Good morning. My name is Cody, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the I-eighty Gold Corp. 2nd Quarter 2021 Results Conference Call. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded.
All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Thank you. Mr. Gilat, you may now begin your conference.
Thank you, Mr. Operator, and sorry all for being a few minutes late here this morning. We had a few But with that, we'll start the call. So yes, welcome to our 2021 Q2 operating results conference call and webcast. And I'm happy to say it's I-eighty's 1st quarter as a publicly traded company out of the spin at a premier and we're very excited to to get in front of you and tell you about all the great things we've been up to and how we plan to grow our business.
Moving on to Slide 2, we've got management Participants that are on the call today, so we have Ewan Downey, the Chief Executive Officer Matt Gueley, President and Chief Operating Officer and Ryan Snow, Chief Financial Officer. On to Slide 3, I'd just like to bring everybody's attention to our standard disclaimer slide and I encourage everybody to have a thorough read of This disclaimer in the context of the presentation. Now finally onto the fun stuff. Introducing I-eighty Gold. On to Slide 5, I'd like to just give a brief overview of the company and just talk about why we are excited about the company and what makes it A differentiated company in this environment, so we built the portfolio or the company based on 3 key aspects.
1 is Hiring key management and experienced management team to run a business. Management that is focused on building a company in Nevada has tremendous Knowledge and experience doing that. We're building on quality production with 3 permitted development stage assets and multimillion ounce of resources. All of our deposits have significant resource expansion and we built it on a risk profile That is second to none in my opinion in the world. So all of our land positions are in Nevada, one of the Most productive mining regions in the planet and we believe that these three key aspects of the business is what is going that make this company successful in the future.
So with that, I'm going to pass the presentation on to Ewan Downey, who's going Who's going to talk to Slide 6 and beyond?
Thank you, Matt. As Matt mentioned, one of the key things in building I-eighty when we decided to launch this company was ensuring that we had a very experienced and technically Strong management team and I'm pretty proud of the group that we put together. We have in our operations group especially Tremendous experience successfully operating mines in Nevada. Matt Geely, previously was the Executive General Manager of the Cortez District For Barrick and Nevada Gold Mines, Brent Christophe previously was the General Manager at the Turquoise Ridge operation. Another one of the 3 major complexes of Nevada Gold Mine and Andy Snow has joined us recently as Senior Mining and and processing advisor after having been the General Manager of the Goldstrike operation, Nevada's Gold Mine's largest facility.
We've also complemented that team with our geological group and our engineering group that works for us works with us out of Reno, Nevada. And we believe that we've built one of the best teams when it comes to developing assets in Nevada and I'm Having a great experience working with this group. On Slide 7, just give a bit of an overview of what the company is doing. I think this really tells our company's story. Our company projects are all located within the Getchell Battle Mountain Trend as Called in Central Nevada and the Parlin Trend are currently producing assets.
South Arturo is a 40% Joint venture with Nevada Gold Mines and Nevada Gold Mines in Nevada is what's likely the world's largest gold producing complex Nevada was recently ranked number 1 by the Fraser Institute as the most attractive jurisdiction globally for mining And every one of our company's projects is located in the heart of the producing the primary producing area in Nevada. We have the 1 producing mine, 3 core projects that are all fully permitted for advancing development. And we are Nevada Gold Mines' only operating joint venture partner in the state. On Slide 8, These are sort of what we call the goals of the company and it's what we intend to execute on here in the coming years. Number 1, it's our goal to become a diversified multi asset producer.
Number 2, we want to be disciplined with our capital allocation as we build out our Allocation as we build out our production portfolio that will see the company grow its production over the next several years to over 200,000 ounces a year. Our goal is to be in the lower quartile in terms of all in sustaining costs as a miner in the state. And currently, as Matt mentioned earlier, we do have a substantial resource base, but it's our goal through successful exploration and continued potential M and A in the state to grow our resource base globally to over 10,000,000 ounces. We currently are in a very strong financial position. At the end of the quarter, we had just over $70,000,000 in cash and equivalents and no debt, and we're well positioned to grow our business.
On Slide 8, this is really just the fundamentals, one of the key reasons why I think investors should be seriously looking at our company. The company has both in open pit and underground. We have some of the highest grade That you'll find anywhere in North America. Our 3 underground projects are all greater than 8 grams per tonne. 2 of them have resource grades of greater than 10 grams And most investors know that there's not too many plus 10 gram operating mines anywhere in the world right now.
In terms of open pit, both South Arturo and Granite Creek have grades of over 1.4 grams, both include Mineralization that can be processed via heap leach, which positions both of those projects as 2 of the highest grade open pit projects You'll find in all of North America and we're excited to advance these projects to development and production and that should result in significant production, Good cash flow for the company in the future and with exploration upside, we expect to add to our resource base in the coming years. Our track value or our track record I think in Nevada has really in premier flew under the radar a bit. We successfully over a period of 6 or 7 years grew our resource base from just over 400,000 ounces when you look at M and I and inferred resources that we had back in 2014 to where we are today with resources well in excess $5,000,000 in all categories. We're continuing to grow our resource base through focused exploration. This year, we have an 8,000 meter surface Underground drill program going at South Arturo mainly focused on expanding the El Nino mine that has so far yielded some very, very good results And we should see results coming in the future.
Our major program though is at Granite Creek, the project we acquired as soon as we went public And we are going to be drilling over 22,000 or we have a plan to drill over 22,000 meters this year, both surface and underground. And the program has really started out well. We're very excited by what we're seeing. And I'd expect the first results to be released in the next several weeks. That will be as a company our first release of drill results.
So moving on to Slide 11, Our company is very committed to ESG and our people. Recently, we have retained a consultant to develop A comprehensive ESG program for the company, stakeholder mapping has commenced, ESG risk assessment is underway, Governance issues are well projected, environmental regulatory risks are front of mind. We are always engaging with social communities, including community engagement and with local indigenous people within the communities. Social and community engagement yields the greatest forward looking opportunities for our company. And I'd really like to point out that In Premier, as I-eighty was spun out of Premier, we had, I think, a very strong record track record In terms of ESG receiving numerous environmental, social and safety awards throughout our history And we have successfully permitted several projects.
And as most people in the mining sector know, That is usually one of the most difficult portions of a mining cycle is actually getting the social license to proceed with your projects and we've had a great track record doing that and our new team in Nevada that previously worked in Nevada Mining at Nevada Operations have a similar success and we're looking to continue this with I-eighty well into the future. And with that on Slide 12, I'm going to hand it off to the next couple of slides to Matt Geely and Ryan Snow, so that they can take you through The quarterly results that we have in Q2 are our first ever quarter release.
Thanks, Ewan. So on Slide 12, the El Nino mine in South Otero continues its consistent performance with 4,972 ounces produced in the quarter. Compared to Q1, the ounces produced were up slightly as the increase in ore mill was offset by lower grades. Cash costs totaled $11.43 per ounce with all in sustaining cost of $13.37 per ounce. The increase in cost relative to the Q1 is attributable to the increased ore tons milled.
We remain on track to meet our published 2021 production and cost guidance for South Larcharum at 15,000 to 20,000 ounces of gold, Cash costs ranging between $900 $1,000 per ounce and all in sustaining costs between $1100 $1300 per ounce. And lastly, as Ewan mentioned, we completed the acquisition of Granite Creek Project in Waterton and have now taken operational control of the property. Drill crews are working from surface and underground while preparations for restart of mining continues. Thanks. I'll hand over to Ryan Snow, our CFO for Q2 financial results.
Thanks, Matt, and good morning to those listening in today. Yesterday, the company reported our Q2 financial results and our financial statements and MD and A can be found on the company's website as well as SEDAR. Highlights for the period include $10,300,000 in revenue from South Arturo, resulting in mine operating earnings of 3,400,000 Net loss for the quarter was $7,100,000 or $0.04 per share. Net loss for the quarter was impacted by non recurring restructuring costs of $4,400,000 related to change in control payments and withholding expenses related to the spin out. When adjusted for these non recurring costs, the company reported adjusted loss of $2,600,000 or $0.01 per share.
During the quarter, the company generated $4,400,000 in cash flow from operating activities and ended the quarter with $70,100,000 in cash and no material debt on the balance sheet. With that, I'd like to turn the call back over to Ewan Downey.
Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Ryan. So the next part of our presentation going on to Slide 15 is an update on our current projects and what we're looking to achieve and what we are achieving on these properties. We'll first start with the Granite Creek project. Granite Creek, as you can see on Slide 15, is located immediately to the south of the Twin Creeks and Turquoise Ridge operations of the Nevada Gold Mine.
Geologically, the Granite Creek area that we're drilling Is Penn be viewed as an extension of the Turquoise Ridge deposit, Turquoise Ridge between the Getchell open pit, the current underground As produced and has reserves and resources inclusive of well over 20,000,000 assets And the host rock that we are looking to be mining in the near future is the same unit and we expect very similar metallurgical characteristics as what you find at Turquoise Ridge. As I said in the at the early part of our management team, Brent Kristoff, one of our senior management members was formerly the General Manager of Turquoise Ridge and we recently added David Westoff To our team, who's really expected to augment our team, he's the project manager for the project for our company. He spent between 2,004,018 at Turquoise Ridge, working at the underground workings there, Continued at Nevada Gold Mines until 2020 is the senior underground project engineer and we're very happy to have him at the lead working with us as we look to successfully launch this project back into production. We have completed the underground rehabilitation work In order to commence the underground portion of the drill program, as you can see in the image here on Slide 15, at one of the 2 portals to access the underground that we are using right now for underground drill program that has started off very successfully.
On Slide 16, the image you see in this slide is the mineral, I guess, shape around what has been identified in previous drilling. The deposit remains completely open along strike and at depth. You can see very at depth, very few drill holes, Wide space sort of in the range of 300 meter spacing those sections and every section intersected mineralization. So we do expect We have a great opportunity here to significantly increase mineralization. We expect to be active throughout 2021 with up to 2 underground and 2 surface drills, also 1 RC drill.
The gray area you see here is the underground workings And we're just in the planning process to commence what potentially will be announcing in the near future being the commencement of test mining for this project. The measured and indicated resource grade of nearly 10.5 grams, inferred resource grade of nearly 12 grams makes this one of the highest grade fully permitted gold deposits in North America. And we are very excited to advance this to what we hope will be full production in 2022. Slide 17 is just giving Everybody have a bit of a feel for what we're achieving. The drilling is being completed from the underground workings that you see in the image in the upper right.
Most of the mining that was completed by Aetna in 2010s And we're also looking to expand on the Adam Peak and Auto Fault Zone off to the west. The Image to the right of that, the incline section of the unspeakable zone is 2 of the intercepts that we're currently focusing on. The 2 intercepts that you see, 21.7 grams over 3 meters and 18 grams over 5.2 meters, Very little drilling done around that. And as you can see, early visual indications have been very, very have demonstrated at least visually that we're intersecting the zone with good winds of altered fault Mineralization in every hole drilled so far, that is an area of about 100 meters by 100 meters that if successful, We expect to start developing in the near future and should be moved into the early part of the mine plan. The lower image is the auto fault zone that is some several deeper intercepts of All over 20 grams and up to 32 grams per ton over good widths that were intersected previously by drilling And we've just started drilling in that area, the 2 holes, the 6.7 meters of nearly 28 grams and 6.4 meters of 21 grams in between those holes about 150 meters.
We've just put our first hole into that Zone and we intersected exactly where we felt. The continuity we've been seeing in terms of visually intersecting mineralization In these near vertical zones has been excellent, maybe even slightly better than I was anticipating and it's leading the company to think And we can at some point implement long hole mining in some parts of this operation, which we would expect would bring our cost down. Results from this drilling will start to follow here in the coming weeks months as The other important part of this project on Slide 18 is the open pit opportunity With grades, this is before dilution obviously of over 1.5 grams per ton, this represents 1 of the highest grade Heap leach and mixed sulfide deposits that I know of in Nevada and perhaps in North America. The drilling completed It has been completed on this project. So we finished our initial drill program here, mainly aimed at geo Technical and metallurgical purposes, as we advance this project towards what we hope will be permitting for a development decision of this opportunity.
We successfully entered into an arrangement with The local ranch that allows the company to pursue this property, acquiring the surface rights to this property and an additional section that should allow us to be able to develop surface infrastructure required for a heap leach operation. Slide 19 really just gives a bit of an overview. We've got the first holes coming in. The image on the left, our first hole in the program is drilling underneath the CX pit. We hit a broad interval, a very strong alteration Blow the pit and we and that mineralization based on the assay Results demonstrates that it is entirely oxide, but we believe it will be entirely oxide.
We're also just starting to get results in hole 2 Drilled near the D pit and in that hole we intersected mineralization outside of the model and demonstrates potential that we can add I likely can add potentially significant oxide ounces to this project as we continue drilling. I would think that later this year, early next year, we will resume drilling on the open pit opportunity with some focus on expanding the mineralization here as we commence the permitting process. Pass the The presentation over to Matt Dealy. Matt Dealy will take us through the South Arturo project, what's going on there and some of The production results which we previously talked about.
All right. Thank you very much. So we're on Slide 20 and we're talking about South Arturo. Just for refresher for everyone, South Arturo is a forty-sixty JV with Nevada Gold Mines. It's the only operating gold property in the North Carlin not held entirely by Nevada Gold Mines.
It's there on the very north end as you can see in the image. Over on to Slide 21, we've gone through the production results for South Artero. It's really what we're highlighting on this slide is just The outstanding potential both for expansion and just the high grades associated with El Nino. Just to remind everyone, El Nino is a portal mine out of the Phase 2 pit of South Arturo. And here, on that figure, you can see that there certainly is expansion potential and that it is supported by some very significant Great intercepts.
These drill results were all previously reported. If you go to Slide 22, What are we doing with South Lortero as a whole? We've talked about El Nino out of the Phase 2 pit. Remind everyone that there is also 2 other pits there, the Phase 3. So the Phase 3, as you see in this diagram, is to the south of Phase 2, this is a large potential here.
The previous plans were for an open pit mine, a quite large open pit mine with a high strip ratio. We are now with Nevada Gold Mines pursuing the opportunity for an underground project coming out of the existing workings. That is in the trade off study phase and the work is going very well and is very exciting as a potential way to reconfigure that pit and add more value from Phase 3. And then I'll just touch again on Phase 1. We mined out a sequence, again to Keep everybody on track.
We mined the Phase 2 pit first and that is where El Nino is at the bottom. Phase 1, we did some initial work on Phase 1 and encountered What looks like a potential for a heap leach oxide cap on the top of Phase 1 and that work is still in progress. All right. Thank you very much. And I want to just pass on over to Ewan.
Yes, our 3rd key project for the company in Nevada is the McCoy Cove project. McCoy Cove is 100 percent owned large property package comprised of approximately 31,000 acres located immediately south of the Phoenix operation. Phoenix is another one of Nevada gold mines. Operations in Nevada, Copper Basin is another project of Nevada gold mines that you see in the image And Marigold to the north is SSR Mining. Big structure runs up through that area, sort of a very north south Lineman, that there's multiple deposits located proximal to that.
Just off this image to the north is the Lone Tree Complex of Nevada Gold Mines and that's another important ore body in the Nevada Gold Mines portfolio. The McCoy Cove deposit itself represents one of the highest grade undeveloped gold deposits in the United States. We've completed a PA on the project. It demonstrates robust economics. And if we jump to Slide 23, we have completed the permitting to advance the underground program here.
So our next plan for this project is to drive a decline that you can see that decline would be just north of the historic cove pit Shown at the right of image the image on Slide 24, it's our intention to do a significant underground drill program from the underground workings in order to upgrade the inferred resource to indicated. You see both the inferred And indicated grades at McCoy Cove are well over 10 grams, nearly 11 grams per ton, 350,000 ounces indicated and over 1,350,000 inferred. In order to advance To a feasibility study, we have to upgrade the inferred resources to indicated and it's our view that to complete that program, it's more economic to Drive the decline drill from underground and then to attempt to drill it off from surface. From underground, we will expect to also And on mineralization, the two holes that you see at the right of the image are our last two step outs due to the Where the pit is, we couldn't do any more drilling to expand underneath the pit. We will have to do all expansion work from underground.
As you can see, PG-one and PG-sixteen oh two, the furthest holes those would be to that And the direction would be to the Southeast intersected very strong mineralization demonstrating significant upside potential for what is one of the highest grade undeveloped gold deposits in North America. Our PEA results that you can see on the left of this image Showed very strong economics after tax internal rate of return of 36% using a low gold price of $1400 However, our company He is doing most of our development assessments now using $16,000,000 to $16,50,000 And at those prices Those gold prices, you can see the economics, NPV of around $300,000,000 and an IRR around 50%. Very strong economics. We have completed the power line to the portal site And we will be presenting to the Board this plan with the hopes of advancing this underground program either later this year or early next year, and it will be our next development project that we expect for the company. And the final things we're doing here is working on securing the water rights that will be required for full production and We expect to bring that to a head here in 2021 as well.
So I thank everybody for attending our first Ever quarterly conference call. In summary, I think that we have built one of the highest quality portfolios you'll find In our sector for a smaller producer that has significant potential to grow our production organically, As we have numerous permitted projects that we can advance to production and development, we operate in what I believe is the most Attractive mining jurisdiction anywhere in the world, very safe region when it comes to land tenure and ability to operate. We are looking to be very disciplined in how we grow and how we use our capital going forward. And As I said earlier, very proud of the team that we've assembled. From the top down, we have a team that's built for exploration and development production success.
So thank you all and we'll open up the floor to any questions people might have. Thank
All right.
We'll take our first question from Tom Gallo with Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.
Thanks, operator. Thanks, Ewan and team Congratulations on all of it, not just the quarter on kind of getting everything done. And I know it's a lot of work, but excited to see what comes next. Just a couple of geology questions around granite. First, could you comment on maybe where you're seeing the Oxidesulfide boundary historically and if that's possible if that fluctuates or if that's consistent at a certain depth?
And second and follow-up to that, now that you're sort of underground there and poking around and doing a bit of development work, Can you comment on the ground conditions at the mine and what the condition of the underground is currently? Thanks.
Yes, I'll comment on the geological portion and I'll let Matt Geely talk about the underground conditions. Geologically, I'd say that boundary, it isn't a hard boundary at a certain depth that kind of fluctuates a little. Hence, the reason for some of our drilling we did in the The pit this year is to try to identify a little better where that oxide sulfide boundary is. What we're finding even in the underground drilling is visually we're still waiting for the assay results so that we can look at Cyanide solubility is, we're actually in the underground working some of the drilling we've been doing. We've been Intersecting what we think appears to be oxide mineralization.
So There could be a little more oxide in the underground than we originally thought, but as I said, we still need to wait for the results to start flowing in to make a Definitive call on that. Depending on our ability to process, there is an opportunity in both Pits are all pits at depth, there is sulfide mineralization beneath all pits that has been, I think under pursued previously because the if you don't have the ability to process refractory ore Makes it a little more difficult to pursue that sort of moderate grade material and we're our goal this year is to secure long term processing arrangements being one of the primary goals. So to answer your question, there's not a hard boundary. We're Probably do more drilling either later this year or into next year to better map out much like we are doing at South Arturo Where that boundary is between oxide and sulfide, so that you can plan better for your mining and how you're how and where you're going to process all of the material. And that'll be part of the next phase of work that we expect will we're just completing the PEA For the Granite Creek, a lot of that is focused on the open pit and following the PA, we will expect to move straight to full feasibility on that as we are permitting that project.
So we'll complete that geotechnical and geological work needed to get a full feasibility study done. And With what we hope will be successful permitting, it will be the next phase of growth for our company as we launch that development. For the underground, I'll pass it off to Matt Geely and he can talk about the conditions of the underground.
All right. Thanks, Hey, Tom, a very astute question. So the history of Granite Creek is 1 of 2 zones. You have the AutoZone and the OG zone. The ground conditions in the AutoZone are difficult and known to be difficult And they have caused complications for previous operators.
So when the work that we're doing right now with our contractor is to reaccess the ore phases in the AutoZone and we are now we're pursuing a different methodology. This is not going to be a standard drill and blast We're going to go in there with cutting machine, we're going to cut and we're going to flash coat with Shotcrete. So that's the immediate program that we've initiated just this week Is to re enter those and understand the mining cycle that's going to make auto successful. The bulk of the deposit and let's say that where let's say 2 thirds of our production forecast will come from is the OG side. The OG side is difficult ground conditions in the world, but consistent ground conditions with Nevada, things we all know how to operate.
What that all that means is that the OG zone is mined out to its current depth. So what we're going to do there is just start expanding the ramp down, put in 1 more ramp loop below the current operations and then start proceeding with that mining. So we do appreciate the ground conditions are going To be something we need to understand very well and that's what we're doing with our mining program right now. Does that answer your question?
That's very helpful, yes.
Matt, would you mind commenting on what condition of the workings were when we accessed the underground here recently? How did we find The state of the workings to be?
Absolutely. Okay. So they state the workings were it beat all my expectations. We took over operational control and safely and very easily drove right down the bottom of the mine, Where the pump the lowest pump station was that had been maintained by a local mining contractor. They've been going down there once a week And during their weekly visits down to the lower pump station, they've been doing any rehabilitation work necessary in the decline.
The declines are in excellent condition. We've started to go back into some of the old workings and we're mining beside some of the backfill that was previously placed, Very high quality backfill. So the conditions of the mine are very good. Really, it's just for us to Understand how we're going to mine this and just understand that mining cycle, particularly on the auto side.
Awesome. Thanks very
much. And we
have drills operating underground right now. So it's a working underground project.
All right. Thanks.
Thank you.
We'll take our next question from Bryce Adams with CIBC Capital Markets.
Yes. Good morning, all. Sorry if the question was already answered. Juggling a couple of conference calls here at the same time. I just want to ask about the timing of the PEA for the Granite project and then subsequently Your timeframe to upgrade that to feasibility?
Yes. Matt Geely has Sort of leading that charge, I'd just say, I'll pass it off to him, but the we're just reviewing the final version of the PA currently and should be out in the very near future is our expectation during this quarter. And I'll let him talk about the timeline that we hope to achieve in order to move to full feasibility, especially focused on the open pit.
All right. Thanks, Bryce. So with regards to the PEA for Granite Creek, as Ewan mentioned, we are in the final stages of Viewing that, as we're building the team, we've also brought on Kelly as our resource geologist And she's doing the model estimations. So she's really as our first PEA, we want to give her the time to really own that resource model to understand that resource model And take ownership, that's going to be our resource model. So that's the phase that we're in right now.
As we advance To the feasibility study, the key components of that feasibility study from the standpoint of the project as a whole are the geotechnical and geometallurgical Test results coming out of the open pit drilling that Ewan mentioned is ongoing right now. So once we get those results, So through the course of the rest of this year, we'll be drilling that out, process those results. It's going to be about a 9 month program to take those results and the existing PEA and to progress that on to a feasibility study. So we would expect that right towards the end of 2022 for that feasibility study to be complete.
Got it. And then concurrently sorry, a bit of feedback coming in, but Permitting is already underway essentially.
Yes. So the underground is permitted and we're it's operating property. So the test the permitting program for the open pit at Granite Creek has initiated with Our first kickoff meeting with our permitting consulting group here based out of Reno. We put together the project timeline, The actual field work and permitting mechanics We kick off September 1 with a fully vetted project schedule, and that's going to be a full EIS.
Got it. Thanks. And then just sticking with technical reports, an updated technical report for South Arturo coming This quarter, what are the moving parts or the areas that you think will change from the technical report that
was put out in, I think it was in January of this year? Yes.
So I'm sorry, there's a misunderstanding. We won't have an updated technical report on South Arturo this year And that Nevada Gold Mines handles that. They're the operating partner for that. We've participated. We were part of the team.
They're extremely Engaging, there's no issues there, but that's going to be managed by Nevada Gold.
Okay. Maybe I misread that one. That's it for me. Thanks.
Thank you. It appears there are no additional questions in the queue at this time. So with With that, I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Gulat for any additional or closing remarks.
Thanks, Mr. Operator. Just Just want to thank everybody for taking the time to sit through our Q1 presentation and webcast. We're very excited about what we're building on. And as always, senior management is always available to speak to any other questions you might have.
So feel free to reach out to you and myself, Ryan and Matt, we can put you in touch with them as well and if you have any additional questions or comments. With that, I'd like to thank you for your time and have a great rest of your day.
Thank you. And that does conclude today's conference. We do thank you all for your participation and you may now disconnect.