Aurania Resources Ltd. (ARU) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Aurania Resources Limited Annual and Special Meeting of Shareholders. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to turn the conference over to Keith Barron, Chairman and CEO of Aurania Resources Limited. Please go ahead.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Annual and Special Meeting of the Shareholders of Aurania Resources Limited. I am Keith Barron, Chairman, CEO and Director of the company. And with your permission, management has scheduled the following for today's meeting: Number one, the formal business of the meeting will be conducted first. Number two, at the conclusion of the formal business, our President, Dr. Richard Spencer, and I will hold a brief question-and-answer period. We have 5 items of business to conduct today. These items are all outlined in the management information circular dated May 12, 2021. Number one, to place the company's audited financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2020, together with the auditor's report thereon before the meeting. Number two, to appoint UHY McGovern Hurley LLP, Chartered Accountants, as the auditors of the company for the ensuing year and to authorize the directors to fix their remuneration. Number three, to elect the directors of the company for the ensuing year. Number four, to approve the company's incentive stock option plan for the upcoming year. And number five, to transact such other business that may properly come before the meeting or any adjournments or postponements thereof. Once the formal business of the meeting has been completed, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. I will now call the meeting to order. In accordance with the bylaws of the company, I shall preside as Chairman of this meeting, and I shall ask Carolyn Muir, to act as Secretary of the meeting. Unless there is an objection, I shall ask Dennis Dang of TSX Trust Company, to act as scrutineer for the meeting. The Secretary has advised me that the Notice of Meeting, together with the former proxy, management information circular and request form have been provided to, as applicable, each director of the company the auditors of the company and provided to each shareholder of the company. On May 10, 2021, the record date for the meeting. An affidavit of mailing has been provided by TSX Trust Company to the company, and I direct that the affidavit be annexed to the minutes of the meeting. Accordingly, unless there is an objection, I will dispense with the reading of the notice of the meeting. The scrutineer has provided me with the preliminary report regarding shareholder attendance and representation at this meeting. The scrutineer reports that there are present at this meeting by proxy, 141 shareholders holding 24,095,761 common shares represented. Accordingly, I declare that the requisite quorum of shareholders is present, and I declare the meeting is duly and properly constituted for the transaction of business. I direct that the scrutineer's complete report on attendance be annexed to the meeting -- to the minutes of the meeting. To the best of my belief, the votes against represented by proxy on a ballot in respect of any item of business before this meeting represent less than 5% of all votes that might be cast in respect of such item of business. There are several matters that must be dealt with during this formal part of the meeting. In order to expedite these matters, I have requested that certain persons make and second the formal motions, and I will call on these persons at the appropriate time. Shareholders may make comments on general matters during the question period to be held following the termination of the meeting. As the first item of business, the company's audited financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2020, and the auditor's report thereon are hereby placed before the meeting. No vote is required with respect to this matter. We will now proceed with the appointment of the auditors of the company. I would ask someone to move the following resolution, which I will now read. Be it hereby resolved that UHY McGovern Hurley LLP, Chartered Accountants, hereby appointed as auditors of the company to hold office until the close of the next annual meeting with shareholders or until their successors are appointed at such remuneration as may be fixed by the directors and directors to be, and they are hereby authorized to fix such remuneration.

I so move [indiscernible].

Thank you. May I have the motion seconded?

I'm Richard Spencer, I second the motion.

Thank you. I declare that the resolution appointing the auditors of the company for the ensuing year and authorizing the directors to fix remuneration has been carried. Now we will proceed with the election of directors of the company for the ensuing year. In the management information circular of the company dated May 12, 2021, on Pages 22 to 25, it was indicated that the company will propose the following 6 persons for election as directors: Dr. Keith M. Barron, Warren Gilman, Jonathan Kagan, Dr. Richard Spencer, Alfred Lenarciak and Natalie Han. I will now hear a motion nominating these persons as directors of the company for the ensuing year.

I, Alfred Lenarciak, nominated Board-seated individual who are [ stated ] in the management information circular of the company, which was dated May 12, 2021, on Pages 22 to 25 to serve as a director of the company, to hold office until the next Annual General Meeting of shareholders or until their successors are duly elected or appointed in accordance with the articles and the bylaws of the company.

Thank you. Are there any further nominations? Since there are no further nominations, I hereby declare the nominations closed. I have been advised by the scrutineer that the proxies deposited for the meeting have been voted for the election of each of the directors, and I would ask someone to move the following resolution, which I will now read. I hereby resolve that the 6 persons nominated by management be elected as directors of the company to hold office until the close of the next Annual Meeting of Shareholders or until their successors are duly elected or appointed in accordance with the articles and bylaws of the company.

Alfred Lenarciak. I so move.

Thank you. May I have the motion seconded?

I second the motion, Richard Spencer.

Thank you very much. I declare that the resolution to elect Dr. Keith M. Barron, Warren Gilman, Jonathan Kagan, Dr. Richard Spencer, Alfred Lenarciak and Nathalie Han as directors of the company to hold office until the close of the next Annual Meeting of Shareholders or until their successors are duly elected or appointed has been carried. We will now proceed with the ordinary resolution approving the company's incentive stock option plan, as described on Pages 24 and 25 of the Management Information Circular under the heading Approval of Option Plan for upcoming year. A description of the stock option plan is set out on Pages 19 and 20 under the heading Securities Authorized for Issuance Under Equity Compensation Plans, 10% rolling stock option plan. And the full text of the plan is set out on Pages A1 to A8 of the Management Information Circular under the heading Schedule A Stock Option Plan. This resolution is an ordinary resolution that requires the approval of at least a majority of the votes cast thereon by the shareholders in person or by proxy at the meeting. The Board of Directors of the company recommends that shareholders vote in favor of this resolution and believes that the passing of this resolution is in the best interest of the company. I would ask someone to move the following resolution, which I will now read. Be it hereby resolved as an ordinary resolution of shareholders of the company that the share incentive plan of the company described in the management information circular of the company dated May 12, 2021, be and the same as hereby ratified, confirmed and approved as the stock option plan of the company. Number two, any director or officer of the company is hereby authorized and directed for and in the name of and on behalf of the company to execute or cause to be executed, whether under corporate CEO of the company or otherwise, and to deliver or cause to be delivered all such documents, and to do or cause to be done all such acts and things as in the opinion of such director or officer may be necessary or desirable in connection with the foregoing resolution.

Alfred Lenarciak, I so move.

Thank you. May I have the motion seconded?

I second the motion, Richard Spencer.

Thank you very much. The scrutineer reports that the resolution has been carried -- has been duly carried by a majority of the shareholder votes cast at the meeting, and I, accordingly, declare the resolution approving the company's incentive stock option plan has been carried. This concludes the formal business of the meeting as set out in the notice of the meeting. There being no further business to conduct, I will now hear a motion to conclude the meeting.

I'm Alfred Lenarciak, and I move that this meeting will be concluded.

Thank you. Can I have a second?

And I second the motion, Richard Spencer.

Thank you very much, hereby declare the motion carried and this meeting terminated. I wish to thank you all for attending. We will now open up the floor to answer any questions you may have about the company.

[Operator Instructions]

Guys, actually, we have a short presentation. And before the Q&A session, there's been questions that we email or we will address as well. And then we'll open up the lines for further questions thereafter. So the first item of the presentation is just a very quick montage of a video of our exploration phase and where we are at the moment. So if we can get that video going. It's a couple of minutes, I believe, and then we'll go into a short presentation, which we'll aim to cover most of the questions that we've received by e-mail. [Presentation]

Okay. Keith, do you want me to go ahead with the quick presentation?

Yes, please, sir.

Okay. Hi, everyone. Richard Spencer speaking here. Just a very brief presentation on our exploration activities and where we stand at the moment. We will try to answer a lot of the questions that have come in via e-mail over the last couple of days during this presentation. I will be making forward-looking statements and Keith will as well. So on Slide. 3, the snapshot as of the last year. Obviously, we're pretty heavily impacted by COVID with about 35% of our employees being infected in last year, the second half of 2020. I'm delighted to say that everyone is fine. They've recovered well and they are back at work. We were zero cases in the first quarter, and then we had a spike in April. And again, everyone's back at work and fully recovered. In terms of the concessions in Ecuador, the initial exploration which was designed to be full year, was extended by the government for the period for which we've been waiting for various permits like water permits. That was done in December 2020. In March, we paid the fees. And in June, by the end of this month, we will pay the fees, the land in Peru. Community is obviously key to us. We always ask permission to go into the land of the 55 communities in our concession area that holds the land there. So we made good progress during the year. I had a new person appointed to lead that team, and we started the year with access to 33 communities and ended up with 41. And in fact, things are going very well with the rest of the communities who haven't signed yet. We finished the mobile MT survey. Drilling -- we drilled at Tsenken N2 and N3, then N1. And we're continuing -- and continuing to drill at N1 at the moment. Kuri-Yawi, we've drilled 2 holes there, and we [ poured ] that, and I'll explain why in a minute. At Tiria-Shimpia, the rig is on its way [indiscernible] and we should see drilling very, very shortly well before the end of the month on that. On Slide 4, a lot of people ask questions about the [indiscernible] and we've been a little bit quiet on that. We have been making good progress on this. On the right-hand side, these are vertical slices through the LiDAR, which is quite amazing. Can literally see branches and trees and all the rest of it. And we've identified this network of roads, very well engineered structures. And in fact, we're beginning to realize that there was a whole infrastructure in that area. And so we have found what we believe to be at least an exploration sort of at it or working in Tiria-Shimpia where they would've been looking at silver. But the 2 areas that we're drilling [ on Sevilla ], the gold mining areas, we haven't found those yet. And this area that we found at Tiria-Shimpia where we believe that, that was working for silver, has been an eye opener for us because there is nothing left. The slopes are so steep that all the waste and all that [indiscernible] has been moved -- just been eroded away. So it's helping us to soften our [indiscernible] and know what we're actually looking for. So the Lost Cities, although required on it, we're certainly beavering away on it in the background. On Page 5, the epithermal gold. And we will talk as we go through the presentation, you'll see that there are very, very specific areas of the concession package, which is shown on the right-hand side, that's about 90 kilometers long and up to about 50 kilometers wide. Where you'll see that the epithermal being 1 restricted belt and other kinds of deposits in other belts. The epithermals are all down in the bottom left. And there are -- [indiscernible] down there. Some people have asked for some other color on what's coming up in the background apart from the targets that we're talking about in every press release. Latorre C is one of those. We talked about this area a couple of years ago. The recent work that's being done on that has got us seriously excited about it. And there's -- you'll notice that it's numbered 2, when and this is effectively a priority listing at the moment. It's jumped up over Kuripan, and we're pretty excited about Latorre C. We've got all the elements that we would like to see in an epithermal deposit. But epithermal means something like a sort of [indiscernible] kind of deposits. But so although, again, we've been pretty quiet on the epithermals, we've been working diligently on them in the background, and Latorre C is pretty exciting. Moving across on to Slide 6. On the copper, up in the north, the watch area is a cluster of what we believe are porphyries, Tatasham. And we've talked about Awacha before. Work is ongoing there quietly in the background. Tatasham is something that we've mentioned. We haven't said a whole lot about it. It's an exciting thing. The MobileMT over that area shows some nice targets, as it does in Awacha as well. But interesting about Tatasham, and one of the questions that we got absolutely alluded to it is a fantastic question saying how many sources of copper do you think you have in the [indiscernible] system. And we believe that Tatasham is [indiscernible] properly believe that it's an appropriate target. And then Tsenken N1, we also believe that although that's sediment-hosted copper, we believe that there's a source of copper and porphyry in that area as well, porphyry for IOCG. And so at both ends of Tiria-Shimpia that's shown in the red there, we believe that we have copper sources. And then under the epithermal belt, epithermal, many of them are linked to porphyries underneath. And at Kuri-Yawi example, one of our targets there is epithermal. The other targets are porphyries underlying the epithermal. So a lot going on, on the copper side as well. On Slide 7, the silver zinc at Tiria-Shimpia, 22-kilometer trend of mineralization there. As I say, the rig is on its way into that area, and we should be drilling by the end of the month. We've identified 3 high-grade, and obviously, we need to make a discovery [indiscernible], and so we're not going to be heroic about the exploration. We're going to just drill under those high-grade areas. And this is still the zinc-dominated trend. In fact, there's some other high-tech elements that are potential sweeteners to the economics of the system. So it's a pretty exciting system, and we hope to be able to report real results by the end of the line or so on that. So on Slide 8, as I mentioned, we drilled zinc in N2 and N3. This shows the number of holes in each and the meterage under each. I think in N1, we're drilling Hole 4 at the moment. And so this is where the 1 rig is operating. That rig will eventually move on to Tsenken West and Tsenken B, and eventually potentially onto Kuri-Yawi. But secondly, it's actually at -- so that was drilling at Kuri-Yawi on the B1 target, and that rig is on its way to Tiria-Shimpia. So it's -- sorry, let me say that again. I'm wrong. The rig at Kuri-Yawi has been part of Kuri-Yawi, and the third rig is on its way to Tiria-Shimpia, a slightly latter wait. So you've got 3 rigs in the field, but only 2 will be operating: one in Tsenken N1 and the other at Tiria-Shimpia. And then on the right hand, the lower-right hand part of that slide, you can see that, that's the lineup of targets that are sort of just to come into the drill sequence. On Page 9, this is just a summary of what we've drilled so far as the 28 holes drilled, 12,000 meters, and the drilling ongoing at Tsenken N1 today, and Tiria-Shimpia due to start very shortly. The management team, I would just like to highlight that we have a pretty skinny team in Canada. Obviously, the bulk of the field orientated work is done by our Ecuadorian team, which is all Ecuadorian apart from Jan Pol Pallier, who keeps from France. But the rest of the team is Ecuadorian and the most motivated bunch of people you've seen, and some of you will be meeting them relatively shortly, I believe. In terms of environment and water on Page 11, we're working with key step forward foundation to provide clean water as a priority. Clean water [indiscernible] from potable water. We are looking at getting filtration systems in to take the clean water to the potable level. There is -- everyone talks about pollution and all that kind of thing in the rainforest, but none of these communities have any waste management systems at all. So if we want to minimize contamination that's being already taking place in these -- that's already happening in these communities, we need to deal with the waste management to be working with the Ministry of Environment and all the rest of the government on that. Environmental is outstanding, ISO 1401 registration, and we are working hard to improve the quality of our work here every day, working with the Ministry of Environment and Ministry of Health and a whole bunch of other ministries as well. And Maiden ESG report, environment, social and governance is due out very shortly pretty much, and it's getting towards its final version. So we'll let everyone know when that is out. It's a pretty interesting piece of work. So turning over to -- on Page 12, what can the shareholders expect in the next year? That is our ranking of targets in the table. We -- you will see that this ranking will change over time. You see -- that's what I see, suddenly jump into that area, above Kuripan. Epithermal gold, silver, which we've been a little bit quiet on, taking the bulk. 3 of those targets for epithermal, gold, silver, while we still work on the sedimentary-hosted copper and silver, and obviously, Tiria-Shimpia, where the drill will be turning very shortly. On the basic exploration, we've done about 2/3 of the very first past exploration on the property. So it's a real priority to finish that through the last third. In terms of joint ventures, and there were a lot of questions on this as well. Yes, we're looking at joint ventures. We have a number of majors in the data room at the moment. And I would suspect that in the next year, we might have news on the joint venture. Obviously, they -- these companies in the data room would like to see some significant intercepts. And as I mentioned earlier, everyone is absolutely motivated to make that first discovery, which I believe will be at Tiria-Shimpia. But Tsenken N1 is looking intriguing. And Kuri-Yawi, I think we're onto something there. Community, no real change there. We are absolutely dedicated. Got an incredibly efficient and motivated team there. I just leave them alone to do their work. Environmental and water. The great thing about ISO-14001 registration, it gives us a means of measuring how we're doing. And all the time, the objective is to improve every day, a little bit of improvement. And in Peru, we're likely to commence some field work in that area after prioritizing the concession areas. Just talking about Peru a little bit. A lot of questions have come in about Peru in the recent election there, where there's a left-leaning government led by Castillo that's come in. He's a school teacher. Came in with some fairly interesting ideas and controversial ideas, but he's become much more centrist as his campaign became more serious. He has moved towards the center and talked about getting the economy moving. And Peru obviously was devastated by COVID. And it means that his challenge is even bigger there to get that economy moving. So I think we're going to see a very strong move towards sensible processes and a sensible approach in Peru. And just on 14, on Slide 14, the sort of left, the left wing components in Congress is in the minority. The right wing has a slight -- just over 50%. But the center right, that gray area, these are pretty pragmatic individuals as well. So there's going to be a really good counterbalance, and we look forward to good things happening in Peru. And we believe that there's an interesting opportunity there, and we're going to forge ahead. We've been working hard on our concession applications, and we've got priorities to get into the field and start working there. So I think I will leave it there and open it up for questions. We have a couple of extra slides on the presentation, just in case a specific question comes up. And so now, if I can open that up to the floor, I could pass it back to Keith to open up to the floor.

So now, we'll have some questions. Has anything come through yet?

We do have a question from the phone line. We have Mark Reichman with Noble Capital Markets.

I just had a couple of questions. First, I really appreciated the visibility on the copper, gold and gold, silver targets. And my question is on Page 19, you have the exploration concept for Tsenken N1 and Tiria-Shimpia. So looking out on the plans for drilling at Tsenken N1 and Tiria-Shimpia, what kind of needs to happen to prove out that exploration concept? And then how soon do you think you'll move to some of these copper, gold and gold, silver targets that are in the lineup?

Shall I answer that, Richard?

Go ahead, Keith.

Yes. Well, this thing is -- Tiria-Shimpia is just so large, it presents actually a bit of a problem. It's going to take a lot of drill holes to put a resource on it, and even more drill holes to put a reserve. So strategically, what we are going to do is, as Richard said in the presentation, we're going to throw some drill holes underneath the stuff that's giving us the best results on surface. That's a key component at the beginning. And then I would like to see some holes on both ends of Tiria-Shimpia to show size. And we don't necessarily have to do all the fill-in drilling, and that could take a good deal of time. What we want to do is illustrate that this is a discovery or a potential discovery with size potential and essentially make this thing as bait, put the bait on the hook for the majors. And if we do that, somebody's going to, I think, immediately jump up and say they want to do a JV on Tiria-Shimpia because they don't want anyone else to have it. So that's the strategy for Tiria-Shimpia. Getting on to Tsenken, well, we'll see how the results go for Tiria-Shimpia. We may indeed have to get a third drill in here to put some holes down on Tsenken. But Tsenken also has got the same good news-bad news thing. Good news as in it's huge; bad news as it will take a lot of drill holes to actually tell what we have at the end of the day. And that thing is even bigger than Tiria-Shimpia by another kilometer. But again, the idea is to get some drill holes in the best spot, especially with a very, very strong copper price, and make hay while the sun shines, as they say. And right now, we know where there's copper on surface. We're trying to follow it down the dip and to hit the stuff at depth. So this is kind of an ongoing thing. We get a lot of information from every drill hole, and we'll see how it goes here.

And then just lastly, on the community access agreements. It looks like you've really done a great job there in terms of 41 out of 55, which is a pretty substantial number considering the size of the land package. Of the remaining -- of the ones that still need to be, I guess, locked in, what areas of the property, I guess, would kind of remain outstanding? And how much of a priority would those be?

Mark, I think -- sorry, Keith, can I handle that?

Go ahead.

Okay. Mark, it's really the sort of extreme northern end of the concession area in the southeast as well where the communities are more reticent. And it's a process. We've had really good access in the southeast recently. We always ask for permission to go into the community and then find -- talk to the community about what we're going to be doing or what we plan to do, and then sign the actual access agreement. So those have been the more sort of ticklish areas, but we're making good progress there. And I think in the next quarter, we're going to see a number of access agreements jump significantly. So those are the main areas that we're sort of focused on in terms of new stuff that obviously all the other communities, that 41, needs a fair amount of maintenance as well. But those are the 2 sort of outstanding areas. And in terms of priority, Latorre C is a great example. We got in there, started to see things that were quite exciting. So in those other areas, the remaining 1/3 of the concession that hasn't been covered by basic exploration, we need to cover the whole thing because we don't know what to expect there. We can't really predict until we get in. Yes, we have an idea from the geophysics, but it's really what you see on the ground that's critical. So that is a priority, to get that fixed.

I might add that when we started this process 4 years ago, none of the communities gave us access. So it's been building over time. And as we make friends with the communities and actually do what we say we're going to do and also provide employment for these communities, it's very, very common that the adjacent communities will ask us to come in. In fact, some communities outside of our concessions have been asking us to go in and work. And of course, we have our hands full with our own property right now, but this is really the way the dynamic's working.

Well, to add on to that, I mean you really have been engaged with the communities and you've rendered a lot of aid and not just during the pandemic, but in terms of addressing water issues and the like. So I would imagine that, that would -- in terms of referrals or testimonials, that, that would carry some weight from the people that are actually dealing with Aurania now versus the ones that are still -- that might still be on the fence.

Yes. And Mark, the next thing relates to COVID as well. I mean Ecuador is a little bit behind the 8-ball in terms of the rate of vaccination. And the new government is desperate to get the population vaccinated. And I think that, that is going to be the next big push in our areas. So there'll probably be some news on that. And so Mark, anything else from your side?

Well, I guess just lastly, just any comment on the lineup in terms of the copper, gold-gold, silver in terms of timing? Would you kind of expect that to be more 2022 or latter part of 2021? Or early to tell?

Mark, it's a little bit early. It depends on what we get at Tiria-Shimpia. Keith alluded to the fact that we don't want to get sort of trapped there. We need to demonstrate that we've got a discovery there, and then that will generate its own interest. The potential of the silver zinc in Tiria-Shimpia to be linked with the sediment-hosted copper at Tsenken N1 or the Tsenken area in general, that's attracting a lot of attention from majors, and we're seeing a shift from the attitude of majors to sort of wait-and-see to thinking, "I better get moving here. Otherwise, I might be left out," because they're thinking on a regional scale. So put both of those things together, and you've got something that's about 50 kilometers long. And then at the same time, these -- the other sort of specific targets like the porphyries, like Tatasham, and then on the epithermal side, Latorre C is starting to come into focus and then Awacha. So I think that there's a bit of competitive tension building there. And what's exciting about the companies that are in Ecuador, a lot of the guys in the data room are not actually in Ecuador yet. So it's -- yes, there are more big and quality companies arriving, outstanding social programs, outstanding environmental programs. Just -- Keith, can I just talk about -- there are a couple of questions that came up in e-mails that we haven't. Okay. So do you -- Charlotte, do you want to prompt for any further questions on the phone?

[Operator Instructions] We currently have no more questions from the phone lines.

Okay, Charlotte. And Keith, if we could just go back to a couple of the questions that have come up in email. Keith, I'll just sort of summarize the question, and then you decide whether you want to handle it or I handle it?

Okay. [indiscernible] we're not going to answer.

Okay. So there's a question about the LiDAR of areas where Achuar have not granted access yet. So those remaining communities where we don't have access. Do we have LiDAR over those areas? And the answer to that is, yes, we do. Some of them, not all of them. The next main sort of theme from a bunch of questions was the share price. Why is the share price languishing, although there seems to be a lot of good news? Keith, do you want to handle that?

Well, yes, I could do. Everyone, I think, is waiting for a hit with the drill, and something substantial with some drill, some width to it and some grade as well. There's a lot of competing stories out there, and we're in competition with things like Bitcoin. And unfortunately, it's not like the good old days where shareholders would participate in the private placement and then they'd be quite happy to sit and watch their investments and let us get on with the job. There's a situation, I think very much in the investment community these days where people just jump from story to story to story, and they really have no staying power on anything. So this is why our share price does jump around. But that being said, we're 4 years into this, and we're not at $0.20. And when I had [ a billion ] going way back when, we did have the story kind of fall off and the interest fall off, and we did get down below $1. So I want to thank the shareholders for being part of this journey that we're on. And most of them are kind of holding onto their shares and letting us get on with it. And I think as I said in my letter to shareholders just last week, we, I believe, are very, very close to making a discovery. I suspect it's going to be a major discovery, but I don't know. I don't have a crystal ball. But nevertheless, we have a tremendous amount of smoke. And as the saying goes, where there's smoke, there's fire.

Thanks Keith. And then the next question is about the JVs. Can we give examples of the kind of JV that we would like to entertain? I think the important thing is that some of the majors that we're talking to are interested in the sort of epithermal gold. Others are interested in the zinc silver. Others in the sedimentary copper and in the porphyries. So I think there's -- as Keith has said many times before, there's potential to divide the property up into a number of blocks and have multiple joint ventures. And I think ideally, the kind of joint venture that we would like to go for and a number of these joint ventures have been signed in Ecuador, is where the major comes in and carries the Auronia through to around about -- an earning of about 70%, 75% by going to a feasibility study, completing a feasibility study. So all the drilling in Tiria-Shimpia, for example, that Keith alluded to just now, that would amount to a lot of drilling, that would be done by a major. And Auronia shareholders would be not [indiscernible] that expenditure. And we would end up holding the 25%, 30% of just share of that of that particular target where the other company would have put in what might end up being $100 million, who knows, depending on the project to get it up -- or on the target to get it up to that feasibility level. The other thing, there was a question about the MobileMT and the extent to which the sort of feedback from the geology that we're intercepting; in the borehole, how that affects the modeling of the MobileMT and the magnetics for that matter? And it's fundamentally important. Each time we hit something, we feed it back to the geophysics, and that tweaks the location and the size and the shape of the target. And just if we can go across to Slide 17, just for a second as an example of that, obviously, there's been a lot of speculation in social media about Kuri-Yawi and what we've intersected in holes 8 and 9. And we're waiting for the results from hole 9. But we -- so this is a vertical slice, showing holes 1 and 2, which we drilled some time ago. And then 8, which we drilled recently. 9, which we just drilled just a little while ago. And green is looking okay. So all those different sort of layers. From the top, that's the volcanic layering and the volcanic sequence to times of volcanics and sort of almost sort of sedimentary kind of layers. And as we -- so we want to be going from green to yellow, yellow is hotter. And we believe that although we didn't hit a showstopper on hole 9, and we're still waiting for the results to see whether there was any gold or silver and mainly pathfinders in there. We're definitely heading in the right direction. So the MobileMT had suggested that there was something right under hole 9 and hole 8 porphyry target. Now that we've fed this information back into the MobileMT, the modeling has refined that target area. So it's an iterative process. And we are making really, really good progress. As Keith said earlier, every hole that we drill gives us a huge amount of information and helps us to sharpen our pencil to head in the right direction and to say, okay, that red blob on the [indiscernible] is really crucially important because the geology is telling us to go there. And again, just coming back to the joint venture, there's a lot of questions about which areas we would like to spin-off this joint venture. Keith, I think, has alluded to that, but I think the majors are waiting for us to get something good in the drill bit, and then go back to negotiations will start in a serious way. And I think it's a little bit early to say what might be joint ventured first. Suffice to say that there is interest by specific companies in your specific commodities and that kind of thing. And then Keith, there was a question specifically for you from [indiscernible]. Your view on royalties and royalty spincos and that kind of thing, trying to create value sort of as quickly as possible for the shareholders.

Yes. Well, I think that it's far, far too early. I don't think anyone would be interested in a royalty until we have a resource, quite frankly. And I would not want to even negotiate a royalty without having a good idea of what the thing is going to be worth for the purposes of the negotiation. So I think it's just not an option at this time.

Okay. And then there's a question about current funding, how long it's going to last, Keith. So I mean, the -- it depends how quickly we go. And obviously, we will come back to that at some point as we are able to see how much drilling we need at Tiria-Shimpia and Tsenken N1 and that kind of thing. So if we want to be more aggressive, we're going to have to top up a little bit more earlier -- a little bit earlier than planned. It's just we're going to have to judge that as we go. And then one of the other situations, one of the other questions was about the Achuar communities that haven't granted access, what is their main sort of concern? Keith, if you don't mind, let me start off on this, and then take over for anything that I leave out. Is that okay?

Go for it.

I think we've got to recognize that the Achuar are a relatively small population. They've been marginalized. They are not enough with their political vote for any politician to take much care of them. So the community has generally been let down by whichever government -- well, in effect, starting with the Spanish 400 years ago, and continuing since then, that being largely marginalized in the political system and all that kind of thing. So there's not a lot of trust of government institutions. Having said that, there is huge interest by the government and particularly, the new government to get involved in this area and to recognize that these people have been marginalized and get this organized. So it gives the company an opportunity to sort of create a bridge between the government and the local communities, because over 4 years, we certainly have created a lot of respect. And as Keith mentioned earlier, we generally do what we say we're going to do. So the concern from the areas, the communities that haven't let us in yet, is generally concerned about pollution. What is going to -- contamination from mining in the future and that kind of thing. But there's huge traction there because now, as Keith mentioned earlier, the guys from the opposing communities or the communities that haven't signed yet, generally work with us when we're working with adjacent communities. They can see what we do, the care that we take of the environment, of the water, the water testing that we do. We take out every single can, every single piece of plastic, whatever that we've been in -- that we've taken into the field for our exploration. And more importantly than that, the fact that we are gaining with pretty rudimentary, but important, waste disposal and that kind of thing, it's going to the community and saying, "Hey, let's not worry about what's going to happen in the future. There is contamination going on at the moment. Let's work with you to help fix that up." And that sort of groundwork on that comes from working with community, creates a really positive environment. And we do make mistakes. And when we do make mistakes, we need to be serious about it. So we're in a pretty honest relationship with the majority of the communities. And as I said earlier, I think that we will get access to the vast majority of the communities. And yes. Okay. So that's all we've got time for. So if the operator can open up the line to questions just 1 more time. I believe we have someone waiting there.

Yes, we do. So the next question comes from Terence Ortslan with TSO.

Just on the [ delays ] and also Ecuador getting validation with respect to the jurisdiction whereby it's being more widely recognized and appreciated, would you say that since the election, was there any change with respect to the validation by companies looking for [indiscernible] entrance, number one. Number two is that since the election, would you say that the CSR issues have changed, accelerated or more reasonable with respect to Ecuador? Anybody who's actually in this CSR issues look over their shoulder, who's doing what elsewhere? And there's all the information exchange. In that context, would you say that there have been any surprises in Ecuador whereby any of the companies or the negotiators are just close to negotiating it, have failed to come to a conclusion. We've seen a validation after the election by Gandhi marking into an acquisition in Ecuador . You've seen a validation immediately after the election by [indiscernible] marching into an acquisition in Ecuador. But we haven't heard any companies or any new CSR issues that came to surface.

I can answer that. Keith here. So we've seen a major acquisition since the new governments come to power, and that's Dundee Precious Metals taking over Pauline MacGibbon's company, INV. And so that's going to be a big, big project. Richard was with [ IM Gold ] when it was discovered, and he thinks it's around 5 million ounces. So that's a hell of a big win. And -- pardon me?

I don't think it's 5. I think it's 10.

10. Even better. Thanks for the validation.

Okay. Keep going.

Yes. So they've got themselves a hell of a bargain. But as far as we're aware, there have been no problems. Nobody been turned away or anything like that since the new government come in. And I would say that in terms of doing a deal and kind of the politics of the country, Peru and Chile, but especially Chile, have gone down, and Ecuador has gone up commensurately. I think I really do believe that the next place where the big discoveries of copper are going to be made is going to be in Ecuador. It's going to be the new Chile. And obviously, companies like SolGold and Solaris have been going great guns on this. And we're just a little bit behind the curve. But as Richard said in the presentation, we've got a couple of lovely looking porta copper targets ourselves that we will get to, and we're going to drill.

And if I can just add, Terry, one of the crucial thing is [indiscernible] himself. He is obviously extremely wealthy guy, banking background, but he's an incredibly humble individual. And I think that this is one of the real benefits that will come to light over time. I mean, when he talks about the communities, communities having been left behind, it's not just [ hot air ], it's not just political rhetoric. It appears that this guy actually believes what he's saying. And that change in attitude, I think, is going to be huge from a CSR point of view. And in fact, we've already seen just the way the various groups, from the ministry of the environment that the ministry of nonrenewable resources, the Education Ministry, how they are starting to approach things is just the difference between light and day. So I think we're -- the potential for our CSR to link up with what the government really wants to see done, I think it creates a huge opportunity to work together.

The -- just coming back to the CAs that, obviously, it's a common practice in our industry to have them. But would you say that the CAs are different than anybody else in terms of the content, in terms of years, commitments, thereby the disclosure? I guess everybody knows how many CAs you have signed with the companies I'm talking about and being part of the discussion and also information sharing. Do you have any [indiscernible] which are different than anybody else, that are unique to you?

Terry, they're pretty standard. I mean, the only thing that's a little bit different about ours is we've got quite a big area of inference. But otherwise, they're pretty standard.

And I think -- thank you for the letter to the shareholders, Keith. It was very well done, and a lot of disclosure in that. You talked about spinoffs, I guess you're talking joint ventures. Am I right? Or are we talking spinouts?

I'm open to either, and that's what we might end up doing. It really depends on what the appetite is of the majors. And if we come up with some really good stuff here, we may just decide that we'll proceed ourselves for a little while, and then spin it out and let the shareholders, the existing shareholders anyway, have a good chunk of the, whatever the NewCo is that holds the project.

Okay. Okay. Just 1 last question. I mean every country should be pleased by seeing the footprint of the project in Ecuador. I guess next is who's going to build one besides [ Punta Del Norte ] and the Chinese that they have their own projects. I guess the expectation going to be now, discoveries are being made, that's great validates the country. Next is building with the capital and commitments in all the agreements in Ecuador. Would you say that the majors at this moment in time has not lost their willingness at all, which -- the names that we know in Ecuador, commit themselves for building those projects?

Oh, no, I think the appetite is out there. There's just -- well, look what the situation is going to be in Chile, for instance. If they rewrite the constitution, they bring in a 75% copper tax on stuff that's produced more than $4 a pound. How are -- number one, are these companies going to want to risk the capital to build something? And #2, are they going to be able to raise the capital from the banking and other institutions? And I think it's looking doubtful until the new regime in Chile has gone away. Now in Peru, our situation is different because we haven't even started exploration in Peru except for desktop. So the present government -- well, the government actually hasn't taken power yet, and it's still contentious. But should the socialists get in, the chances are excellent that they're going to be out again by the time we can advance with any of that project. So I think that looking at Ecuador, of course, some projects are going to be more expensive than others because they lack infrastructure, and that has to be put in. But there are other things that are quite advanced in a number of prefeasibilities that are coming down the pipe just in the next 4 to 6 weeks, so I've been told within Ecuador, and this is going to raise the profile of the country.

Terry, I think if I can just add to that, I think we're going to start seeing a different pressure applying to new projects. There's a highly entertaining and well-written article in the May 15th version of The Economist that is talking about all these politicians yapping all over the planet. About net 0, and what's their aims and forecasts and the money that they're going to put into it. And then this guy just points out that you need commodities for this, you need copper. And with it taking as long as it does to get a mine permitted the way things are going at the moment, the politicians have no clue what they're talking about in terms of these net euro gold. So as this starts to come through, I think we're going to start seeing governments getting behind rather than being agnostic at best towards mining. I think we're going to see governments and big institutions start to get behind responsible mining, and which ties in with the whole CSR, I think and ties in with the Ecuadorian's government approach. And we'll probably see a similar thing happen in Peru as well. But it's really nice to see what we all know as investors in the resource space, ordinary people start to realize. But if we want a net 0 economy and world, boy, we better get our skates on and start getting mines into production; ones that are done in a socially environmentally responsible way.

Which I completely agree. I think, Keith as well, when you talk about Peru, no matter what happens, exploration is kind of neutral and naturally positive because you're discovering adding volume. When it comes to the building mines, it's a bit different with the other companies that got projects in Peru. Coming back to Ecuador, however, just curious, the Ministry of Resources is kind of clogged up with many different responsibilities. Any possibility that they may have an exclusive industry of mines, so it could be more focused and more championship in the country with respect to the project?

Short answer is yes.

That's very positive.

It's in the cards.

That's very positive. That's good to hear.

Once again, if you have a question now. We currently have no more questions from the phone lines, and this concludes the question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Keith Barron for any closing remarks.

Well, thank you very much. I'd just like to say thank you for the support that has been from our investors. Thank you for these great questions. And remember, at any time, you can fire off e-mails to either myself or to Richard, and we'll get to them. And yes, we've got a lot of news coming down the pipe. So as they say in the newspaper business, watch this space. So okay, thank you so much for your participation, and God bless, all the best to you. Thank you. Goodbye.

This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.