The Mining CEO Behind Two Major Exits Starts Again - George Ogilvie

0:00Happy Friday. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to this long form episode here on Mining Stock Daily to get you into your last day of trading on Friday and into a weekend. We've got a great in depth conversation here with one and only George Oglevie, the new CEO of Hercules, metals coming off of that win from Arizona, Sonoran, and then also prior success at Battle North. I actually go in depth about the philosophy of taking distressed companies and rebuilding them, creating shareholder value and what that foundational playbook looks like. The George and his team are looking to replicate up in Idaho and maybe it's a little bit different of a beast this time. So more on that great conversation, first time George and I and all the conversations we've had who take over the full hour talking about his career and that playbook. So anybody interested in junior resource speculation, this

1:01is a must. Listen, thank you so much to Tegrir resources, equinox gold, visa silver, and revival gold for their support of Mining Stock Daily. Also big thank you for Tara Hutton who also makes this program. Being able for us to bring it to you every week, they are actually going to be in Colorado for the conferences in the next week or two. So if you are interested to learn more about Tara Hutton, how they make the invisible, investible, let me know, I'll get you in touch with the team and maybe you can set up a meeting with those gentlemen. Great platform there and we thank them for their continued support of MSD. All right, everybody, great conversation. You want to know only George Oglevie? Have yourself great weekend. Be well. It's a real pleasure to welcome George Oglevie back onto the podcast. Typically when we've done these types of interviews in the last couple of years, it's been more on the corporate update side from Arizona, Sonora and Copper. Obviously that cactus project is a gone and sold to Hutbey.

2:09George and team have recently announced going into a new project, the Hercules Meadows project up in Idaho more on that in a bit. So instead of really diving into more of the corporate update side, we're going to talk a little bit of George's success, mistakes made in the past and really how he just cannot quit the CEO position within the mind development. So George, it's really good. It's really good to see you, man. What a year. What a year. Congratulations. Oh, thank you, Trevor. Yeah, it's been a phenomenal year so far and let's hope it continues to get better. Yeah. Well, we've missed you dearly. Me personally, missed the conversations. The banter back and forth, who is going to have the best sport coat at any conference? So you want to attend it? Well, precious metals is coming up and I believe it weeks though. The competition is on. It is. And maybe we'll just wear the exact same jacket as we once would do

3:13once in a while. Two years ago. It's such a good time. You and I looked at each other pointed fingers like, hey, great minds. All right. I do want to spend as much of the hours I can, George, because I will get to the Hercules story and that transition. But honestly, you've spent more than three decades in mining. You started as an engineer and operator. You weren't necessarily capital markets guy. That comes later. But when you look back at those early years, underground in South Africa and then working for Canadian mines, what did that experience teach you about the mining sector that you simply cannot learn in an executive office in Toronto? Yeah. Well, look, it was a phenomenal experience and really gave me a solid grounding in the mining industry. Once you actually work underground and see what can actually be done as far as

4:16moving the rockest concern, development rates, what people are physically capable of actually doing underground. It really gives you a solid foundation to actually work from. As I always say, spreadsheets can really be made to give you any result that ultimately you're looking for. But at the end of the day, it's really the rock underground and the people that will deliver the results, not a spreadsheet. So that's really allowed me to be successful in my career as having that solid grounding and in practical mining and various types of mines around the world. When it comes to exploration and discovery, there's always that back and forth discussion about who makes the better executive, the geologist or the engineer or maybe even the banker, the finance guy. You've worked in so many different parts of that mine cycle and the projects in your

5:21past. Do you have any sort of thoughts on that debate? Yeah, absolutely. Look, I think it's horses for courses and at various stages of a project, you need certain skill sets. So definitely in the early exploration stage, when it's real grass roots, that's where the exploration guys are in their 40, really in their area of expertise. But as the project transitions and there's maiden resources done and then you have to start moving into technical studies and metallurgical work and then all the costing and the permitting, I think that's really where mining engineers really come into the fore. And if you have a mining engineer that also has good business acumen and good management skills, they're certainly capable of taking the company through EPCM and construction development and ultimately, you know, running and managing and operating mine.

6:24You could even argue beyond that, however, as the organization continues to grow, does the mining engineer have the actual have the business acumen to manage multiple assets and multiple jurisdictions in a lot of instances, that's not the case. And it's incumbent upon the individual to be able to recognize that and hand over the reins to the best qualified person for the sake of the shareholders and take a back seat and move on to something bigger and better or perhaps, you know, move, you know, remain with the company, but in a board position. And then they always say in our industry, when ultimately you end up having a lawyer who ultimately becomes the CEO of the company, you're probably in that final, you know, mature stage where you're looking to ultimately maybe sell the company or do some sort of a major corporate development activity. So I think it's horses for courses and you've got to match the skill set for the phase of where the project is actually

7:28positioned. Do you feel companies maybe underestimate the makeup of an executive management team? So for example, like there's numerous stories out there where, you know, obviously, geologists make the discovery and push things forward. And then it just gets to the point where it does need to grow up to that second version. Maybe that's exactly where Herculeez is right now. That might be a great story for later. Or when maybe a finance guy takes over an early stage project, doesn't necessarily have the geological exploration background, but can certainly make numbers look very good for economic reports and permitting. Do you think, I mean, I guess what do you think? Do you think not enough companies really appreciate it? Understand the cycle that is a mind life and really the best type of profession that sits into those executive roles? I think companies, certainly, you know, the mature companies out there that are in production today

8:33and, you know, have sophisticated HR systems and people, you know, well-qualified people within the company. I think they definitely understand it. And in the junior field, however, sometimes people don't understand that either they don't have the experience or they just want to hold on to the position. Maybe it's a lifestyle for them or maybe they just can't see the, you know, the forest for the trees, so to speak. But yeah, I'm more in the junior sector. I see people not not not understanding that. Okay. You've been involved with a couple of successful outcomes here over a couple different companies now. Yeah. And your recent past. But instead of, you know, I really want to actually not ask you about, you know, the successes. But really kind of do some some thinking about the mistakes and lessons you learned along the way. What is a decision early in your career that you probably would have made differently today? And how was that

9:39how's that mistake changed the way you evaluate projects? Wow. It's a great, great question. Mistakes that I've made. Wow. Honestly, I can't nothing actually comes to mind immediately. Mistakes that I've made. I've been so blessed and, you know, working with phenomenal people, phenomenal teams. And, you know, as you've heard me say on your show before and the listeners will know, I mean, going into any possession, any company over the last two decades, I've had the luxury. I've actually been able to do due diligence on the company before accepting any, any possession. And, you know, with the right skill set and having, you know, advisors around me, and when I don't particularly have that skill set or not particularly strong in a certain area, it allows you, as I've said in the past, to pick the winners before the race has even started.

10:45But I wouldn't say I've made any decisions that are mistakes or anything that I regret, because based on the career that I've had, I've had phenomenal success and I'm absolutely delighted with that. And I wouldn't wouldn't change anything tomorrow. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. If I look back at your time at Battle North and then also Arizona, Snorren, Battle North, when you took over, and often solvency was the right term to put under the company, the need to, EWLA credit, or protection. Yeah. Yeah. So you grew that resource from about half a million ounces to 1.3 million ounces, de-risked the Bateman through, you know, both mining, technical studies, you raised over $100 million. Sold the company for $343 million Canadian. Yeah. So it was almost 50% premium though. Yeah. So incredible success. You take that knowledge and

11:46experience. You take over Arizona, Snorren, which was ELA mining at the time. That's when I first started investing with it. It was ELA. Yeah. When it was a private company. Advanced cactus to over 10 billion pounds of copper. You raised over $300 million Canadian. Obviously sold that to Hud Bay recently for $2 billion. I mean, is there a playbook in here that you look for? It's like, okay, I've done this before. I can do it again. Or is it specifically geological? No, there's definitely a playbook. Obviously, the geology is very, very important, and you have to be confident around the mineralization and the ground, and it is actually economically recoverable. So that's the foundation of everything. Because if that isn't there, you're really building a company or building a project with like a deck of cards. And as soon as you get your first crisis or crises, the whole thing is going to come crashing down. So the reserve and resources

12:53absolutely critical. But there is a playbook. And you've got to look at where you're at in the cycle and make sure you're in the right commodity. 20 years ago, if we were talking about copper, nobody cared about it. It was probably under $2 a pound. And nobody was thinking forward or had the vision to think about where the world was heading with AI and electrical vehicles. That whole greenhouse, green energy transformation. So packing the right commodity at the right time in the cycle is also very, very critical. And then you've got to look at the juror's section. Where is this thing actually going to be mining? Because you can't pick the mine up and move it to some other country or some other juror's section. So you have to assess that because that carries a big risk associated with it. And then you've got to look around and say,

13:54well, what infrastructure is already here that we can help take advantage of or leverage to help minimize future infrastructure and capital costs and the sustaining capital. And can you take advantage of roads as the power or as the access to water. And then there's the community aspect as well. How is the project regarded within the community? Is this something that will have community support? Or are we going to be pushing a road up a hill and always have obstacles and backlash versus the project? Because that then will impact the timelines for the project and also the investor sentiment. And then, obviously, the economics, the financial and economics are very important. Where are we at with commodity pricing? Was the pricing likely to go your best guesstimate looking five, ten years out as you de-risk the mine? And can we actually make money on this? Because that's what we're here for at the end of the day to make money for ourselves,

14:55for our shareholders and reinvest in the community and all stakeholders should participate and be successful. And then what's the regulatory and environmental regime like? Can I actually get this thing permitted in a production in the next five to ten years or is this thing going to be decades out there? Am I wasting my time? Should I be looking at something else? And when you bring all of that together into a mix, it's like baking a cake. You've got to have the right ingredients to make a really good cake. And then it's not just about the right ingredients, it's then working out the puzzle of how you fit those pieces all together and in the right sequence at the right time. So again, like baking a cake, you know, you put in the right ingredients at the right time and then you've got to put it in the oven and bake it at the right temperature and keep checking on it. So yeah, there's definitely a playbook that is required to have success and the junior mining sector,

16:02you know, based on the results that we've had in the past over the last several decades. What do you think the most common thing is exploration companies overestimate about their own playbook and their own projects? Before they need somebody like a George O'Vee to come in and save the shareholders. Well, everybody always thinks that they've got the biggest and best project. And yeah, I know that you've got a market in the project and you've got to, you know, obviously put your best foot forward, but sometimes you're actually better being conservative, you know, actually, you know, speaking the truth of what you have and then work with the best with what you have, you can still get a phenomenal result. But, you know, I see a lot in the junior game, a lot of over marketing, a lot of overhype, you know, everything is world class, where and reality that is not the case. Yeah. I do want to go back to battle North. I mean, because you and I,

17:08in the couple of years that you and I worked together and were following covering their zone of snoring story, we didn't really talk about battle North at all. That wasn't the purpose. But I get the opportunity to do that now if you don't mind. And I think it's, I think it's an important chapter. Yeah. In your story, because you arrived at the company as it was kind of restructuring financially and you weren't obviously starting from a clean sheet of paper. You inherited some really big problems. But what did that experience teach you about distinguishing between a bad asset and a good asset inside of a broken company? Yeah. Well, look, it's easy to look back now with hindsight, but that was definitely a project that was sort of over estimated, over marketed back under Rubicon 1.0. And I think, you know, the company at the time was trying to take advantage of a very hot gold market. And there'd also been another asset and I believe Red Lake that had sold

18:13for several billion dollars. And they were trying to ride on the coattails of that with all the, you know, hype, you know, around that sale or acquisition at the time by gold corp. And I just, I just think the promotion took over. And, you know, when I looked at it, to be honest with you, first of all, when they approached me in July of 2016, initially I said no because of all the baggage and negativity around the story. And then in August of that year, I said, okay, well, look, I'll sign a CA and I'll come into the data room and do some due diligence. I even visited the project in September of that year. And I came to the conclusion, the fact that the mine had already been built, the shaft had been sunk. There was, you know, 13 kilometers of development and the mine, the tailings pond was in place. The infrastructure was there, the power was in. I came to the conclusion

19:19that all of those now were sunk cars. And if we had a clean slate and it wasn't good for the old shareholders, because there was 162 to one rollback of stock, you know, the debt people who were in debty to the company got paid sense on the dollar. We negotiated with the two big lenders, which was Royal Gold and CPIB at the time. They took shares in the new co or the restructured company. And starting with a nice clean balance sheet, a really tight share capital structure, all that sunk cost. There was hundreds of millions of dollars of tax loss pulls that we could use when we put in the financial and economic model. And essentially, we did everything the way it should have been done from square one. And we took a very pragmatic, a very conservative view. We redid the resource. We were drilling in those stoves on five meter centers. We ran a 40,000 ton bulk sample.

20:21You know, people asked me, George, you're coming in. We should rebrand the company tomorrow. We we need a new name. And I said, no, when we go marketing, we are going to market under Rubicon minerals. And if people don't want to take a meeting, they don't have to take a meeting. But I'm not going into meetings with fund managers. And then as I walk out, they realize, oh, this is Rubicon minerals. George is trying to pull the wool over my eyes and you know, put lipstick on a pig. That's not how I or my team operate. And for four years, as we de-rest that project, we marketed the company under Rubicon. It was only after we came out with a feasibility study, the 40,000 ton bulk sample. You know, the two or three updated MREs had raised additional monies. And we'd one back the trust and respect of the market that we actually rebranded the company to battle north gold. And within a year of doing that, we obviously got taken up by evolution mining.

21:28And that's how these projects are supposed to work. But I would say, had I gone in and I wouldn't have, but had I gone in to Rubicon 1.0 five years prior under the original company, we would that that company would not have been successful. Because that infrastructure was not there. You were going to have to put in 700 million dollars of value. That project would not have worked the way it was originally built, even if I had gone in there. It only worked because there was 700 million dollars of salt cost and hundreds of millions of dollars of tax lost pools, which made made the mine profitable at that time. And remember, we were dealing with 13, $1400 an ounce of gold. Today at $4500 an ounce of gold, the thing looks very different. But back then, 10 years ago, that project was never going to succeed off the bank. So the infrastructure, the building of the infrastructure, the delusion to get that done

22:32at the time was a mistake. But you saw it as an opportunity. I saw it as an opportunity and an opportunity to rescue something out of, out of essentially nothing. Yeah. And I think that actually is quite interesting because I did want to ask you kind of when the importance of capital markets does come in and the importance of being able to crunch numbers and find the opportunities within the spreadsheet. And a lot of times, most geologists don't have the tool set to make that happen. But if you're too early, if the successful mining stories have geology, capital markets working together in tandem. But you do it too early. You spend enormous amounts of shareholder capital proving something out that isn't the appropriate time like you just described. And too late, you may not have the money to advance the geology needed to build the mine plan. So when is that perfect time for those two entities to

23:34start working together? Well, it should work together as soon as possible as early as possible. Because that's one of the issues in the junior sort of exploration field as well as that people will drill out deposits to a certain size. I'm okay with it on an inferred basis, let's say. But when you start doing the NFL drilling and tightening up the pattern to measure and indicate and eventually thinking about reserves, you need to have an opinion or formulate an opinion at that point in time as to how big do we want this mine to be and what should the life of mine and the production actually actually what would be the optimum levels? Because you don't want to be sinking money in a drill holes and have a hundred year mine, let's say, because we know when you get into those financial and economic models and you get out beyond year 12 or year 15,

24:37you know, the impact on the NPV, the way the models work with the discounted cash flow, has absolutely no impact. So drilling measured and indicated drilling beyond 15, 20 years, what impact is it really having? To me, yes, you want to drill out a mineral resource estimate, maybe the inferred category to show that yeah, we've got a 20, 30, 40 years of resources here, but you need to hone in on that when it comes to the actual mine, the size, the daily production, the annual production, and what do we want here? 12, 15, 20 years? Yeah, so you let the found it. I just by the way, because you know, we knew there were other areas where our circle had drilled and head mineralization, and if we had put drills there, we would have been able to duplicate those results and increase that resource, but we were already at close to 20 years, ultimately, which obviously for a copper porphyry is a good start,

25:44but I think more copper is going to be discovered there, but it had absolutely no impact on the financial and economic model, and at the end of the day, we were just really throwing dollars down the drain when it was better needed on getting into the feasibility study, and ultimately, EPCM, and putting deposits on long lead item equipment. So let's do talk about the foundation of Cactus, because obviously we talked about about North and that playbook. You did a great job. Yeah, yeah. I was looking to be explaining that. When you come into the Cactus project with Arizona, Snorren, you know, what was ELA mining as I mentioned, I participated in the last, I think it was the last private round of that before it became Arizona, Snorren, and it was a different set of problems, a different set of challenges that you were faced with. I mean, it seemed to be some generous royalty agreements made before you came in, and I think a lot of shareholders were

26:47a little perturbed. It was a private company at the time, but so it was a different set of problems, but can you maybe describe the challenges that were different with the Cactus project when you first came in, but yet how did that playbook kind of attribute to really getting the project back on track? Yeah. Well, you know, going back to scratch again, you know, when I was originally contacted in May of 2021, you know, we had just sold battle North and quite literally the day after we sold battle North, I was contacted by a head hunter looking for a CEO for ELA mining, and you know, after I spoke with him and you know, thought that, you know, this is something maybe I should take a look at the very next day I had signed a CA with the company and I was doing my due diligence again. So you see that playbook got into the data room, you've got a mining background, you've got practical mining experience, you can go through the technical reports and discern

27:52what is actually real and what is BS, what is not going to happen. A lot of those technical reports, they're not worth the paper they're written on in the in the junior sector game to be honest with you. So you're able to discern and work out what is actually going to work or not. And I saw, hey, it's the US tier one, it's copper, it's a former producing mine, you know, they've got hundreds of thousands of meters of historical core that got the pulp so we can rely on that information, you can look into the open pet and visually see all that mineralization in the side walls and the bottom of the pet, it's got roads, it's got power, there's a support of community, oh, and it's on private land because at the time, you know, Republicans weren't in office, it was a Democrats. So you've got to be thinking about, oh, how do I get this permitted and suddenly now you're all on private land, nobody knew, you know, Trump and Republicans would get in and, you know, he'd be so supportive of the of the US mining industry. So he pulled all of that together

28:58and you can see you've already got, you know, a lot of positive attributes that this thing could move forward. We did, however, recognize that I think the maiden resource that we published as part of the IPO document was around three and a half billion pounds of copper. And when we looked at the site, the footprint was very small, it was only about 3500 acres. And the team before I got there had already did a good job in expanding it from 1200 acres to that 35. But it was fairly obvious that the land package was going to have to more than double. And if you followed the company, that was something that we did over the four years at the right time as we increased the land package up to 7800 acres that ultimately could accommodate that 20 year mine life, accommodate the leech pad space and the pad and the space for the waste that was going to be

29:58generated from the the overburden that would, you know, come from that 20 year mine life. And obviously accommodate the engineering building and all of the other facilities that are required. So that was that was a different challenge than what we had at other projects we had gone in where the land package was huge and we had more than enough enough space to deal with. Yeah. Amongst all this thing, obviously, there's an endgame here both those projects and that also brings up it's almost like a philosophical question around, you know, selling projects and selling companies here at George. Yeah. So you sold Battle North Evolution, Arizona, Sonoran, as we said, went to Hud Bay. Yeah. When you look back at those two and maybe there's another playbook here. But how does a CEO determine when shareholders are better served by continuing to build independently versus handing those assets off to a larger company with stronger balance. Yeah.

31:00Well, it's a great question and you just got to recognize, you know, when has that when have you sort of reached your optimum value? And you know, if somebody is in the data room and they've put an offer on the table, does that offer, you know, represent as good or better value than the go-to-loan plan? And of course, on the go-to-loan plan, you've got to look at it on a on a risk adjusted basis. When when evolution mining put the offer on the table for cactus and we compared that to the internal plan, the internal plan was better than what evolution mining put on the table marginally better. But evolution mining was offering cash. Whereas the internal plan everything had to go to perfection. So we and I've worked in mind mining now, I'm on my 37th years, since graduation in 1989, we all know when you get into operations and your reminds, things go

32:05wrong. You have challenges, you have breakdowns, you know, you get it a letter from the regular and you've got to stop something perhaps. So things go wrong and you've got to recognize that, that nothing's perfect. And when you look at your own go-to-loan plan on a risk adjusted basis and you're honest with yourself, it becomes very, very evident that if somebody's putting cash on the table in front of you to take today at a 50% premium, that's the type of deal that you want to take. And you know, I've seen this in the junior industry from inside. There are so many deals that are on the table and get put to companies and CEOs and boarded directors and they don't take them. They don't put them to the shareholders to vote because they think that it's bigger and better, they can do even better than what they got on that spreadsheet. And in some instances,

33:09they do, but in 90% of the occasions, they don't and the shareholders, it never comes to light. That's fast. I mean, it's amazing to think, what would drive you to think you can do it better independently? How do you separate that attachment to the company from your obligation as a capital allocator? What's more important? Your CEO position or capital allocator for your shareholders? And, you know, obviously, it's complex. I mean, sometimes companies, you know, they might have you know, ambitions to do emanate themselves or, you know, they believe that, you know, there's another deposit or they've just had some success and they haven't had the time to drill it out and determine what's actually there and how do you describe any value to it? So it's very, very complex. But the last two deals you have done, you left the table knowing that your, your approach

34:15doing it independently was not the best decision. So you have not thought about my, like, my team's way is better than the offer at the table, right? You know, like you're not, you're not building minds yourself. And I'm just kind of curious how hard of a decision was that for you? If you go back to battle North and then onto the cactus project, was it a hard decision for you to be like, no, you're going to part with. No, when, when, when we looked at it as a senior management team and you've obviously got very knowledgeable intellectual experience, people around the table and you, you put everybody's experience and get everybody's opinion and you come to the same conclusion and then you bring an independent financial advisors and they ultimately advise you that this is the best course of action. We're happy to take that course of action, assuming that the board of directors is on board because at the end of the day, it still has to go to a shareholder vote. The shareholders then get all the information and they have to decide. The frustrating part for me and our industry,

35:19particularly in the junior game, is a lot of instances that information or those deals never see the light of day and the shareholders don't get to vote on it. So that's the frustrating part. But we're happy to walk away because we walk away with the shareholders being happy. We've made the money. They can, you know, recapitalize, put that money into something else and have another when and you walk away as a management team with your credibility and reputation intact. Another big feather in your cap and you can move on to something bigger than better. Look, less than a month ago, my team and I announced we were joining Hercules Metals and we'll, I know we're going to get into that. Stock was 60 cents. The stock has gone as high as $1.62 on no news going out other than it's now from the team. But why is that? The reason for that is that the market recognizes, oh, Georgian is team of her success and the past. We trust in them. They know something. We support

36:26Georgian. We're going to come in and if you hadn't, I've had those successes in the past. We wouldn't have seen the share price increase 200%. Yeah. Yeah. No, the stock moved because of that news announcement and the track record that you have proven, bringing now going into Idaho. I do want to get into it. I got one last question on the philosophy of selling here because you mentioned a lot of management teams are given kind of deals that don't even go to the shareholders or just pass by. Why do you think that is? Is it just kind of demonized? Is it ego greed? Why would we cause a management team to say like, nope, we're just going to do it ourselves. Well, look, I mean, you think about the time, money and effort and hours and hard work you put into getting these projects from grassroots exploration plays and into, you know,

37:30exploration and eventually all the technical studies and the permitting. I mean, it takes years. And you've put all that blood, sweat and tears into it. Sometimes can be very difficult to know just when to let go. That's just human nature. I mean, I always use the analogy. It's like, you know, your children as well. You mean, you have your children and you see them grow up and you nurture them from birth and they go to the first school and then there's a graduation. And then there comes that point in time where you need to stop parenting and a sense and you've got to let them go. You've got to let them go out in the back world and find their own way. And yes, you want to be there to support them, but at the same time, you don't want to smother them. Companies the same way, you need to know when to let go. Yeah. Let's do talking about Hercules. You know, you could have taken a long ride into the horizon, George. I don't know what you would have done with yourself if

38:32you did call it quits. But obviously, I think a lot of us are happy to have you back and do so in a pretty quick manner. Yeah. I will say before we get into this, following the announcement that you and your team were taking position, I did take a, I did take a small position in Hercules medals. Nothing to brag about or write home about. So it's just very small. But you know, just the news on the announcement was enough for me to be quite interested. But after this extraordinary outcome and Arizona snore and that you and I chatted about for a couple of years, like really excited to see what you can do at Hercules. And I will tell you, just if I may say so from an observer prior to not necessarily shareholder, the discovery at Hercules was a tremendous discovery. The follow-through on the exploration was just very hard for me to comprehend and kind of get that story wrapped around my head to make an appropriate decision for my own capital allocation. And I don't think

39:35on the only one, if I may so openly may say, I'm not the only one that may be shared kind of that confusion. And so, you know, what did you see in Leviathan? And maybe perhaps Idaho more broadly, is this over of new explorations been coming into that state for the last couple of years now, since that discovery. What's convinced you about this to make you want to do this all over again? Yeah. Well, again, same situation. Sorry, I'm starting to sound a bit like a broken record here, but as you know, in March of this year, we announced the Huttby transaction on Arizona's snore. Allison and I had gone off to Zurich for the precious metals conference in late March. We met a fund manager there who was a shareholder in Arizona, Sonoran, and was delighted. And he was also a shareholder in Hercules metals. He asked us, do we know the company? We said, never heard of it. He said, well, I know the chairman extremely well and the CEO. And I believe

40:42they're actually looking for a management team to come in and, you know, take the company in a slightly different direction. So would you be interested? And he shared over 15 minutes at a very high level some of, you know, the positive attributes, which he believed for the project. So the following week, this would be early April. I spoke to the chairman. There was a enough there where we signed an NDA and we started conducting due diligence on Hercules metals by mid April. And of course, by the end of July, we'd come to the conclusion that this was a project where we absolutely wanted to come in as the management team. We were extremely fortunate as well and that Chris Paul, the XCEO, recognized that, you know, he's probably in his late 30s, an extremely accomplished exploration geologist, but this was his first opportunity at the

41:43CEO level. He had the insight to recognize that he didn't have all of the skill sets required. And given this was his first time, and he needed help. And he was willing to step aside to bring in the right management team and play a role in the future success of the company. We really need to commend Chris for that, you know, kind of thinking and maturity. It doesn't happen in our industry enough. And people, as we've, you know, discussed on this call up till now, tend to want to hold on for whatever reasons for way too long. So we have to commend Chris for seeing that and having the foresight to step aside. And I'm very confident that himself, the management, the shareholders and other stakeholders over time are going to do extremely well with this story. So why did we jump in here? Well, first of all, let's just talk about the resource.

42:43So they've got this Leviathan deposit. They pulled to hold on there in 2023, 180 odd meters exceptional copper. There's some molly. Now, this entire region and the past was really known as a bit of a silver plate. And there's epithermal, silver, very close to surface, but the copper was unknown. And there was an empty survey flown over the property, I think, in 2022. They were obviously magnetic conductors that were highlighted. And that's really what gave Chris the idea to poke in a few deep holes. And he got into the top of the poultry system. And as they have followed up with additional empty and now inverse polarization. In addition to Leviathan, they've actually seen three other anomalies on the project, which are hook, southern flats and Pegasus. And what we liked about it was that, you know, definitely Leviathan

43:50has got the ability to be an open pet given the current mineralisation comes to within about a hundred meters of surface. As it moves to the southwest, it plunges very similar to what we saw at Park Salier. And we think that should really bear with it, be where the initial focus is. The other thing to bear in mind is that they've only explored on 20% or 20,000 acres of their existing land package. There's over a hundred thousand acres here of land. What else could we like about it? It's copper. It's going to have some molly. And because the silver near to surface, you might actually be able to incorporate that into the design, particularly of Leviathan, we can actually minimise the strip ratio or improve the economics by actually mining the silver as well, initially, before you get down into the copper poultry. There's roads and the area

44:57paved roads. There's three hydroelectric dams. The main power lines run over the property. So you know you're going to have the ability to tap into relatively inexpensive power, green energy down the line. There's water in the ground that they currently use, obviously, for the drilling. We need to do more work on that to see if there's enough water for all of our operational and processing needs. But my gut feeling tells me in that area of the world, there probably will be water and the water table. The other thing we liked about it, we visited the site in June. We met with representatives from the city and key business people. And the feedback we got was extremely positive that they want to see the project move forward. Leviathan itself is on private land, meaning this company controls the surface and the mineral rights. But once you step out of Leviathan, you start getting

46:01into state and then particularly federal land. So unlike cactus, where it was all on private land, we are at some juncture going to have to engage with the US Forestry Service here. And of course, anytime we have drill pads on the forestry land, we're putting in plans of operation and getting permission from forestry to put in the road and put in the drill pad. That has happened in the past and it'll have to continue going on in the future. One of the things we saw, which can be rectified, is that they've only had two drills drilling on this 20,000 acres of land, with they've picked up these anomalies with Leviathan hook, Pegasus and Southern flats. And they've kind of been like kids in a candy store. And I've seen this in the past. And what I mean by this is if a kid goes into a candy store and there's all these candies on the shelves with all these sweets. What does a kid do? They go up to try and go into every jar and dip their

47:07hand in and whatever as opposed to having more of a focused with with Venomore resources, right? I know you laugh. No, I'm thinking about the opening scene of Willie Walker and the chocolate factor. Because I just I literally just washed it with my daughter like last weekend. The candy man can. That's why I was like, sorry. Great analogy then. But that's what can happen. You've got to be very, very disciplined. So immediately what we saw was, look, take the only two drills we have and let's put them on Leviathan because that's where we know we've got a large resource that can be expanded and probably would be the focus for an initial mineral resource estimate eventually when we get there. The other thing that we're doing right now and this is extremely difficult given the availability of drills in the United States. Everybody is drilling and everybody wants drills.

48:10But we've reached out to a couple of drilling contractors and one of them is visiting the property next week and our goal is to try and increase the drill count in 2027. Once we've obviously completed our budgets at the end of this year and we understand, you know, we're the 32 and a half million dollars and the treasure will take us to given the plans that we have and then can we physically get those drills in on site. The beauty of this project in my humble opinion for the drilling contractors as the effort drilling contractor comes in here and they do a good job, they will have a contract that easily could be 5, 10 or 20 years of drilling given how big this system is likely to be. This is not a one or a two year contract. This is a decade plus contract easily. So I think that's going to be attractive. So budgets by the end of the year, bets hopefully coming in from drilling contractors and then we can increase the drill count next year

49:17and that comes back to an important point that you raised. The company puts out good drill results but they don't do it on a frequent basis because they've only got two drills going and the drills are moving all over the place to different targets. If we can stay focused at least initially on Leviathan and bring in additional drills, the news flow is going to increase. And as we all know, the markets are very fickle. People don't have long times when it comes to concentrating on things. You put out a great news release today by next week, it's forgotten. So if you're not putting out continuous news flow, you're not front and center. So we think the plan that we have will move the company up next year as far as news flows concerned. And I think that's going to create a lot of excitement around the stories we put out more continued good news. Thank you for that explanation. Obviously, Leviathan comes, I mean, it's a lot more green fields

50:22than, say, cactus was with all that historical information. You just scratch the surface. Chris and team have just scratched the surface with Leviathan with that discovery and some of, promising follow up drill holes. But I think your time, I mean, is it fair to say that the timeline here with Hercules investors need to be potentially expand that horizon than what was cactus and also with battle north because it's still early stage exploration with porphries. It takes a lot of time, a lot of capital, a lot of drilling to really understand these things here. George and those are things you inherited with cats. You had a really good understanding because they were so absolutely. Yeah, we had 200,000 meters of historical drought core from the 70s and 80s with all the pulps that we tested 5% often when the QP was satisfied. Bad immediately came

51:23into our reserve and resource, right? Right. So we don't have that here. So that's going to take some longer time. You're quite right there. But the way to skin the cat at the moment is, you know, we're drilling on 500 foot centers now at Leviathan, we're 130 meters. We're doing that because we know when we come out with a minimal resource estimate, it gets as they are sooner, but it'll only be in the inferred category. But I think the key thing here for the market to look out is the scale and the size of this. How big can it actually be? And I always remember, you know, when we were in Arizona, we spoke to a couple of the senior base metal producers and they gave me a number on, you know, a tier one asset for them and it was 20 billion pounds of copper. If they see something that's 20 billion pounds of copper or more, especially if it was in the United States, for example, it definitely would be attractive to the senior. So that was a number I

52:27took away from Arizona, Sonoran, and my five years in Arizona. To get to an expanded drill program, more rigs on the ground, it's going to take some capital, George. Obviously, I don't think you would have any problems with a package, a financing package for Hercules, but it just definitely feels like something like that needs to happen. Are you currently negotiations to talk about that next round of financing and what the equity structure of Hercules is going forward? Does that change at all? Well, we've been approached by a couple of banks already putting the dealers out about, you know, doing a deal at this stage in time. We've said no. The company has a very strong treasury for what it's currently doing at $32.5 million. I think on a monthly basis, we're burning through $350,000 in drilling costs, Canadian. So, you know, the treasury based on the current plan can stretch well

53:27into the second half of next year. However, as we go forward in the next two to three months now that our feet are on the table, we will have started our budgets for 2027 and we will be having strategic meetings in the next month to determine, you know, what's ultimately the course and where do we want to go with this company? So, I would expect by the end of the year, that'll all be in front of the board of directors. They will have signed off on something and we'll be in a possession to know just exactly what we want to do for 2027 and how much money do we have and how much money do we do we have to raise to expand that program? And importantly, if we do that, we're able to communicate to the street to the investors. This is the use of proceeds. This is how we intend to put your capital to work. And these are the returns that we're expecting. These are the goals that we're hoping to achieve by taking your hard earned money. Final question, because I know I only have a couple of minutes left and kind of a bigger picture professionally, personally,

54:30the next, this next chapter that you're engaging in. So obviously, you've had those two significant exits in the last number of years. If we're sitting here again, five years from now, George, and I certainly hope we can continue the conversations because I love talking to you, always have. But how would you consider this next chapter a professional success? And I don't necessarily mean a share price or take over value. What would you like to have proven about maybe Leviathan, Hercules, medals, or perhaps yourself as a mine builder? Well, look, I think Chris Paul, again, needs credit for this. I mean, the fact that he's probably discovered a whole new copper porphyry district in the United States and Idaho is one hell of an achievement. And I'm coming into the twilight of my career now. I think

55:33proving this deposit and these assets and this district up and then seeing it go into the right hands, let's say at the right time and being further developed, I think that would be a tremendous achievement for myself and my entire team because if what we believe is actually there, you're looking at a mining camp, a district that would be here in a hundred years time. Boy, that wouldn't that be something. Yeah, that would be so incredible. There would be books written on that. And then in Hestia, people would look back about the Idaho copper porphyry mining discovery. And you're going to be all part of that. I mean, it'd be phenomenal. Yeah, amazing. All right. George, good to see you. I've been wanting to have this deep dive conversation with you for a long while now. Glad we can finally make it happen. Thanks for your patience with my technical difficulties. I'd really do mean it's a pleasure to speak with you. And I can't wait to continue to follow the story and what you and your team do with

56:36the life and going forward. Thank you, Trevor. We appreciate it. Thank you. Yep. All right, everybody. That's a wrap here this week. We'll be back next week with more from Miningstock Daily, the Morning Briefing and your corporate updates. Have a wonderful weekend. And be well. The information presented should not be considered investment advice. Miningstock daily and its affiliates are not responsible for any loss arising from any investment decision and connection with the material presented herein. Please do your own research. Our speak with the license to financial representative before making any investment decisions.