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🚨 CRITICAL! 🚨 This will Happen in the GOLD Sector SOON · SILVER / GOLD / $UFD: Surviving Global Economic Shifts | RONS BASEMENT

• 0:03
  Exciting times in the gold market.
• 0:06
  There are a lot of new people coming in to precious metals
• 0:10
  today. We're pleased to be joined by
• 0:12
  Dan Wilton. He's the CEO of First Mining
• 0:15
  Gold. We're going to talk about gold,
• 0:17
  but we're also going to talk about the gold mining and the
• 0:21
  junior gold mining sector, where some of the stocks, some of the
• 0:24
  potential for capital appreciation is really
• 0:28
  outstanding. Dan, welcome to Ron's Basement.
• 0:31
  Ron, it's a pleasure to be back in the basement.
• 0:33
  Yeah. Well, you know, I have to say
• 0:35
  you were the first CEO to actually visit here in the
• 0:38
  basement. And I think back when that was
• 0:40
  the case, the the gold bear was blindfolded.
• 0:43
  We thought we would never see $2500 gold. $2500 gold for
• 0:49
  blindfold bear. It seems like an ancient
• 0:51
  history, doesn't it? It's crazy.
• 0:53
  People, people said I was crazy back then saying that I thought
• 0:56
  gold would get to 2500. But I think as we sit today,
• 1:00
  we're around $3200 for gold. We have a lot of new people
• 1:04
  coming into the precious metal sector.
• 1:07
  What are your general thoughts on gold that kind of the market
• 1:10
  and and maybe you know, the the the attributes that people
• 1:13
  should be looking at when they're considering buying gold?
• 1:17
  Yeah. I mean, it's interesting.
• 1:18
  Ron Gold's played this role for thousands of years, as you know,
• 1:23
  an investment in times of uncertainty and in large part
• 1:27
  because, you know, it's a lot of value in a small physical space.
• 1:31
  If you own physical gold, you hear countless stories about,
• 1:35
  you know, that little bit of gold that saved someone's family
• 1:38
  from ruin in periods of real global macro instability, wars
• 1:43
  and other, you know, financial calamity.
• 1:46
  Well, the reality is I think we're, we're in a period right
• 1:50
  now a pretty unprecedented economic, you know, potential
• 1:54
  economic calamity. We've seen the gold price, I
• 1:58
  think react to what the world is seeing as kind of a, a change in
• 2:04
  the world order. And, you know, we, I think we as
• 2:09
  societies advanced on this, on this theory of global
• 2:14
  cooperation for a long time. And one thing looks very clear
• 2:18
  is that people just aren't in countries aren't really
• 2:21
  cooperating anymore. So you know, whether that's
• 2:24
  tariffs and you know, there's it's going to be a bumpy Rd.
• 2:27
  We all know that. But fundamentally, I think the
• 2:31
  train has left the station on the de dollarization of the
• 2:35
  global economy. And that's one of the biggest
• 2:37
  things I think that's driving gold right now.
• 2:39
  When you look at who you know, the real major gold buyers are,
• 2:44
  it's central banks and often emerging markets central banks
• 2:47
  looking for something that can provide something other than
• 2:52
  U.S. dollar to underpin their foreign currency reserves.
• 2:56
  And it's a lot of now like retail gold buying, particularly
• 3:02
  in China where people have historically had a lot of their
• 3:07
  money in the real estate market. And now I think you've started
• 3:09
  to see that change as well. So yeah, it's it's interesting
• 3:14
  times. I think, you know, gold's played
• 3:16
  this role for thousands of years and it's really I think done a a
• 3:20
  pretty good job over the course of the last year 18 months and
• 3:25
  in reflecting, you know, what is really the volatility in the
• 3:30
  overall market. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 3:32
  I've heard it said that gold has been valuable everywhere in the
• 3:37
  world and for all time. It really is like the definition
• 3:41
  of decentralized finance. There's not one, there's not one
• 3:44
  government or one power that can control gold, right?
• 3:48
  Like it's just it's always there, it's everywhere and it's
• 3:51
  always been valuable. The massive valuable and liquid,
• 3:55
  as it turns out, you gotta, you gotta remember for your store of
• 3:58
  value, you need to be able to, to enter and exit it, you know,
• 4:02
  reasonably easily. So most places in the world,
• 4:07
  somewhere on the street, there's someone who's selling, you know,
• 4:10
  there's a shop front selling gold or they know someone where
• 4:14
  you can go and buy some gold. So yeah, it's it, you're right.
• 4:18
  It, it is the original Defy instrument because it was
• 4:23
  something that again, portability, lots of value in a,
• 4:28
  in, in a small space, you know what a small weight.
• 4:32
  I think that's what's really contributed to that.
• 4:35
  Yeah. I mean it's, it really stands
• 4:36
  apart in that, in that regard. When we look at the the global
• 4:41
  gold mining, I guess we'll start obviously you are CEO of a gold
• 4:45
  development company and we're going to focus in on 1st mining
• 4:48
  gold a little bit later. But when you look at the global
• 4:51
  gold mining sector right now, there's not really that much
• 4:56
  gold being produced. Like I think what is it one or
• 4:58
  two percent is added every year to the global gold supply and
• 5:04
  and gold mining companies are, I know I've been seeing recent
• 5:08
  earning reports are making just tons and tons of cash.
• 5:11
  What do you think the implications are for the for the
• 5:14
  big miners? And then we'll, we'll focus down
• 5:17
  to the smaller and then development stage companies like
• 5:19
  First Mining Gold. Yeah.
• 5:21
  I mean, it's interesting, you know, I've been in this sector
• 5:25
  for 30 plus years. We've never seen anything like
• 5:31
  the free cash flow that we're seeing on gold miners right now.
• 5:36
  Just even you look back in 20/10/2011, the last time the
• 5:40
  gold price, you know had a a really quick push, you had cost
• 5:45
  inflation that actually captured a fair amount of that run up in
• 5:50
  the gold price. Right now we are seeing
• 5:53
  unprecedented levels of free cash flow.
• 5:56
  You know, most of these companies have just issued
• 5:58
  their, their, you know, first quarter results and at an
• 6:03
  average gold price of $2800, they're generating unbelievable
• 6:08
  levels of free cash flow. All of their balance sheets are
• 6:11
  in pristine condition. And that's, that's also never
• 6:15
  been the case. Like historically there's a fair
• 6:17
  amount of debt that was on, on all of these gold companies they
• 6:21
  paid back. Most of them are in a net cash
• 6:23
  position now. But interestingly, many, I'd say
• 6:29
  most of those companies have not really been investing what they
• 6:34
  need to invest over the long term to replace those reserves
• 6:38
  because you got to remember it's an extractive industry.
• 6:41
  When you mine an ounce of reserves that you have, you no
• 6:45
  longer have it. You need to replace it somehow.
• 6:47
  And there's really only two ways you find it through exploration
• 6:51
  or you buy it like that's it. So, you know, you go back to
• 6:58
  2015, well, really from 2011 to to today, you've had
• 7:04
  consistently, you've had these companies really not having
• 7:09
  enough capital to allocate to exploration budgets.
• 7:12
  Many of them haven't gone out to buy new projects or, you know,
• 7:15
  replace reserves through acquisition.
• 7:17
  And so, you know, you're sitting with a lot of these companies
• 7:20
  with mine lives on some of their main minds that, you know, they
• 7:25
  might have built these mines in sometime between 20/15/2020.
• 7:31
  Well, most gold mines get built with a 10 year life.
• 7:35
  And so you extend it with exploration.
• 7:37
  There's lots of ways that you can, you know, you can find
• 7:39
  more. But fundamentally, I think the
• 7:43
  state of of the longevity of the reserves that these companies
• 7:48
  have is something that people haven't been focusing on and
• 7:51
  they're going to start focusing on it.
• 7:54
  So, you know, I think that sets up a very interesting
• 7:58
  environment where you have investors that are clamoring for
• 8:02
  these companies not to go buy other companies, right?
• 8:06
  They're clamoring for these companies to give the the like
• 8:09
  give the cash back through share buybacks or dividends or
• 8:12
  whatever capital return is and of all the big investors in the
• 8:17
  in the gold space are talking about.
• 8:19
  But yet the companies really need to do something to replace
• 8:23
  these reserves. So it's setting up a very
• 8:25
  interesting environment. Have, have, have they been
• 8:28
  exploring on their own, 'cause I don't think that's the case.
• 8:30
  I think there's some graphs out there and charts that show like
• 8:33
  basically new gold discoveries over the last decade.
• 8:37
  I mean, it's like just goes down, down, down.
• 8:39
  Is that accurate? That is accurate.
• 8:42
  Not that they haven't been exploring, but most often
• 8:44
  they're exploring right around their existing minds.
• 8:47
  So we'll call it brownfields exploration.
• 8:50
  That is not what it's, it is not demonstrated or delivered the
• 8:58
  results that they need to replace those reserves.
• 9:00
  And so, you know, the charts that you're talking about, Ron,
• 9:04
  will tend to show that over time, the efficacy of that
• 9:09
  exploration. So the number of Oz discovered
• 9:13
  per dollar put into the ground has really fallen off.
• 9:16
  And that's because by and large, it is easy to find.
• 9:20
  It's been found, right? So now you're you really kind of
• 9:24
  need to be in frontier areas to find new resources.
• 9:28
  And it's why you've got, you know, you've got Barrick going
• 9:31
  to like Pakistan on the border of Afghanistan to build mines.
• 9:36
  You know, you've got a lot of countries or a lot of companies
• 9:40
  that are pushing to expand resources.
• 9:43
  And, you know, in places like West Africa where, you know,
• 9:47
  there's some pretty significant, you know, country risks that
• 9:52
  they are stepping into for, for some of that, the production
• 9:57
  that they're looking to add on. So, you know, but it's, it's a
• 10:00
  classic, you want to buy a car, you want a car that's fast, high
• 10:06
  quality and cheap. And the reality is you can only
• 10:10
  take two of those, right? It's very similar in the gold
• 10:13
  mining industry. Like you want good jurisdiction,
• 10:16
  you want large scale and you want something that's cheap.
• 10:20
  Well, you know, in a tough jurisdiction, you could probably
• 10:24
  get something big for cheap. In a good jurisdiction, you
• 10:26
  could probably get something small for cheap, but typically
• 10:30
  you just can't get, you know, good projects in Tier 1
• 10:34
  jurisdictions and sizable projects at attractive values.
• 10:38
  Although we're sitting today with some of the longer, longer
• 10:43
  sort of longer lead time development projects sitting at
• 10:47
  still the same levels they've been at over the last four or
• 10:50
  five years, many still trading at, you know, 10 to $20.00 an
• 10:54
  ounce. Yeah, yeah.
• 10:55
  So let me let me get this straight.
• 10:56
  The world is clamoring for gold, right?
• 10:59
  We know that. And I know even JP Morgan
• 11:02
  recently put out a piece saying that by the end of Trump's term,
• 11:05
  we could see gold at $6000 per oz.
• 11:09
  So the world is demanding gold. The big gold mining companies
• 11:13
  are producing as much as they can, but they haven't really
• 11:16
  invested into the future. You know, they're not out
• 11:21
  exploring. They don't have, you know,
• 11:23
  they're, they're, they're kind of eating through their
• 11:26
  inventory of gold, correct. And then you have the situation
• 11:31
  in the world where most of the easy gold is already been
• 11:35
  discovered. So, so, so these big miners are
• 11:38
  going to get to a point soon where they're going to need to
• 11:41
  replace what they have. And there's only a handful of
• 11:46
  big development stage projects out there that can fill that
• 11:49
  need. Do you happen to know of any
• 11:51
  companies, Dan, that might fit that bill?
• 11:54
  I know one particularly Ron are. You going to let me know?
• 11:58
  It's first mine and gold. As a matter of fact, I can see
• 12:01
  it just above your shoulder there.
• 12:02
  Yeah, there it is, right there. Yeah, exactly.
• 12:05
  And I mean, the, really the, the other very interesting thing
• 12:10
  around, you know, the development stage companies like
• 12:14
  us is they've had a real difficult time attracting
• 12:20
  capital over the last number of years.
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  And it's become more and more expensive to develop projects.
• 12:25
  When you're talking about social licensing, environmental work
• 12:28
  that has to be done, feasibility studies, you know, working with
• 12:33
  the indigenous communities that you're working with and
• 12:35
  providing capacity for them to go through their, their own
• 12:37
  processes. It is really expensive.
• 12:41
  And it's and, and, and that time frame to develop a project over
• 12:45
  the last 30 years has gone from on average like 8 or 9 years
• 12:50
  from discovery to production to today.
• 12:53
  That number would be 17 years globally.
• 12:56
  And I think in, you know, in places like Canada, it's
• 13:00
  probably longer than that. Just it's, it's a very expensive
• 13:05
  complex process with a, with a part of the a sector, a sub
• 13:10
  sector of the industry that's had real trouble attracting the
• 13:14
  capital. So if you want to put another
• 13:16
  screen on these projects, you then need to look at, well, how
• 13:19
  long, where is it in its development pipeline?
• 13:23
  And how long will it be until you have your main permitting
• 13:27
  decisions that you'll know that this is something that's going
• 13:30
  to be a mind because permitting's become more and
• 13:33
  more difficult over time. So that's where I think when we
• 13:37
  look at our portfolio and particularly with our spring
• 13:39
  poll project like we, we are in our estimation the next project
• 13:47
  to get in a federal environmental assessment
• 13:49
  decision which we're targeting at the end of this year.
• 13:52
  Now that's just that EA process is the end of a 10 year, well
• 13:57
  seven-year. We've been in the in the EA
• 13:59
  process now for seven years. We've been doing environmental
• 14:02
  work at our at our spring pool project for 15 years, like in
• 14:07
  reasonable detail. So you know it, it takes a long
• 14:11
  time. So while the while the producing
• 14:13
  companies have been waiting, those of the developers that
• 14:17
  have been able to scratch the money together to advance these
• 14:21
  projects to these critical milestones and I think are
• 14:25
  setting ourselves up to be, you know, really those projects were
• 14:30
  the industry and it really needs them the most.
• 14:35
  And we said that, you know, when I started here in 2019, that was
• 14:38
  the strategy we're going to get these projects ready for when
• 14:41
  the industry needs them the most.
• 14:42
  And I think that time is here and I think that that part of
• 14:46
  it's going to get more and more acute over the next few years.
• 14:49
  Yeah, yeah. And you know, in, in you and I,
• 14:51
  we aren't giving financial advice.
• 14:53
  We're not financial planners. But I guess I can say this
• 14:56
  because I, I've have been an investor in first mining gold
• 14:59
  for more than five years. The entire development sector
• 15:04
  has been pushed down to a very high value of very, very, very
• 15:10
  attractive valuation prospect. I'm trying to nicely say that
• 15:15
  the whole sector has just gone through a very difficult time.
• 15:18
  Very difficult time. But, but the other side of that
• 15:20
  coin is and it, and it's can be hard to put this into words, but
• 15:26
  but you did a good job is that now you've positioned the
• 15:28
  company where, where we have this confluence of factors where
• 15:33
  the big, the big miners need to replace their resources.
• 15:37
  There's big demand for, for gold out there.
• 15:40
  And the other thing we forgot to mention is that just the amount
• 15:44
  of cash that these big producers have that as we move into the
• 15:48
  next like 2 to three years, the potential for capital
• 15:52
  appreciation. Again, I'm not giving financial
• 15:55
  advice, but when you look at at how how these companies are
• 15:59
  valued, it's just a very attractive situation that even
• 16:04
  if things just remain the way they are right now, it's to me
• 16:07
  it feels like it's almost inevitable that that there's
• 16:11
  going to be good days ahead for the entire development sector.
• 16:14
  And then in particular, when I think of first mining gold, and
• 16:17
  I want to ask you this question, when I think of spring Paul,
• 16:19
  which is just one of your big projects, it's, is it accurate
• 16:24
  to say it's an advanced stage development project?
• 16:27
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• 17:09
  Very much so. I mean, you know, there are.
• 17:13
  I think when we look at the industry, particularly in Canada
• 17:17
  and ask ourselves which projects could get a shovel in the ground
• 17:22
  before 20-30 of significant size, so call IT projects of 5
• 17:27
  million oz or more, I think there's three of them.
• 17:33
  So for an industry where, you know, there's a lot of large
• 17:37
  players that really need to replace their reserves, need to
• 17:43
  add productive capacity, want to add it in a Tier 1 jurisdiction,
• 17:47
  they look their their look, their gaze naturally goes to
• 17:51
  those that are at the front of the queue in an environmental
• 17:54
  assessment or permitting process.
• 17:56
  And so that's where I think again, even further
• 17:59
  distinguishing these projects, you just kind of have them set
• 18:03
  up such that, yeah, historically, Ron, if you look
• 18:07
  back over time and almost kind of across gold cycles and
• 18:12
  through many different commodity prices, these projects have
• 18:15
  tended to to sell when they get bought by bigger companies at
• 18:20
  100 to $200.00 an ounce of of resources.
• 18:24
  And you know, we and others are trading at $10.00 an ounce
• 18:27
  today. Right, right.
• 18:30
  And we're at an unprecedented gold price.
• 18:32
  We're at a level that the economics of these projects, you
• 18:36
  know, at a $2500 gold price, at blindfold bears gold price.
• 18:41
  These are phenomenally economic projects.
• 18:44
  You know, $2500 is, is, you know, it's 2530% below the where
• 18:52
  we are today. And I think, you know, we and
• 18:54
  others see a trajectory and a rationale for the gold price
• 18:57
  going higher from here. So no, it's a, it's a phenomenal
• 19:01
  opportunity. I think sitting where we are
• 19:04
  today, that's just being mispriced by the market in large
• 19:08
  part because it's just a sub sector that's kind of been
• 19:12
  ignored for a long time. Yeah, yeah.
• 19:14
  In, in, in an environment where we are seeing more and more
• 19:18
  people though come into the pool of, of wanting to invest into
• 19:24
  the into the mining sector. I want to ask you another
• 19:27
  question to maybe clarify for, for some of the newer people
• 19:29
  that are watching us, you know, we can talk about spring pull
• 19:32
  and somewhere around 5 million ounces of, of gold in the
• 19:36
  ground. I think it's important, I want
• 19:38
  to get your, your input on this because you're the expert for
• 19:41
  people to realize like that project has been in development
• 19:45
  for a decade or or more and that there's been, and I don't want
• 19:51
  to put, you know, a number on it.
• 19:52
  I'll let you give an estimate, but like 10s of millions of
• 19:56
  dollars spent in that process, like this is a, a very extensive
• 20:01
  process that goes on not just, oh, we have this gold in the
• 20:05
  ground, but it's a, there's a lot of work than drilling and
• 20:07
  everything else that goes into this.
• 20:09
  Hundreds of millions of dollars if.
• 20:11
  You. I wanted you to say that, yeah.
• 20:12
  You look at the replacement value of the work that's gone in
• 20:15
  so 200,000 meters of drilling, you know, a number of technical
• 20:21
  studies, all the environmental baseline work that's gone into
• 20:26
  it, you know, and on. And, and we continue to add to
• 20:30
  the environmental data that we collect, you know, capacity
• 20:34
  provided to indigenous communities to work through the
• 20:37
  project, taking it through an environmental assessment.
• 20:40
  So, you know, there's a 15,500 page final environmental
• 20:44
  assessment document on our website which the readers really
• 20:47
  want to dig into the project. They can learn a lot as they go
• 20:50
  through it. But you know, it's just these
• 20:54
  that's the thing. These development projects take
• 20:58
  like well north of $100 million to develop and that's in an
• 21:04
  environment where that capital has been hard to come by.
• 21:07
  You know, we've been lucky that we had a portfolio of other
• 21:09
  projects that we sort of were able to turn those other
• 21:13
  projects into cash, bring in partners, create royalties.
• 21:16
  We had to get pretty creative about it.
• 21:18
  But that provided A substantial portion of that capital that
• 21:22
  we've put into the project, you know, since since 2019.
• 21:26
  But you know, you go before that when a lot of the really heavy
• 21:29
  lifting was done. Yeah, that's, it's easily, I
• 21:34
  don't know, $250 million that's been spent on this project.
• 21:38
  On spring, Paul alone on. Spring Paul alone, yeah,
• 21:41
  Duparque, you'd be easily, probably another hundred 150
• 21:46
  million. So, you know, and I, I'm not a
• 21:49
  big fan of valuing things on a sunk cost basis, right.
• 21:52
  But I think, you know, you can't get to the finish line without
• 21:55
  doing the work that was done by us and the predecessors.
• 21:58
  So there is real value in that investment.
• 22:01
  And you know, today you're, you're acquiring it, you know,
• 22:04
  at, you know, well, less than half times the half of the the,
• 22:09
  the book value, if you will, of, of just what's been spent.
• 22:13
  Yeah, yeah. And you would think it would
• 22:15
  make sense that at some point one of the big producers is
• 22:19
  gonna come and then look, and like you've already done all the
• 22:23
  work, you know, you've already put all the, the effort and the
• 22:27
  money and, and, and when this market kind of wakes up that the
• 22:32
  valuations and not just for first mining gold, because
• 22:35
  again, you're not alone, right? It's the other developers as
• 22:38
  well that are, that are, that are at this, at this level that
• 22:42
  makes the opportunity for capital appreciation.
• 22:45
  Again, I'm not a financial advisor, but you know, it's a
• 22:48
  stock that I own because I think that there's opportunity for it
• 22:52
  to go up multiple times in value.
• 22:54
  And I think that if we just objectively look at history
• 22:58
  within the gold mining sector, the gold stock mining sector,
• 23:02
  that's happened before, right? We've had, you know, companies
• 23:04
  that have had fantastic levels of return in the past.
• 23:07
  And you're and you're starting to see it even on late stage
• 23:10
  developers now where the market is, you know, when, when the
• 23:13
  market believes that you are going to get to these, these
• 23:16
  permitting sanctioning decisions.
• 23:19
  You know, we've we've seen a couple of our peers go up six
• 23:24
  and seven times in the last year just from that point that the
• 23:27
  market says OK, I believe it. It goes from being 100 hundred
• 23:30
  and 2000 and 50 million market cap company to, you know, a
• 23:35
  billion dollar market cap company without a whole lot of,
• 23:40
  you know, fanfare and not a whole lot of, you know, new news
• 23:46
  other than them doing what they said they were going to do.
• 23:48
  So, you know, and for us, we're excited.
• 23:51
  We've got some of those major milestones we're still on track
• 23:55
  for hitting at the end of 2025 and early in 2026.
• 23:59
  And then, you know, I think that I think that can go a long way
• 24:02
  to not not just, you know, changing investors minds, but it
• 24:10
  goes a long way to demonstrating to the industry that those major
• 24:14
  milestones are significant gating items for a big company
• 24:19
  who wants to come in as an investor.
• 24:20
  And they'll often do it beforehand, but often, you know,
• 24:24
  when you're this close, many of these of these larger companies
• 24:29
  just like to wait until you hit your milestones.
• 24:32
  So, you know, we just kind of keep our head down and drive on
• 24:36
  and you know, I think within the next 9 to 12 months, hopefully
• 24:40
  have some very, very significant news to deliver to our
• 24:46
  shareholders. And you know, that seemed it, it
• 24:49
  felt like it was a long way away six years ago.
• 24:51
  And we never thought it would take this long and we never
• 24:54
  thought it would cost this much and we never thought it would be
• 24:56
  this difficult. But yet here we are, you know,
• 24:59
  in kind of. Which which which makes you that
• 25:02
  much more valuable. Also, sorry to interrupt you,
• 25:04
  but you know, right, there's a reason why the big guys aren't
• 25:08
  necessarily maybe engaged in this work, right?
• 25:12
  So all the work that you've put in, all the work that your team
• 25:15
  has put in, and I know I've met almost all of your team, you've
• 25:19
  got like a top notch A+ team of people, all that work that has
• 25:24
  value. And I think when the market
• 25:27
  wakes up and, and, and, and recognizes that value, it's,
• 25:31
  it'll be, you know, it won't be a big surprise.
• 25:33
  Like you said, you know it'll be, it'll be, it'll happen, but
• 25:37
  not with a lot of fanfare, but I believe it will happen.
• 25:42
  What about Duparquet, We talked about spring pole in Ontario
• 25:46
  advanced, but then you've got this other big almost dual
• 25:49
  flagship project with Duparquet in Quebec.
• 25:52
  Any update there? I think maybe you put out a
• 25:54
  second drill rig recently. Yeah, we've, we've added a
• 25:58
  second drill rig for a program this year.
• 26:00
  So we're looking to drill about 20,000 meters there.
• 26:03
  The the real excitement for us at Duparquet and and Ron you've
• 26:07
  been to the project, you understand kind of the size and
• 26:10
  scale of it. We are having very good success
• 26:14
  at demonstrating that this project is growing.
• 26:17
  So we always knew there was a lot of you know we call it blank
• 26:21
  canvas around the existing deposits at Du Parquet.
• 26:26
  So things that were never cut off by drilling, you know, some
• 26:30
  of it is just connecting a couple of remote or a couple of
• 26:35
  kind of separated deposits that just had no drilling in between
• 26:38
  because there used to be a property boundary there.
• 26:40
  So we've had very good success in extending that ore body down,
• 26:45
  finding new zones of mineralization and, and
• 26:47
  importantly finding new styles of mineralization at Dupart K
• 26:51
  that no one's ever looked for before.
• 26:53
  Because as you know, this big smokestack there like this, this
• 26:57
  was a mine from 1933 to 1955. And the only thing that people
• 27:03
  have ever looked for at Dupart K is what they mined, which is
• 27:07
  this, you know, scientific intrusive ore body.
• 27:11
  But there's all, you know, it's located in the middle of the
• 27:14
  most prolific gold belt in the world in the Abbatibi.
• 27:18
  And no one's ever looked for kind of all the other styles of
• 27:22
  mineralization that you have at the Abbatibi that have been the
• 27:24
  foundation of of what's been about 200 million ounces of gold
• 27:29
  produced in this district over the last.
• 27:32
  So that's what James and Caroline and exploration team
• 27:36
  are so excited about is it's very rare in the middle of an
• 27:40
  established camp like this that you have this really kind of
• 27:45
  starting from scratch, blank canvas where we're starting to
• 27:49
  find these different styles of mineralization, a lot of which,
• 27:53
  you know, we're now drilling some deeper holes to try and
• 27:55
  demonstrate that this is, you know, this is going down.
• 27:58
  Right now it's only drilled down 600 meters.
• 28:01
  There's many mines in the Abitibi where they're mining
• 28:05
  down, you know, 2000 meters plus.
• 28:09
  So, you know, this is an area that's prone to deep mines and
• 28:14
  no one's ever looked beneath our mind where it is right now to
• 28:18
  understand just how big this could be.
• 28:20
  So that's that's very exciting for us there as well.
• 28:24
  It's just that real potential for resource growth and and we
• 28:28
  can see a very clear path that this could be, you know,
• 28:33
  something that could get to 10 million oz plus, which would put
• 28:37
  it even further in its own league as you know, a unique
• 28:43
  development opportunity. And but again, similar to spring
• 28:46
  poll, $100 million plus of work that's been done on this project
• 28:52
  and really good work that stretches back, you know, going
• 28:56
  back to the 1930s in some cases. So really quite an advanced
• 29:00
  stage of project and we'll kind of get through the the the focus
• 29:05
  and heavy lifting that we're doing at spring pool right now.
• 29:08
  We love the fact that we have Dupart K that we can pivot to as
• 29:11
  well. So, so, so Dupart K 'cause I did
• 29:14
  visit and I remember when the the deal was announced, it was a
• 29:17
  big deal that you were able to kind of combine a lot what a lot
• 29:22
  of properties that had been separately owned in the past.
• 29:26
  And then so as I think about what you're saying is, and it
• 29:29
  makes sense, right? Like if I was exploring for gold
• 29:33
  and I owned a piece of property, I may not want to drill right
• 29:36
  near the border because you know, it wouldn't, you know, it
• 29:39
  wouldn't necessarily all be mined, buy gold.
• 29:42
  So now that those properties are together, you're able to, like
• 29:45
  you said, connect those dots. But wait, there's more.
• 29:49
  You can also go deeper, which really hasn't been done.
• 29:54
  And I just want to throw in as well that like you said, this
• 29:58
  area has all the mining infrastructure you could ever
• 30:02
  ask for, right? Roads, power mills, everything.
• 30:06
  I mean it's, it's really A and you're saying that you think
• 30:09
  that eventually you may be able to establish a resource maybe as
• 30:14
  much as 10 million ounces? Potentially, well, you know it's
• 30:19
  about 3 1/2 million ounces of measured and indicated resource
• 30:22
  and two and a half million of have inferred there today,
• 30:25
  today, Yeah. So you know for us to say we can
• 30:28
  not quite double it when we know we've got more than double the
• 30:33
  strike the the potential strike length going a depth.
• 30:37
  Yeah, we know there's a lot that we're going to get just from
• 30:40
  infilling on a shallow basis as well.
• 30:43
  And we're finding new zones literally right at surface, Ron,
• 30:48
  the last, some of the last things we put out, you know,
• 30:51
  they'd step back to try and drill a bit deeper and hit a new
• 30:55
  zone right at surface, which was like 20 meters of 3 grams.
• 31:00
  Like they're remarkable intercepts for, for in the
• 31:03
  middle of the Abitibi. Like it's this is half an hour
• 31:06
  from a smelter. It's half an hour from a city of
• 31:09
  50,000 people like this is the, the real mines here should have
• 31:15
  been found 100 years ago and that just because there was an
• 31:18
  existing mine that kind of never got to the rest of the property.
• 31:21
  So no, it's a, it's a remarkable opportunity that we have there.
• 31:25
  We're very, very excited about it.
• 31:26
  Interesting, interesting. If if people want to learn more,
• 31:30
  they can go to firstmininggold.com.
• 31:33
  There's details on all the projects.
• 31:35
  And as an extra bonus, if they want to really learn more, they
• 31:39
  can call Paul Morris, the director of Investor relations,
• 31:43
  or e-mail himpaul@firstmininggold.com.
• 31:47
  First, Mining gold is unique in that all you know, Paul's always
• 31:51
  there to talk with investors if people have questions, anything
• 31:55
  like that. Dan, thank you so much.
• 31:58
  It's always great to talk to you.
• 32:00
  Is there anything I forgot to ask or anything you want to
• 32:02
  mention before we bid farewell? No, I, I think the only other
• 32:05
  thing, Ron, we talked a bit about this before, but you know,
• 32:09
  for an investor who might be new coming into the sector, there's
• 32:13
  not one way to invest in gold. There's a lot of different
• 32:17
  avenues, there's a lot of different risk reward profiles,
• 32:21
  right? And typically your lowest risk
• 32:24
  and you know, you call your real kind of hedge against disasters
• 32:27
  owning some physical gold. And that I think is, is, is
• 32:32
  interesting. And then it's just varying
• 32:34
  degrees of leverage to near term gold price and cash flow, which
• 32:38
  you have with gold producers and liquidity and things like that.
• 32:43
  And then as you go down, you're looking more for value cuz your
• 32:48
  average gold producer would trade at, you know, call it
• 32:51
  $1000 an ounce in the ground or something like that.
• 32:55
  Maybe not that high. I haven't seen a comparable
• 32:58
  table recently. But you know, then you come down
• 33:02
  into the developers, which typically will trade to that,
• 33:05
  you know, 75 to $150.00 an ounce.
• 33:08
  And then you find the deep value developers, which you know, like
• 33:11
  we talked about, there's a bunch of us that are still trading at
• 33:14
  $10.00 an ounce. So you know, but more risk and
• 33:18
  more you need to understand on that, on that earlier, earlier
• 33:24
  development spectrum are those kind of at those more attractive
• 33:28
  values? But yeah, you know, it's,
• 33:30
  there's it's a sector I've spent 30 plus years working in.
• 33:34
  And to say I understand it would probably be an overstatement.
• 33:39
  I love it. It still continues to confound
• 33:43
  me on a daily basis at times, but there's some of these longer
• 33:47
  term trends that are just as clear as day that we've seen for
• 33:51
  years and that's the real opportunity that people have now
• 33:54
  to that that are just looking at an entry point today.
• 33:57
  Yeah, well, you, you know, you're I I read it all the time,
• 34:00
  right? That if you want to make real
• 34:02
  money. And again, I'll say for one
• 34:04
  final time, Dan nor I are financial advisors, but if you
• 34:08
  want to make real money in the stock market, you know, I, I've,
• 34:12
  I've read so many of the most successful investors, they buy
• 34:15
  things when they are beaten down, but they know that there's
• 34:20
  actual value there And they know that the potential for big
• 34:25
  capital appreciation, big stock price increases are there and
• 34:30
  that that's the way I like to invest.
• 34:32
  You know, it is there's risk, right?
• 34:34
  There's risk with anything. I always advise people to, you
• 34:38
  know, be responsible. But you know, when I look at it
• 34:42
  just the, the entire gold developer sector in general, I
• 34:46
  get excited because I know that the value is there, right?
• 34:51
  I know that, you know, I've joked around in the past when I
• 34:54
  talked about first mining gold. I'm like, well, I own a lot of
• 34:57
  gold. It's just in the ground in
• 34:59
  Canada, but it's in it. It's, it's like the safest vault
• 35:02
  in the world, right? Very true.
• 35:05
  Very. I mean, you know, I mean that
• 35:07
  that's my, that's how I own physical gold and that's just
• 35:10
  how I look at it. But I think it's very exciting,
• 35:14
  you know, and I do I, I think, I think you alluded to this like
• 35:17
  these things go through cycles and over time as the market
• 35:21
  shifts. And, and I think that as we move
• 35:24
  into the coming, let's say 2-3, five years and more and more
• 35:29
  people come into the gold mining sector, from an investment
• 35:33
  perspective, you know, it's natural that the money flows
• 35:37
  from the top to the to the mid tier, down to the developers and
• 35:41
  the explorers. So I'm super excited, Dan, and
• 35:44
  it'll be fun to see what fun to see what happens.
• 35:47
  I as I'm, I know, I think you know, that overnight success
• 35:56
  story, you know, 10 years in the making.
• 35:59
  This company was founded about 10 years ago, so you know,
• 36:03
  that's right. That's right.
• 36:05
  We'll get there all. Right, Dan, thank you.
• 36:07
  On behalf of our viewer, thank you.
• 36:09
  You've shared a lot of knowledge and I'll look forward to talking
• 36:12
  to you next time.