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

Hey, I'm told it's time to go. So today is kind of for me a special day. This is the 25th time I've had the privilege of standing up here and presenting to shareholders. And 25 years has gone by like it was yesterday. It's been a lot of fun, ups and downs during the years. What I think we've got in terms of our assets and our ability to grow a company here at i-80 is very special. I really thank very supportive board. I think we've built a great Board of Directors that I work with here and the management team at i-80. And I'd like to welcome today Christina McCarthy, as our newest member of our board. I'm being fortunate to have a lot of successes in my career. We've right now, one thing I can say is we have 2 projects under development that we essentially discovered Cove that we're doing, and Equinox is building hard rock. -- I still call hard rock, but the Greenstone Mine, which is a project we had in Premier. And this year, given it's 25 years, I thought it's an opportune time, there's a few people I should acknowledge that I've worked with over the years. We've had great long-term shareholders. The guys [ John Hathaway ] was a shareholder of Wolfden back in 2000. And he's still one of the people I talk to the most as a shareholder more than 20 years later. [ Cam Curry ], a friend of mine who phones me every day and tells me why gold is going up. One of the first people who work with a gentleman named [ John Pollack ] and [ John Pollack ], 1 day, I was -- I worked with my dad in the field and for [ John Pollack ] and 1 day, he said, "Why don't you got all these ideas, why don't you start a public company, and I'll finance it". And so I did, and he actually funded that company. So I wish John was here, and I've had a great opportunity to work with a lot of professional mining guys. I didn't take mining engineering and school. So everything I've learned is from people -- one of our first Chairman was [ John Cook ], who spent a lot of time taking me through mines and what it takes to make a mine and build a mine. John Begeman, who's with me at Wolfden back in the day, and we've worked together since he was the Chairman of Premier. [ Eve Churcas ] was a key guy. I view him as a bit of a mentor. He's the guy who said, when you -- you can build a real company, but you have to build it, you can't just sell it. We sold Premier. But anyway, I think the opportunity we have here is to do something special like Eve said. And you always said a polymetallic mine is like LaRonde is the best. And I think what we're doing at Ruby Hill including the fab deposits that we acquired from Paycore is something that is much like LaRonde. And I have a slide in today's presentation to talk about LaRonde and even what he did with Agnico. And now I learn from Ron Clayton, as our new Chairman, kind of every meeting, I learned something new about mining or metallurgy or something that's it's really good. I was really hoping that Dan Ross is going to be here today because Dan took us public in 1998. And he was here almost every meeting. And unfortunately, it couldn't come today. But just somebody who -- when I started Wolfden, I was taking a public react happen, we were trying to raise 450,000 to go public. We couldn't raise it. And Dan Ross at the last day, and we had a bit of issues because I was this guy knew nothing about public companies going public. And the last day was how much do you need to go public? Is it another 100-and-something grand. We wrote the cheque, so we went public, and he showed up at every AGM almost except he couldn't make it today. But we first launched an over-the-counter company. So the first AGM, Dan is saying right here. And during my presentation, he says, how come the share price never goes up. And I said, "Well, you're a market maker, why don't you tell me to chase [ gold ] and then Peter Brown, who had ought to know who I knew I was kind of making it in the industry when I used to get the call from Peter in his back tub. So people who know the best, I'm sorry, Peter around that's pretty unique. He's been a great guy to work with. And my father, [Audio Gap] sorry [ Turn ] I lost him in August. And I'm the guy following his foot steps as a kid walking around the bush, following right behind them, looking at head frames, getting little bunny rabbits, the drill scared the family away, there's a baby bunny. So I kind of followed his foot steps into the industry. And he's not here to listen today. And the support of my demise that's been key -- back -- so anyway, that's the bit of a softy. So now we'll move on with the presentation. So 25th year presenting, I kind of view i-80 is a continuation of Wolfden. We started Wolfden, it was taken over. We spun out premier. Premier is taken over, we spun out i-80, and it's been a really fun ride. I love working with the people I do the bankers, the brokers, everybody, there's a lot of bad days, stocks going down, I'm getting shipped. And the day, a lot of people holding any stocks, performing well. So do a bit of a forward-looking statement. There will be forward-looking statements made here. We're going to be promoting a bit of what we're doing. So I urge everybody to read this when they have time. The participants here today that we have and that I'd like you to talk to, who are helping build the company. Myself, I'm the CEO. We have Matt Gili, sitting right there, our President and Chief Operating Officer; Ryan Snow, -- right here, he's our Chief Financial Officer; and Matt Gollat, who I've worked with for 16 years today. I also like to acknowledge somebody else, John Simon, sitting here. 24 of the 25 years. He's been with me a great guy to work with and the boss, I think, legal for basically 25 pretty close. So a lot of people have had the fortunate opportunity to work with and it's working with these people who have allowed me to learn what to do and how to build companies. And I really think this is going to be the best one we've done to date. So i-80 has been around for 2 years. It's our second AGM we've had [ peer ] best share performance in our first 2 years. In 2021, our share price increased by 29% and 22%. This year, we're off a bit, but we'll catch up. Trust me, we've got a lot going on a lot of successes, particularly in exploration. In our exploration programs, we've discovered recently the Hilltop zone as a real focus of our drilling at Ruby Hill when I believe to be one of the world's highest grade new discovery and combining it with FAD, I think, is going to make for a world-class mine that will be around for decades to come in the future. The South Pacific zone is to become our core deposit at the Granite Creek mine. I think our plan is to start mining the South Pacific zone in Q1 of next year is when we hope to get into it. So that's our ambitious plan for now. We are progressing mine development as some people might have noticed. We had our first gold production -- our gold ounces produced out of Granite Creek in the first quarter, and we'll see more here in the second quarter as things continue to improve. We're delivering materials to both Lone Tree and Twin Creeks for processing to increase the Nevada Gold Mines operation. And moving forward, there'll be less going to Lone Tree and more going off site. Our permit submissions have been made for the underground development at Ruby Hill and Ruby Hill is a project, I think, is really going to be the biggest part of the future for our company. It's really a project that's worked really well for us and continues to -- the exploration decline is more than 70% complete right now at Cove. And today, we released our first drill results from that program. This year, we expect substantial growth in our resources given that the South Pacific zone is going to come into resource sometime this year, we released our [ more of this ] studies. We are recently hit about 200, 250-meter step out in the Ruby Deep zone at Ruby Hill that we will be in filling this year to bring that to resource. So that will add to our resources or we expect it to, assuming success and the 428 Zone discovery that's what we believe might be in actually a higher-grade deposit at Ruby Hill will be the subject of some drilling in the second half of this year. And hopefully, we get enough holes and prove enough continuity that becomes part of our resource, maybe a small part, but at least becomes part of our company's resources by year-end. And one of the real highlights we expect is to complete following this year's drill program resource estimates for the polymetallic deposits at Ruby Hill, that's expected to include the Blackjack deposit, the Hilltop deposits and the FAD deposit, and we expect it to be a very material increase in our company's resources. So talk a bit about gold. My friend, [ Kam ] always harps on me that we're going to be the biggest promoter of our industry. And why do people own gold. I think -- what we're seeing today is a real change in people's perceptions towards money. There's a bit of almost a currency war going on between the East and the West, as you might put it. And with that currency disruption, I think we're seeing the U.S. dollar with the ever-increasing debt that we see here in Canada and in the U.S. is making the dollar probably less and less attractive. There are challenges, especially the Chinese on to the reserve status of the U.S. dollar. And if there is diversification away from the U.S. dollar going forward, gold we expect will be the major benefactor of that. And I'm expecting this year to see all-time highs in gold, and I'm expecting to see those sustained. We're also seeing countries significantly increase their buying of gold for reserves. And I think China just announced another 8 tonnes for last month. So we're seeing some of these countries really increasing their gold and they're back in their currency with gold. And as I said earlier, I think gold will be the biggest benefactor as there is some diversification away from the U.S. dollar. Since 2020, so a 23-year period, gold has been one of the few currencies that has realized average gains of 9% and that's -- when you look at other currencies, it does -- it has and it will continue to significantly outperform. And one thing, one of my friend says to me, gold is the world's only currency that has no political attachment no debt obligation and no printing press. And that's why I think gold is going to be a store of value for a long time to come. But we're not just a gold company now. We are expecting to be a significant producer of base metals or polymetallic resources in the future. And one of the main metals we're looking at is zinc and something that few people know is in 2021, zinc was added to the critical metals list by the U.S. geological survey whereas copper wasn't. And zinc is now used in batteries. The zinc ion batteries are some believe a safer alternative to lithium ion battery. So in the future, we could see an increase in battery production in this. And if governments can really put in all the infrastructure they're talking about and going net zero we're going to need a lot more base metals. So the companies are going to perform the best, I think, as we both need more gold and we need more metals to achieve the -- this greener electrified future. I think the mining companies will be the ones who will really benefit from this going forward. Some things is about supply. It's supply and demand. If we are going to see significantly increased demand over the next few years, it's how do we make enough of these minerals to meet that demand because it takes 5 to 10 years, to permit and build a mine. And if you look at Greenstone, for example, that Equinox is building this year, we did the first drilling there in 2008, and today is 2023. So 15 years later, it is in development and in 2024, it will produce its first gold. So that's a 16-year period from first drill hole to production. And that's why I think we're going to see a significant increase in the companies who do produce share prices going forward. And the companies like ours who have advanced stage permits and existing infrastructure will be one of the biggest benefactors of that. So going to the kind of the exploration development part of today's presentation, just last week or the week before, we operate 100% in Nevada U.S.A.. Nevada was once again ranked as the #1 mining jurisdiction in the world by the Fraser Institute consistently there. There's a reason why we only work in Nevada because it is a very pro mining state, and we're very welcome to be there. Having experience in Canada and Mexico, I definitely view Nevada as a significant tier up from working in the other countries. The Carlin and Battle Mountain trends shown here in this image, there are 2 structural corridors running through North Central Nevada collectively represent the world's most productive gold districts. In fact, Nevada Gold Mines, all of their production comes from this picture if it were a separate company would be the fourth largest gold producer in the world, next to its two owners and Agnico Eagle. So it is a very gold-rich area. Next to Nevada Gold Mines, we are now the second largest holder in these districts in terms of gold resources. And we also have significant silver resources in all categories, almost 118 million ounces. One thing that I think really gives us a competitive advantage in the states is the fact that we have 2 existing permitted processing facilities. We were able to secure a deal with Nevada Gold Mines to acquire 1 of their 4 refractory processing facilities. That's the Lone tree site. Lone Tree is processing facility we're advancing multiple deposits to ultimately feed and is expected to be the core asset within our portfolio. We're just working on sort of timing of permitting the various projects required to fill that facility. So sequencing is something we're working through as a Board and as a management team, how do we sequence these 2 facilities because we also have Ruby Hill and Ruby Hill, we've released studies that we're advancing that as not as a gold plant is we're going to convert the Ruby Hill plant to a flotation plant, likely producing 2 or 3 separate concentrates and moving concentrates to wherever we can in the world in the market. So we're looking at we don't really think that it would be prudent for us to try to build both of them at once. Financial needs would be significant. So we're just working through the final kind of trade-off work at which of the 2 facilities we're planning to start up first. And as you can see, a lot of works is going into Ruby Hill and the acquisition of Paycore is demonstrating that we are definitely looking at beefing up our polymetallics or the base metal part of our company in making that decision. So the plan for us is to build multiple mines feeding 2 facilities essentially. And over the next 5 years, our target is to produce on a gold equivalent basis, more than 400,000 ounces a year that will make us the second or third largest gold producer in the United States. And so now let's get the work done, hit the marks of that do all the drilling we need, the underground development, the test mining, the bulk sampling, feasibility economic studies and then ultimately ramp up the development of these 2 sites. We're fortunate that as part of the acquisition of Lone Tree, we secured 2 processing arrangements with Nevada Gold Mines such that they will process approximately 1,750 tonnes of material a day on our behalf until we get our own facility up and running. And so that allows us to ramp up in the interim period without having to spend the major capital immediately on our own auto claims. So it's been, I think, a really good working relationship with Nevada Gold Mines. And Matt Gili was -- once they outran one of their major operations. So good relationships, and we definitely try to maintain that relationship as we grow our company. As I said earlier, we are right now one of the largest holders of gold and silver resources in all of the United States. We are growing our resource base through acquisitions like the FAD acquisition and also through successful exploration. As I mentioned earlier, we are upgrading the South Pacific zone at Granite Creek to resource status the Ruby Deeps and 428 deposits, we expect to ultimately add additional resources at Ruby Hill. We're working currently with multiple drills at both FAD and at the Hilltop and Blackjack area, we're working to [indiscernible] elevate all of those deposits to 43-101 resource status at the end of this year and we expect that, that will move us significantly higher in terms of a company in holding resources in the United States. Ruby Hill is quickly becoming our company's flagship asset. It is the project that we have the majority of our drilling going in 2023. And with the acquisition of Paycore, we're adding 2 drills to our efforts there right now. The Eureka district which is where Ruby Hill is situated is a really unique area. It's really -- we call it the ultimate optionality. There's just all kinds of different mineralization found here. It's also a district that has a very long and strong history of mining, 150 years of production that started in 1864. The last of the mining happened in 1966 and during that over 100-year period of production, most of the production was from carbonate replacement deposits, CRD, polymetallic mineralization. It wasn't until home state came along ultimately taken over by Barrick and found our committees pit. You can see in the lower image here, that Carlin style mineralization was identified here in mined. And that was mined for several years until there was a slope or a pit wall failure. Barrick sold the asset, and we were fortunate enough to acquire it in '21 and in '22, we discovered the Hilltop zone in our first exploration program for generative exploration targets. And I'll talk a little more about that. But some of the zones that we're drilling were actually drilled by Homestake and Barrick and some of the intercepts when we went back and look at [ drill core ] when they hit polymetallic mineralization, obviously, they didn't even sample the base metals. They were just looking at the gold value. So really opened up a new area. And when you see this kind of history out production in a district like this. It's a real head scratcher some people -- sometimes people like courses, they get their blinders on, and they're only looking for one thing and you missed the force for the tree, so to speak. With the addition of Paycore to our portfolio and the FAD deposit, we really now control the majority of the productive part of the Eureka district. And as I said, the -- we call it the ultimate optionality. There's refractory gold. The Ruby Deeps deposit and the 426 zone are primarily refractory gold deposits, so sulfide mineralization. We have oxide underground mineralization we've identified in the 426 zone. There's a large seen here in red, mineral point, a very large, moderate grade open pit opportunity. It's an oxide open pit project that we call Mineral Point that we are going to be looking at advancing over the next several years. There's polymetallic CRD like we're seeing at Hilltop and at FAD. We have stared base metal or zinc mineralization right underneath the pit in the Blackjack zone that we're drilling. And one thing we didn't press release, but we'll talk a bit about today, is we actually have now hit can kind of copper moly mineralization in -- on the side of one of the intrusive in the new hole that was drilled actually on the FAD property. And that opens up a new area for exploration in the future, and hopefully, we can identify in the future significant copper mineralization on this property. If you look at the geological setup, it's almost perfect that somewhere there should be a big porphyry copper deposit in this district. I'm not saying it's going to be necessarily on our property, but there should be one in the district, and we are going to be doing some exploration over the next few years looking at that opportunity as well. So taking the blinders off. We're open. We hit high-grade lithium. Maybe we'll start listening to it. That seems to be the hot thing today. What's really unique about Ruby Hill is there is an operating heap leach facilities. So we are producing gold off that heap leach today. There's an on-site oxide milling facility, and that is the mill that we are currently doing work on and doing metallurgical work on the various deposits looking at converting that to a base metal plant. So Ruby Hill in the future, I think, will be a very unique mine. And you turn left, you go to gold, you turn right, you go to base metals and the unique operation that have the same decline will mine both gold and base metal. So looking forward to that. And as Kirk has said, these polymetallic deposits are the best deposits. They survive metal cycles more than just one metal deposits, and they are the most profitable and I'll talk a little bit about LaRonde, just a bit of a comparison to LaRonde. It's a bit of a -- thank you to Eve, who's always said, get a polymetallic deposit. And -- he's not with us on the board anymore, but Eve, we finally did it. We're completing the permitting. This year, we've got a lot going on completing the permitting for underground programs, working on preliminary economic assessment, a resource update for the Ruby Deeps deposits. So that's gold only. We're not yet in a status where we can move the base metals into PA hopefully, by the end of the year, we'll start doing the economic studies on the polymetallic deposits. We're doing the metallurgy on the various deposits that form the polymetallic zones that Ruby Hill is, we're looking at do we convert this plant to flotation. We've got significant exploration and definition drilling going in multiple areas and expecting multiple year-end resources at this project. They will be released early next year, but we'll be drilling hopefully until about November and December on these deposits and then have a cutoff date and start working on the resources. The Hilltop discovery that we made is part of this major structural trend. It's a north-south striking fault structure. Some of the faults, the Jackson fault is being referred to the Holly faults as various large-scale faults that run for, as we know it more than 10 kilometers through the district. And the image on the right, all the red dots are polymetallic deposits whereas the yellow dots are Carlin-type deposits. So the district just seems to be more endowed with polymetallic mineralization or base metal mineralization and gold. Though we, in our portfolio, feel that the best mine in terms of mineability within our portfolio is Ruby Deeps. So that's something that we'll be talking more and more about this year. But these polymetallic deposits in the Eureka districts are very unique in terms of grade. The historic Ruby Hill mine, which is really the faulted part of the FAD deposit, if it were in production today, I believe it would be the highest grade gold mine running in United States right now. It also had multi-ounce silver over 15% led. It's a really classic deposit. And the area between FAD and Hilltop is all [ Ruby ] covered and there is essentially no drilling in that 2 kilometers. So we think there's a great opportunity to find significantly more mineralization as we drill out this structural trend in the future. We're permitting. We have to go through the BLM to get permits to drill in that area. It wasn't previously permitted for drilling, and we're going to do additional geophysics to make sure that we're using all the tools necessary to hopefully make the best decision on where to drill and have the most success. The Hilltop fault structure is something that we've identified over really the last 6 months. Since mid-2022, in June when we hit the Upper Hilltop zone or the Lower Hilltop zone, we have made 7 new discoveries on the property. So that's almost a discovery a month when you look at it. We've discovered the Lower Hilltop zone, the Upper Hilltop zone, the East Hilltop, which is skarn zone. The 428 gold zone, we drilled our first hole into in November of last year, and we have yet to follow it up even though that intercept was 12.3 grams over 10.7 meters. The East Hilltop CRD is something brand-new that we just hit as we've been drilling the eastern extension of the Hilltop fault. Just -- I think last week, we announced that we discovered mineralization, the CRD Breccia zone to the west of the Lower Hilltop zone. It's likely the continuation of lower Hilltop but we need the infill drilling to prove that it is continuous now. And at depth, we hit a new zone called the Gedde CRD with an intercept of over 9% zinc that at some point were followed up. It's not something that I think we'll be looking at in the near future. So it's just been pretty remarkable, but it is one of these northwest striking fault structures we've identified. And that's really where we find the controlling mineralization closer you are to the fault, the higher grade material. You start to move away the grade drops off, and they occur in lenses, which is quite typical of CRD mineralization. And then rate underneath the pit unfortunately, it's very difficult to drill because there was a pit wall failure that you can see in the lower right of the pit, and we're not allowed to access that part of the pit for drilling. So we're doing some directional drilling with moderate success getting to the target, but we are starting to get some intercepts into the Blackjack so that we can upgrade it to resource data. On a sort of a sectional view or a long section view, the Upper Hill top zone has been fairly densely drilled. We're hoping to do with some additional drilling later this year once we get the permits for the new drill pads is to hopefully do enough drilling into that zone so that it can be classified as indicated mineralization. So we can start looking at economic work or ramping economic parameters around it. The East Hilltop is fairly shallow as well. So once we get the new ability to set up new setups, we probably do a bit more definition in that area. And then at depth, we have the Lower Hilltop zone and the Geddes horizon that will be subject to some drilling, but not really a big focus because they are deeper and would be many years out in terms of any mine planning, assuming we get there. So talking about the development plan, we are planning to put in 2 portals out of the kind of the mid depth of the Archimedes pit driving north towards the 426. That's a gold zone. And then as you can see in this image, you turn right, you head towards Blackjack and you head South and you go to the Hilltop zone. So we're -- we've got a great mine team that we've assembled in i-80, and they're working through the planning of how do we do this? How are we going to pull it off? And I'm sure we will once we get to it. The layout of the site is shown on the image on the right, and that is something that we're expecting the permit so we can start the groundworks and setting up for the underground program in 2023. Now this is one of the conceptual models of how are we going to mine all these zones, the 426 and the Ruby Deeps are the Carlin type refractory mineralization and FAD,Jack and skarn, skarn zinc mineralization and the upper hill and lower Hilltop zone or CRD polymetallic mineralization. So as I said, all of these are being looked at. How will we mine this the base metal material, hopefully, we get processed right on site with the conversion of the mill, but you can see the image of here to a flotation plant and the refractory mineralization will be trucked either early on to Nevada Gold Mines as part of our interim processing agreement, but ultimately, one of the main deposits to help fill our own auto play ultimately and make ourselves as a self-sustaining company in the state. Mineral Point is the biggest deposit in our portfolio, something that isn't in our general corporate presentation, but it is there. It's right beside the existing our [ committees ] pit. It is when you include indicated and inferred mineralization it's nearly 5 million ounces of gold and almost 170 million ounces of silver. So in terms of one single deposit, it is actually the largest deposit in our portfolio but it isn't part of our 5-year plan. We're kind of working with a 5-year plan. But it is something that we're looking at. So in our 10-year plan, how we grow, we can grow organically, hopefully, with projects like Mineral Point. The first hole, we were actually drilling polymetallics, but we drilled through mineral point earlier this year, and the [ Black-Scholes ] was 1.2 grams over 50 meters. So really good grade mineralization and that deposit does have some upside opportunity, but it's not something we're targeting in the near future. The addition of Paycore, we think, is going to be a real key acquisition for our ability to develop a deposit that will go long term in this district. It provides us with about 2.5 kilometer extension along that sort of Jackson fault structure down to the south that runs up to the Hilltop fault and the Holly fault, which runs parallel to it. It also consolidates the northern part of the district and with our advanced stage permitting and existing infrastructure, it will allow for us I think to Paycore shareholders to benefit from our infrastructure. If Paycore were going it alone, I believe it would take a long time to be able to permit to dewater to build the infrastructure. And by combining the 2 assets with our advanced stage permitting that we're doing at Ruby Hill more for us to move it forward through amendments to existing permits rather than brand new permits. So it should allow for the permitting process to accelerate to develop a project and what I believe to be a world-class project like the FAD project that at Paycore. And this image is taking that earlier development image and sort of looking at how does this look long term. So the big picture, so to speak. We have all of the mineralization proximal to the our committees pit at the north part. So we're looking east in this image. And then a similar depth is the lower Hilltop is the FAD deposit, about 2 kilometers away has the old FAD shaft is there so people who I hope some people are in this room have either been there or are going to come see the project. And you'll see the FAD shaft and all the infrastructure that sits there. But ultimately, likely using that as a ventilation raise or something and linking the two, and that will provide us significant access to that 2 kilometers in between that is essentially untested and we believe has the potential for multiple deposits. The FAD deposit is, in my opinion, one of the world's premier polymetallic deposits. It's that one deposit that you look at. And as I said, [ Eve Churcas ] one of my -- I call them my mentors as when it came to are we really going to build a mining company-- it was like Eve, who was like, we can do this, like don't be scared. So Eve was always like, you got to find one of these things. And FAD really fits that mold. If you look at the drill holes they did in 2022 fantastic results. I think the last hole is PC22-10 that hit 27 meters of 8 grams gold and 11% lead zinc. That's world-class in any district, and that deposit is open. And one thing that they did very little work on that we may advance and want to look at what the metallurgical properties will be is Gold Hill drilling the oxide mineralization around that historic mine, is there an open pit opportunity and hold 2 of their 22 program hit 2 intercepts, 23.9 meters at 2.3 grams gold and about 4.5% lead zinc and a second intercept of a gram gold and over 5% lengthening. So it does identify that there is a potential significant scale and maybe significant scale, open pivotal project here that I don't think we're planning to drill -- [ Tyler ] he told me, but I'm never planning them to drill it this year, but something we'll probably do a little more work on in 2024. And I put this in here for my friend Eve because he took a bunch of us to see LaRonde when he joined Premier and really proud of what they've built there. And one thing you discussed is how you build a real company and LaRonde is still one of their flagship operation. And I'd point out the grade of FAD here because FAD actually higher grade than LaRonde. And I'm not throwing dirt at LaRonde. It's a great mine. But FAD is one of those deposits when you combine it with the Hilltop and Blackjack that I think gives us a world-class opportunity in the polymetallic deposit. And Eve, when he was working with us, he talked about when they built Agnico. They almost ran out of the money. I think he was using his own bank account for salary. He was telling us about what one point because the market was so bad, they couldn't raise money. They were building 3 mines at the same time. People thought they were crazy at that time, when LaRonde came on, they were trading at $3.50. And I referenced that because that's roughly where our stock is trading today. And if you look at Agnico today, it's one of the most respected companies in the world, and that's what I hope we're going to build here with i-80. Quickly just look at the FAD deposit, the copper potential because in the area this year and as many of the analysts know, we've been talking about somewhere there should be a porphyry -- we're doing some just cursory work around that. But whole 23-16 was drilled this year on the FAD property and our C-hole tested an intersection of structures. And you can see in the magnetics here that, that sort of maps out what they call the Ruby Hill intrusive body. It's intrusive, potentially it could be porphyry at depth. But when we did drill that hole, we hit over 100 meters of magnetite bearing skarn mineralization locally, what our geologists have identified as being copper, Bornite and Moly mineralization within that hole. We're not expecting to be a Barton burner by the way, but it proves that there is a different style of mineralization in this camp that's never been looked at. And it's something that with the geophysics more further our knowledge of this target and ultimately do more drilling. There will be deeps in the 428 zone, 426 zone and now the 428 zone are the Carlin-type refractory, mostly refractory gold mineralization that we see here. Hole 9 of our drill program at Ruby Hill this year, we intersected 7.3 grams over 10 meters, about 250 meters south of our Southmost drilling from last year in the Ruby deep zone. That opens a pretty significant area for extension of that deposit. And later this year, we will do that infill drilling with the hope of adding resources to our Ruby deeps deposit. We're also planning from in the area, we're doing all the groundworks in the pit later this year for the ultimate underground plan is doing some additional drilling because you're down quite a bit in elevation, it saves us a lot of money in drilling. So we're going to wait until we're down in the pit to do more drilling in the 428 zone, but it is something that could become a part of the future of this operation if we can demonstrate continuity in that structure. The grades and with the mineralization at Ruby Hill are very impressive. We're expecting to see an increase in grade based on our drilling in this deposit that will be used in our economic studies compared to what was done by Waterton prior to us acquiring the asset. But I put this image here at the core because for a Carlin-type gold deposit in Nevada the ground conditions appear very, very competent. And for us, that means easier mining and more tonnes. So it's a project that I think is going to really -- it is really the deposit, I think, that's going to help us build the autoclave ultimately once we get that site up and running. And again, on this long section view on the right, you can see the location of hole 9 from this year. Mineralization immediately underneath the [ Wacker Hill ], exactly what we see with the Ruby Hill deposit, the main part of the Ruby Hill deposit 200 meters to the north. The 428 zone is kind of in between Blackjack and the Ruby deeps deposit. It was actually a single drill hole drilled by Homestake into a deeper rock unit that they really didn't target in the open pit area other than the one hole, it was 1,428, and -- but it was 15 grams over 5.5 meters. So we say that it's a pretty good hole. We should at least put 1 hole in and see what it looks like, and we hit 10.3 grams over 10.7 meters completely open for expansion. So it is a target for us later this year that we hope adds high grade, even higher grade resource ounces to the Ruby deeps deposit. Next, I'll talk about Cove because today, we put out results from Cove. Cove is a project that we acquired I think Tyler said, the first drill hole was it 10 or 12 years ago, maybe it's 15 years ago times fly. We stopped drilling the Cove deposit in 2018. So 5 years ago, we stopped drilling in favor of advancing permitting to go underground because it is a deposit that occurs in about a depth of the upper parts of the Helen zone are about 550 meters and goes down to about 700 meters, which is what's known. And to do a definition drill program, as you can see, our current resource is about 1.7 million ounces at nearly 11 grams, but the bulk of that 1.3 million tonnes is inferred. So you can't do a feasibility studies in inferred resources. So we need to complete a significant infill drill program to complete a feasibility study. And we did the analysis to drill all these holes from surface. We're going to lose some because of deviation as you go down. What's the cost of that program? And we felt it was going to be well over $30 million to do the definition drill program. And we did the analysis, well, what is the cost to put in the decline and drill it from underground that came out, our analysis was it should be less. So we decided to permit putting the underground and drill it from underground, which actually saves money, but it took time to permit. And the drill holes that we announced today, I think, really confirm -- what we've always felt about Cove. I think a lot of people forgot about this asset, but the first -- in the first 4 holes drilled into the Gap zone, the darker blue that you see in this image, we had intercepts up to 36 meters of nearly 13 grams. So it does in place that really good with relatively good ground conditions we expect and this drill program is about a 40,000-meter drill program that we're doing. So we should see a lot of results over the next 12 months as we continue to drill this and maybe a bit of step-out drilling to the southeast later in the program. Lastly, we'll talk a bit about Granite Creek before we take a few questions on the floor, if there are any. And or else, hopefully, everybody will join us for a bit of a celebratory drink for 25 years of being up here. Cove -- I mean Granite Creek is one of Nevada's newest high-grade gold operations that we are just doing a lot of work at ramping up. Granite Creek property is situated right beside Turquoise Ridge and Twin Creeks, which is, I believe, the third largest operation of Nevada Gold Mines up against the Osgood stock. It's an intrusive complex. Fault structure runs along the eastern contact of the Osgood stock, the north end of that stock is Turquoise Ridge about a $25 million mine as it's a great operation. And on the south end of the stock is where the Pinson or what we call Granite Creek is located. Last year, early in the program, we discovered what we call the South Pacific zone, which occurs immediately north of the historic mine workings and the primary Ogee zone, which is the zone that we're developing right now underground. But our plan is to get into the South Pacific because you can see in this image, the South Pacific zone has a significantly larger strike length that we've identified the Ogee zone. So hopefully, tonnes per vertical meter as we get in the mining more and more in the future will increase by including the South Pacific zone, and that's some of the work we're advancing right now on the property. So I am going to not just take all the thunder today, and let Matt Gili come up and talk a bit about the underground work that we've been doing over the last year at Granite Creek and some of the -- I guess the good, the bad and the beautiful that comes out of this kind of work. And I'll let him end the presentation today and urge everybody to come talk to us after the presentation here.

Thank you very much, Ewan. So I take it to 3 slides to talk about Granite Creek, just really show first what we're currently doing. I want to talk about how -- the second slide, how the development ramp-up is progressing. We're seeing a really steadily increase in our production or development rates our [indiscernible] execution of the development plan. Lastly, touch on what does that mean really bringing in the South Pacific. So on this first slide here, what you see is these are the current production areas. The areas to the left of this slide, that's what we refer to as the Ogee zone. There's currently 4 sublevels in production on the Ogee zone, we might under hand. So what you see on a sublevel in the Ogee zone, the top cut of the sublevel is the cut you see there, and we'll be mining down on the subsequent 3 cuts, okay? So that's what you see there. You do see on the auto side, which is the right hand of that side, you do see 2 active work areas we have. We have some remnant mining happening around the 4,600 level. And then you see we have put in one new sublevel in the 4,500 level area. That's the small sub level. We're really focusing on the Ogee and that's the area of most importance for us right now. So we talked about the top cuts. We've also talked about, look, we're proceeding cautiously on this. This is a very high-grade deposit. It is also very tricky. So we're learning a lot. We're using these top cuts on these sub levels to understand where the ore envelopes exist. We're doing a lot of pausing for cover drilling to better delineate the ore. We want to make sure we do this correctly and do it efficiently. It's really then all that data you get from the top cut being translates immediately below you. And then that's when you really start seeing the pickup in the rate of coming out of there. Some statistics for the quarter. We shipped 9,389 tonnes of material to Lone tree, that's oxide material. We are encountering quite a bit of oxide material coming out of Granite Creek. In fact, the majority of what we produce right now is oxide material and Ogee is primarily oxide -- that material. So we have something -- we need to do something with that oxide material. For the last quarter of last year and the very beginning of this quarter and this year, we were shipping that material to Lone Tree for leaching. We're leaching that on a dedicated portion of the Lone Tree pad. It's got its own its own cyanide train now so we can process that separately from the rest of the heap leach there, really do a high-intensity leach. We're getting gold off there. We sold 444 ounces for the first quarter. That gold continues to come off there. It's working. It's really not ideal, and we're looking for better alternatives. Right now, we've stopped shipping ore to Lone Tree. We're stockpiling the oxide on-site, and we're looking at better alternatives for how to process that oxide, and we will certainly keep all of you informed as we progress with that. So for the quarter, we did mine 16,000 tonnes at 9.9 grams. That's all ore types combined. We completed 1,870 feet of development. And as I said, we sold 440 ounces [Audio Gap] so the development ramp-up. What we're really pleased with is this curve, okay? We have -- we had a really steady ramp-up when we initiated in 2021, we kind of plateaued in the second half of 2022, and it's really picked up dramatically this year. What is the cause of that pause? We encountered two issues as a company. One, we started to hit water, not a lot of water. We're talking -- in mining terms, 150, 200 gallons a megawatt. What we need to do is to -- that water had above limits for arsenic. We couldn't just discharge it as we normally do. So we had to work out better methods, safe, environmentally safe methods to contain that water. We've worked through a lot of that process. We understand the water better. And so we've been able to take that knowledge and better water management, and that really helps development. you're driving a decline that's wet, you're swimming in water. And the water you can remove makes everything go better. The other thing that's happened is there's been some changes in the in the mining industry in Nevada, there's been some major operations that have gone patent maintenance. We have been able to take the best talent and the best equipment from those other operations and deploy them at Granite Creek, and that's part of what you see as the increase in production rates there for development. What you're seeing on this isometric view here is the upper areas, the Ogee and autoclave, as I talked about before, and then you're seeing where the South Pacific comes into play. We're about one more sublevel away from being -- coming across in the top of the South Pacific. As Ewan pointed out, we are on schedule to blast our first drill in the South Pacific zone in the first quarter of next year. All right. So lastly, I want to talk about the South Pacific zone itself and what we're seeing there. This is a long section. Again, I'd point out the current workings. I point out the lower Ogee and I point out South Pacific. We will continue to down on that main Ogee ramp. But as I said, coming across at the end of this year to the top of the South Pacific can start down on that side as well. What you do see here is you see a gap in South Pacific. And we don't believe that, that gap is necessarily there. We were lacking data. So we're proposing a 12-fold program, 21,000 feet of surface holes to fill in that area. There's some inferred resource. There's a -- the lower part of South Pacific has the widest intervals and it has the best grade. So we proposed a 12-fold program, 21,000 feet to fill in that area and provide better knowledge for our planning and for our technical reports as we go forward on that. That's pretty much what I have with regards to Granite Creek -- Ewan is there anything else would you want to come back up and goes out? Well, it's been a fantastic honor to be here with you today, Ewan. Thank you very much for taking us through it all. It's a fantastic company to work with and for. I'm very honored to be here, and thank you very much.

Thank you, everybody.

So we do have a microphone here. If anybody wanted to answer -- ask a question, but if somebody doesn't want to ask a public question wants it to be more private -- we're all going to be here for the next half hour. So feel free to either come up if nobody see nobody moving, let's mingle a bit and very happy..

Could you comment on cash flow. I understand you're going to have a little bit more gold over the balance of the year production, and you've got cash, but will all that cover the ambitious plans you have? Or what are your thoughts?

Mining is a pretty capital-intensive business way to put it, so I would say that the amount of gold we're producing this year is not going to make us cash flow positive this year. Our goal is that Granite Creek for it itself next year is, hopefully, it becomes on its own cash flow positive. But as we're developing Cove, obviously, we're not producing any gold out of that. Ruby Hill likely won't be until the year after next where we'll start to see a ramp-up in production. I think you'll really see us have to use existing cash, whatever cash we do get from gold production and we'll obviously continue to look at other alternatives at how we finance our growth over the next couple of years.

I'm sorry to disappoint everyone that I don't have a question. I just have a comment.

Seeing you at a lot of our AGMs in to you again.

I have been coming to this meeting for almost 10 years. And today, I learned more than more than what they have learned all these years. And I have moved so much in the first 3 minutes of your talk, and I'm sure everyone else must have [ moved ] with this talk and I feel -- I just want to acknowledge that I'm in good company, both figuratively and literally in the sense and with good people as well as in good companies that I'm invested in I hope you will continue the good work that you have been doing. Just had one question with the drilling from Ruby Hill. You mentioned the trade-off study at Cove, what was better drilled with the underground access versus from surface. So with the declines planned to go into Ruby Hill, are there portions that you're thinking might hold off drilling that are better tackled from an underground access versus from surface.

Yes, much like we're doing at Cove. The plan is for all of the infill drilling and Ruby Deeps and the 426 zone to do it from underground. You get a lot better precision on your drilling. Underground drilling is actually a lot cheaper than surface drilling. So we actually want to get underground drilled because it starts saving us money. So getting that underground access will be critical for us in the infill and much like we're seeing at Granite Creek, it will provide a platform for us to start as I'd say, test mining -- we can look at it we're going to take top concert in the long hole, we can try different mining methods, which one works so that ultimately, when we deliver a feasibility study for Ruby Hill it will be based on real-time data, not just a bunch of surface drill holes. And let's hope this works when we get in there. It will be a lot more advanced than I think you typically see out of the junior development company.

The other question I had is maybe better directed to Matt Gili, the ground conditions at Granite Creek because I know that's going to be a tough year to mine on. So any kind of color there on what you're seeing or how you kind of plan to tackle the South Pacific zone or any differences there versus Ogee?

Great question. We were extremely cautious when we first entered into Granite Creek, and we had -- we did some [indiscernible] test mining. We have on-site instant delivery of Shotcrete, always available. And in our development drivers, we do shotcreting on cycle. The the ground conditions on the Ogee side have been incredibly surprised very good, right? So we are really not -- ground conditions on the Ogee side are really not a limiting factor to how we advance other than just the water. The auto side is a very much more difficult ore body to mine. You see we're really not focusing much on the auto. We only have 2 sub levels there that we're even working doing any work on, and we're really not talking about putting in more sub levels. So you're right. I mean where we are now, we are very pleasantly pleased with the ground conditions and they're not a limiting factor in how we progress [indiscernible] so it just seems to be -- it seems to be getting better as we go deeper. And what you're seeing on the South Pacific is a really competent host rock. That's what makes it easy if your development openings are easy to maintain, you don't have to go back and rehabilitate your development, you can just progress more at it.