As folks start filtering into the room, I will say good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where in the world you are signing in from today. I see Hawaii all the way through to Australia, so I do love when we have global coverage, which is nice to see for an event. I am joined today for a strategy update on Guardian Metal Resources, with the company's Chairman, JT Starzecki, CEO Oliver Friesen, and introducing to some, David Hendriks, the company's recently announced COO. Gentlemen, how are you today?
Doing well. Thanks for having us.
Great.
Romeo.
Awesome.
Thanks, Romeo.
Here is how today's program is going to work, just for the folks in the room. First, Oliver is going to do a couple introductions, and then the executives here are going to run through a presentation. Then I have some questions to go over based on that presentation, and there will be time for a few short questions from the audience, both using that chat function at the bottom of the screen, but also a number of questions that were sent over in email in advance. As this event is under an hour, it is likely there is going to be some really specific questions that we cannot get to that are not quite on topic. I will make sure those get to the Guardian Metal team following today's event, and they will be able to get back to you.
You can also request a meeting by clicking on the Request Meeting button on the bottom of your screen, and I will make sure to connect you with the Guardian Metal crowd after this ends. Last bit of housekeeping from me, this event is being recorded, and the replay will be made available in the early afternoon, I would say, Eastern Time. It will pop in on this exact same link, but it will also be available on 6ix's YouTube channel. Without further ado, let's get into today's program. Oliver, I will throw it to you for some introductions.
Great. Thank you so much, Romeo. Just to confirm, everyone can see my screen, Romeo?
Yep, looks good.
We are good to go? Okay, amazing. Welcome everyone in. Very exciting presentation today, and what we are unveiling and rolling out is sort of an updated recut strategy around building America's tungsten mining hub. A lot of work has gone into this, taken a lot of feedback on. As we stand here today, November 5th, the company is trading at less than one year's cash flow, from just one of our tungsten projects at base case tungsten pricing. Despite that value disconnect, we are going to show even further ways that we can optimize our strategy and the value of this business longer term. Really importantly as well, as Romeo mentioned, we are introducing Mr. David Hendriks, who has come on as COO. What we are doing here is building now the team, putting the team together, who is going to deliver these really important mines. We wanted investors to meet Mr. David Hendriks.
I'm going to pass it off to Dave to give sort of 60 seconds on his background, and he'll be available at the end for questions as well. Dave, go ahead.
Thanks. Excuse me. Thanks, Oliver. As Oliver mentioned, my name is David Hendriks, mining engineer. Graduated back in, what, 1988. I've been working underground as of 1986 even. Did work in Northern Ontario, Central Nevada for quite a number of years, Chile, Argentina. I was working for Kinross and ran things over in Africa for them for a while at the Tasiast Mine. Spent a few years down in Nicaragua running everything for Calibre. Spent most of the last year working as a COO over at Centerra, working on some operational issues. Thought I retired six months ago. These guys approached me. The thing I love about this tungsten project is it's in my backyard. I'm a two-hour drive away from Hawthorne, and I'd spent five years working there back in the early 1990s, so it's really nice to get back in the area.
The idea of building a couple tungsten mines, specifically the Pilot Mountain one, that's a 2.5-hour drive from my home. As far as I'm concerned, that's a local job when it comes to where I've been with mining over the years. Really looking forward to the opportunity to take something, put it into production. Done a lot of things from small-scale mining, working with contract miners, ran some very big operations, groups of 1,500 people in Nevada, 2,500 over in Africa, about 4,500 when I was down in Nicaragua. Lots of big-scale pieces that we've done. But to get back to a couple of small operations between what's going to go on at Pilot, what we'll do at Tempiute down the road, I'm about a month in, and lots of opportunity sitting on the table here.
I'm really looking forward to working with this group to bring these things into production.
Amazing. Thank you so much, Dave. Those listening, you are going to start to hear a lot more from Dave going forward here. He is a very, very important part of what we are doing here. Incredible experiences I am sure you have taken away from that introduction. Welcome aboard, Dave. Disclaimer, I encourage everyone to read through this at their own leisure. This presentation should be available on the website as of now. We are going to try to keep the presentation to about 25, 30 minutes. There is a lot of information here, so there is going to be some slides that we sort of just skip over. Please do go look at the presentation afterwards, go through. There is a lot of important detail here. The team has worked really hard. We have come together to put together the details of this presentation. This is sort of just an overview slide.
A lot of this is going to be sort of a replay of the economics that were detailed in the PFS study that we put forward and completed back in June of this year for just Pilot Mountain, importantly. Really, where do we go from here? We are trying to show investors what the next catalysts look like. Also, we have re-evaluated our strategy around Tempiute. We do not feel as though the market is giving us adequate value for an asset that is such an important part of what we are doing long term. You will see if you focus in on number four here, a lot of today is going to be talking about a hub-and-spoke strategy.
Now, for those who are not familiar with the hub-and-spoke strategy, very traditionally, you have one central processing facility, and you have feedstock coming from multiple different mines or areas nearby into that central facility. That is what we are looking to really roll out here. A lot of work to be done, but how do we optimize Pilot Mountain? How do we optimize this business for the long term? By adopting a more traditional hub-and-spoke strategy. Number one, we do not need to stand up processing at both Pilot Mountain and Tempiute. That was the previous plan. By doing that, by sending material from Tempiute and other sources in Nevada to a central hub, we increase our tungsten output. We should be able to shorten payback.
We are working towards that, looking at ways that we can boost EBITDA with an optimized strategy, improve the grade profile, improve mine life, all the things that we want to show investors these two projects can do long term. We will go into quite a bit of detail about hub-and-spoke strategy today, what that means, the work we are doing, and what the next steps could look like. Importantly, number five, we raised $68.3 million as part of our U.S. IPO back in March. As of last reported accounts, we have $52.5 million cash in the bank, and we are pushing forward.
Obviously, the market is challenging right now, but as you will see in this presentation, there are multiple catalysts, multiple de-risking steps that we are working towards and that investors can look forward to over the next multiple quarters as we push towards construction decision and ultimately into first mining and first production. What you see here is, I think, a really important slide. This is illustrative in nature. It is a schematic, but I think it highlights to investors what is called a Lassonde curve, which is something that I think mining investors have typically used for many, many decades now to better understand how the value of a mining company changes from the various stages of development, right? The initial stage is exploration into discovery, then it goes into engineering, resource studies, the PFS, which we have completed, the DFS, which we are working towards.
Then you start to move towards key de-risking steps for your projects. Mine permitting, mine finance, buying long lead time items, signing offtake agreements into a construction decision, and then into production. The value that can be realized as we move through these steps, as we de-risk along these important milestones, that is what this slide really illustrates. We are going to just quickly talk about what has been delivered, what has been done, but more importantly, where do we go from here, right? As you can see, we are in the bottom of this sort of trough, which is typically sort of the engineering status within the Lassonde curve that is, once again, this is a schematic and illustrative. But as we de-risk, what is the value that we are looking to add here as we move through the key de-risking steps?
Number one, we started exploration at Pilot Mountain in 2023, drilling in 2024. There was no one else, as far as we are aware, in the entire U.S. that was exploring and pushing forward tungsten exploration development in 2023 and 2024. The price was depressed. It was hard to raise money for tungsten exploration and mining, but we took a contrarian view that at some point in the near future, the U.S. and the allied countries are going to need safe mine sources of this metal. We started, raised some money, and started pushing forward exploration at Pilot Mountain. That was step one. A lot of work was done, a lot of drilling was done, which allowed us to declare our first mineral resource estimate done to S-K 1300 compliance. You will see that is number two on the chart here.
Then once we had that, we were able to use that S-K compliant report to go into our listing documents for the NYSE listing, which we completed back in March. Post that listing, we then put out the Pilot Mountain PFS study. That was helped supported by our partners at the United States Department of War and the DPA Title III program. Very thankful to those folks and that team and that agency that allowed us to complete that PFS study on time, on budget. As part of that PFS study, that came with an updated mineral resource estimate. Indicated resources went up 40%. The TRS was put out. That was June. Post that, we submitted the mine plan of operations, so that now starts the clock on a key de-risking part of this story, which is getting mine permits to start construction. Those were submitted.
We're working very closely with the folks at the BLM and the state offices to make sure we can permit these projects as efficiently as possible. More importantly, what's next, right? What can investors look forward to end of this quarter, Q1, Q2, Q3, and onwards, right? What are the de-risking steps that are upcoming? You'll see here next catalyst, number five, commercial strategy, right? Now that we have the PFS study, we have product specs, we are speaking to multiple potential offtake partners ranging from defense primes to domestic processors of material, right? How do we build a commercial strategy that will allow us to build a finance case for a mine hub at Pilot Mountain?
We are in discussions with multiple U.S. agencies around funding for the current steps, and how do we work together to continue to align this project and these projects with the federal agencies that really want to see new U.S. tungsten mining stood up in America. Then moving into 2027, looking at long lead time item equipment ordering, how do we make sure that we're parallel pathing as much as possible to ensure that we can deliver according to our target timeline, which is first production in Q4 of 2028? Offtakes, looking to execute those offtakes, build the finance case. JT has a few slides that I think really detail how we're going to look at the financing strategy around this central Pilot Mountain hub. Then DFS completion, that's Q2. That's going to come with an updated Pilot Mountain mineral resource estimate.
The project financing is ongoing, and a lot of discussions can move forward post that DFS study. You'll see here sort of a few bonus catalysts and things investors can look forward to. Initial MRE, maiden MRE for Tempiute target for Q2 of next year. We've been drilling consistently. We put out some really exciting results. We actually put out some visuals today. We've detailed some really nice visual results that we've hit at Tempiute. Obviously, results pending. But investors can look forward to an updated, and I guess the maiden, sorry, the maiden MRE in Q2 of next year. Moving into Q3, target permit approvals, project financing comes together, EPC contract execution, FID, starting construction, getting things moving forward. This is a really important update that I think investors can get excited about.
If you look at my, if you can see my mouse, hopefully you can. What we've done as part of an optimized strategy, and how can we move to first mining a lot quicker than what was originally quoted, is we've looked at Tempiute a bit differently. The original plan was the stand-up processing at Tempiute. But by stripping that away and saying, "Hey, we're going to process Tempiute material elsewhere," either at Montana, we have a partnership there with a toll mill that can potentially take some of this material, or alternatively, obviously at Pilot Mountain, that's the longer-term strategy. By stripping away and taking away the need to process on-site at Tempiute, we can then just permit for mining. That timeline looks a lot different because effectively, the process is a lot more streamlined when you're just going to be mining.
So what investors can look forward to now is with the new updated target, and by stripping away processing on-site at Tempiute, we are now projecting, and our target is to get to first mining at Tempiute by the end of next year. So by Q4 2027, that is our updated target. We have brought that timeline forward significantly by re-looking at how Tempiute is going to fit into the broader strategy. That is a really important and exciting update from today's presentation to take away. Then the big value driver is obviously driving forward for Pilot Mountain production, or at the Pilot Mountain hub now, by Q4 of 2028. That is our target. This is the last slide, and I think a lot more detail. There is a lot of information here, so this is one of those slides I really encourage investors to go and look at afterwards.
But it really details across multiple verticals, technical, permitting, Tempiute, project finance, offtake, what are the planned and targeted steps as we go from Q3, Q4 of this year into Q1, Q2 next year, and as we work towards Q3, Q4 building and production in 2028. So a lot of key updates here. The way we are looking at this, the team has worked really hard and aligned on this strategy, so I encourage investors to look at this as a way to really gauge what they can expect across multiple verticals moving forward here. Most folks have seen sort of a similar type slide. The tungsten price has done incredibly well. That is really on the back of the Chinese export restrictions, which were put into effect back in February of last year.
Contrary to the Chinese price, which has come off a little bit, the price in the Western world has remained quite robust. It has rolled over a little bit. But as you can see here, the price, or at least the base case that we use for the PFS study, is quite a bit lower than the current price, which is actually, if you can look at my mouse here, about $267,000 per ton as quoted by Fastmarkets. But I think the main takeaway from this slide here is, number one, on the project finance, JT is going to go into this, but who are the different groups that we are talking to on the government side who could potentially work alongside us to get the construction, get this project moving forward, deliver two new mine sources of tungsten on American soil?
EXIM, OSC, Department of Commerce, DPA Title III, all groups amongst others that we are actively engaged with and speaking to. Importantly, I think this is one just to highlight the DFARS January 2027 deadline. That is law, and effectively as of January 1st for defense procurement, by January, no tungsten material can be imported or can be utilized from China, Russia, and North Korea. Between those three countries, that accounts for almost 90% of total global mine supply. So the defense primes in the U.S.A., they understand this. This is law. They need to be sourcing from allied and preferably domestic sources for defense procurement.
We are expecting a huge growth demand from the defense industry as the U.S. looks to sort of rebuild munition stockpiles and kind of re-stand up a lot of the industrial base things that have been depleted as part of some of the ongoing wars. This is the hub-and-spoke strategy, I think really well laid out. As you can see, that is Nevada in front of you. Pilot Mountain is in black with that kind of that blue outline there. To be clear, the PFS design was for 4,000 tons per day, and what we are looking to do here is push the plant as far as we can without materially changing existing capital. We want to take the capital that has been put forward by the PFS and find ways to push the plant as far as we can.
How do we allow for other potential feed sources to do the things that we discussed? How can we increase output? How can we shorten the payback? How can we make this a much more economically attractive situation and hub strategy longer term and one that I think is better suited for a market that is going to fluctuate going forward here? The plan is to look at, with the engineering team, we are doing that now, how can we push capacity and then where can that material come from? The obvious first spoke in the hub-and-spoke strategy would be from Tempiute. As I mentioned, we are now targeting and looking to get to first mining by the end of next year by taking away the need to process material on site. As you can see here, there are other sources of potential feedstock long term.
At Tempiute, there are maybe some assets you are actually not familiar with. Pilot North, which is right up the street from Pilot Mountain. We have Cinch, we have White Elephant. Those are very exciting earlier stage projects that we want to continue to push forward and find ways, subject to exploration success, to potentially use those as additional feedstocks for a central hub. This is how it is going to play out, right? These are the things that we are looking at. Importantly, step one is with our partners in Montana. We have sent a batch of material to Montana from Tempiute. That material is being processed and tested, looking at getting results back from that and seeing how they can optimize and look to set up a circuit that really works for Tempiute material. If successful, how can we expand that throughout 2027?
A very key work stream for us. Dave and the team were actually in Montana over the last few days kind of overseeing things as our material was being pushed through the circuit. This is sort of a snapshot of the PFS economics. I think what is important here is we are working towards the DFS now, right? The DFS targeted for Q2 of next year. We are now sort of four or five months into that. What we are doing now is looking at ways to optimize this project, obviously with the hub-and-spoke strategy. Just to be clear, in the DFS, now obviously a lot of work has to go into really formalizing a plan around expanded capacity. That work is ongoing. What we can do in the DFS is look at sensitivities around tonnage rate, right?
What could this look like if we expanded tonnage rates longer term for the project on top of that grade profile? If we are injecting higher grade material from Tempiute or other sources nearby, how does it change in grade profile? How does it change in the tonnage rate affect what the economics of this project could look like? All part of the DFS sensitivities, but also just looking at Pilot Mountain specifically, the various deposits that are there, how can we better optimize this project? How can we find ways to make sure it can be successful long term throughout multiple different metals markets? Back to Tempiute now. These are kind of the various steps that are being pushed forward here. First one, we talked about the legacy stockpile. That material is at Montana. Testing of that material is underway.
We are certainly going to look to have updates to the market before the end of the year on how that is progressing. Very important part of our strategy short term here to find ways to get to the ability to actually start producing tungsten concentrate on American soil. No one else is doing that right now. The tailings, we have done a lot of work, a lot of drilling to look at the ability to reprocess historical mine tailings that are at Tempiute. That drilling work is done. We are awaiting assays. As those assay results come in, looking to QA/QC those and get some results out to the market. Number three, I think is the most important. Rehabilitation is going to start imminently here.
With the ability to sort of take away the need to process on site, we are looking at targeting first mining from Tempiute in Q4 of next year. That is one of the highlight intercepts there, incredible intercept, great widths, great grade, a lot more drilling results to come from Tempiute. Drilling 24/7 with two rigs there right now. I just want to touch on point four, step four. Longer term, the team is looking at ways to really optimize this hub-and-spoke strategy longer term. What we are looking at is, one of the great things about Tempiute is the existing infrastructure. We have foundations for the primary crusher, the secondary crusher, the mill building. The mine is electrified. The water infrastructure there is there. We own the water rights. There is a lot of infrastructure that has a ton of value.
What we ultimately want to look towards doing longer term, first of all, stand up the mine, get the mining going, get that material to another processing site within Nevada or Montana to get that into a concentrate. More importantly is longer term, how can we effectively upgrade material at Tempiute prior to shipping? If we are going to ship, call it 1,000 tons a day, how can we get that number down, decrease shipping costs, but then increase the grade profile? We are looking at things like using an ore sorter, gravity as a first step, potentially produce what is called a pre-concentrate, and then you ship that pre-con to a place like the Pilot Mountain hub. Longer term strategy, there is some metallurgical work ongoing right now to look into that. A lot more results and news to come on that in the future.
We'll just skip over this. This is sort of a summary slide of everything we've discussed today. We're also going to skip over this, but this is important to show investors how we move from exploration to processing what we sell, tungsten concentrate, and effectively where that tungsten concentrate can go. As I mentioned, we're in discussion with multiple potential off-takers, right? Groups in the U.S. processing defense primes who can have a use for our material. Obviously, there's a lot of groups who are after high-quality domestic tungsten concentrate. That's what we're going to produce. So encourage investors to look at this to understand how those steps will flow. Once again, I think it's important to highlight the base case for the PFS was done at about $197,000 per ton. The current price as it stands today is about $267,000 per ton.
Skip over this one as well. This is sort of just another way to look at how we can sort of add value from here going forward, right? Market cap, as I mentioned, less than first year cash flow from one of our projects. But this is a way to really, I think, visualize for investors what we're sort of getting value for, but importantly, what's not getting value for, and how do we move that forward and get those things de-risked so investors have to give us value for the other parts of the business that I think are being overlooked. With that in mind, I'm going to pass it off to JT to run through a few slides on how we're going to look at the financing of this central Pilot Mountain hub.
Sounds great. Thanks, Oliver. Appreciate that. Hopefully the audience is understanding now what we're trying to march towards, right? We've talked obviously about the operations and how we're going to build out construction. So let's talk a little bit about how we're going to finance everything, right? There are just so many opportunities out there, and when you look at sort of our case on things, hopefully the next couple slides will give everybody a very clear picture on what we've already started to do to execute and to build out sort of this project and move the company forward. A couple of sound bites here on the next few slides, and I see that there are some questions in the chat around financing, so I'm going to try and hit those. But if I miss anything, certainly we can address it in the Q&A.
But some of the sound bites and some of the things that I think I'd really like the audience to understand is, first and foremost, we have a solid balance sheet, right? We were fortunate enough that we had a successful IPO back in March of this year, and that allowed us to put cash in the bank, and with our conservative spending approach. Even in a market right now where it's a bit in flux, and now we've got more clarity on the political landscape here in the country, we really have everything that we need to continue to advance the DFS, right, to move through all of the permitting process and all the other development activities, right? We're sitting here a year ago, and we didn't have the opportunity that has now presented itself this year in Montana, right?
This has allowed us to pivot our strategy and really start to focus on how we are going to be successful in the short term. Let's not forget that we have a project that is strategically important to the U.S. As Oliver rightly pointed out, the DFARS legislation that is coming in January 1st, it is not a procurement suggestion. It is federal law. That is, I think, a very distinct situation. Regardless of how the political landscape has now changed, that is really important, that our defense needs still need to be procured or are moving to a position where they have to be procured from friendly nations and countries in the West.
I think another thing that maybe goes unnoticed is we've built this funding strategy that is most important to you, our shareholders, which is we are very conscious of dilution, right? Our objective is to maximize everything we're doing with the U.S. government, with our commercial debt structures, and path forward, and strategic funding, but we want to do it in a way that protects you, our shareholders, right? We've created a strategy that I'll go through in the next slide, which shows that we're not dependent on one sort of stage gate, right? The U.S. government is a nice-to-have, and we were running the traps appropriately and are probably more advanced than our shareholders probably realize, but we're not dependent on that. This isn't the Hail Mary pass. We're building a strategy that's going to allow us to execute properly, right?
Preserving our existing cash gives us flexibility, right? A strong cash balance now in sort of a down market means we don't have to go back to the market and we have to raise on a depressed share price, right? We know that the capital structure matters. We know it matters to you, it matters to us, and we've built a strategy that I think is going to illustrate that and allow us to give us an opportunity to execute on it. As we moved into slide 15, right, the first thing we're focused on is traditional project debt, right? That can come in a few different ways. We're already in the process of evaluating senior lenders. We're working through options around vendor financing, other commercial structures that might entail a prepayment for offtake. But the PFS gave us that foundation, right?
As one of the listeners here rightfully points out, the eight-year mine life is the baseline. Oliver, I think, did a fantastic job of showing how we can increase production, how we can increase that resource, right? That will allow to strengthen our debt case. Commercial financing, right? How do we go and work with banks to put a very favorable lending package in place? We're leading with that. We're leading with project debt, and we're building a case so that and we're building a due diligence process already that supports commercial lending at either treasury rates or commercial financing rates.
Then if we are very fortunate enough to get into a situation where the U.S. government puts the right funding package in place, I think if any of our listeners have gone out and sort of scratched below the surface on some of the other government financing packages, if you get past the sizzle on the headlines and you dive into the deal, you'll see that there are better deals and there are less ideal situations that have been put in place. We're focused on getting the right thing in place. So project debt, commercial financing, government-supported funding, then we're leaving the equity component last. One of the things that we want to do is, we know that at some point, to finalize that structure, the project finance structure, there will be some equity that will probably be a part of this funding solution.
But we've already engaged a process where we're trying to minimize that dilution, and most importantly, bring in strategic partners that will come in and strengthen our project, strengthen our balance sheet. So we've got a process that has already kicked off where we've engaged with defense primes, with large oil and gas structures, companies, also with groups that are expanding their processing capabilities and looking at sort of what does that bring into our capital stack. So I think we're very cognizant. We've gone into this eyes wide open, and we're developing a strategy, I shouldn't say we haven't, we've already developed the strategy. We are executing the strategy now that is going to be most beneficial to our shareholders and allow us to build this project.
I think I'll close off on slide 16, which the first thing that we're doing, Oliver walked us through the milestones, but we are completing our ongoing technical validation work. That's really important. We're in that part of the Lassonde curve where it's the true blocking and tackling. So it's us being in the trenches every single day, knocking this stuff out to make sure that we've got the right technical solution to make this work. We're also parallel pathing everything. So the DFS, the permitting, the engineering work. We're looking at solutions that will allow us to start to procure long lead item equipment. So we're parallel pathing all of that while completing the technical validation. We're going to be very disciplined in getting messages out to the market. We have queried shareholders.
We spent time talking to people, saying, "What is it that you need to hear from us, and in what form do you need to hear that?" We will remain very disciplined in getting messages out to the market for them to understand everything that we are doing. We're building a financing strategy around a project. We're not trying to take a predetermined finance package and retrofit the project to it. So the PFS has given us a credible baseline. We're continuing to engage with the U.S. government. I would keep your eyes out for news flow around that. We are advancing the commercial discussions.
We're getting to a point where you should be keeping your eyes out for news flow around offtake partners. We've built a strategy that we're executing on that's going to provide us multiple routes through to get this thing financed, to get the permits in place, and be construction-ready next year.
Corporate snapshot, we'll just skip over this here. Once again, market capitalization relative to first-year cash flow. Value disconnect, and we can even further, sort of, with the strategy, with the hub-and-spoke, how we even push that even further, right? How do we make it so the market has to give us proper valuation for the business that we're building here? That's all things we're doing right now. This is the team. You've met David Hendriks now. You're going to learn more about him and speak to him a lot more in the future. This is key, right? We put the right team, the right folks around these projects to deliver them around permitting, finance, construction, engineering. Fantastic team. It's been a pleasure. That team will continue to grow now as we move from sort of PFS to DFS and into construction.
We have the right big pieces in place, and we're going to continue to fill in around them. I know we're a bit over time here. We got to get to questions. I have to nerd out here just a little bit. The feedback we've gotten is less technical, so I think the new deck and the new strategy, I think, is certainly aligned with that. I'm a geologist myself, but I have to nerd out here a little bit on geology. This is a slide that no one has seen yet, but I think it really puts into context Tempiute. Once again, Tempiute is an asset where people have gone, "I don't know quite enough yet to really give proper value across the business," right?
With this new strategy, with the updated timelines, we're really forcing investors and those watching the story to say, "Hey, you know what? There's a lot more here at Tempiute that I think I originally recognized." So, I'm going to try to spend two minutes on this, and then we're going to open up to questions, but it is important. So, what you're looking at here is a long section through the Tempiute project. East-facing long section, and so, as you can see, the slope of the mountains. The red is mapped skarn zones at surface. So, the skarn is where you find your scheelite and your tungsten. So, the results we put out at Tempiute, we put out some visuals today on Twitter, so certainly have a look at those. Those are the different red zones.
What you see here, and we have talked about the historical mining history of Tempiute. This is one of the more important mines for tungsten across the U.S.A. that has operated multiple times in the past, most recently in 1983, 1984, before it shut down, not because they ran out of material, but because China flooded the market. They had opened up the mine, done a ribbon cutting, and about three, four years later, unfortunately had to shut down. But that is the opportunity, right? They only shut down because of what China did to the tungsten price. The narrative and the whole industry has done a complete 180, and now the tailwinds are, or sorry, the winds, I would say, are firmly at our tail to bring great projects like this back to their former glory. What you are looking at here is the technology is great now.
What we did is we took a drone and we flew it across all of the accessible underground workings across Tempiute. You will see the scale bar here on the right. You can just see how big this system is. You can see all your different underground mine workings. You also have a vertical shaft. The bottom of this shaft is actually flooded, so the drone obviously cannot fly through the water. That shaft actually extends, if you can see my mouse, further down. What that means is that UCC, their plan, their intention was to develop a long-life mine, delivering a very high-value tungsten con to the market, but shut down. You can see here all the different adits and shafts, and where you see the kind of the gray blowout areas, that is effectively a mined-out stope.
That is where they mined out tungsten material from what is a more or less vertical skarn body. The real takeaway from this slide is, we have talked about the area we are drilling. We have talked about how we can get to first mining as quickly as possible, focusing on an area that is as accessible as possible. As you can see here, there is a huge amount of the map that has no workings, right? These are areas that we want to explore. There are some deep drill holes done by UCC, which I think give us indications that this system is wide open at depth. But all the work we are doing, all the drilling we are doing is focused just in this top little right-hand inset here, right? This is what we are trying to focus on for early mining.
All the drilling we are doing, all the drilling we are planning for phase II is focused on the green panel, which is South Thumb, and then the red panel, which is Schofield. When you see the results coming out, it is going to be broken out between South Thumb and Schofield. But as you can see from the drill holes in that 3D section and the red zones, which are the mapped skarns, that is an area that we are starting with, right? The initial MRE is going to be on these areas, and it is going to show, we believe, sufficient mine life and the ability to pull material here and ship it to Pilot Mountain or Montana for processing. But this is just scratching the surface. The longer-term plan, obviously, is continue to expand.
If you can see my mouse, obviously going down dip underneath Schofield, underneath South Thumb, and then importantly, laterally. That shaft went further down vertically. What is below? This area is all we are focused on right now. We think there is a lot of value we can add with just this area. But longer term, this is a project and a historic mine and operator that we think has tremendous exploration upside and potential. Hopefully it is not too technical. It is worth just kind of spending a few minutes with this slide in the next few days here just to really understand the nuances of it. But I think really the takeaway here should be the potential scale of Tempiute and why we think it is going to be such an important part of this optimized hub-and-spoke strategy that we are building.
With that, I will flip to kind of the. Actually, what I will do is I will stop sharing, and then Romeo, I will hand it off to you.
Awesome. Appreciate it, Oliver, and thanks for running through the presentation. I got a couple questions. I know there are tons and tons in the chat and sent over email. I think a lot of them will be covered by the conversation we are about to have, but I will be able to get to some of them during today's program as well. Just give me a beat here. JT Starzecki, I want to start with you because I know this deck is called a strategy update, and I do really want to start there, because it has been a year of a lot of firsts for Guardian Metal. The New York listing, completed PFS, mine plan of operations at the door, COO hired, who is kind enough to join us today. Take us through what has been built this year and what the next 12 months are designed to show.
Yeah, I mean, you summarized it perfectly. I mean, 2026 has been a year of firsts for us, right? Major milestones. And when I go back to 2025, even in 2025, we had a pretty amazing year and moved the project and the company forward. We made a quantum leap this year, and I think the recent sort of market sentiment and share price dip has sort of taken away from the fact of just how much we have gotten done. In 2027, and I am speaking on behalf of our board of directors, this is about execution. It is about your traditional blocking and tackling and developing a project. This is about capital discipline and really trying to check off and get to that next major milestone, which is a DFS, right?
The DFS and the way that we've got the company set up for execution is the DFS, the permitting, and our customer development will all bring together what we need to then move from indicative terms around a capital stack into full execution. We made a great leap in 2025, an even bigger leap in 2026, and now we've positioned the company, and I think this goes unrecognized. We've done a great job positioning the company to, again, execute and take another major step forward in 2027. That's really where we're focused, and that's how I would sort of look at the future is so bright when it comes to moving into next year.
No, appreciate that. Oliver, I'll get you in on the same topic.
Yeah, no, I think JT detailed it perfectly, right? I think 2026 has been a great year. The share price is obviously very frustrating right now, but I think it takes away from We've done what we've said we're going to do, right? That's been our motto is measure twice, cut once. We're delivering on those milestones. But I think importantly, 2027 is set up to be the most important year for the business ever, right? The commercial discussions, project financing, government discussions, FID, first mining are all things that we're targeting next year.
If we deliver on those, we're working towards a way where we can add a lot of value and create a lot of value for our shareholders, and we think those milestones that we're working towards are ways to ultimately do that throughout certainly this quarter and into next year and throughout the remainder of 2027.
Great. Oliver, I want to stay on you because I always like talking about the tungsten price. The price chart in the deck ends in June around 3,000 per MTU. Since then, obviously, we've seen the market bifurcate, as you talked about. Inside China, APT has fallen to well under 1,000, while Rotterdam still quoted between 2,500 to 3,000. The PFS base case of 1,973 sits in the gap there. JT, I'll get you in on this after, but when you're negotiating with a U.S. converter, which of those numbers is the conversation anchored on? Where in that large spread are real conversations had?
Well, it's the Fastmarkets price. I think investors sometimes see the Chinese pricing, get spooked a little bit, although it is turning right now in China. But I think historically what's happened is China set the price and we took it, right? That's why there's no production of tungsten on American soil and hasn't been for 10 years, right? China controlled the market, right? China's willing to subsidize domestic mines to control the industry. What we've seen post-February of last year is a really important step change in the tungsten space whereby a proper bifurcation has happened. There is a Western world price and there is a Chinese price.
If you're a Western world producer, you would sell based on the Western world index, which is Fastmarkets. So when we're speaking to off-takers, processors, defense primes, no one's looking at the Chinese price. They're going, "Hey, you are a Western world mine. You are in the U.S.," right? Fastmarkets is the quote that matters. So yes, I mean, there's maybe a few things to take away from the Chinese price, but once again, the reason we have no mine production in the U.S. and haven't for 15 years is because there was one price and we took it. That's changed. There are two prices now, and as a Western world company looking to stand up mining in the U.S., that is the price, the Fastmarkets price is the one that we look at. It's the one that we negotiate on the basis of.
No, appreciate that. Somebody from the comments says, "His work suggests contracted tungsten, which is the overwhelming majority of demand, is still at 3K." So there's some confirmation from there in the chat.
Correct.
JT, I do not know if you had any additional commentary on this one.
No, I think that the topic that we have been trying to educate the market on, at least in the back part of the year, is this bifurcation of the price.
Right? It still does not change also some of the other macros that people need to look at, which is China has been mining product for 60 years, and it has been mining at a pretty heavy pace. At some point, those reserves start to run out, or it certainly starts to degrade what the grade of the concentrate can be. So, while there might be some fluctuations within the China price, the demand in the West, and this kind of feeds into some of the questions that I know we have been getting around what does the political landscape look like? Tungsten specifically, along with antimony and certainly rare earths, have become a national security item, right? It is not just within the U.S., but in the Western countries, whether you are a NATO country, flowing past the United States and all the way into Australia.
This is the sort of thing that I think developed nations have recognized that this is no longer a we want to take price. This is now a we need to rebuild, and we need to understand that this can be weaponized. So, this is not a political party thing. This is a national security item. So, while China will play some games with price points here and there, I think we have seen a fundamental shift, which then also means that we are not dependent on whatever party controls Congress and whatever party controls the White House, because this is a bigger thing. I think that one of the comments I saw was right, that all the work, at least in the West, that price is still around $3,000 per MTU.
There you go. JT I will stick with you, and we will get into politics, not for the last time during today's program, but January 1st, 2027, is the date everyone quotes for the DFARS restriction. Waivers still exist. The July executive order attached mitigation plans to them, and there is a House bill, as I understand it, that would phase some of the concentrate and APT rules out to 2031. Now you have spent more time in this world than I believe anybody on this call. For a company that produces in 2028, what does January 1 actually change, and what has to happen in Washington between now and then that is going to matter to Guardian Metal Resources?
I realistically don't. Even if legislation has been proposed, which it has been, and it is going to extend that date, I think the market has recognized, again, one of the issues, which is what the legislation was meant to solve, which is we cannot be dependent on nations that are no longer our allies-.
Sure.
To provide us the types of inputs that actually go to defend the Western world, right? That is a dichotomy that just does not work for us in the short, medium, and even long term. There might be some relaxation, but it is not going to come. I mean, the restrictions will come in hard and heavy on January 1, and that will be the paradigm in which we will have to work under. I would also argue that given what we saw on Tuesday with the shift in the political parties, that is the kind of thing that probably will not get pushed through.
Sure.
I think that that restriction in 2027 will certainly stay in place, and it is going to benefit a company that is going to have first production in 2027 and full-scale production in 2028, Guardian Metal.
Great. I appreciate that. Oliver, I am going to switch to you for a bit to talk about operations and what is up next, because I know the current plan runs through a DFS now to Q2 2027 rather than straight to build decision. For folks watching, what does the DFS add, and which of the open questions does it close, the plant size, the satellite zones, or the feed from Tempiute?
Yeah. The DFS is a way to further refine what the final project is going to look like, right? I just want to be abundantly clear. The hub-and-spoke strategy, that is moving forward right now. In the DFS specifically, that is going to be covered with sensitivities, right? There are certain things that need to be happening. For example, we need reserves at Tempiute to properly model that or include that under an S-K 1300-compliant DFS. But we are going to give investors a flavor and understanding as to what an optimized hub strategy could look like by having sensitivities around tonnage rates, around grade profile, which would be including material from other sources, including Tempiute, right? But really, the DFS is about how do we further optimize and get this project ready for the position where we can go and actually start construction effectively.
We are looking at optimization, right? We delivered the PFS on the tightest timeline possible. We are trying to move it forward as quickly as we can. There are a few things that I think we sacrificed for speed, right, given where the tungsten price sat at the time and even sits today. But now it is about how we make sure this project is set up for success, not just short term, but medium term and long term. Maybe I will just pass to Dave. I know Dave, when Dave and I first spoke with the project, he is someone who has gone into different mines and found ways to optimize, how to make them better, how to make them profitable in much different metal environments.
Maybe, Dave, maybe no specifics, but just your thoughts around the things we are looking at and what we can do to try to optimize this project for the DFS and for ultimately for construction.
Yeah. Thanks very much, Oliver. One thing I will add, I have seen some of the questions along the way. A lot of it comes down to the permitting as well. We can permit what we are doing at Pilot Mountain, and we are in good shape to make that work. We have more work to do at Tempiute before we can declare an MRE. Therefore, we cannot put that into the actual declare of the DFS at the end of Q1. The strategy is to go ahead and get something built that has flexibility, and a large part of that comes down to we will need to do some early ordering next year. Power plants, getting into some of the shell sizes on the grinding circuit, the comminution circuit, and everything else. We need to pick a spot that works for those.
That is a lot of why we are doing what we are doing strategically. As far as looking at the long-term opportunities, in the early 1990s, I spent five years living in Hawthorne, working at a mine of a similar type size to what we are doing here. There, the big piece was always about the mining contractor and how much it cost there. This is a relatively high strip ratio property that we are talking about at Pilot Mountain. What can we do to lower that stripping ratio as we are adding more resources? Again, these are the pieces where, what can you declare to the market versus what do we think is there? A lot of drilling that is going on is identifying those other resources that we have at Pilot Mountain to give us a better profile of the mining strategy going forward.
That will be a big piece of what we get to do there. The other thing is on the process side of things, there is a lot of work to be done on the consumables. There has not been a lot of this kind of work done in, what, 50 years here in the U.S. Coming up with experts in tungsten flotation, where it is a different piece there, they are a little few and far between. There is a lot of test work going on that we will continue to do. The work in Montana was a lot about, yeah, sure, maybe there is a toll mill opportunity there, but a lot of it is, in a larger scale, what can we do and what works and what does not work?
Taking things from a bench level, testing in a laboratory, to sort of a more scaled-up version, that will all help us define that strategy. My background has always been, I worked at $240 gold, right? I mean, there is a lot of times where things are thin, and you always want to work every property to be a lower-cost piece. Anything that we can do to make our project not only first, but also give us the flexibility to have it lower cost so that we are competitive against everybody else across the landscape that comes in, that is really a lot of my focus. All these strategy pieces, what is the right way to do the bringing in material from outside? What is the right way to go to a toll mill?
That is just a lot of the work that we are doing, trying to figure out what is the best scenario, understanding that we need to keep the process going forward so we can actually be in production. A lot of these things will be short-term, and some of them will be long-term. When I say long-term, the three- to five-year sense versus when we are actually first day in production.
Great. No, appreciate it. Thanks, David. Some wisdom there, and also covered my next question about permitting, so that is perfect. JT , I will jump to you. We have already touched on this, but I think it is worth reiterating because the financing slide, it is clear that equity gets sized last after debt offtake and government routes have shown their terms. Can you walk us through that order of operations? What gets signed first and what that tells the lenders, and then where equity fits once everything else is known?
Yeah. Great question. We have started with the process, and we are starting and leading with project debt first. What will happen is it will come sequentially. What we are working towards into next year will be an indicative term sheet around the magnitude of the debt, right? Just to refresh the audience, you are typically targeting anywhere between 70% and 80% of project debt. I would say that the likelihood of us getting closer to 80%, given the margins and the payback, are higher than I think a lot of the projects that are out there today. When you have got a quick payback, banks take a lot more comfort. Get indicative term sheets, right? That will come either from the government or from a project finance bank. If we execute properly, we might have the ability to weigh two different options, right?
One private, one public. Then we move forward, and as part of that process, you need to move from indicative to confirmed and executable term sheets. In that process becomes then, what do the offtake structures look like, and then what do the forecasted revenues look like, more importantly? With today's margins and today's price points, you probably do not have to sign as much up versus a market that was depressed, right? The banks will probably get comfort between 40% and 60% of our first couple of years of production spoken for in an offtake. Then you sort of leave that equity piece last. We are going to lead with equity coming from a strategic partner.
As I mentioned earlier, we've already engaged that process and have active dialogue going on with some of the biggest players in the defense space, and then also conversations going with companies that are large in the oil and gas space. Anything that there is left over, there's an opportunity to look at things like rights offerings and going to shareholders that have consistently supported us. I think one of the things that I'll sort of close with is that once you then put all of those pieces into place, it is a pretty short lift to go from the indicative term sheets after you've put your DFS out there, locked in your contracts, got your permits in place. It's a small lift to go from indicative to indicated and executable term sheets.
We quickly move through an FID decision through the board of directors. Economics is all shaped up really, really well, and then we move forward and we get right into construction. One last thing I kind of want to divert but also work in, because I know the questions came up, is I use the term supportive shareholders because we have very supportive shareholders. Take away sort of some of the sell-off that we've had, it's most important for the audience to understand that our large shareholders continue to support what we're doing. Oliver speaks to the likes of UCAM and the likes of Duquesne on a very regular basis. There was a misnomer out there that there were shares that were being moved. The reality is they continue to hold their shares, hold their position, and be very, very supportive.
And why that's important is that will help underpin the financing case that ultimately is going to allow us to put the finance in place to build and execute this project.
Great. No, appreciate that, JT. Thank you. Oliver, I'm going to jump to you, back on the operational side for a second. I know the Montana crushing and recovery results on the Tempiute stockpiles are due by end of year, here. That's the first time that Tempiute material has gone through a real circuit in 40 years. What are you personally hoping to see, and what does a good result unlock on the Tempiute side of the plan?
Yeah, no, you bring up an important point, Romeo, which effectively, there's been no tungsten mine, but also a concentrated. No, sorry, there's been nothing, no tungsten concentrates produced in the U.S. for over 15 years, right? Part of this demonstration, it's also there's the desire to take that further downstream, right? What we're trying to really highlight to the U.S. industrial base, to the U.S. defense partners, U.S. agencies, that we have all the ingredients we need in America right now to not only mine material, but also take that to a concentrate, a la Montana, and then take that further downstream to, in the case of this partnership, an oxide that can then be consumed by Army Research Lab. That's what we're trying to showcase here. We have great partners in Montana and also with the Army Research Lab.
Importantly, what I want to highlight is that with Tempiute, this is a mine that's been in production for many years, producing a sellable concentrate that was utilized by the defense industrial base. This isn't some unknown tungsten source that's never actually been effectively and economically processed or recovered via concentrate. The great thing is when we work with Montana, we can send them the flow sheets that were utilized back in the 1980s. Now, there's some nuances and changes. Obviously, technology has changed, but that gives us a leg up. Really what we want to see here is that Montana. Now, just to be clear, Montana, that is a mine that changes over. It's a toll mill, right? It doesn't just process tungsten. It processes silver cons or copper cons. They have flotation there.
There is tweaking and there is modification of existing facilities to really optimize for tungsten recovery. They have actually processed tungsten before, so they've done it before. That's the step we're at now. It's the testing, it's running the material through at kind of different batch sizes to say, "Hey, how is this responding? Can we move this, change this, put this in front of this?" There's some new equipment that I think we'll need longer term to really optimize what we're doing here, and really sort of better mimic the UCC flow sheet. It's a testing phase now. That's been clear from day one. Testing is done throughout 2026. We'll come out with some results to say, "Hey, this is the amount of material tested. These are kind of the results.
This is what we're seeing." Then more importantly, how do we drive that forward, right? How do we optimize and make it better longer term? Like I mentioned, there's probably some modifications needed to really optimize this. But importantly, it's a good first step to, I think, show key players in the U.S., we have what it takes here in the U.S., right? There's the mining, there's the processing, there's the downstream process. It exists, and that, I think, as a signal, should really help agencies and government folks to say, "Hey, let's really start to drive a lot of money towards domestic, domestic, because we can do it," right? The U.S. in the past has been a fantastic tungsten mining country, but that shut down most recently in the 1980s when China flooded the market.
It is about standing that all up again, and we are working with our partners to be the first to do that in the U.S. in well over 10 years. Exciting partnership. A lot more work to do there. Some initial results this year, but then importantly, we are going to try to detail how we can expand and improve this partnership throughout 2027 towards our target of first mining from Tempiute, from those panels that I showed in the top right corner, targeting by end of 2027 next year.
Great. To get a little deeper into that, and this covers a lot of the questions that are in the chat, hopefully. I do want to talk a bit more about Tempiute as a near-term business, because the deck lays out those four steps: legacy stockpiles, historic tailings, first underground mining by the end of 2027, into full operations. Which of those specifically can produce revenue before Pilot Mountain is built, and what has to happen on the permitting and resource side in the next 12 months to make that Q4 2027 mining target real?
Yeah. Tempiute, we think it can be near term on multiple fronts, right? That is why it is an important part of the strategy, and this deck covers a lot of what the potential looks like at Tempiute. I want to be abundantly clear, we are in the resource drilling stage now. We are doing the metallurgical work. There is a lot more work to be done, but we have gathered enough results now, we have seen enough visuals, we have gotten assays that we are comfortable drawing out and really detailing what the potential next steps look like and what the ideal strategy looks like. The stockpiles, that is already in Montana. That is being tested and put through a circuit effectively right now, right? That is the first step, right? Step two is the tailings, right? What is the value of the tailings? How can we really realize that?
Once we know the grade and volume, what is a way to move that forward as quickly as possible? But I think that the key takeaway for investors should be, on top of the two, step 1s and step two that we have discussed that have really important parts of the business, is step three, which is standing up first mining, right? That would be if we are successful in achieving those timelines, which we do not quote those timelines unless we think there is a very realistic possibility. That would be the first new tungsten mining in the U.S. for over 10 years, right? Trying to be first to that stage, and by taking away and streamlining that process and looking at an optimized hub strategy, these are all ways to really build this business and set it up for success in the short, medium, and long term.
No, appreciate that. Now, next question's also going to cover a bunch that are in the chat, but I think important as we get towards the end of this. I'd love if you could pull the catalyst slide for us together, Oliver, because between now and the end of 2027.
Sure.
As we've talked about, there's Montana results, Tempiute maiden resource, the DFS, offtake, permits, financing, and a build decision. So, with all this upcoming, which two or three of those do you think the market is going to reprice on, and roughly when? These are tough questions, obviously, but just your best guess now.
You're going to get me in trouble on that one. For some reason, it's not sharing now. I'm not entirely sure why, but investors have seen that slide.
Yeah.
I don't want to
It is on the website, right?
It is on the website now. I need to be careful with that one, Romeo. I think, I started by saying market cap right now is less than what first-year cash flow would be as part of the PFS we published on just Pilot Mountain, right? That kind of set the stage as to where we are at right now. The market is challenging right now. JT pointed out, we are in a good cash position. We are going to focus head down on delivering against those milestones, and ultimately, as we do that, what we are trying to really achieve is force investors and force the market to say, "You know what? I got to look at this thing because they are doing what they said they are going to do. They are marching these projects along. They are de-risking them," right?
We have started, every time we have quoted a timeline, we have been effectively very close, if not met those timelines. We are a company that measures twice, cut once, and I think our track record speaks for itself. The market is challenging. We get that. Shareholders are frustrated. We are frustrated. But all we can do as a management team is continue to liaise with shareholders, talk to them, explain to them where the value creation should be happening here, what the market is missing, and that is what we are focused on doing. Dave and the team on the ground, day in, day out, it is about how do we drive these projects forward? How do we deliver these catalysts and these major milestones?
Because we believe that as we do that and de-risk these projects, when you look at the Lassonde curve, once again, it is a schematic, but it shows you how companies can come out of that rut and then really force the market to say, "You know what? We are not going to value you based on a NAV now. We are going to value you based on future cash flow," right? And a multiple on that. That is what we are trying to get towards. The great thing is timelines have been truncated. They are even shorter now than they were before. This is not a company that needs five years to stand up a new 50,000-ton-per-day mine. They are smaller mines, but they can be very high margin, certainly the current tungsten price. So, focused on that. I kind of danced around your question, Romeo. I apologize.
Hopefully that gives investors some comfort as to what they can expect, what's going forward. JT, myself, David, the whole team, we're working around the clock. It is all hands on deck, getting these things moving forward, getting results out there, pushing forward catalysts, and we appreciate investors' support. We appreciate the patience. We appreciate the frustration. But let us continue to deliver, and we believe that as we move forward and deliver these catalysts, things are going to look a lot different than they do now.
No, appreciate that very much, and your willingness to answer a question that famously you can't answer with regulations.
You thought you could trick me with that one, Romeo.
I was just asking for-.
I'm sure our lawyers are dialed in too.
For the lawyers on the call, I apologize for trying. Oliver and JT, I got one last one from me, and then I'm going to get to a couple of just key ones from the audience. Again, I know there's a million in the chat. I will be sending through this full transcript so the team can get back to you. Oliver, let's say it's November 2027. We're doing this again. The four of us are sat back in this room. What's the one biggest thing on site that'd be different?
Well, construction at Pilot should be started, right? We're targeting Q3 FID and construction, so a ribbon cutting and breaking ground, right? Tempiute, the infrastructure's there, so it's not going to look all that much different. Pilot Mountain, and that's what we're really focusing on as being our central processing hub, right? So, we do our job and we permit on the timelines we believe are possible, then there's dirt being moved and there's equipment being moved around, getting ready to really start to ramp up construction. Certainly around that date, we'd love to do some sort of ribbon cutting or some sort of ceremony to really detail, "Hey, we're breaking ground. We're starting towards delivering a very key project that will support U.S. national security, support the industrial base." We have a great, we believe, head start here. I talked about the timelines that we started.
It takes time to build these things. It takes time to permit them. It takes time to explore them. We're marching through those steps. We've done a lot of great work. The biggest amount of work is ahead, but we got the team and the expertise, and certainly the cash balance right now to continue to move towards that goal.
Great. Appreciate it. JT, same thing. We are in here a year from now. What is on the balance sheet that is different at that time?
Well, for us to start moving ground, we will need to have our financing sorted. It gives us We have, I think, a very realistic timeline that we have published. We have also built in our ability to flux and change as needed. We can pivot very easily. We are not putting any eggs in one basket. I think we have a very robust plan that we have already started to work on. I echo Oliver Friesen's sentiments. What does it look like next year? I think it will be another quantum leap. It will be a situation where we have big machines moving a lot of dirt and getting us set up to get this thing fast-tracked and into production by the end of next year. We have a two-year window here or a horizon for us to completely change the tungsten space in the United States.
I think we have aggressive but realistic goals. We have the team that is in place. Let us not forget, we have a strategically important asset based in the United States. That is key. We have already shown that we have a lot of support, not only from the capital markets, but also from the U.S. Government. We have built a strategy that allows us to execute in a realistic manner. I am excited to be sitting here this time next year and being able to look back and show everything that we have executed on in 2027.
Awesome. Looking forward to it as well. I am going to get into just a couple of quick audience questions. I know we are already over time, so it will just be a couple. JT Starzecki, this is one you have talked about already, but I would be remiss not to ask it just because it has been asked six or seven times in the chat and over email, and people have texted me about it. The midterms, that obviously just took place in the States, how do they affect Guardian Metal Resources' operations?
Yeah. This is definitely a bipartisan issue, right? Critical metals are a bipartisan issue. There are also a couple of things I'd just like to point our shareholders to, which is, we are building this project in what was already a blue state, in the sense that both of our elected officials, elected officials to the state, to the federal house, and now the governor, have always been sort of in Well, they're Democrats, right? But they're Democrats that are very pro-mining, very pro-industry, and that will continue to be some of the foundation that we build on. I can say that as somebody that makes frequent trips to Capitol Hill, all of our representatives have been supremely supportive of what we're doing. They're constantly offering their help and their offices' help.
I think that, again, even at the federal level, national security, building mines in America has been sort of this all-sweeping compass. America spoke on Tuesday, but minerals are national security. A sound bite every now and again that Oliver Friesen likes to drop into presentations is, let's not forget that our first investment or our first award from the U.S. Government actually came under the Biden administration, right? It's shown that what we're building at Guardian Metal Resources spans the political spectrum. Not only was it approved under Biden, we had to revalidate it under Trump. We've continued to work really, really hard in Washington, and I think we're going to start to see some of the fruits of that labor coming up here in the next couple of quarters. We're excited.
I don't think it dramatically changed for the negative in any way, shape, or form on Tuesday.
Just to add to that very quickly, I think it's important to recognize what tungsten is needed for, right? Obviously, we're expecting defense demand to really drive the market forward here going 2027 onwards, right? The defense primes have billions of dollars of backlog orders to build munitions on American soil. But it's not just a defense metal. Defense is 15% of the puzzle, right? You need it for oil and gas. You need it for mining. You need it for solar, right? If you want to cut solar panels, you need tungsten wires. If you want to build wind turbines, you need tungsten wires and tungsten cutting tools. If you want to build nuclear fusion and stand that up, you need an incredible amount of tungsten. Electric vehicles need tungsten. The list goes on and on and on. Chips.
All things that across any administration, and really just to support U.S. resiliency, you need tungsten for all of those different things. If you don't have it, ultimately manufacturing will shut down. That's why this metal is so vitally important, and that's why across the aisle, you have politicians and people in government who understand and appreciate the need for a domestic mine source, of which Guardian Metal is looking to deliver.
Awesome. A couple of quick Tempiute questions I want to run through.
Sure.
Just stack a couple in a row, and then I'll probably get towards wrapping up. Paul wanted to know, how long was Tempiute operating, and how much total ore was mined during that time?
Oh, that's a good question. To be clear, it's a great question, Paul, and one we've been trying to understand ourselves. The challenge and also the opportunity of Tempiute was when we acquired it, there was very little data that came with it. We actually had to go out and find the data and buy the data. When we acquired it, there was a few bits of pieces of data that we had strung together. We had a few presentations. But ultimately, we had to go in there from kind of first principles and say, "Okay, what's here?" Go in the underground, map the underground, go buy the data. The historical production records dating back to There's a really interesting book. If you go to Rachel, Nevada, to the Little A'Le'Inn .
There's actually a mining history of the Tempiute area. There's sort of four or five pages on Tempiute and where it first started. It was Wah Chang back in the 1920s. We know they were in there. It talks about there was a full-sized town built there to support the Tempiute mine. It talks about the different years of production. Ultimately, we don't know the total amount of material mined. I believe, and I need to double-check this, but around 60 miles of underground mine workings have been excavated. That's a lot of miles.
Yeah. Sure.
Right? By just doing those drone surveys. There's also areas that have collapsed that we can't get to, right? I think the important thing just to note, Paul, is the extensive mining history, right? It's been picked up multiple times in history when the price was supportive and been brought into production, and this is one of those times in history, right? The price has done incredibly well. The U.S. needs this to support multiple industries. We've picked up a really critically important asset. We've now built up the knowledge base, right? We've done a lot of drilling. We've invested a lot of capital. A lot more to go, right? A lot more data and a lot more information we need to collect. But now we know enough to say, "Hey, you know what? This is a really, really important part of our long-term strategy.
Let's tell the market." These are things to look forward to. These are what we're targeting. This is what the next steps could look like while we continue to push it forward. A lot more to come on Tempiute. Hopefully today's presentation gives you much more color than I think has ever been provided. Just to be clear, we're not trying to hide it in the background. We just need to understand the project ourself before we really roll it out. We've given you some teasers and some information as to how this is going to play into our long-term strategy. More results to come, the permitting moving forward, metallurgy moving forward, all part of continuing to de-risk this asset to make sure it forms an important part of the value proposition of the business going forward.
Awesome. Just as we wrap up here, I just wanted to clarify something because there's a conversation going on in the chat, between which project goes into production when. What are the current planned starts of active mining and production of both projects?
Okay. To be clear, these are targets. This is what we're working towards, right? I'm not giving you definitive timelines. The target right now for first mining at Tempiute is Q4 2027, right?
Awesome.
First mining. To be clear, processing will not be stood up then, right? That material would be taken elsewhere, right? There's opportunities, we've talked about where that material could go. Pilot Mountain, the target there is commissioning and first production Q4 of 2028. So before the end of the current administration, having that stood up, that's our target, right? Subject to all the work we're doing now in permitting. Our current Gantt chart, that's what we're targeting, is standing up mining and first production at Pilot Mountain by the end of 2028. So, Tempiute first mining, process elsewhere, Pilot Mountain comes next, and then it's about optimizing both of these projects longer term in an optimized hub-and-spoke strategy. Obviously, we talked about Cinch, White Elephant, and Pilot North, how those fit in long term. More work to be done there.
They're early stage, let's be clear, but some really exciting first signs from the work we've done so far.
Awesome. No, appreciate that clarification, just to know they were having it in the chat.
Yeah, no worries. Yep.
There are a number of very specific questions left I think are probably better suited for email or phone calls, to be honest, at this point. I am going to send those all in to your team.
Sure.
You will be able to get back to them. JT , Oliver , David, thank you so much for running through a presentation, but also letting us grill you for a good hour and a bit. Went over time, so really, really appreciate your time today. For the hundreds of people in the room, thank you so much for joining. The replay will be available very shortly, so you will be able to watch any parts that you missed, but you will also be able to share it around once that is through. That will probably be in just a couple hours. Really appreciate all the speakers, but everybody who joined us as well, and hope everyone has a wonderful end to their day.
Thank you so much, everyone. Appreciate it.
Cheers, everyone.
Thank you all.
Thanks, Romeo.