Nova Minerals Corp (NVA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hi. This is Craig with RedChip Companies. Thank you for joining today's event with Nova Minerals, which trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker NVA. With us today, we have Christopher Gerteisen, Executive Director and CEO of Nova Minerals. We will begin with a brief presentation in a moment, and then we will answer your questions. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, please allow me to read the safe harbor statement. This call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements pertaining to future financial and/or operating results, along with other statements about the future expectations, beliefs, goals, plans or prospects expressed by management constitute forward-looking statements. Any statements that are not historical facts should also be considered forward-looking statements. Of course, forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties. I now turn the webinar over to Chris. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Craig. Very exciting time for Nova Minerals. We just recently listed on the NASDAQ ticker code NVA. What we have is the Estelle project. We're developing North America's next major gold and most recently, a critical minerals district here in Alaska. We're a gold company. We're focused on the gold. That story is strong, getting stronger. We've also made very significant discoveries of many of these critical elements that are so highly sought after. The big one there drawing a lot of interest is antimony, very significant discoveries of antimony. At a glance, 200 square mile claim block in Alaska here, quite a large project to date. We've defined almost 10 million ounces globally. Now internal to that, according to S-K 1300 guidelines for the NASDAQ, economic resources at a $2,000 gold price are 5.2 million ounces. That's in 2 deposits, Korbel up North, which is a bulk tonnage system and then down south, what's really become the jewel in the crown at RPM, very high-grade deposit right on the surface there, and the company is laser-focused on getting that into production here as soon as possible. In addition to that, 20 other known prospects at various stages of advancement. And one to point out there is Stibium, where we've made one of these high-grade antimony discoveries there that's drawing so much interest. In the Tintina Gold belt, this is the land of the intrusive related gold system. Here's our neighborhood, some names you might recognize, a lot of the majors operating in the region, Kinross with Fort Knox, Newmont over on the Yukon side, Barrick with their Donlin project just to the west of us. So 10 million-plus ounce deposits not uncommon in our neighborhood, and that's certainly what we're on to at Estelle. Let's zoom in here to South Central Alaska. We're looking east towards Anchorage. The project sits about 100 miles west of Anchorage. First thing to note, all on state land, no federal land, no native corporation land, what that means in terms of permitting, a much more streamlined permitting process. In terms of infrastructure, lots of options there. With access, we have a 4,000-foot plus airstrip on the site to support the project year-round. That pink line, that's our winter road, very common in this part of the world, do a lot of heavy freight haul on that road. It is seasonal, though. Now the red line gaining major momentum here is the West Susitna Access Road project. That's a state-funded project, whole economic corridor in there and we're just one of many beneficiaries, lots of things going on, and they're looking to break ground on that next year in 2025. So that will come online. In terms of power, lots of options there. The blue line is the Donlin proposed gas pipeline that will go about 10 miles to the North of us, potential offtake there. We've looked at our own transmission line straight to the Beluga power plant. That's all gas here supporting anchorage in the valley. Also, a coal project coming online with a coal-fired power plant, very cost-effective solution, micro nuclear reactors looking at that. The state asked us to look at that, a big push for that here in Alaska and then diesel generators, which is how most of these projects do it. So we can begin our plan is to start with diesel generators in the winter road is possible with our RPM start-up project and then grow ourselves into some of these other solutions for the longer term. Zooming in on the project, 35-kilometer long mineralized intrusive corridor here. We've been focused on 4 main areas: Korbel and RPM where we have our resources defined. Then mostly our exploration has been focused advancing projects through Stoney and Train. And there's some outer lying prospects like Stibium and Styx, where we've discovered this antimony that we've been working on as well. Ultimately, this is a larger project. We've been called the Carlin trend of the North, certainly in terms of potential scale and resource endowment, that's kind of what's taking shape here. Now with that larger project, it is -- we have looked at the larger project, and it's no secret that it has a very, very sizable NPV to that project, but that also comes with a larger CapEx now. We do have the option, which we're focused on now to go for the lowest CapEx start-up option, which we're focused on now at the RPM with a starter mine there. With that low CapEx option, we have very high-margin material right on the surface, and we can grow ourselves by starting there -- grow ourselves into the much larger project by expanding RPM and then growing ourselves into the Korbel deposit up North as well as some of these other prospects that are coming online as we continue to advance them. That's the gold story. We don't want to dilute that; we're a gold company. But with other opportunities presenting themselves, particularly antimony, certainly, we're pursuing that. With antimony there, we've discovered high-grade massive stibnite veining all over the surface there. If people know about antimony, one of the most strategic critical metals, we produce none in the United States. We were totally beholden to China and Russia for that. China has now cut us off. And so it's used in all the clean tech, green tech batteries, solar panels that goes on and on, semiconductors, but also it's used in all the munitions, 155 mm artillery shells, HIMARS, Javelins, these things you hear about, even small arms that you just buy off the shelf. We produce none in the United States. Obviously, there's a big interest with the Department of Defense to bring this back to the United States, establish and fully secure U.S. supply chains. We're quite advanced working with the Department of Defense on Title III DPA grant funding, and that's very advanced. We feel very positive about that to bring this online and Nova Minerals playing its part to bring this production back to the United States. Big opportunity, very lucrative for the company. We think at that first Stibium prospect, we're estimating already about 10,000 tonnes there of potentially of antimony. At current prices of $38,000 a ton ex Rotterdam, you can see how lucrative that is. That's the antimony opportunity that we're pursuing, all dependent, of course, on the DoD grants. There's gold in that stuff, too, so we'll get gold credits off that deposit as well. Let's take a closer look at RPM. To date, we've defined 3 main zones there, North, South and Valley, all have the potential to merge together as we continue. Here's the actual drilling, and you can see most of it is focused around RPM North, where we have that very high-grade right on the surface, high-margin material. We're looking to get that starter mine going there. There it is outlined, that's our starter pit focused on RPM North. You can see here our most recent drilling. This is what we did this year, right on the surface. This will be the first material we get into for quick payback. The results here are just exceptional, 39 meters at 5.4, including 20 meters at 10.2. Here's one 29 meters at 7.1, including 22 meters at 9.4, and that goes on and on. So that will be the initial material that we get into with our RPM starter pit that we're looking at now. Then as we go down to depth in the RPM North pit, here's what's awaiting us. It just continues on and on. Let's have a look at one here, RPM-005 hole, 400 meters at 3.5 grams per tonne, including 132 meters at 10 grams per tonne. Again, I could go on and on. These are spectacular world-class intercepts, some of the best intercepts globally for the last 10 years for sure. Here then at RPM Valley, this is all future upside. We're on to here in this hole, RPM-060, 204 meters at 1 gram, including 42 meters at 2.6, 17 meters at 5.3, there in the valley, very representative. And then over here at RPM South, our most recently discovered zone, we're on to it here as well. I mean, RPM-023 has 333 meters at 0.9, including 94 meters at a gram. So lots of work there is still to infill, but we're on to it. That's catered, we can make good money off that. Here's a cross-section now looking North through RPM North and the Valley zone. I got the 1 gram per tonne cutoff grade shell on there, a very high-grade cutoff. And you can see the deposit here at RPM North still hangs together, a very nice, thick, broad continuous zone. That's what we're focused on with our starter pit right there at RPM North, right on the surface. Now we've also drilled down from there into the Valley zone, and you can see another high-grade zone starting to take shape. And so we keep drilling away at that full for future upside. I'm putting on the 0.3 gram per tonne grade shell now that's much more aligned to a mining cutoff over the long term and you can see it really bulks out. Here are some rocks on the right-hand side. So those light-colored rocks we're after, that's the mineralized intrusive. It's got intense veining in there, visible gold. And then the dark colored rocks on the bottom, that's hornfels. It tends to be bearing. So it's a very visual deposit. We know we're in the right stuff when we're drilling, which makes it very nice and avoid a lot of waste drilling. We generate economic pit shells to report for S-K 1300 standards. Here, you see one here at the $1,800 gold price. And those resources we report are in-pit resources. But you can see outside the pit, still lots of resources hanging out the bottom here and out here to the site. So we continue to infill, drill those areas, prove them up. And then with the rising gold price today at $2,600, $2,700, these pits will just get larger and deeper and we'll capture more and more of that resource as we move forward in our next resource updates and statements. Most -- here's the resource classification, most of the resources at RPM North are high confidence measured and indicated resources. And I should note here that this drilling you see outside the model, this has not been included yet in our resource. So we're working on a resource update now to include that – that additional material that we've discovered there and of course, that will be indicated and measured with high confidence as well with that close space drilling. The remainder of the deposit remains inferred so we still have some work to do to infill and prove up the valley and the North zones. And all of our drilling has indicated and we're mapping the mineralized intrusive linking these zones. So between South and Valley, 600 meters of strike length, big volume of potential upside and also between the valley and the North, this is still wide open here to link these. So currently, this is a 1.1-million-ounce deposit in total. We easily see this as a 2 million, 3-million-ounce deposit as we move forward here. Just got to get in there and drill it and prove that up, and we're focused on doing that here as we move forward. So this thing is only set to grow. So that's RPM. That's what we're looking to start on to get going and get that cash flow and grow ourselves into the larger project. The RPM area has additional potential. We've discovered additional anomalies along the ridge line here. You can see an anomaly here with our surface sampling here. So we're looking to drill those and see what's down there in this upcoming year as well. With RPM, we're looking at a low CapEx, small footprint start-up. We have a plant site already chosen and developed a flow sheet for that right here, and that will be scalable. So as we grow, we can be modular, we can expand the plant, but it's very close to RPM and ideally situated here down south for not only RPM, but also some of these upcoming prospects here. I'm taking you now 5 kilometers to the north of RPM to our Train area, another one of these massive intrusive related gold systems, lighting up what you're looking at as surface sampling here, and you can see at the Train prospect proper high-grade gold up to 80 grams per tonne. 1 kilometer to the North of that is the Trumpet prospect, high-grade gold, same story up to 132 grams per tonne. And here, we're starting to recognize the multi-element potential. You're seeing hundreds of grams per tonne silver, percents of copper, antimony, many of these other critical elements all coincident with the gold here at Trumpet. And then at Shoeshine on the east side, again, high-grade gold up to 1,290 grams per tonne here. One of the highest grade rock chips ever at Estelle. You can see the extreme high-grade potential. Again, same story, multi-element, silver, copper, antimony, all these things. And then on the North side, Muddy Creek, another prospect. This one tends to be gold only. Very clean metallurgically as they say, up to 127 grams per tonne here. On average, the rock chips are running 128 grams per tonne -- or sorry, 18 grams per tonne, I apologize, that's the high value, 18 grams per ton. Even the soil samples, which tend to just be like – to generate targets and identify anomalies, they're running ore grades at 2.5 grams per tonne over that 1 kilometer strike length across Muddy Creek. So all those prospects I just showed you in the Train area are future upside, drill-ready prospects, and we're looking at those. And certainly, when the major companies and the mid-tier companies look at our project, and we're certainly on their radar, that's what they really appreciate all that future upside potential. Now let's take you -- as we -- we're going to start in that south area with RPM and then grow ourselves with a larger project, and that includes the Korbel deposit. And let's have a closer look at the Korbel area. Same story, lots of things we're working on. Let's focus on these black dots. That's where we have our resources defined. Korbel Main, bulk tonnage system, large deposit, 2.5 kilometer strike length. It's not just one of these narrow vein things, it's a sea of mineralization. The entire host rock is mineralized with these sheeted veins, a very low strip ratio. So almost everything you dig up there is some kind of pay dirt. And then a short distance away, 500 meters away, we've made a new discovery here at Cathedral. And at a minimum, it's early days, but at a minimum, we see another Korbel Main taking shape there. A long section looking east through Korbel Main, bulk tonnage, 800 million tonnes at an average grade of 0.3 grams per tonne. Now there is a higher-grade feeder core through here. And what I'm talking about is look at some of these intercepts, 94 meters at 1 gram, 101 meters at 1.3, including 30 meters at 2.4, 113 meters at a gram. That constitutes that very representative of that high-grade feeder core. When I put on the 0.5 gram per tonne grade shell that encompasses that core very continuously down along the strike of the deposit. And then with the 0.3 gram per tonne grade shell really bulks out, like I said, 800 million tonnes. So what do we intend to do with this? Well, of course, we'll start at RPM, as I said, but we'll grow ourselves with the Korbel deposit and the first order of business is get after the starter pit here. That's that high-grade feeder core right on the surface, direct mill feed and then the lower-grade portions of the deposit to understand the sheeted veins in there. When you selectively sample those veins, they're running ounces per ton. And so what we'll do is just that the vein density is less in the lower-grade portions of the deposit. So the lowest grade portions of the deposit will send off to a heap leach pad, a very low-cost recovery method. And then we'll classify a medium-grade material, and we'll utilize ore sorting, XRT density ore sorting to be specific, done quite a bit of test work on that, and we're seeing a 10x upgrade, taking 0.4, 0.5 gram material and upgrading it up to 4 to 5 grams per tonne. Most of the in-pit resources are high confidence indicated working on this years before we even discovered RPM. And then there's lots of inferred around the edges there at Korbel Main and Cathedral is still inferred there. So lots of work to do there still to infill that deposit and prove that up. Here's some rock chip sampling at the surface at Korbel and you can see at these grades, 114 grams per tonne, 98 grams per tonne. That's what we're separating out with the ore sorters. And you can see at those grades, how we readily achieve that 10x upgrade when we use those ore sorters by separating out that high-grade vein material that are represented in some of those samples there. More on the process. We've done extensive metallurgical test work already, developed a flow sheet. We're finding this particulate gold very easily liberated, nothing fancy going on here, conventional off-the-shelf technology. We crush, we mill, we float to produce a concentrate and then we regrind that down, get it a bit finer and then we leach and we're already seeing over 95% recovery in our scoping level test work. Now we're working on a feasibility study and we're honing in, finding efficiencies, that next level of test work, and these numbers are only set to improve. So to recap, what we'll do is, of course, start with RPM down south now, and that will be direct mill feed. Then we'll grow ourselves into the Korbel deposit and that starter pit will come in direct mill feed, lower-grade portions of the deposit off to the heap leach pad. And then we'll have the medium-grade material, hundreds of millions of tons of that, put them through these ore sorters, focus on maximizing the grade, the accepted portion out of the ore sorter is running 4 to 6 grams per ton straight to the mill and then the reject portion, which still has some gold in it, off to the heap leach pad. So very efficient resource extraction, maximizing the total gold recovery over the life of mine and all that straight to the bottom line, of course. So that's the process. Let me take you another exploration area just south of Korbel at Stoney. And we're seeing here same story, high-grade gold at numerous deposits and also multi-element here. We're seeing thousands of grams per ton silver and up to 12% copper in some of these prospects here. So we continue this pipeline of additional prospects that we advance and we advance all for future upside. So that's the project, kind of sum it up on the gold side. Now I mentioned the antimony and our most recent discovery here was at the Stibium prospect. And we found gold there, and then you might see the antimony found us. Again, massive stibnite veining on the surface. That's what you see in that photo there, someone holding a piece of massive stibnite. And you can see some of the numbers here, just spectacular, 50% -- 40%, 50% antimony that we're getting from rock chips on the surface there and also very, very good gold now. We just did a news release yesterday up to 141 grams per ton gold. So this is definitely an antimony gold prospect. We're well advanced working with the Department of Defense for that grant funding to get into this deposit in a very short period of time, very lucrative opportunity for the company. So watch -- continue to watch the news flow on that. And what we're working on with this grant funding is a Phase 1 to produce the munitions grade antimony trisulfide, which is a very straightforward task. You just dig up the stibnite ore, which is antimony trisulfide, concentrate it, crush it down, pulverize it. That's the Phase 1. Phase 2, which we've been asked by the DoD to look at is to bring in a refinery here into Alaska. They love the location, lots of other opportunities around the state to bring a state-of-the-art hub into Alaska to bring that production back to the United States and for Nova Minerals to be at the center of that. And what we're talking about with the refinery, it's not a nickel copper smelter, $1 billion projects and all this kind of thing on big surface area. These are -- you can fit these on a few acres. And we're talking about producing all the antimony products, trisulfide, antimony oxide, the metals, compounds for semiconductors potentially, all, not only for the Department of Defense, but for the entire U.S. industrial base right here. And of course, I said there's gold in that. And so we'll be getting gold credits along the way as well. So that's the project. We'll be out here for decades and decades, multiple mining centers producing multiple commodities. You can see why they call us the Carlin Trend of the North. I mentioned critical elements along the way. And what I'm talking about there, here's a table. You can see how we have highly elevated concentrations at many of these prospects of things like bismuth, gallium and indium, that's big for semiconductors. The gallium and indium antimony substrates are used in all these latest high-tech semiconductors, lanthanum starting to see some of the light rare earths out there, taking a closer look at that. Scandium, big for stealth technology like F-35 jets, tungsten, hardened steels, warships, tanks. And you can see same story, 0 to negligible amounts of production in the United States and perhaps more of a concern. There's no reserves. Nobody has been looking for this or defining these type of resources or reserves for decades now. And so even if we wanted to start mining this stuff and producing, we couldn't because we don't know have any reserves. And so this is presenting also an opportunity in the longer term with our DoD grants to produce these elements as well out of our waste streams. Here's the flow sheet. We talked about most of this on the gold side, and you've already spent the time, the money, the energy to process for the gold. And what we're talking about is on the back end to produce critical minerals. Out of our flotation circuit, we can produce concentrates like antimony can be done with that and then sending them off to a refinery. Once we've leached the gold out, we have that waste stream, which usually just goes off to a tailings facility. We divert that to a critical minerals extraction plant. This is what the Chinese do. This is how they've captured the market. And this is what we're working on with the Department of Defense for grant funding, for the development studies and the CapEx required to build these extraction plants in these refineries and bring this back to the United States. The United States just tend to look at the primary commodity. But we're bringing this back to the United States, Nova Minerals to be at the center of that. All for national security, we're all in on that, but of course, significant byproduct credits to the company in terms of the overall economics. So there it is. We're in the right place at the right time with the right commodities, both gold and antimony at historic high prices and rising rapidly on an upward trajectory, both potentially just the beginnings of a bull market here. There's no bull market like a gold bull market is what they say, but perhaps the antimony bull market will even outpace that. So current prices, these are even out of date. Ex Rotterdam now is $38,000 a ton for antimony. So very big opportunity for the company. Here's our time line. So we're currently working on that feasibility study to get RPM into production. And being on state land, once we deliver that to market, we'll submit for permitting. We're very well advanced with our environmental studies. Being on state land, that permitting process take about 12 months and a very streamlined process here on state land. And then we're looking at best case scenario by 2027 to be producing out of that starter pit at RPM and then grow ourselves into the larger project by 2028. And then, of course, the other opportunity is the antimony that we've discussed, dependent on DoD grant funding, feeling very positive about that. But if that comes online, then we'll be getting into that Stibium prospect producing antimony as well as gold out of that. That's the path to production. Of course, there's all the -- concurrently all the exciting opportunities. We've only scratched the surface out there of additional discoveries as we continue our exploration work out there as well. So all that news flow to come along the way. Here's really the opportunity for the investor. And this is one of the reasons we came over to the NASDAQ. You can see a peer comparison, companies, similar projects listed over here in North America. And the valuation discrepancy is obvious. Our direct neighbor there, U.S. Gold Mining, Inc., right there, their claims right next to ours. That's a project that's been dormant for 10 years, and they're running 3x, 4x our market cap. Some of these companies running 10, 12, beyond times our market cap. And the point is they're not even close to being as advanced as we are in many of these companies. No resources reported, no studies commenced yet and so we're much more advanced working on this feasibility study for RPM. We got production on the horizon, cash flow in our sights. And so once people appreciate what we have here, which is one of the reasons we're doing this today, I think that's a potential re-rate opportunity and really an opportunity for the investor. Here's our team, deep bench of mining knowledge and experience. Myself, I'm an economic geologist has been doing this business for 30 years all around the world, taking resource stage projects, bringing them into production. A long list of those, Richard, deep mining experience, Louie construction guy, Craig. Hans Hoffman is our secret weapon, our Head of Exploration. He's been working these grounds for over 15 years, and he's really the one on the ground advancing these things. So we think we have the team to propel us forward and meet our objectives. A quick corporate snapshot. Currently, our market cap at $42 million. And you can see the -- what our resources are being valued at in the ground here at $8 per ounce. Now that's seriously undervalued. If you look at our peers again in this space, their resources in the ground are valued at a minimum $50 per ounce in the ground, some of them well over $100. So our ounces are currently valued at $8 per ounce. So that's another opportunity for the investor. You can see that since we've listed on the NASDAQ and getting our story out that we're on an upward trajectory as far as NVA goes. Here on the bottom, you can see the bar chart is the gold price going up. The line is the VanEck Junior Index, still straight lining there, big gap there just for the entire sector to catch up to the rising gold price. So that's another opportunity. We got about $5.5 million in cash and equivalents, half of that in cash, half in our holding in a lithium uranium company. They're also listed on the NASDAQ. Our company actually built that. We spun that off. So that's liquid as well. We got about $5 million in debt that's held by our largest institutional holder, Nebari Gold Fund, who also have a significant equity piece as well and they've been a great partner, ready to step in with bridge finance, construction finance once we get to that stage. Directors and management hold about 10% of the company. So we got lots of skin in the game. We've always participated in the capital raises along the way. And just to sum it up, being in Alaska with all the geopolitical sovereign risk these days with these projects is much more of a consideration favorable jurisdiction and being on state land here is a big one. I really want to drive home. I can't say that enough. We're an aspiring gold producer, not here to flip the project. That's not one of our core strategies. We're project builders. We're taking this into production. Now I mean, we would consider a strategic partner like one of these majors and mid-tier producers that are knocking on our door, at some stage, they would really ramp things up, of course, with the resources they have. Myself, I'm throwing the last stuff come full circle, back home, live here, work here, pushing the project day and night. Our low discovery cost per ounce, anything less than $10 in this business is amazing. We're doing it at $5. That's just because right now, it's mostly outcropping out there, doesn't require deep searching complicated, expensive exploration techniques just yet. And so we're keeping that cost down. We're just going after the low-hanging fruit right now. There's plenty of it that we just see it right on the surface, looking at open pit, low strip bulk mineable deposits with thick high-grade zones. We certainly demonstrated that at RPM, and there's significant resource upside potential, not only at the deposits, which remain wide open laterally as well as at depth for underground potential for the future, but also this pipeline of additional prospects I've showed you that we continue to advance for truly be out there for decades and decades and increase the resource inventory, multi-element potential. Like I said, gold story is strong, getting stronger, but with these other elements we've discovered now and the big one there is antimony, it's really adding value to the overall project. And I'll leave it at that. Look, all that content, much, much more on our website, urge people to go there, check out. And at that stage, I'll open it up for questions. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] It has been a long journey. It has been a long journey this person, right? Are we still 2 years or 3 years or more from cash flow?

It has been a long journey in this space in general. What do they say is the average time it takes to get a project from the beginning, early exploration to production. And the average that I've just seen the charts, it's 16 years in the United States. And so I think we're actually on a fast track here. We've taken this project in less than 5 years, about 5 years now, from Greenfields, nothing to the stage you see right now. So it's quite amazing progress. And then to answer the question, when do we get to cash flow? So right now, we're working on that feasibility study for RPM being on state land. The best case scenario is by 2027, we'll be producing gold out of RPM. Now with this DoD grant for the antimony gold opportunity at Stibium, that's a very near-term decision, I believe, like very near term. You don't know until the cash is in the bank, of course. But if that decision turns positive in our favor, we could be on the cash flow by 2026 because just getting that antimony trisulfide out of the ground for the Department of Defense as a Phase 1 of the project, we could be into cash flow with that. And that's a big stepping stone into the rest of the project as well. So we're feeling very positive about that. So if the Stibium, antimony and DoD grants come online 2026, with the RPM for gold, we're looking at 2027 best case scenario.

Thank you, Chris. Could you explain what you mean when you talk about a gold credit?

Well, that would just be the --whatever the commodity is that's paying the most. So if antimony is at $38,000 a ton and you're producing antimony and the revenue you're generating from that is greater than the gold, then it becomes a credit, right? It just becomes a byproduct or a co-product, right? So that's what I mean by that. It just depends on which one generates the most revenue and the most profit ultimately. So it's just that. Whichever one pays the most becomes the primary element and then the secondary element becomes the credit. So it's just semantics.

How many DoD proposals have you made and how big are the potential dollar amounts in grants and loans?

So we have submitted this year 3, so we've gone after 3 opportunities. And we started this only at the beginning of the year and one of those wasn't really geared towards antimony. So that one, we were not successful, but it wasn't really an antimony one, we were still finding our feet. But the most recent one that we've submitted in September, that was specifically geared towards antimony, specifically geared towards resource developers, drilling, production. That one is an active one right now, which was submitted in September, and they're looking to make a decision on that very soon. And there's not much more I can say on that. It's working with the DoD, going for grants. There's not much more to say. But all I can say is that you don't know until the money is in the bank, but we are feeling very positive about it, and we're quite advanced… The dollar amounts we're looking at there, our ask was $20 million. And I'm not sure if that will be the amount of the grant, of course. We still have some negotiations to do, but that was our ask in our proposal.

Okay. Thanks, Chris. Next question would be, can you give us a quick breakdown on time lines for resource updates and the feasibility study? How long is the review process for the feasibility application? Or how long does the review process usually take to review?

Okay. So with the feasibility study, that requires, of course, lots of technical studies to go into that feasibility study. I assume we're talking about the final feasibility study report that gets released to the market. But in the background now, you have metallurgical test work, drilling, environmental studies going on. So we have those types of studies happening right now with heap leach and the next level of looking at the mill, milling and crushing, and milling and CIL and all these technical studies that go into that. So that will continue through the first half of next year for sure. And then we'll get into the mine plan, the mine design, the optimization, the scheduling, all of these things have to take place, and then you wrap it all up into the feasibility study. So for the course of all of next year, we'll be doing all those studies to then compile it for a feasibility study report that we released to the market by -- very soon after that. And then in terms of reviewing that, that will then be used to form the basis of our permitting. So then we'll submit for permitting, which is mainly focused on the environmental side of things and the project plan and what we'll be disturbing there. And then that process being on state land. And with the current Alaska resource economy and big push to get these projects going, it could take about 12 months after that to get a decision on our mine plan there. So resource update, somebody asked there. We're still working on that. We're still incorporating the drilling. The labs have been a bit slow, but we're still incorporating the drilling, and we're trying to get that out, hopefully, before the end of the year. That was our goal. But certainly, by early next year, in January, somewhere around there in the next -- in the coming weeks, let's put it that way. There's not much I can do. The independent consultants doing this modeling. And so that's -- we're pushing them every day.

Yes. Chris, if you could read out any question that you wish to take without me reading it out to you because only the person who wrote the question can actually see it. So others may not have known exactly what you're talking about. Yes.

Copy that. So here's one, are you able to get the personnel you need to do the job? So far, with our operations thus far, we haven't had any issues, and there's a great labor pool for resource and mining and exploration in Alaska. I mean it is a resource economy. That's -- there's a good labor pool there. Now, when it comes to mining and you get into some of these more technical roles like metallurgists and some of these type of things, certainly, we might look -- we have a very strong hire and buy Alaska policy here in our company. So we always look for Alaskans first and over 90% of all of our people are Alaskans. In fact, a large majority of that 60% to 70% straight here from the Matanuska borough, our county, and then we go look at Alaska. And we have a few people, some of these technical roles like geologists that do come from the U.S. So that would be our next -- if we have to expand our search, we would go and look at the U.S. But we don't see that as a major issue, particularly with our current plan of an RPM smaller start-up. And certainly, with this type of project starting up, people will move to Alaska. So we haven't had any problems thus far. But I know in general, in the macro perspective, that with the mining schools shutting down over the last few decades in the United States, the talent pool is certainly decreasing. So I would urge anybody listening. If you got a kid going to college, set them to get a metallurgy, mining, geology, whatever, some kind of degree in the mining space and help us out -- help out the whole industry. The next question, has the DoD approached you for long-term volume contracts of antimony? Or will they just buy at market rates? We haven't discussed that yet. So there would be a long-term supply. But pricing, we haven't discussed that. What the first step is the grant funding to get it out of the ground and produce. The negotiations -- and that will take about 18 months and the negotiations for the actual prices that they pay for strategic stockpiles, for DoD, annual use, these type of things. It will be at -- the pricing for them is not so much of a concern because remember, if they can't get antimony for the munitions, it becomes priceless, right? There is no price that -- if they can't get it. So that hasn't been part of our discussions. The pricing is not locked down yet. Next question, what would a major or mid-tier do if they came in as a JV and with Trump's $1 billion investment tweet, will this fast track the project? Significantly increase it from its current [indiscernible] is this the best way forward? Well, if a mid-tier or a major came in, who we had discussions with getting into our data room and things like that. I mean, there's not many projects like this left in the world, remember. And so they would ramp up, quadruple what we're doing. We drilled that most with 3 drill rigs at most this year, only had 1 drill rig out there for about 6 weeks. We have limited resources, but they would get 10, 12 drill rigs out there. It's the kind of project where if you can throw the resources at it to increase the resource inventory, you can produce 0.5 million ounces a year or several hundred thousand ounces a year. That's the kind of project these majors and mid-tiers need. They have depleting reserves from their production. They got to fill that gap. And so it's that kind of project. So that's what they would bring to the table, significantly ramp things up. Now, the Trump tweet, actually, I saw that. And large projects in that tweet, I think he said, large projects will get streamlined permitting. And so it's an interesting question. Do we go back to looking at the whole hog, the much larger project of the start-up opportunity. At this stage, we're still focused on RPM and getting into production until we get any kind of clarification on that. Okay. Do you expect much of this to -- next question, do you expect much of this to happen during 2025? Certainly, DoD grants, starting the antimony depending on DoD grants, more drilling at RPM to continue and these technical studies for the feasibility, all during 2025. That's all coming up. We're planning for that. It's going to be a very exciting year next year, transformational for Nova with all -- for all of these reasons. Next question, what's the difference between the stock NVA and NVAAF? How would that -- so NVAAF was our OTC listing. So that's being discontinued or is discontinued and NVA is the one on the NASDAQ. So previously, when we were just listed on the ASX in Australia, we did have an OTC listing, and that's what that is. So I would advise people not to trade on the NVAAF OTC, if that's even still active. We're getting that -- that will stop. NVA, NASDAQ is the ticker code. Next question. Are you aware of any antimony production in North America at all? Do you think you can be the first one? There is no antimony mine production at all in the United States. And that -- and we are a first mover in this space, which is one of the reasons why the DoD took such a great interest in us from the very start, and that's why we've been talking to them for about a year now. There's one other project in Idaho, Perpetua Resources, Antimony Gold project, which the DoD, they received, I think, almost $80 million in DoD grants to date over the last 3 or 4 years, and you can see the result of that. I mean they're $800 million market cap now. I think that project is tied to the $1.8 billion CapEx gold project for antimony production. And I believe that they're still in the permitting. They're on federal land, native corps are down there, have some environmental cleanups there. And even when they get started -- look, even when they get started, I think it's like 2029 or something, when they get started, they still only have production of about 30% of required demand in the U.S. over a 5-to-6-year period. So there's always room for additional players, and we're certainly a first mover, which is why we're so advanced with our DoD grant funding at this stage. Okay. Last question. Are you more excited about the gold or the antimony? I'm a gold guy. I'm a gold guy. And -- but what can you do if antimony is right there, it found us. And the beauty of it is coincident with the gold, right? At Stibium, it's not just about gold or antimony, it's about gold and antimony or antimony and gold. So I get the both -- the best of both worlds with what we've discovered here. And I don't see any further questions.

Thank you very much, Chris, and we can wrap it up right there. Let me just end with a few notes on how to get more information on Nova Minerals. One way is to call us at 1-800-RedChip, that's 1-800 (733-2447). Another way, e-mail us at [email protected]. Thirdly, you can visit the information page created by RedChip for Nova Minerals. It's nvainfo.com. There, you can view and download the investor presentation and fact sheet and sign up for news alerts on Nova Minerals. Finally, please be sure to watch Small Stocks, Big Money, RedChip's program featuring exciting small-cap companies, including sometimes Nova Minerals. Every Saturday night at 7:00 p.m. Eastern on Bloomberg U.S.A. Join RedChip's forthcoming webinars, Gorilla Technology Group tomorrow, bioAffinity Technologies on Thursday, December 19, and LOBO EV on Wednesday, January 8. All webinars start like today's at 4:15 p.m. U.S. Eastern. Register for those events and for all RedChip webinars at redchip.com/events, where you can also view an archived version of today's webinar. Thanks again to our many participants today, and thank you very much, Chris.

Thank you so much. Looking forward to the next update.