Alright, good morning, and thank you for joining us today for the Titan Minerals Investor Webinar. I'm Jane Morgan, Investor and Media Relations Manager, and today I am joined by our CEO, Mel Leighton. We're running through the company presentation, which you can see on your screen, followed by a Q&A session. To ask a question throughout today's webinar, please use the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. Mel, I'll hand to you.
Thanks, Jane. It's great to be here and to be able to give everyone an update on, I guess, some pretty exciting developments and activities at our Dynasty Gold Project. To facilitate the session, I'll just share a couple of slides of the latest results. Just initially as an overview, probably most people are already familiar with the Dynasty Gold Project, but for those that are not, just an overview of the current resources. Currently we have 3.1 million oz of gold and 22 million oz of silver, and the gold grades are a little over 2.2 g per tonne gold, 15.7 g per tonne silver for the silver resource.
It's contained within a 9 km epithermal gold system, and we believe that there's, you know, really strong potential to grow that to plus 5 million oz, and really that's what we're targeting with our current resource growth drilling program. We are targeting both lateral and depth extensions at the Dynasty project with the bulk of our drilling. The 10,000 m of drilling that we're doing right now is focused at the Cerro Verde and Iguana prospects. We believe there's good potential to grow the resources, particularly below about 200 m vertical. There's very limited drilling in those areas, and you know, the resource itself and mineralisation itself is actually open at depth, and it's a good opportunity to grow resources in that part of the project in particular. Zooming in on the, I guess, the latest results and where we've been focused.
We're looking at the Cerro Verde prospect on the right here. We've got the geology underneath. In the green, we can see the andesite and the volcanics. The pale pink is where we're getting the diorite intrusions and the breccia, I guess, zones of mineralisation. In particular, you can see that box with new results there. That's largely where we've been focused on our drilling. I'll just change to a pointer here. This is the area where we've largely been focused on drilling of late. Very pleasingly, we've drilled 11 holes for 3,700 m there. Pleasingly, the first three holes were received, and we released the results last week. Friday, not a great day in the market, unfortunately, but we believe it's really, you know, exciting news for us to have delivered some substantial both lateral and depth extensions from drilling in this area.
In particular, we note that the mineralisation is more associated with, you know, the diorite intrusion, the breccia zones, and northwest fault corridor, which sort of trends through this area here. What we are seeing in these latest results is wider and higher grade mineralisation than probably what we see typically in the vein and volcanic hosted mineralisation in other parts of the project. The results themselves, 17.5 m at 2.5 g/t gold, 8.6 g/t silver, which also included a higher grade intersection of 5 m at 5.5 g/t gold, 10.7 g/t silver. That was delivered from 374 m down hole. What it did demonstrate is that we have been able to grow resources. The intersections over here, by the way, we were able to grow resources by about 150 m vertically below previous resources in that part of the project.
Also of interest is that it's located about 220 m away from a previous historical significant intersection, which sits down here of 16.3 m at 5.7 g gold, 11.9 g silver. I guess what that tells us is that this, you know, northwest corridor here is very fertile and very well mineralized, and there's a lot of opportunity for, you know, I've put this dashed open polygon or ellipse here, but in fact it also trends this way in the northwest corridor as well. You know, a great, I guess, result for us. The other really exciting result was very, you know, shallow in the hole. It's actually up here. We got 2.9 m at 21.9 g gold, 10.4 g silver from 18 m down hole.
You know, that's the, I guess, previously the drilling was here, I guess the furthest East drilling, and now we've been able to demonstrate even further across the mineralisation here. That's an extension of about 80 m to the East at the Brecha Comanche prospect there with that shallow hit. Just looking at it in cross sections, the same significant intercepts are annotated on this plan. The shallow intersection I was referring to is actually up here in CVD 25122. The deeper intersections, as you can see, really quite wide and high grade mineralisation returned, you know, from about 300 m vertical, but effectively extending that previous, you know, indicated and then inferred resources, you know, quite a bit deeper at depth.
I guess what I also draw your attention to is that, you know, there's about a 220 m gap here where we have no drilling. We do have one drill hole that we've completed, and the assays are still pending here. I guess an important area for us to check. There is a large 220 m gap between, you know, this hole and this significant intersection of, you know, 5 m at 5.5 g and this up dip intersection of, you know, 16.3 m at 5.7 g gold. A lot of opportunity to define further high grade and wide mineralisation, both up dip and also down dip here. This hole we completed CVD 24121. We also had significant mineralisation in three intercepts in the hole here, which is great for the resource. Will improve, I guess, confidence and classification and also extend the resource at depth.
What I do note is we've probably pulled up that hole a little bit too early. What we'll do is go back and re-enter this hole, and we'd like to be able to define this mineralisation further down dip in that hole as well. Good opportunity to definitely grow the resources in this area. It's completely untested. We are working towards a resource update in mid 2025, and that's very much on track. As we do this drilling and we receive the results, we're very much working on the 3D geological model and working sort of hand in glove with the resource consultant as well in terms of, you know, expediting all of those lead time items as part of the resource update that we're working towards. That's largely it for Dynasty in terms of the update there.
I guess the only other thing to mention for Dynasty is that we have got some metallurgical test work in train. We recently announced the oxide test work where we were seeing very good recoveries of, you know, mid to high 80% recovery for gold, which we believe is very pleasing for this style of mineralisation at this project. What we have got underway is the sulfide or the fresh metallurgical test work for Dynasty, and we'll be hoping to release those results in the coming one to two weeks, which I think will be a great de-risking for the project. Linderos itself, while I haven't put out an announcement specifically on Linderos, I intend on announcing within the next few weeks some results from Linderos.
I've just received a data pack from the Hancock or the Hanrine Resources exploration team in country, and I'm due to have a joint venture committee meeting with them tomorrow, at which point I'll have a really good understanding as to progress at the project and, you know, what is also planned for the forthcoming quarter as well. It will be great, obviously, for myself to get an update on that, but also to be able to get some news out to the market on that as well in the coming few weeks. Just to reiterate, you know, 2025 is actually, it's a very busy year for us, and you've probably seen from, I guess, the activity in terms of the announcements.
We've got three drill rigs firing on all cylinders at Dynasty as part of the resource growth program, which we intend to have completed by either late this month or at this rate, probably into April. We've had some slight delays with fairly heavy rainfall over the last few weeks in Ecuador, which has slowed down our operations just slightly. The drilling is almost complete. The resource update, like I said, still on track for mid 2025.
My only disclaimer to that would be, you know, if we're seeing really good success in these extensional areas, particularly at Cerro Verde, we would be, I guess, a little bit silly not to chase those up and take the opportunity right now, considering, you know, the funding that we do have in place to do that drilling and also the support that we have from our major shareholders, you know, Tribeca being a major shareholder. You know, they're very, I guess, supportive of us getting on and doing the work that needs to be done at Dynasty to, I guess, realise the project's full potential at this point in time. That is certainly what we're working towards at Dynasty. As I said, you know, copper, our copper projects, Linderos is taking care of itself.
You know, the fully funded exploration program are being managed by Hanrine , and we are expecting results very soon from that. Copper Duke, again, once we finish the drilling at Dynasty, the intent is that we would send our team out there mid this year to get some scout drilling underway at Copper Duke. We've got some very exciting drill targets there and Copperfield, a project that we don't talk about very much, but it is very much one of our exciting copper projects in Ecuador where we are soon to get an aeromagnetic survey underway. It will be really, I guess, exciting to build those first principal data sets for Copperfield where we haven't really done a lot of work there in the past.
This is a slide that's been released previously, but just to talk to it a little bit, I guess our current market cap sitting at around, you know, AUD 100 million really gives us, you know, if we think about the EV of the gold resources, it's about $22 an oz. That's, I guess, the valuation at this point in time for the Dynasty resources. You know, it gives no value to the silver resources at Dynasty, which clearly are, you know, 22 million oz of silver is a, you know, a pretty big resource in its own right.
You know, the discovery cost at Dynasty has been, you know, it's a fairly low cost ore body to explore. The fact that it extends to surface and we have a good understanding of, you know, mineralisation controls and extents there means that, you know, we're paying about $5 an oz to date for gold discovered at Dynasty. I guess just to point out the Dynasty resource itself, when we put it out in July 2023, gold price was sitting at around $1,900 an oz. You know, we're almost $1,000, you know, higher than that now in terms of the gold price. If you look at our share price, we've sort of just been tracking to the right and, you know, we haven't really seen that uplift in, I guess, our valuation.
What I do note is that we're getting, you know, really quite, I guess, improved liquidity in our stock if you look to the right sort of from September, you know, last year onwards. We are seeing, you know, far greater inbound interest from, you know, both sophisticated investors and institutional funds. I think the delivery of, you know, the resource update itself, but particularly the results of the met test work, I think that will be, you know, key for a lot of those groups. I think that we'll certainly be in the crosshairs for a number of those institutional investors once we release those results. Watch this space, I would say. Again, no value ascribed to the Hancock Prospecting agreement, which, you know, circa AUD 180 million valuation for 80% of that project. Yeah, it's pretty clear to see the disconnect there.
I guess, obviously, like I said, 2025, very busy year for us and a lot of, I guess, value to be delivered and exciting milestones to be achieved for us this year and our technical team. Yeah, exciting year ahead. I guess that concludes my presentation. I believe at this point we will do some Q&A.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, wonderful. Webinar attendees, please use the Q&A function, which can be found at the bottom of your screen if you've got questions for Mel. Let me jump into it now. Titan's been making some big moves lately. Can you walk us through the company's growth strategy and how we're positioning Titan to take advantage of today's gold and copper market?
I think I probably summarised most of that in my presentation just then, Jane, but I guess the growth aspirations really are currently underway with our resource, you know, drilling right now, looking to expand that resource from, you know, 3.1 million oz up to the sort of 3.5-4 million oz mark. You know, I can't put a number on the resource update that's going to be out mid this year, but certainly we'd be looking for something meaningful in terms of that resource update. The copper projects, I mean, clearly the environment for copper is improving, I think, and the sentiment, and there's always going to be that demand for copper as part of the green sort of revolution. You know, very pleasing to have Hancock as that partner and to be spending their money, you know, developing our copper project.
Mel, you've actually just touched on this in your answer now, but the Dynasty Gold Project already has significant resource and we do have those ambitious targets that you did speak about. What is the further game plan for getting that to the new goal?
The game plan, yeah, again, we're probably talking about the same thing again, but yeah, it really is around drilling and really well targeted drilling. You know, initially we're targeting, I guess, relatively near, you know, 80-160 m sort of resource extensions lateral and at depth. Quite close to what we know in terms of resources. The next phase of that would be targeting some more of our, you know, we've got a number of exciting exploration, I guess, targets at Dynasty that sit well beyond currently defined resources.
The intent is once we finish the 10,000 m of resource drilling, we'll get onto a, you know, a 5,000+ m program of exploration drilling at Dynasty as well to test some of these new targets. Some of those targets are gold. We also do have copper porphyry targets at Dynasty as well, which I think are pretty exciting.
Thank you, Mel. Sorry, there's quite a few coming to us from jumping around a little bit.
Oh, okay.
Okay, next one, recent intercepts, obviously at Brecha Comanche, looking strong. This webinar attendee just asked, so what does that mean for the overall economics of the project?
What it means is that, from the optimization work that we did, you know, an open pit wanted to optimize down to about 300 m vertical at Brecha Comanche already at that mineralization to the west.
What this will do is we'll sort of bring out the, I guess, the base of that pit further to the East and we'll want to sort of take more of that mineralisation that we're, you know, currently defining. I think it will, I guess, feature in an ultimate pit optimization and an ultimate reserve, this mineralisation that we're defining. I think also there certainly is opportunity to, I guess, go from that open pit to an underground scenario if we can maintain these types of widths and grades, you know, below that kind of 300 m vertical mark.
Thank you, Mel. A couple of questions just on the deal with Hancock. This question in particular is just asking if you can break down how the partnership works and what it actually means for Titan.
The partnership works the way that it works currently and until Hancock earn their 80% is that they will be managing and fully funding all of the exploration and development work programmes. It is a staged earning agreement. They have already earned their initial 5% for the $2 million upfront cash payment. The current 10,000 m drilling programme will earn them an additional 25%. That will get them to 30%. Following that, there is an additional 15,000 m of drilling that will get them to 51% ownership. You know, my conversations with them and my understanding from their strategy is that, you know, the Linderos project features quite heavily in their, I guess, aspirations to be a large scale copper miner in Ecuador. You know, they are not mucking around. They have obviously got plenty of cash themselves. They are getting on with the work and the drilling.
I believe that, you know, they will have earned their 51% and done their 25,000 m of drilling probably by, if not the end of this year, sort of into Q1 next year. I think that, you know, we'll be at that point with them. What it means for us is that we're free carried. We still retain 20% of, you know, what could be really quite a large scale copper porphyry project that goes ahead. We've got a big brother to assist with funding all of that. Or a big sister.
Yeah. Excuse me. Just further on that then. This webinar attendee just asked, has anything happened in terms of regulations or politically, which bode well for the Ecuadorian projects?
I think the main thing is the current president, Noboa, has been very firm and very vocal about, I guess, his desires to, I guess, promote the mining industry in Ecuador and to support the mining industry in Ecuador, both at a regulatory level, you know, and permitting, but also fast tracking that permitting. No, we've had, you know, we've had very good support at all levels. We've been in country for sort of four to five years now and forged really strong relationships with all, I guess, levels of government, local, state, federal. There is an election process ongoing at this point in time. President Noboa and one other candidate will be going for a runoff election in the next few months.
I guess the point to make there is that although we'd love Noboa to win that election and to, I guess, retain some, a constant in terms of the government and ministerial bodies that are governing the mining at this point in time. If it does swing the other way and the other candidate does get in, they're a slightly leftist candidate. I guess the good thing about that is Lundin and their Fruta del Norte operation. They actually got all of their permits and all requirements, you know, passed under the rule of a leftist government. I think it doesn't really matter which way it swings for this particular election. I think we'll still see good support going forward.
We're lucky at our projects just to make the point that, you know, at Dynasty and Linderos in particular, there's actually no indigenous communities and no environmentally sensitive areas or no environmentally sensitive flora or fauna. We do have good access to water. The Catamayo River runs just to the south of all of our projects, you know, within about 2 km. There's, you know, very strong flow through that river. Our back of the envelope calculations or estimations look like there's ample water there for our projects, which I think is probably one of the things that has potentially held back other projects in Latin America. We've certainly got the water there in place.
Thank you, Mel. A couple of questions just here on cash and bank . What is the current funding available to the company?
I mean, I can only really speak to what's public at this point in time in terms of our last quarter, but our cash balance at the end of Q4 2024 was about a little over AUD 18 million, close to AUD 19 million. Obviously we're drilling, so there's a bit of a burn associated with that. I would also note that we've had, you know, options converted, which sort of brought in an extra, you know, AUD 3.5-4 million as well. You know, and currently we're only funding the Dynasty project. We're not spending, you know, very much money at our other copper projects at this point in time.
Being pretty, I guess, not frugal, that's probably not the right word, but quite conservative with the way that we spend our money and certainly watching every dollar that we spend and making sure that we put the drill holes in the right spot. No, I think we've certainly got funding in place to see us through to the end of this year in terms of all of the drilling that we want to do at Dynasty and potentially at Copper Duke as well and all of the de-risking, you know, scoping study items and resource update as well. All funding in place for the year ahead.
Thank you, Mel. Again, jumping around a little bit here. There are two questions from this attendee. What is the downhole pink zones on the chart? Are they gold zones over a certain grade?
Further to that, based on the drilling to date conservatively, what is the outline looking for a pit in this 9 km zone? What depth?
Okay, let me answer the first question first. I believe what you're referring to is the drill trace and there's a magenta sort of histogram to the right. That is gold grades, which are projected as a histogram on the drill trace. That's just to really highlight the mineralised zones on the drill hole. Just then ask me that second question again. Sorry, Jane.
Yeah, that's okay. Sorry, it was a bit of a long one. Just on drilling to date and obviously conservatively, what is the outline looking for a pit in this 9 km zone and to what depth?
Yeah, I think there'll be multiple pits.
It won't just be one large open pit at this point in time because clearly there are large parts of the project that we haven't yet drilled and haven't defined resources at. With the current, I guess, definition of resources, there would be really quite a large open pit at the Cerro Verde area. It does look to want to optimize down to about 300 m vertical. It would be potentially up to sort of 1.5 -2 km in diameter, and then down to sort of 300 m at its maximum or 350 m at its maximum depth for Cerro Verde. Iguana, being a slightly different shape of mineralization, would be a more elongate pit, but again, looking to be about 2 km long.
You know, maybe down to about 250 m at its maximum depth at this point in time with the resources that are currently defined. The optimisation work that we did again, which was after the previous resource, showed that there was good opportunity to, you know, go to an underground scenario following the open pit mining and use a long hole stoping method for extracting, you know, deeper ore. Also, what I would note is that topographically there's undulation at the project, but we can use that to our advantage and potentially add it into, you know, the side of hills to reach deeper mineralisation in some areas, which would save us from developing, you know, a lot of capital development in terms of an underground drive that's required.
So many ways to skin a cat, I think, at Dynasty in the way that we optimize the mining and the scheduling.
Thank you, Mel. Look, I think that covers all the questions that we've got. I know you did cover this in the actual presentation itself, but for investors that are tuning in, let's run through key milestones for the next sort of three to six months.
Yeah, very, very busy time for myself and for the team at Dynasty and at Linderos. I guess key milestones is delivery of drill results as we progress through the resource drilling program over the coming, you know, month to two. The resource update is targeted for mid this year. The de-risking study, so the metallurgical test work for Dynasty fresh mineralization should be due within the coming couple of weeks.
I guess outside of that, we've got a number of the de-risking studies as a part of the scoping study that are already underway. Some of those lead time items that are somewhat independent of the resource update, you know, have got underway in terms of, you know, TSF infrastructure layout options and, you know, baseline studies and things like that. That will feed into a scoping study due towards the end of this year for Dynasty. You know, copper projects, like I said, good news to come from that. Fortunately, we're not having to spend any money on that, but we get the advantage of the good news from those projects.
Thank you, Mel. Sorry, there's just another one that's popped up here.
Obviously, the share price, and you did touch on this in your presentation, you know, the gold price at the moment is at all-time high. I think just asking a little bit of an opinion on where you sort of see the disconnect between share price and the gold.
Yeah, I think unfortunately, you know, Titan, we're not alone. I think that there's still, you know, we saw great support and buoyancy in the market sort of late last year, September or sort of October last year. There was the Trump election, so a lot of uncertainty then prior to the election. Now that he has been elected, clearly there's some quite, you know, swinging, you know, policies that he's sort of putting in place that's creating a lot of uncertainty in the market.
I think that certainty is with gold producers right now, and they are certainly seeing, you know, good attention and good price appreciation, which makes sense. They're producing gold at these all-time high prices. I think that we're sort of starting to see, you know, some of that money come back out of those, you know, those top seven stocks in the U.S. that have been sort of controlling the market and holding so much of the market. I think it's only a matter of time until we see some of those funds start to flow down to more of the developers and the explorers in the gold space. Yeah, I don't think that Titan is alone here.
You know, I sit on the board of Great Boulder Resources as well, and they are also struggling a little bit with the share price despite delivering a significant amount of value. As has Titan, you know, we've delivered a lot of value over the last sort of 18 months and just haven't seen the value in the market yet. Like I said, I think some of the delivering some of those de-risking studies for Dynasty will be really important for us. I think it will certainly open up an entire new audience for us out of, you know, potentially North America and some of those institutional funds that we're yet to quite get on the register. I think we're very close with that.
Yeah, I absolutely agree. Mel, that's all we've got time for today.
If we've missed any of your questions, please feel free to reach out via the contact details on the bottom of our ASX releases, and we will have a copy of this presentation online in the coming days. Thank you all again. We look forward to hosting you next time.
Thanks, Jane.