AuMEGA Metals Ltd (AAM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to Matador Mining Webinar. On the call today, we have Sam Pazuki, Managing Director and CEO; Chief Geologist; Warren Potma; and VP Exploration, Crispin Pike. The scope of the webinar will be to discuss the Malachite results from last week and just talk about our order plan for 2023. If questions arise during the session, please pose them during the Q&A function at the bottom of your screens, and we'll address those towards the end of the session. Without further ado, I'll pass it over to you, Sam, to kick off the presentation.

Great. Thank you so much, Alex. Happy New Year to everyone. We were just commenting earlier, January is almost over. So an overdue Happy New Year to everyone. Hopefully, 2023 has gotten off on the right foot for each of you. As Alex said, the purpose of this webcast is really to focus in on the drill results we published last week. Give us an opportunity to kind of walk you through what the results actually mean, what the intention was, just remind everybody what the intention of the drill program was the initial or, I should say, inaugural and initial drill program at Malachite, what the results actually mean and where we go from here. Alex did mention that we'll have a discussion here on 2023. We're still working through those plans. We're beavering away. That's a Canadian expression. I'm not sure if that's often used in Australia. But we're working away here on the definitive plans for 2023. But as I've said often, either face-to-face or in the news releases, we do have a lot of work ahead of us, a lot of exciting work. Again, we haven't even literally scratched the surface at Malachite, we've got a lot of work there to do. We're encouraged by the results that we just published, whether it's through the prospecting work or through the drilling. And we've got a number of different areas that we're also doing a little bit of work on so that we can keep the pipeline going. So what we're going to do today is just kind of walk through some of the slides we've got in the corporate presentation, which is also available on our website, but also posted to the ASX. As I mentioned, focus it on the drill results. I will turn it over to Crispin, our VP of Exploration in Newfoundland, to kind of walk you through what the program entailed and what we saw visually, but also what the results mean, as I mentioned. So I will just rip through some of the earlier slides, the corporate metrics are there. No change to the top shareholders, et cetera. We will be publishing our financials in the next couple of days before January 31, so either today or tomorrow. But Newfoundland, again, this is a slide that we've had in our corporate presentation for quite some time. It is well endowed with several types of critical metals and other minerals throughout both island of Newfoundland, but also Labrador. Labrador has been a major source of iron ore and nickel, big producer over the years, continues to be one of the larger producers. And then obviously, Newfoundland, it's generally early days with respect to the gold exploration front. We know that Marathon is the most advanced project on the island. They received their permits last year, are into construction right now, and will be the next gold mine in Newfoundland. So we're on the same trend as Marathon. And basically, what we're looking to do is replicate the technical successes that they have. I feel like we're in a similar junction as they were from several years ago with a small resource, and well, they started to explore new areas and began to tag into big deposits, which has led to their subsequent significant resource increases and currently sitting at 5.1 million ounces. So we're excited to see a gold project advancing and on the structure that we're sitting on and have 120 kilometers of continuous strike. There are other success stories in Newfoundland with respect to gold. NewFound Gold continues to get some big intersections, and we're sitting on the same structure as they are with our Hermitage project. We had sent a team, a small team to Hermitage Canadian summer last year, did some prospecting work and we're hoping to get those results and publish in to the market in due course. I mentioned several times now the B2Gold deal is closed following the AGM at the end of November. It's great to have B2's endorsement of what we're doing, endorsement of the program that we've got in place. And I think it's also important to remind the audience as well that B2 is a world-class producer. They produce over 1 million ounces of gold. They have a strong track record of operating successfully in many jurisdictions, as B2. But many of the people behind B2 were part of Bema, which was the first company they had and that they advanced that into a multibillion dollar business, which then ended up getting sold to Kinross. They know how to explore, they're project builders. They build their own projects. and do so successfully. They've made major discoveries from an exploration perspective. And again, they're very strong operators. And from my perspective, I don't believe the market is really appreciating or giving us a lot of value for having this sort of strategic investor in the story. B2 has never made a strategic placement in the history of their company, whether as B2 or Bema. They've always preferred to go down the joint venture route and do an earn-in arrangement. It's the first time in their history they've made an investment at their corporate level. And it's the first time, whether it's Bema or B2, that they've actually invested in Canada. It's also important to recognize that it's the first time in 2 decades that a major gold mining company or a mining company has made an investment in Newfoundland. So not only is it great for Matador and its shareholders, it's also great for the province of Newfoundland and for the industry in Canada. So we're excited to be working with B2. Early days in terms of the relationship, but I can tell you that they're a top-notch group. We've worked really well together in the early days here. They've added a lot of value in terms of shaping our thinking. And finally, it's important to note that what drew B2 to the Matador story was the fact that we had focused or pivoted the strategy to greenfields to go back to grassroots and look for multimillion-ounce deposits. We were drawn to Malachite. I'll let Crispin talk about why we like Malachite so much. Nothing's changed. The thesis is still very much intact. Malachite is a huge area. It's 60 square kilometers. It's bigger than Marathon Gold's footprint at Valentine Lake. It's bigger than their deposits, which hosts 5.1 million ounces and it takes a lot of boxes in terms of what we're looking for, for big areas, potential systems that could host multimillions of ounces. Again, that hasn't changed. It's still the same system. The drilling that we did was just an inaugural drilling. Malachite has never seen a single drill hole ever, the holes we put in, the 11 that we put in were the first ever. And when you think about how large the Malachite area is, and that's the picture there on the screen that you're looking at, put 11 holes into this big vast area that's significantly underexplored, doesn't even do it justice to say that this is only the beginning. We were looking based on the magnetic survey and the till survey that we had done in 2021, 2022, along with the prospecting to drill some structures. That was the focus of the drill program, was to test some of these structures because we're trying to vector in on where the source of this gold on surface, but also in bedrock through the prospecting it has originated from. If we were able to make an intersection that's significant 50, 60, 70, 100 gram meters, that would have been an outstanding outcome, but not one that we were expecting. We were looking to see if there was gold in basement and the drilling that we just completed has confirmed that there's gold in basement. That's very positive from our perspective. And now we need to, again, do more work to figure out where the gold is actually being sourced from. And that's the name of the game. So the drilling completed. We curtailed it early because of weather. So we planned on 3,000 meters, managed to get 1,700 meters in. We had to abandon the second pensive drill holes that we're putting into Malachite-3, which was one of our favorite targets. So you can pretty much guarantee that we're going to get back in there this year to complete that drilling. Also, we were looking to drill a couple of other areas of interest that we didn't ever gone to because of weather. We learned that November is probably not a good month to drill. And generally speaking, and then both Warren and Crispin can attest to this. Any of these transitional periods are probably times to avoid any significant field activity. So that will be the transition from the Canadian fall to Canadian winter and then from Canadian winter to Canadian spring. But once the weather breaks and things start to stabilize weather-wise, we'll be back in there to do some field work, which will include diamond drilling, RC drilling and prospecting. But I'll talk a little bit more about our plans for 2023 shortly. But again, Malachite, this is a slide we've had for a while. Again, it's got all the characteristics we're looking for in terms of hosting a major gold system or major gold deposits. Again, very early days. We are encouraged by the results we've seen since we started exploring Malachite, and that began before I even started my tenure with Matador in May of last year. I started with the high-resolution aeromagnetic survey, which you can see the image on the screen. That was followed up with the gold grain analysis through the till survey and then the reconnaissance drilling that we've just completed, along with the prospecting over the summer. So I will stop there, and I'm going to turn it over to Crispin Pike, who is our man on the ground in Newfoundland and led the team through the drilling that we completed in the fall of last year. So Crispin, I'm going to turn it over to you.

Hello, everybody. As Sam has indicated, Malachite was a full area of focus as we made the pivot to greenfields exploration. If you just go back one slide, Sam. If you look along the belt historically, there's a 12-kilometer window where all of our resources fall. And it was discovered in the '70s. And over the last previous decades, previous explorers, 90% of all the expenditure was in this 12-kilometer resource corridor and very little work was done outside. So we recognized that our 837,000 ounces is sitting on this structure, the same structure that hosts Valentine Lake's 5 million ounces. And between, there's virtually not just no diamond drilling, but there is very little geochemistry, geophysics or prospecting geological mapping. A lot of this ground is virgin. When we conducted the geophysical survey in 2021 and got the results, what we saw at Malachite was right where there was a large bend in the Main Cape Ray Shear Zone that was associated with significant structural complexity, second and third order faults coming off into the footwall in an area that has seen no exploration previously. So from a structural perspective, this was why we focused on Malachite Lake. The next step was to conduct the till survey. So we had these structures on a fertile structure, complicated structural traps for gold, but we didn't know if there was any gold in the system. There was no previous samples from Malachite Lake that had any gold in the period. So the till, if we just go to the next slide now. When we had our till survey completed, we did see significant gold up to 1 gram of gold in the soils themselves up to kilometers away from the Main Shear Zone. So what the till survey showed us was, yes, there is gold in the Malachite region, and this was taken and transported cover that was moved by the glaciers. So the next step, and what we had to do in 2022 is source this gold in bedrock. So these were some of the hurdles that we had. First, we did the geophysics. We identified the structures as potential gold-bearing structures. We did the till to see if there's gold in the region. And then the next step is to find gold in this 14 kilometers of strike where no gold had previously been recorded. We did that through prospecting. When we did our early-stage prospecting, we found multiple multi-gram gold samples, both as boulders that were transported, angular subcrop which wasn't in place but didn't look like it traveled far as well as in bedrock in quartz veins. So this just kind of shows how underexplored this region is, the very first week of field work we had discovered multi-gram gold in quartz veins on surface. We also needed to add context to the geology. There was no geological mapping in this area. The previous government worked from the '80s was very course, and there's really only 2 units, the one to the north of the Cape Ray Shear Zone, which you can see here as a strong black line and the geological unit to the south of the Cape Ray, you can see we've added much more detail, both from interpreting the structural geology from the geophysics but as well as from detailed geology mapping. We walked over 1,000 kilometers of geological traverses to generate this map and ground-truth these structures. And what we are looking for was signs of large hydrothermal systems that could host multimillion ounce deposits. So you can see here on the map, all the second and the third order structures that are splaying from the Cape Ray Shear Zone, which traditionally in many other orogenic gold belts are responsible for hosting the big deposits in those camps. From the Geochem results, we really focused in on 3 of our largest anomalies, which was [ MAL-1, MAL-2 and MAL-3 ], and we did find evidence of large hydrothermal systems. For instance, at [ MAL-3 ], there's large alteration halos associated with these structures that are hundreds of meters wide. There's path finder geochemical anomalies that are multiple kilometers in strike. And what we're seeing in is signs of substantial amount of fluids moving through these rocks that are associated with the gold-bearing fluids that we see down in our deposits. So the nice thing about having our deposits is that we can learn from them, learn what the fluids look like, learn what the alteration of the rock looks like and the structures that are hosting them and then extrapolate that knowledge that we've learned from our deposits into this greenfields area. So at Malachite Lake, we have a very strong arsenic silver gold anomaly in the tills. And where we did our drilling, it was just in the Northeast corner of this geochemical anomaly that we have, and we drill the hole through here. And we hit 1 meter at 1.72 grams, within this meter, there was about a 30 centimeter vein that looks very similar in style to the veins that host the 837,000 ounces that we have to the South. So in this vein, we saw base metal sulfides, the textures are similar, and they're associated with this large structure. You can see on the map here, that the Cape Ray Shear Zone is bending and almost going east, west at this point. While there's this large second order structure that passes through MAL-3 northeast up to MAL-1, and this is a significant structure and has around 9 kilometers of strike. So this in itself, this structure is a very interesting feature. And from a geological perspective, there's abundant fluids, large hydrothermal systems associated with this large structure. And we drilled 11 holes. The first was in MAL-1, we had a strong gold in till anomaly here, which was unexplained by this drilling. However, once we've studied the data, the anomalies could potentially be associated with the structure that's striking Northeast than the East-West structure that was targeted in the drilling. In Malachite-2, this is a new package of rocks that's been explored, previously explored, has now explored and there's not a single hole drilled in the hanging wall rocks of the Cape Ray Shear Zone. And we did have a very large gold in till anomaly. That was over a kilometer in strike. This is a substantial anomaly. And when we drill the holes here, we did intersect gold. The gold was associated with copper, which is interesting. And also associated with younger granite [ sac ] we have not previously seen in this area. So even though some quartz stringers with chalcopyrite averaging a gram over a meter doesn't sound significant, this is not causing a kilometer long by 500-meter wide gold in till anomaly. This is a massive anomaly on similar scales to what we see on the gold anomalies in till that are over our known deposits. So this is just scratching the surface. It indicates that there is gold presence in this rock package and that this still hasn't been transported from a separate rock package. Now the work that needs to be done is to really narrow down within this large geochemical anomaly where the source is for this gold. And of course, at Malachite-3, we've found quartz veins that are similar in style and texture, are gold bearing and are associated with the hydrothermal alteration that we see elsewhere in the belt, and this is a very large anomaly as well. So we have found gold in bedrock, which is a great proof of concept. If you look at the milestones we've made in such a short period of time, we went into an area that has never been worked, identified the structures, found gold in bedrock and intersected gold with these bore holes. Now the next step is to see where this gold can be in significant concentrations and volumes.

And Crispin, just you may want to touch a little bit on MAL-2. You mentioned it in terms of making first gold discoveries in the hanging wall first time ever on the Cape Ray Shear, what's the significance of that? Because I don't believe we were necessarily, we were drilling, obviously, looking for gold, but seeing it in the hanging wall to the extent that we saw in terms of the drill holes or the core, what does that actually mean to us?

Well, this lithological package is a separate package of rocks that host the known mineralization as well as other known showings. There is known showings in the footwall to the north. So the Cape Ray Shear Zone dips to the southeast. So these rocks is what we call the hanging wall rocks. And in the footwall, these are separate package rocks that do have known mineralization in them. Previous explorers have not explored the hanging wall for various reasons. There was no known showings. So there was no money spent looking for gold in the hanging wall. When we extended our till survey into the hanging wall, we saw very large anomalies and this is exciting because if we can find significant volumes of gold in MAL-2, it really does open up a lot of strike right down through the entire Cape Ray Shear Zone in a package of rocks that haven't been targeted yet. So this has been explored since the '70s, and this is the first multigram gold that has been discovered in this massive package of rocks. And we do have other anomalies in the hanging wall that we're kind of waiting. This was our best anomaly we had in the hanging wall. We want to prove the concept that this can be a host for significant gold mineralization. And then we can move on to many other targets along strike.

Yes. So the other thing just to add here, I'll kind of maybe focus in on this picture here, and I'll let Crispin add a little bit of color to this. This is Malachite, but also on the Southwestern portion of it down in this corner, I don't know if the audience can see my cursor. But down here, this is the area we call Grandy's, and that's where this major bend on the Cape Ray Shear takes place. You can see, and Crispin already touched on this in terms of the mapping work that was completed this summer. So again, we're gaining a lot more information, a lot better understanding of the terrain of the geology, having set we're basically having boots on the ground in the summer last year and doing the prospecting work that we did. So we've got a number of these interpreted structures that came as a result of the work that we did on the field in the summer. But you can see there's a lot of activity here. It's geologically complex, which I learned when I joined Matador is a positive. This again ticks a lot of boxes for why it could host a major gold system. You've got these big bends in the largest gold bearing structure on the island, and you've got a bunch of these second order and third order structures that are splaying off of it. And so we tested through 11 holes, which again doesn't do it any justice, tested a few of these structures based on the soil samples that we've taken. But you can see here from the image through interpreted structures from west to east from south to north that we haven't even touched. There's a number of these structures that are of interest. Definitely, there's smoke here, but it's a big area and will take some time for us to get to. But that's the opportunity. So that's what we're looking to do. It's to find major gold systems in this big area. And what's interesting, and this a bit of an anecdote from a conversation I had with an investor back in November, basically around the time B2 made their investment. This investor asked, what if Malachite ends up being a dud, which is about the question. I mean this is exploration. I think I've mentioned to a number of shareholders over the last several months that in this world that we're living in, the outcome is binary, it's a [ 0 or 1 ]. We obviously believe that the opportunity is 1, but we can't rule out that it just may not be there. We may miss it or it just may not be there. Again, we believe the Malachite's got all the characteristics that we'd be looking for in terms of making a major discovery or a series of discoveries, but if it doesn't work out for us at Malachite, we've got several Malachites in the portfolio. We have 120 kilometers of continuous strike. This, again, is a large area. The area to the east of this is actually larger, we call it Bunker Hill, which is also very interesting, very geologically complex, it's a significant area of interest for us. This area of Grandy's, which I've mentioned or anywhere between Malachite and where we have the current resource, again, is vastly underexplored and is a significant area of interest. And then beyond Bunker Hill, there's even more areas of interest. And then we haven't even talked about Hermitage. So there's a lot of potential, a lot of opportunities here for us and all shareholders at Matador. Malachite, we are encouraged with the results that we've seen here, we've got a lot of work ahead of us. So that's what we'll be focusing on this year. I will also just comment in terms of where we've got their current resource. One thing that dawned on me as I basically started with Matador and look to understand what's been done, what was planned to be achieved in the coming months. Obviously, we've pivoted strategy to move away from this resource, focus on Malachite and greenfields exploration. But the idea of increases to the resource in what I call the brownfields is very much an opportunity that we have within the portfolio. What dawned on me was Warren and Crispin and the team, they were focused extensively to drill meters. And that seemed to be the focus was to drill as many meters as we could given the season but also the capital constraints that we had. Drilling meters is not a KPI. We don't drill meters for the sake of drilling meters. Drilling is a very important tool that we have for exploration, probably the most important tool that we have, also the most expensive tool that we have. But you get a lot of information, a lot of data with every drill hole that you drill. And if the focus was just on drilling, then it doesn't give the team an opportunity to actually take that information and do proper analysis with it to see what we do next, where are the opportunities? What are we missing? So that's work that we're actually working on right now to look at the brownfields, compile the data, do the analysis work that had been deferred and see if there's any pockets here or large areas that we just haven't explored, never thought to explore and then potentially add that as part of the 2023 plan. And that's the focus this quarter is doing a lot of that analysis for not just here in the brownfields, but also in the greenfields. So that every dollar we look to invest going forward this year and every year going forward is with the aim to get the highest return that we possibly can. It's not to throw darts in a dart board. That's not why we're here. We're going to apply science. We're going to obviously factor in the commercial side of things, hence, the return on investment. But one of the things that there are several things why B2 was attracted to us. But another reason why they were attracted to us was our approach to exploration. And because of their support and because of their endorsement, it actually gives us the opportunity to do things properly. Crispin could attest to this, that in Canada, many companies, many of the companies even here in Newfoundland, don't do a lot of the prework before you drill. They just go in and start drilling. And they don't necessarily hit anything. And they will drill 15,000, 20,000, 30,000 meters and not really have much to show for it. That's a lot of capital wasted to not generate a result. So we're going to be different. We're going to continue to do things properly. We're going to continue to be focused on applying the tools, using the tools that we do have, so we can go and make major discoveries and in the brownfields context, look to add additional ounces. And one of the areas that we will be focused on in 2023 is Hermitage. Again, it sits on a completely different structure than everything else that Matador has explored. It's another large area. It's 27 kilometers, a continuous strike. It's in a different orientation than almost everything else geologically on the island of Newfoundland, and it's the largest arsenic and antimony anomaly on the island. There's an antimony mine in Newfoundland, which is considered high grade. The Hermitage project is actually considered a higher-grade anomaly than that antimony mine itself. And gold and antimony are closely associated as well as arsenic. But this is another large area that's underexplored. There is, I think, one, is that right, Crispin, one historic drill hole by Falconbridge a couple of decades ago looking for base metals. It is remote. So we do have to, again, just like Malachite, access it by helicopter or flow plane. But it is a significant area of interest for us. We did some prospecting, as I mentioned, in the summer. We're getting the results back and we'll be looking to do an update for the market once we've got all the results back. But for 2023, we're basically looking at focusing on, I'd say, half our efforts at least on Malachite. Again, it's a large area. There's a lot of work for us to do, a lot of interpretation, a lot of exploration. So we'll spend most of our time and invest our capital on Malachite. These are just approximate figures. Probably, a quarter of our efforts will be spent here at Hermitage and another quarter of our efforts on the brownfields plus a couple of the other areas that I've mentioned, Bunker Hill and Grandy's. And you're going to see that Matador is really going to use different tools that we have at our disposal. So we will diamond drill. The amount of diamond drilling will be dependent on the work that we're doing right now. We're going to bring an RC drill rig to this area. So this is not something that Matador has done before, but we'll be using RC drilling to take bottom-hole samples going forward, both in the Malachite area, some of the other areas that I've mentioned, but also potentially here at Hermitage. We're going to look to do some more geophysics, some specific IP in areas like MAL-2, which is vast and very conducive to success from a geophysical IP survey perspective and obviously, look to use other tools like mapping and sampling, prospecting and other tools such as that. Alex, were you trying to interrupt me there?

I was, of course. Sorry, Sam. I was just saying we're coming up to time. So any listeners did have questions, it's probably a good time to pose them.

Yes. So I will just wrap up then. Thanks for that Alex. This is very much philosophy that we have at Matador. Someone asked me where we are on this. We are in the beginning. We are in pre-discovery phase. The amount of time it takes to make the discovery will be dependent on our ability to make those discoveries. If we are lucky, obviously, sooner rather than later, but there's no guarantee of success of discovery, and there's no guarantee that it's going to happen quickly. But we want to ride this curve appropriately. We do not want to get into development prematurely, which is what the previous strategy was. So we are back to grassroots, greenfields exploration, so we can properly move up this curve and create that significant long-term value for shareholders. As I mentioned, since I started, one of the things that we are focused on in addition to exploration is enhancing the capital structure and expanding to new capital markets. There continues to be pent-up demand for Matador, particularly in North America. I marketed through Europe. There was quite a bit of interest there. Many are waiting for the TSX listing. That's very much front and center for us and looking to move forward with creating that dual listing structure for Matador and bringing on these additional interesting investors, but also not just on the buy side, but sell-side brokers who are interested in being part of this Matador story. So Alex, I will stop there and take questions.

Two questions have come in, firstly, around costs because as per the presentation, it looks like the cash balance at the end of the December quarter is around $9 million, which is down from $11.8 million at the end of September quarter. So Matt was just asking about what the approximate cost of the Malachite program has been to date. And just given the number of holes, does that sort of match the drawdown over the quarter?

Yes. So the cash balance at the end of the September quarter was actually $8.8 million. So we've exited this December quarter with a higher cash balance, but it's offset by the B2Gold investment and our drilling program. Obviously, any time you drill, it's going to be more costly. But now we're in this quarter where there's no field activity, it's all desktop work and the cash burn significantly lower than what it would have been in the fourth quarter. One of the reasons I made the comment that we've learned not to drill in November is it wasn't very efficient, costs ended up being higher than what we're used to because of a lot of standby costs, the drill rigs there on standby, but we can't move it from site to site with the helicopter, the weather is inclement, which it was. So that we are keen on getting some drill holes into Malachite, which we've again completed 11. But we've learned that October is probably it was a good month for us to drill, but probably the last month of the year for us to drill. And then we'll sort of regroup and look to drill when we get through Canadian winter and into the spring. It doesn't rule out that we won't in the future, drill in the wintertime because that isn't necessarily a bad time to drill. But we weren't in a position to drill this winter here in Canada, but we would be looking to drill targets like Hermitage, for example, during the winter, where we can take a drill rig over tracks and not disturb the ground.

Ties into another question that's just come in, Sam. What's the expected time to start drilling again RC and AC diamond as well?

Yes, weather dependent again. So the weather, we can't really predict whether the winter is going to be long or short. So the transition periods are the periods that you want to avoid. So from Canadian winter, the Canadian spring, you want to avoid that transition, which is basically March, April. If winter is prolonged, and we'd be looking at maybe towards the middle or end of May, if it's shorter, then we could potentially start drilling in the beginning of May, but it's all going to be dependent on weather.

And that's true. We can get out in the field and do some prospecting work and other field work while the weather is transitioning. So it's not that we won't be doing any field work whatsoever. It's just drilling if we want to do it efficiently, we'd have to wait for that weather to be conducive for it.

And that sort of, again, is nicely answered the second question that came in for us given how extreme the way they can be on the island to that sort of infer that production development and extraction costs would be correspondingly higher as well?

Did you want to answer that one, Sam?

Yes. I mean, I'll let you answer that in just a second, Crispin. But I mean we've seen with Marathon, which is the most advanced project on the island. It's one of the lowest cost gold mines in North America, if not globally. So we're not there in development. We obviously have a PEA and there's some numbers there, and that's based on the information that we would have. Yes, the weather can be inclement, can't get extreme from time to time, but that's not unique to any parts of Canada or anywhere that's in the northern hemisphere. But if you want a bellwether in terms of cost, Marathon Gold's probably where you need to look and have a look at their technical report to get a sense of what costs are. Crispin, anything to add to that?

Yes, just about the weather. The main thing for the weather delaying our diamond drill program was high winds and low visibility for flying the helicopter. So all of our delays had to do with being unable to fly the helicopter. From a production standpoint, you'll have access via road to the deposits and the weather will be very easy to deal with. So it's more about flying the chopper than it is about the weather being extreme.

Is there another question that's come in gents. Did B2 have any input involvement in the inaugural drilling program at Malachite either planning or drilling or drilling?

No, we had already planned out the drilling where we wanted to drill specifically at Malachite prior to B2 coming in. They obviously, the relationship has started while we were drilling. And I think we announced the deal at the end of October, but we already had the drill rigs in there and turning. So I'd say no, to answer the question directly, but we've had a number of meetings with B2. I'm telling you right now, they're a fantastic partner to have, truly exceptional, very knowledgeable. Again, they've been successful. They've all been part of major discoveries in their careers as geologists. And it's a big team, and we've engaged with many members of that team, and they've got tools at their disposal, which we're looking to leverage and really build a long-term partnership with them.

Well, that is great. That is it for questions for now, gents. So it's probably a good place to wrap up. We've got a little over time. So thank you, Sam, Warren and Crispin for presenting today and everyone for dialing in. I allow them to turn it over to you to Sam for closing remarks.

Thanks, Alex. No, I appreciate that. I think the results of one other question that we actually gone through via e-mail. I don't know if you want to read that out and we can answer that and then wrap things up...

Just asking some comments on the width of the single strike of the gold grade reported from the results from last week and just asking about whether that's true with and what that means for the exploration program, Crispin, from Graham.

Yes. So the vein that we intersected at Malachite-3 moderate to shallow dipping vein, and we are drilling orthogonal to the vein at around 45 degrees. So the core angles are pretty good. We also did oriented core on that hole and measured the orientation of the veins. And that was fairly close to true width. As I mentioned before, the vein was about 30 centimeters wide. So that 1.72 grams over that meter, obviously, the gold values in the vein were higher than that. Just regarding the width, this is an initial fence of holes through this entire structure. This is the structure that we call the breakout structure, this major second order structure that splays off of the Cape Ray Shear Zone, has about 9 kilometers of strike. Of that 9 kilometers of strike, we have significant geochemical anomalous in the tills over multiple kilometers of strike as well as from the geological mapping, we see hundreds of meters of width to these alteration systems with the same sericite and chlorite alteration that we see in our deposits, but in the wall rock associated with these structures. So the width of the vein that we had intersected with this first pensive holes is very narrow. It is not a gold intersection, as Sam mentioned, the high numbers that are going to mean that we have discovered significant concentrations of mineralization that could potentially turn into an economic deposit. What we have done is proven that this large regional structure is gold bearing. For instance, prior to us receiving our assays, we did not know if these quartz veins had any gold in them at all. And I think that's a big step. There is a lot of generations of veining in the Cape Ray Shear Zone regionally as a whole. We get a lot of veins that don't have any gold associated with them. There's multiple generations of quartz veins, multiple timing events that bring fluids to the rock. And I think it was key for us. Obviously, we would have loved more thickness to the gold-bearing veins. But the fact that we know now that there is gold-bearing veins in this geographical region is 14 kilometers of strike as well as associated with these structures and these large hydrothermal footprints that we see from the mapping and the geochemistry. So it's very exciting, and we're looking forward now to exploring a long strike from these mineralized veins.

Thanks, Crispin. Warren, is there anything you want to add to that?

Yes, I think maybe for the Australian audience, who are used to exploration in lateritic weather terrains where you get these really big footprints sitting above the deposits. We're exploring a very different terrain here, right? So this is more akin to try to see through a Salt Lake with fresh rock at the bottom. I think [indiscernible] gold field, for instance, Nobody knew there was gold under that lake until somebody went and looked because there's nothing outcropping at the surface. And we've got similar issues here. We've got small patches, as Crispin spoke about, of veins outcropping at surface. But we've got to see through this cover, which is transported. We know there's gold in the system. But when you drill through that, you don't drill through to weathered rock, which has a large dispersion halo of gold sitting above the basement occurrence. You drill straight into the basement occurrence. So thinking back to my time at Sunrise Dam, if we drilled 150, 200 meters away from the 10 million to 15 million ounce Sunrise Dam gold deposit, you're going to intersect the same meter at a gram if you're lucky or nothing in fresh rock. If you haven't got the regular developed above it, you're not going to see anything other than the alteration signature. And we're seeing big alteration signatures here. We're drilling into fresh rock, which doesn't have the benefit of that dispersion halo, and we're hitting multi-gram gold in veins in the middle of the alteration or in the alteration system. We don't even know if it's the middle of the alteration system. So the opportunity is huge. The challenge is to see through transported cover without the benefit of a lateritic weathering terrain, big plums of enrichment and dispersion of gold, which we know in Australia. And I think that's the key thing we are looking for basement gold under cover. It's going to take a bit of time.

Excellent. No. Thanks, Warren. Thanks, Crispin and Alex as well. So yes, we've got a lot of work ahead of us, but we're all keen and motivated. Again, we think we're in the right area. We believe we're in the right area, more than just think. And we've got a bunch of these other areas that we'll do a little bit of work on to advance in the pipeline, significant pipeline that we do have. So I appreciate everyone's time. Thank you for hosting Alex. And as always, if there's any questions, please do reach out, and we'll be happy to answer any of the questions you have.

Thank you, Sam. Thank you, guys. I will end it here. Thanks, everybody.