Seabridge Gold Inc. (SEA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome, everybody, to Seabridge Gold's First Virtual Annual Meeting of Shareholders. The meeting will now come to order. My name is Rudi Fronk, and I am Chairman and CEO of the company. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, for the health and safety of not only our shareholders, but also our personnel, the company chose to hold a virtual annual meeting this year. I will act as Chairman of the meeting, and I have asked Bruce Scott to act as our -- as the Secretary of the meeting. Rebecca Liu from Computershare will act as scrutineer. Our Board of Directors is attending virtually as well and consists of Fred Banfield, Eliseo Gonzalez-Urien, Richard Kraus, Jay Layman, Melanie Miller, Clem Pelletier, John Sabine and Gary Sugar. Officers of the company in attendance and on the line with me include Chris Reynolds, our CFO; and Bruce Scott, our Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. Before we get started, I would like to address a few procedural matters. The AGM will commence with the formal portion of the meeting described to the notice of meeting, followed by an update on the company's activities, which should collectively take about an hour to complete. [Operator Instructions] We will attempt to respond to those questions or comments when the relevant agenda items before the meeting. If you could submit questions or comments in advance of the opportunity for a discussion on the motion for each item of business, it will be greatly appreciated so that questions and comments can be assembled and organized, and the meeting can proceed smoothly. To help move the formal portion of the meeting along, I've asked Chris Reynolds, our CFO and also a shareholder, to make motions when required. At the conclusion of a formal portion of the meeting, I will provide an update on the company. Questions or comments relating to the company's activities may be submitted at any time but will be answered after the presentation. We will do our best to answer as many questions as we can within the time we have. Questions that are substantially similar may be grouped to ensure we are able to answer every question in this virtual format. Shareholders of record as of the record date of May 6, 2020, and persons holding valid proxies can vote now or at any time during the meeting using a control ID and clicking on the Vote my Shares icon. Voting in respect to any matter will close shortly after the final motion on that matter is called. Final votes on each matter will be confirmed after the conclusion of the formal part of the meeting. We have a lot of people joining us today on this webinar, so we've muted participant lines to reduce noise disruptions. However, if you experience any issues, you can call either (844) 399-3386 or (919) 744-2718. I also advise that recording of any portion of this meeting, whether by audio or video, is not permitted. Proof of mailing to the shareholders of the notice calling this annual meeting together with a copy of the notice regarding use of notice and access procedures, instrument of proxy and supplemental mailing list return form have been duly filed, and I direct the proof of mailing to be kept with the records of this meeting. The scrutineer's report has been provided to me. It shows that there are present more than 2 shareholders represented by proxy holding greater than 60% of the outstanding shares entitled to vote at this meeting. I now declare that there is a quorum present, and that's regularly called and properly constituted for the transaction of business. The first item of business is the presentation of the financial statements of the company and the report of the auditors for the financial year ended December 31, 2019, the financial statements and auditor's report form part of the annual report made available to each shareholder. Unless there are any questions regarding the financial statements and auditor's report, I shall consider them received by the shareholders as submitted to the meeting. Bruce, have any questions come in on that?

Mr. Chairman, no questions have come in.

Okay. Thank you. Under the articles of the company, all the directors of the company retire annually at the time of the annual meeting. At present, the number of directors of the company is set at 9. In the information circular, it is intended to elect 9 directors for the ensuing year. We will now proceed with the election of directors. The meeting materials mailed to the shareholders contain the names of management's nominees to the Board of Directors. I now declare the meeting open for nomination of directors.

Mr. Chairman, I nominate Frederick Banfield, Rudi Fronk, Eliseo Gonzalez-Urien, Jay Layman, Richard Kraus, Melanie Miller, Clem Pelletier, John Sabine and Gary Sugar as directors of the company.

Are there any further nominations?

There is nothing noted online.

Thank you. Each of the nominees is either present or as consented to act as a director of the company. If there are no other nominations, I ask for a motion that nominations be closed and that the persons nominated be elected as the company's directors.

Mr. Chairman, I move that nominations for the election of directors of the company be closed and that each of the nominees be elected as directors.

Thank you, Chris. Bruce, are there any questions or comments that have been submitted by meeting participants that relate to this motion?

Mr. Chairman, there are no questions or comments that have been submitted by meeting participants that relate to the motion.

Thank you. You've heard the motion. We have counted the votes to be cast by management proxy holders on behalf of those shareholders that directed the management proxy holders how to vote. For the remaining shareholders attending online, if you have not yet voted, please vote now by clicking on the Vote my Shares icon on your screen, casting your vote and then submitting it. We will pause briefly to allow the voting to occur. [Voting]

Although the final vote count has not yet been completed, it is clear from the votes received to this point that the motion is carried. Since the number of directors to be elected is 9, and 9 directors have been nominated, I now declare that the aforementioned 9 individuals are duly elected as directors of the company. The next item of business is the appointment of the auditors. I ask for a motion to reappoint KPMG LLP Chartered Accountants as auditors of the company for the ensuing year.

Mr. Chairman, I so move.

Bruce, have any questions come up on this item?

Mr. Chairman, there are none.

Thank you. You've heard the motion. We have counted the votes to be cast by management proxy holders on behalf of those shareholders that directed the management proxy holders how to vote. For the remaining shareholders attending online, if you have not yet voted, please vote now by clicking on the Vote my Shares icon on your screen, casting your vote and then submitting it. We will pause again briefly to allow the voting to occur. [Voting]

Although the final vote count has not yet been completed, it was clear from the votes received to this point that the motion is carried. I now declare that KPMG is duly appointed as auditors of the company for the ensuing year. The next item of business to come before the meeting is the remuneration to be paid to the auditors. May I have a motion to authorize the directors of the company to fix the remuneration to be paid to the auditors?

Mr. Chairman, I so move.

Bruce, any questions that have come up on this item?

Mr. Chairman, there are no questions on this item.

You've heard the motion. We have counted the votes to be cast by management proxy holders on behalf of those shareholders that directed the management proxy holders how to vote. For the remaining shareholders attending by -- attending online, if you have not yet voted, please vote now by clicking on Vote my Shares icon on your screen, casting your vote and then submitting it. We will pause briefly to allow the voting to occur. [Voting]

Although the final vote count has not yet been completed, it is clear from the vote -- it's clear from the votes received to this point that the motion is carried. The final item to vote on is approval of the extension of the expiry of 425,000 stock options held by directors of the corporation by 1 year to April 27, 2021. Under the company's stock option plan and extension of stock options held by insiders is subject to disinterested shareholder approval. Before we move to the formal part on this item, I'd like to maybe just make some comments. These options that we're looking for the 1 year extension on were originally granted in April of 2015 with a 5-year term and were overwhelmingly approved by our shareholders in June of 2015. When these options were granted, they were subject to vesting on the completion of a joint venture at either KSM or Courageous Lake or some other transformative corporate transaction. As many of you know, since 2015, the company has significantly advanced and improved the KSM asset, culminating in a new technical report that I'll report on later in the meeting. I should also point out that conversations continue with potential joint venture partners. And over the years, a number of proposals have been turned down by our Board from potential partners and not satisfying the terms we're looking for. I would point out that any one of these proposals would have vested the options. Earlier this year, we were also moving towards a potential joint venture with suitable partners. However, as a result of COVID pandemic hitting, discussions have slowed down quite a bit. We believe that this 1 year extension will provide the time to deliver on meeting the vesting requirement, but more important, on getting a deal done that makes sense for our shareholders. Our view from the beginning has always been that we only get to do this once, and it better be with the right partner under the right terms. May I now have a motion for disinterested shareholders resolution to approve the extension of the expiry date of options granted to directors and summarize in the company's management proxy circular related to this meeting? For this purpose, the directors who hold the options proposed to be extended were considered interested shareholders, and the shares must abstain from voting.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the resolution approving the extension of the expiry date of an aggregate of 425,000 options of the company held by directors by 1 year in the form set forth in the company's management proxy circular related to this meeting is hereby ratified, confirmed and approved.

Are there any questions, Bruce, that have been submitted by meeting participants that relate to this motion?

Mr. Chairman, there are no questions or comments that have been submitted by meeting participants that relate to the motion.

Thank you, Bruce. You have heard the motion. We have counted the votes to be cast by management proxy holders on behalf of those shareholders that directed the management proxy holders how to vote. For the remaining shareholders attending online, if you have not yet voted, please vote now by clicking on the Vote my Shares icon on your screen, casting your vote and then submitting it. We will pause briefly to allow the voting to occur. [Voting]

Although the final vote count has not yet been completed, it is clear from the votes received to this point that the motion is carried. And for those of you interested in the numbers here because, obviously, stock option grants and option issuances tend to be -- not look kindly apart by the proxy solicitation companies that provide their comments on each things to be voted on. In this instance, about 70% of the shareholders voted in favor and 30% against. Bruce, is there any other business for the meeting that has been proposed by meeting participants that should be addressed at this time?

Mr. Chairman, the meeting participants have not proposed any further items of business for the meeting.

Thank you. If there's no further business to be brought before the meeting, then I declare the formal portion of this meeting concluded, and I will now move on to the presentation that we prepared for the audience. I believe everybody should be able to see the slide deck in front of them. We prepared a slide presentation. It will probably take about 20 to 25 minutes, and then happy to stay online to answer whatever questions will come through the system. Just a reminder that I will be making forward-looking statements during today's presentation. As many of you know, we tend to be bullish on gold over the long term. I think that strategy has played out well since 1999 when we formed the company. Our long-standing thesis remains that the world has far too much debt. We had a credit crisis in 2007, 2008, when global debts were about $160 trillion, and the only thing that's changed between now and then is that global credits and debts have now almost doubled. We believe that a coming recession would eventually pop the credit bubble, generating defaults, unemployment and huge government deficits. Obviously, COVID-19 is now the reason why the recession is upon us. Our view is if it wasn't something like COVID-19, it would have been something different. As a result, central banks are doing what they always try to do to prevent a collapse, and that's by aggressive monetization. In fact, if you look at the Fed's balance sheet in the U.S., we'll probably exit this year with a Fed's balance sheet in excess of $10 trillion, meaning that $6 trillion will have been added as a result of the current situation. As a result of this, our expectation is that currencies will fall hard, and gold will soar. I think it's important to point out here that if you look at the price of gold and just about every currency on the planet, we are now at all-time highs, not yet in the U.S. The all-time high in the U.S. is about $1,920 an ounce. We believe that over the next period of time, that gold will not only take out the previous all-time highs in U.S. dollars but will go to levels that will shock a lot of people that don't understand what gold is. If you look at Seabridge from the 50,000-foot elevation, we have lots of reserves. Between KSM and Courageous Lake, we have 45 million ounces of proven and probable gold reserves, plus an additional 10 billion pounds of copper in the proven and probable categories, and these reserves are contained within an overall resource of about 123 million ounces of gold and 46 billion pounds of copper. I think what our management team is proud of the most, we've now been in business for 21 years, initially taking over a shell company that had about 17 million shares outstanding at the time. And after 21 years of implementing our business plan, we still only have about 66 million shares outstanding. I think one of the biggest risks investors face in the mining sector, and especially the junior exploration sector, is the risk of equity dilution. That's something that we have, I think, done a good job in terms of maintaining. Today, on a valuation basis, we're trading at about USD 22 per ounce of gold reserve, or on a resource base, less than $10 per ounce. When we formed the company, we also decided to try and avoid political risk as much as we can. In my career, I've had mines expropriated that I've been involved with. Political risk is real, which is why our business activities are in North America only. All of our reserves are located in Canada. And not only that, KSM is now shovel-ready, having successfully gone through the environmental assessment process. What our team, I think, has done best, though, is finding gold. If you look at the success of our company over the past 15 years, we have now found over 100 million ounces of gold through our exploration activities. That's more gold found than any other company on the planet, and I include the Newmonts, the Barricks and the Goldcorps within that analysis. What we've also tend to do is take advantage of down markets and doing our acquisitions when assets are cheap and then taking of opportunities at top of the markets to either sell assets -- noncore assets or do strategic deals. Recently, with the downturn in gold that began in 2012, ending at about 2017, we have now completed 3 new additional acquisitions that I'll touch on today. This next slide, I think, drives home one of our guiding principles from day 1, and that guiding principle has been to grow ounces in the ground faster than shares outstanding. We're willing to suffer equity dilution if we can convince ourselves that, that dilution eventually yields to increasing ounces per share. And if you look at our track record since we started our first -- since we completed our first wave of acquisitions in 2002, you can see that over the years, we have definitely delivered on the concept of ounces growing faster than shares. In fact, by the end of 2019, with about 63 million shares outstanding and 123 million ounces of total gold resources, our shares were backed by almost 2 ounces of gold per common share. That's 10 to 20x more gold ownership per common share than just about any other company in our space. And what this has translated into is what we thought Seabridge would become, and that would be the best stock to own in a rising gold market. Since inception, the price of gold is up about 472%. Our share price is up over 5,000% since inception, meaning that on average, our shares have outperformed the gold price by about 10:1. But more importantly, if you look at those periods of time when gold is in a very, very strong bull market, like from 2004 to 2007, as gold moved from below $400 an ounce and broke through $1,000 for the first time in 2007, our share price went from single digits to the high 30s. And then again, coming out of the financial crisis in 2008, our share price again went from single digits to the high 30s. The next period of time was a tough time to be in the gold space in any way with equity holder who are owning physical gold. Gold dropped $1,900 down to about $1,000 an ounce. Since that time, obviously, we've had a nice rebound, and you can see our shares are once again breaking out from the pack and providing relative outperformance to the gold price and other gold equities. We believe that as good as our past has been, the best is yet to come. We believe that as the gold price moves through its all-time highs into much higher levels, that our shareholders will continue to deliver the outperformance seen over the past plus 20 years. So what I'm going to spend most of the balance of the time I have left is really updating the audience in terms of what's new. First and foremost, as an updated technical report, we have now completed KSM, showing further significant improvements to the project in terms of engineering, enhancements and financial returns. Also reporting that even though we are in the face of COVID now, dialogue is continuing with potential joint venture partners. We also did a recent acquisition, taking advantage of the situation early in COVID by going out and buying a project into the Yukon called 3 Aces. We also now are moving forward with drill programs, both at Iskut and Snowstorm this year. And then finally, as many of you know, for the past year plus now, we disputed with Revenue Canada on some interpretation of expenditures that we deem as flow-through-able that they have not. We've now been assessed as a company for about $2 million in back taxes they claim we owe them. We dispute that, and we'll fight this tooth and nail. We also have provided security for the shareholders that provided those funds and those flow-through finances. We did a recent financing of $17 million, which now gives us a full backstop in a worst-case scenario to cover the potential liabilities if they ever come to fruition. But more importantly, we now have [ indiscernible ] the flow-through tax dispute we have with Revenue Canada. KSM is the project that keeps on giving to us. It's a project we acquired from Placer Dome in June of 2000 for about $200,000. Fast forward to today, we've now put about $300 million into KSM, finding today what is the largest developable copper project as measured by gold reserves. The project is located in Northern British Columbia in an area that's becoming quite exciting from not only exploration but also big companies starting to get involved in this district. Recently, we've seen Red Chris in buying 70% -- sorry, Newcrest come in buying 70% of the Red Chris mine and Newmont coming in and buying 50% of the Galore Creek asset. Not only have we done a lot in terms of exploration here, but also in engineering and also in social license. We did receive our environmental approvals in 2014. We have now been extended through 2024. And to get those approvals in place, we established strong relationships with the local communities, indigenous populations and the nearby towns and having impact benefit agreements now in place with Nisga'a Nation and the Tahltan Nation as well as letters of support from the nearby communities and other First Nations. Since we purchased this project in June of 2000, a lot has happened with other people's money, making the project more attractive. To build a mine the size of KSM, you need good infrastructure close by. We're fortunate that we now have a major highway running just east of the project, Highway 37, that connects the Northern United States to Alaska. Along this highway, the governance of British Columbia and Canada have spent over $700 million extending the power grid. We now have contractual agreements in place with BC Hydro, which will give us access to about 250 megawatts of power from this line, for which we'll have to pay about USD 0.05 per kilowatt hour, some of the cheapest power in the world. And then last but not least, just to the south of us in the town of Stewart, there was an old port there that has now been upgraded. And in addition to that, a new port has now been built. This will provide year-round access to bring supplies in by ship and take concentrate out. Access to highways, access to power and access to ports make a big difference in advancing a project like KSM. In 2012, we completed a pre-feasibility study at KSM that was used to apply for environmental approvals, which were received in 2015 -- sorry, 2014. In 2016, we decided to update that pre-feasibility study to take into account the commitments we made during the environmental assessment process. We added a bunch of capital to satisfy some of the concerns and questions raised by the indigenous peoples as well as the regulators. We also obviously had a lot of numbers changing in terms of metal prices and exchange rates. In that updated 2016 pre-feasibility study, we captured 2.2 billion tonnes of reserves containing 38.8 million ounces of gold and just over 10 billion pounds of copper. And if you looked at that study, project projected -- the study projected bulk of the production over the 50-plus year mine life of about $670 per ounce of gold produced. That includes all of the upfront capital, the sustaining capital, the closure costs and the operating costs, net of copper and silver credits. So against today's gold price of $1,700, a profitable project. What the study did not yet -- or what that mine plan did not yet include, the additions we've made subsequent to that time period. In 2013, we started drilling at Deep Kerr. And by the time the 2016 study was done, we actually had found 2 billion tonnes of new resources. We actually, in the 2016 pre-feasibility study, showed what the project could become by including Deep Kerr. And at that time, we'll be able to show an improvement of the project with the all-in cost of production dropping from $670 an ounce down to $350 an ounce. Subsequent to the 2016 study, we continued exploration activities, focusing on the Iron Cap zone, and we have now identified and confirmed our third 2 billion tonne deposit at KSM. If you look at these additions here over the past several years, since 2013, we've added over 40 million ounces of gold and nearly 30 billion pounds of copper. We are blessed with lots of tonnes. Between our 4 deposits of KSM now, we have 7.6 billion tonnes of economic resources to consider in mine plans. What we've been doing, however, is limiting our mine plans to what we have permitted as tailings capacity. In our environmental approvals, we now have a tailings capacity approved for 2.4 billion tonnes in nearby valley. So as we look at different mine plans using the 7.6 billion tonnes of resources we have, we've been focusing on what are the best 2.4 billion tonnes of material that give us the best economics and the best project. Earlier this year, we completed an update study, which we now call our 2020 mine plan, which not only captures Deep Kerr, but also now captures the material we had at Iron Cap. The way that we see this project being mined in the future is an open pit first at Mitchell, followed by a block cave at Iron Cap, then open pits and a block cave at Kerr and finally, an open pit at Sulphurets. This updated mine plan, again, limiting it to the 2.4 billion tonnes we have approved for tailings capacity, now captures just over 40 million ounces of gold versus the 38.8 billion we have in our reserve mine plan. But instead of 10.2 billion pounds of copper, we're now capturing 19.2 billion pounds of copper. So obviously, a lot more copper for essentially the same throughput, which, as you would expect, would drive production and economics. If you look at the new mine plan for KSM, the first 5 years of mining there will actually capture over 1.3 million ounces of gold a year. This mine plan still has a 44-year mine life, and I should point out again and remind you that, that's only capturing less than 1/3 of our resource. As we transition to block caves at Iron Cap and Kerr, the copper production goes up while the gold production goes down. We've been asked, why do you continue to do the work on this project that you do? Well, our goal has always been to try and make the project more attractive for a joint venture partner. And I think if you look at how we've concluded the mine plan, the varying mine plans over the past several years, you can -- this slide drives home why we did the work. In 2016, the reserve mine plan had an all-in cost of production of about $670 an ounce. The updated mine plan in that study that captured Deep Kerr dropped the all-in costs of production down to $350. The new mine plan using the same metal prices and same exchange rates that were used in the 2016 studies, so we can show an apples-to-apples comparison, obviously, also had a positive improvement to the project, mostly a result of the additional copper that's being produced. In the updated study we just filed, we are now using the more appropriate assumptions in terms of gold, copper and silver in exchange rate, which is a 3-year average look back that the SEC requires company to use and looking at mine plans. And as you can see here, the project is even better than the previous slide in that the all-in cost of production now, including all the upfront capital of $5.2 billion, another $7 billion almost of sustaining capital over the 44-year mine life, the closure costs and the reclamation costs, all combined net of copper and silver credits is $4 per ounce. This would make KSM probably the lowest cost producer of any big project on the planet. And if you look at the project in the context of today's metal prices, when we prepared this slide, copper was not yet at $2.50. It's now pushing $2.70. You see a project here that not only generates obviously tremendous cash flows and net present values but also really good internal rates of return. One comment on internal rates of return, anything beyond year '20 in an IRR calculation really isn't captured. But even with this project going for 44 years, we're able to show a pretax IRR at today's metal prices of nearly 22%. These are the pretax numbers. And as you would expect, with the government's take and also [indiscernible] we made during the -- as far as the [indiscernible] agreements, cash does flow out to the government as well as to the indigenous peoples, but still a very healthy IRR on a project that goes 44 years and a payback period of somewhere between 3 to 4 years, depending on the metal price assumptions on a project that goes beyond 40 years, and again, only capturing about 1/3 of the overall resource. Our goal remains at KSM to complete a joint venture with a suitable partner that has the technical, financial and social capabilities to build and operate a mine the size of KSM. And quite clearly, that's a small limited number of companies. Our goal in the joint venture is to maintain a meaningful interest in the project while minimizing our capital contribution. Courageous Lake is another asset that we have spent a fair bit of time on ourselves, but not recently. It's an asset we acquired from Newmont and Total in 2002. 2012, we finished a pre-feasibility study on this project, capturing about 6.5 million ounces of reserves in an open pit configuration at about 2.2 grams per tonne. That study back then with gold at $1,380 and the U.S. dollar and Canadian dollar essentially at par showed a very marginal project. Nobody would invest the amount of capital needed back then of $1.5 billion to generate a project with a 7% IRR. However, if you take those same set of numbers now and just update the gold price to $1,700 and the exchange rate to 0.72, which is where it was recently, you see a project that was challenged in 2012 looking a bit more attractive today. Last year, we did some internal studies with 2 different consulting firms looking at, is there a better, smaller, more robust starter project at KSM before you go to larger throughput, and we came back with the conclusion that there was. We are now assessing what is the best way forward with Courageous Lake. Many of you may know that in years past, we have taken opportunities in market tops to sell noncore assets. We're all looking at Courageous Lake as a potential sell or a joint venture with a suitable partner, and we'll make that decision later this year in terms of the best way to drive value going forward with this asset. The excitement we have now in the company rests with the 3 exploration projects that we now have. The most recent acquisition was the 3 Aces asset in the Yukon that we acquired from Golden Predator. To buy this, we issued 300,000 shares of Seabridge and granted Golden Predator of 0.5% royalty. We also agreed that if we are successful on exploration down the road, we will make a further cash payment to Golden Predator of CAD 1 million on the discovery of the first 2.5 million ounces and a further CAD 1.25 million payment on finding an additional 2.5 million ounces. Clearly, we hope we will be making those payments down the road. What excites us about this project is we believe that this project represents not just a project but a district scale opportunity. We now have over 300 square kilometers of project area here, over 30 kilometers of strike length. And up and down the entire 30 kilometers, there has been high-grade gold showings from previous drilling right near the surface. We also have a project now that provides us year-round access by road. We don't have that at either KSM at this point or Iskut. But we also inherit a project where the previous owners did a good job in terms of working relationships with First Nations, and we'll step into their shoes and continue on. If you look at some of the historic drilling that's been done here, I mean, just mind-blowing results. In fact, when Golden Predator was drilling this for the high-grade near-surface intercept several years ago, this project generated a market cap to them of over CAD 200 million. Some of these intercepts here, for example, 21 meters at 18 grams per tonne, that's over half an ounce of gold per tonne. In terms of dollars per tonne, that's over $1,000 per ton value. Another intercept of 13 meters at 43 grams per tonne, that's better than 1 ounce per ton material or better than $2,000 per ton of contained metal. We're excited about this. Right now, we're in the process of assembling all the data that's been available on this into one usable database. This season, we're expecting to go up to site to do some more sampling, more mapping and some more geophysics with the expectation we'll have our first drill program here in 2021. Another thing that excites us here is that the mineralization is not just limited to the vein material. There's actually a hell of [ an ore ] grades outside of the high-grade gold zones, which may make a bulk mineable open-pitable situation available to us. An acquisition we completed in June of 2016 was acquiring a company called SnipGold. To complete this acquisition, we issued about 700,000 shares. On the front end, we got a resource, an M&I resource, at the project of 2.2 million ounces of gold, about 0.5 billion pounds of copper. From a logistical perspective, this project makes a lot of sense. It's located only about 30 kilometers away from KSM as the crow flies. We're in the same rocks. We're in the same age of mineralization, and we believe that a lot of the opportunities that we saw early on at KSM will present themselves at Iskut. In fact, this year, we'll be focusing our first drill program chasing what we believe could be a large gold copper porphyry target. When we first acquired this project, we were focusing on to see if there's any near circus, high-grade epithermal top of the system contained within a lithocap, and we concentrated our activity drilling in and around the Quartz Rise target. What we found was that the lithocap and the high-grade mineralization probably was there. It's been eroded away. But what that led us to was seeing higher in the system gold copper porphyry mineralization that we did not think would be that high in the system. So last year, we did additional work, geophysical work, outlining what we believe is a big, big target. And we are now opening up camp and should start drilling this project within the next 30 days. The budget this year is about $6.5 million, focusing on that one opportunity. Another acquisition that we'll be working further on this year is our Snowstorm project in Northern Nevada, a large land system that we purchased from John Paulson, and Paulson & Co., the hedge fund guy out of New York, using this asset for 700,000 common shares and 0.5 million common share purchase warrants. The reason we purchased this project is our team has a lot of experience in this part of the world. The Snowstorm project sits on the intersection of the Getchell Trend and the Rift Trend and the Carlin Trend. We've been focusing over the past few years trying to vector into opportunities that would be similar to Twin Creeks and Turquoise Ridge. Last year, we did our first drill program here, confirming that we have the right alteration, the right structural intersections and the right rocks that led to the deposits at Twin Creeks and Turquoise Ridge, and we'll be following that up this year with our second drill program, hoping to vector into where the high zones might be. So when you look at Seabridge as a shareholder, you say to yourself, "Okay. If I own this stock, what's going to drive value as we go forward?" Well, clearly, the gold price. I showed you our track record over the past 20 years in a rising gold market. We believe that in the gold price, the best is yet to come. If gold goes to levels that we expect it to go to, our shares will continue to outperform gold and other gold equities. Exploration success. Our market cap was built initially on our ability to find gold where other previous owners did not. We now have 3 new projects in our portfolio, and our team is anxious to go on that. And I remind you that our team has found more gold over the past 15 years than any other company, and we now have 3 new opportunities. Any one of which we believe could be a company maker. And last but not least is a joint venture at KSM. We know that this is the most important job to get done. It's an objective we've had in place now for many, many years. We continue to dialogue with suitable partners that can build and operate a project to scale of KSM. We have turned down a number of proposals in the past that did not meet some of the objectives we were looking for in a joint venture. Dialogue continues with these companies. Obviously, in COVID right now, things are a bit challenged in terms of the big companies being more inward looking on their own operations and their own capital budgets versus looking at new opportunities. However, the elephant in the room, in our view, is that the major mining companies, both in the gold space and to a lesser extent, the copper space don't have enough reserves to continue. The reserve mine life of the major gold companies is about 10 years. They need new projects. They'll be focusing on projects in safe jurisdictions, focusing on projects that [indiscernible] and focusing on projects that are capital-efficient and focusing on projects that have scale, and obviously, KSM checks all those boxes. Just a reminder that we are dual listed. Most of our volume happens in the New York Stock Exchange. However, we are a Canadian company and list on the Toronto Stock Exchange. We included a number of the indices, including the GDXJ and a number of the composite indexes up in Canada. Share count, 69.5 million out today -- sorry, 65.9 million out today, about 70 million fully diluted. We have no debt. And right now, as a result of doing that equity financing as well as a recent flow-through financing as well as being very successful in using our ATM if and when needed, our treasury is as strong as it's ever been with over $40 million in working capital. Finally, this is a company that's strongly held by insiders, insiders including Albert Friedberg over 30% of the company with also some good financial institutional support. That concludes my formal presentation here. I'd be happy now to address any questions that may come through the system.

Mr. Chairman, there are no questions at this time.

That's the one disadvantage of doing a virtual meeting. I know when we have our meetings in person, we actually spend quite a bit of time on Q&A. So thank you, everybody, for participating in today's call. We're always available to answer any questions that any shareholders have. Please don't hesitate. You can reach out directly to me at my e-mail, which is rudi@ seabridgegold.net. And again, thank you for your time, and continue to be safe. Good day.