 55,000 meter drill program. So we've been we have been busy and you know what I've been telling shareholders is at 5 and a half years of Dolly as the company's gone from 20 million to 500 million. Those first four years I was playing defense. I'm now playing offense. And we are into a situation right now where we are into the biggest drill program we've ever seen. Mhm. The ambitions that we have as a company is to create the next cur, the next pan-American, the next heckla. That's the goal. Success for me is to come back here soon and lay out that plan on how we transform to complete that vision and to continue to come back as this company continues to grow. What I'd love to see here is production, a development pipeline, exploration, and a portfolio of marketable securities cuz not everything that we acquire is going to remain in the mothership. You know, we want to start generating value. I'll give you an example. One of the transactions we did, we bought a 35% interest in a very, very high-grade property in the Golden Triangle. Our cost on that 35% interest for our shareholders is $9,000. Jay, I'm confident I'll be able to get more than $9,000 of value from that project. A lot more. And so, you know, that I just think we've gone through this period and we're still in it where there's a lot of management teams that are a lot older than me. There's a lot of companies that don't have what Fior has. They don't have technical. They don't have access to capital. There's a lot of projects that even today are trading at depressed valuations. Yeah. It's my job for my shareholders to unlock those opportunities to we have a high bar. We want the best grade projects. We want to be in tier one jurisdictions. We're a silver coat, right? Yeah. Um so there we have certain criteria primary and that's m that's remained the mission. But the truth is, okay, the secret truth of our industry is if you dissect and interrogate and investigate the 10 primary silver coasts, some of them only 28% of their production is derived from silver. And so it wouldn't be out of character for us to consider other metals to achieve our ultimate goal, which is giving investors exposure to silver. So look, we bought Homestake. You had me on, we we really got to know each other after the Homestake acquisition back it was announced in 2021. It was closed in early 2022. That's a gold deposit with a silver byproduct. Yeah. But it was so wildly accretive for us and and the cost was right and and if you look at the company prehomestake, we were trading at about a $50 million valuation. We're 10 times that value today. And so we need to trust our experience and our expertise and be very bold in the decisions we make. That's how great companies are built. and we have the building blocks and the ingredients to create a great company and we're working extremely hard and we've been in the space a long time. And so, look, there's we have no debt on our balance sheet. We have over $40 million in the bank. We just put out the best drill hole this project's ever seen. So, we've been blessed with great geology, which is what you need. I've got a great team. So, all the ear marks are there for a very successful company. Okay. So, postNYSC listing April 2nd, you use that new currency, that share price appreciation to effectively like 10x the land package, right? Uh, more or less 15,000 up to what is 110? Six times. Yeah. Yeah. Six. Six times. Thank you. Fill up the treasury, 50 million in the bank and launch. The 55,000 meter drill program is colossal. That's really, really big. Five rigs, 24 hours a day. Serious. Okay. And just because you referenced your uh drill results, your recent drill results from the Wolf fame, correct? This thing has become a bit of a growth engine for the company. So, walk me through what you've uncovered thus far in this program and what we can expect next. Yeah. So, the tough thing in our industry is primary silver. Like silver is a byproduct. Uh 75% of it comes as byproduct. So, when you get into one of these primary silver systems, it's special. It's the one in four. And so if you look at Dolly, which was the richest silver mine in the British Empire, if you look at Torit, which was Canada's third largest silver producer, these are some of the best silver mines ever in Canada in terms of grade, in terms of quality, in terms of minability, metallurgy. You know, you start ticking the boxes. These are great minds. Um what wolf represents is a vein and a deposit that can be classified with torit with dolly. And so what wolf represents is growth of that history okay on the property. And so we've what started as a little surface expression is now over a kilometer of strike length and it's demonstrating you know we drilled 1,422 g of silver over 21 m and it's open it's highra that's not a silver equivalent and it's 21 m very wide so all the credit goes to Amanda Bennett Andrew Hamilton, Rob Van Eggmmont, Rob Mloud. We've got the right mix. We've got a young team that's also in the field that are looking for the next Wolves. You know, we've got a couple of veins in Moose and Chance, Musketeer, and other showings that we're going to be putting uh more information and data out on. Uh so no it's an exciting time but you know the the the secret truth at Dolly Varden right now when you have a 90 to1 silver to gold ratio the rigs all five rigs are up at home stake okay they've moved from Wolf and they're up at home stake okay okay and look we the only assays I have are the Wolf assay we put out you know we just started essentially drilling at home stake but I bet you the numbers we pull out at home stake are going to rival what we do at Wolf if not exceed them and and it's because of that ratio. It's because gold is valued at 90 times more than silver. And uh despite us having 64 times more silver than gold, uh the economics of the project today are on the gold side. Yeah. Because of that ratio at present, right? And home stake, depending on what you find, may drive that further. We'll have to wait and see. Yeah. Okay, Sean, you've been incredibly busy, man. And it's been fun covering the story since that homestake acquisition uh which has now been three or four years and you continue to increase the ounce count, deliver on what you tell shareholders you're going to do, which is an anomaly in this business. So, thank you for that. That's that's going to look like a small deal for what we have in store. I like it. I like it. Hey, I I believe it, man. And I can't wait to see it. Yeah. So, I'll stay tuned for NewsFlow. It's always good chatting with you. Thanks for coming in today. Thank you. All right.