I-80 Gold Corp (IAUX) 2024 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Good morning, and my name is Matthew, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the I-80 Gold Corp., second-quarter 2024 results conference call. (Operator Instructions)

Thank you. Mr. Snow, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our second-quarter 2024 results webcast and conference call. I'd like to remind everybody that today we will be making forward-looking statements and to please read our disclaimer slide in the presentation.

I want to start with a couple of comments about production for the quarter production for the core, our starting yesterday, we did publish the results of our MD&A and financial statements for the three and six months ended June 30, 2024, and they can be found on SEGAR+, EDGAR and our website.

Production for the quarter was from the residual leaching activities at both Ruby Hill and Lone Tree and it was 1,636 ounces. In addition, in the second quarter, we sold 9,361 tonnes of oxide mineralized material from Granite Creek for revenue of $5.9 million.

As this material is sold under an ore purchase agreement, i.e., does not report the ounces for the year. The company has sold 19,528 tons of mineralized material that has generated $9.1 million in revenue and 4,122 ounces of gold revenue for the quarter was $7.2 million, bringing year to date revenue to $15.6 million. Production from Granite Creek has been primarily oxide and sold under the ore purchase agreement so far in 2024, and we will for We will provide more details on this later in the call.

The company reported a net loss for the quarter of $36.8 million, or $0.1 per share when adjusted for the impact of mark-to-market losses on the company's convertible debt outstanding warrants, gold prepay and silver purchase and sale agreement, the loss was $25.8 million or $0.07 per share.

During the quarter. The company continued to invest in exploration, evaluation and predevelopment with $5.1 million invested, bringing the 2024 total to $7.9 million. This investment is focused on definition drilling at our projects that will allow us to advance the technical studies to feasibility level.

For definition, drill program continues to produce many great assay results, a summary of which were provided in our press release yesterday and will be touched on later in this call. First six months of 2024 have seen the company invest $15 million into the development of Granite Creek, and Matt Gili will provide additional details on the development progress later in this call.

The company ended the quarter with $47 million in cash and $39 million in restricted cash yesterday. The company also announced the establishment of an at-the-market equity program. This program as a tool in the company's toolkit to provide financial flexibility over the next 24 months with up to $50 million of additional liquidity.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Ewan Downie.

Thank you, Ryan, and I will give an update on each of our projects. And right now we are looking at slide 3 of the presentation, our plan with the I-80 Gold is to convert our exploration success into operational excellence.

We have constructed what I believe is one of the top quality portfolios of assets you can find in any company all located in mine friendly Nevada, where we have now assembled projects that make us one of the largest holders of gold and silver resources in the state in the United States.

This is a highly de-risked property portfolio, given that we have road access grid power, many of these projects are past producing mine copper mining operations and brownfield sites that offer a clear path towards permitting and production.

We have six strategically located projects in the state of Nevada. Two of these have existing permitted processing facilities, including an autoclave. We're one of three companies in the United States that has a facility capable of processing the refractory ore we have for high-grade Carlin type gold deposits, five oxide open pit projects or zones, and three poly metallic base metal deposits in zones that we are advancing. The company offers significant exploration upside as all deposits are open for expansion.

The slide 4 really highlights the infrastructure that we have constructed or was previously constructed at our sites. I won't go through these slides in detail, but Lone Tree is our cement plant to be our central processing facility of our hub-and-spoke production model.

Ruby Hill, as you can see in this image also has a production facility on site that we are looking to convert to base metals upon the completion of a joint venture that we're working. We're working on with that with a third party

At Cove. We are have completed the first phase of underground development and are now completed and completing a large-scale underground drill program on what I consider to be one of the highest grade development stage projects in the United States and Granite Creek is fully permitted. We have a resource in excess of 2 million ounces, and we are producing gold in and developing the core deposit at that project as we speak.

On slide 5, our company is one of the largest holders of total resources in Nevada with only AngloGold and Nevada Gold Mines ahead of us. We have not yet brought our polymetallic deposits to resource status. However, we plan to following the next drill program and we have not completed an updated resource for the Ruby deeps deposit at Ruby Hill, which is also planned over the next 12 months.

On slide 5, what I believe really stands out in our projects are the grades highly holds. Some of the highest grade development stage projects in all of North America, and we are advancing both open-pit and underground opportunities.

On slide 8, the company is entirely focused on North Central Nevada this postage stamp within the northern portion of Nevada's host to the Carlin Battle Mountain and Getchell trends. And this area is considered to be one of if not the most productive gold district anywhere in the world.

In fact, Nevada Gold Mines, the joint venture between Barrick and Newmont have all of their operations in this image. And if that company were separated from its two owners. Nevada Gold Mines would actually be the fourth largest gold producing company in the world on an annual basis.

In addition to our multiple deposits that comprise over 6.5456 million ounces of gold in measured indicated over 8 million ounces inferred at combined, almost 180 million ounces of silver. We do have the two processing facilities that will allow us to become a significant producer in the future.

Lone Tree on slide 8 is our key processing facility. Strategically. This gives us a significant strategic advantage in the state of Nevada. Given that over time, many of the I would say, easier to process oxide deposits have been depleted and the grade of oxide projects continues to drop.

A unique component of Nevada is the fact that most of the top deposits transition to sulfide at depth, which means the gold mineralization is encapsulated in sulfides and needs to be processed through us specialized facilities in order to liberate the gold and prior to our acquiring Lone Tree.

Only two companies in the state had this capacity and with the acquisition of Lone Tree about two years ago, it positions our company to become a stand-alone long-term producer with multiple operations. We plan to feed this facility through the development of Granite Creek, which is underway, Ruby Hill, which we expect to be permitted for underground this year and coal, which is permitted for underground.

And we are doing the definition drill program, one thing that many people don't know about Lone Tree is that there is a significant open pit resource expansion opportunity with approximately [400,000] in indicated resources and 2.76 million ounces inferred and a very significant high-grade underground opportunity. This project is not part of our short-term plans but is something we will revisit in the future.

Granite Creek on slide 9 is our most advanced project on the image on the right strategically. It is located immediately on strike from the Turquoise Ridge mine of Nevada Gold mines. The deposits sit in the same host unit adjacent to the Osgood Mountain intrusive stock shown in pink.

And the deposits occur proximal to the Getchell or range from fault shown with a big white line at Turquoise Ridge mine is host to approximately 30 million ounces of production reserves and resources. Recent drilling, and that's been shown on their site demonstrates that they continued to step south towards our Granite Creek property.

And currently, we are advancing the South Pacific zone to the north towards Turquoise Ridge. In the current program, we are completing one exploration hole currently, that is a significant step out to the north on the South Pacific zone and that whole did intersect mineralization prior to reaching target. It hasn't reached this chart that target depth yet is getting quite close.

But prior to hitting the target depth, we did hit mineralization in the prior and that mineralization did carry grain as was carried in our press release, definitely another structure on the property that deserves future follow-up.

The underground drill program that we've completed has yielded very significant high grade results, and we have done a limited surface program this year as well.

The South Pacific zone shown on slide 10 in red is the primary deposit at Granite Creek. It occurs to the north of the current workings where the OG and [atom] peak and AutoZone and actually the Range Front zone occur. It was delineated by following up a couple of historic intercepts north of the mine that were never followed up.

The deposit does not come to surface but ended down some between 200 meters and 250 meters to our deepest drilling in our North most drilling, we have consistently hit very high-grade intercepts with some of our deepest drilling being the widest intercepts drilled to date.

The grade of the deepest intercepts in the last step out over 15 grams per tonne, which provide excellent expansion opportunity.

The drilling along the structure, what we call the South Pacific fault structure going out to the North has not been tested as you go north of hole to '26. However, there is an old stake hole located about 400 meters to 500 meters to the north. They did drill through that contact and hit two high-grade intercepts that we will be following up in the future.

With that, the next few slides, I'll let Matt Gili, our President, Chief Operating Officer take you through the continued development of Granite Creek. As we begin, we just begin the first stopes in the South Pacific zone, which is plan to be the primary or heading for the future.

Thank you, Ewan. So slide 11, Granite Creek. During the quarter, we focused on development. First half of this year was development heavy by design. We're at the inflection point in the ramp system where we branch out to include the South Pacific is up.

This requires increased development footages for our access as well as secondary escape. Additionally, significant improvements have been made in water control and water handling with the water treatment plant fully operational and work started on deepening an existing well, for deep additional dewatering capacity.

We continue mining of the OG zone across four levels. We accessed the first production level in the South Pacific zone level 41.85, with more details on the subsequent slides. We continue to surface drilling campaign focused on infill drilling of the South Pacific zone in preparation for finalization of the feasibility study for the property.

We'll note that in order to increase the effectiveness and efficiencies of the infill drilling, we halted drilling from the surface center repositioning to an underground drilling campaign.

On the slide 12, South Pacific zone itself. As noted, we exist and subsequently completed the first level, the South Pacific zone. Here, you see the ore control reconciliations for the level. No, these are or control reconciliations graded as expected, with notable upside in tonnage. This is the uppermost level and therefore, relatively small in size.

And we are on the first level, so now are inferences about the entire zone but very pleased this went as planned.

On slide 13, four types, so here you can see more detail on the distribution by ore type from the uppermost level itself is a bit almost entirely oxide mineralization at this elevation. Remembering high-grade mineralization is sold through our ore purchase agreement, while lower grade mineralization is being shipped to Lone Tree site for leaching.

And lastly on to slide 14, South Granite Creek and South Pacific. Here, you can just see so many details of the individual or control samples by heading. Again note, while the current elevations for both OG & South Pacific zones are predominantly oxide are drilling at lower elevations does clearly show a transition to our refractory sulfide deposits in the future. Thank you. Back to you, Ewan.

Thank you, Matt. And as most people may know, we are more interested in developing sulfide refractory mineralization than oxide. So the fact that we got into the upper level and we achieved the high-grade portion was over 0.3 ounces per ton bodes well for the future. And as Matt said, we had more tonnage than expected mine from that very uppermost level of the operation.

Next slide is about the Cove projects. So Cove is centrally located proximal to Battle Mountain there, multiple mines and deposits being developed in this area at the very north, you can see on the image on the right, where our Lone Tree processing facility is the plan for Cove is that the mineralization from coal will be trucked to Lone Tree for processing Buffalo Mountain immediately to the south west is an oxide gold deposit that we hold in our portfolio, not currently advancing it, but it is something we are looking at in the future.

The last time, the South most step-out hole drilled into Buffalo Mountain was a gram oxide over 134 meter intercepts. Lone Tree and Buffalo Mountain occur immediately to the north of the Marigold Mine owned by SSR, which is north of the Phoenix mine that is operated by Nevada Gold Mines and immediately south of Phoenix adjoining their property is the Cove and McCoy deposits on our McCoy-Cove property.

The '22, '23 drill program produced many significant results as we continue to provide to do the infill drilling to upgrade inferred resources to measured and indicated in order to complete a feasibility study, we are completing a hydrological plan following large-scale pumping that was completed in December of 2023 for full mine permitting.

The first phase of underground development was put in place completed in about mid-2023 and provides us with a platform to do delineation drilling at significantly enhanced definition, given we are closer to the deposit and at significantly reduced costs. And that would be for drilling this from surface.

Slide 16 shows the ongoing drill program. So the platform takes us around the historic Cove pit to produce over 2.6 million ounces of gold and 100 million ounces of silver, the gap in Helen's zones from the Cove deposit that is being drilled from underground.

The image on the right in green are the completed holes and in grey are some of the rest of the program we did drill in the area between knows it's an area where the deposits offset from each other intersecting a significant interval of high-grade or of Zone Carlin type mineralization.

And if it carries the grade, we hope it does. It will warrant additional drilling between the GAAP and Helen zones, on the lower image on the left, it shows where the deposits are could offer significant upside given that we have additional discoveries of polymetallic and gold silver mineralization that have little to no follow up.

And we believe there's significant potential to find additional deposits on this property with very little exploration have occurred outside of the main Cove deposit. We are also reevaluating the McCoy deposit, which is right at the bottom left of this of the image you see on slide 16 and the oxide mineralization that occurs there.

Yesterday, we released new results from the underground drill program that continue to current confirmed cold as one of the highest grade development stage projects, I think you'll find anywhere in North America.

Slide 17 will introduce you to our flagship Ruby Hill property. Ruby Hill provides company with a dominant land position in the Eureka mining district. It is 250 kilometers from the Lone Tree site and is host to oxide gold deposit mineralization, sulfide gold mineralization and polymetallic base metal mineralization, both skarn and CRD.

So it's pretty remarkable property in its endowment of multiple mineral types. The projects that we are advancing most actively are the development of base metals add or polymetallic base metals of the Hilltop and Black Jack zones and the Ruby deeps deposit for sulfide mineralization in the near term.

We just in the first half of this year, completed a drill program funded by a third party in order to advance this, the metallurgy at the metallurgical understanding of this project as part of the due diligence related to a planned joint venture, we released the results of our metallurgical work about a month ago and are now working towards definitive documents with this proposed partner.

The negotiation of these is bean have been long, but it is continuing to advance and we made good progress of late, the open pit mineralization that's shown on the mineral point deposit to the north to be. So the immediately to the west of the Archimedes pit here on slide 17 is actually the largest gold deposit in our company's portfolio.

It is an oxide gold project that hosts more than 5 million ounces of gold in all categories and 170 million ounces silver making it one of the largest gold silver deposits in the United States. We are currently working towards completing an initial scoping study for this project to assess the economics of this project and doing additional metallurgical work to, hopefully increased silver recoveries.

Slide 18. The near term plan for the property is to advance the black jack Hilltop and Ruby deeps deposits likely from underground workings. Upon completion of the planned joint venture, we would we expect to sit down with our proposed partner and agree to what the program will be for the balance of 2024. And for all of 2025, we expect there to be a very significant drilling campaign to expand mineralization, both in the Ruby Deeps and the Hilltop areas and particularly between Hilltop and Black Jack, an area that remains open and where most of the drill intercepts in that area have been very high-grade polymetallic mineralization.

We are in the final phases of completing the permitting to allow for the underground development. The proposed program that you see on both images is for one decline to access both polymetallic base metals and gold.

On slide 19, we are also advancing the underground plan for the sulfide mineralization. So what you see in this image are the preliminary mine design for the Ruby deeps deposit that's the refractory gold deposit that as part of our larger plan and the hub-and-spoke model for the Lone Tree plant.

This year, we will be completing additional metallurgical work. We will look at ore sorting and other methods to potentially look at reducing transportation costs. At mineral point, we're doing additional test work for silver recoveries, as I mentioned earlier, and ongoing hydrology work is being completed in order for long-term mine planning.

The poly metallic has been one of the true successes we've realized since acquiring this project about three years ago. When we started work here. The bulk of our exploration was solely on the Ruby deeps deposit and the refractory gold mineralization.

In mid-2022. We tested a new target that resulted in the discovery of the Hilltop zone. Since then, we have defined four different known lenses to the Hilltop deposits, both CRD and skarn along the Hilltop fault structure and Northwest striking fault feature and the mineralization here remains completely open.

In fact, the South most hole we drilled into the East Hilltop zone so far was our widest intercept with over 114 meters of 9.5%, zinc, 12.6 silver and elevated copper mineralization that elevated copper mineralization occurred in several of the deepest and self-most holes that we drilled into the skarn deposit and will be a focal target once we resume drilling later this year, early in 2025.

When you look at the Ruby Hill property, though the highest grade and largest of the polymetallic deposits is the FAD project, FAD is on the adjoining Gold Hill property we acquired from pay core and the fan deposit, we believe is one of the highest grade polymetallic deposits anywhere in the world.

Our furthest west hole drilled in 2023 intersected 9 grams of gold, 92 grams silver and over 13% combined zinc and lead over an intercept with 14.6 meters, leaving the deposit wide open along strike to the West, our East most hole and the final whole of the program in 2023 intersected 3.9 grams gold over 180 grams silver and nearly 15% zinc and lead over an intercept with 25.4 meters, leaving the eastern extension wide open as well.

It is not part of the company's current resource, but we do plan in the future to advances to resource status. And we expect this will result in a fairly significant increase in not only our gold resource endowment, but also our base metal resource, the initial metallurgical work that was completed here was very positive, as you can see in the lower bullet. And to date, we view we expect that the gold rule will report to a pyrite concentrate.

So in summary, on slide 22, we have assembled one of the top portfolios of gold deposits, high-grade gold deposits in North America to achieve our future success. Our plan is to convert resources to reserves, deliver the technical studies to enhance our financing options and deliver our long term production plan. As I said earlier, the goal of our company is to turn exploration success into operational excellence.

Thank you, everybody, for attending the conference, and we are we will take a few call questions here and following that, people are welcome to call the company at their convenience.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session.(Operator Instructions)

Don DeMarco, National Bank Financial.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, Ewan and team. My first question has to do with Granite Creek so we continue to see oxide ore sales and that's great. And that work at the South Pacific zone, that's very encouraging. And the read-through there course, has increased tonnage of the refractory sulfide ore.

But just trying to quantify some of that a little bit on how do you expect the toll milling of the refractory ore to 10 trend over the next few quarters and revenue so far remains somewhat modest. Is this a potential material source of liquidity? If you can get that SP zone up and running and some and the toll milling the refractory at higher levels than currently? Thank you.

Yes, I'll pass that question over to Matt Gili, who heads up our Nevada office and our operations and allow him to answer that question for you, Don, thanks for the question. Thank you.

All right. Thanks, Don. So I'm aware of, but when I think of your question, Don, I'm thinking of that we are we are currently in the oxide predominantly an oxide mineralization that is sold through the ore purchase agreement.

You're correct in that as we progress into the refractory materials then we transition to a toll milling agreement, which has slightly better terms, and this is certainly the future for the property and for our efforts in the little bit of history, there is that when we acquired the property, they had completed very successfully completed the gold assaying sampling, but they hadn't really done a lot of work on the oxide refractory split so all of our drilling, which is deeper is clearly delineated a refractory deposit.

Right now. We're in that portion of the property where we understand the gold grade, but we don't really understand all of the details on the oxide refractory split. So right now, we're predominantly oxide. We're transitioning into refractory the first quarter by design. And as I touched on in the narrative was really very development heavy. We understood that going into this year.

The second quarter started off a little rough with some water at June really, really ramped up significantly and as forecast. So that's kind of where we're sitting down. I'm not I can't really provide you with too much details. We don't provide guidance. You brought it together is the trends that we're seeing going forward.

Okay. Because I think I saw in Q2 from Granite Creek mines and $6 million in revenue from and we're looking at a potential, you know, on or to the amount after they get some clarity or magnitude. Any comment on that would be helpful.

I'm being really cautious because we don't we don't provide guidance by design.

Okay.

But we are I mean, we are certainly in the ramp of your what I from where we are with the mine plan, both in the budget and in the April forecast. It clearly shows that when we are accessing more ore levels, the June production was significantly higher on a four tonnes per day than our previous yield in the year to date.

So we're in that ramp up. And again, it's a function of the number of ore headings or the number of ore headings as a function of development. So really the critical path for Granite Creek is development, which we focused on in the first quarter.

And one of the enablers for development is dewatering, which is the other thing that we really focused on in the first So half of this year.

Okay. Thanks, Gili. Good luck with Granite Creek. Just shifting over to really help. It seems like there's been good progress on the JV, but can you give maybe a little bit of color on the reason for the delays? And would you expect this finalizing this JV to be and each two item are 2025.

Thanks, Don. I'm wondering the delay on the JV is the [SAP] when you're working trying to work out a partnership with them with another company to come in there. And then on your flagship asset is very important to make sure that the deal is done right? If you recall, what happened to Premier with our partnership that wasn't so smooth and we ended up buying it and actually essentially ended up stalling the project.

We want to ensure that everything is considered prior to entering into a partnership again in order for that to be an unlikely scenario in the future. Tomorrow, when we did press release and we didn't intend to actually press release that we signed the term sheet, but we did so because it was required was able to complete financing's disclosure around financing on that we were planning to complete and the when we put out that press release, we stated specifically that it was subject to metallurgical due diligence and that involved a drilling campaign that took about four months given the Christmas happened in between and everything shut down to complete.

And subsequently, the material from that drilling was sent to us labs in order to complete the metallurgical work to ensure that the polymetallic mineralization here is recoverable, which was an important component for our planned partner to come in and work with us on this project, we released our results about a month ago, which we believe were highly positive.

And now we are working on the final documentation for that partnership. And I expect that hopefully to be completed in well before the end of the year, Don.

Okay.

But again, as you're negotiating terms, you got to make sure it's right. And but for right now, I believe that everything up most of the major issues have been dealt with, and we're working through the legal document related to that.

Okay, great. Thanks for that, Ewan. And then final question. So it's been two months since the AGM, when you announced that you'll be passing on the CEO title to someone else. And can you just give us an update on this process or maybe additional color behind your decision or what the potential timing of this might be, if that information is available at this point? Thank you.

Yeah, I think my and the original plan for CEO succession was put in place about two years ago. So two years ago, I as you know, Don, I'm more of an explorer than a than a developer, I'm not exactly I don't think known as being a mine builder and have it having constructed or operated multiple operations, though Premier was a producing company.

I think we've taken, I've taken this company, we've had huge success in exploration. But in order to achieve the next level for this company, I fully believe that it is important that we increase our operations capacity in the upper levels.

And that was part of the part of the decision, but also some ongoing health issues that I have to deal with at some point. So it's something that we did press release I do. This is a plan, but right now I continue to be the CEO. And but at some point, I expect that there will be a transition.

Okay. Well, thank you. With that. We certainly wish you the best in the process and whatever other issues you might be dealing with. But thanks again, and good luck with the rest of Q3. All the best.

Thank you.

Justin Chan, SCP Resource Finance.

Hi guys, thanks very much. Maybe if we could go back to the slide that showed on that showed the long section of the South Pacific zone. I was wondering if you could maybe talk us through and where you're mining now? And I guess what the next what the rest of the year looks like in terms of what's in the mine plan.

Okay. And so I think you talked about slide 10. So here on slide, you can see the very, very upper part where essentially where the role the word openness is where we drifted over and access the top very, very top portion of the South Pacific zone.

The decline is going to depth in both into the OG zone and as we go to depth. We are drifting over on multiple levels into the South Pacific and with each level as we go deeper, we are expecting the strike length to increase.

On slide 11 we some really in the upper red part above that sort of upper red flat part. And then as we go down because it's a bit of an blue as we go down, we expect to get more and more mineralization. We do expect to expand on that image because there are intercepts outside these shape that with definition drilling, we believe will become mineralized areas for future development.

And as Matt Gili said earlier, to get the definition required for this drilling, we're finding that from surface, it's quite costly. We have a lot of deviation in drilling and we are implementing an underground platform in order to provide us with a much better platform in order to complete the definition and expense from drilling front.

Got it. Thank you. And maybe just as a follow-up for I guess for Q3 and Q4, in terms of, um, what are you expecting in terms of ore volumes, maybe others or sold? Or do you think you'll be kind of getting into areas where you'll be, I guess, for the sulfides, will you be reporting port ounces or will it still be or sold to mode?

So I think this quarter was about 50-50 oxide sulfide.

Yeah, for the for the gold that comes off the two existing residual leach programs that is our gold sold and the refractory mineralization under our current contract is that where we receive the gold. So it is reported gold ounces and we do expect that to ramp up significantly quarter on quarter going forward as we get more and more South Pacific zone mineralization and go to depth in that zone.

So oxide, I would expect to sort of remain more consistent going forward, given that we do expect more and more sulfide going to depth. But as Matt said, the more headings we get put in place in the more available phases. The more mineralization will be getting week on week and month on month, and that ramp up is occurring as we speak.

But yes, so I guess maybe just zooming in on say for this quarter is about 10,000 tonnes, I guess, well, could you give us any steer on what you think for Q3 and Q4.

As Matt said earlier, we don't provide official guidance as yet because we haven't declared commercial production. So I would say we just expect that to improve as we add the headings.

Okay. Thank you. And I appreciate the color. And then maybe just one in terms of in terms of the plan to Ruby. I mean, is it fair to characterize that you're? I mean, is it fair to characterize that now in most of the DD work is happening and it's just about negotiating final terms, are just trying to get a sense of what you think the key milestones are for that agreement? Don't care what potential timing might be?

Yeah, it's just that right now it's really down primarily just to negotiating definitive document structure, tax structure, things like that. Also because there's both gold and polymetallic mineralization. We want to ensure that gold production from the operation is also a focus, not just the base metals and the incoming partner, I would say is more focused on base metals.

So it's just getting the right balance for that. That's a lot on commercial terms. So have been negotiated and then completed.

Okay, thanks. Do you think I mean, high level? I know these things take employers aren't easy, but is I mean is it something that you think is likely to be this year or maybe early next year? Just trying to get a sense and some timing on that?

I would like it to be next week. But as you said, when there's two sets of lawyers working on documents, things can go back and forth quite a bit. And we've been seeing a lot of back-and-forth on different points and then arriving at the conclusion within those points. But really it's if it went into next year, I'd be very, very shocked.

Okay. Thanks. That's good to hear, and I appreciate, Ewan. I appreciate the color. Thanks a lot, guys. Thanks for your time.

Okay. We have one time for one more question.

Spencer Lehman.

Good morning. You know, with the price of gold hitting new highs. It looks like a lot of M&A is heating up and you probably saw the Osisko Mining buyout yesterday. I'm just wondering from your price getting so cheap that his view on you consider a possibility of a friendly or even unsolicited takeover rather than the joint partner way.

Thanks for your question, Spencer. It's hard to comment on M&A. I'd say in our industry. The lack of new discoveries in recent years has created an environment where larger companies who are seeking to FAD their reserves and resources for the future are always on the lookout for projects.

A good example, I guess, was a Osisko yesterday. And we have, as we showed and in the slide 3, the first slide of our presentation we also in addition to having our sulfide deposits that we focus the most attention on, we also have significant oxide projects, and we also have the polymetallic.

So our company is diversified, but we do have several open pit oxide projects that we don't carry in our corporate presentation and obviously talk very little about today. However, those projects have attracted in the past and continue to attract a lot of attention, and we're constantly talking to other parties about what to do with some of these assets.

There is a possibility we could sell some projects within our portfolio. And there's always been there's always interest, especially in a place like Nevada of larger companies to take a look at what people have. I wouldn't like to see a proposal for our company at these levels, as you said, were of late, especially, we've been at depressed levels as we've had to finance our business.

But given our significant resources in one of the safest jurisdictions in the world. I think we offer tremendous value. And right now is the time for us to be considering M&A for us to disappear. So I hope that answered your question.

I know it's a difficult thing to discuss, but I was just curious, was there, you know, the joint partner of from the standpoint of the shareholders is a joint partnership work as well as maybe just a straight a buyout or takeover based on the price of gold now. So but you answered it well and thank you for that.

Thank you for your question, Spencer, and feel free to call our office and talk to Matt, Ryan or myself and we can we can discuss further a few if you feel if you have any more questions or whatever. We're quite open for calls and we're putting right up against our hour time.

So we have to that what that has to be our last question, but everybody who attended, thank you very much and please feel free to reach out to us if you have any further questions.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.