i-80 Gold Corp. (IAU) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Well, thank you for coming, everybody. Nice to finally do one of these in person for a few years since the premier days. Thanks everybody who joined in on the webcast as well. Just reflecting on the presentation that we put together today, we're talking about our different sections, and how we're thinking about the company. And there are 3 key things come to mind for me when I think about this presentation, and what we're trying to do. So I think about growth, I think about executing on a plan and I think about opportunities. So when it comes to growth, we are talking about all the M&A that we've done this year, and Ewan's going to talk to that. Growth in our operations, and Matt's going to talk about the plan around that, how we're building our team and the operations there. And then obviously, the execute on the plan. So we set up a vision as a management team about a year ago, and we are executing on the plans to see that vision and become Nevada's second largest gold producer in the coming years. So we're working through that. And then finally, the opportunity. So opportunity -- not only the opportunity going [indiscernible] Nevada, but the opportunity through the expirations that we're doing, we're seeing some great results we had after close to date, and the opportunities that Matt is finding as we're developing our assets. Going to Slide 2. I know we just did the introductions of the Board and the management team. I'm going to do it for the sake of the webcast as well. So in the room with us, we have Greg Smith, who is the Director of ours; Eva Bellissimo; John Seaman; John Begeman who is back there; and Arthur is not here. Ewan Downie, CEO; Matt Gili, President and Chief Operating Officer; and Ryan Snow, Chief Financial Officer. I'm Matt Gollat, our Executive Vice President. On to the disclaimer. So we will be making forward-looking statements. So I urge you to read the disclaimer page, and reference the technical reports on the disclaimer page. So what is i-80? We think of i-80 in 4 key areas. We look at a company that is entirely focused on safe jurisdictions. We're entering Nevada-focused, arguably one of the most prolific gold districts on the planet. We've got infrastructure already in place. We've got a CIL plant, the AutoPlate [indiscernible] facilities and 10 facilities. And then we've got a, I would call, a pure best growth profile. The goal of reaching 400,000 ounces over the coming years, and we think we can get there with our current assets. And then we've got a sense of gold and silver resources. So over 6.4 million ounces in M&I in gold, and 8.14 million in silver. And then on top of that, we believe we're going to be creating a low-cost producer. So our PAs are showing less than $1,000 on sustaining costs. So with that, I'm going to bring on Ewan Downie to talk and address it.

Thank you, Matt, and I thank those for attending in person, and also those people who are here on the webcast. i-80 Gold is a year old. We just turned the year out in April. So we're a relatively new company following the takeover by Equinox of Premier. We spun out the Nevada assets that we have, but we've really had a tremendous first year as a company, I think. We made several in terms of business development, several key acquisitions. We acquired the Lone Tree Project, and project site that includes an autoclave in Nevada from Nevada Gold Mines. And this time will allow us to build our own destiny. It takes us out of being reliant so to speak on either First Majestic or Nevada Gold Mines to process refractory material, and makes us one of only 3 companies with that capability. We acquired as went public the Granite Creek project from Waterton, and we've had substantial exploration success there. I believe we're drilling off what we call the South Pacific zone as one of the highest grade deposits being drilled off anywhere in the world right now. We also acquired from Waterton the Ruby Hill project that I believe has the potential to become one of Nevada's next major gold mine. And Matt Gili is going to talk to you a bit more about some of the various opportunities that project offers to us, including metals diversification. We just announced this morning that we acquired the Argenta properties which provides us not only with water rights to advance our Cove Project with substantial infrastructure, including now a railway heading, so we can move concentrates of bulk commodities, et cetera, that we need for the mining operation. So pretty strategic not only for the water rights. And just yesterday, we announced that we acquired additional lands from Nevada Gold Mines late in the so-called Turquoise Ridge district where our Granite Creek project is. So we've had a really good first year in terms of making strategic deals that will allow us to grow this company on an expedited basis. We've had numerous exploration successes to date. Like I said, the key discovery, so to speak of the year, is the South Pacific zone at Granite Creek. And we acquired that project when we did our sort of exploration mining as we call it, and look at budgeting for each year. For 2021, the South Pacific zone picked as the #1 in target. So every year, we are willing to have a [indiscernible], and people say this is my favorite target. Both Tyler and myself picked the South Pacific zone is the #1 target. And it's really panned out essentially every single hole we've drilled has hit material of essentially 10 to 20-gram material. So it's been pretty remarkable. We identified significant upside the Ogee zone that is currently being developed, and that will show some of the early development that's going on there. And just right now, we put out the first results since we acquired Ruby Hill, we put out the results here today that includes some of the biggest intercepts I've seen come from any property we have in Nevada with widths of up to almost 80 meters, and those are close to true width. So Ruby Hill is really looking good, and we've got a lot of hope for that project, and we believe it's going to bring a very strong future for our company. In terms of corporate development, we've successfully continued to attract people to join i-80, and built what I think is a Tier 1 management team headed by Matt and Ryan, and Matt who have all been in [indiscernible] offices we know now, North Canada like Premier [indiscernible]. We've completed the rehabilitation of the Granite Creek underground workings. And we just started mining. We're driving the decline deeper, being prepared to set up the mine for numerous years of success to come. We've started the portal of McCoy-Cove. So those of you who came from the shareholders from Premier will know that we permitted Cove several years ago, but we didn't go ahead with the underground development because we didn't have a guaranteed process of arrangement. And with the acquisition of Lone Tree, we also secured an interim processing arrangement with Nevada Gold Mines. It is allowing us to proceed with that underground development, and then we're over 100 meters in and expect to start drilling underground in the third quarter of this year. We completed financings that result in the company having a very solid balance sheet. Currently, we have just under USD 160 million in cash, cash and equivalents. And in the first quarter, we produced the first gold in company history. If you look at the cover slide, that is some of the gold buyers coming from our Ruby Hill project. When you look at what we're doing in Nevada, I think the Slide 7 of our presentation tells a lot of the story. The posted stamp, as I call it, within Central Nevada, is arguably the most productive gold district anywhere in the world. Nevada Gold Mine, who is the primary operator in that area, partnership between Newmont and Barrick produced over 3 million ounces a year from this image. They have multiple processing facilities, and we've created what I call a bit of a mini Nevada Gold Mines with the goal of becoming a major producer in the state. We're planning to build 4 mines in the next 3 years that will result in us being -- moving from being a small producer to a mid-tier producer. And all of the initial 4 mines we process that long. So it's really a hub-and-spoke model, and that Matt Gili will get a bit more into that. And importantly, these projects are all road accessible. You could say diverse property we can take a [indiscernible]. But you could drive there [indiscernible]. We've got power lines, so grid power at every site. Most projects are fully or near fully permitted. So we're not worried about huge delays when it comes to permitting. And we've seen a lot of cost escalation, especially when the companies are building projects. And given that Lone Tree is an existing site, it's really just retrofitting it. So we don't -- we think we'll be more immune, I wouldn't say totally immune, but a bit more immune from the inflationary pressure that we're seeing at some sites, and Ruby Hill also has substantial infrastructure that we are intending to use for production in the future as well. Importantly, in the state of Nevada, and I believe anywhere in the United States as shown on Slide 8, there are only 5 sites that have infrastructure capable of processing refractory ore. So some people say, you're having a lot of success at Granite Creek, and now we're seeing substantial success at Ruby Hill, why were these projects sitting there? And it was most companies without the ability to process refractory material in Nevada, choose not to go there. And we went there with McCoy-Cove, but always had the intent that we're either going to get a good relationship with Nevada Gold Mines, which we did, but they will process for us. And more importantly, you can see right in the center of the -- we're sitting right on the highway International, or Interstate 80, is the Lone Tree site, which is now our own Autoclave and look into a program to restart that facility. In terms of fundamentals, while you look at our company, we're one of the largest holders of gold and silver resources, not only in the state of Nevada but in all of the United States. And since we are a U.S.-focused company, our cover image, we now call ourselves made in the USA. We're 100% U.S.-focused loan producer and developer. We're targeting 20% increase in our gold resources this year. As Matt said, in all categories where we have over 14 million ounces of gold in measured indicated plus inferred resources, and also over 180 million ounces of silver. We are currently upgrading both the Blackjack and the second Chanse, the Buffalo Mountain deposit to resource status. So those are both result in increased resources for our company. And we have over 50,000 meters of drilling going right now at Granite Creek and Ruby Hill, and we're having substantial success. I'm very confident we're going to see a pretty significant increase in our resources at year-end when we redo our resources. On Slide 10, what are we trying to do? We're going to try to simplify it a bit here today because sometimes you got a lot on the go. But it's really 3 identical ramps, 3 identical mines being built. 3 portals that go down into high-grade mineralization and the mineralization is trucked to the Lone Tree processing facility. And as I said, and with the addition of Buffalo Mountain and Brooks, which would be heap leach projects, processed at the heap leach site, that sits at Lone Tree as well. All 4 sites would really be the 1 facility. Matt Gili will give you additional detail on that. But with the building out of those 4 initial operations, we expect to produce more than 250,000 ounces of gold initially. And we're also currently permitting an open pit at Granite Creek that with the construction of that operation, I believe would make us the second biggest producer in the state of Nevada. I'm going to pass the presentation over for an operations update, and Matt Gili will come up. And please feel free people on the floor if there's something that you see on the screen, they're like, hey, I want to ask a question. Jump in.

All right. Thank you, Ewan. My name is Matt Gili. I am the President and COO. I've been here since the day it was born. So first thing I want to talk about is ESG. What you have here are the 6 pillars. i-80 Gold is committed. In our internal corporate scorecard, we have measurable and actionable items relating to one of these 6 pillars. More importantly is what you don't see on there. We haven't just cut and paste from Rio Tinto's GHG goals. We have selectively picked items that matter to us, matter to i-80, and they are actually -- we have an influence over, and we can make the world better by pursuing these objectives. All right. So I'm really going to try to double down on that concept of simplicity. Big picture, and while my job is incredibly complex, and no one else could do it, and I probably don't get paid enough. In the big picture, it is actually a pretty simple idea. We have 3 portal mines, all very similar in style, all very high grade that produce refractory material, that we track to a centralized autoclave facility in Lone Tree. This is completely common and ordinary in Nevada. This is not particularly the similar to Cortez. The Cortez, we had 3 portals, and we truck our refractory materials to the Goldstrike, Autoclave and roaster complexes. So I'm really trying to stress that concept that this is -- it's a lot of moving parts, but a relatively simple concept. We've integrated our operations. We act as one. We're based in Reno. I live and Reno. Lone Tree is becoming the center of our operations, both our technical and operating teams. And we are all -- we're not maintaining different groups of people at each different mine, different operational and technical groups. We're all working as one together. [indiscernible] talk about is Lone Tree -- or I take no some kind of note, right? Okay. So Lone Tree, a couple of our operations includes a centralized autoclave facility and operating deep leach, centralized laboratory facilities. We have a climate controlled warehousing system, all of our core, we bring 2 Lone Tree for processing, cutting and logging. We have full main shops for office complex. This is becoming the hub of our operations. So the PFS for the recommissioning of that plant is on schedule and on track. We'll be reviewing the results late in the second quarter, internally. We'll be publishing those in the third quarter. As we're progressing on that study, we are not finding any significant unpleasant surprises. As we expected, the equipment is in the condition we anticipated. As everyone, as Ewan alluded to, we're all anxious about inflationary pressures, and getting current pricing model is part of the scope of that PFS. And as Ryan always reminds me to mention, for the next 3 years, we have a 12 million agreement with Nevada Gold Mines that allows us to continue to generate cash flow from our existing operations. So the satellite pits. Again, we talked about this Brooks and Buffalo are 2 satellite pits. They're outside deposits. They're running in the trend. Yes, go ahead, I'm sorry.

What's the processing capacity of Lone Tree?

So Nameplate, when it was run by Newmont, the Nameplate capacity was 2,800 tonnes a day, and that plant was operated in the acidic environment. So right now, we're -- our study is for that plant to run in the ample of environment. And the true competitor -- the capacity in that environment is part of that PFS study. And I wouldn't say despite coincidence. There's a design in there. Actually, when all 3 of the mines are feeding their nameplate capacities into that autoclave, we are just about hatched on capacity. So in a simple model, you've got a 2,800 tonne a day plant, and you've got 3 mines that are producing somewhere between 1,000 to 900 tonnes a day that's trucked to that business. And so that's kind of the match that we got. And if you take that plant at that capacity and the grade of our operations, you're looking at a plant with a capacity of between 275,000 and 300,000 ounces. So we talked about the 2 satellite deposits at Lone Tree. They're there. Brooks is almost fully permitted. Buffalo is in permitting. We're going to start mining on those later this year. That's going to provide a modest amount of cash flow to continue with our operations. And that material gets trucked to the heap leach facility that's currently operating at Lone Tree, gets added to the existing leach pad, and that's our strategy for extracting. So next we're going to talk about Granite Creek. So what did we achieve at Granite Creek? Well, we've commenced with 24/7 operations. We've completed over 14,000 feet of Stope Delineation drilling. Think of it as Cubex drilling, think of it as ore control drilling. This tells us what's out ahead of us. We've updated the resource model with the results of our 2021 drilling, and we're going to continue to be updating that resource model through our cutoff date of August which will allow us then to publish a feasibility study and convert to reserves by the end of the year. So that's the point of the August cutoff. We advanced the main decline 425 feet. And we are now at the Stope ore contact on 2 different sublevels. A is the Granite Creek, and nothing comes easy to Granite Creek. We've been [indiscernible] of difficult ground. That's what we do. Reminders. We're also in this area. Most of us have worked here in the past from different [indiscernible]. And as we encounter those areas, we work through it, persevere, punch through them, and make a go. And I'm very pleased with the team, very pleased with the innovation there, the eagerness to pursue opportunities and to meet their objectives. As I mentioned, we were preparing for the publication of a feasibility study for the Granite Creek underground at the end of this year. This is going to be the point where we bifurcate the studies for the underground renewal. What is our execution plan? What are we doing? 3 parts. First, as I mentioned, we need to understand where the ore is, understand the deposits, have a reasonable mine plan. The second is all about infrastructure. And the infrastructure I'm talking about is the decline itself. It's the access to ore faces that it's going to make this successful. That's what we're pursuing as our top priority. So while we do have 2 active stope faces, the priority heading is continuing the decline, opening of additional ore faces, and also allowing for access over to the South Pacific. And lastly, it's about optimization. In the upper areas of the mine, there's portions of remnant pillars, remnant deposits mostly associated with the Autozone, we're pursuing those as an opportunity or in between our decline advancement. Okay. And lastly, Granite Creek. I don't want to forget about the open-pit. It's not our top priority today. Right now, we're in the permitting stage for the open-pit. We're going to be permitting that open-pit for the next several years. But I always want to remind everyone that we have that open pit out there. DEA is published on that, and that is we're a company that has a whole lot of active growth, but already has the next phase of growth laid out ahead of it, and is in the permitting phase for that next stage growth. Ruby Hill -- all right, what do we achieve at Ruby Hill? We've completed the open-pit mining on the [indiscernible] pit. All that material has been placed on leach pad, and we're actively leaching it this year. We've stabilized the lease solutions, a lot of technical stuff in there, but the leach solution was completely -- the chemistry just wasn't right. Corrected all that. Before we integrate the Ruby Hill teams into i-80, when we bought Ruby Hill, we bought it as an asset. So all the employees of Ruby Hill became employees of i-80, welcome them in as one big happy family and they're all part of one team now. Primary goal for that heap leach facility at Ruby, which is old run by Homestake and then it was run by Barrick, we run by multiple different operators. There's parts in that we don't really know all the good parts. Right now, we're focused on just systematically working our way across that leach pad, releaching every section of it, getting the last remaining materials along with the [indiscernible], which is the material we placed at the end of last year. And then lastly, permitting is underway for the start of portal in the East Archimedes pit at the end of this year. We hear the ore zones before coming out of the Archimedes pit, accessing the 3 different distinct ore zones. I'll talk about those on the next slide. So the real joy of Ruby is the ultimate optionality. There's just so much stuff going on at Ruby. Ruby alone could make a mining company. You've got your refractory gold material, which is represented by the Ruby leach deposit. You've got oxide material underground, high-grade oxide material underground between the 426 area. We have an oxide gold open pit mineral point, which is over 5 million ounces material, and resource in that pit. We've got a base tunnel deposit, which is the Blackjack deposit. Alongside that, we've got an operating heap-leach facility, and we also have on-site a CIL plant. CIL plant was built by Homestake. It wasn't operated very long, but it's all in excellent mix. You can see from the pictures. We use that for our carbon processing off the heap leach. And that would be the base. Do we refurbish that as a CIL plant and process the oxide underground for 426? Do we convert that over to a flotation plant to make a legacy concentrates out of Blackjack? Or do we do both? But this is all about the optionality, and the extent of the resource, over 7 million ounces of gold and resource at Ruby Hill alone. Of course, that's very exciting for me, right? We're restarting this. You had mentioned it has been sitting there. It's been known, been eagerly anticipated what we could do there once we got that processing agreement at the autoclave was our chance to start. So to date, we have completed over 324 feet of the decline itself. We secured the water rights for a pit evaporation permit. A fantastic team. The leader of this team is the same individual that developed in South Arturo Mine for the NGM and Premier joint venture. He's now leading the efforts here, and at Lone Tree as well. And very pleased with all the individuals we've been able to bring into the team. And what do we do in this store. -- this is [indiscernible] just always remind everyone 1.7 million ounces in resource, well over 10 grams per ounce. I always tell you and not so that great. When you have high grade, have trouble, have obstacles, you can work through them. When you have low grade, it's just test can be a few to exercise. But all of our deposits are blessed with very high grade and brings that optionality. Just showing you here the isometric of what are -- we're going to continue to extend that decline through the rest of this year, later in this year and into 2023. We're going to drill out this pattern and advance the studies, and the resource and reserves for pick up. All right. In my last slide is the Argenta properties we announced that last night. What is Argenta? Argenta is a bare type deposit and we purchased from Baker Hughes. I do not want to confuse the message. We are not going into barite mining. We have purchased a facility from Baker Hughes that allows 582-acre feet of water in our basin. We can use for co. It also gives us a facility that is on the Union Pacific rail line as well as Interstate 80. That siding on the Union Pacific rail line is very valuable, both for us to move concentrates and other products away from sites as well as to bring in bulk commodities, lease it to other bulk commodities fires. We're just looking at what optionality bring that plan.

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Good. Yes. So great question. So Greg, a very brief update on Nevada Water law. The water you need needs to come from the basin you're in. Granite Creek, Lone Tree and Ruby already have all of the water rights in their respective basins they need in order to operate. Cove is the one site within Premier that did not have water rights already secured for its operation. And to date, we've been getting the water to operate Cove from leaching water from a nearby rancher. So this then changes that so that we now have secured that water right we secure our own destiny as [indiscernible]. Any other questions before I hand over to Mr. Matt?

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Pardon me?

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This was a $3.7 million acquisition. We've got that question several times this morning. We did mention it, and I'll be very, very transparent. Baker Hughes assess not to -- that it's not material to them. They don't -- they prefer that we didn't talk about this in the press release. It's not a [indiscernible] is going to -- you're going to see it on the financial statement. So it's not going to be a secret, but we're just not mentioning it in the press release [indiscernible] we're averaging approximately 8 feet per shift at Cove. And at Granite Creek, we're averaging approximately 8 feet per shift right now -- per day, pardon. 8 feet per day. Ground conditions at Granite Creek is a little more troubling. So we're -- that we are incorporating that Creek into our advancements. We're not coming back later to rehabilitate. Our philosophy is that we never go back. But as we drive those declines, we drive them to our final specifications, the first time, and that any time you go back to fix old work, you're just losing efficiency.

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It's part of the same development of crews. We have a crew and that crew is allocated to both drive the main declines, accesses in the Ogee zone as well as revenue mining over on the auto and range front loads. We do utilize different equipment. In the remnant mining, we're primarily using drum cutters. We're not drill and blast them because of the weak ground conditions that we are drilling blasting on the deal. That's so much we have. But look, it's -- the upper workings are good, old Turquoise Ridge. We're working our way through it. The grades would matter. I mean the face right now there is a 16-gram face on the remnant pillars. So you can do a lot. You can engineer a lot, and you can strategize a lot on the 16-gram face, and that's what we're doing.

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We don't have any restrictions on our power -- we got it. Power is -- our power supplier. We don't have any restrictions on timing for power draw. We -- as a customer to Nevada Energy. We are allocated their green rights, and so the green credit, I should say. And their corporate strategy right now is they're 27% renewable, which takes us 27% renewable, right? Thank you very much. Ryan?

Thanks, Matt. Welcome, everybody in the room. Reiterate Matt's last comment. It's great to see everybody in person. -- long time, something like this at any company I've been at, so it's great to see everybody, and welcome to those that are on the line. So yesterday, the company announced our Q1 2022 financial results, and our financial statements and MD&A are available on our website are have an interest. Some highlights of what you'll see there is that in the quarter, we produced $2.9 million in revenue, which generated mine operating income of [indiscernible]. So this is significant in that first revenue we've had in the company from the assets that we acquired in last calendar year. At Ruby Hill and at Lone Tree, we've got the leaching operations that are generating these ounces. On the next slide, I'll walk you through how many ounces have been produced. However, kind of small industry. Our net loss for the quarter was [indiscernible] or $0.10 a share. When you adjust out of that loss, mark-to-market on our derivative instruments and [indiscernible], loss was [indiscernible] or $0.06 per -- of that $13.2 billion, $9.3 million of that was spent in exploration and evaluation development. [indiscernible], that's a direct investment. And as I talk about later, we've had some very good results. For the quarter, we did produce and sell 1,489 ounces of gold. And 646 of those ounces came from Ruby Hill, and 853.3. The average realized price for those ounces was [ $1,915]. Our cash cost per ounce consolidated $1,019, and our all-in sustaining costs were outsold plus $1,249. These cash costs and sustaining cost metrics do include fair value of the ounces that were on the leach pad when we did the acquisition. Finally, I'll talk a little bit about our liquidity. As we've been talking about, there's a lot of exciting developments on the go. There's a lot of capital to be spent in the company. As at the end of the quarter, we had $65.1 million in cash and $30.8 million. Subsequent to the end of the quarter, we did complete a $75 million financing package prepay and the presale agreements. And our inventory balance as at March 31 was $29.1 million. And I think this is important because that's the value of the ounces that's [indiscernible] the inventory we have currently is work in process. So that amount and those ounces come through in the next [indiscernible] the current assets for the company were $100 million. Our accounts payable and accrued liabilities were $7.2 million, and our current liabilities were $33 million. So I feel this is important because as of March 31, our current ratio was 3. And when we take into account the nation of the financing package after the end of the quarter. Now we take that current ratio [indiscernible] we're really well to execute on [indiscernible] and as you were talking about the exports coming up, now we're well positioned to continue to still hit the results. Our net assets as of the end of the quarter were $187.6 million. And that, I will turn the presentation to Ewan talk about our [indiscernible].

Thank you, Ryan. And as I mentioned earlier, the exploration, really, the first year as we've been setting up to be successful in mining, which is where Matt Gili is heading up down in Nevada, and Tyler Hill, our lead geologist in Nevada heads up our exploration program, and really a lot of the news you've been seeing coming out of our company is from those because we acquired known projects with known deposits, but we felt there was significant upside. And we've been proving that with successful results to date. But we've also been pretty focused on delineating the deposits better. One of the biggest issues we saw with Granite Creek or what was called [ Pinson with Aetna ], was the fact it was really under drilled, so they weren't able to stay necessarily on the ore body because of a lack of drilling. And we've seen a few other companies recently come out and say that they've had the same issue when they went to try to go mining too quickly. With our strong balance sheet, we've been able to do a lot of drilling from underground before we start mining. We've been able to put in the additional development as we're setting up for mining instead of the program that happened here previously, with as they put in enough development again in ore, hoping to make enough money from what they are mining to keep doing the same thing. So we've really set up our company a lot differently, and we feel we're in a great position to capitalize on that. So looking at the projects that we're going through, the primary 2 that we're exploring this year, Granite Creek and Ruby Hill of 50,000 meters between the 2 plants, and we're well into those programs this year. We just, in the last few weeks, have released our final results from 2021. So that shows you how long it is being recently to get assays from labs as being really a real struggle, and we've made changes to where we send our core just to try to get better treatment, and there was a new lab that's talking about building as well. But at Granite Creek, we -- as you can see up on the high wall of the pit here, is the drill natural is drilling the South Pacific zone. So it's a new target that we've been delineating to the north of the historic pit that goes towards Turquoise Ridge. And Turquoise Ridge is just in this and it's just over the hill. And back in the background there, you can see some white spots, that's the Twin Creek's operation. So that's where we are initially planning to send the material from underground to. And in the pit, you can see the one portal on the pit wall and the other one is closer to us. And the shops and everything are down in the bottom of the pit, or the office and there's a mechanic base. It's also driven into the sign of the pit as well. Granite Creek is an advanced exploration and mine development project for our company. It's located at the north end of the Battle Mountain Trends at its intersection with what's called the Getchell trend. We have an interim processing agreement with Nevada Gold Mines to process up to 1,000 tonnes a day at the Twin Creeks facility. As you can see in the image here on Slide 33, both Twin Creeks and Turquoise Ridge are immediately north of our company. The South Pacific Zone is a high-grade horizon that we are drilling. And it's not just one zone. In many holes, we're seeing up to 4 zones in the drilling. So we are expecting over this year and next year as we continue to drill up the zone, a pretty substantial increase in our resources here because of the success, and it's immediately below into the north of the mine working. So very accessible. And as Matt said, we have changed a bit power developing there to drive the decline down deeper to fast track our ability to access the South Pacific zone to be able to drill it from underground and hopefully quickly bring it into our mine plan that will help us get to that ultimate goal at the end of next year achieving 1,000 tonnes a day, which would maximize our agreement with Nevada Gold Mines. So by the end of this year, our target is to get up to 450 tonnes per day being mined out the site and by the end of next year up to 1,000. We -- because of the success of the South Pacific zone, we are trending north. And in black in this image is our previous property, the Granite Creek property we acquired from Waterton. And we went to Nevada Gold Mines because we -- the South Pacific zone is trending towards the Turquoise Ridge property to the north. We presented them in the model, the 3D model of what we're doing that it would really be beneficial, we think. We think this deposit could trend on to your ground and we'd rather not stock the foundry. We'd like to keep going north. So we made an offer to purchase the adjoining ground to the north. And I think it speaks to the relationship between the 2 companies, they agree to sell it to us. So a pretty key piece of ground. You can see immediately north of that ground is a historic summer camp mine. It's an open pit operation and in their technical report. They talk about being an underground exploration target for them, and the Turquoise Ridge mine immediately north of that. And Turquoise reach between historic production and current reserves is well over 20 million ounces of gold. I mean you have to increase to that the entire district immediately north of us is about 50 million ounces. So we're truly operating here in what many would call elephant country, and we're very excited by what we're drilling. The main focus for the company, Granite Creek has developed both open pit and underground operations. The first focus is on the what's -- the imagery here on Slide 34, is on the left is the underground operation. And what we show there is the -- in the open area, there's a few holes shown there. Those were holes drilled 25 years ago by -- mostly by Homestake. So back when Homestake was around at this property. They had a few deep drill holes to the north. It had very good grade material that never followed up. And that was our #1 target, and we've been very successful in that program. Shown here on Slide 35, the existing mine workings with the Ogee, Otto and Adam peak area are is the area that we're developing underground. But it's just below the bottom level, about 100 meters below the bottom level of the historic working, and about 100 meters to the north on the other side of [indiscernible] is the South Pacific zone. And what we've really found with drilling out the South Pacific zone is we are doing 50-meter space drilling, so still pretty wide space drilling, but remarkable continuity, the main fault structures in or at the contact of the upper and lower comes, the main 2 limestone units has consistently been mineralized. And it's mineralized towards surface as well. But up towards surface, it just doesn't grade [indiscernible] about 250 meters of grade picks up. And essentially, every hole we've drilled below that level as being 10 grams or better. Pretty remarkable. And in my history of exploring over the last couple of decades, it's a [indiscernible] decades now, as this has been the most continuous zone or most continuous high-grade mineralized growth program that I think I have experienced in my career. So it's pretty exciting. The grades have been phenomenal. As we show here on slides 36 and 37. We present every single hole that's drilled into this project. So we're not presenting a couple of hot holds in our press release and leave everything else that didn't run now. We're presenting every hole. We're doing 5, 6 holes at the time as we receive the assays, and it's been remarkable at the grades. And often the woods, our 18 coal, our southernmost hole, getting close to the Ogee and that was our best hole of the program if then 15-point -- or sorry, that hole ran 16.2 grams over 15.7 meters. So very, very strong grades, good width -- true width on these intercepts is estimated between 60 and 90. We are drilling angles holes, and the zone is dipping to the east and trending north, as I said. And when you look at that on a long section view, as shown on Slide 38, you can see up near surface where the underground workings are, the strike length of high-grade mineralization tends to occur over about 200-meter straight length. But when you get down to where the South Pacific zone is, and you include the down dip of the Ogee, we're seeing the straight length of mineralization increasing to about 800 meters so far, and is completely open to the north -- and it's actually open to the south side depth as well. So the upside that we're seeing here, the ounces per vertical meter as we go deeper, we expect to increase substantially. And that's why we're driving the infrastructure at depth right now and putting a real focus on our drilling on this project. We show here for 2205. That's one of the -- obviously, the fifth hole of the 22 program. We -- and we've got about 13 holes completed now in the program. We continue to step out. But down hole was drilled about 100 meters underneath all previous drilling to try to -- as we go forward this year demonstrate the deposit does continue strongly at depth. So we continue to step out. We're not just going to start infilling just to get a bunch of good drill holes. We're going to try to make this envelope bigger and then do infill primarily, we hope from underground, which is a cheaper means of doing it. And because of that success, the acquisition, especially on Slide 39 and the blue block to the north, was very key because -- we took that image on the previous slide, and it's pretty shrunken down there, but when it says SPZ on the image is the South Pacific zone. And there was a hole drilled by Homestake further 400 meters to the north, getting pretty close to the boundary that hit 3 high-grade intercepts at depth, and was never followed up. And rather than our drilling chase up to there and then approach Barrick, we thought maybe we should approach them before we get to the boundary, and there might be more amenable to selling us the property, and we were pretty fortunate that they said they would. So our projection of the mineralized zone is shown in red on this slide. And as we go through the balance of this year, we are expecting to start stepping out to the north now. We weren't stepping out to the north because we didn't want to go too far north before we either hold that, we'll sell you that ground or get lost, not a chance. And so the deal was just struck, and we look forward to working with them for processing that could extend into the future, and they hold a net profit interest in this property as well. So they benefit from us being successful as well. The underground definition program is taking place primarily in the Ogee zone this year. We're really focused there. That's where Matt showed the development. Two of the holes that we just announced. So the first 3 intercepts in the Ogee zone from our drilling from underground have now been announced 22.9 grams over 6 meters; plus 11.2 over 11 meters in our hole 39 of last year; hole 38, 14.8 grams over 3.8 meters; and hole 37, a deeper hole, hit 54.7 grams over 5.9 meters. So very strong grades, and those are the areas that we're currently developing underground. And then we drilled a deep hole 15 from surface, was to test the Ogee at depth. That's the deepest hole we've drilled to date, and we hit 3 high-grade intercepts of 13.3 grams over 13 meters, 20.2 grams over 7.5 meters and 10.1 over 17.5. So very strong widths woods and grades and just demonstrates the substantial upside not only in South Pacific, but also in deeper drilling on the project. The highlight assays, we're estimating 70% to 90% true width on these intercepts, and you can see the highlight assays, including the first 2 holes from underground the test of the Ogee zone at depth. And this year, I think we're about 40-something holes into the '22 program. So there should be substantial new flow from this property. Ruby Hill is a property that early on. It's a deposit that was mined by Barrick. They had a pit law failure. They sold the project, it was bought by Waterton. They sat on it for years and then did a little bit of restart of the remnant mining in the open pit, which we finished. But we didn't acquire it for that open pit. When we were doing that analysis of projects across Nevada, we identified Ruby Hill as maybe the highest potential sulfide deposits that we knew of in Nevada. And now with the current resource, collectively, it represents our company's largest gold resource. But in my opinion, also has the most significant upside amongst our portfolio, and we look forward to demonstrating that with the drawback. In fact, today, we released our first 5 holes from drilling from '21, finally got the assays and back in at the back was scrambling to get the press release out on this presentation done because [indiscernible] assays almost had us not released them and put them in our presentation, and kind of did this around the Ruby Hill results. The woods and grades are incredible. The ground conditions appear to be quite stellar for a Carlin-style deposit, and just completely open for expansion. The primary projects that we'll be advancing. Internally, we present to the market. We have a 3-year plan for Ruby Hill, and we also have a 5-year plan internally, and we also have a 10-year plan. We have 3 different scale-ups of this project, we expect. In the image on Slide 43 for those online, Ruby deeps is in red and it is open to the north and south along what we called [indiscernible]. And that drilling is the first area we tested because as we look to start the autoclave, we need to do metallurgy. We needed more from Ruby Hill to blend with the core from Granite Creek and Cove in order to do the metallurgy to figure out what we need to do to the autoclave facility. And there was no core left from this project because it was mostly drilled by -- again, by Homestake. And as most of you know, Homestake disappeared more than 20 years ago. So their defaults, cores gone, drill logs that were kind of mostly handwritten, and we didn't know what we were going to get into when we drove it other than there was a lot of good intercepts across the property at depth. And what really surprised us was the tenor of the rocks there. It's, I guess, I call them stick rocket. We expect this to be very good ground conditions. We've seen substantial oxidation in the upper parts of the 426 zone. As Matt said, with the CIL plant that makes us think about what else can we do with this project. [indiscernible] mineralization is being drilled out in the Ruby Deeps in 426 zone, but there's also a very compelling polymetallic deposit immediately below the pit, very high grade zinc with some gold that we expect to bring to resource this year, and do some drilling later in this year and [indiscernible] to the south and to the north along that structure. And then in blue is Mineral Point. Mineral Point is the biggest deposit. As Matt said, about a 5 million-ounce heap leach project that we will be evaluating for development in the future. But just with everything else going on, we don't want to say we're developing a big 5 million-ounce open pit at the same time. So it's a future growth project for us. And I'd like to point out on this slide that immediately to the south, you can see the property boundary along the South is the fab project owned by Paycor. And our company is as a shareholder in that company, and they're having a lot of success in their drilling program. So it's something that hopefully we can collaborate on in the future. We have a lot of infrastructure, and we're a shareholder. So we support the company as much as we can. The Ruby Hill project, as I said, is hosted substantial resources and indicated more than 4 million ounces of gold, just under 4 million ounces inferred. So very sizable resource, significant silver, mostly in Mineral Point. Mineral Point where I like something like a Rochester mine that Cove has, but this mineral point would be a higher grade Rochester, if you look at it as what type of deposit. We will look at continuing to permit that in the future. But right now, the main focus is, as Matt showed on his slide, as we show here is putting in the declines, hopefully, starting in the fourth quarter of this year to drive down first into the 426 zone and then deeper in the Ruby Deeps. And you can see in this conceptual mine image that we have here, the workings will drift over to Blackjack, which is the polymetallic deposit underneath the pit. Because of its location where the pit slide is, you can -- it's very difficult to drill from surface. So most of our drill plans here are going to be from underground. It's -- these deposits are completely open for expansion. The D2 targets, we call Ruby Deeps, we have R2 and D2. D2 is a single drill hole drilled in what appears to be or could be a parallel structure which intersected 15 meters of nearly 9 grams per tonne with no follow-up. That's an area we are going to do some drilling. And the R2 South target is the our block model that we're carrying for Ruby Deep that showing in yellow, but that's a substantial step out to the South. So we're following that up right now in the '22 program. And to the north, you can see the 8.2 grams over 30 meters, that's outside of our current mineralized envelope. So we're doing some additional drilling there to demonstrate the upside, going to the north. And those are some of the holes we announced today. So the in-surface plan on Slide 46, let's see Ruby Deeps and 426 outlined in red. Open to the north and south, the D2 target where it is in relation to the pit. And what we're seeing with this drilling is really good rock quality. We expect the mineability of this to be very good, especially when we developed the South Arturo deposit. We drilled off [indiscernible] underground Granite Creek the experience that Matt and his team, and had another Carlin deposits are also often associated with pretty major faults, so broken ground, difficult ground. And Ruby Hill, we've got some images at the core. So you can see just how good the core is here. It's solicified block that should be very mineable. These are the first 4 intercepts of intercepted zones. So in hole 2, we hit 71.6 meters of 7 grams including 9 grams over 15.8. In hole 3, we intersected 9 grams over 18.3 meters. In hole 4, 9.1 over 24.7. And hole 5, the northern most hole, remains open hit 7.1 on grams per tonne over 78 meters. And given that the flat line deposit, these intercepts are close to true width, contained within that was 41.8 meters at 10 grams, deposits completely open to the north of that. So we -- there's just pretty major upside in this project. And like I said, not just in this current R2 would be deep deposit, but also a lot of long intercepts around the property. Almost everywhere you look at a hole that's being drilled to depth on this property, it hit Carlin-style mineralization. It also hit high-grade gold. And Tyler mentioned one thing to me last week, he said the size of the Carlin alteration package we're seeing here is on par with Cortez, which is a pretty bold statement. And hopefully, we can prove that this is going to be the next Cortez district in Nevada. Just showing the section. So as you can see, there are some historic holes in this area that we're following up, some Barrick and Homestake holes with high-grade intercepts. On the right is the core from hole 2. And you can see it's very confident block altered class [indiscernible]. In hole 3, again, very solicified. A lot of [indiscernible] that you can see here. So a lot of fluids were flowing through this rock. In this section, you can see a Barrick and a Homestake hole that was drilled down in this area, both with over 13-gram intercepts, so very high grade material, very good width, and given where the pit is the -- since we're driving the decline on the bottom of the pit, it's not that far down. The true depth of this deposit is sort of 600 to 700 meters from surface. But the lower the portal goes in, it's about 400 meters. Again, the fourth hole, you can see the competency of the ground. It's not all broken up and corn flakes, as you can see in places that Turquoise Ridge, et cetera. And the biggest hole of our first 5 was -- or our '21 program was hole 5. Again, the ground conditions that really stands out. So the deeper deposit isn't where we're seeing this oxide portion. We're seeing that in '22, we started drilling off to 426. That's pretty much go out of the pit, and we expect to be almost immediately into the 426 zone. And the 426 zone as shown here on Slide 52 is a mixed sulfide oxide zone. We're seeing pretty extensive oxide in drilling the upper parts. That makes us -- when we build our new resource model, we're going to have oxide ore and sulfide ore because we will have to figure out exactly how to drill it. And finally, for this property, the Blackjack deposit. Talked about some good holes here, but you can see consistently 10% to over 20% zinc in the drilling underneath the pit, with wigs of over up to over 70 meters. So it's a big broad zone. We're currently putting all that data together, building our own geological model so that we can actually bring this to resource status. Then we have 2 to 4 holes planned later in the program. So just so we can say, well, yes, we hit it 2, and then we can bring it to [indiscernible]. And then talk about next year, do we look at trying to expand this along strike likely associated with the major faulty area that has been interpreted in some previous papers as the Jackson fall. So it seems to be pretty closely associated with that fault structure, but it's a mixture of CRB and [indiscernible] mineralization up against the [indiscernible]. So with that, that's the end of the exploration. A very, very good first year for our company. And we expect the '22 program to yield similar or hopefully, greater success. And just let Matt come up and close out our presentation and talk a bit about our scorecard that we put out earlier.

Okay. So looking back at the score card that was issued in January 1, we wanted to update it for our investors and the people here to call up the presentation. And a few things I'd like to highlight for what we've see to date. One, we closed the financing package with [indiscernible], my finance secures our ability to grow our company this year. We celebrated our first ounce of goal at both Ruby Hill and Lone Tree. At Granite Creek, we initially started out the year with a 20,000-meter drill program. But owing to the success of the SPZ zone, we increased it to 30,000 meters, and acquired the ground to the north. So we secured the long-term upside for that property. At Cove, we initiated the underground development program and secured water rights to help develop that project. And as an overarching comment, I would say, I was chatting with Matt earlier today. None of the other items -- they're all tracking on time and as expected. So we don't anticipate any so far. So we're very excited about how we're progressing for the year. So as a primary, where do you go with i-80 Gold? You get a company that's executing on a plan with the goal of becoming Nevada's second largest gold producer. We've got a strong capital allocation team working on how do we execute on that plan. And we've got our organic pipeline to do that. With that, we'll take some questions for the team or anybody else?

I know as have had a question from [indiscernible]. Are you feeling nervous about drilling 3 mines at 1 time?

[indiscernible].

Okay. I'm trying to make sure I say this in [indiscernible] way. My previous job was the COO at Oyu Tolgoi, and we're building a mine and concentrator complex in the Gobi Desert. So this is not that complicated. And we've got a good team. We're in the right jurisdiction, we a lot of grade. And again, I want to always kind of stress back to that concept that it's 3 mines in 1 processing plant, when reaching those mines is a well run, well planned, total excavation without its own processing facility associated with it. So in the big scheme of things, it's a fairly tidy and certainly a very executable one. Any other questions?

[indiscernible]?

We can try to buy Cortez. No, we're probably not going to do that. But we're going to -- we're going to be the producer of choice in Nevada and going to be the most efficient, most profitable in Nevada. Sure. So we're not giving guidance. But what I can say is if you look at our Q1 financial statements and take the number that was disclosed, the 9.3, multiply that by 4, you'll be right in the ballpark. So we're not giving guidance.

[indiscernible].

Got it. There's always concerns with staffing the -- one, we've been able to get a really good team. We all have a name in the area, and we bring with us to certain groups that work for there's 2 areas where we struggle. First one seems kind of obvious, and not a surprise, and that's traits, but particularly electrical traits and mechanical traits. We have alternate strategies for both of those, particularly electrical, where we've had some strategic alliances or master service agreements with several different service providers. The other one is accounting, and it's real. It's proven to be the hardest area to get really highly skilled staff and if there's -- they are so fungible. They can work wherever they want to work, whatever industry they want to and turns out mining is not necessarily their first choice. Did I answer that rate?

[indiscernible].

[indiscernible], I'll step in and say that we have been very successful like hiring very key people. And I went on the tour of the sites for a 1-year anniversary, so don't see them. But I didn't want to go if matter. I want to go by myself. So they were -- the guys answering the questions on site, we're looking at Matt, how do you want to these answered? So it was kind of fun. I got to go to each site and ask questions. And 2 of the gentlemen on the site said they joined our company because of Matt Gili. So that was a real testament to his previous history there. And when I retire so I was going to retire this go away, and Matt found me. And I wouldn't say no to Matt. So he's running Ruby Hill of course now. So it's good to hear right from the horse's mouth. And they are a great team. I learned a lot on that trip.

[Audio Gap].

That's all categories.

[Audio Gap].

We -- again, I'm very cautious not to give guidance. But if you...

[Audio Gap].

That's our target. That's our target. That's our target.

[Audio Gap].

Pardon me?

[Audio Gap]

Okay. So if you -- I touched on it briefly. First stage is to completely fully autoclave with high-grade material from the underground. Then the next stage is, one, the open pit at Granite Creek, develop that as an oxide -- that's an oxide heap leach pit. So that's not going to interfere with the capacity at the [indiscernible]. And then the next step is to fully explore all the aspects of -- so you've got oxide -- high-grade oxide material there with a CIL plant on site, got a base metal deposit with a CIL plant to convert it to a sulfide float plant, but that would be the stages. And then at the end, you've got mineral point deposit on Ruby, which is over 5 million ounces just in itself. We are -- the drilling that we're doing right now is partially targeted specifically towards metallurgical testing and its a [indiscernible] is running that program.

[Audio Gap].

No. You're not going to see that with the Lone Tree events, Michael. What you'll see that with is -- and we haven't targeted the date yet. But when we start updating the technical reports for Ruby Hill, when we update -- when we -- we do the resource update, you're not going to have that much detail. What you do have at Ruby, there is a lot of historic information, both Homestake and Barrick did a lot of metallurgical testing on all those different parts including the concentrate from Blackjack and where the golden [indiscernible] is there's 2 concentrates, there's a lead and the zinc and the gold and silver credits are associated with lead, which is on. So there's a lot of testing there, but none of it's publishable yet [indiscernible].

So if there's no other questions. I hope you stick around, and we have some drinks and food at the back and mingle with our management team and our Board, and ask any extra questions you might have. Thank you very much, everybody, for attending both online and in person.