We're in 'Unprecedented' GOLD Bull Market – 'It's NON STOP'
Summary
Gold Bull Market: The podcast discusses the unprecedented bull market in gold, driven by factors such as central bank buying, currency issues, and global uncertainty, with gold prices reaching levels faster than anticipated.
Institutional Interest: There is a noted shift in institutional interest towards gold, with major financial institutions like Morgan Stanley recommending higher allocations to gold, signaling a potential paradigm shift in mainstream financial adoption.
Price Predictions: Goldman Sachs has set a target of $4,900 for gold by Q2 2026, reflecting a conservative yet bullish outlook, with some experts predicting even higher prices due to ongoing momentum and limited pullbacks.
Silver Market: Silver is outperforming gold year-to-date, with discussions on its potential to catch up and even surpass gold's performance in the current bull market, though some skepticism remains about reaching extreme price targets.
Mining Sector Performance: The mining sector, particularly gold and silver miners, is experiencing significant gains, with discussions on whether to exercise caution or seize opportunities as equities finally reflect the metals' price movements.
Norsemont Mining Overview: Norsemont Mining is highlighted as a promising investment with significant infrastructure and resources in Chile, aiming to expand its gold resource and move towards production with strong financial backing and strategic partnerships.
Project Development: The Choco Limpe project is advancing with extensive drilling and metallurgical studies to increase resource size and optimize production, positioning it as a potentially undervalued opportunity in the gold sector.
Investment Strategy: The podcast emphasizes the importance of having exposure to gold, recommending a 20% allocation, and highlights the strategic moves by Norsemont Mining to capitalize on the current market conditions.
Transcript
Hello everybody and welcome into commodity culture where our goal is to make you a better investor in the commodity sector. My name is Jesse Day. Before we dive in, standard disclaimer, nothing here is investment advice. Do your own due diligence. And today's guest is the CEO of Norsemont Mining, a Canadian resource development company focused on advancing and developing the past producing Choco Limpy gold, silver, copper project in northern Chile. Mark Levy, great to have you on the show. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. >> Very exciting times in the precious metal space. I want to kick things off by discussing gold. As we sit here today, gold's at around $4,040. We were speaking before we hit record today that the metal has risen faster than I think even gold bugs anticipated. So, what are you watching as the main catalyst that you think have driven the market to where it is now? And how much more room do you think this bull market has to run? >> Sure. Um I mean I originally a year ago I predicted gold would hit 3500 this year. Obviously I was wrong about that. Um obviously you you you see a lot of pressure on interest rates um issues with currencies like the euro and the Japanese yen and you're seeing obviously central bank buying. Right. The biggest thing is you got all the central banks buying into gold. You got ETFs buying into gold. Um I I think there's so many catalysts right now. Um that's pushed gold to where it's at and the momentum behind it is is unprecedented. You know, we've never seen gold move at this level of uh price appreciation without much pullbacks. Typically, you see gold climbs a bit, takes a step back. So there there's so many um factors here that I guess all of it together is is really starting to see gold break out here and uh I think a lot of a lot of issues in the world too a lot of uncertainty a lot of you know friction in the world uh worldwide and and and I guess a lot of people you know see gold as a safe haven as you and I probably do right so yeah it's interesting times Absolutely. And despite this amazing run in gold, Wall Street and the mainstream financial press haven't really been paying much attention. But recently, we did see the chief investment officer of Morgan Stanley come out and recommend a 20% allocation to gold, which is actually much higher than I would have anticipated from a big financial institution. I would have thought maybe they'll say 5%. Um, obviously a big paradigm shift from 0%. Uh, do you anticipate more financial institutions and advisers waking up to gold? Um, there there's been varying price targets set. I think before we we hit record today, you were mentioning price target from from a a financial institution. Maybe you could talk to us about that and just your thoughts on we're we're in the early stages, right, of this adoption of gold by the mainstream financial institutions. >> For sure. I I mean, obviously I'm a little bit of a gold bug. I'm biased cuz I got involved in gold in 2019. Uh, and I was telling people, financial managers, wealth management, investors, friends, family, you know, back then, you should be 5% to 10% gold. And then my my my my view changed uh 2 years ago, telling people, you got to be 10% gold here. You know, there's so much uncertainty. Um, it's very nice to see. I I saw a report today Goldman Sachs actually targeted $4,900 gold in Q2 of 2026 and their uh basis for that was that they see interest rates dropping another 100 basis points over the next uh 2 3/4 and they also say um a lot of the ETFs there's a big inflow of capital into the ETFs that are acquiring positions in gold central central bank buying. Um, China's resume buying, it's the 11th month buy. And I I I I say, you know, with a smile, you know, likely whatever China reports is not the whole story. So, if they said they bought X amount of tons, we all know it's probably 2 3x tons. So, uh, because they obviously don't want it to get too far ahead because they're busy accumulating and they've been accumulating since 2022, I think. Um, I think a lot of the buying in China was prior to central bank buying. It was actually internal domestic buying from what I read. So, you you've got, you know, so many factors. Um, I've been saying for a long time and I I'm seeing Wall Street starting to adopt it. As you just said, look, Goldman Sachs has been putting out targets. They've been very active over the last three years putting targets on gold. It's the most aggressive target they put. um you know you've you've got uh Bank of England came out made a comment which is really close to my beliefs and what I've talked about is um there's they're they're predicting that the markets overall are overvalued with a big emphasis on tech and AI and a sharp correction coming. So that's showing some smart earlier stage institutional money and even potentially retail shifting into gold. But the paradigm shift hasn't happened. I I think we're in for some fun. Um you know I have my own we'll we'll maybe talk later about my predictions on gold which we've already exceeded uh this year's prediction. U but yeah there there's there's a whole bunch of factors and bankers getting on board. Um, even from my perspective, the US small midcap bankers have been knocking on our door. Um, which they, you know, I'm like, do you have a geologist on staff? They're like, no, but we have a lot of demand for investing in some gold projects. So there's some interesting situations and I'll talk some personal stuff that came up interesting with with a big CEO uh approaching me uh from a from an industrial company like uh consumer products company. So you know I I think the momentum is building but we definitely haven't hit mainstream yet. >> I'd love to get some price targets for you for gold. But before we do that I just want to pull on the threat of central bank gold buying. Um because as you mentioned, China is accumulating likely much more gold than they uh are stating as well as already holding much more gold reserves than they're stating as well. But the Bank of Canada, we always hear this, Canada has no gold reserves. Do you think that's true? Do you think Do you think the Canadian government is playing 8D chess here and they're actually sitting on a hoorde of gold or are they really that ignorant? And if so, they're in dire straits right now, right? if if they're really going to go into this paradigm shift, the fall in fiat currencies, the rise of gold, the return of gold as a monetary asset, and they've got nothing on their balance sheet. What are your thoughts there? >> Wow, you've opened up a can of worms. Um, it's an interesting question because obviously me being Canadian, uh, and and obviously, you know, I I'm a big believer in gold, I've got a lot of our net worth tied up in gold equities and physical gold and silver. Um, I I think it's very irresponsible of the Canadian government to not have uh a certain amount of gold in their coffers like every normal smart country has been doing for years now. And it's never too late to jump on the bandwagon, but Canada's sleeping at the switch sadly and and and really going to fall behind. And I think we're going to get really badly hurt in Canada because they're not, you know, um, acquiring gold as the rest of the world is doing. Uh and and and funny topic is as you know I moved recently from Canada to the United States because I felt the policies in Canada um weren't good for Canadians uh and and we're not making the right financial moves where the US is really jumping on that bandwagon despite both countries having you know exorbitant debts and all all the problems both countries may have but Canada's still asleep at the wheel sadly. You know, I'm I'm trying to choose my words politely. As a Canadian, it's very um disheartening to to see how badly managed our government has done here. And being left out of a G7 countries without buying any gold, backing our currency with some gold is is crazy. I I don't think we're sitting on any gold there. There's really been no movement. Canada's more transparent. So, whatever they say, I kind of believe. Um China, I put a multiplier. If they're selling, they're really selling. If they're buying, they're really buying. I mean, we all know they've been hoarding it both domestically and through central banks. So, they're they've made some smart moves and they think 10 20 years ahead, whereas North America only thinks a few years ahead. So, it's unfortunate. >> Yes. And I would love to get your thoughts on where the price of gold could go. Is your estimate in line with Goldman Sachs that we could see that 4,900 uh by I believe you said Q Q1 or Q2. I think it was Q2 of 2026. Do you think we could go higher? I mean the way gold is moving now I I thought you know as we saw gold climb into the 37 3,800. I thought maybe we'd see 4,000 by end of year. It's funny when I prepared these questions originally, my first question was going to be, you know, do you think gold could get to 4,000 by the end of the year and it's already there and and then some by the time this interview started. So, what are your thoughts on the price of gold uh maybe for for 2026 and beyond? >> I mean, a year ago, my public prediction to investors and people and speaking on on at engagements and interviews, uh I was saying $3,500 gold for 2025 and $4,000 for 2026. Um, obviously I'm under understated and wrong. Uh, although, uh, when gold did cross 3,800, uh, I guess over a month ago, um, I was like, "Oh my god, you know what? I I think we're going to see, uh, $4,000 gold by the end or beginning of of October." And sure enough, September, October here, and that's where we're at. There's just too much momentum, and you don't see many pullbacks. Like two years ago and a year ago, gold would have some runs and then pull back and lose 50% of those gains, but maintain, you know, now it's just non-stop up up and and I guess more and more um flow of capital into gold, more demand for gold, more a little bit more um it's in the news a lot more than it was before before it wasn't in the news. crypto I think cryptocurrency has really stolen the uh capital and limelight from gold but now there's been a paradigm shift where you're seeing crypto guys um either tokenizing gold or investing in gold so I I'm seeing a shift now from the crypto guys now stepping into gold uh and we talked about a story earlier right so you know my my my views um personally um I've I've kind of revisited that. I I'm thinking $4,500 gold in in next year and $5,000 gold the year after was still my prediction. But um based on everything going on, I may have to sit back and kind of read some more notes and get some more uh data cuz I mean smart guys at Goldman Sachs and they're pretty conservative these guys. They don't want to be wrong. They'd rather be understated. And I follow Goldman Sachs closely and they've been wrong about gold all the time on the understate. You know, they were predicting 3,200 for this year. Then they they've always underpredicted. So them telling me 4,900 Q2 2026, that's pretty scary. I mean, that's uh that's telling me gold's going 5,000 next year. >> Yeah, I I I echo that sentiment for sure. Uh, I want to discuss silver for a little bit here because as gold continues to soar to new all-time highs, silver quietly outperforming gold year to date now over $49 up around 67% compared to gold's 52%. How do you view the silver market? It's often said that that gold leads and in the beginning stages of a precious metals bull market and then silver ends up catching up and outperforming. Do you think we're in that phase at this point in time or do you just see blue skies ahead for both gold and silver? >> Yeah, so um I'm more of a gold bug than silver bug. I love silver. I own physical silver. Um we own some silver stocks as well. Um and obviously both metals are performing well. Um you know, my my views towards silver are maybe not as aggressive as some of the silver bugs out there that are talking $100 silver next year. I really don't see silver going to a 100 bucks and a lot of smart people that work with me and that are around me have, you know, a different view, but definitely there's a lot of torque to silver, a lot of upside to silver. So, uh, if I was to go on the records, I'd say, you know, I I think we can see $60 silver um, next year, which, you know, would be a 20 plus% increase. Same as gold being 5,000 would be the similar type of thing. Um, but I I I don't know that I see gold going to 10,000 maybe for a for short crazy stint. You know, uh, Sprat's views are a little bit more extra extravagant than than most. Um, and and the same thing with silver. Maybe it does touch 100 bucks, but it might be just for a short period of time. I I think there's not as much demand for physical silver in ETFs and and central bank buying to to really um give it the same strength that gold has and gold is still the gold standard, right? Like that's number one. Um I do feel like there may be bit more upside from a price appreciation on silver, but uh I'm not a believer in $100 silver unfortunately. Well, let's quickly touch on the gold and silver mining sector, then I want to dive into Norsemont. Um, the GDX and the SIL ETFs up massively. Last time I checked, it was 115% year to date. I think we're up higher than that at this point. And it wasn't that long ago that investors were complaining about the miners not providing that levered play on gold and silver. Just last year, people were wondering, why aren't the miners outperforming the metals by a wide margin? And and here we are. Now they're really taking off. Do you think this is a time where some caution is warranted or do you think the greater fear is sitting on the sidelines hoping for a dip and watching these equities run away from you? >> Well, I mean, we we've seen uh gold move and I think a lot of people in the junior market, gold mining market were projecting that when gold breaks 2,000, we're going to see a big run in the equities and that obviously never happened. And then it was like, okay, 2500, okay, 3,000. And really at $3,000 gold, the equities didn't move. Now they're moving. Um I I I think that you're going to see, you know, really good performance in both the large cap gold stocks cuz they're producers. Um you know, one of my favorites is uh like Nico Eagle. You know, they reported record gold profits. I think imagine what next quarter is going to be like in the next quarter with $4,000 gold. So I think you're going to see the large cap gold move, you know, really well with profitability. And I think you're going to see the small and midcaps, they are moving. As you said, they've moved. Um, I've been, you know, we run our own family office. We're very heavily invested in the space. And I'll say I've made the mistake, which I should know better, is looking for a dip to buy into some of the uh, smaller midcap stories that we like that have ounces in the ground, which is one of our criteria, metals in the ground, and and we've regretted every single deal. Uh, I don't want to name them because, you know, it wouldn't be appropriate, but I'll tell you, there's three deals that we would have tripled our money if we weren't trying to wait for a pullback and we would have done really well. And and now is probably time to buy some of those equities. So, I I think there's a lot of room, a lot of upside. Um, if people believe gold going into 5,000 next year, like Goldman Sachs does, um, the time is now. It's not too late. Um, and if there's a pullback, that's where you kind of go in a little bit heavier even. And I've been telling people buy on pullbacks, but we're not seeing much of that. You know, the pullbacks don't last for more than a few hours or a day maybe. So, um, I I think there's just too much momentum right now, and the money the capital flows are just going to increase over time into this sector. >> Yeah. Let's discuss how North Mining fits into the picture. Why don't you start by giving us an overview of the company? So, we own uh the former third largest gold producer in Chile with a full infrastructure. So, we've got roads, power, 3,000 ton a day mill. Um we've inherited, you know, what what what I was told by the person who put in production, David Lang, the famous engineer. We've inherited about 175 million worth of infrastructure. Um we've got 140,000 mters drilled and 1710 drill holes in our core shack. Um, we've got an existing 2.74 million ounce combined indicated and inferred uh resource. Majority of that, 80% of that being indicated. Um, we've got a path to production on a smaller part of our deposit which is sitting in our stock piles in the short term less than 2 years away. And then we this project was primarily drilled down to 70 mters and it's a high sulfidation system. So you got you know high 70 mters of mineralization but high salvidation usually goes down 230 m. So when we acquired the asset we said okay we can probably triple or quadruple the size. So, we're out there publicly targeting 7 12 to 9 million ounce global resource um to expand the overall resource and build out a large cap uh gold production play. Um, we've got a world-class team. Um, one of our key guys down on the ground there, uh, Mikuel Teal, he drilled the first hole at Esparanza and 6 years later and $2.7 billion in production ahead of time, ahead of schedule, ahead of budget. So, uh, and he also turned around Anglo's Las Bronces mine. It's a large mine in, uh, Chile. So, he's he's a mine builder, an engineer. Um, we've got David Lang who put it into production for Shell back in the 80s and we've got a couple other engineers joining our team. Um, so we're focused on taking this, you know, to a smaller scale production scenario, get cash flow, become independent, and develop this larger uh gold deposit that we have uh with our team. We've recently raised uh significant capital. We went to the market for 3.5 million to drill and we ended up closing 6 million and the funding was led by people like Rob Mchuan, the billionaire uh and gold investor sold gold corp. He's founder of Mchuan mining. Super good mining guy obviously a big gold silver copper bug. Um, uh, Paul Matis, who's, you know, a legend in the business and has had so a few billion dollars of exits, uh, was a big investor of ours into this round. Um, Quinton Henning, who's very well-renowned geologist working with Crescat. Crescat was also a part of it. Uh, Larry Leard, a fund manager out of the US, big gold bug. I'm going to call him that for sure. Um, we had a couple other founders of mining companies in there. So, we've had a really good u capital raise of strategic money from actually Europe, the US, and very little from Canada. We focus more energy on the US and Europe uh and South America. And so, you know, we're in a good situation. We're about to embark on a very large drilling program for the project in all of our high grade zones. Um, we're undertaking an engineering study on our plant to see what we need to fix up or refurbish for the plant to bring it up to speed for production. And we're doing a lot of metallurgical work to better understand the minology and the metallergy of the different types of gold that we have within the project and how easily it liberates because we've got gold at surface that liberates through uh leeching and then there's stuff that's below the surface and sulfides that may require other strategies. So, we're we're undertaking a very large um metallurgical game plan and obviously we've attracted a lot of powerful money coming into our deal looking at this and saying, "Wait a second, this is highly undervalued. Um we're coming in at these levels. We think this is a way to, you know, invest and create 10 times their money on it." And they see the upside in the project geologically. Um we check all the boxes. We've got water. We've got local community on the side. We've got permits for drilling. I mean, we're we're we're basically one of the more undervalued gold deals with an actual resource and getting really close to a production scenario uh in the market. Um and we're well capitalized obviously with the people that we have. So, really good situation. Um my family something that's very unique for the Canadian markets. Um you know, we had a couple of quiet years. It was pretty tough and we had to sustain things and you couldn't raise any money. Um, my family has invested about 9.3 million into the deal through the market and through private placements. We participate at every level. Um, we're in the market buying when we're allowed to. Uh, I was averaging down some of my RSP a couple of weeks ago in the mid 80s. Uh, and so, you know, we've got exposure financially. We're the largest investors in the deal. Um, and so we're aligned with our shareholders, too, right? Like our motivation is create as much shareholder value as possible. That's kind of how we will be rewarded in the near future here. So, we're aligned. Um, there's nobody I think in Canada that I know of that maybe is depends what use words I use. My wife might say worse words, but crazier than us to invest in our deal at that level. There's very few guys that have put, you know, almost eight figures in their own small cap $100 million type of deal, sub$und00 million deal. So, you know, that's a big show of strength for the company. Um, I've typically I've been known for my background. I' I've sold close to a billion dollars of mining companies, two large copper uh deposits to majors uh Hud Bay and Inmet. And then I've sold a silver company and a coal company. And each time I sell the companies, guys are asking me like, "Don't you regret it cuz now your copper assets, a multi-billion dollar asset instead of, you know, you sold it for 520 million." Um but the capex on copper is a bit different. Uh this time I think our motivation is to put it into production because we our capex is not anything crazy to get there with a gold project like this as robust as it is. Everything is at surface open pitable um and and as I said earlier you know we've got ADR effluent plants 3,000 ton a day mill. We've got a full infrastructure which is really nice to have to fasttrack things. Great overview and that amount of skin in the game is something that shareholders obviously love to see. I want to maybe pull on that thread of of the team behind Northmont a little more. You you mentioned a few key team members there. Maybe you could shed some more light on that team, how you plan to leverage their expertise and start with yourself and your your own background. You mentioned there you've you've closed some pretty big deals in terms of selling those other companies. maybe you could dive a little bit deeper into that and just what brought you to become CEO of Northmont Mining. >> Yeah, sure. I guess uh in 2019 I was concerned about the uh debt levels of governments and and and uh people in North America and I felt our our family and myself we we need exposure to gold. So we went hunting to acquire a gold asset. Um and through my connections we met with COPEC which is the largest conglomerate in Chile. uh they do 24 26 billion a year. They own gas stations. They own grocery stores. And they were exiting two gold mines in 2019. Um and they were investing actually in a copper mine near my old copper project in Peru. They put 950 million in. So we acquired Choco Limpe um and and and and um I got involved. The the people funding us wanted to see me step on as CEO. So I had no choice but to step on as a CEO. uh and lead the charge. Um from a background, I've been involved in the mining sector since 2003 where earlier in my career, I did a deal with Mitsui and Riotinto and acquired Constansia, which was a large copper deposit in Peru. Um we we uh advanced that through to Fasibility and we ended up selling that to Hud Bay for 520 million. Um it's one of the larger copper projects in production in Peru in recent times. I think they put about two billion into it. Uh and and I think it it delivers about twothirds of the copper production at Hud Bay. Um so that was a great win for our shareholders. Uh and during my tenure of running what I call Norsemont 1.0, the copper play. Um I also tried to acquire a company called Pedakia, which owned a very large copper deposit in Panama. And uh unfortunately we couldn't do a deal to acquire them, but I ended up becoming one of the larger shareholders or if not one of the largest shareholders of the company in tandem with other shareholders. And we kind of took control and put my president, my CFO on the board uh and and I became an adviser and our lawyer came on as corporate secretary. So we kind of took control, ran that and we sold that for 357 million to INMAT and spun out the gold for 200 million. So it was a you know a $550 million kind of asset for our shareholders and again so we did very well with that and then uh a silver company that I founded a small silver company in Peru we ended up selling that Rio silver and a coal company in Canada coal hunter so 2011 we exited all of our mining assets we felt mining was over which probably was the right time we thought we're going to be uh I didn't think I I I think I publicly said I'll never do a mining deal again because I wasn't smart enough to look 10 years ahead head um and and uh got involved in in founding a payment processor which we had exited and uh one of the famous companies in Canada. I got involved with the cannabis sector and I was one of the co-founders of Aurora Cannabis which a lot of people know me from that because that became a $16 billion crazy story. It's still about a billion dollar company but uh not involved anymore. And then 2019 back into you know mining sector I thought this was the right timing and we had a bit of a run with Normont and raised a lot of capital institutionally up to a$160 and our stock was trading near three bucks and higher market cap than we are today. So now we've got a resource. We've got a you know uh our team is is has advanced quite a bit with some of the people involved on our board advisory board. Um guys who have built mines before and had accidents and so you know we feel we're highly undervalued and and u I think timing is right. We just talked about the price of gold where it's going and the equity. So it's it's the perfect storm going on here. I mean, you couldn't I don't think anybody could have predicted this create this this type of storm going on with debt levels and currencies and interest rates and tech overvalued versus gold and central banks buying. I mean, there's just too many things going on, wars going on, you know, Russia, Ukraine problems and Middle East issues. So, it's like it's a whole I feel bad for our kids cuz it's a crazy world they're inheriting. But hopefully, you know, all of us being smart and exposing ourselves to gold and silver will pay off for our children's future. >> Absolutely. I I want to dive a little bit deeper into the Choco Limpe project. Could you maybe talk to us about the progress you've made there so far? You mentioned a little bit about infrastructure in place. Maybe if you could give us some more details there, the historic production in the area, um, and highlights from the 43 101 you think it's important to touch on. So, a couple of things. It used to be owned by Shell in the beginning. Uh, and in the late 80s, early 90s, it was the number three gold producer. They were producing very high grades, multig gold. Um, which is why we have a bit, we have 210,000 ounces sitting just in our stock piles near a gram. And people can't believe that the grade is that high sitting there because they're cut off. A gram wasn't worth it back in the uh, I guess early 90s when gold went sub 300. that was kind of game over for any gold producers. Um, you know, and because it was a producer, uh, it was kept on care and maintenance in a in a good way by COPEC. Um, we've inherited, you know, a 3,000 ton a day mill, an ADR effluent plant, which is for treating water and recycling of water on the plant. We we have backup generators. We have full power. We have year round roads. And the cost of power in roads is typically a very large capex for most pro production scenarios. So we don't have that cost basis. Um we have existing uh leech pads where we can put uh gold uh stock piles on and leech out the gold from a production standpoint. uh which is typically the oxide gold and near surface gold. We've got about 8 kilometers of strike within known strike of mineralization within the projects and and because it's a form producer there's several pits certain zones are higher grade than other grade some have more silver some have more gold um and obviously this being a very robust project I mean even you know I I mentioned earlier we've got 140,000 mters of drilling to drill that today would cost you $50 to $100 million all in. So just the drilling we have all that core in our core shack. Um so we're in a very unique position. The company itself has an actual um presidential decree mining permit from 1983 and 1988 that has sustained itself throughout every presidency. So over the main part of the deposits we have the right to mine it and a mining permit. And then around all the mineralized areas we have an exploitation permit which we'd have to convin convert a larger area if we wanted to in the future to a mining permit. So we've got a very unique situation you know 25 km of which 5 km is the kind of the heart of the project. Um we've got drill permits in hand community on side. Um the metallurgical work from the past has demonstrated 80 90% recoveries and and typically about 88 to 90% recovery for leeching. Um there is in our 431 uh talking about our sulfide zones and there was some conversation somebody saying oh it's refractory or and and if it was refractory or in today's market you know when you see guys saying allin cost for producing gold at 1500 well if it's refractory it might be 17 or $1,800. Well nobody cares at $4,000 gold. Our gold is in our 4100 is not refractory. A lot of the gold is actually attached to a sulfide. So, we may be able to liberate it easier, crush it, run through concentrator, shakers. So, there's a lower price capex to maybe um extract what we label our uh sulfide gold. And so, we're exploring that and what percentage of the project would liberate that way. And then there's a larger, you know, 20% of the project is oxide, which is very easy to process. I call it throw the rock in the swimming pool, throw in some acid, leech out the gold to just make it simple for people to understand. Um, so we've got a very unique situation. Uh, and and as I mentioned earlier, very low capex to get into production because we have so much infrastructure that we've inherited. U, we have a lab, we have a 35man camp, which we did have to put some money into refurbishing the camp. And so we've got a very um robust situation that I think would allow us to be into a production scenario faster than some of our peers. Um as I a comparable I look at using um a great company called Rio2 which is um sitting at about 800 plus million. Maybe it's more cuz I haven't looked at their share price in the last few days since gold's moved. But, you know, they're sitting at 800 million market cap. Their grade is probably a third of our grade. So, they're a lower grade producer, but they have the cash and they're a little ahead of us, right? So, showing where we can be today, you know, sitting at an 80 90 million cap, they're at 800 million. Um, we're projecting to have more gold at a much higher grade than them. So showing a a good comparable to investors to say, hey, when I say this is a 10 bagger, you know, that would take us to that 800 million billion dollar range in the next, you know, uh year or two to catch up with someone like uh a Rio2. And obviously that doesn't factor in you know if you want to forward look at the price of gold that some people look at uh you know what will the value be as the price of gold if you believe gold's going to go 4500 5,000 all these prices move with it. So what our family bets on is really simple. We bet on the commodity physically moving in price. So that's where we make a win. When go we bet on gold when it was 1,600 now it's you know 4,000. And then we also bet on the size of the project growing which geologically this is a very simple project. It's a it's a young system and it's all exposed and intact. And we also have multiple pfries on the project which are the engines that drove likely all the gold to surface here which adds another uh opportunity to to grow the overall size of the deposit. >> Well, let's end by looking forward to the future. What are the major catalysts and news flow that shareholders of Northmont can look forward to for the remainder of the year and into 2026? >> Sure. The biggest catalyst I would say number one uh which the retail market and even the institutional market are waiting for. We're drilling out in our high-grade zones. Um our drill program I think is going to be the number one catalyst. We have areas that have 30 m of 32 g and per ton 32 g per ton gold 8 g silver that has only been drilled from zero to 35 m. So we want to drill that down to 230 m. If we can pull a 100 plus meter hole of an ounce plus material, it'd be you know our stock would go parabolic. It would be the biggest hole for South America. So, we have two zones like that that we want to try drilling. We have other areas where we've we've seen drill holes go down to 120 m or 100 mters with 4 g per ton from surface. We want to take that down 300 m. that allows us to delineate a larger amount of resources through our drilling and also helps us augment the average grade by drilling some of the higher grade zones and increasing the overall grade of the deposit, giving us better geological knowledge. So, I think our drill program this year is a very high impact drill program which will deliver good results that the market wants to see and I think will get us noticed by some of the mid-tier and majors. and we've had knocks on the door people in our data room from larger cap midcap mining companies. So we're already getting that traction. Um secondly, we're doing a lot of metallurgical work which allows us to qualify which um ore can be liberated through leeching, liberated through concentration or other methods. uh and and and I think some of our you know belief and it's outlined in our 4301 there is some potential for leeching our sulfide material and getting good recoveries on that which is very low capex you know most sulfide uh mo most oxide production plays are you know sub 500 bucks an ounce processing I think ours is sitting at about 300 from what I heard the other day from our team uh obviously sulfide you know with a plant and every all the work that gets done you're looking at that $12 to $1,500 $100 an ounce uh and moving up because of inflation and labor but still very profitable. So we've got the metallurgical side and then we have some engineering studies going on with regards to the project. We are going to be advancing to a prefeasibility study or PA on our uh stock piles that we want to put in production in short order here. uh and and we've obviously attracted a lot of new capital and so we're looking at augmenting the team and growing the team on the uh corporate corporate development, corporate finance side as well as the technical side especially on the engineering. So we're we're looking at adding to our team and growing our team here with people to allow us to advance the project. So, I think those are kind of the main catalysts that will drive uh you know, investor interest and add value to our shareholders and stakeholders. >> Fantastic. Well, I'm going to put links in the description below to the Northmont Mining website as well as social media for people who want to follow along with the company. Mark, this has been a fantastic conversation. Really appreciate you coming on the show. >> Yeah, thank you for having me. Really appreciate it. It's good for us talking high level on gold and then diving into the details here was was was fun. And obviously, you know, everybody has to do their due diligence and I I strongly would suggest to your subscribers even stepping into big cap gold stocks like everybody like you said, uh, you know, 20% exposure to gold is probably a smart number today. Commodity culture is a series on commodities and natural resources. If you would like to see more, be sure to subscribe and hit the bell notification so you're always up tod date with the latest episodes.
We're in 'Unprecedented' GOLD Bull Market – 'It's NON STOP'
Summary
Transcript
Hello everybody and welcome into commodity culture where our goal is to make you a better investor in the commodity sector. My name is Jesse Day. Before we dive in, standard disclaimer, nothing here is investment advice. Do your own due diligence. And today's guest is the CEO of Norsemont Mining, a Canadian resource development company focused on advancing and developing the past producing Choco Limpy gold, silver, copper project in northern Chile. Mark Levy, great to have you on the show. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. >> Very exciting times in the precious metal space. I want to kick things off by discussing gold. As we sit here today, gold's at around $4,040. We were speaking before we hit record today that the metal has risen faster than I think even gold bugs anticipated. So, what are you watching as the main catalyst that you think have driven the market to where it is now? And how much more room do you think this bull market has to run? >> Sure. Um I mean I originally a year ago I predicted gold would hit 3500 this year. Obviously I was wrong about that. Um obviously you you you see a lot of pressure on interest rates um issues with currencies like the euro and the Japanese yen and you're seeing obviously central bank buying. Right. The biggest thing is you got all the central banks buying into gold. You got ETFs buying into gold. Um I I think there's so many catalysts right now. Um that's pushed gold to where it's at and the momentum behind it is is unprecedented. You know, we've never seen gold move at this level of uh price appreciation without much pullbacks. Typically, you see gold climbs a bit, takes a step back. So there there's so many um factors here that I guess all of it together is is really starting to see gold break out here and uh I think a lot of a lot of issues in the world too a lot of uncertainty a lot of you know friction in the world uh worldwide and and and I guess a lot of people you know see gold as a safe haven as you and I probably do right so yeah it's interesting times Absolutely. And despite this amazing run in gold, Wall Street and the mainstream financial press haven't really been paying much attention. But recently, we did see the chief investment officer of Morgan Stanley come out and recommend a 20% allocation to gold, which is actually much higher than I would have anticipated from a big financial institution. I would have thought maybe they'll say 5%. Um, obviously a big paradigm shift from 0%. Uh, do you anticipate more financial institutions and advisers waking up to gold? Um, there there's been varying price targets set. I think before we we hit record today, you were mentioning price target from from a a financial institution. Maybe you could talk to us about that and just your thoughts on we're we're in the early stages, right, of this adoption of gold by the mainstream financial institutions. >> For sure. I I mean, obviously I'm a little bit of a gold bug. I'm biased cuz I got involved in gold in 2019. Uh, and I was telling people, financial managers, wealth management, investors, friends, family, you know, back then, you should be 5% to 10% gold. And then my my my my view changed uh 2 years ago, telling people, you got to be 10% gold here. You know, there's so much uncertainty. Um, it's very nice to see. I I saw a report today Goldman Sachs actually targeted $4,900 gold in Q2 of 2026 and their uh basis for that was that they see interest rates dropping another 100 basis points over the next uh 2 3/4 and they also say um a lot of the ETFs there's a big inflow of capital into the ETFs that are acquiring positions in gold central central bank buying. Um, China's resume buying, it's the 11th month buy. And I I I I say, you know, with a smile, you know, likely whatever China reports is not the whole story. So, if they said they bought X amount of tons, we all know it's probably 2 3x tons. So, uh, because they obviously don't want it to get too far ahead because they're busy accumulating and they've been accumulating since 2022, I think. Um, I think a lot of the buying in China was prior to central bank buying. It was actually internal domestic buying from what I read. So, you you've got, you know, so many factors. Um, I've been saying for a long time and I I'm seeing Wall Street starting to adopt it. As you just said, look, Goldman Sachs has been putting out targets. They've been very active over the last three years putting targets on gold. It's the most aggressive target they put. um you know you've you've got uh Bank of England came out made a comment which is really close to my beliefs and what I've talked about is um there's they're they're predicting that the markets overall are overvalued with a big emphasis on tech and AI and a sharp correction coming. So that's showing some smart earlier stage institutional money and even potentially retail shifting into gold. But the paradigm shift hasn't happened. I I think we're in for some fun. Um you know I have my own we'll we'll maybe talk later about my predictions on gold which we've already exceeded uh this year's prediction. U but yeah there there's there's a whole bunch of factors and bankers getting on board. Um, even from my perspective, the US small midcap bankers have been knocking on our door. Um, which they, you know, I'm like, do you have a geologist on staff? They're like, no, but we have a lot of demand for investing in some gold projects. So there's some interesting situations and I'll talk some personal stuff that came up interesting with with a big CEO uh approaching me uh from a from an industrial company like uh consumer products company. So you know I I think the momentum is building but we definitely haven't hit mainstream yet. >> I'd love to get some price targets for you for gold. But before we do that I just want to pull on the threat of central bank gold buying. Um because as you mentioned, China is accumulating likely much more gold than they uh are stating as well as already holding much more gold reserves than they're stating as well. But the Bank of Canada, we always hear this, Canada has no gold reserves. Do you think that's true? Do you think Do you think the Canadian government is playing 8D chess here and they're actually sitting on a hoorde of gold or are they really that ignorant? And if so, they're in dire straits right now, right? if if they're really going to go into this paradigm shift, the fall in fiat currencies, the rise of gold, the return of gold as a monetary asset, and they've got nothing on their balance sheet. What are your thoughts there? >> Wow, you've opened up a can of worms. Um, it's an interesting question because obviously me being Canadian, uh, and and obviously, you know, I I'm a big believer in gold, I've got a lot of our net worth tied up in gold equities and physical gold and silver. Um, I I think it's very irresponsible of the Canadian government to not have uh a certain amount of gold in their coffers like every normal smart country has been doing for years now. And it's never too late to jump on the bandwagon, but Canada's sleeping at the switch sadly and and and really going to fall behind. And I think we're going to get really badly hurt in Canada because they're not, you know, um, acquiring gold as the rest of the world is doing. Uh and and and funny topic is as you know I moved recently from Canada to the United States because I felt the policies in Canada um weren't good for Canadians uh and and we're not making the right financial moves where the US is really jumping on that bandwagon despite both countries having you know exorbitant debts and all all the problems both countries may have but Canada's still asleep at the wheel sadly. You know, I'm I'm trying to choose my words politely. As a Canadian, it's very um disheartening to to see how badly managed our government has done here. And being left out of a G7 countries without buying any gold, backing our currency with some gold is is crazy. I I don't think we're sitting on any gold there. There's really been no movement. Canada's more transparent. So, whatever they say, I kind of believe. Um China, I put a multiplier. If they're selling, they're really selling. If they're buying, they're really buying. I mean, we all know they've been hoarding it both domestically and through central banks. So, they're they've made some smart moves and they think 10 20 years ahead, whereas North America only thinks a few years ahead. So, it's unfortunate. >> Yes. And I would love to get your thoughts on where the price of gold could go. Is your estimate in line with Goldman Sachs that we could see that 4,900 uh by I believe you said Q Q1 or Q2. I think it was Q2 of 2026. Do you think we could go higher? I mean the way gold is moving now I I thought you know as we saw gold climb into the 37 3,800. I thought maybe we'd see 4,000 by end of year. It's funny when I prepared these questions originally, my first question was going to be, you know, do you think gold could get to 4,000 by the end of the year and it's already there and and then some by the time this interview started. So, what are your thoughts on the price of gold uh maybe for for 2026 and beyond? >> I mean, a year ago, my public prediction to investors and people and speaking on on at engagements and interviews, uh I was saying $3,500 gold for 2025 and $4,000 for 2026. Um, obviously I'm under understated and wrong. Uh, although, uh, when gold did cross 3,800, uh, I guess over a month ago, um, I was like, "Oh my god, you know what? I I think we're going to see, uh, $4,000 gold by the end or beginning of of October." And sure enough, September, October here, and that's where we're at. There's just too much momentum, and you don't see many pullbacks. Like two years ago and a year ago, gold would have some runs and then pull back and lose 50% of those gains, but maintain, you know, now it's just non-stop up up and and I guess more and more um flow of capital into gold, more demand for gold, more a little bit more um it's in the news a lot more than it was before before it wasn't in the news. crypto I think cryptocurrency has really stolen the uh capital and limelight from gold but now there's been a paradigm shift where you're seeing crypto guys um either tokenizing gold or investing in gold so I I'm seeing a shift now from the crypto guys now stepping into gold uh and we talked about a story earlier right so you know my my my views um personally um I've I've kind of revisited that. I I'm thinking $4,500 gold in in next year and $5,000 gold the year after was still my prediction. But um based on everything going on, I may have to sit back and kind of read some more notes and get some more uh data cuz I mean smart guys at Goldman Sachs and they're pretty conservative these guys. They don't want to be wrong. They'd rather be understated. And I follow Goldman Sachs closely and they've been wrong about gold all the time on the understate. You know, they were predicting 3,200 for this year. Then they they've always underpredicted. So them telling me 4,900 Q2 2026, that's pretty scary. I mean, that's uh that's telling me gold's going 5,000 next year. >> Yeah, I I I echo that sentiment for sure. Uh, I want to discuss silver for a little bit here because as gold continues to soar to new all-time highs, silver quietly outperforming gold year to date now over $49 up around 67% compared to gold's 52%. How do you view the silver market? It's often said that that gold leads and in the beginning stages of a precious metals bull market and then silver ends up catching up and outperforming. Do you think we're in that phase at this point in time or do you just see blue skies ahead for both gold and silver? >> Yeah, so um I'm more of a gold bug than silver bug. I love silver. I own physical silver. Um we own some silver stocks as well. Um and obviously both metals are performing well. Um you know, my my views towards silver are maybe not as aggressive as some of the silver bugs out there that are talking $100 silver next year. I really don't see silver going to a 100 bucks and a lot of smart people that work with me and that are around me have, you know, a different view, but definitely there's a lot of torque to silver, a lot of upside to silver. So, uh, if I was to go on the records, I'd say, you know, I I think we can see $60 silver um, next year, which, you know, would be a 20 plus% increase. Same as gold being 5,000 would be the similar type of thing. Um, but I I I don't know that I see gold going to 10,000 maybe for a for short crazy stint. You know, uh, Sprat's views are a little bit more extra extravagant than than most. Um, and and the same thing with silver. Maybe it does touch 100 bucks, but it might be just for a short period of time. I I think there's not as much demand for physical silver in ETFs and and central bank buying to to really um give it the same strength that gold has and gold is still the gold standard, right? Like that's number one. Um I do feel like there may be bit more upside from a price appreciation on silver, but uh I'm not a believer in $100 silver unfortunately. Well, let's quickly touch on the gold and silver mining sector, then I want to dive into Norsemont. Um, the GDX and the SIL ETFs up massively. Last time I checked, it was 115% year to date. I think we're up higher than that at this point. And it wasn't that long ago that investors were complaining about the miners not providing that levered play on gold and silver. Just last year, people were wondering, why aren't the miners outperforming the metals by a wide margin? And and here we are. Now they're really taking off. Do you think this is a time where some caution is warranted or do you think the greater fear is sitting on the sidelines hoping for a dip and watching these equities run away from you? >> Well, I mean, we we've seen uh gold move and I think a lot of people in the junior market, gold mining market were projecting that when gold breaks 2,000, we're going to see a big run in the equities and that obviously never happened. And then it was like, okay, 2500, okay, 3,000. And really at $3,000 gold, the equities didn't move. Now they're moving. Um I I I think that you're going to see, you know, really good performance in both the large cap gold stocks cuz they're producers. Um you know, one of my favorites is uh like Nico Eagle. You know, they reported record gold profits. I think imagine what next quarter is going to be like in the next quarter with $4,000 gold. So I think you're going to see the large cap gold move, you know, really well with profitability. And I think you're going to see the small and midcaps, they are moving. As you said, they've moved. Um, I've been, you know, we run our own family office. We're very heavily invested in the space. And I'll say I've made the mistake, which I should know better, is looking for a dip to buy into some of the uh, smaller midcap stories that we like that have ounces in the ground, which is one of our criteria, metals in the ground, and and we've regretted every single deal. Uh, I don't want to name them because, you know, it wouldn't be appropriate, but I'll tell you, there's three deals that we would have tripled our money if we weren't trying to wait for a pullback and we would have done really well. And and now is probably time to buy some of those equities. So, I I think there's a lot of room, a lot of upside. Um, if people believe gold going into 5,000 next year, like Goldman Sachs does, um, the time is now. It's not too late. Um, and if there's a pullback, that's where you kind of go in a little bit heavier even. And I've been telling people buy on pullbacks, but we're not seeing much of that. You know, the pullbacks don't last for more than a few hours or a day maybe. So, um, I I think there's just too much momentum right now, and the money the capital flows are just going to increase over time into this sector. >> Yeah. Let's discuss how North Mining fits into the picture. Why don't you start by giving us an overview of the company? So, we own uh the former third largest gold producer in Chile with a full infrastructure. So, we've got roads, power, 3,000 ton a day mill. Um we've inherited, you know, what what what I was told by the person who put in production, David Lang, the famous engineer. We've inherited about 175 million worth of infrastructure. Um we've got 140,000 mters drilled and 1710 drill holes in our core shack. Um, we've got an existing 2.74 million ounce combined indicated and inferred uh resource. Majority of that, 80% of that being indicated. Um, we've got a path to production on a smaller part of our deposit which is sitting in our stock piles in the short term less than 2 years away. And then we this project was primarily drilled down to 70 mters and it's a high sulfidation system. So you got you know high 70 mters of mineralization but high salvidation usually goes down 230 m. So when we acquired the asset we said okay we can probably triple or quadruple the size. So, we're out there publicly targeting 7 12 to 9 million ounce global resource um to expand the overall resource and build out a large cap uh gold production play. Um, we've got a world-class team. Um, one of our key guys down on the ground there, uh, Mikuel Teal, he drilled the first hole at Esparanza and 6 years later and $2.7 billion in production ahead of time, ahead of schedule, ahead of budget. So, uh, and he also turned around Anglo's Las Bronces mine. It's a large mine in, uh, Chile. So, he's he's a mine builder, an engineer. Um, we've got David Lang who put it into production for Shell back in the 80s and we've got a couple other engineers joining our team. Um, so we're focused on taking this, you know, to a smaller scale production scenario, get cash flow, become independent, and develop this larger uh gold deposit that we have uh with our team. We've recently raised uh significant capital. We went to the market for 3.5 million to drill and we ended up closing 6 million and the funding was led by people like Rob Mchuan, the billionaire uh and gold investor sold gold corp. He's founder of Mchuan mining. Super good mining guy obviously a big gold silver copper bug. Um, uh, Paul Matis, who's, you know, a legend in the business and has had so a few billion dollars of exits, uh, was a big investor of ours into this round. Um, Quinton Henning, who's very well-renowned geologist working with Crescat. Crescat was also a part of it. Uh, Larry Leard, a fund manager out of the US, big gold bug. I'm going to call him that for sure. Um, we had a couple other founders of mining companies in there. So, we've had a really good u capital raise of strategic money from actually Europe, the US, and very little from Canada. We focus more energy on the US and Europe uh and South America. And so, you know, we're in a good situation. We're about to embark on a very large drilling program for the project in all of our high grade zones. Um, we're undertaking an engineering study on our plant to see what we need to fix up or refurbish for the plant to bring it up to speed for production. And we're doing a lot of metallurgical work to better understand the minology and the metallergy of the different types of gold that we have within the project and how easily it liberates because we've got gold at surface that liberates through uh leeching and then there's stuff that's below the surface and sulfides that may require other strategies. So, we're we're undertaking a very large um metallurgical game plan and obviously we've attracted a lot of powerful money coming into our deal looking at this and saying, "Wait a second, this is highly undervalued. Um we're coming in at these levels. We think this is a way to, you know, invest and create 10 times their money on it." And they see the upside in the project geologically. Um we check all the boxes. We've got water. We've got local community on the side. We've got permits for drilling. I mean, we're we're we're basically one of the more undervalued gold deals with an actual resource and getting really close to a production scenario uh in the market. Um and we're well capitalized obviously with the people that we have. So, really good situation. Um my family something that's very unique for the Canadian markets. Um you know, we had a couple of quiet years. It was pretty tough and we had to sustain things and you couldn't raise any money. Um, my family has invested about 9.3 million into the deal through the market and through private placements. We participate at every level. Um, we're in the market buying when we're allowed to. Uh, I was averaging down some of my RSP a couple of weeks ago in the mid 80s. Uh, and so, you know, we've got exposure financially. We're the largest investors in the deal. Um, and so we're aligned with our shareholders, too, right? Like our motivation is create as much shareholder value as possible. That's kind of how we will be rewarded in the near future here. So, we're aligned. Um, there's nobody I think in Canada that I know of that maybe is depends what use words I use. My wife might say worse words, but crazier than us to invest in our deal at that level. There's very few guys that have put, you know, almost eight figures in their own small cap $100 million type of deal, sub$und00 million deal. So, you know, that's a big show of strength for the company. Um, I've typically I've been known for my background. I' I've sold close to a billion dollars of mining companies, two large copper uh deposits to majors uh Hud Bay and Inmet. And then I've sold a silver company and a coal company. And each time I sell the companies, guys are asking me like, "Don't you regret it cuz now your copper assets, a multi-billion dollar asset instead of, you know, you sold it for 520 million." Um but the capex on copper is a bit different. Uh this time I think our motivation is to put it into production because we our capex is not anything crazy to get there with a gold project like this as robust as it is. Everything is at surface open pitable um and and as I said earlier you know we've got ADR effluent plants 3,000 ton a day mill. We've got a full infrastructure which is really nice to have to fasttrack things. Great overview and that amount of skin in the game is something that shareholders obviously love to see. I want to maybe pull on that thread of of the team behind Northmont a little more. You you mentioned a few key team members there. Maybe you could shed some more light on that team, how you plan to leverage their expertise and start with yourself and your your own background. You mentioned there you've you've closed some pretty big deals in terms of selling those other companies. maybe you could dive a little bit deeper into that and just what brought you to become CEO of Northmont Mining. >> Yeah, sure. I guess uh in 2019 I was concerned about the uh debt levels of governments and and and uh people in North America and I felt our our family and myself we we need exposure to gold. So we went hunting to acquire a gold asset. Um and through my connections we met with COPEC which is the largest conglomerate in Chile. uh they do 24 26 billion a year. They own gas stations. They own grocery stores. And they were exiting two gold mines in 2019. Um and they were investing actually in a copper mine near my old copper project in Peru. They put 950 million in. So we acquired Choco Limpe um and and and and um I got involved. The the people funding us wanted to see me step on as CEO. So I had no choice but to step on as a CEO. uh and lead the charge. Um from a background, I've been involved in the mining sector since 2003 where earlier in my career, I did a deal with Mitsui and Riotinto and acquired Constansia, which was a large copper deposit in Peru. Um we we uh advanced that through to Fasibility and we ended up selling that to Hud Bay for 520 million. Um it's one of the larger copper projects in production in Peru in recent times. I think they put about two billion into it. Uh and and I think it it delivers about twothirds of the copper production at Hud Bay. Um so that was a great win for our shareholders. Uh and during my tenure of running what I call Norsemont 1.0, the copper play. Um I also tried to acquire a company called Pedakia, which owned a very large copper deposit in Panama. And uh unfortunately we couldn't do a deal to acquire them, but I ended up becoming one of the larger shareholders or if not one of the largest shareholders of the company in tandem with other shareholders. And we kind of took control and put my president, my CFO on the board uh and and I became an adviser and our lawyer came on as corporate secretary. So we kind of took control, ran that and we sold that for 357 million to INMAT and spun out the gold for 200 million. So it was a you know a $550 million kind of asset for our shareholders and again so we did very well with that and then uh a silver company that I founded a small silver company in Peru we ended up selling that Rio silver and a coal company in Canada coal hunter so 2011 we exited all of our mining assets we felt mining was over which probably was the right time we thought we're going to be uh I didn't think I I I think I publicly said I'll never do a mining deal again because I wasn't smart enough to look 10 years ahead head um and and uh got involved in in founding a payment processor which we had exited and uh one of the famous companies in Canada. I got involved with the cannabis sector and I was one of the co-founders of Aurora Cannabis which a lot of people know me from that because that became a $16 billion crazy story. It's still about a billion dollar company but uh not involved anymore. And then 2019 back into you know mining sector I thought this was the right timing and we had a bit of a run with Normont and raised a lot of capital institutionally up to a$160 and our stock was trading near three bucks and higher market cap than we are today. So now we've got a resource. We've got a you know uh our team is is has advanced quite a bit with some of the people involved on our board advisory board. Um guys who have built mines before and had accidents and so you know we feel we're highly undervalued and and u I think timing is right. We just talked about the price of gold where it's going and the equity. So it's it's the perfect storm going on here. I mean, you couldn't I don't think anybody could have predicted this create this this type of storm going on with debt levels and currencies and interest rates and tech overvalued versus gold and central banks buying. I mean, there's just too many things going on, wars going on, you know, Russia, Ukraine problems and Middle East issues. So, it's like it's a whole I feel bad for our kids cuz it's a crazy world they're inheriting. But hopefully, you know, all of us being smart and exposing ourselves to gold and silver will pay off for our children's future. >> Absolutely. I I want to dive a little bit deeper into the Choco Limpe project. Could you maybe talk to us about the progress you've made there so far? You mentioned a little bit about infrastructure in place. Maybe if you could give us some more details there, the historic production in the area, um, and highlights from the 43 101 you think it's important to touch on. So, a couple of things. It used to be owned by Shell in the beginning. Uh, and in the late 80s, early 90s, it was the number three gold producer. They were producing very high grades, multig gold. Um, which is why we have a bit, we have 210,000 ounces sitting just in our stock piles near a gram. And people can't believe that the grade is that high sitting there because they're cut off. A gram wasn't worth it back in the uh, I guess early 90s when gold went sub 300. that was kind of game over for any gold producers. Um, you know, and because it was a producer, uh, it was kept on care and maintenance in a in a good way by COPEC. Um, we've inherited, you know, a 3,000 ton a day mill, an ADR effluent plant, which is for treating water and recycling of water on the plant. We we have backup generators. We have full power. We have year round roads. And the cost of power in roads is typically a very large capex for most pro production scenarios. So we don't have that cost basis. Um we have existing uh leech pads where we can put uh gold uh stock piles on and leech out the gold from a production standpoint. uh which is typically the oxide gold and near surface gold. We've got about 8 kilometers of strike within known strike of mineralization within the projects and and because it's a form producer there's several pits certain zones are higher grade than other grade some have more silver some have more gold um and obviously this being a very robust project I mean even you know I I mentioned earlier we've got 140,000 mters of drilling to drill that today would cost you $50 to $100 million all in. So just the drilling we have all that core in our core shack. Um so we're in a very unique position. The company itself has an actual um presidential decree mining permit from 1983 and 1988 that has sustained itself throughout every presidency. So over the main part of the deposits we have the right to mine it and a mining permit. And then around all the mineralized areas we have an exploitation permit which we'd have to convin convert a larger area if we wanted to in the future to a mining permit. So we've got a very unique situation you know 25 km of which 5 km is the kind of the heart of the project. Um we've got drill permits in hand community on side. Um the metallurgical work from the past has demonstrated 80 90% recoveries and and typically about 88 to 90% recovery for leeching. Um there is in our 431 uh talking about our sulfide zones and there was some conversation somebody saying oh it's refractory or and and if it was refractory or in today's market you know when you see guys saying allin cost for producing gold at 1500 well if it's refractory it might be 17 or $1,800. Well nobody cares at $4,000 gold. Our gold is in our 4100 is not refractory. A lot of the gold is actually attached to a sulfide. So, we may be able to liberate it easier, crush it, run through concentrator, shakers. So, there's a lower price capex to maybe um extract what we label our uh sulfide gold. And so, we're exploring that and what percentage of the project would liberate that way. And then there's a larger, you know, 20% of the project is oxide, which is very easy to process. I call it throw the rock in the swimming pool, throw in some acid, leech out the gold to just make it simple for people to understand. Um, so we've got a very unique situation. Uh, and and as I mentioned earlier, very low capex to get into production because we have so much infrastructure that we've inherited. U, we have a lab, we have a 35man camp, which we did have to put some money into refurbishing the camp. And so we've got a very um robust situation that I think would allow us to be into a production scenario faster than some of our peers. Um as I a comparable I look at using um a great company called Rio2 which is um sitting at about 800 plus million. Maybe it's more cuz I haven't looked at their share price in the last few days since gold's moved. But, you know, they're sitting at 800 million market cap. Their grade is probably a third of our grade. So, they're a lower grade producer, but they have the cash and they're a little ahead of us, right? So, showing where we can be today, you know, sitting at an 80 90 million cap, they're at 800 million. Um, we're projecting to have more gold at a much higher grade than them. So showing a a good comparable to investors to say, hey, when I say this is a 10 bagger, you know, that would take us to that 800 million billion dollar range in the next, you know, uh year or two to catch up with someone like uh a Rio2. And obviously that doesn't factor in you know if you want to forward look at the price of gold that some people look at uh you know what will the value be as the price of gold if you believe gold's going to go 4500 5,000 all these prices move with it. So what our family bets on is really simple. We bet on the commodity physically moving in price. So that's where we make a win. When go we bet on gold when it was 1,600 now it's you know 4,000. And then we also bet on the size of the project growing which geologically this is a very simple project. It's a it's a young system and it's all exposed and intact. And we also have multiple pfries on the project which are the engines that drove likely all the gold to surface here which adds another uh opportunity to to grow the overall size of the deposit. >> Well, let's end by looking forward to the future. What are the major catalysts and news flow that shareholders of Northmont can look forward to for the remainder of the year and into 2026? >> Sure. The biggest catalyst I would say number one uh which the retail market and even the institutional market are waiting for. We're drilling out in our high-grade zones. Um our drill program I think is going to be the number one catalyst. We have areas that have 30 m of 32 g and per ton 32 g per ton gold 8 g silver that has only been drilled from zero to 35 m. So we want to drill that down to 230 m. If we can pull a 100 plus meter hole of an ounce plus material, it'd be you know our stock would go parabolic. It would be the biggest hole for South America. So, we have two zones like that that we want to try drilling. We have other areas where we've we've seen drill holes go down to 120 m or 100 mters with 4 g per ton from surface. We want to take that down 300 m. that allows us to delineate a larger amount of resources through our drilling and also helps us augment the average grade by drilling some of the higher grade zones and increasing the overall grade of the deposit, giving us better geological knowledge. So, I think our drill program this year is a very high impact drill program which will deliver good results that the market wants to see and I think will get us noticed by some of the mid-tier and majors. and we've had knocks on the door people in our data room from larger cap midcap mining companies. So we're already getting that traction. Um secondly, we're doing a lot of metallurgical work which allows us to qualify which um ore can be liberated through leeching, liberated through concentration or other methods. uh and and and I think some of our you know belief and it's outlined in our 4301 there is some potential for leeching our sulfide material and getting good recoveries on that which is very low capex you know most sulfide uh mo most oxide production plays are you know sub 500 bucks an ounce processing I think ours is sitting at about 300 from what I heard the other day from our team uh obviously sulfide you know with a plant and every all the work that gets done you're looking at that $12 to $1,500 $100 an ounce uh and moving up because of inflation and labor but still very profitable. So we've got the metallurgical side and then we have some engineering studies going on with regards to the project. We are going to be advancing to a prefeasibility study or PA on our uh stock piles that we want to put in production in short order here. uh and and we've obviously attracted a lot of new capital and so we're looking at augmenting the team and growing the team on the uh corporate corporate development, corporate finance side as well as the technical side especially on the engineering. So we're we're looking at adding to our team and growing our team here with people to allow us to advance the project. So, I think those are kind of the main catalysts that will drive uh you know, investor interest and add value to our shareholders and stakeholders. >> Fantastic. Well, I'm going to put links in the description below to the Northmont Mining website as well as social media for people who want to follow along with the company. Mark, this has been a fantastic conversation. Really appreciate you coming on the show. >> Yeah, thank you for having me. Really appreciate it. It's good for us talking high level on gold and then diving into the details here was was was fun. And obviously, you know, everybody has to do their due diligence and I I strongly would suggest to your subscribers even stepping into big cap gold stocks like everybody like you said, uh, you know, 20% exposure to gold is probably a smart number today. Commodity culture is a series on commodities and natural resources. If you would like to see more, be sure to subscribe and hit the bell notification so you're always up tod date with the latest episodes.