Resolution Minerals Ltd (RML) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

So good morning, and welcome to today's Resolution Minerals webinar. My name is Abbey Phillipps from Jane Morgan Management. Thank you for joining us. Before we start, just a few housekeeping notes. So the session is being recorded and will be made available after the webinar, and we'll also move into Q&A after Craig presents. So please use the Q&A function at the bottom of the taskbar. So thank you so much. And then so today, we're hearing from Craig Lindsay, CEO of U.S. Operations for Resolution Minerals, who will provide an update on the Horse Heaven project in Idaho, including the Golden Gate Gold discovery and current drilling progress at Antimony Ridge and key upcoming catalysts. Craig, thank you so much for your time, and over to you.

Thank you very much, Abbey. Really appreciate it, and welcome, everyone, to this webinar. Really appreciate all the folks that have joined us today. I thought I would start out very quickly refreshing everyone's mind about the Horse Heaven project and then speak specifically to the Golden Gate target and then run through the drilling and then talk a little bit about our plans going forward with Golden Gate. So hopefully, that's a sensible way to approach. I don't have any slides today. I'm just going to kind of speak extemporaneously and hope we get through it. So Horse Heaven, it's a project that Resolution owns 100% of. It's a 15,000-acre project, and it's immediately adjacent to Perpetua's Stibnite mine, which is about a 6 mine that's got a grade of just under 1.5 grams with a big antimony kicker. Resolution acquired this project back in July. We did a drill program out of one of our targets, called the Golden Gate target in August of this year. We knocked out 10, followed that up with a couple of shallow RC holes. The focus of our drilling has been at this Golden Gate target, which the Horse Heaven project has a couple of low-hanging fruit in terms of targets, one being Golden Gate, the second Antimony Ridge. Antimony Ridge has not been the subject of drilling this year. We'll get out there and start drilling next year, but Antimony Ridge is a past producer of antimony. They produced antimony off of about 3,000 feet of historic trenches. They pull high-grade material off of the hill and processed it likely at Salt Lake City during the first World War and the second World War, and indeed right through to the Korean War. Also at Horse Heaven, we have a past-producing tungsten mine, a bit to that, but that's an exciting feature of this project. So Horse Heaven, it's gold, it's antimony and tungsten, big focus on critical metals, but we're surrounded by this big gold halo. So let's talk about the Golden Gate target. And the Golden Gate target, it's about 3 kilometers long at the -- we have rock chip samples of 4 grams per tonne. At the north end, 3 kilometers away, we have rock chip samples 7 grams per tonne. Airborne geophysics and ground-based CSAMT work that confirms that the Golden Gate fault runs the entire of this strike. We've also done soils out at Golden Gate, and we have soils, anomalous gold that covers the -- virtually the entire 3-kilometer strike length. The drilling that we've done at what we're calling Golden Gate North covers an area only about 20% of that 3-kilometer strike length. And again, we've drilled 10 holes. We've announced on first 3 holes, people will recall probably we had some great numbers, one of them being 253 meters at 1.5 grams per tonne, about 110 meters at 2.3 grams per tonne. The last 3 holes that we've reported on today, it's -- we've got material. We've got 240 meters at 0.6 grams per tonne. That includes a nice hit of 62 meters of 1 gram per tonne, a real long intercept, 280 meters mineralized throughout 0.36 grams per tonne, typically a lower grade, but within that, there was some stronger 43 meters of 0.7 gram material. And then there was another hit of 207 meters of about 0.4 grams per tonne. The key takeaway from my point of view from this drilling is that we've established a strike length of about 600 meters. That's about 150 to 200 meters wide, 300 meters thick. It's open-ended at depth and it's open-ended to the north and it's open-ended to the south. We haven't -- we don't know what's to the east and west laterally because we haven't been able to drill beyond drilling off of an existing network of drill roads, but if you take that 600 meters by 200 meters wide, by 300 meters thick, that's 80 million, 85 million tonnes of rock that's basically mineralized throughout. So -- and that is only covering 20% of the strike length of this of the Golden Gate target. So when I look at this Golden Gate, I kind of used this earlier today, we're in kind of day 1 of the first test of the Ashes, and we've got 4 more tests to go. We're at the early stages at Golden Gate, and it's a very, very exciting project with a lot of potential. We do have, within this Golden Gate target, we've got within the fault itself, we have a lot of this very high-grade material. And then in the host rock around these fault zones, you've got this disseminated halo of lower grade mineralization, very representative of an intrusive-related gold system. In terms of where we're taking this project, folks, we've got at the Golden Gate target, permits today, we're allowed to drill 57 holes off of 19 drill sites. And as I mentioned, we've only drilled to date, off of those 57 holes, 10 core holes, and I think 3 RC holes. So we've got another 44 holes to drill at Golden Gate. We're going to start the next drill program around May 1 in 2026. That drill program is fully funded. It's going to cover about 2.5 kilometers of the 3 kilometers in strike length out there. So a lot going forward from a drilling perspective. And then also keep in mind, we've got another 4 hole -- core holes to issue at Golden Gate, which are drilled further south of the Golden Gate North target, so that will tell us a lot about the potential strike length of the deposit, so again, in very early days. And then on a parallel basis, something to share with you folks up at the north end of the Golden Gate target, there's an old tungsten mine, and we are -- we found the fellow who is the mine geologist at that mine. He's a retired guy who's going to be doing some consulting work with us, share with us some of his historic drill data that they had from that mine, and help us identify what ore is left in the old underground mine. So that's an exciting thing that we're going to be talking about going forward. And then also at Antimony Ridge in terms of things you folks can expect to see, we've done some more sampling within the pits of high-grade material at Antimony Ridge that will be coming to the market with over the next couple of weeks. And we're also -- by Christmas, we will be filing a plan of operation to conduct drilling out at Antimony Ridge as well as we're going to be putting in a permit for a bulk sample program to start taking off some of this high grade -- a significant of high-grade material off of the hill for testing. So just a whole lot going forward with the project. Just before I finish, I wanted to kind of address and we've had a little bit of feedback about grade, and we still consider this project to be, it is a direct analog to the Stibnite mine next door with an average grade of about 1.4 grams per tonne gold, but for those of you that aren't aware, the 4 big gold mines that are being developed in Idaho today, the DeLamar mine, 250 million tonnes at a grade of 0.37 grams per tonne. The Black Pine mine operated by Liberty Gold, 300 million tonnes. The grade there is only 0.32 grams per tonne. The Kilgore deposit has an average grade of 0.59 grams per tonne and the Beartrack mine, their oxide and sulfide mineralization averages less than 1 gram per tonne. So this is kind of the nature of gold projects in the Western U.S., many of them are lower grade. What I'm trying to tell you is that the grades that we're producing are double, triple or even higher than the average grades of those 4 competing projects that get a lot of play in North America. So I don't want people walking away, looking at this 0.4 gram material and thinking, oh, gosh, this is a low-grade story that we are at the very, very early innings. We've had a lot of high-grade material already. There will be more high-grade material coming, and we really believe that we are on to a very significant gold discovery at Golden Gate, and also very, very excited about the future of critical metals, antimony and tungsten at this story. So that's kind of what I wanted to share with you folks today. Abbey, I thought if you had any questions from the audience, I'm more than happy to field some questions.

Thank you, Craig. Yes, we do have a few questions here. So firstly, at what point would you consider putting together a resource estimate?

That's actually a great question, Abbey. And I think, we're a little bit early for putting a resource estimate out. I did throw out some numbers there on the tonnage that -- of rock that we've got out there and it's fully mineralized, but keep in mind, we've still got 4 holes to go, core holes to get out and review, and we also have a couple of shallow RC holes. So it's something the company is starting to think about, but that would not happen likely until 2026 at some point. And we may even wait until we get even more information from drilling in 2026. But gosh, with the tonnage that I see out there, you could knock together a pretty significant resource at a good grade right off the hop. And again, that resource would only cover 20% of the initial -- the strike length that we know that's out there at Golden Gate. So I'm being a little bit coy, not giving you a direct answer, but it's not something that we're committed to right now. We're really focused on growing this deposit to a significant number.

With 6 of the diamond holes now defining a 600-meter strike of -- sorry, 600 meters of strike and mineralization open in all directions, what's your current view on the potential scale of Golden Gate North?

Well, I go back to that comment that this is a 3-kilometer-long target that we've identified by geophysics, by gold and soils, by rock sampling, by historic drilling. And the 6 holes that we've announced to date, only cover 20% of that target. And if you -- if there's roughly 80 million tonnes of rock there, and we've only covered 20%, you can see a very, very large potential resource out there, assuming everything holds together.

Great. Sorry, we're just jumping around a bit here. I've got lots of questions coming through. So I will just say, if I don't get to them today, I will send them off to Craig, so he can answer them directly as well. And then so the next question here is 5 of the 6 reported holes ended in mineralization. What does that imply about depth potential? And where will the deeper drilling focus be next?

That's a good question. So we are actually drilling from the top of the hill. If I could -- you guys can see, we're up here drilling. The hill comes down to the side. We're drilling 300-meter holes, and they're ending in mineralization. Are we going to drill deeper holes? Logically, you'd say, yes, do a 500-meter hole. But what we're going to do is permit -- there's an old road that's been decommissioned that runs along the side of the hill, and we're going to be drilling off of that going down, and that's what's going to get us deeper rather than drilling from surface. But that -- what you're seeing at Golden Gate is a north-south fault, which is fairly narrow and runs deep. And so far, we haven't found the bottom of it. So the potential at depth is certainly there, and we're very excited about it.

And then another question here. So we hear a lot about increasing U.S. government support for critical minerals projects, especially in U.S.A. Can you please confirm the support and give like an overall bird's eye view of the conditions in the U.S.

Sure. Well, the U.S. government has -- the U.S. -- the current U.S. administration is totally focused on supporting critical metals projects. They've got a demonstrated track record of rating tracks for the Stibnite mine next door. They're supporting a project up in Alaska. They're supporting Mountain Pass down in California. I don't want to say it's a bottomless pit, but there is a process that you go through. Resolution is involved in that. So we are out knocking on doors with the U.S. government as we speak with a view to getting some interest in us submitting a grant application to help jump-start production of antimony at Golden Gate. Reception so far, it's -- we're -- again, we're in the early innings. Some companies who have -- this is a process that takes 9 to 12 months, and we've only been at it for about 3 months knocking on doors in Washington, but the reception is very good. And it's not just resolution. There are a lot of companies out, there are a lot of birds chirping for at the feeder, but we think we've got a very compelling story from a U.S. government perspective because antimony was produced at this project to support the U.S. in past conflicts, World War I, World War II and through to the Korean war. So they know this story. This is a high-grade antimony deposit that we've got at Antimony Ridge. So you'd be -- the first step would be stripping out some of this high grade -- these high-grade veins that are running 50% plus grades. So it's -- you don't have to move a lot of rock to get a lot of tonnage of material off. So we think there's an opportunity to pitch the U.S. administration on getting some near-term production of antimony to help grow the -- their critical metal stockpile, which is something that they are very focused on doing.

Amazing. Thank you, Craig. So the next question here is the planned program is 57 holes over a 3,000-meter strike. How will that program be sequenced, and what are the priority step-outs?

So I did two things. So firstly, we'll be starting the program hopefully around May 1. So we are at elevation at Horse 7. So there is -- there can be a lot of snow in the winter. So we start drilling off of the southern slopes at the lower end of the project, which would be the southern end of the project in the initial stages. That's not because it's higher priority. That's just easiest to get to from a weather perspective. And over a 4-month drill period, we're going to cover 2.5 kilometers of that Golden Gate target with those 40-plus drill holes. So, yes, we will be doing some more drilling to expand what we've got at the Golden Gate target, but we're very excited about marching south down the Golden Gate Fault and hopefully identifying continued mineralization as you march south towards what we call Johnson Creek.

And Craig, you may have already touched on this, but how confident are you that the Golden Gate Shear zone continues the additional approximately 750 meters north suggested by historical data?

It's another good question. And we actually don't talk too much about this because we're not very good at marketing at Resolution. North of the Golden Gate target, there's 500 to 750 meters as you go down the hill, 3/4 of the way down the hill, there's 7-gram material and rock samples that have been identified. And at the bottom of the hill, there are 3 old dog holes, we call them, that are mineralized with gold and tungsten. And that's at an elevation drop of over 1,000 feet. So -- and then you layer on the fact that we've done the geophysics over that, that confirm the structure runs through there. I'm actually quite confident. And I suspect that going north, for I've been talking about going south where we have drill permits, but going north, that 750 meters down to the east port of the Salmon River, you're -- I think there's definitely going to be additional high-grade material down there, and it's an exciting target, and we will get to that with the next permit that we permit. So with this road that -- it's called the old Harlow road that we're going to permit to open up and drill off of, and we'll do some helicopter sites down there as well. So it's -- that -- the north part of the Golden Gate North is actually super exciting and very confident that the structure continues there.

Great. Thank you. So then which upcoming assay batches are the most market moving -- sorry, Hole 6 or the Southern Golden Gate holes 8 to 10?

I think they're all going to be -- there's only 4 holes. So it's not like we've got 50 holes that we've got to release and we've eyeballed 3 of them. All 4 will be very informative about the potential for growth at the story. But again, we're -- this is such a large target, and we were only able to get a relatively few number of holes out there this year. I'm not entirely convinced what we issue, is going to be representative of the potential of this project. The drill bit is going to tell a heck of a lot next year, but clearly, if you're getting numbers down at the south end of this target out of the final 3 holes, 8, 9, 10, that will -- that should move the market.

Thanks, Craig. So we are jumping around. I'm going north and south and all over the place, but if the Southern Golden Gate holes confirm similar mineralization, how quickly could the discovery footprint expand towards district scale?

Well, it would be a district scale, in my opinion, after with that. I mean, you're going to have a couple of kilometers between the south and the north. And if you're -- if you can prove up mineralization between there, you've got a lot of gold sitting there. And we've already proven it sitting up at the north end with 6 holes. So you can imagine, hopefully, what we can do with another 40-plus holes of a really robust drill program starting in May.

And Craig, so the last question from me here, and I do believe, there were a lot of questions coming through. So as I did mention, we will get those sent to you directly. But in addition to further assay results, what's next to Resolution? What should shareholders and investors be looking out for over the next 6 to 12 months?

I think some of the most interesting stuff is going to be the metallurgical testing that we're doing out at Antimony Ridge, which will come out. Hopefully, it will be a 3-month process. So by the end of Q1, we'll have results out on that, which is going to be very exciting. I mentioned some of this additional sampling work that we've done at Antimony Ridge. We're waiting for the results on that. We'll have that out to the market. Very much going to be a market mover because that the antimony story continues to grow in interest from an investor perspective and simply from a commercial perspective. It's boring, but the fact that we are filing these two new plans of operation to expand drilling at Golden Gate and initiate drilling at Antimony Ridge, we're very excited about. So I think those are kind of some near-term additional catalysts in addition to drill news.

Fantastic. Thanks so much for your time today, Craig, and for the update from Resolution. We really appreciate it. And as I mentioned, the recording will be available for later playback, and I will get those questions to you as well that we didn't get to today.

Sure. And Abbey, if anyone has direct questions they want to reach out, they can reach me at [email protected]. I'm always open to questions. If they're hard ones, I'll farm them out to the guys with the brains and the operation, our geologists, but happy to get back to any direct queries from investors. Always enjoy connecting with folks.

Thank you so much, Craig. Have a great day.

You too. Thank you again, Abbey. I appreciate your time. And thanks, everyone, for joining.