Latest / Kitco MINING / Silver47 Advances 168Moz Silver Resource at Alaska Red Mountain | Giordy Belfiore

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Silver47 Advances 168Moz Silver Resource at Alaska Red Mountain | Giordy Belfiore · Kitco MINING

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to Kitco Mining with me, Paul Harris, here at the 2026 Prospectors and Developers Association conference in Toronto and Canada.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're talking about precious metals exploration in the United States, and I have the great pleasure to be joined by Geordie Bialfour, Vice President of Investive Relations at Silver 47, which trades on the TSXV under the ticker AGA.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Geordie, welcome to Kitco.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Paul.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you taking the time to speak with me today.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking forward to digging into this.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: You've got a portfolio of silver and gold exploration projects in the United States, including Red Mountain in Alaska, Hughes in Nevada, and Mongolon in New Mexico.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't we start off with a brief overview of the projects and which metals you're exploring for with each of them?
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: So we have three projects, like you mentioned, but our whole theme is high-grade silver in the United States.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: So Alaska, our Red Mountain project there, is definitely the most advanced out of the three assets.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: It has a hundred and sixty-eight million ounce silver equivalent resource at 336 grams per ton.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now that asset, it is a polymetallic style deposit, so it's uh comprised of silver, gold, and then a number of uh critical base metals as well, including zinc, uh lead, and copper.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and we also have seen some showings as well of indium, uh, tin, uh, aluminum, and some of these other critical minerals.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: So that's going to be a focus of ours for this 2026 exploration programs that we have going on.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, what is the history of the company and how did you come by these projects?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so Silver 47 um originally listed in dis November of 2024, uh, but they were really focused on the Red Mountain project in Alaska.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh going back now uh throughout the summer of 2025, Silver 47 merged with a company called SUMA Silver.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the SUMA company had two assets in the lower 48, the Hughes Project in central Nevada and the uh Muggeon project in southwest New Mexico.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now 168 million ounces at uh Red Mountain, that's a sizable deposit.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: A number of silver explorers are aiming for the magic number of 100 million ounces.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: The back of the envelope calculation is 10 years production of the million ounces uh sorry, 10 million ounces a year.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um you've more than got that there.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: So what's the plan there?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so the plan here is we're actually gonna start a summer drill program in early June, and it'll go likely until early fall.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna have four drill rigs turning there, uh, between 15 and 20,000 meters worth of drilling.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Now, those of those four drill rigs, two of them are gonna be turning on the known resource areas, which is which is Dry Creek and West Tundra Flats.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that's gonna be a focus because there's still a lot of ounces that we can add there and to grow the deposits, while the other two rigs are actually gonna be stepping out at some of the mineralized prospects outside of the resource area looking to make a new discovery.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: In terms of the sort of the project location, uh Alaska can be quite a challenge for infrastructure.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: What's the situation for your project?
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so this is located 60 miles south of Fairbanks in Alaska.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: There is a road that's about 30 kilometers west of the project.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: So right now we are heli assisted in our drill programs throughout the summer.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: But with that said, we've since acquiring this asset and having two summers of drilling, we have cut down on a lot of you know direct drilling costs and other things that go into it.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: So we are getting more efficient as we go.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um but yeah, for Alaska, being 30 kilometers west of a road is uh is uh you know it's pretty good to access.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you mentioned it's a polymetallic project.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the metallurgy of those can sometimes be quite complicated.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: What have you found so far?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so like we said earlier, it's a 168 million ounce resource.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um depending where you are on the project, some parts is more precious metals rich, while some is more base metals rich.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: So part of um you know what we've done last year and will continue to do this year is focus on the precious metals aspect of the deposit.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um but with that said, you know, part of the benefit of these polymetallic deposits is provide some optionality as you eventually get into production, right?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it kind of hedges your bet on certain metals and commodity prices.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so we're certainly not you know uh dissuaded from looking at some of the base metals, especially right now in the US, things like copper, zinc are very critical to the United States, literally.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: So well, absolutely the critical minerals narrative in the United States is very, very strong.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of optionality or potential does that lend to Red Mountain?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, Red Mountain to start, it's actually exclusively on state-managed land.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: So just from an overall permitting perspective, um, it's just a huge plus plus that we get to deal with the state of Alaska directly.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's very pro-mining, it's uh I believe it's a top three mining jurisdiction globally, according to the Fraser Institute.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, bigger picture speaking, I look at trilogy medals, what happened with them, right?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: They got permits, they got a whole bunch of money from the government, all of a sudden the stock went, I believe it was you know a couple dollars up well over ten dollars a share in a in a matter of days.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I look at stuff like that, and I think that you know there is there's certainly the potential to get government involved the government involved, and obviously it can be a massive ROI if they do.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: So you'd want that aspect of trilogy, but without the federal permitting nexus and the issues they've had with that.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, of course.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, fair enough.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um now um you've got combined, let's get back to the precious metals.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: You've got combined resources of more than 230 million ounces of gold equivalent.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: You've got a goal of getting much bigger than there.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: How are you going to get there and how long do you think that will take?
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: So, number one, it's through the drill bit.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, this year we have exploration programs happening on all three of these core assets.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, all these projects, there are many targets we haven't tested yet.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's open at depth and um in many other areas, so there's a lot of easy ounces for us still to add, um, some big exploration targets where we can make some huge discoveries.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but of course the other angle to that is MA.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: To you can grow ounces really two ways through the drill bit and through MA opportunities.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: So we're certainly going to be looking at uh those throughout 2026 as well.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh drilling and MA, both of those take funding and things of that nature.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: What's the company's cash position?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of funding do you think you'll need uh over this year and next year?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: So right now we have$55 million in working capital.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh for what we have planned here in 2026, we're looking at you know in the neighborhood of$25 to$30 million.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um we haven't you know hammered that number down yet, but it'll be somewhere in that neighborhood.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um so we'll still have plenty of money left over for 2027.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, in terms of MA, it's always a great way to grow your company, but for us, we're a high-grade silver company in the US.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: Those types of assets are tremendously scarce.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, aside from you know, companies like us, BlackRock Silver, Apollo Silver, Silver One, just a few names off the top of my head, but the list more or less ends at that.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: So if we want to do and engage in further MA, it is has to kind of fall into that criteria a little bit.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: And like I said, it is few and far between with how many companies out there are available.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a couple of follow-ups for you there, Geordie.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: In terms of the MA, and you mentioned there's a few silver assets in the United States.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Your asset base at the moment is in the United States.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to keep that focus in the United States?
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: I see a I'm sure everyone's seen that there's certain political instability in Latin America where that's usually where most of our silver does come from, right?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: So we want to stay in the United States because it's obviously it's an incredibly easier, or sorry, an incredibly easy place to operate relative to some of these places down south.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um property rights certainly means something whether we're operating on you know our private and patented mining claims or we're on the state managed land in Alaska.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we feel very comfortable in those types of environments.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now you mentioned you've got a working capital position of about$55 million.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh tell us a little bit about your investor base, who's invested you, who are some of the who's cut you some big checks?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: So Eric Sprott's our biggest individual shareholder.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: He personally owns 8% of the company.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh management and insider is around 10%.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Umership is it says 19% in our deck, and I think that's pretty close, but I do think it's starting to grow a little bit more from there.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Crescat Capital is a significant shareholder.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we're actually included in the Sprout Silver ETF as well.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then just a number of Canadian uh long resource funds as well, making up that institutional base.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now, number the executives I speak to, everybody's talks about valuation, and you know, most people say they're undervalued.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um in your debt you talk about the valuation re-rate potential from let's say 30 cents per ounce to up to$2 per ounce.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um what are some of the steps you're looking to take to sort of piece that in, to fill that in to get to that higher valuation level?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: And just to maybe talk a little bit about those valuations too for a sec.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's when we look at these things on an EV per ounce basis, essentially, how many, how much is each ounce in the ground being valued at?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: We see our peers will get as low as around$2,$2.30 per ounce to you know, BlackRock Silver, one of our biggest peers, is is over$5 per ounce.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: Today we get 30 cents to 40 cents depending on the day.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: So certainly there's an opportunity there to re-rate, but us just going out and saying we're undervalued, that's not enough.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: We need to go out and and build momentum and and you know make some new discoveries, get some big high-grade numbers on the books to further build out the story because at the end of the day, this company's only been around for about a year and a half.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's still not super well known, and it's just about developing that story and getting it more recognized.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Having a lot of ounces on the book, having more ounces on the book is obviously part of that valuation uh growth potential, but uh investors do want to see de-risking and project economics, so to get a greater level of confidence that there could eventually be production here.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: What are your thoughts from that point of view?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: So what we have going on this year for us is not only is it a whole whack of drilling across all three projects, but we're actually going to be updating the resource at our Red Mountain project in Alaska.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we're looking at hopefully uh before the end of March, maybe four to six weeks out from now.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and that resource, if it comes back to what we're kind of internally thinking right now, we will push this forward to a PEA by the end of 2026.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of this year.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's correct.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Let's uh use that as a uh a cue to step back and talk about you know, what what's the business plan?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: What was the purpose of the company?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you want to get to in the coming years?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I look at our management team, what we're good at, how we've built this company, and it's really built on the back of an excellent group of minefinders, right, and and discovery geologists.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: We have these three deposits that you know we have nice resource spaces on them now, but there's so much opportunity on all three of them to grow them further.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the next couple years, it's all about growing these assets, adding more ounces to the books.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: At that point, when we get to critical masses on all three of these projects, I think at that point we look to expand the team to bring in some engineers and mine builders, not just mine finders.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, or we also start to look at how are we going to monetize these assets as well, whether is that through putting them into production ourselves or eventually selling them.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: So at the moment, all options are on the table.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, um, you've got a lot going on, Geordie.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: What are some of the key catalysts our viewers should be watching out for from you for this year?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I got a handful of them.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: Number one is we just finished drilling in New Mexico.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: Those assays will be coming out hopefully around six weeks from now.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um next week we're gonna start drilling 7,000 meters at our Hughes project, and that'll carry us right until when we start drilling in Red Mountain.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: So pretty much the whole year ahead, we're gonna have assay results coming out as they become available.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other two kickers, one being the updated resource from Red Mountain, and then something we haven't talked about a ton as a company is the tailings that we have over at our Hughes project in Nevada.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: We have 1.8 million ounces of silver, 11,000 ounces of gold pretty much sitting right at the surface, and that's something that we have a little bit of met work ongoing right now, and that'll be a little bit of a bonus catalyst that we can have throughout the year.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And is the intention there with the the tailings to you know reprocess those, reprocess those yourself or sell them to somebody else to reprocess?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we would likely reprocess them ourselves.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: This is really something that became a big deal for us when silver really started to take off.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: We always knew we had these tailings, but at$25,$30 silver, that's maybe a break-even operation.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: At$50 silver, it looked good.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: And at$80 to$100 silver, this is something that's gonna make us a whole bunch of money.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: So do you have an idea of the sort of volume and potential grade that they contain at the moment?
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so like I said, it's 1.8 million ounces of silver and 11,000 ounces of gold.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the average silver equivalent grade on that's 68 grams per ton.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um so we're looking at obviously some some different mat work and kind of putting a plan together on the metallurgy and how we're going to process that.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: But uh certainly we hope to be able to share something to the market on that pretty soon.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, we'll look forward to hearing about that, as and when you can share about that.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Geordie Belfio, thank you very much for joining me today.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, thank you, Paul.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: And once again, Silver 47 trades on the TSX V under the ticket AGA.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: We have a lot more to come for the 2026 Prospectors and Developers Association Conference in Toronto, so hit that subscribe button.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Paul Harris, and this is Kiko Mining.