Paramount Gold Nevada

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32 seconds, OK. Great. thanks everyone for joining us for the afternoon session, day 3 of the Mining Forum Europe. My name is Cosmos Chuu. I'm a research analyst at the CIBC based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This afternoon, I have the pleasure of introducing Rachel Goldman, CEO of Paramount Gold, who will tell us about the, the company and then thereafter, after a presentation, if there's any questions coming from the audience, we'll, ask Rachel to answer those questions as well. So, without further ado, I'll turn it over to Rachel to tell us, what's happening here at Paramount Gold. Thank you, Cosmos. I'm actually super excited to be here today because the past year has been nothing short of extraordinary for this company. so Paramount Gold, we are a US domiciled company. Our assets are all in the US and we're listed on the NYSC American Stock Exchange as well. And so within this company, we have two principal assets. our main asset that we've been focusing all of our efforts on over the last 8 years is the Grassy Mountain project in Eastern Oregon. So we have the honor of being the very first project to move through the permitting regime in Oregon. Now, for the last 6 years, when I would tell people that, I could see they'd get very squeamish because everybody thinks about the beautiful coastal areas in Oregon. And fortunately for us, we are based on the eastern border with Idaho, and we'll talk a bit more through what that means in terms of social license for this project. But as we've been progressing, We've also been very fortunate, especially with Grassy Mountain, that we were added to the US federal government FAST 41 list last May. So in just one short year, we've been from adding to the FAST 41 list to receiving our federal record of decision just this past January. So in addition to the Grassy Mountain project in Eastern Oregon, I'm also going to talk to you about the Sleeper project in Nevada. This is a past producing asset that we've had in our portfolio since we first spun out of our prior company, which was called Paramount Gold and Silver. That was back in 2015 that we were spun out. Sleeper has a really remarkable history, which we'll also touch on a little bit. But as a large, low-grade deposit, it wasn't something that we could be really focusing the company's efforts on back in 2010 or even in 2015. We first spent out, which is when we acquired the Grassy Mountain Project in 2016. So between those two assets, we have a total of 4 million ounces of gold resources, which accrue 3 million to Nevada at Sleeper and a million to Grassy Mountain in Oregon. So when I say Eastern Oregon looks nothing like the coastal West, this is what I mean. This is the access road to Grassy. It's a desert terrain. We actually are crossing through Bureau of Land Management land, which the bulk of the project sits on. However, we own the, the patented claims that the deposit itself is on. So as, as much as you can see from the, the aerial image on the right. we don't have neighbors. We don't have neighbors in the sense of farms, ranches, homes that are going to find this mine to be a nuisance. So as much as we are close to the closest population centers, we have a small office in Vail that acts as a core shop, and this is where we would look to source as much of local labor as we can between. Vail, Ontario, Nissa, and even Boise, which is only 70 miles away. We're not so close that that we're confrontational, I would say for, for neighbors. The other thing that, that being in this part of the state helps with is that this is a very undeveloped part of the state. So that means there are not a lot of jobs to speak of until we show up. So I mentioned at the outset that from granting, being granted FAST 41 status in May of 2025, we also received our federal record of decision just this past January. I should also note that in December, we received for the first time ever in the history of the state of Oregon, draft permits for the Grassy Mountain Mine, which is a really Significant event and and it's here I would like to say that Oregon has never rejected a mine before. They've simply never had a project which tested their permitting regime. So this is where Grassy Mountain and Paramount have an opportunity to help shape what permitting in Oregon is going to look like in the future and that's been a, it's been an interesting experience to say the least. We've been at it for many years now. And that's the other thing I'd like to point out. There's 8 years of work that's gone into getting us to this point of receiving the record of decision in January. So it wasn't that we got added to the list in May and then snapped our fingers and it it came the next day. So in February, we went through the state and comment period and hearing. And we're expecting that we'll get those final permits from the state in the second half. Though keep in mind, we don't have a precedent to base that off of. It's really just our best guesstimate at this juncture. Between now and then, you'll also see an updated feasibility study coming out on Grassy. Which will update the last one that we did and we'll come to that in a, in a couple of slides as it's really pretty dated. So we have right now tremendous social license to see this mine get built. And a big reason for that is Malheur County, where we're based, which for those of you who speak French is Mallor, has a 20% poverty rate. That is the highest of any county in Oregon. And it's, it's really a challenge for them to find opportunities for the kids when they're coming out of school. And so there's been a lot of interest in this project, as it's been known about for about 30 or 40 years, changing hands along the way. A lot of people want to see this mine get built. We will be able to. Contribute about 200 jobs between our direct jobs, indirect jobs, and then the induced jobs that will come up to support the mine. And this is in addition to about 300 construction-level jobs as well during the 18 to 2, 18 months to 2-year, construction period. So all of this will generate about $140 million of economic activity annually from Malhere County. Which is certainly something that's helped to draw that social license from the ground level all the way up to the governor's office. So this is a good image of grassy. It's also a good way to explain why previous owners and operators of this project viewed it as an ideal open pit, because frankly, it is an ideal open pit and the economics would be spectacular. The low-grade mineralization is about 50 m from surface, that's in the purple. The mine that we're currently building or, or designing to build is anything over the 3 g. So in the hot pink, and that's only about 150 m from surface. The choice to go underground was made by Paramount in understanding our role and responsibility, let's say, as the very first project to move through permitting in the state. It was a lot more palatable for these agencies to permit a small footprint underground mine versus a large open pit. And this isn't to suggest that an open pit wouldn't be possible in the future, but I think for their first go around, for the risk aversion, for the handholding, this was a much easier win for them in a sense. At Grassy, though, I've mentioned that we have a million ounces in total. The current mine plan is only targeting about. Roughly 40% of that. So there's still a lot of opportunity here to see that expand down the road. In addition, we have a number of near M exploration targets, and we haven't fully drilled off at depth where the grade does improve. So this is our very stale study from 2022. These numbers are represented on an after-tax basis and were run at a 1750 gold price. So what remains unchanged is obviously the, the million ounces that we currently have. And what we're targeting for the M plan. I, it's too, it's too early for me to say, certainly because the, the study hasn't been released, what will change in terms of the economics and even because this will be the first time that we're adjusting, not just the pricing and the cost. But the cut-off grade we'll see an adjustment for the first time in 10 years. And so we still have yet to see how that will accrue in annual production versus M life, but you won't have long to wait for that because the results of the study will come out this quarter. So shifting over to Nevada, which as unfamiliar as Oregon is as a permitting jurisdiction, Nevada is very familiar to investors across the world and ranked very highly year after year. we own a property here called Sleeper, which is a past producer. And back in its day, and I'm sure some people in this room might remember Sleeper from the old days, it was producing. From one extremely high grade vein, a 7 g per ton vein was a head grade, and they produced, close to 2 million ounces over that 10-year period from the mid 80s to the mid-90s. And then with the drop in the gold price, they basically just walked away. So Paramount picked this up basically out of bankruptcy in about 2010. Has completed all of the environmental reclamation work, EL pond conversions and the like. And it's essentially been snoozing in the portfolio over the last 8 years as we focused our efforts on permitting grassy. And I should mention the state of Oregon is what's called a pay to play state, which means we have to reimburse these agencies for the work they do. So I'm paying my consultants, I'm paying them, and I'm paying their consultants. So you can see where it was a bit of a capital crunch over the past number of years for junior companies like ourselves who don't generate any revenue. So we had to choose our spots. And because we were so deep into the process at Grassy, and, and fortunately, we did because we're seeing success, but Sleeper had to wait. And I would say that wait is now over. We announced last week that we're doing what's called an initial assessment in SK 1300 as a US listed company. We have to follow the US regulations for our filings and, and reports, but it's, it's basically a PEA. So the PEA that we're going to be looking at for sleeper rather than using the entirety of the resources that were outlined in 2020. 3, we're going to be looking only at the material that's amenable to heat bleaching. And in addition, we made the happy discovery of an additional 54 million tons of surface material, that will also be, evaluated as, as part of this initial assessment. So that'll be in total about 90 million tons from ours. To oxide and mixed material and an additional 54 million tons of surface material. So it's going to be an exciting start for us on this study, which I also anticipate will be out this summer, so we won't have that long to wait as well. And to orient you a little bit about what sleeper was, what it is currently, and maybe what it could be in the future, as we saw the bulk of that. Actually, the entirety of the production that we saw come out historically came from the little yellow dot in the red outline. I think it's probably difficult to see. The red outline is our entire acreage package, so that's about 40,000 acres. The little yellow pit was what produced all those years ago and still contains our. 3 million ounces of gold and 30 million ounces of silver. You'll note that the grades are materially lower than that 7 g, which I think explains why we were experimenting with permitting in Oregon. But in today's commodity environment, we're in a much different position than we were, like I said, either when this was acquired and even when we made the decision to pursue the Oregon permitting. The other advantage of working with a project where there was so much history is there's an enormous amount of data. And when we did the resource in 2023, it took us longer than we'd anticipated because we made the discovery at that time that none of that data from the 1980s and the 1990s had ever been digitized. So that was, that was quite a labor to get it over the line and to this day, we still continue to find interesting and relevant pieces of information that are going to feed into both this PEA that we'll be putting out as well as, as future studies as well. And the interesting part for us too is beyond looking at what this initial potentially quicker free cash flow scenario could generate from a small heap bleach, is that there's a lot of opportunity for exploration on sleeper that's just never been done. Historically, all the drilling that was done really was targeted around that old pit, which isn't a surprise they were chasing 7 g per ton material. But it also means that the rest of our land package is virtually a white map. So when we'll be able to fund that will be somewhat dependent on the pathway that we take for grassy and what we see eventually emerging from Sleeper as a, as a cash flow opportunity. So I do like to give a nod to, a few things here on, on my, on my team. we have a very strong board. many of you, I'm sure are familiar with Rudy Frank, who's the founder, chairman and CEO of Seabridge. he's our chairman. He has also been an enormous, supporter both of Paramount and for me as well. we have strong representation also from Seabridge. Chris Reynolds is a former CFO and he's our current chair of the audit committee. And a lot of the members of our board were in the first, were involved with the first Paramount and continued through on this one. So there's a lot of institutional knowledge there. I would say the same about the management team. And obviously, as a small company, we rely heavily on external consultants. So we have an army of consultants who help on all of our technical work. And what I also add on the sheet here is two of our local consultants, Andy Bentz and Lynn Finley, both of whom are multi-generational Oregonians, involved heavily in government and social, and certainly have great connections within the agencies as well. So we, benefit significantly from their facilitation. So along the way, it's been, as many of us have talked about on this stage and otherwise, the last number of years were very challenging for small companies to access capital, and we were no different. We had to get creative on a number of fronts. And so I'm very, very proud today that we've managed to get through this period, deliver on what we have over the last number of years, and keep the share account sub 100 million like it is today. I would also stress that we've. Had the, the great benefit of a supportive shareholder base, the core shareholder base who during difficult times were there to help us out. and I know not everybody in, in my role had that same benefit, and I can say that it's something I'm very grateful for today. So in spite of the big move that we've seen in the stock recently with permitting success, you know, we, we've all participated in the war-driven, pullback of late. We believe there's a tremendous opportunity here, not just with what we've accomplished, but for what we see on the horizon. And we do think that as we continue to advance, both grassy through the permitting and sleeper through studies, that there is an opportunity for further re-rating in the stock. With a strong cash balance at this moment, which I think is probably the strongest in the company's history, we're certainly well funded to get through these upcoming studies, the work that we have on the horizon, and well through next year. So perhaps just to summarize, all US based resources where we see still a lot of exploration upside for both properties, advanced stage permitting, which, you know, a year ago, I would not have been able to tell you that this is where we would be today simply because we had no visibility on any of these developments that have come out of the US government that have led us to this point, but we do think it puts us on the path to really high value production coming out of grassy and potentially out of Sleeper. So just a reminder on the catalyst we have coming up, the grassy feasibility study will be out this quarter. the initial assessment or PEA for sleeper will also be out by the end of this quarter is our expectation. We are hopeful that we'll see final state permits in the second half. I, I feel pretty comfortable with that target. And should it be allowed for based on availability and capital, the PEA that we put out for sleeper will also include a path. Way for infill drilling to start converting some of those additional inferred ounces to measured and or indicated as appropriate, which we can either use to update that PEA when they come out or perhaps roll forward to a future PFS. So I guess with that, we have 2 minutes, Cosmos. Thanks, Rachel. any questions coming from the audience? If not, I'll, I'll kick it off. Oh, there's one here. Yes. How in the drilling that's been done at Grassy, what is the deepest hole that's been? What is the deepest hole that's been drilled? You, you talked impressively about your near surface for the 1st 50 m, and then you have the higher grade going down 150 m. So still very good. But have you, have you explored below those levels? No, no, I mean that's what you saw on the, on the image. I mean, that's, that's as far as we've gone. Oops, I can't do this anymore. Yeah. So no, we really haven't done much drilling at depth at all. And it was really, it's the classic, you know, as a junior, you drill off as much as you have to to prove up an economic resource, and then you drive on because over the last 8 years, the market wouldn't have paid us for proving up another 500,000 or a million ounces of grass see if we can't prove that we can permit and actually get it into production. So essentially we were, we were saving our powder until we had that visibility. Is that in your budget now going forward to poke a few holes deeper? Yeah, not yet, not yet, but I would say when it comes time to having to, you know, transition towards detailed engineering, I, I would expect that there's some additional drilling that we should do there. We have a current, financing agreement. With Sprout streaming. So Sprout streaming provided a really life-saving, funding vehicle for us at, the end of 2023. And as part of that agreement, there's a commitment to do some, some deeper drilling as well. Not deeper, but sort of into the high grade portion. And so that would likely be wrapped into a bigger drill program to exactly your point, Mike. Great. Thank you, Rachel. And that's a great question. Maybe if I can follow up on that question as well. Rachel, as you mentioned, updated feasibility study coming out, in Q2 for Grassy Mountain and potentially full permitting in the second half. At that point in time, would you be in a position to make a positive or, you know, some kind of construction decision? Not yet. We, we certainly would need to see a lot more of the, the engineering wrapped around, the project. And I think an important point to make there is that all the way along, we have been updating. The feasibility study that was first envisioned in 2020, you know, off of a PFS that was probably done in 2018. And so it also begs the question that in today's environment, which is much different than it was 10 or 11 years ago, would this mine be designed differently today? And so there needs to be a really thoughtful consideration that goes into that. Great. I think that's all the time we have. Thanks again, Rachel, for a very good presentation. I. Great. next up we have Russell Bradford, CEO of Gold Sky Resources. Hi, how are you doing? Good, yourself? Yeah, good, thank you. Good.