Japan Gold Corp. (JG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to the Annual Meeting of Stockholders of Japan Gold Corp. Please note that today's meeting is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to turn today's meeting over to John Proust, title, Chairman and CEO of Japan Gold Corp. Mr. Proust, the floor is yours.

Thank you, operator. Good day, and welcome to the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders of Japan Gold Corp. My name is John Proust, and I'm the Chairman of the company and the Board of Directors of the company has delegated me the authority to lead the meeting today. I'm also happy to welcome our registered shareholders that are joining this meeting today through the Computershare virtual meeting platform. If you participate in today's meeting and disclose personal information, you will be deemed to consent to the recording, transfer and use of the same. If you disclose personal information of another person in today's meeting [indiscernible] to Computershare and the company that you first obtained all required consents for the disclosure, recording, transfer and use of such personal information from all appropriate persons before your disclosure. Today's meeting will be held in 2 parts. Following the formal meeting, we will have a question-and-answer session after the shareholder update. You can submit questions or comments at any time by clicking on the Q&A icon on the virtual interface. Questions will only be addressed during the Q&A period at the end of the meeting. And I'd really encourage you to -- if you have questions and you are aware of, submit those questions as soon as possible. As this meeting is held live via webcast, we think it is necessary to set out a few rules for the orderly conduct of the meeting. For the purposes of the meeting today, voting on all matters will be conducted by electronic ballot. Registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders will be asked to vote on each business item after the presentation of each business item. When you are asked to vote, I will state that the polls are open, and please register your votes. At this point, all registered shareholders -- registered holders and proxy holders, who have properly logged in with their control numbers or username and wish to vote, will be able to see on the screen each motion being brought forth at the meeting. Please register your votes by accessing the voting page and selecting [ the For ] and Against buttons or the For or Withhold buttons next to each motion. Please take note that if you have already registered your vote, then there's no need to take any action. To expedite the formal part of this meeting, I will move and second all motions. We will now proceed with the formal portion of today's meeting. I now ask that the Annual General Meeting of the shareholders of the company come to order. I appoint Eileen Au, Corporate Secretary of the company, as Secretary of the meeting. For the purposes of this meeting, I appoint Vanessa Lee of Computershare Trust Company of Canada to act as scrutineer to compute the votes [ at this ] meeting and to report thereon to me. The purposes of today's meeting are set out in the Management Information Circular of the company dated September 6, 2022. The notice calling this meeting, the Management Information Circular and the form of proxy were mailed to shareholders on or around September 21, 2022, along with the audited consolidated financial statements of the company for the fiscal period ending December 31, 2021 and related MD&A to shareholders of the company who requested such statements and related MD&A. I will dispense with reading of the notice of meeting. Copies of the Management Information Circular and other meeting materials are available under the company's profile on the SEDAR website. Our transfer agent, Computershare Trust Company of Canada has attested to the proper mailing of the notice calling this meeting. There has been filed with me proof of service of such mailing provided by the company's transfer agent. I direct that a copy of such proof of service be annexed to the minutes of this meeting as a schedule. The company's articles stipulate that a quorum is one person who is a shareholder or who has otherwise permitted to vote shares of the company at a meeting of shareholders, present in person or by proxy. I have before me the scrutineer's interim report indicating that there are no shareholders present in person representing [ nil ] shares and 71 shareholders represented by proxy, representing 119,234,427 shares of the issued capital of the company for a total of 71 shareholders and 119,234,427 shares. I direct that the formal scrutineer's report be annexed to the minutes of this meeting as a schedule. I therefore declare a quorum of shareholders present and this meeting to be regularly called and duly constituted and is now ready for the transaction of business. As the first item of business on the agenda for today's meeting, I now present to the meeting the audited consolidated financial statements of the company as at and for the fiscal period ended December 31, 2021, together with the auditor's report to the shareholders thereon. Copies of such documents have been mailed to the shareholders who requested such statements, and it does not propose to read them to the meeting. The next item of business is the fixing of the number of directors. Before we proceed to the nomination of directors, I move and second a motion as follows: Resolved that the number of directors of the company be fixed. The polls are now open. Please register your vote. [Voting]

And as you may notice, there is a pause until we recognize the votes being registered. All right. The polls are now closed. The votes have been received and the motion is carried. The next item of business is the election of directors. The company did not receive notice of any director nominations in connection with the meeting in accordance with the company's advanced [indiscernible]. And accordingly, only persons eligible to be nominated for election to the Board of Directors of the company are the management nominees. Since there are no other nominations, I move and second the motion as follows: Resolved that John Proust, Mitsuhiko Yamada, Paul Harbidge, Murray Flanigan, Ian Burney, Michael Carrick and Tanneke Heersche be elected as directors of the company for the ensuing year and hold office until the next Annual General Meeting or until his or her successor is elected or appointed, unless his or her office is earlier vacated. The polls are now open. Please register your votes. [Voting]

As noted there will be a pause while votes are registered. The polls are closed. The votes have been received and the motion is carried. The next item of business is the appointment of the company's auditors. I move and second a motion as follows: Resolved that KPMG LLP be appointed auditor of the company for the ensuing year at a remuneration to be fixed by the directors of the company. The polls are open. Please register your vote. [Voting]

The polls are closed. The votes have been received and the motion is carried. The next item of business is the approval of the company's 2022 equity incentive plan as more particularly described in the company's information circular prepared for the meeting. I move and second the following resolution: Be it resolved that, a, the Company's 2022 equity incentive plan adopted by the Board of Directors of the company effective as of September 6, 2022, the Compensation Plan, in substantially the form attached as Schedule B to the Management Information Circular of the company dated September 21, 2022; be and is hereby confirmed, ratified and approved and the company has the ability to grant awards under the Compensation Plan; b, the Board of Directors of the company be authorized in its absolute discretion to administer the Compensation Plan and amend or modify the Compensation Plan in accordance with its terms and conditions and with the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange; c, all issued and outstanding stock options of the company previously granted shall be continued under and governed by the Compensation Plan; and d, any director or officer of the company be authorized and directed to do all acts and things and to execute and deliver all documents required as in the opinion of such director or officer may be necessary or appropriate in order to give effect to this resolution. The polls are open. Please register your vote. [Voting]

The polls are closed. The votes have been received. And the motion is carried. I would ask that the scrutineer compile the report regarding the results of voting on all matters. There'll be a brief pause while receive that report. I have been advised by the scrutineer that the ballots and proxies deposited for the meeting have been voted in favor of the resolutions. Summary of the motions passed today are as follows: Number one, the number of directors for the ensuing year has been set at 7. Number two, each of the 7 nominees have been elected as directors of the company. Number three, KPMG LLP has been appointed as the auditors of the company, and the Board of Directors has been authorized to fix their remuneration. Four, the adoption by the Board of Directors of the company's 2022 equity incentive plan be and is hereby confirmed, ratified and approved and the company has the ability to grant awards under the Compensation Plan. I direct that the results of the poll be included with the minutes of this meeting. The formal items of business as set out in the notice of meeting have now been dealt with. I move and second that this meeting is now terminated. As there is no further business to come before the meeting, I declare the formal part of the meeting to be concluded. We will now take a brief pause and proceed with the shareholder update portion of the meeting with the Q&A session to follow. Participants may click on the Broadcast icon on the virtual interface for a full stream view of the shareholder presentation. And I'd encourage you to do so as there is some finer detail in the presentation. I will also note that for an expanded presentation, you can go to the Japan Gold website at japangold.com, and you'll find the updated presentation on the cover page. So I'll now move into the shareholder update. And if you could forward the next -- to the next slide, please. I will note that in this update that I'm going to provide to you today, there are forward-looking statements. I would encourage you at your leisure to have a look at the forward-looking statement slide and certainly contact the company if you have any questions. Next slide, please. Could you go -- return one slide, please? Thank you. So as shareholders know, and I'm excited to speak with you about today because there are so many developments in the company, and we've had important developments just recently not only with our Barrick Alliance decisions being made, but also with the drilling that we're currently undertaking now and the results that we're achieving. The investment rationale remains the same for Japan Gold. We are and have always been the first mover in Japan since the 2012 change in the mining law. And that's allowed us to assemble a significant portfolio of projects, 31 gold projects covering in excess of 40 historic gold mines. We have been very fortunate to have a strategic alliance with Barrick Gold Corp, and we'll speak about that in greater detail in a moment. We have significant shareholders that I'll summarize with you in a moment as well. And we have a management team and an operational team with a proven track record of identifying mineral deposits and advancing them to production. Next slide, please. So this map indicates the portfolio of the company's projects, and we've tried to color code it to make it a little bit easier to understand, and I'm going to take you through that. So first of all, there are the 3 main islands of Japan starting in the north with Hokkaido and in the long central island of Honshu and then the southern island of Kyushu. And you can see that our projects are concentrated in Hokkaido and in Kyushu with 1 project on Honshu. We've color-coded these projects because they are held in various ways, or they have certain interest associated with them. Over the last 2.5 years, under our countrywide alliance, our strategic alliance with Barrick Gold Corporation, Barrick has evaluated 29 of the 31 projects to the Barrick Standard in order to determine projects that may meet their criteria going forward. Recently, at the end of August of this year, Barrick selected 6 projects that met their standards to proceed going forward. And those are the ones that are highlighted in red, and we'll talk about those in a moment. 3 of them are in Hokkaido, 1 of them is on Honshu and 2 of them are either side of the Hishikari Gold Mine in Southern Kyushu. Next slide, please. So to touch on the Barrick Strategic Alliance and just really bring you up to date there. So Barrick took 2.5 years of a comprehensive review of the 29 projects, which included detailed geochemistry and geophysics across over 2,100 square kilometers to come to their decisions on which projects may host or have the potential to host a Tier 1 or a Tier 2 ore body. A Tier 1 ore body is a 5 million-ounce gold ore body that has the potential to produce -- or greater that has the potential to produce 500,000 ounces a year or more annually for 10 years or greater. A Tier 2 ore body is 3 million ounces or greater that has the potential to produce 300,000 ounces a year for 10 years or greater. And so we were delighted when Barrick decided that 6 of our projects had the potential to host either a Tier 1 or Tier 2 ore body. In addition, and more recently to our evaluation of the project portfolio, we have acquired additional prospecting rights. And Barrick selected 3 additional project areas for further review over the next 11 months in order to see if any of those 3 project areas should be included in the second evaluation phase and would host that same criterion of Tier 1 or Tier 2 ore body. So this is a very, very strong endorsement of the quality of the portfolio and the potential of Japan. And our focus now is very much on advancing those projects with Barrick through detailed geophysics and drilling. And I'm pleased to say that, of course, Barrick continues to fully fund any projects that they've selected to move forward, including the 6 projects that they've selected, but also the 3 project areas they're continuing to evaluate. So those are being fully funded by Barrick. Let's move to the next slide, please. So as I mentioned, the evaluation was completed at the end of August this year. Barrick has committed USD 10 million to the evaluation of the 29 projects. And at the end of June of 2022, had spent USD 7.3 million on that initial evaluation. Fortunately, for Japan Gold, that has given us a looksee to the Barrick Standard in all the various projects that are included in that Barrick evaluation. So all 29 projects and so notwithstanding some projects are not advancing under the Barrick Alliance, we have valuable information about those very prospective projects. We concluded geochemistry and geophysics in order to -- across all 29 projects in order to identify over 40 significant gold anomalies across the project areas and these helped Barrick decide which areas were moving to that next stage. In the past -- or over the period of the alliance, we increased the portfolio by 42% in terms of the area size as we found other prospect areas in the alliance portfolio that could be expanded to cover those significant gold anomalies. Next slide, please. So as I mentioned, when we were looking at the summary map, 6 of the projects were selected going forward, 3 in Hokkaido, 1 in Honshu and 2 in Kyushu. And the other 3 projects that were -- project areas that were identified for further evaluation, 2 of those are in Hokkaido and 1 of those is on Honshu. Next slide, please. So we're going to look in a little bit more detail at these various areas to show you what Barrick selected and try to give you a sense of why they might have selected these areas. Starting with Hokkaido in the north. And you can see there's an inset map where we're in Northeastern Hokkaido. The area that's highlighted in the map on your screen, that's outlined in a purple dotted line is the Kitami Metallogenic Province. And all the project areas, no matter what color, are our projects in the Japan Gold portfolio. The projects in red, the 3 projects in red were the ones that Barrick selected to advance to the second stage of evaluation with the potential to host a Tier 1 or Tier 2 ore body. You can see that there's 2 in the West [indiscernible], and then between them, there is a dark blue outlined area, which is an area that was more recently acquired that is in that basket of being further evaluated by Barrick to consider whether it would have the same potential of a Tier 1 or Tier 2 ore body. The Hakuryu Project further to the east, outlined in red, sits directly south of the Kenomai Mine. The Kenomai Mine is the third largest past-producing mine in Japan [indiscernible] 1974 and it produced over 2 -- almost 2.5 million ounces [indiscernible]. It's held by and owned by Sumitomo Metal Mining. And it was a vein system, a series of veins that were running east-west that were moving from the northern end of our Hakuryu Project northward. After the Second World War, there was a road that was driven south through the Hakuryu area, and it exposed some favorable [indiscernible]. And it may be a continuation of a similar system going to the south. So that's what we're evaluating now. And that's one of the reasons why Barrick has kept that particular project area in the portfolio and advancing to the second stage. Also what you see on this slide are -- in green are the project areas that Barrick did not - -they evaluated them, but they did not select them for further advancement. So those are in a basket that we call other projects that are now available for discussion with other third parties or other potential arrangements that I'll discuss in a few moments. The light blue project, the Ikutahara Project is 1 of 2 projects in Japan that is outside the Barrick Alliance. The Ikutahara Project has a right of first -- is granted a right of first refusal to Newmont in order for them to be the right of first refusal on a joint venture, should Japan Gold wish to enter into a joint venture on that project. So -- and that's the project we're going to return to in a few moments because it's our most advanced project in Japan, and we're actively drilling there now. Let's move to the next slide, please. Now we're moving to Southwest Hokkaido. So we're southwest of the city of Sapporo. And we only have one project in the northern part called Buho, and if you look carefully at your map, you'll see that there are 4 blocks in the Buho Project; 3 that are outlined in green are areas that Barrick is not advancing and 1 that's outlined in purple or dark blue is the area that Barrick is continuing to evaluate over the next several months. And so we continue to advance that project. Further to the south, the Minamikayabe Project was not advanced by Barrick, and it's in our other basket. Next slide, please. We're now moving down to Kyushu -- to the middle Kyushu area. And we have the 3 projects outlined in -- within the purple polygon, the Kamitsue Project, the Usa Project and the Bajo Project. These 3 projects were evaluated by Barrick and not advanced to the next stage, but they do sit in fairly close proximity to the Taio Mine, which is another large in excess of 1 million-ounce past-producing gold mine in Japan. Next slide, please. Now we're moving into Southern Kyushu. And this is the most prolific gold-producing province or area of Japan, the Hokusatsu region. There's a few things to note on this slide for you. One is that the Hishikari Gold Mine, which is the only producing gold mine in Japan today and is owned by Sumitomo Metal Mining in a black shading, and that mine is held by Sumitomo Metal Mining. The Hishikari Gold Mine is one of the highest-grade Tier 1 gold mines in the world, having now produced since 1985, over 8 million ounces of gold at an average grade of between 30 and 40 grams per tonne and still has approximately 5 million ounces of reserves remaining. So it's an incredible ore body in Japan and is one that really is worthy of notice and one that we, as explorers, of course, are trying to replicate. I will note that all of our project areas and projects that we are evaluating throughout Japan have similar targets that we're chasing as the Hishikari Gold Mine, which is a certain type of deposit that's called a low-sulfidation epithermal gold mine, which really just means quartz veins that in Hishikari's case are about half a meter to about 3-plus meters wide, and there's a collection of about 40-plus veins in the Hishikari Mine area. On this map, you'll see that in green are the projects that are in our other basket areas that Barrick evaluated and did not go through to the second phase of evaluation. You'll see in red, the 2 project areas that Barrick did select. The Ebino Project, which is directly north of the Hishikari Mine and the Mizobe Project, which is south of the Hishikari Mine. I will note that in this Hokusatsu region, we hold across our project portfolio over 84% of all prospective ground in this region. And we are currently active on both the Ebino Project and the Mizobe Projects, and we hope to be able to report further details to you about these projects in the very near future. Next -- one other point that I will make there. Sorry, just if you could go back. In light blue is our 1 project in the southern half of Japan that's outside the Barrick Alliance, where Newmont has that right of first refusal. And Newmont is not only holding that right of first refusal but is also a large equity shareholder in Japan Gold Corp at 10%. And so because of those 2 reasons, Newmont provides us with significant technical support to help guide the programs on both this project in Southern Kyushu and also the project in Northern Hokkaido. Next slide, please. So what happens to the projects that are now in our other basket now that Barrick has made there to [indiscernible]. We have 23 projects in that basket. And we are delighted to say that those projects, while not meeting Barrick's criterion have significant attributes to make them highly prospective and attractive to other potential partners. So we have several routes to consider here in terms of how we advance those projects. And in order to really solidify that for ourselves, we've been spending the last few weeks carefully looking at each project, preparing summary, reports or presentations on each project, ranking those or rating those within our own internal system and trying to decide how they would proceed going forward. And so we have 3 choices and probably really 4 choices. The first one is out of those 23 projects, perhaps there are projects now that we want to retain for Japan Gold and advance exclusively ourselves. In that case, we would be using our own capital to do that, just like we are with the Ohra-Takamine Project and the Ikutahara Projects, the 2 that are outside the Barrick Alliance that we currently hold in the country. The second thing we might want to consider is selling a project or projects and adding to our capital base. The third thing that we might consider is entering into new joint ventures with partners that are appropriately sized and appropriate for the project portfolio that we have in the other basket. So all these things are being considered and we have a very lofty goal of trying to advance all these projects by the end of the year. And so we're deeply immersed in that now. And let's move to the next slide, and we'll talk about some of the other attributes. So with the 2 projects that are outside the Barrick Alliance, as I mentioned, we have the Ikutahara Project and the Ohra-Takamine Project, and these are our 2 most advanced projects in Japan. Now in the last year, we have not done a lot at the Ohra-Takamine Project because Barrick has been very active around that project, as you saw in that Southern Kyushu map. And so we felt it was prudent to let Barrick complete their evaluation before we became more advanced in that project. We've done considerable work there, mapping, geology, geophysics, geochemistry and some scout drilling. And we have a comprehensive plan on how we'd like to move going forward. But at this time, we'd be holding off on that, focus our drilling activities have all been in the Ikutahara Project in Hokkaido, and we'll discuss that now. So next slide, please. So at the Ikutahara Project, we've identified through the same mechanisms, mapping, geology, geophysics, geochemistry and scout drilling, we've identified 3 significant prospects that we are drilling now and reporting to shareholders. The Ryuo prospect, we started drilling in the middle of last year, and we completed 11 holes in 2021. And then this year, we finished another 7 drill holes as well, and we've had very strong high-grade results. In the 11 holes that we drilled last year, our best intersection was 20 meters at 6.3 grams of gold and silver included in addition to that. Our most exciting intersection was almost 0.5 meter at over 1,300 grams per tonne, really indicating that in these high levels of these epithermal systems, there is significant concentrations of gold that have made their way up closer to the surface in these systems. At the -- and other intersections in addition to that, including almost 5 meters at 12 grams. So we've had some very strong results there as well. In addition to the Ryuo prospect, we've now completed a 6 drill hole program in the Saroma Valley under the Saroma Mine, and we are now completing 3 significant deep holes under the Kitano-o East prospect, and we hope to have those completed within the next month. Our results from all these programs will be forthcoming. We've reported on the Ryuo prospect holes and Saroma and ¢ Kitano-o will be coming in the next few months between now and I'd say, Christmas. So as I mentioned, we drilled 7 additional holes this year at the Ryuo prospect. And if you can go to the next slide, please, we can talk about some of the results of both of these. So first of all, here's a map just to orient you. So this is the Kitano-o -- pardon me, this is the Ikutahara Project. This is a geology map that basically is showing you the layers of geology from the deeper blue basement rocks. So those are highlighted in blue. Then you have the buff-colored areas, which are the intermediate zones or the rhyolites. And then you have the shallow or shallower areas, which are the volcanics, the younger rocks that sit over top of those. And gold mines in Japan have been found in the volcanics in the intermediate or rhyolites and also in the deeper basement rocks as well. On this map that you see here, you'll see in red, we've highlighted the areas that are detailed prospects and so as I mentioned, the Ryuo prospect up in the Northwest corner is one that we've done 18 drill holes and now the Kitano-o East prospect is where we're drilling 3 holes currently and [indiscernible] prospects under the Saroma Valley, which represents about 1 kilometer of that 4-kilometer long oval. We've now drilled 6 holes under that area as well. Next slide, please. So I'm going to zero in on the prospect, but I just want to give you a visual to keep in mind for what it is that we're trying to find in these areas. When we're looking for these low-sulfidation epithermal gold deposits, typically, they are the manifestation of activity that's happened deeper in the earth. So well deep in the earth, there are big boiling zones of magma that are under significant pressure and have low concentrations of gold and copper and other metals. When opportunities arise, like the movement of tectonic plates or volcanic activity or other movements that releases the pressure on those zones, those deep zones and allows those mineral-rich fluids to flow closer to the earth and to concentrate their precious metals. In our case, we are at the very high end of the very last results of that when these materials come up closer to the surface, they start filling in cracks or fissures and they start creating veins that are closer to the surface to create these epithermal systems. Epithermal systems or deposits are generally found in about 100 meters to 400 meters below the surface. And historically in Japan, under the mines that we've been evaluating, or the mines that we've been evaluating, have been basically very shallow. So those mines have gone from the surface down to 50, 75, maybe 100 meters deep, but not much deeper than that for 2 reasons. One is they haven't really had the technology or the ability, or secondly, they've hit the water table and they wouldn't have had the pumping capacity to pump out the water. But nevertheless, they've hit gold-bearing systems, and they've had productive mines. But my analogy is that they're seeking out or we're looking at a buried tree. So we're looking at a tree and the historic mining is just hit the small thin branches at the top of the tree and our goal is to find the thicker branches that are a little further down on the tree or ultimately define the feeder zone or the upflow zone where that -- those mineral-rich fluids have come up from deeper in the earth where there could be higher concentrations of precious metals. So that's our plan here. So now we're looking at the Ryuo prospect. And on this map, it's very detailed, but I'm just going to give you a couple of quick descriptions. The Ryuo prospect in the pink area, which is that intermediate zone that's hosting the quartz veins is about 800 meters to a kilometer long from the southwest to the northeast. And in 1943, when the government closed all the gold mines in Japan, at the Ryuo Mine, they were mining from 5 separate underground locations along this mineralized corridor. Our goal was to drill under these mining areas, starting at about 50 meters below the old workings and then 50 meters down to 100 meters below the old workings to try and identify what's happening to those fairly vertical veins that are being mined by the historic miners. Do those veins pinch out? Do they swell? What happens to the gold grade as we go deeper? And so what we've been very fortunate to find is that as we've gone deeper, we found that the veins in a number of cases have gotten wider and the grades -- the gold grades have gotten higher as we've been going deeper. So our theory or thesis is working, and this is what's really reinforcing our continued drilling activities in the Ryuo area. So we drilled 7 additional holes this year. And again, we've hit high grade -- significant high grades of almost a meter at 22 grams, 0.4 meter [indiscernible] 0.5 meter at 19 grams and then lower grades, but still very viable, 1.1 meters at 2.9 grams. So this continues to give us more information as we prospect across this mineralized corridor and seek out the mineral deposits underneath the old mine workings. We've also identified that this mineralized corridor could extend both to the northeast and to the southwest. It may have a thin veneer of covering, but we want to continue to test that as well. And so between now and the end of the year, we're going to drill 2 additional holes that we think are going to be quite well placed and will give us additional information to add to what we've learned already in 2022. One of those is nearby the last of the 7 holes that we drilled, where unfortunately, we were forced to stop our drilling prematurely because a forestry permit unfortunately expired right at that time. So we'll be back into that between now and the end of the year, and we'll have 2 more holes drilled at Ryuo. Next slide, please. So I summarized already the high-grade results that we've encountered at the drilling -- in the drilling in 2021. So next slide, please. And 2022, again, high-grade intersections through that same area as well. Next slide, please. Just to give you a visual of what we're talking about the Ryuo prospect, I'm going to give you really a couple of visuals. But this is a cartoon. It just shows 1 of the 5 prospects that was being mined underground in 1943 when the government closed the gold mines in Japan and the Ryuo Mine was closed along with that moratorium. And this basically shows that at that time, they were mining on 6 different levels. They were mining a vein that was approximately 0.5 meter wide and that was averaging over 40 grams per tonne and Level 6 that you can see on your slide was the lowest level, and that was where the water table was being encountered. So 0.5 meter wide at [ 40.8 ] grams per tonne. We went 50 meters under Level 4, and our intersection was almost 5 meters at 12 grams, which was an impressive intersection. And within that, the core was over 0.5 meter at now 60 grams, 59.4 grams. We then went 40 meters beneath that, and we went from 5 meters wide to 20-meter-wide stock working zone at 6.3 grams that again had a core zone of over 0.5 meter, 0.65 of a meter now at 92 grams. This has given us, again, very strong encouragement to continue to drill the Ryuo prospect. Next slide, please. This is a long section with geology that we've included for the first time in a presentation. And this basically shows you the Ryuo Mine and the 5 sets of underground workings that are highlighted across this slide. And so starting with the Jinja and Shouei workings, those are 2 sets of workings at the north end of the slide. You see that on the right side of the cartoon that you have here. Now the Jinja and Shouei workings that was the cartoon I showed you on the previous slide of the 6 underground levels. That was a Jinja. And so basically, you're working to the south as you go from right to left on this slide. What we wanted to just highlight on this was that there are significant drill targets that are open to depth under these old mine workings now that we have a better understanding of the geology and the formations that exist under these old mines. So it really has given us a much stronger understanding for this area and is allowing us to really pinpoint the drilling that we'd like to do. Next slide, please. So to move away from geology and projects and prospects, I want to talk about our share structure. This is our share structure today. We currently, as you can see on the circle that's here, we have Newmont as a shareholder at 10% of the company. We are very fortunate that over the last several years, we've built an incredible collection of some of the very best institutions in the world who now hold 55% of the shares of our company. And those include BlackRock, RCF from Denver, large New York groups like the Donald Smith Value Fund and Libra, Regal from Australia, Rothschild from Europe, a larger shareholder with Equinox Partners holding 15% of the company. These groups are all embedded in our business with what they call placeholder investments or toehold investments, so that they will be called upon when it comes time in the future for us, hopefully, to build mines with Barrick or Newmont or others, and we require the capital, the large capital to build the mines. So we've already baked in or built into our share structure, the institutions that can support those types of capital raising. Management holds 7% of the company and the public float is 28%. You can see in the schedule below that, all of our warrants have either expired or have been exercised. We have stock options that are outstanding across our broad collection of [indiscernible] consultants across the company in terms of our operational side and management side. And our current market capitalization is approximately CAD 55 million. And through the last sort of this market cycle where there's been significant pressure on equities, I'm pleased to say that really Japan Gold has held up very, very well at recent conferences that I've been at, presenters have been using the phrase that a horizontal share price is a win in today's current markets. And obviously, we'd like to see a higher share price going forward, but we're pleased that we have had such strong support from the marketplace. The other point that I would make for any existing investors or new potential investors is that the last financing we did was in July of 2021. And at that point, we raised $17 million in a highly oversubscribed financing [ predominantly ] by the large institutions. And that was done at $0.35 with no warrants attached. We currently trade in the $0.25 to $0.30 range. And so we think that there is very significant value and a very good opportunity to buy the company's shares at this juncture. Certainly, with the developments of Barrick having selected 6 projects to move forward into their second phase of evaluation with the potential to have Tier 1 or Tier 2 deposit. Next slide, please. As I mentioned last year at the same time, we -- last year went through what we would call a diversification of our Board to really bring in some very strong members in a variety of disciplines. And very quickly to summarize, in addition to myself being on the Board, Ian Burney is on our Board as well. Ian was previously the Ambassador of Canada to Japan until the middle of 2021. He was also raised in Japan as a child and has an extraordinary reputation of diplomatic service and is a very strong addition to our Board. Michael Carrick is a very well-respected mining executive, who has put 7 major mines into production in 5 countries around the world, and was responsible for selling one of his last businesses or combining one of his last businesses [indiscernible] with B2Gold. Mitsuhiko Yamada has been my mentor and our representing director in Japan for many, many years. He is one of the top mining executives in Japan, having previously been the Chief Executive of Sumitomo Corporation's Global Minerals division. Paul Harbidge is one of our independent directors, who was previously at Randgold in Africa with Mark Bristow when they had incredible success with several world-class discoveries in Africa. And were one of the highest-rated companies, mining companies on the London Stock Exchange. Mark Bristow went on to become the CEO of Barrick, and Paul Harbidge moved on to become the Head of Exploration -- Global Exploration for Goldcorp and really pinpointed Japan as an opportunity for Goldcorp prior to their acquisition by Newmont. And has now moved on to his own independent companies, including Faraday Copper, where he is currently the CEO. Tanneke Heersche is a significant mining lawyer globally, has been very active with White & Case in London and then Fasken Martineau in Toronto. She's done a number of major transactions with Japanese trading houses and is the head of the global ESG Steering Committee at Fasken Martineau. Murray Flanigan, an outstanding CFO with a large amount of international experience and the Chairman of our Audit Committee. Next slide, please. Our executive team has a really strong cross-section of experience. Andrew Rowe is our Vice President of Exploration with many, many years of significant work throughout the Asia Pacific region and has been our primary focus on Japan since 2012 and the change in the mining law. So he's got over 10 years of experience in Japan and would be one of the most experienced foreign executives in that space in the country. Yoshio Nojima is our General Manager of Business Administration coming to us from Sumitomo Corporation, where he led a number of international divisions and also was in charge of the private equity investment portfolio of Sumitomo Corporation. Takashi Kuriyama has been with us for many years as our General Manager of Exploration. He is a geologist that has basically come from Sumitomo Metal Mining, where he was the Head of Global Exploration. And prior to that, he was the General Manager and Chief Geologist at the Hishikari Gold Mine and has incredible [indiscernible] the opportunities that lie there. He is also on the Teck Resources Board of Directors for 10 years. Dr. Kotaro Ohga came to us from the University of Hokkaido where he was -- he was a mining engineer, but he was an associate professor there, and he leads our activities in Hokkaido in both the permitting and operational activities there. Vince Boon is our Chief Financial Officer, again, with many years of public company and resource sector experience. And Dr. Tim Sharp is our Chief Geologist, who came to us from Barrick, where he was the Principal Geologist at Barrick in Africa and the Middle East and with their consent, Tim joined us about 1.5 years ago and has been a welcome addition. Next slide, please. Finally, on our Board of Advisors. Our Board of Advisors is heavily weighted to the technical side with Steve Garwin, Dr. Mike Andrews and John Carlile also being -- all being geologists -- sorry, and Bob Gallagher as a mining engineer, all with significant international credentials and discoveries globally. Our most recent addition was Toru Tokuhisa, a very senior banker from Japan, who had a strong banking career for over 30 years. And then for the last 15 years, led the Mergers and Acquisitions division at the Sumitomo Corporation. So a welcome addition on that side. Next slide, please. So just to summarize Japan Gold -- Japan Gold's strengths, we are clearly the first mover in Japan. We have 31 projects that are held across Japan. We are in one of the most geopolitically safe and corruption-free jurisdictions in the world. We've been able to advance our projects at a very underexplored environment and bring new technology and models to Japan to really advance and restart the gold mining industry. And we have brought in the 2 largest gold mining companies in the world to be our partners with Barrick Gold Corporation and Newmont strongly supporting us. And with Barrick fully funding the evaluation of 29 of our 31 projects and selecting 6 to move forward with great potential. We're well funded to complete our activities this year and not only to complete our activities this year, but to move well into next year. We've developed a team that has got the confidence of not only Barrick and Newmont to be fully operational in Japan with geologists, field assistants, a permitting team and our full drilling division and 4 diamond core drill rigs to complete the programs that we're undertaking. And we're looking forward to inviting new joint venture partners to come in and join us in Japan and to help advance the portfolios that we are -- the other projects that we have in our portfolio, so that we can continue to unlock the full riches across the country. So thank you very much for your attendance today, and I'm going to pause, and we'll open the floor to questions and answers. Let's see if there's any questions that have emerged at this point, but what I wanted to do just before we sign off today and in the event there are not any other questions is just to tell you what's happening between now and the end of the year and the type of activity that we have underway. So just to summarize, first of all, under the Barrick Alliance, with the 6 projects that have been advanced and the 3 that are still under evaluation, we have significant work programs that are currently happening now, and we hope to be drilling by the end of the year. So we'll report to the market on that shortly. So you can look for those sets of news. And we'll continuously report on the Barrick projects being advanced as they go forward in the coming months. With regard to the 2 projects that are outside the Barrick Alliance, our focus on drilling is the Ikutahara Project. And so we're drilling at those 3 prospects that we've shown you, the Ryuo prospect, the Saroma prospect and the • Kitano-o East prospect, and we will have continuous drilling results between now and the end of the year and beyond. And the drilling results are demonstrating that there is high grade gold in Japan yet to be discovered. The final piece is that I'm very excited about this new chapter that we're undertaking now because we have significant interest from mining companies around the world in terms of our projects that are now available for new relationships or new advancement. And we are going to carefully identify what's in the best interest of Japan Gold with regard to retaining projects for ourselves, selling projects or advancing of the new joint ventures. And we look forward to reporting those to you again through the coming months. So as there's no further questions, well, thank you very much for attending. I appreciate you joining us at the 2022 Annual General Meeting, and we look forward to reporting to you again next year, if not before. Thank you.

This concludes the meeting. You may now disconnect.