Surge Battery Metals advances High-Grade Nevada Lithium project

0:00At PDEC 2026, I'm at the OTC Market's booth and I'm with Stefan Ball, who is the new vice president of corporate development at search battery metals. Stefan, thank you so much for joining us here today. Oh great to meet you here. How are you finding the energy, especially when it comes to critical minerals here at PDEC? You know, we've had a lot of ups and downs over the years. I think last year was it didn't feel good. So it's been refreshing this year to come and feel the energy again. Everybody's very excited. There's a lot of people here. A lot of different commodities, not just critical minerals are excited, but yeah, I've definitely seen a rise in critical minerals. It's seen a rise in government. I think it's something that stood out to me. There's a lot of government boots throughout Africa, Europe. You know, governments are really waking up to how important critical minerals are. Yeah. And we're seeing that represented by absolutely absolutely. I mean, we can talk geopolitics for hours and how that's kind of playing into this story. But let's talk a little bit more about you because you're new to

1:03search. You come from an other industry background. So talk to me about what you're hoping to do here at search. What a shot to you to the world. Yeah, so I joined search about just a little over a month and a half. Maybe two months to go now and I came from Nissan, the maker. I actually visited search quite early on when they had finished just their initial duo program. And I was actually with Ford F and and I saw the potential of this project immediately from the other side. And it had just shown great drill results and seemed to be the highest grade lifting up deposit in Nevada. And that's continued to be true. So I followed the project for since since that time. And then eventually kind of the opportunity was bright. And so I was able to join search and I'm excited to bring kind of the auto's perspective to search. I understand the value chain. Where does the lithium go once it's produced from their ground?

2:07It needs to go through this, you know, very complicated supply chain before it's into batteries and ports into a vehicle. So I really hope to bring kind of that expertise. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. And look, I mean, that's going to come in very, very handy once we're sort of at that stage of production. But just give us an update as to where where the operations are right now in Nevada. You've had some good news that recently and I know the company's been quite busy. So tell us about what's going on right now. Yeah, so we're moving fast. A couple big things to highlight is we we signed a J.V. West evolution mining hope own some property around us and so that has been good to get them on board of a large experienced whiner. In fact, I'm the first employee of the J.V. Oh, good. Beyond that, we did a bit of drilling. A lot of it was infield drilling to show up our resource.

3:09But we did have a few step out. And the news on that has been we're continuing to see the high grades that we've come to expect from this deposit. No surprises. And so with that, we expect to update the mineral resource, the next few thoughts and results. And then in addition, we jumped into doing our PFAS of pre feasibility study. So we're using floor. They're an engineering firm that has a long-vex fatigue place. And so they're really guiding us through the PFAS and we expect to have that out towards the end of the year. Yeah. Well, look, it sounds like it's going to be a catalyst rich here for surge. I mean, it seems like it's always a catalyst rich here for series of companies. Always always doing a lot there in Nevada. But seven, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us and update us on what's going on. Great. Thanks for having me. Great. For a project by Angela Romantis.