Generation Mining Limited (9GN.F) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

I'll say good morning, good afternoon, good evening, depending on where in the world you're in from today. I saw at least one person from Sri Lanka. Good night to you. I hope you're doing well. Today, I'm joined by Jamie Levy, CEO of Generation Mining; and Kerry Knoll, the company's Chairman. Jamie Kerry how are you guys today?

Great.

Doing well [indiscernible] update Romeo, that's very good. Copper, palladium are up, our stock, I like it.

This is the time to do [indiscernible]. Feels good. So here's going to work for the folks in the room. Gentlemen from Generation Mining are going to give a brief presentation. Then I've got a couple of questions for them, but this is also an interactive event. So we will be taking questions from the live audience. [Operator Instructions]. If for whatever reason we don't get to your question or it's way off topic or there just isn't time, I'll make sure that the team gets the transcript of Generation Mining, and they'll be able to get back to you at their leisure. Only other piece of housekeeping before we get into the [ protein ] of today's events is that this is being recorded and will be available for replay probably at about 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time. It will pop right in your inbox. It will also be available on 6ix's YouTube channel. But enough out of me. I'm going to pass it to Kerry and Jamie to get started with the presentation today.

Thanks, Romeo, and welcome, everybody. There's a forward-looking statement that's available on our website, if you want to review that independently. We're here to talk about Generation Mining, obviously, and we have kind of a combination of new people, new followers and long-term followers. So I'm just going to give a quick background on the company for the new people, and then we're going to get into what we're doing now and what's coming up in the next year or so. So I think some of you know we're in a Tier 1 jurisdiction. Our project is in Northwestern Ontario, right on the TransCanada Highway. It's one of the very, very few shovel-ready mining projects in Canada because we have all of our permits. I believe we are the only permitted and unbuilt critical mineral mine in the country. And we're trading at a substantial discount to our peers, right around 12% of our net present value based on our most recent feasibility study. The average in our kind of category is 30% to 60%. And so there's still -- even though our shares have had a pretty good run this year, they've got a lot of room to go. And also very, very important, we have a lot of support from the local indigenous community, the town of Marathon and both federal and provincial government. I never in 40 years in mining, seen such a strong support. We have 3 metals -- 3 main metals that we're going to be producing. And the palladium and copper are kind of equal currently at today's spot prices in terms of revenue. So palladium, I think a lot of you know, palladium is used in catalytic converters in cars. And it had a bit of a bad [ wrap ] for a while when everybody thought electric cars were taking over. That turns out not to be true. And in fact, what's happening is hybrids are way more popular than electric cars and hybrids actually use more palladium than a regular internal combustion engine car. Also, the emission standards in both China and Europe are increasing and the loadings of palladium in those automobiles will be continuing to rise. Another thing that's happened is over the last 3 or 4 years, about -- of the 10 million ounces of palladium that is consumed in an average year, about 1 million of that went over to platinum. When platinum was lower priced than palladium, they started substituting it because it substitutes fairly well in catalytic converters. Well, that's now changing back. So that's going to be a huge -- it's over -- well over 1 million ounces switched over. So that's 10% of the market, and that's going to be really good for palladium in the coming year as that switch, it doesn't happen overnight. It's going to take a year or more to happen. It needs regulatory approval, et cetera. And then on the copper side, we've got -- I think most of you know, if you're investing in junior mining that copper is predicted to hit a wall in the next year to 2 years. There's not enough copper in the world to transition the whole fleet to electric cars. There's not enough copper to power all these data centers and hook up new solar and wind mills, like it just everything needs copper, and there isn't enough copper. There's very little new copper mining coming on stream in the next 5 years. And yet the increase in copper consumption continues to go up 2% and 3% every year, and that's got to come from somewhere. So that's one of the reasons for the firmness in the copper price, but it's going to continue, we think, and it's going to dovetail really well into our first couple of years of production. And then platinum which is a much more minor metal in our mix, but it's still at today's prices would add about $60 million a year in byproduct revenue. And of course, platinum (Sic) [ Palladium ] has had the best run of these metals this year. It's up 76% year-to-date. Platinum, on the other hand, is up 36% year-to-date. Copper is up 24% year-to-date. It's been a pretty good year for us, and that's been reflected in our share price has doubled, but I think it's got a long way to go. Next slide.

And Kerry, sorry, if you just mentioned the Grasberg shutting down as well recently, the force majeure, some of the firmness and then obviously, that black swan event with Kamoa and Cobre Panama all shutting down here.

Yes. There's been a lot of disruption in the copper market. Grasberg had a land slide that is taking about 1/3 of its production off stream probably into 2027. You've got, of course, Cobre Panama, you've got that shutdown in Chile due to an accident. And then you've got Constancia mine in Peru has been shut down by protesters, and nobody knows how long that's going to last. So there's been a lot of disruption lately. So I mentioned before, we were on the TransCanada highway. I don't think you could locate a mine in a much better place, Canada. We've got all the infrastructure. You hear about the Ring of Fire or some of these things happening up in the Arctic. But we've got all the access that we need. We've got TransCanada Highway. We've got the CPR main line comes right across our property. We're just 10 kilometers from the town of Marathon, which supplies the Hemlo mine, a population of about 3,000. There's a new power line that was built a couple of years ago that goes right over our property. We're going to have all grid power coming from essentially the Bruce Peninsula. So it's low carbon power. We already have purchased a 276-bed construction camp from the construction of that power line, and it's in the town. We're going to need more, but that's a start for us. And then we've also got a lot of towns and communities nearby, not just Marathon, but there's a few other towns that can supply workers as well. So we're really, really in a really good situation. Plus we've got a provincial government that is very, very pro-mining at this point. Now I'm going to turn it over to Jamie to talk about the feasibility study, which we updated in March of this year.

Thanks, Kerry. Our latest feasibility, which we released earlier 2025, March 2025 shows quite robust economics using a 3-year trailing average pricing, just over $1 billion NPV after-tax IRR, just over 28% initial capital, as you can see here, just under $1 billion and a very short payback of just under 2 years here. Kerry has adjusted some of the payable metals that we had. And you can see it's a fairly large-sized project of just over 168,000 ounces of palladium a year and 42 million pounds of copper a year. So it's about 20,000 tonnes of copper. It's not a world-class deposit like Grasberg and Kamoa and Cobre Panama, but it's certainly nice economics there of 40 million pounds and copper is approaching $5 a pound. So revenue from the palladium and copper is quite substantial there. As you can see, our all-in sustaining cash cost for palladium and copper quite low there. It's quite a profitable project. The feasibility studies, if we were to look at today's prices, we'd be over our feasibility study prices with copper just, I guess, copper is around $480 and palladium is around $12.75 and the U.S. dollar, Canadian dollar is a little bit higher than where we had in our feasibility study. So economics are quite robust, and we're ready to start getting going on this project. What we get asked a lot of questions is, where we are in the financing. This is an ongoing -- our conversations we're having with investors, with the critical metal government funding and strategic partners. But as mentioned to your -- our initial capital is just under $1 billion. We could break it down with a $200 million from Wheaton Precious, which we announced a stream with them a couple of years ago where they would give us $240 million on construction. We've already drawn down $40 million, another $200 million is coming in on a financial investment decision. We had released a while ago that we have a syndicate [indiscernible] led by Société Générale, ING and Export Development Corporation for just around USD 400 million. We're just trying to work on definitive documents with them now. Safe is our ongoing independent engineer reports, and we're hoping that we can get credit approval, if not later on this fall or winter, early next year, but we're pushing that ahead. We are formalizing our offtakes. We had mentioned we had an offtake 50% going to a European smelter and the other 50% going to Glencore down the road. And then we did press release that we have about a $200 million in subordinated debt unsecured, and we're looking to finalize that. So within the next couple of months, we'd like to have all of these and some other funding out there so we could tell the investors that we're basically in a financial investment decision here. So there's lots of interest on the critical metal funding. As Kerry -- as a large shareholder, I'm a fairly large shareholder. dilution is a key for us to minimize it. So we'd like to get as much grants and low unsecured debt as we can on this project. What we get asked a lot of time is where do we stack up against some of the copper and palladium producers are out there or developers. Very hard for us to comp against palladium because there's very few of them other than Bravo and maybe Platinum Group Metals. But obviously, those are not in Canada. But here are some North American projects relative to your net present value, your EV to your net present value, your p/NAV. As you can see here, we're near the far right there. So we're less than 10% here shown around 22% is based on our NAV, but our price to our net present value is just over 12% right now. And I could just keep going into our comps here, but you can see it online, but we're fairly cheap relative to where we should be. Lots of Analysts think we should be trading somewhere between 60% to 80% of our net present value. I hear other guys saying around 40% to 60% based on our last feasibility study of $1 billion and our market cap just over $100 million, we certainly should be trading at a much higher valuation than we are right now. But I just have someone that walked into my office here, and I thought maybe I could introduce you all. He just happened to have an 11:00 meeting, and he's been staring to me for the past couple of minutes. And I thought maybe it's a good time that I could introduce you all to the Mayor of Marathon. Speaking about Marathon, Rick is here.

Well, good morning, everybody, and thanks, Jamie. It's nice to be here. I'm down in Toronto doing a meeting with [ Amo ] and I thought I'd reach out to Jamie this morning, come to the office and pop in, we're doing a webinar on the Generations project in Marathon Ontario. I just want to take the opportunity to thank Generation, obviously, a good corporate citizen. They have great relationships with the town of Marathon and of course, our First Nations neighbors just down the road, [indiscernible] Anishinaabe. The project, what it means to Marathon is huge. I mean, obviously, construction will bring in a huge amount of employees coming through over a 2- to 3-year project, 800 to 900 employees through that process, maybe a little higher, maybe a little lower based on what Jamie's new feasibility study looks like in Generations. Talking about the impact Marathon will have, obviously, 400 to 450 direct jobs for a decade or better, 14, 15 years, whatever it looks like in regards to continue on exploration. So we're really excited, and we look forward to -- Marathon is a mining community now. I really appreciate that. We were a paper pulp community built on paper laced with gold as local goes. Now we're going to be built on paper, laced with gold and a lot of copper, platinum and palladium mixed into that. So we're excited about Generation. We have a great relationship with Jamie and Kerry, and we look forward to the construction start as soon as possible and hopefully, through the process, working with the Ontario and Canadian governments, we get this project and shovel ready and get it going and start cutting trees and start making things happen. So we're looking forward to it, very excited. Glad to be here, and I have, like I said, great relationship with Generation. They're in Marathon talking to us all the time, making sure we're fully aware of the project. So excited to be here. I just want to say hi to everybody and thank Generation for being in the corporate citizen they are. Thanks, Jamie. Thanks, everybody. Have a good day. .

Thanks, Rick. You're welcome for the free coffee. Sorry about that. And I think that's it for our presentation here. Romeo, what are some questions that we have from the audience?

Awesome. So I've got a couple of questions first and some of the ones that came in over e-mail, but then I will get to all the great questions that are in the chat. People are pleased to see Rick, so the support is huge. So I appreciate that. But I got a couple of questions. I know we've kind of touched on some of them already, but I'm eager to just kind of put a fine point on them for the investors in the room. Obviously, as you just said or as the last slide has just kind of outlined, Generation Mining is trading at a discount to peers despite having completed feasibility study, secured the construction permits. So I got kind of 2 questions for both of you. And that's what do you believe the market is missing or overlooking? And then what's going to bridge that valuation gap? What are the steps that it's going to take to get folks to see what's going on here?

Kerry, you want to go first?

Well, I don't know that the market is necessarily missing it, but I think one of the things Jamie touched on during the presentation was that palladium has very few comparables. And there's nobody ready to build a palladium mine anywhere that we're aware of. Ivanhoe has one in South Africa that's almost going into production, but that's a fairly small part of that company's portfolio. And -- but we're here to shout from the rooftops that palladium is actually increasing in consumption and decreasing in production. As you may know, about 80% of it comes from South Africa and Russia. The South African grades are declining. They have all sorts of water and electricity issues. Russia, of course, keeps getting threatened with sanctions. If that happens, it's game over for palladium in North America because we get a lot of ours from Russia. The other thing that I think that possibly people are missing or not missing, but are sitting back and waiting to see is that we -- how can a company with $120 million market cap raise $1 billion. But I'm just here to say we've done that before in my career, and we are going to do it. The money is starting to line up, and it's just going to take a few more months to put it all together, but it is going to happen, and then we're going to build the mine.

I know you guys -- Generation Mining is positioned as Canada's next critical minerals mine. At a time, copper and palladium are facing different market dynamics, but both currently looking very positive, copper driven by electrification, palladium by that hybrid vehicle transition. So my question is, how do you see these 2 different demand stories playing out over the course of the entire mine life?

Well, copper, first of all, is projected to be in a deficit for the foreseeable future. So we can't emphasize enough that Canada needs copper. Canada doesn't have enough copper compared to what it consumes. It is a significant copper producer, but not -- it needs more and especially with -- we're not going to be getting it from the United States. We're not -- can't rely on it from China. So we got to supply our own. And as far as palladium goes, the only palladium mine that operates in Canada is the Lac des Iles project, not far from ours, and they've announced that they're closing. They -- owners of that have not put any investment into it for the last several years in development, and they've got to the point where it's going to be closing. And so Canada -- if Canada needs palladium for catalytic converters for our automobile industry and does not want to rely on Russia, we need to get our own. And that's one of the reasons the governments are so supportive of what we're doing.

And if I could just add on too. I mean, you mentioned that these are critical metals. I mean, I'm certain to think that they're more strategic metals and they are critical metals. Having to rely on Russia to supply the rest of the world for the catalytic converters seems quite risky nowadays. Trump came out the other day mentioning why the EU is supporting the war efforts because they're buying all the oil and natural gas from Russia. So it's only a matter of time, I believe, before someone realizes, wow, Russia produces 40% of the palladium and who's buying it, the EU, Canada, U.S., all the Western world. So whether it gets sanctioned or tariff, I don't know. But at the end of the day, I think that the Canadian government, federal government, provincial government, the DOE in the U.S., whoever it might be, will help support projects like ours that are shovel-ready to get these strategic metals. So we don't have to rely on Russia or South Africa to produce these metals.

No, makes sense. That's certainly the way that the direction of the conversation is headed, particularly in North America. Now I want to talk specifics on financing. I know you guys have a mandate letter for that $540 million in project finance and are discussing $200 million in subordinated debt. I'd love if you could walk us through the financing time line and what market conditions or project milestones need to align for you to close this funding?

I'll take First step with that or stab with that. We've had these mandate letters with the banks for a while. We were not waiting for a better market, but we were waiting to get all the permits. We received all the permits, I guess, when was it, May of this year? So once we receive those permits, then we become shovel-ready. That's the time where we pick up the phone and called our Endeavor Financial is helping us up with the project financing, okay, what are the next steps we need to do to get the banks up on site. So we updated our feasibility, as we mentioned earlier in the presentation. So now the banks have to go back and look at that feasibility study, look at the numbers to make sure that it's at a level that they're happy with. So they're doing their work on that, independent engineers, and we're hopeful that we can get some definitive documents and credit approval, as I mentioned earlier, if not later this year, early next year. So that would be the time that we would want to start to make that financial investment decision that all the monies come in from as you mentioned, the $200 million in subordinated debt and have the offtakes all done. So there's lots of work to be done. But in today's market where this project is as robust as it is and it's getting the bright lights on it for being the only shovel-ready project that I know of in Ontario, maybe only in Canada, certainly only in North America palladium copper. So this project is going to get some interest, I believe, in the future.

Awesome. Kerry, I want to speak to something you mentioned earlier, which is that you've done this before. I wanted to zoom out and talk about your experience just for a second, if I can gas up your past accomplishments for a second. I know you built several successful mining companies, including Wheaton River, Thompson Creek. What lessons from those experiences are you applying to GENM? And how is today's mining development environment and financing environment different to when you started those companies?

Interestingly, I have only seen one market as good as this one in the 35 or 37 years I've been doing this, and that was in 2005, '06, '07, just before the crash. And it actually resumed in 2010 and '11 and then it kind of died for a dozen years. But -- so in terms of the market, how is it compared to the past, it's a phenomenal market right now raising money for building lines. The big change that we've had since -- in Canada, at least since that time is how supportive the governments are. The governments were kind of reluctantly approving us in the past. Now they're endorsing us. on the floor of Parliament. It's something that I've never seen before. So we've got that change happening. We've obviously got strong metal prices as well. So it's a really good time to be doing this. As far as lessons from the past, I mean, you've got to raise this money when it's there because in mining, it's not there always. And that's why we're working hard to get that, and we hope to have it all locked up early in the new year at the latest.

Great. Jamie, I want to throw it to you for a second. As you look at the energy transition accelerating globally, how are you seeing Generation Mining's role evolving? Are you positioned more as a copper story, a PGM story, something else entirely? Kind of what's your vision for how to position the company?

I think it depends what's up more that day. So today, palladium is up more, so we're a palladium sorry. No, it's nice to have this polymetallic deposit where we have copper, we have palladium, we have platinum, we have gold and we have silver. So we have all these commodities. We're not relying on one asset. I hope they all go up. But we're producing one concentrate. And whatever price it is, it is, we know at today's price, it's economic. We believe the prices are going higher. forecast seem to be higher. There was a note that I saw yesterday from Metals Focus talking about palladium. Sorry to get sidetracked on your question. And they said the inflows of the palladium ETF, and I don't know what ETF was, it came from TD node is at the highest level since 2018. And that's an important year for us because that's actually the year that we optioned the project from Sibanye at the end of '18, '19, and that's when palladium was trading below $1,000 before it had its first takeoff. And remember Kerry saying to me at one point, he goes, "I don't think Sibanye is going to sell it because palladium just went through $1,000 first time in a long time", and then it kind of settled down. And then once we close the deal, that's when it really took off to $2,000, $3,000 an ounce. So I guess my point being is that these inflows are probably smart money, and they smell that the lack of supply is out there and the increasing demand is coming in the hybrid vehicle. So palladium could have a nice little run coming up. in the near term. But going back to your question about metals, I just -- I think they're all going to go up. I think as Kerry mentioned earlier, I think copper has the most leverage to going up and 40 million pounds of copper-ish a year and trading at $5, $6 a pound or whatever your analysts are, it's a lot of revenue per year for copper. So we have 13 years in our feasibility study. We have a lot more than that in this project. It's over 260 square kilometers, a huge strike length of over 30 kilometers, and we've only really scratched the surface on our Marathon deposit. So we've got a lot of upside here as well.

Great. And sticking to micro for a second. How does the depressed price of PGMs over the last couple of years, in your opinion, affect the future supply of the same materials?

Well, I will start and then Kerry, you can finish off. But Kerry and I had quite a busy dance card down in Beaver Creek, like most other companies did. And one of our meetings was with a -- I don't want to call it a competitor because it was very -- it was another palladium producer -- or sorry, a developer, and we were just passing sharing ideas, and they were mentioning to us that they had heard that a lot of the South African producers had been -- I don't know, neglectful is the right word, but had been not doing the enough underground exploration or development over the depressed prices. So whether it's selective mining or high-grade mining, unsure. But I think a lot of the potential development for expansion underground has been reduced because of the depressed price of palladium -- or PGMs for that matter. So when you're mining underground, you need to keep doing underground exploration and development when you don't, when you're just mining what you have, there's still reserves, but it takes some time to get the metal out of that ground. So Kerry, anything to add?

On top of that, you've seen the announcement, of course, that Lac des Iles is closing and the Stillwater cut back more than half of its employees in Montana as a result of the lower prices. And that, of course, is impacting the development there and will certainly affect the long-term production, if not the viability of the mine entirely.

And Romeo, sorry, just -- you asked a question about Kerry, and I just want to answer something that he left out, which I think is important about his successes in the past, what he's done and why these companies were successful. And I think what we're -- next step is not only getting the project financing, we're trying to bring in a good owners team or a great owners team. And I think that's where Kerry has been successful or has been successful in the past. Robert Freeland has been really good in the past by hiring the best. And we look to announce in the next couple of months, if not sooner, that we are bringing in an owner's team that has much construction experience, operating experience, the whole gamut. We had a few people look at them and one of the individuals that helped us interview these people said, you guys hit the jackpot in these people because we have construction to projects to operations to even human resources. So I know Kerry has always stressed that is important. And so since the departure of our old CEO earlier this year, we've been actively looking. And I think the market is going to be pleasantly surprised by hopefully, again, it's a forward-looking statement, but I'm hopeful that we could get that over the line. Kerry, anything to add on that?

But you're right about a successful mining company. A lot of the really savvy investors out there will tell you that the deposit is extremely important, but the team is more important. And if you've looked at some of the successful mining companies, that's why. You have to get the best people. And fortunately, we're in Canada. There's a lot of projects in some very remote parts of the world that aren't as attractive to work in. These -- our staff can all live in Toronto if they choose and just commute back and forth to the site.

One question I wanted to ask, actually, Jamie, you mentioned being at Beaver Creek. I'd love to know what generally the interest you were getting from investors was like at the conference. I'll say from my perspective, it's the first time into a mining conference where the average person seemed happy. So that was certainly unusual. But I'll throw it to you for what was interest like at the show.

I can't remember, but I think we had 3, 3.5 days of meetings, so whether it was 50, 60 meetings, and I give them credit. I mean, every hallway, every closet, every room that I thought couldn't be used for a room. These guys -- Beaver Creek had needed it for a room. So I mean the sentiment was very optimistic. A lot of the interest was in gold and silver. But I think a lot of people started to take notice to our valuation, started to take notice that palladium and platinum are precious metals, and they've been undervalued. And I think people obviously forgot that we are a copper developer as well. So we're getting lots of interest from different people, and I think the critical strategic metal angle is very interest. And I think as Kerry stressed on our Slide 5 or whatever it was about the jurisdiction with having support from the Mayor, Rick, the First Nations, being where we're at, we're -- it's nice to have that Tier 1 jurisdiction. So lots of interest, and I think there's only going to be more optimism and momentum in our share price going ahead.

I think the results also speak for themselves in terms of the volume and our shares. We've had record volumes, trading up to 3 million, 3.5 million shares a day in the time since the Beaver Creek. And that, I think, reflects a lot of the response we were getting there.

Scoreboard is usually a good indicator. So fair enough. I do want to talk about copper real quick just because Jamie just mentioned it. I know with Hudbay and Capstone hitting 52-week highs, the recent Freeport-Grasberg force majeure incident, copper price obviously had debentures this year. Curious what your view on the macro is for the rest of the year for copper and going into next year.

Well, just to add on there, it wasn't only Capstone and Hudbay that hit 52-week highs. There's a stock name symbol GENM Generation Mining trading on the TSX that hit a 52-week high.

I've heard of that one.

So it wasn't just those 2 larger copper companies. But the copper outlook is -- I don't know who hasn't become positive, is getting more and more positive now, especially with the Black Swan event yesterday of Grasberg. So I don't see any downside really rest of the copper here. There's -- as Kerry mentioned before, there's very little development exploration going on or anything near term. So I think we're the nearest term project that's out there. The only other project I know in Canada that's getting built right now is Foran, and then we'd be right after them producing a similar amount of copper to them. So I think the outlook for copper is quite bullish.

Awesome. I will jump into some questions that came in, in advance over e-mail, and then I'll try to get to as many in the chat that I can that we didn't already cover in questions. If you feel like I'm not covering your question, please do bug me in the chat, and we'll try to get to it today. One question that came in over e-mail is, Jamie, are you interested in having an open to the public meeting in Marathon. The person who writes in is a previous town counselor and notes that he's been involved with the project for the past several years. He's just curious if that's something you'd be open to.

Absolutely. we're in the town all the time, and my phone number was on that last slide there. People can reach out to me any time. So as they can see the Mayor was just in town. So if there's anybody that needs us, I'm going to be in town next week. So if they want to chat with me, let me know.

Perfect. The next one I'll ask is really just a combination of, I think, about 15, 20 people's questions that popped in over e-mail. So I'll try to combine them all into one if you feel like I'm not asking a precise question, let me know in the chat. But basically, when is this project going to be shovel-ready to the best guess of yours available?

Well, it's technically shovel-ready now, I guess, is the word because of all the permits. But again, we've talked about a few times. I think early next year would be the date that we would hope to get starting construction. So whether it's January or late spring -- or sorry, early spring, but that's the timing that we're aiming towards get the banks all through and then to raise the final money to get this thing to make a financial investment decision.

Yes. But we can't start construction until we have all of the money in place. I've seen companies start before they've done that, and that can be very dangerous.

That's a good note. Doug from the chat asks, where does the detailed design work sit today? So...

Jamie, do you want to answer that?

Go ahead...

So we updated the feasibility study. We had it about 50% done a couple of years ago, but then we updated it and we made some changes. So that would put it back down to probably 30% is my guess. And we don't want to start construction until we're at 60%, 65%. So that will ramp up. As soon as the money is in place, that will ramp up. And so that will happen as we upgrade the roads, as we cut down the trees, getting it ready for construction, that detailed engineering will be completed.

Great. T Mikel -- sorry, go for it, Jamie, if you got something else.

No, I was just going to say, Doug, I mean, stay tuned. I mean, whether we're at 15% or 30% detailed engineering now, it's a feasibility study level. The new team, the owners team that we're talking about, construction team, we're going to have a better visibility on that in the next month or 2. So stay tuned, and you can reach out to us then, but we're actively trying to increase that level of confidence in the detailed engineering, and we're going to do that in the coming months to get up to a level that's more comfortable than this level to start construction.

Great. T Mikel from the chat asks kind of a political question, so if [indiscernible] your IR team for a second. But how are the Trump tariffs going to come into play for Generation Mining?

Who's that?

T Mikel from the chat.

Trump. We've been looking at the tariffs. A lot of -- the U.S. doesn't really manufacture or produce anything that we might be purchasing. If some of the Caterpillar equipment might be purchased in there, maybe we'll look for an alternative. But so far, most of our costs are labor in the feasibility study and the labor has obviously already gone up due to the pandemic and, which we have reflected in there, but that's Canadian prices. So a lot of the stuff is made over in China or made over in South America. So not much is produced in -- or manufactured in the U.S. these days. So I think it's minimal, but we will have more outlook on that when we do our Class 2 estimate prior to construction.

Perfect. I know you touched on it already, but there's a number of questions in the chat about it. So I'll just summarize into one. Once funding received and construction has begun, how long is it going to take to build the mine?

In our last study, I believe it was somewhere between 18 to 20 months to construct this. So if we started in the spring to summer of next year, I guess it would be 18 to 2 years after that time.

Perfect. Rick asked a question in the chat, and this might be one where you want to get back to them later, so let me know. But he asked, could you give us a calculation for the cost of the various metals in the ground and how that compares to other companies at this stage and companies in production?

Well, we did have a slide there that our ASICs for copper, I believe this is over $2 a pound and palladium, Kerry, do you have? -- was it $780...

$700, $800, yes.

Yes. So the costs are in there. So we'd be a fairly low-cost producer of PGMs. But again, it's a polymetallic deposit. So it's kind of hard to compare us to other projects that are out there. But if copper is at $5 and we're producing copper for $2 a pound equivalent, you could see that there's upside or palladium is at $781 and it's trading at $1,300, there's upside there as well. So...

The average cost of producing palladium outside of Russia, where it's a byproduct, the average cost of producing palladium in the world is over USD 1,000 an ounce. So we'd be in the first quartile.

Nice. One question. Has all the water needed to run the mine coming from the Pick River?

From the Pick River, I don't think any water is coming from the Pick River.

Great. One question. I think we've already touched on this, but I'll just throw it to you again. Given the strong market sentiment for copper compared to the outlook for palladium, could there be a strategic pivot towards copper by trying to get a streaming deal for palladium and to becoming a more primary copper mine?

These financial decisions, they're all valid. We're looking at everything. As mentioned to you, we have Endeavor Financial and another Canadian -- or a few Canadian banks and broker terms helping us on that financing. And when we're ready to announce that, we'll let the market know, but there's many non-dilutive ways that we could look to reduce dilution on our financing.

Great. One person from the chat asks, where do you feel like you can get the skilled trades you needed to build and operate the mine in a labor market like this?

Well, there was a few mines in Ontario that have finished construction over the last year. And therefore, there are people available currently. And I don't think that there's any mines slated to begin construction in the period of time between now and when we're intending to start. So I think that the market is actually slightly better than it was, say, a year or 2 years ago when Greenstone was being built, Magino was being built. We had Côte being built. There was a lot going on with the trades, but I think it's lightened up a little bit. And also with the demise of Lac des Iles, there's quite a -- there's like something like 700 workers there that will be looking for jobs.

And I mentioned to you before, I mean, the Mer Marathon is I guess, born and raised in Northern Ontario. He loves it up there. Many people do love it up there. I love it up there. To be in a town, our project, as Kerry mentioned to you, we're just around 10 kilometers away from the town of Marathon. People can live in a city if they want to raise their family in a city, a lot better than a lot of these other areas where you might fly and fly out. So we have that option. People can still fly in and fly out if they want to or drive in, drive out. But it's a really nice piece of the world to be in Marathon to have that town so close to our project.

That's great. That's good. Shuman from the chat asks, have you completed additional field work at Gordy Lake deposit this year?

We have not completed field work on it. We really like that potential of that project because it's very copper rich relative to the other project, but we're looking to do some [ dust ] studies on this project to be released soon enough on some of these results that we do have. But our focus is getting this project developed or built, financed. And after that, then we'll start doing some exploration work at Gordy and Sally and somewhere else just northern below [indiscernible] and other parts on this project. But the focus right now is on trying to get this built as I think most investors are waiting for us to get the project financed so we can get into a construction decision.

Great. Speaking of Sally, Fowler from the chat with a keen eye says, a diamond drill was recently seen heading to the Sally deposit. Curious if the company is going to be announcing plans for a fall/winter season or for additional satellite deposits.

I have no idea. I hope someone is drilling it for us, but it's not us drilling it. So...

Tony from the chat asks, Norilsk Nickel is the largest palladium producer in the world. Any comments on their plans or production profile?

Norilsk is a very, very unusual deposit. It's very rich in nickel. It's got copper, it's got palladium, it's got platinum. Palladium historically was a byproduct, but now it became a co-product when the price went up. In fact, it was more valuable than the nickel for a little while there. But that's not going anywhere. It's solid mine. It's going to be going for a long time. I don't think that production is going anywhere. The only thing that would disrupt it is if the U.S. decided to put sanctions on it over the Ukraine war, but that would probably be temporary. Incidentally, a delegation of politicians from Montana did go to the White House to petition Trump to sanction that palladium. And so -- and a lot of them were Republicans on the Trump side. So that's something that could conceivably happen, but it would be temporary if it did. I think that that's not something that you would expect to happen for 10 years. And frankly, if you put sanctions on all the Russia palladium and we're successful on keeping it out, there wouldn't be enough to build the cars that we have. we'd have to shut down some of the assembly lines.

Dave Ramsey in the chat has got a personal question for you, Jamie. He notes that you recently increased your stock holdings in GENM. Just curious what your motivation was to increase it now.

I guess there's -- I see good value in this asset. So as mentioned earlier, we're at Beaver Creek. And one of the companies we happen to see, just happened to have land next to what's the big rare earths in California Mountain Pass. They said they're ready to get rid of it for nothing and all of a sudden, they have a couple of hundred million dollar market cap on that. And not a drill hole on it, just being closeology play. So seeing lots of interest in mining, and I think this is one of the best stories out there. So I invest in other companies, and I think this is by far the cheapest stock out there. So if I have some extra money, why not invest this, but some money here.

Julian from the chat ask, how much is the equity component for the upcoming financing?

We don't have that information yet, but we're going to have to raise some equity, but it's TBD to find out if everybody could reach out to their local MPs or MPPs and say, help us out, then there will be less dilution. So we're going to get support from the federal and the provincial governments. I just don't know how much yet. Is it going to be $1? Is it going to be $0.5 billion. So like I'm hoping something in between, but -- and that's going to be how much equity we need to raise.

Perfect. Gene from the chat ask, can you speak to your current cash position and about the Wheaton extension?

I think our cash position, I could be wrong, is around $12 million, $13 I think we just raised -- what did we just raised $12.5 million. So we're not spending much money. Wheaton extension is, I guess, we're in a little bit of penalty because we hadn't started construction. Wheaton, we've talked to them, they're okay whether we could just defer it to later on. Wheaton doesn't really need the money right now. They want this project to get going. They're going to make a lot of money on this project, the gold and the platinum a lot higher than when we originally did the deal. So I'm not concerned with them. They're not into ownership, they're into partnerships. So they just partner with a group down the road from us at Hemlo. So there's lots of interest and lots of money that Wheaton has.

The -- I have to say about Wheaton, they're an exceptional partner to have. I have nothing but admiration for them.

Awesome. So this is the last chance to ask questions for the folks in the chat. But while we give those people the last opportunity, I'll ask each of you, starting with you, Kerry, what are you most excited about for the rest of the year at GENM?

Putting the financing package together. That's the driver for us, and I think it's going to happen.

Jamie...

Companies tend to get a serious re-rating in this market, not so much like 5, 6 years ago, but now in this market when the financing package is together, you've seen companies get super re-rating. So I'm excited about that as well.

Jamie, same question.

Same answer. I mean it's the aha moment. Everyone's been asking us for the past 5 years, when are you going to build it, when are you going to build it? And I think we're here the commodity prices are cooperating. The permits have cooperating to have the Mayor of Marathon to have Chief Michano, the First Nations on site. I mean, we want this build for them as much as we do want for the shareholders. The North Shore of Canada needs this. We, as a Canadian, Ontario, I'm proud to have this built. So we have our own strategic critical metals in our backyard and not having to rely on other people to supply this. So it would be a big win for Canada to get this project off the ground.

[indiscernible] Align. So I'll say, Jamie, Kerry, thank you so much for going through your presentation and letting me and the audience grill you for a good half hour. Really appreciate your time and all the additional context. For everybody in the room, I know there are a ton of you really appreciate asking questions and staying with us for the full 45 minutes. If you have any great questions you think of as soon as this event ends, as I often do, please do still send them in. I'll make sure the GENM team gets them and get back as soon as possible. But Jamie, Kerry, thank you so much. This is great.