i-80 Gold Corp.

Q1 2022 Earnings Conference Call

5/10/2022

spk04: Thank you for coming, everybody. It's nice to finally do one of these in person. It's been a few years since the premier days. I'd like to thank everybody who joined in on the webcast as well. Just reflecting on the presentation that we put together today, we're talking about our different sections and how we're thinking about the company. Three key themes come to mind for me when I think about this presentation and what we're trying to do. I think about growth, I think about executing on a plan, and I think about opportunity. When it comes to growth, we are talking about all the M&A that we've done this year, and Ewan's going to talk to that. Growth in our operations, and Matt's going to talk about the plan around that, how we're building our team and the operations there. And then, obviously, executing on the plan. So we set up a vision as a management team about a year ago, and we are executing on the plan to see that vision and become Nevada's second largest gold producer in the coming years. So we're working through that. And then finally, I see opportunity. So opportunity... not only the opportunity of owning an autoclave in Nevada, but the opportunity of, you know, through the exploration that we're doing, we're seeing some great results we had out there close to date, and the opportunities that Matt is finding as we're developing our assets.
spk00: I'm going to slide two.
spk04: I know we just did the introductions of the board and the management team, but I'm going to do it for the sake of the webcast as well. In the room with us, we have Greg Smith, he's the director of ours, Eva Bellissimo, John Seaman, John Bagaman is back there, and Arthur is not here. Ewan Downey, CEO, Matt Gehle, President, Chief Operating Officer, and Ryan Snow, Chief Financial Officer.
spk00: I'm Matt Golat, Executive Vice President. On to the disclaimer, so we will be making forward-looking statements.
spk04: So I urge you to read the disclaimer page and reference the technical reports on the disclaimer page. So what is I-80? You know, we think of I-80 in four key areas. We look at a company that is entirely focused on safe jurisdictions. We're entirely Nevada-focused, arguably one of the most prolific gold districts on the planet. We've got infrastructure already in place. We've got a CIL plant, the autoclave, heat beach facilities, and tanning facilities. And then we've got what I would call a pure best growth profile. The goal is reaching 400,000 ounces over the coming years. We think we can get there with our current assets. And then we've got extensive gold and silver resources. So over 6.4 million ounces M&I in gold and 8.14 in silver. And then on top of that, we believe we're going to be creating a low-cost producer. So our CAs are showing less than $1,000 all in sustained costs.
spk00: So with that, I'm going to bring on Hugh and Downie to talk with the rest of them.
spk05: Thank you, Matt, and I thank those for attending in person and also those people who are here on the webcast. IAD Gold is a year old. We just turned a year old in April. So we're a relatively new company following the takeover by Equinox of Premier Electronics. We spun out the Nevada assets that we have, but we've really had a tremendous first year as a company, I think. We made several, in terms of business development, several key acquisitions. We acquired the Lone Tree project and project site that includes an autoclave in Nevada from Nevada Gold Mines. And this site will allow us to build our own destiny. It takes us out of being reliant so to speak, on either First Majestic or Nevada Gold Mines to process refractory material and makes us one of only three companies with that capability. We acquired, as went public, the Granite Creek Project from Waterton, and we've had substantial exploration success there. I believe we're drilling off what we call the South Pacific Zone. It's one of the highest-grade deposits being drilled off anywhere in the world right now. We also acquired from Waterton the Ruby Hill project that I believe has the potential to become one of Nevada's next major gold mines. And Matt Geely is going to talk to you a bit more about some of the various opportunities that project offers to us, including metals diversification. We just announced this morning that we acquired the Argenta properties, which provides us not only with water rights, to advance our cove project, but substantial infrastructure, including now a railway heading. So we could move concentrates or bulk commodities, et cetera, that we need for the mining operation. So pretty strategic, not only for the water rights. And just yesterday, we announced that we acquired additional lands from Nevada gold mines laid in the so-called Turquoise Ridge District, where our Granite Creek project is. So we've We've had a really good first year in terms of making strategic deals that will allow us to grow this company on an expedited basis. We've had numerous exploration successes to date. Like I said, the key discovery, so to speak, of the year is the South Pacific Zone at Granite Creek. And we acquired that project and we did our sort of exploration roundup, as we call it, and look at budgeting for each year. For 2021, the South Pacific Zone was picked as the number one target. So every year we kind of are willing to have a bit of a bet and people say this is my favorite target. And both Tyler and myself picked the South Pacific Zone as the number one target. It's really panned out, in fact. Essentially every single hole we've drilled has hit material of essentially 10 to 20 gram material. So it's been pretty remarkable. We identified significant upside in the OG zone that is currently being developed. And that will show some of the early development that's going on there. And just right now, we put out the first results since we acquired Ruby Hill. We put out the results here today that include some of the biggest intercepts I've seen come from any property we have in Nevada. with widths of up to almost 80 meters, and those are close to true widths. So Ruby Hill's really looking good, and we've got a lot of hope for that project, and we believe it's going to bring a very strong future for our company. In terms of corporate development, we've successfully continued to attract people to join I-80 and built what I think is a tier one management team headed by Matt and Ryan, and Matt, who have all been in In Reno, our head office is Reno now, not Canada like Premier's was. We've completed the rehabilitation of the Granite Creek underground workings, and we just started mining. We're driving the decline deeper, being prepared to set up the mine for numerous years of success to come. We've started the portal of McCoy Cove, so those of you who came from the shareholders from Premier will know that we permitted Cove several years ago, but we didn't go ahead with the underground development because We didn't have a guaranteed processing arrangement. And with the acquisition of Lone Tree, we also secured an interim processing arrangement with Nevada Gold Mines. It is allowing us to proceed with that underground development, and we're over 100 meters in and expect to start drilling underground in the third quarter of this year. We completed financings that result in the company having a very solid balance sheet Currently, we have just under 160 million US in cash and equivalents. And in the first quarter, we produced the first gold in company history. If you look at the cover slide, that is some of the gold bars coming from our Ruby Hill project. When you look at what we're doing in Nevada, I think the slide seven of our presentation tells a lot of the story. The posted stamp, as I call it, within Central Nevada, is arguably the most productive gold district anywhere in the world. Nevada Gold Mines, who is the primary operator in that area, a partnership between Newmont and Barrick, produce over 3 million ounces a year from this image. They have multiple processing facilities and we've created what I call a bit of a mini Nevada Gold Mines with the gold becoming a major producer in the state. We're planning to build four mines in the next three years. It will result in us being a moving from being a small producer to a mid-tier producer. And all of the initial four lines will be processed at Lone Tree. So it's really a hub-and-spoke model, and Matt Gilley will get a bit more into that. And importantly, these projects are all road accessible. I always tell people you can take a Chevy Chevette. Some people don't know what a Chevy Chevette is, but you can drive there with a Chevy Chevette. Paved roads, we've got power lines, so grid power at every site. Most projects are fully or near fully permitted, so we're not worried about huge delays when it comes to permitting. And we've seen a lot of cost escalation, especially when companies are building projects. And given that Lone Tree is an existing site, it's really just retrofitting it. We think we'll be more immune, I wouldn't say totally immune, but a bit more immune from the inflationary pressure that we're seeing at some sites. And Ruby Hill also has substantial infrastructure that we are intending to use for production in the future as well. Importantly, in the state of Nevada, and I believe anywhere in the United States, as shown on slide eight, there are only five sites that have infrastructure capable of processing refractory ore. So some people say, you're having a lot of success at Granite Creek, and now we're seeing substantial success at Ruby Hill. Why were these projects sitting there? And it was most companies without the ability to process refractory material in Nevada, choose not to go there. And we went there with McCoy Cove, but always had the intent that we're either going to form a good relationship with Nevada Gold Mines, which we did, but they will process for us. And more importantly, you can see right in the center of the, or sitting right on Highway International, or Interstate 80, is the Lone Tree site, which is now our own autoclave, and we're working through a program to restart that facility. In terms of fundamentals, why do you look at our company? We're one of the largest holders of gold and silver resources, not only in the state of Nevada, but in all of the United States. And since we are a U.S.-focused company, our cover image we now call ourselves Made in the USA. We're a 100% U.S.-focused gold producer and developer. We're targeting 20% increase in our gold resources this year. As Matt said, in all categories, we have over 14 million ounces of gold in measured, indicated, plus inferred resources, and also over 180 million ounces of silver. We are currently upgrading both the Blackjack and the Second Chance, the Buffalo Mountain deposit, to resource status, so those both result in increased resources for our company, And we have over 50,000 meters of drilling going right now at Granite Creek and Ruby Hill, and we're having substantial success. So I'm very confident we're going to see a pretty significant increase in our resources at year end when we redo our resources. On slide 10, what are we trying to do? We're going to try to simplify it a bit here today because some people say you've got a lot on the go, but it's really three identical ramps, three identical mines being built. three portals that go down into high-grade mineralization, and the mineralization is trucked to the lone tree processing facility. And as I said, and with the addition of Buffalo Mountain and Brooks, which would be heat bleach projects processed at the heat bleach site that sits at lone tree as well, all four sites would really be the one facility. Matt Gilley will give you additional detail on that. But with the building out of those four initial operations, we expect to produce more than 250,000 ounces of gold initially and we're also currently permitting an open pit at Granite Creek that with the construction of that operation I believe would make us the second biggest producer in the state of Nevada. I'm going to pass the presentation over for an operations update and Matt Dilley will come up and please feel free people on the floor if there's something that you see on the screen and you're like hey I want to ask a question, jump in.
spk00: All right. Thank you, Ewan. My name is Matt Gilley. I am the President and COO of I-80 Gold. I've been here since the day it was formed. So, first thing I want to talk about is ESG. What you have here are the six pillars I-80 Gold is committed to keeping. In our internal corporate scorecard, We have measurable and actionable items relating to one of these six pillars. More importantly is what you don't see on here.
spk02: We haven't just cut and paste from Rio Tinto's ESG goals. We have collectively picked items that matter to us, matter to I-80, and we have an influence over and we can make the world better by pursuing
spk00: these objectives. All right, so I'm really going to try to double down on that concept of simplicity.
spk02: Big picture, and while my job is incredibly complex and no one else could do it, and I probably don't get paid enough, in the big picture, it is actually a pretty simple idea. We have three portal mines, all very similar in style, all very high grade, that produce refractory material. that we trucked to a centralized autoclave facility in Lone Tree. This is completely common and ordinary in Nevada. This is not particularly dissimilar to Cortez. At Cortez, we had three portals, and we trucked our refractory materials to the Gold Strike autoclave and roaster complexes. So I'm really trying to stress that concept.
spk00: It's a lot of moving parts, but a relatively simple concept. We've integrated our operations. We act as one.
spk02: We're based in Reno. I live in Reno. Lone Tree is becoming the center of our operations, both our technical and operating teams. And we are all, we're not maintaining different groups of people at each different mine, different operational and technical groups.
spk00: We're all working as one together. First one I'm going to talk about is Lone Tree. I take notes. I'm kind of a note. Okay.
spk02: So Lone Tree, the hub of our operations, includes a centralized autoclave facility, an operating heat bleach, centralized laboratory facilities. We have a climate-controlled warehousing system. All of our core we bring to Lone Tree for processing, cutting, and logging. We have full maintenance shops, full office complex. This is becoming the hub of our operations. So the EFS, or the recommissioning of that plant, is on schedule and on track. We'll be reviewing the results late in the second quarter internally. We'll be publishing those in the third quarter. As we're progressing on that study, we are not finding any significant unpleasant surprises. All as we expected. The equipment is in the condition we anticipated. As everyone, as Ewan alluded to, we're all anxious about inflationary pressures, and getting current pricing models is part of the scope of that PFS. And as Ryan always reminds me to mention, for the next three years, we have a total million agreement with Nevada Gold Mines that allows us to continue to generate cash flow from our existing operations.
spk00: So, the satellite pits. Again, we talked about this.
spk02: Brooks and Buffalo are two satellite pits. They're oxide deposits. They're running in a trend. Yeah, go ahead.
spk05: I'm sorry. What's the processing capacity of Lone Tree?
spk02: So, main plate, when it was run by Newmont, the name plate capacity was 2,800 tons a day, and that plant was operated in the acidic environment. So right now, our study is for that plant to run in the alkaline environment, and the capacity in that environment is part of that PFS study.
spk00: And I wouldn't say it's by coincidence.
spk02: There's a design in there. Actually, when all three of the mines are feeding their nameplate capacities into that autoclave, we are just about matched on capacity. So if you have a simple model, you've got a 2,800 ton a day plant, and you've got three mines that are producing somewhere between 1,000 and 900 tons a day that's trucked to that facility. So that's kind of the match that we've got. And if you take that plant at that capacity and the grade of our operations, you're looking at a plant with a capacity of between 275 and 300,000 ounces per So we talked about the two satellite deposits at Lone Tree. They are there. Brooks is almost fully permitted. Buffalo is in permitting. We're going to start mining on those later this year. That's going to provide a modest amount of cash flow to continue with our operations. And that material gets trucked to the heap leach facility that's currently operating at Lone Tree, gets added to the existing leach pad, and that's our strategy for extracting.
spk00: So next I want to talk about Granite Creek. What have we achieved at Granite Creek? Well, we've commenced with 24-7 operations.
spk02: We've completed over 14,000 feet of stoke delineation drilling. Think of it as cubex drilling. Think of it as ore control drilling. This tells us what's out ahead of us. We've updated the resource model with the results of our 2021 drilling. And we're going to continue to be updating that resource model through our cutoff date of August, which will allow us then to publish a feasibility study and convert to reserves by the end of the year. So that's the point of the August cutoff. We've advanced the main decline 425 feet. And we are now at the stope or contacts on two different sub-levels. It's Granite Creek. Nothing comes easy at Granite Creek. We've encountered areas of difficult ground. That's what we do. We're miners. We're all from this area. Most of us have worked at TR in the past, no different than TR. And as we encounter those areas, we work through them, persevere, punch through them, and make it go. And very pleased with the team, very pleased with the innovation there, the eagerness to pursue opportunities and to meet their objectives. As I mentioned, we were preparing for the publication of a feasibility study for the Granite Creek underground at the end of this year.
spk00: This is going to be the point where we bifurcate the studies for the underground. What is our execution plan? What are we doing? Three parts. First, as I mentioned, we need to understand where the ore is, understand the deposit, have a reasonable mine plan.
spk02: The second is all about infrastructure, and the infrastructure I'm talking about is the decline itself. It's the access to ore faces that is going to make this successful. That's what we're pursuing as our top priority. So while we do have two active faces, stope faces, the priority heading is that continuing the decline, opening up additional ore faces, and also allowing for access over to the South Pacific. And lastly, it's about optimization. IN THE UPPER AREAS OF THE MINE, THERE'S PORTIONS OF REMNANT PILLARS, REMNANT DEPOSITS MOSTLY ASSOCIATED WITH THE AUTOZONE.
spk00: WE'RE PURSUING THOSE AS OPPORTUNITY OR IN BETWEEN OUR DECLINE. OKAY, AND LASTLY, GRANITE CREEK.
spk02: I DON'T WANT TO FORGET ABOUT THE OPEN PIT. IT'S NOT OUR TOP PRIORITY TODAY. RIGHT NOW WE'RE IN THE PERMITTING STAGE FOR THE OPEN PIT. WE'RE GOING TO BE PERMITTING THAT OPEN PIT FOR THE NEXT SEVERAL YEARS, BUT I ALWAYS WANT TO REMIND EVERYONE THAT WE We have that open pit out there. DEA is published on that. And that is, you know, we're a company that has a whole lot of active growth, but already has the next phase of growth laid out ahead of it and is in the permitting phase for that next stage of growth.
spk00: Ruby Hill. All right, what have we achieved at Ruby Hill? We've completed the open pit mining on the East Archimedes pit.
spk02: All that material has been placed on the leach pad, and we're actively leaching it this year. We've stabilized the leach solutions. A lot of technical stuff in there, but the leach solution was completely, the chemistry just wasn't right. Corrected all that. We fully integrated the Ruby Hill teams into I-80. When we bought Ruby Hill, we bought it as an asset. So all the employees of Ruby Hill became employees of I-80, welcomed them in as one big happy family, and they're all part of one team now. Primary goal for that heat leach facility at Ruby, which is old, run by Homestake, and then it was run by Barrick, and it was run by multiple different operators. There's parts in there we don't really know all the good parts. Right now we're focused on just systematically working our way across that leach pad, re-leaching every section of it, getting the last remaining materials, along with the L cell, which is the material we placed at the end of last year. And then lastly, permitting is underway for the start of a portal in the East Archimedes pit at the end of this year. You can see here the ore zones, the portal coming out of the East Archimedes pit, accessing the three different distinct ore zones. I'll talk about those on the next slide. The real joy of Ruby is the ultimate optionality. There's just so much stuff going on at Ruby. Ruby alone could make a mining company. You've got your refractory gold material, which is represented by the ruby deeps deposit. You've got oxide material underground, high-grade oxide material underground, typically in the 426 area. We have an oxide gold open pit mineral point, which is over 5 million ounces of material and resource in that pit.
spk00: We've got a base metal deposit, which is the blackjack deposit.
spk02: Alongside that, we've got an operating heat bleach facility, and we also have on-site a CIL plant. The CIL plant was built by Homestake. It wasn't operated very long, but it's all in excellent mint, you can see from the pictures. We use that for our carbon processing off the heat bleach, and that would be the base. Do we refurbish that as a CIL plant and process the oxide underground for 426? Do we convert that over to a flotation plant and make a of a lead and zinc concentrates out of blackjack or do we do both? But this is all about the optionality and the extent of the resource, you know, over 7 million ounces of gold in resource at Ruby Hill alone.
spk00: All right, McCoy Cove. McCoy Cove is very exciting for me, right?
spk02: We're restarting this. You know, Ewan mentioned it had been sitting there. It's been known. We eagerly anticipated what we could do there. Once we got that processing agreement and the autoclave, it was our chance to start. So, to date, we have completed over 324 feet of the decline itself. We've secured the water rights for pit evaporation permit. A fantastic team. The leader of this team is the same individual that developed the south arterial system. portal mine for the NGM and Premier Joint Venture. He's now leading the efforts here and at Lone Tree as well. And very pleased with all the individuals we've been able to bring into the team. And what are we doing this for? This is McCoy Cove. Just always remind everyone, 1.7 million ounces in resource, well over 10 grams per ounce.
spk00: I always tell you, it's all about grades. When you have high-grade, have trouble, have obstacles, you can work through them. When you have low-grade, it just can be a futile exercise. But all of our deposits are blessed with very high-grade and brings that optionality.
spk02: So I'll just show you here the isometric of what we're going to continue to extend that decline through the rest of this year. later in this year and into 2023. We're going to draw out this pattern and advance the studies and the resource and reserves for Coico.
spk00: All right, and my last slide is the Argenta properties.
spk02: We announced that last night. What is Argenta? Argenta is a barite deposit we purchased from Baker Hughes. I do not want to confuse the message. We are not going into barite mining. We have purchased a facility from Baker Hughes that allows us 582 acre feet of water in our basin we can use for coal. It also gives us a facility that is on the Union Pacific Rail line as well as Interstate 80. That siding on the Union Pacific Rail line is very valuable both for us to move concentrates and other products away from sites as well as to bring in bulk commodities, lease it to other bulk commodities.
spk00: buyers. We're just looking at what optionality we can bring that plant to the company. Sir? Yeah. Yeah. So a great question.
spk02: So a quick, a very brief update on Nevada water law. The water you need needs to come from the basin you're in. Granite Creek, Lone Tree, and Ruby already have all of the water rights in their respective basins they need in order to operate. Cove is the one site within Premier that did not have water rights already provided. already secured for its operation and to date we've been getting the water to operate cove from leasing water from a nearby rancher so this then changes that so that we now have secured that water right to secure our own destiny any other questions before i hand over to mr snowman pardon me This was a $3.7 million acquisition. We got that question several times this morning. We didn't mention it, and I'll be very transparent. Baker Hughes asked us not to. It's not material to them. They preferred that we didn't talk about this in the press release. It's not a secret. You're going to see it on the financial statement, so it's not going to be a secret.
spk00: But we're just not mentioning it in the press release. So the development rate at Cove, we're averaging approximately 8 feet per shift at Cove.
spk02: At Granite Creek, we're averaging approximately 8 feet per shift right now, per day, pardon me, 8 feet per day. The ground conditions at Granite Creek are a little more troubling. So we are incorporating shotcrete into our advances. We're not coming back later to rehabilitate. Our philosophy is that we never go back, that as we drive those declines, We drive them to our final specifications the first time, and at any time you go back to fix old work, you're just losing efficiency.
spk00: Yeah. It's part of the same development of crews.
spk02: We have a crew, and that crew is allocated to both drive the main declines Accesses into the og zone as well as remnant mining over on the auto and range range front zones We do utilize different equipment in the remnant mining.
spk00: We're primarily using drum cutters We're not drill and blasting because of the weak ground conditions that we are drill and blasting on the deep Is that so much we have but look it's it's the upper the upper workings are good old old
spk02: turquoise rage art. We'll work our way through it. The grade, grades would matter. I mean, the face right now there is a 16-gram face on the remnant pillar. So you can do a lot.
spk00: You can engineer a lot, and you can strategize a lot on a 16-gram face, and that's what we're doing. Yeah? We don't have any restrictions for more power.
spk02: Nevada Power is our power supplier. We don't have any restrictions on timing for power draw. As a customer to Nevada Energy, we are allocated their green rights, their green credits, I should say. Their corporate strategy right now is they're 27% renewable, which makes us 27% renewable.
spk00: All right, thank you very much. All right. All right. Thanks, Matt.
spk03: Welcome, everybody in the room. To reiterate Matt's last comment, it's great to see everybody in person. It's been a long time since something like this at any company I've been at, so it's great to see everybody. And welcome to those that are on the line. So yesterday, the company announced our Q1 2022 financial results and our financial statements and MD&A are available on our website. Some highlights of what you'll see there is that in the quarter we produced 2.9 million dollars in revenue which generated mine operating income of 1.2 million. This is significant in that first revenue we've had in the company. from the assets that we acquired in the last calendar year. At Ruby Hill and at Lone Tree, we've got the resistance leaching operations that are generating these ounces. On the next slide, I'll walk you through how many ounces we did produce. Power, kind of small on the screen there. Our net loss for the quarter was 23.5 cents, or 10 cents a share. When you adjust out of that loss, mark to market on our derivative instruments and torrents, the loss was 30 cents. million or six cents per cent. Of that 13.2 million, 9.3 million of that was spent in exploration, evaluation, and development.
spk00: Why I feel this is important is because that's a direct investment. And as we'll talk about later, we've had some very good results. For the quarter, we did produce and sell 1,489 ounces of gold. And 646 of those ounces came from Ruby Hill and 843 from Stone Tree.
spk03: The average realized price for those ounces was $1,918. Our cash cost per ounce consolidated was $1,019. And our all-intustaining cost per ounce sold was $1,249. These cash cost and all-intustaining cost metrics do include their value of the amount
spk00: that were on the leach pads when we did the acquisition. Finally, I'd talk a little bit about our liquidity.
spk03: As we've been talking about, there's a lot of exciting developments on the go. There's a lot of capital to be spent in the company. As at the end of the quarter, we had $65.1 million in cash and $30.8 million. Subsequent to the end of the quarter, we did complete the $75 million financing package.
spk00: we pay an agreement and our inventory balance as at March 31st was 29.1 million I think this is important because that's the value of the ounces only inventory we have currently is work in process so that amount those ounces come through in the next Current assets for the company were $100 million.
spk03: Our accounts payable and accrued liabilities were $7.2 million. And our current liabilities were $33 million. So I feel this is important because as of March 31st, our current ratio was 3 to 1. And when we take into account the completion of the financing package after the end of the quarter, we take that current ratio to about 5.2.
spk00: So we're really well-positioned to execute on these plans. Matt has walked us through them so far. And as you were talking about in the exploration coming up, we're well-positioned to continue to drill to get the results. Our net assets as of the end of the quarter were $287.6 million. And with that, I will turn the presentation over to you to talk about our exploration. Thank you, Ryan.
spk05: And as I mentioned earlier, the exploration, really the first year is we've been setting up to be successful in mining, which is what Matt Healy is heading up down in Nevada. And Tyler Hill, our lead geologist in Nevada, heads up our exploration program. And really a lot of the news you've been seeing coming out of our company is from those because we acquired known projects with known deposits, but we felt there was significant upside. And we've been proving that with successful results to date. But we've also been pretty focused on delineating the deposits better. One of the biggest issues we saw with Granite Creek, or what was called Pinson with Aetna, was the fact it was really under-drilled. So they weren't able to stay necessarily on the ore body because of a lack of drilling. And we've seen a few other companies recently come out and say that they've had the same issue when they went to try to go mining too quickly. With our strong balance sheet, we've been able to do a lot of drilling from underground before we start mining. We've been able to put in the additional development as we're setting up for mining instead of the program that happened here previously where they put in enough development to get in the ore, hoping to make enough money from what they're mining to keep doing the same thing. So we've really set up our company a lot differently, and we feel we're in a great position to capitalize on that. So looking at the projects that we're going to, the primary two that we're exploring this year, Granite Creek and Ruby Hill, about 50,000 meters between the two planned, and we're well into those programs this year. We just in the last few weeks have released our final results from 2021. So that shows you how long it has been recently to get assays from labs. It's been really a real struggle, and we've made changes to where we send our our core just to try to get better treatment and there is a new lab that's talking about building as well. But at Granite Creek we, as you can see up on the high wall of the pit here, is the drill, that drill is drilling the South Pacific zone. So it's a new target that we've been delineating to the north of the historic pit that goes towards Turquoise Ridge. And Turquoise Ridge is just in this image, just over the hill And back in the background there, you can see some white spots. That's the Twin Creeks operation. So that's where we're initially planning to send the material from underground to. And in the pit, you can see the one portal on the pit wall, and the other one is closer to us. And the shops and everything are down in the bottom of the pit, or the office. And there's a mechanic... bay that's also driven into the side of the pit as well. Granite Creek is an advanced exploration mine development project for our company. It's located at the north end of the Battle Mountain trend at its intersection with what's called the Getchell trend. We have an interim processing agreement with Nevada Gold Mines to process up to 1,000 tons a day at the Twin Creeks facility, as you can see in the image here on slide 33. So Twin Creeks and Turquoise Ridge are immediately north of our company. The South Pacific Zone is a high-grade horizon that we are drilling, and it's not just one zone. In many holes, we're seeing up to four zones in the drilling. So we are expecting over this year and next year as we continue to drill up this zone, a pretty substantial increase in our resources here because of this success. And it's immediately below and to the north of the mine working. So very accessible. And as Matt said, we have changed a bit how we're developing there to drive the decline down deeper, to fast track our ability to access the South Pacific zone, be able to drill it from underground and hopefully quickly bring it into our mine plan that will help us get to that ultimate goal of at the end of next year achieving 1,000 tons a day, which would maximize our agreement with Nevada Goldmine. So by the end of this year, our target's to get up to 450 tons per day being mined out of the site, and by the end of next year, up to 1,000. Because of the success of the South Pacific Zone, we are trending north, and in black in this image is our previous property, the Granite Creek property we acquired from Waterton. And we went to Nevada Gold Mines because the South Pacific zone is trending towards the Turquoise Ridge property to the north. We presented them the model, the 3D model of what we're doing, that it would really be beneficial, we think. We think this deposit could trend onto your ground, and we'd rather not stop at the pound rate. We'd like to keep going north. So we made an offer to purchase the adjoining ground to the north. And I think it speaks to the relationship between the two companies. They agreed to sell it to us. So a pretty key piece of ground. You can see immediately north of that ground is a historic summer camp mine. It's an open pit operation. And in their technical report, they talk about being an underground exploration target for them. And the Turquoise Ridge mine immediately north of that. And Turquoise Ridge, between historic production and current reserves, is well over 20 million ounces of gold. And when you add Twin Creeks to that, the entire district immediately north of us is about 50 million ounces. So we're truly operating here in what many would call elephant country, and we're very excited by what we're drilling on. The main focus for the company at Granite Creek is to develop both open pit and underground operations. The first focus is on this image here on slide 34, is on the left is the underground operations. And what we show there is in the open area, there's a few holes shown there. Those were holes drilled 25 years ago, mostly by Homestake. So back when Homestake was around and had this property, they had a few deep drill holes to the north that hit very good grade material and were never followed up. And that was our number one target. And we've been very successful in that program. Shown here on slide 35, the... existing mine workings with the OG, Otto, and Adam peak area is the area that we're developing underground. But just below the bottom level, about 100 meters below the bottom level of the historic workings, and about 100 meters to the north on the other side of, I interpret as being like a CX West cross fault, is the South Pacific Zone. And what we've really found with drilling out the South Pacific Zone is we are doing 50-meter space drilling, so it's still pretty wide space drilling, but remarkable continuity. The main fault structures in or at the contact of the upper and lower comas, the main two limestone units, has consistently been mineralized, and it's mineralized towards surface as well, but up towards surface, it just doesn't grade. Below a depth of about 250 meters, the grade picks up And essentially every hole we've drilled below that level is being 10 grams or better. So pretty remarkable. And in my history of exploring over the last couple of decades, it's getting to say decades now, is this has been the most continuous zone or most continuous high-grade mineralized drill program that I think I've experienced in my career. So it's pretty exciting. The grades have been... Phenomenal. As we show here on slides 36 and 37, we present every single hole that's drilled into this project. So we're not presenting a couple of hot holes in our press release and leave everything else that didn't run out. We're presenting every hole. So we're doing five, six holes at a time as we receive the assays. And it's been remarkable at the grades and And often the woods, our 18th hole, our southernmost hole, getting close to the OG zone, that depth was our best hole in the program. It ran 15 point, or sorry, that hole ran 16.3 grams over 15.7 meters. So very, very strong grades, good width. The true width on these intercepts is estimated between 60 and 90. We are drilling angled holes, and the zone is dipping to the east and trending north, as I said. And when you look at that in a long section view, as shown on slide 38, you can see up near surface where the underground workings are. The strike length of high-grade mineralization tends to occur over about 200 meters strike length. But when you get down to where the South Pacific zone is, and you include the down dip of the OG, we're seeing the strike length of mineralization increasing to about 800 meters so far, and it's completely open to the north. And it's actually open to the south at depth as well. So the upside that we're seeing here, the ounces per vertical meter as we go deeper, we expect to increase substantially. And that's why we're driving the infrastructure at depth right now and putting a real focus on our drilling on this project. We show here hole 2205. It's one of the, obviously the fifth hole of the 22 program. We've got about 13 holes completed now in the program. We continue to step out. But that hole was drilled about 100 meters underneath all previous drilling to try to, as we go forward this year, demonstrate the deposit does continue strongly at depth. So we continue to step out. We're not just going to start infilling just to get a bunch of good drill holes. We're going to try to make this envelope bigger and then do infill primarily, we hope, from underground, which is a cheaper means of doing it. And because of that success, the acquisition, especially on slide 39 and the blue block to the north, was very key because we took that image on the previous slide and it's pretty shrunken down there, but where it says SPZ on the image is the South Pacific zone. And there was a hole drilled by Homestake, further 400 meters to the north, getting pretty close to the boundary that hit three high-grade intercepts at depth and was never followed up. And rather than our drilling chase up to there and then approach Barrick, we thought maybe we should approach them before we get to the boundary and it might be more amenable to selling us the property. And we were pretty fortunate that they said they would. So our projection of the mineralized zone that's shown in red on this slide and as we go through the balance of this year we are expecting to start stepping out to the north now we weren't stepping out to the north because we didn't want to go too far north before we were either told we'll sell you that ground or get lost not a chance and so the deal was just struck and we look forward to working with them for processing that could extend into the future and they hold a net profit interest in this property as well. So they benefit from us being successful as well. The underground definition program is taking place primarily in the OG zone this year. We're really focused there. That's where Matt showed the development. Two of the holes that we just announced will be the first three intercepts into the OG zone from our drilling from underground have now been announced. 22.9 grams over 6 meters, plus 11.2 over 11 meters in hole 39 of last year. Hole 38, 14.8 grams over 3.8 meters. And hole 37, the deeper hole, hit 54.7 grams over 5.9 meters. So very strong grades, and those are the areas that we're currently developing underground. And then we drilled a deep hole, hole 15 from surface, was to test the OG zone at depth. That's the deepest hole we've drilled to date, and we hit three high-grade intercepts of 13.3 grams over 13 meters, 20.2 grams over 7.5 meters, and 10.1 over 17.5. Very strong widths and grades, and just demonstrates the substantial upside, not only in South Pacific, but also in deeper drilling on the project. The highlight assays, we're estimating 70 to 90% true widths on these intercepts. And you can see the highlight assays including the first two holes from underground that tested the OG zone at depth. And this year, I think we're about 40-something holes into the 22 program, so there should be substantial news flow from this property. Ruby Hill is a property that early on, it's a deposit that was mined by Barrick. They had a pit wall failure. They sold the project. It was bought by Waterton. They sat on it for years and then did a little bit of restart of the remnant mining in the open pit, which we finished. But we didn't acquire it for that open pit. When we were doing analysis of projects across Nevada, we identified Ruby Hill as maybe the highest potential sulfide deposit that we knew of in Nevada and now with the current resource collectively it represents our company's largest gold resource but in my opinion also has the most significant upside amongst our portfolio and we look forward to demonstrating that with the drill bit in fact today we released our first five holes from drilling from 21 finally got the assays and Jacqueline at the back was scrambling to get the press release out and this presentation done because check assays almost had us not release them and put them in our presentation and we kind of did this around the Ruby Hill results. The woods and grades are incredible. The ground conditions appear to be quite stellar for a Carlin style deposit and just completely open for expansion. The primary projects that we'll be advancing, we have internally, we present to the market, we have a three-year plan for Ruby Hill. but we also have a five-year plan internally and we also have a 10-year plan. We have three different scale-ups of this project we expect. In the image on slide 43 for those online, Ruby Deeps is in red and it is open to the north and south along what we call the Harley Fault and that drilling is the first area we tested because as we look to start the autoclave, we need to do metallurgy. We need a core from Ruby Hill to blend with the core from Granite Creek and Cove in order to do the metallurgy to figure out what we need to do to the autoclave facility. And there was no core left from this project because it was mostly drilled, again, by Homestake. And as most of you know, Homestake disappeared more than 20 years ago. So there are deep holes, cores gone, drill logs that were kind of, you know, mostly handwritten and we didn't know what we were going to get into when we drilled it. Other than there was a lot of good intercepts across the property at depth. And what really surprised us was the tenor of the rocks there. It's like, as Ty called it, stick rock. We expect this to be very good ground conditions. We've seen substantial oxidation in the upper parts of the 426 zone. As Matt said, with the CL plant, that makes us think about, you know, what else can we do with this project? The Carlin-style mineralization is being drilled out in the Ruby Deeps and 426 zone, but there's also a very compelling polymetallic deposit immediately below the pit, very high-grade zinc with some gold. that we expect to bring to resource this year and do some drilling later in this year and test it going to the south and to the north along that structure. And then in blue is Mineral Point. Mineral Point is the biggest deposit, as Matt said, about a 5 million ounce heap leach project that we will be evaluating for development in the future. But just with everything else going on, we don't want to say we're developing a big 5 million ounce open pit at the same time. So it's a future growth project for us. And I'd like to point out on this slide that immediately to the south, you can see the property boundary along the south, is the FAD project owned by Paycor. And our company is a shareholder in that company, and they're having a lot of success in their drill program. So it's something that hopefully we can collaborate on in the future. We have a lot of infrastructure, and we're a shareholder, so we support the company as much as we can. The Ruby Pit project, as I said, is host to substantial resources and indicated more than 4 million ounces of gold, just under 4 million ounces in thirds, so a very sizable resource, significant silver, mostly in mineral points. you know point where I liken something like a Rochester mine that CORE has but at this mineral point would be a higher grade Rochester if you look at it as what type of deposit. We will look at continuing to permit that in the future but right now the main focus is as Matt showed on his slides as we show here is putting in the declines hopefully starting in the fourth quarter this year to drive down first into the 426 zone and then deeper in the ruby deeps. And you can see in this conceptual mine image that we have here, the workings will drift over to blackjack, which is the polymetallic deposit underneath the pit. Because of its location where the pit slide is, it's very difficult to drill from surface, so most of our drill plans here are going to be from underground. These deposits are completely open for expansion. The D2 targets, we call ruby deeps R2s, we have R2 and D2, D2 is a single drill hole drilled in what appears to be or could be a parallel structure that intersected 15 liters of nearly 9 grams per ton with no follow-up. That's an area we are going to do some drilling. And the R2 self-target is our block model that we're carrying for Ruby Deep Sashone in yellow. But that's a substantial step out to the south. So we're following that up right now in the 22 drill program. And to the north, you can see the 8.2 grams over 30 meters. That's outside of our current mineralized envelope. So we're doing some additional drilling there to demonstrate the upside going to the north. And those are some of the holes we announced today. So the in-surface plan on slide 46, you can see ruby deeps in 426 outlined in red. open to the north and south, the G2 target where it is in relation to the PIP. And what we're seeing with this drilling is really good rock quality. We expect the mineability of this to be very good, especially when we developed the South Arturo deposit, we've drilled off cove or underground at Granite Creek. The experience of Matt and his team have had at other carbon deposits. They're also often associated with pretty major faults, so broken ground, difficult ground, and And Ruby Hill, we've got some images of the core, so you can see just how good the core is here. It's silicified rock that should be very mineable. These are the first four intercepts that intercepted the zone. So in hole two, we hit 71.6 metres of 7 grams, including 9 grams over 15.8. In hole three, we intersected 9 grams over 18.3 metres. In hole 4, 9.1 over 24.7. And hole 5, the northernmost hole where it remains open, hit 7.1 grams per ton over 78 meters. And given it's a flat line deposit, these intercepts are close to true width. Contained within that was 41.8 meters at 10 grams. Deposit's completely open to the north of that. There's just pretty major upside in this project, and like I said, not just in this current R2 or Ruby Deep deposit, but also a lot of loan intercepts around the property. Almost everywhere you look at a hole that's being drilled to depth on this property, it hit Carlin-style mineralization, and it often hit high-grade gold. And Tyler mentioned one thing to me last week. He said the size of the Carlin alteration package we're seeing here is on par with Cortez. which is a pretty bold statement, and hopefully we can prove that this is going to be the next Cortez district in Nevada. Just showing the sections, so as you can see, there are some historic holes in this area that we're following up, some barrack and home stake holes with high-grade intercepts. On the right is the core from hole two, and as you can see, it's very competent rock, altered, collapsed breccia, in hole 3 again very solidified a lot of realgar that you can see here so a lot of fluids were flowing through this this rock in this section you can see a barrack and a home stake hole that was drilled down in this area both with over 13 gram intercepts so very high grade material very good width and given where the pit is since we're driving the decline out of the bottom of the pit, it's not that far down. The true depth of this deposit is sort of 600 to 700 meters from surface, but below where the portal goes in, it's about 400 meters. Again, the fourth hole, you can see the competency of the ground. It's not all broken up and cornflakes, as you can see at places like Turquoise Ridge, et cetera. And the biggest hole of our first five was... or of our 21 program was hole 5. Again, the ground conditions are what really stands out. So the deeper deposit isn't where we're seeing this oxide portion. We're seeing that in 22 we started drilling off to 426. That's pretty much go out of the pit and we expect to be almost immediately into the 426 zone. And the 426 zone as shown here on slide 52 is a mixed sulfide oxide zone. We're seeing pretty extensive oxide in drilling the upper parts. It makes us, when we build our new resource model, we're going to have oxide ore and sulfide ore because we will have to figure out exactly how to drill it. And finally, for this property, the blackjack deposit. Talked about some good holes here, but you can see consistently 10 to over 20% zinc in the drilling underneath the pit with widths of up to over 70 meters. So it's a big, broad zone. We're currently putting all that data together, building our own geological model so that we can actually bring this to resource status. I think we have two to four holes planned later in the program, so just so we can say, well, yes, we hit it too, and then we can bring it to 43-101. And then talk about next year, do we look at trying to expand this along Strike, likely associated with a major fault in the area that has been interpreted in some previous papers as the Jackson fault. So it seems to be pretty closely associated with that fault structure, but it's a mixture of CRD and scarring mineralization up against the intrusive. So with that, that's the end of the exploration. A very, very good first year for our company, and we expect the 22 program to yield similar, hopefully greater success. And just let Matt come up and close out our presentation and talk a bit about our scorecard that we put out earlier.
spk00: Okay.
spk04: So looking back at the scorecard that we issued in January, we wanted to update it for our investors and the people here at the presentation. And a few things I'd like to highlight for... and what we've achieved to date. One, we closed the financing package with Orion Mike Finance, which secures our ability to grow our company this year. We celebrate our first ounce of gold at both Ruby Hill and Lone Tree. At Granite Creek, we initially started out the year with a 20,000-meter drill program, but owing to the success of the SPZ zone, We increased it to 30,000 meters and acquired the ground to the north, so we secured the long-term upside for that property. At Cove, we initiated the underground development program and secured water rights to help develop that project. And as an overarching comment, I would say, and we were chatting with Matt about it earlier today, None of the other items, they're all tracking on time and as expected. So we don't anticipate any so far. So we're very excited about how we're progressing through the year. So as a summary, what do you get with ID Gold? You get a company that's executing on a plan with the goal of becoming Nevada's second largest gold producer. We've got a strong capital allocation team working on how do we execute on that plan. and we've got an organic pipeline to do that. With that, we'll take some questions for the team or anybody else.
spk00: I know Habib had a question for Matt about, are you feeling nervous about building three mines at one time? Not nervous. I'm feeling... I'm trying to make sure I say this in a non...
spk02: mat-centric way. My previous job was the COO at Oyotogoi, and we were building a mine and a concentrator complex in the Gobi Desert. So this is not that complicated, and we got a good team. We're in the right jurisdiction. Got a lot of grade. And again, I'm going to always kind of stress back to that concept that it's three mines and one processing plant. Remember, each of those mines is a
spk00: well-run, well-planned portal excavation without its own processing facility associated with it.
spk02: So in the big scheme of things, it's a fairly tidy and certainly a very executable development.
spk00: Any other questions? We're going to try to buy Cortez.
spk02: No, we're probably not going to do that. But we're going to be the producer of choice in Nevada.
spk00: We're going to be the most efficient, most profitable in Nevada.
spk03: Sure, so we're not giving guidance, but what I can say is if you look at our Q1 financial statements and take the number that was disclosed, the 9.3, multiply that by four, you'll be right in the ballpark.
spk00: But we're not giving guidance. There's always concerns with staffing.
spk02: One, we've been able to get a really good team together. We all have a name in the area, and we bring with us certain groups that we've worked with before. There's two areas where we struggle. The first one seems kind of obvious and not a surprise, and that's traits, but particularly electrical traits and mechanical traits. We have alternate strategies for both of those, particularly electrical, where we have strategic alliances or master service agreements with several different electrical service providers. The other one is accounting, and it's real. It's proven to be the hardest area to get really highly skilled staff in that they are so fungible. They can work wherever they want to work. whatever industry they want to. And it turns out mining is not necessarily their first choice. Did I answer that correctly, Ryan?
spk05: And I'll step in and say that we have been very successful at hiring very key people. And I went on a tour of the sites for our one-year anniversary, so I went to see them. But I didn't want to go with Matt or Ryan. I wanted to go by myself, so they weren't. the guys answering the questions on site weren't looking at, Matt, how do you want these answered? So it was kind of fun. I got to go to each site and ask questions. And two of the gentlemen on the site said they joined our company because of Matt Geely. So that was a real testament to his previous history there. And one guy retired. He said, I was going to retire. Just go away. And Matt phoned me, and I wouldn't say no to Matt. So he's running Ruby Hill for us now. It was good to hear right from the horse's mouth and
spk00: and they are a great team. I learned a lot on that trip. That's all categories. Again, I'm very cautious not to give guidance, but if you... That's our target. That's our target. Pardon me? Okay, so I touched on it briefly.
spk02: First stage is to completely fill the autoclave with high-grade material from the underground. Then the next stage is, one, the open pit at Granite Creek, develop that. That's an oxide heap leach pit, so that's not going to interfere with the capacity of the autoclave. And then the next step is to fully, fully explore all the aspects of... So you've got oxide, high-grade oxide material there with a CIL plant on site. You've got a base metal deposit with a CIL plant that could be converted to a sulfide float plant. So that would be the stages. And then at the end, you've got mineral point deposited ruby, which is over 5 million ounces just in itself.
spk00: Yes, Michael.
spk02: We are, the drilling that we're doing right now is partially targeted specifically towards metallurgical testing.
spk00: Andy, Mr. A. Cole is running that program. No, you're not going to see that with the long-treat PFS, Michael.
spk02: What you'll see that with is, and we haven't targeted the date yet, but when we start updating the technical reports for or Ruby Hill, when we update, when we do the resource update, you're not going to have that much detail. But you do have it, Ruby. Look, there is a lot of historic information. Both Homestake and Barrick did a lot of metallurgical testing on all those different parts, including the concentrate from Blackjack. Where are the gold and silver? There's two concentrates. There's a lead and a zinc, and the gold and silver credits are associated with lead, which is
spk00: So there's a lot of testing there, but none of it's publishable yet. We need to refresh that all.
spk05: So if there's no other questions, I urge everybody to stick around, and we have some drinks and food at the back, and mingle with our management team and our board and ask any extra questions you might have. Thank you very much, everybody, for attending both online and in person.
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