Fortitude Gold Corporation (FTCO) Q2 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, everyone. Welcome to the Fortitude Gold 2025 Second Quarter Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Jason Reid, CEO and President. The floor is yours.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Fortitude Gold Corp's 2025 Second Quarter Conference Call. Following my brief comments and associated presentation for those who joined online, we will have a brief question-and-answer period. Joining me on the call today for the Q&A portion will be Ms. Janet Turner, our Chief Financial Officer. Let me remind everyone that certain statements made on this call are not historical facts and are considered forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties as described in our annual report on Form 10-K and other SEC filings, which could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by our comments. Forward-looking statements in the earnings release that we issued yesterday, along with the comments on this call, are made only as of today, August 6, 2025, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update any of these forward-looking statements as actual events unfold. You can find a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures referred to in our remarks in our Form 10-K filed with the SEC for the year ended December 31, 2024. Second quarter financial results and highlights include $4.9 million net sales, $800,000 net income or $0.04 per share, $17.1 million cash balance at June 30, 2025, 1,500 gold ounces produced, $26.6 million working capital at June 30, 2025, $2.6 million mine gross profit, $1.3 million exploration expenditures, 1,131 total cash cost after by-product credits per gold ounce sold, $1,452 per ounce total all-in sustaining costs, $1.5 million dividends paid and 619 ounces of gold rounds or bullion at June 30, 2025. At our Isabella Pearl, we continue to move waste for the Pearl pit layback. Our goal is to access the mineralized gold zones trending southeast deep from the bottom of the Isabella Pearl pit in the next few months. Between ongoing residual leach of our heap leach pad and the mineralization in the Pearl deep, both areas are expected to provide the bridge to obtaining and putting County Line into production. We are excited to see the pro-business and pro-mining Federal Administration work through the permit backlog. The Bureau of Land Management is moving our County Line project closer to permit approval, and we remain optimistic we will be granted all the necessary approvals to build the project in the near future. We look to take advantage of this momentum and are pursuing permits and programs, including South Scarlett, North Scarlett and Golden Mile for future mining. I am pleased to report after all these years, we have finally been granted the permit to connect to the local power grid. This will allow us to lower our energy costs by moving away from higher cost diesel-powered electricity. We are now working with NV Energy on setting up a preconstruction meeting, and we look forward to connecting to the grid. Other permits we are pursuing include an exploration EA for our East Camp Douglas property to allow us significant additional acreage that could be disturbed for exploration above the standard 5 acres provided under the BLM notice of intent permits. We are also pushing the BLM for our Golden Mile project to be added to the FAST-41 Transparency, a web link that will allow investors to see the status of permitting directly from the regulatory agencies. It's great to see the Trump administration take a proactive approach to fixing a broken regulatory permit system. On June 30, the Energy Department published this announcement. And for those not attending the online presentation, you can go to energy.gov to find this information. Energy Secretary announces updated NEPA procedures to end permitting paralysis and unleash American Energy. While this specifically focuses on the energy sector, statements they make in the announcement like this, "As part of a government-wide effort to restore common sense to permitting" makes me optimistic there will be spillover from this streamlining into the mining sector. This administration is making strong and bold moves to return this country to some semblance of common sense and prosperity and attempts to position the country to compete for vital resources that provide our way of life. We continue to defensively position the company to overcome the challenges created by the Biden administration while targeting to offensively position the company to permit and build our next mines under the Trump administration. With that, I would like to thank everyone for their time today on this conference call. And operator, if you can please open up the lines for possible Q&A.

[Operator Instructions]

Okay. Operator, I have several questions that came in on the web portal. So let's take those before any live questions as people queue up. The first one is from Harvey Bolan, a private investor. Question is, after County Line is permitted, when do you expect production to commence and in what amount per quarter do you expect other properties to be permitted while County Line is producing? Harvey. I'm not going to start calling out quarters of production yet. We have all our production going forward as a TBD as a function of when that timing comes in. But let me just give you our world view on County Line. We're awful close to getting this permitted, and it's great to see some action and movement in this regard. Now we have a choice in front of us once we do get this permitted. It will be a function of managing capital. And what I mean by that is we're spending a lot of money to go deeper at Isabella Pearl. And it may make sense to go ahead and complete that and then move over to County Line. Now we obviously will be doing some basic infrastructure, what little there is over there, roads, et cetera. But that would be one path forward. The second path is we feel confident that we can go at both of them full bore. So we'll just wait and see. But the most important thing is to get that permit. And we're just out of the 30-day comment period. And so we think we're very close to getting these permits. Another factor in this is that we have an area close to the Isabella Pearl called Scarlet South and Scarlet North. Scarlet South can be encompassed in the current mine plan. And we're moving forward in that regard. And it is highly likely that, that permit could drop in soon as well. Let's assume for the moment that happens, we would actually and plan to cycle equipment between the Isabella Pearl Deep and Scarlett South to chase some ounces over there. So we're -- we always try to position for optionality, especially coming out of that brutal 4 years of the Biden administration basically locked down a permit. So that optionality hopefully comes to fruition here where we may actually, Harvey, be mining from Isabella Pearl Deep and Scarlett South before we actually start mining County Line. So lots in flux, but I like the optionality. That's why we create the optionality because Plan A rarely works and you're usually stuck with Plan B, C or D. But at least we have those. So great question. Thank you. The next question is from Ray Lieb. Is the Civit Cat deposit exhausted? What is the goal with the bullion treasury? Why did the leach pad inventories go up by $10 million? Okay. The first part of your question, Ray. Is the Civit Cat deposit exhausted? Yes, for all intents and purposes, yes. We're still picking away a little bit there, but that's for the most part, done. What is the goal with the bullion treasury? We'd love to add to it. We're glad that we created it when we did. And before the big move on gold, we'd love to add to it. We're just not in a position to do that. So it will be in a holding pattern, so to speak, for the time being. But it's nice to actually hold gold in the treasury. The second part of why did the leach pad inventories go up by $10 million, I'm going to turn it over to Janet, who's on the call, our CFO.

Hi, good morning. The reason that leach pad inventories went up was a function of the average cost of the leach pad inventories increased over the -- from the last 6 months due to the fact that we're mining higher cost ore. There's a lot of waste for Phase 5. So as those higher cost ounces go on the pad, the cost per ounce goes up. And so that is the reason for the increase in the leach pad inventories.

Okay. Thank you, Janet. And Ray, thank you for the question. Next question is from Phil Dunsmore. Jason, what will be the ramp-up time to preliminary mining and then full production at County Line, once you have the permits, how fast can we see results from IP layback? Meaning can the quarterly mined ounces increase prior to County Line production? All right. Thanks for the question. This is Phil. The first part of your question, what will be the ramp-up time to preliminary mining and then full production at County Line. Kind of addressed that in the last question. But I guess to reiterate -- come back to that on the bigger picture of ramping it up. It's going to give us a couple of years of production there at about 20,000 ounce run rate, but it's not going to be clean years. It's never a clean year in as much as January to December. So as a function of whenever we get the permit and when we choose to start for the aforementioned reasons on the other answer I gave for the previous question, there'll be some preparation, not a lot because we're not building much at County Line. You guys all know that, who follow us, we're not building a heap over there. We're not building a process. We're basically mining, crushing and hauling it. It will be put into production once we go at it hard fast -- as fast or faster than any mine. So the full production, it will probably -- let's just assume it takes at least 6 months before we're in "full production" as a function of mining. But also keep in mind that County Line is an old open pit. There's gold left. There's actually 2 pits. There's the County Line pit proper and then the East pit. The East pit has a lot of exploration potential to the north of the County Line pit has a lot of exploration potential. We think we're going to be here longer than just the 2 years that we've identified now. But there's gold in the bottom of the pit right now in County Line. So we could potentially get some gold, a nice shot in the arm early on. And then as we do a pit layback, to chase more deep, there'll be a little bit of work there. So a lot going on. I hope that kind of gives you some insight as to what we're looking at County Line. The second part of your question, how fast can we see results from the IP layback? The IP layback is basically -- and those are the pictures for anybody who joined in the conference call presentation online, you can see the pictures of the pit layback. We're moving along really well. We only have a couple more benches and we should be into the ore. Yes, I'm not going to -- I don't want to be held to a time frame, but we fully expect to be mining that by the end of the year. And we don't expect it to take very long to see some results and a shot in the arm, so to speak, on some production, which will be good. That, coupled with potentially bringing in Scarlet South, which I'm mentioning earlier, we're just trying to be in a position to do what we can to produce as much to take advantage of these gold prices. Let's see. I think I got to your questions, Phil. Thank you. There's another -- let's do one more writing question before we see if there's any live questions. Craig Hooper. As far as the 1,500 ounce produced in Q2, is that calculated based on what you pull off the leach pad or some other calculation? What percentage of the pad is empty/full? Can you estimate number of recoverable ounces currently on the pad? That's what we actually produce. So that's gold ore that we're producing. So hopefully, that's clear, Craig, that that's not an estimate on gold on the pad or anything. That is a production ounces and which also varies from sold, but not by much. So I think that gets to your first part of the question. The second part is that calculated based on what you pull off the leach pad or some other calculation? I got to that, that's just the production. What percentage of the pad is empty or full? Okay. The pad is -- it's almost like its own living entity in as much as you have all these various levels on the pad. And then you all have all these different, what we call cells or smaller areas like a checkerboard that you go in and leach them. Sometimes you'll do a couple of cells at a time, sometimes just one. And so it gets very dynamic, very complex as it relates to how much in any given area, et cetera, and you're working off the best estimates on how long you've, a, put a cell under leach, how many levels it's going through, et cetera. But we have an estimate on total ounces on the pad, and that's -- we're seeing a lot of the fruition of that. It takes time on residual leach, and that's commonplace for the industry, but that's what we're pulling off now is a lot of residual leach. So hopefully, that got your question, Craig. Thank you. Operator, are there any live questions?

Yes, there are some live questions. Your first question is coming from Jeff Ploen with J. Paul Consulting.

Jason, can you hear me?

I can.

Great job moving forward, and I couldn't be more excited about the prospects. I have 2 questions. First one is on the Isabella Pearl and your movement forward there. What is the company hoping for really in terms of maybe ounces and/or time to get those ounces maybe over the next 6 months or half a year or whatever once you get in there, what are we hoping for there? If you could give us a little color there?

Yes. I appreciate the question, Jeff. I'm not going to give ounces. Let me back up for a minute of why we went deep on Isabella Pearl. We at the time we made that -- we at the time, when we made that decision to go after deep, we always knew there was an area of mineralization that trended to the Southeast under. But when we ran our initial pit shell under those gold prices way back when, it didn't make sense to chase this gold. Jeff, I can hear a lot of background noise on your phone. So I don't know if you can mute because I can hear talking on...

Sure. Let me see if I can mute, that would be perfect. Sorry.

Okay. No problem. So we are looking at a situation where we're dealing with the Biden administration. We're dealing with the BLM head of Theresa Stone-Manning, who's focused only on green energy, and she's basically making sure that everything grinds to a halt and very few permits are issued. So we're living in that world at the time we made the decision to go deep. Now we had the choice. Do we basically stop mining, send the miners home? Or do we be a mining company and try to go deep and chase this? Well, when we originally ran the pit shell, it didn't make economic sense. For one, I think it was about $1,800 gold. Two, the waste and overburden to remove it, make the pit bigger on that side, it didn't make economic sense. You fast forward to a situation where you're now under $3,000 gold it made sense to chase it. So I don't want any people to grab on to this, oh, you're going to do this many ounces and therefore, it's going to be this kind of revenue and try to calculate in that regard, because we're spending a lot of money, they're kind of costly ounces to do the pit layback to get these ounces. So -- but what we do believe is it keeps us in the game. And that's the decision we made based under this -- the awful Biden administration that we had to live under for 4 years. It was never the goal to chase this, but we had the opportunity with the gold price that really helped us. It's not the panacea. It's not our future. It just is the bridge of additional ounces between that and the residual leach until we get the County Line permit. So while I hate to not give you a number of ounces and what you can expect, I don't want to do that because I don't want people to grab on to this and then back calculate any kind of -- we're confident that we're going to get ounces and we're going to make some money. So let's just leave it at that. But again, it's just a bridge. It's just -- it's a function of having to deal with a really bad administration that was anti-mining. So now we're fast forward into where we are with this positive situation with an administration that's pro-mining that realizes how important minerals are and is trying to clear up the backlog. And we've seen movement that we haven't seen in 4 years under Biden administration in a matter of months since this administration took office. And I think that's a sign of what's to come. So I think we're going to get these County Line permit, we'll then be able to start forecasting again what we might be able to produce. But until we do this, until we get these permits and have additional transparency, we're not going to be forecasting anything. So any more questions to come in on what are you going to produce? I'm just -- we're not going to answer them right now. That's just a TBD, to be determined, based on timing of permits. But we are seeing tremendous movement of this administration clearing up the backlog. And let me just emphasize this by saying, just to put a power line in, now somebody can point and say, well, the federal government didn't have anything to do with that and those holdups, I don't think that's a coincidence. I don't think we were under this awful Biden administration for 4 years, and we couldn't even get a power line in. And all of a sudden, the new administration takes hold and our power line is now approved. I think it's part and parcel of this overall tenor where you have from the top, a federal administration, there's pro mining, there's pro permits. That is trickling down and we're seeing the fruits of that. So I'm excited because this gives us a lot of optimism going forward that we're going to get not only permits, but I hope to get every permit we want under this administration. In case it goes back the other way, and we have to deal with anti-miners again, at least we have several mines in the queue to build. So Jeff, I hope that helps, and thanks for your question.

Jason, I couldn't be more excited about where you are and what you're doing. That's fantastic. I guess as far as getting this new story out, Jason, I know there's a big conference as there are all the time, but I know there's something going on here at the Beaver Creek Gold Conference coming up at September. Will we have any kind of a presence there at all? Or I guess, what -- how do we get this exciting new story out to our shareholders and possibly some new shareholders?

No, great question, Jeff. We attended the Beaver Creek long ago. It's often or more often focused on just exploration companies. And so we attended years ago as a producer and it was a great conference. They put on a great conference. I have nothing but praise for that conference but it doesn't focus on producers. So to come back to your question, how do we get the new story out in September is our biggest conference of the year called the Denver Gold Group, and it's held in Colorado Springs at The Broadmoor Hotel. And we will be presenting at that conference. And there'll be a webcast. And obviously, new shareholders could potentially attend via webcast either live or after the fact. But that is the biggest gold conference of the year, and we're pleased that Fortitude will have a presence there at that conference. So yes, we are working to get the story out. Okay. Thank you, Jeff. Are there any more live questions?

Yes. Your next question is coming from Doug Johnston with Five Management.

Jason, congrats on all the hard work you're getting through the regulatory issues over many years. I'm really clear that you want to be very cautious about describing Isabella Pearl as anything other than a bridge. I get it. It's prudent for you to do that. And yet, I still want to ask a couple of questions. Number 1 is how many ounces has -- have you pulled out of Isabella Pearl over the past 5 years? And can you give any estimate of -- or just general terms about how deep you're going and how long you expect to be there?

Okay. The first part of your question, we probably pulled out close to 200,000 ounces out of that thus far. What was your second part of your question?

Well, how long would you expect to be there at Isabella again, you characterized it prudently as it's a bridge, it's not the future of the business and yet you are laying it back, you are going deeper. How long would you expect to be there?

Yes, not very long. I think once we get deep and access this mineralization, we did a tremendous amount of studies on the material because it's deep and the way it's trending, it's moving toward what we call transitional ore, meaning the oxide goes from strictly oxide into a transitional, which has some sulfides in it into a full sulfide. We cannot process the latter. So there are a lot of ounces deep in Isabella Pearl that are heavily sulfide ounces that would take a completely different process than we have to extract the gold. So in the future, we can potentially sell that if it made sense to one of the bigger dogs in Nevada, one of the big mining companies that has the facilities to process and extract that gold out of the sulfide rock but that's not our business plan. So we don't expect to be mining at Isabella Pearl all that much longer. In fact, I would guesstimate that we're done mining by the middle of 2026 at this point. From -- we're still a couple of months out from reaching the mineralization, and I think we'll be done mining before the end of the -- before the midyear. So that gives you some perspective that it's not a long-term thing. But we believe it will help along with the residual leach of ounces already on the pad that come off, albeit residual leach comes out slower, give the bridge and buy more time. In no world did we ever think that we couldn't get a mine at County Line permitted that you effectively mine as a gravel pit as an aggregate. You're not building anything. You're not putting a heat pad, you're not putting a process. You're literally just mining it as if it's a gravel pit. And under the Biden administration, we couldn't get that through. In no world do we think that was going to be the case. I knew I don't think anybody on these calls knows where I land on politics, but I knew it was going to be bad. I never thought it would be that bad. And it wasn't just us. It was across the board, any resource, any extraction, timber, oil, gas, whatever. It was an awful time. And we always planned early on as a company to just keep building mines. And so you layer new fresh ore from new mines on top of old residual leach heap, and that's how you keep the train rolling. Well, we had a pretty big speed bump there with the Biden administration who we couldn't get a permit under him, not even as an aggregate pit. It's ridiculous. And then to hear after the fact by the offices of the BLM that, okay, so we didn't even really look at your Golden Mile permit you turned in 2 years ago. We didn't really even look at it. Wow, what do you do with an administration where you turn something in and they don't look at it for 2 years? Like how do you operate in that world? So thankfully, we're now back to -- now they're looking at it. They're looking at everything we're throwing at them before they're like, "Hey, you need to pick and choose what's the most important. We'll look at maybe 1 or 2 things." Now they'll look at everything. That didn't just -- that light switch didn't just flip on coincidentally. Now that's a function of who's at the top. And we have a pro-business pro-mining administration. So things are going to start changing for the positive, I believe. It's just unfortunate that the previous administration causes some damage along the way, and we have to work to dig ourselves out of that hole, no pun intended. Okay. Doug, does that answer your question?

It did. Thank you very much, a very thorough answer and keep doing what you're doing.

And you 2 have one last question coming from John Bair with Ascend Wealth Advisors.

I actually have 2 questions. First, on the power connection situation, what do you think is the time line there when you actually will be able to hook up and utilize that? And what -- as a percentage of your power cost and needs versus diesel, how much do you think you'll be able to save there. Can you quantify that at all? Are you willing to quantify that at all?

Yes. No, we did the analysis long ago when we made the decision to hook to the power grid, plus we have all intents and purposes to be here long term, and this is kind of the hub and spoke, as you know, where we hope to bring in material, whether it's direct shipping or carbon -- gold-infused carbon into the Isabella Pearl for processing from our satellite properties. So it made sense at the time. And I don't have those numbers at the top of my head but they absolutely are beneficial at the time we ran them, and I can't imagine them being very much different than that. So I'm not going to give you the exact just because I'll be wrong. That's been a long time since we ran that analysis. As far as when we're going to connect, we don't know yet. This power line we've been working on for 4 years -- plus 4 years, we have spent and Janet is going to correct me if I'm saying something wrong here, over $2 million already given them $2 million to install this thing that they had asked for. And for all the reasons we all can speculate why it never got pushed through. It never got pushed through even though they're sitting on $2 million of our money. So I'd like to think that's some leverage to say, "hey, guys, you guys have had this $2 million for a long time, how soon can you put this in?" It's not going to be very costly for us since we already front-loaded the bulk of the funds to put this in to close the loop and pay for the balance. I think it's like $200,000 or $300,000 left to pay them. But as I mentioned in the conference call or in my statements, we're now able to set up, and that's what our team is trying to do, set up a construction, a preconstruction call with NV Energy to get some clarity on timing. This just happened 2 days ago, John. So, I don't have -- yes, I don't have the answers. We got this information just a couple of days ago and put it out in the press release yesterday. So it's a little bit in flux, but what's wonderful is we're going to save on cost. And that's good for the long term. It also might free up. We can maybe take one of our generators, depending on timing over to one of our satellite properties and not have to buy more generators or as many anyway. So anyway, it's just a good thing all the way around. It makes my head spin to think what -- how inefficient is a country when you can't get a power line in, in 4 years. Again, coming back to the previous administration and prepay it to the tune of millions. It's not like we were being cheap or they didn't have money to do it. We paid them the money to do it. So it just shows you and underscores for me how awful the previous administration was on all fronts. I mean, my associate, Greg did right by having me exclude some stuff out of my pre written statements. But I'll say it now. We now are all waking up to the fact that, that President wasn't even running the country. He wasn't cognitively around for the most part, and it was his team. I mean, no wonder we couldn't get permits. No wonder we couldn't get power line we paid for put in until this new administration comes in and, boom, it's like a light switch. The week after -- I said this on the last conference call, the week after he was elected, he wasn't even in yet, and the BLM changed their tune immediately. So I just think it's great and it gives a lot of hope and positivity to the resource space again, which was lacking under the previous one.

Sure. So just kind of to wrap that part of that question up. So when you've got a meeting coming up with NRV, right? And will -- do you feel that they will give you some sort of an idea of what the evaluation time line construction might be? I mean, if they say, we're going forward on this, we're going to get it done, do you think that they will -- you'll get better clarity on when that might be up and running that will.

Yes, I hope so. I would hope so...

Would you put something out -- do you think you'll put something out to as like a press release or...

Like a construction start, yes, possibly...

Yes. Yes.

Yes. Having been involved in an absolutely major power line crossing Southern Mexico from a really remote transfer station across some of the roughest Canyon country there is in Oaxaca, Mexico and watching the Mexican energy companies crush it. They crush that. Like once they got permission, they put that thing in, in some of the most remote toughest country in such short order. Now you look at where we are. We are relatively flat. We're across the highway from a major transfer station. It shouldn't take long. I mean I don't want to be held to this, but in no world should this take more than a couple of months. Like that would be generous. I mean there -- it's not like we're going very far to the transfer station. You go from that transfer station to the highway and you go down the easement on the highway and over to Isabella Pearl, and it's not very far. So I can't imagine a world in which once the powers of [indiscernible] be are motivated, they can't get this thing done in short order. We just don't know when that is.

Let's say you have a problem with the line. Let's say you have a problem with the supply line, the lines -- the physical lines themselves to hook it up.

Yes. We have no indication of that at all. But -- yes, we don't have any indication.

Data centers, I guess, is what I'm kind of hinting at.

Yes, like Bitcoin miners and stuff pulling energy, who knows? Yes, we'll just see. But all the interaction we've had with them over the years because believe me, we've had a lot enough to where we're getting invoices and paying $2 million yet nothing is getting done. Never once did it come up that they're not going to have enough energy for us. That would be a kick in the teeth at this point. Like I know...

I meant the physical lines, the actual connectivity, connecting the line.

The poles and wires and stuff.

Yes, right, because that's somewhat of an issue, too. Okay. Well, That's good. Hopefully by the end you'll have it.

I hope it better be. Again, we’ve paid them already.

It's a question to ask to them when you have your meeting.

I appreciate that, John. Did you have another question?

Yes, I sure did. So if I'm understanding kind of the time line of the various activities, you're continuing to deepen the pit at IP, you've got Scarlet. And hopefully, let's assume say for a second, you get the County Line permit to go forward. Conceivably, then you could possibly have 2 or 3 operations going on where you're actually pulling ore and sticking it on -- putting it on the leach pads. Is that -- am I kind of understanding that correctly?

Yes, but it probably won't be more than 2. Like originally, you've followed us long enough, John, to know we always intended to layer at least one on top of the other, and we're trying to get back to that. So where I see in the near future is a strong possibility, assuming we get Scarlet South permitted and brought in under the mine plan, which things are moving in that regard well, we would be mining deep in Pearl while taking that -- because it gets tighter and tighter, the deeper you go. So you have availability with the equipment to just have them drive over 700 meters and start working on Scarlet South and then go back and forth and back and forth. That I see happening hopefully in the near future. while we're working on County Line. But again, coming back to what I stated earlier, we don't expect to be deep in the Pearl past midyear next year at the latest probably. So we'll be done down there. So at that point, then you're still pulling from Scarlet, hopefully and County Line adding new. And then eventually, just County Line, while we permit, which we are actively trying to permit Scarlet North. That will be a little more in depth because it's -- this is a different area, and we can't pull it into the mine plan as easy because it wasn't originally included in the boundaries of the mine plan. So it's a little more in depth. But that would be another layering, if you will, once we get permission to do that. But we're a ways from that. We're ways from Golden Mile, but we're working on all of them now, and they are looking at them all, which is great. So again, our goal is to try to permit everything we can before the next federal election in case it swings back to an anti-mining, anti-business stance. And hopefully, we have a handful of permits that we can weather that storm, too.

Right. One last quick one, and that is, you had mentioned that -- and I know this, you're not able to do -- able to mine and process sulfide ores. Has there been any interest from any of the companies operating in the area that do have that capability to look at this Isabella Pearl asset to where you could perhaps get some residual monetization of it?

Yes. A, I'm limited on what I can say, but B, there are groups that have seen some of the high grade we hit deeper, and I'm sure they're looking -- watching. But yes, who knows? I mean, if gold keeps screaming like it's doing and these big companies, the biggest ones out there in Nevada that have the processes to actually be able to extract the gold out of the sulfide ore, who knows? Maybe they need -- what we know in the past, they needed to feed, maybe they get more interested. I don't know, but that's not our game plan. I don't want anybody on this call to think that we're going to do anything with that.

No, I understand that. If prices keep going up, then obviously, just like deepening the Pearl pit, right? I mean, it was all a matter of pricing of -- gold prices. So play fun with numbers and decide what number do you want to put on it? And when does it become attractive to somebody to come in here and say, okay, yes, we'd like to work a deal with you. So Okay, very good. That answers the question.

Appreciate it. I'm going to get back to some of the questions on the writing. Any update on the Golden Mile permit? This is again from Ray Lieb. Yes, they're looking at it finally. So as I mentioned earlier in the call, to find out kind of at the end of Biden's term that they didn't even look at it. It was heartbreaking after 2 years, they sat on their hand. But one of the things we're finding with these permits that we turned in years ago that then they didn't even look at is that then they come back and say, well, in those 2 years, hey, we've implemented this new borrowing out issue. So you didn't do an analysis on the burrowing out when you turned yours in. Now we obviously didn't because that wasn't part of the permitting process. But you need to do that now. And we've gone back and say, can't we be grandfathered in because that wasn't a regulation when we turned it in and you guys chose not to look at it for 2 years and can't we be grandfathered and not have to do that? And they're like, no. So we have to go back and do some of these new baseline background studies but I come back to the Theresa Stone-Mannings of the world, the BLM head under Biden, who is so anti-mining that is it a coincidence that they put in all these new burrowing out studies and all these things. That's how you grind permitting to a halt, and she did that successfully. So we're having to overcome some of these things they did from the point in time which we turned in the permit, they implemented new things. They didn't tell us, okay, we picked up your permit, now you didn't do those. Now we have to go back and do them. I mean that's the thing. That's the thing about the previous administer. I can't -- I could speak all day long on the headache that when you have an administration that doesn't want mining and wants to grind things to a halt, that's how they do it. And they do it without having to shut it down completely and say we're not going to issue anymore. They just make it so difficult. So we're having to go back and redo a lot of the Golden Mile stuff, which is a shame. Had they looked at it, picked it up and got it in the process, I would argue we could have got grandfathered in and have to do the new regulations. I just hope that the direction that the new administration is going, that NEPA thing I mentioned, even though that was on the energy side, that's the attitude is they know the system is broken, and they're trying to fix it. And that's what we need. All right, Ray. Hopefully, that gives you some insight, but they're looking at it at least. Another one from -- or not another one, but this is from Brian Mullen, Palm View Investments. For a new investor, very good color thus far on the call. What is the IP Bridge primary purpose? What I mean by the bridge is that you may have -- you probably heard me address this in one of the previous questions is we had to make the decision, do we stop everything or do we mine deep? And because the gold price was higher, it made sense, we could go chase this gold deep. It just gives us time. That's what the bridge is. It just buys us time. It just interject time with bridge. It buys us more time to put up with the BS that the previous administration put us through, not issuing permits to get the permits from this administration is pro. So that's what that is. Hopefully, that answers your question. Your second part of your question, is it to bridge resources, keep resources active or get cash generated? It's just cash to stay in business so that we find the next Isabella Pearl or that we find a 1 million ounce plus over at East Camp or that we find these big deposits that we have potential to find but we need to be in the game long enough to find them. So let me use that as a segue into Isabella Pearl. If all we had as a company was Isabella Pearl, we'd have a very exciting story. When you look at what's happened in this trend, Homestake mined across the highway. They're no longer mining there but Homestake is an old mining company that mined over 300,000 ounces across the highway in a deposit called the Santa Fe. And then a couple of stone throws away, you cross the highway and you hit Isabella Pearl, and we're going to do over 200 plus. Well, we have locked up on this trend, 10 kilometers of this trend that the company controls. I believe there will be more Isabella Pearls -- the question is who will find them. There'll be another Santa Fe on this trend. The question is who will find it. So the bridge is the time. It just buys us time through a rough administration to be - and stay in business to find these bigger deposits. We can find 1 or 2 more Isabella Pearls, my goodness. Yes, that would be wonderful. And that's our goal. So we have this area, just 700 meters from Isabella Pearl called Scarlet South and Scarlet North. Are we on the edge of perhaps another Isabella Pearl or Santa Fe? Maybe, maybe not. But what we do know is there's gold mineralization at surface and near surface, and we're going to mine it. And we have to move quick. We don't have years to delineate, drill it out and all this. We don't have that time. So we have to move quick and start mining it while we continue to generate cash, while we continue to explore, but hopefully, we find one of these, another one. And hopefully, there's several more. I'm convinced there'll be numerous. It's just we want to be the ones to find them, not some other company. So hopefully, that gives you some insight. The last part of your question of both, then does it tilt one way or the other? I guess I'm not. No. Okay. That had to do with cash generation resources. So sorry, I don't -- yes, it's all about cash. Okay. Moving on to the -- let's make this our last question. This is going longer than I thought. T. Stuerek, a shareholder. Are you expecting a need for any external financing capital or capital for development of the new mines and projects until cash flow develops? Thanks for the question, T. Stuerek. We do have cash flow, first of all, albeit it's not as much as we used to have, but we do have cash flow. We're trying to manage our cash so that we don't have to dilute. So my goal would be that we don't have to rely on any external financing or capital. We'd like to continue to do it in-house. We still want to be a dividend company if we can be. And yes, we want to keep a tight capital structure to do it. So plan A, B and C of this is to do it with cash flow. If we have to go into D, E, and F and have to do something, that's a discussion for another day. But right now, our goal is to do it with cash flow. So hopefully, that answers your question. Hey, this went on much longer than I thought. If you're in the queue on live or otherwise and you have a question that I didn't get to, feel free to pick up the phone, call Greg or myself. We're both in the office. We'll answer. We'll get to any questions that we didn't get to on this call. But with that, let's -- operator, if you can close out the call, and thank you, everybody, for joining the conference, and we look forward to updating you on the next quarter. Thank you.

Thank you, everyone. This does conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time, and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.