Oh, there we are. All right, I'll hit record, and then, give it a second, and then we'll get started. I'll do just like we did before with the short introduction.
Good afternoon and good morning to everybody. My name is Jim Macdonald with Torrey Hills Capital, and I will be your operator for today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to a more detailed discussion of NGEx Minerals July 4th, 2023, press release, entitled "NGEx Minerals Drills 90 meters at 4.05% copper equivalent and 21 meters at 8.09% copper equivalent, confirming major discovery at the Lunahuasi Project." Joining me today from NGEx Minerals are Wojtek Wodzicki, the company's President and CEO, as well as Bob Carmichael, the company's Vice President of Exploration. Before turning the call over to Wojtek and Bob, just want to take a moment to review logistics. All lines right now have been placed on mute to eliminate background noise. Following today's formal remarks, there will be an opportunity for Q&A.
The best way to ask a question is to use the navigation pane at the bottom of the screen, click on the Q&A button, type in your question, and we will answer those in the order that they are received. With that said, I am pleased to introduce today's presenters, Wojtek Wodzicki and Bob Carmichael of NGEx Minerals.
Thanks a lot, Jim. Thanks for the introduction, and welcome, everybody, to what, you know, we think is a super exciting announcement of the remaining results from what we're now calling the Lunahuasi Project. This was previously known as Potro Cliffs. You'll see why we decided to honor it with this new name. I think the results that we put out yesterday are outstanding and definitely the best initial drill holes that I've been involved with in my career, and I think that speaks to the potential that we see at the Lunahuasi Project.
I think despite one of the key points that we want to make today is that despite the grades and the success that we've had in this early part of the program, we're really only touching the tip of the iceberg here. We've tested a very small portion of a very large overall system. Before I move on into the body of the presentation, I just want to give you all a sense for the scale of what we're dealing with here and how small a portion of it we've tested to date, despite how impressive these results are. The distance across this image at the top of the ridge that you see in the background, that's about 5 km.
If you have very sharp eyes, at about the middle of the screen towards the bottom, you can see a drill road, a horizontal line just above the blue line. If you have very sharp eyes, you can see the mast of a drill rig, and that's the drill that drilled the discovery hole into Lunahuasi, drill hole two. It just kind of gives you a sense for the immensity of the landscape here. The Filo del Sol Project, which lies along the same trend that controls both Lunahuasi and the Los Helados deposit, Filo is just about 6 km behind us, and then the Los Helados project is about 12 km towards the right-hand side. We're right in the heart of the Vicuña District.
You know, this is the first brand-new discovery in a while, and we're at the very, very early stages of exploring what is proving up to be a super exciting system. We'll come back to this image because I think it illustrates a lot of the key points, and I think it'll get across to you why we're so excited by what we've hit in this initial campaign. you know, we will be making forward-looking statements today, both Bob and I. We will post this presentation on our website, so definitely encourage you to read through those forward-looking statements when you have a chance.
This is a photograph that was taken by one of our geologists when we were drilling here, and on the left-hand side, you can see the moon setting over these spectacular mountains. I think once we saw that, we knew that the name had to have something to do with the moon. Spanish word for moon is luna. Huasi is a Quechua word for home of or resting place of. We just thought, you know, with this picture, this was the perfect name for a project like this. I think there's also kind of a cool tie-in with the nearby Filo del Sol Project, and Filo del Sol means Ridge of the Sun.
Kind of the sun and the moon, kind of two ends of what's shaping up to be a really impressive district. For those of you that don't follow the company that closely, just a reminder of where we are. Lunahuasi is right in the middle of the Vicuña District. It's the latest discovery in the Vicuña District that the Lundin Group has been putting together over the last 15 years or so. You know, we're right in between the three existing discoveries, Los Helados, Filo del Sol, and Josemaria. We're about 120 km to the southeast of the town of Copiapó. The Vicuña District straddles both sides of the Chile-Argentina border. However, the Lunahuasi project is 100% on the Argentine side of the border in San Juan Province.
NGEx, you know, holds a key portion of the overall Vicuña District. We're not gonna talk a lot about Los Helados today, but, you know, that's a much more advanced project that underpins our valuation and is the key project right now for NGEx, although Lunahuasi is rapidly nipping at its heels. Just to the north of Los Helados, about 15 km to the north and off the image, is the Caserones mine, where Lundin Mining recently acquired a 51% interest. The Josemaria deposit is about 10 km to the south of Los Helados. Lundin Mining has a 100% interest in that. The Josemaria deposit is about 8 km due east of Lunahuasi, which is the main topic that we'll be talking about today.
Filo del Sol deposit, held by Filo, is about 6 km to the southwest of Lunahuasi. We're right in the heart, the geographical center of this exciting new district. This is just a more detailed look or of where the drill holes that we're gonna talk about today were plotted onto that same photograph that we looked at earlier. We drilled two holes up on the plateau in the upper part, and then six holes in the valley below.
The discovery hole was drill hole two, and then we drilled a series of holes around that, initially to try to define the geometry of the high-grade hits in drill hole two, and then starting to step out and to try to extend the mineralization that we hit in that first hole. It's a total of eight holes. Drill hole two was released in April, and today, we're gonna talk about the rest of the holes, which are shown in black. I don't know, Bob, is there anything I've missed that you want to add at this point?
No, not so far.
Okay. Just kind of a visual representation. One of the things that is difficult to see in that photograph, as spectacular as it is the horizontal dimension. Everything sort of gets foreshortened. We talked about the horizontal scale, the 5 km that it, that it, that's the distance across that image. There's about a 750 m elevation difference between drill hole one and three, and the valley drill holes two, four, six, seven and eight. What you don't see on the, on the photograph is the horizontal dimension. The horizontal distance between drill hole two and drill hole one is about 1.5 km , so they're quite far apart in horizontal distance as well as elevation, and this oblique view gives you a better sense for that.
Just to summarize, the whole season's drilling, we drilled eight holes. This was an initial program. We started out thinking we would just do two kind of initial, two scout holes. You know, we exceeded, I would say, exceeded our expectations with the result of drill hole two. We expanded the program, we ended up drilling a total of eight holes and almost 5,000 m. Of those, two were up on the plateau, our current interpretation is that those are on the edges of this system. They drilled long intervals of kind of peripheral style of alteration.
You know, that gives us a sense that those holes were drilled probably into the western edge of the system, and the bulk of the system lies between the valley holes and that plateau. Those six holes in the valley intersected a quartz sulfide vein swarm, and we'll talk about what we mean by that, with very high copper, gold, and silver values, and true widths up to 20 m. Included within those overall intervals that you see are some real bonanza-grade copper, gold, and silver numbers. You know, we're seeing up to 20% copper over 2 m intervals, up to 44 g of gold, and over 1 kg, over 1,000 g per ton of silver. You know, this is while we're drilling in a portion of the system that really...
These systems are typically zoned. There's a copper part of the system, and then there's typically a more precious metal-rich part of the system. We think the bulk of our drilling has been into the copper-rich part of the system, but despite that, we're seeing indications that there may be really significant gold and silver elsewhere in the system. That's something that'll be part of future exploration programs. You know, some of these statistics, I think, speak to the grade potential of this system. You know, within our current database of samples, there were 20 samples with more than 10% copper, including five over 20%. Some really impressive gold numbers ranging up to almost 44 g per ton, and then you can see some of the 18s, you know, 11s, and 12s.
You know, similar to what we see at Filo, very high silver values also present, with 39 assays over 100 g per ton and five over 500 g per ton. You know, as a, as a, as an initial program, as a start, this is a pretty impressive down payment. The area that we've tested so far is relatively small. The drilling covers and tests a block that's about 400 m east to west, we drilled two sections of holes roughly 180 m apart, and then we tested things with the deepest hole down to 850 m below surface. These are super encouraging results for a first pass test.
As that red box on the slide shows, you know, we've really only tested a very small fraction of the system. I think that speaks to the potential as we start to step out and test the rest of the system. You know, really, I think the final point I wanna make here is that, despite these results and the, you know, kind of how extraordinary they are, we really feel that we're just at the very, very early stages of exploring the system, and there's lots more to come and lots more value to be created from where we are today. I'm gonna just stop for a second, see if Bob would like to add anything.
I think why don't you go through the presentation, and then we can have some wrap-up comments at the end, maybe just to keep going.
Okay. Yeah. This is a vertical section, a vertical slice through one of the lines of holes that we did, and it'll give you a sense for what we were trying to do. You know, drill hole two was the discovery hole. At that point, you just have one pierce point. You don't know whether what you've drilled is flat, inclined. If it's inclined, which way is it inclined? We drilled a series of holes from that same platform, and then a platform 100 m to the east to try to define those geometries. What we've defined is that in this part of the system, what we're seeing are steeply dipping, almost vertical series of multiple quartz sulfide veins. You know, there's enough of these that I think it really...
You can see that in the complete table of results in the news release, that this is really a swarm of veins. We are interpreting these veins to be related to a major, yet to be discovered, porphyry copper-gold center. Despite the grades that we're seeing here, we're interpreting this mineralization as being on the edges of the causative porphyry system. Part of our exploration program next season will be to vector in and step in towards the center of the system. Everything that you see here today is really just the edges of the system, and when you see these sorts of grades at the edges, you know, it really makes you think about what might be at the center.
I think another important point, you know, although the overall mineralized system and the overall family of deposits that Lunahuasi falls into is very similar to what we, what we see at Filo or what we see at Los Helados, this part of the system is fundamentally different. You know, what we're doing in this part of the system is high-grade vein exploration. That's analogous to what you would do on a high-grade vein gold system. That's kind of how you have to think about it. The grades are an order of magnitude higher. You know, these are steeply dipping structures. This is probably as, you know, as in this part of the system, it's a selective underground mining target that we're testing for.
You're not gonna see the 1,000 m intercepts of 0.5 or 0.6 that you might see at a Los Helados or a Josem aria or a Filo. What you're looking at is much more concentrated mineralization, and therefore, the, you know, the volumes are different. You know, in this sort of remote location, we feel that that's exactly what we want. Grade is king, and these are some of the best grades, if not the best grades we've seen anywhere in the district. We think in this location, that's exactly what we want.
One of the things I wanna point out about vein systems is that one of the characteristics of them is that they are structurally controlled, and they tend to pinch and swell along strike or laterally and up and down dip or vertically. These things are going to be have thinner portions, thicker portions, and that's important because some of the thicker intercepts that you see, chances are, as we, as we chase them laterally or up and down dip, they're gonna, they'll some of those will pinch down. By the same token, some of those thinner intercepts that you'll see in the table, I mean, the, you know, the tons of thinner intercepts that we see, the twos, the fours, the 10 m, by the same token, you know, those are likely to swell somewhere along strike or up and down dip.
I think one of the things that has really struck Bob and I is the vertical extent of this mineralization. What you often see in vein systems is a specific vertical interval of maybe a couple of hundred meters, where the majority of your grade is, and then things tend to kind of fade out as you go up and down. We're not seeing that at Lunahuasi so far. You know, we've tested a vertical extent of almost 850 m, and the grades are remarkably consistent within that. We're not sure exactly what that means from a genetic point of view, but it's very encouraging for the strength of the system and potentially the, you know, the overall potential. Just seeing vertical extents like this is extremely rare.
You know, we're still working on, you know, what exactly the exploration model here is. I mean, this is definitely porphyry-related mineralization. We see veins very similar to this, or similarities to some of the bonanza-grade gold, silver veins at El Indio in Chile, in the Pascua- Lama Veladero district. There's a lot of similarities, especially in the high copper veins, to some of the veins in the world-class Collahuasi and Chuquicamata systems. You know, it's possible to see both styles of mineralization in one of these porphyry-related systems, and it's possible that we're seeing, you know, both end members. They're, you know, they're good end members to have present. I just wanna summarize what we think are the key takeaways.
These are the highest grades, you know, we've encountered over these sorts of widths to date in the Vicuña District. That's very significant for a first-pass drill program. You know, we didn't do a lot of sophisticated targeting for this, for this initial pass of drilling, and I think, you know, we, it speaks to the robustness of the system when your very first few holes drill these sorts of grades. The other systems that we've worked on in the District, it's taken us a much, much longer time to vector into the highest grade part of the system.
Here, we basically did it on the first try, and, you know, as much as Bob and I would like to put that down to our skill and the skill of our team, you know, there's an element of what nature has given us. What nature has given us here is a, it looks like, is a really robust system, where it's not that hard, to drill some really impressive grades. I think that's, you know, that's really has important implications for future exploration here. I think the other thing that we're really impressed with, and we think is really important, is the sheer number of veins that we've intersected in these drill holes, the high grade the consistent high grades that we've intersected, and then the persistence of that high grade to depth.
I think all three of those factors really speak to the robust nature of the system and the robust nature of the causative intrusion that, or the causative porphyry copper system that drove all of this. You know, I think in summary, these results really increase our confidence that this mineralization is just a small part of a major porphyry system that has the potential to produce some really exceptional grades once we work our way into it. I just wanna stress this final point, that, you know, despite the success that we've had in these early days, you know, we've really only tested a fraction of the overall system, and there's lots more to come here.
You know, this image, again, I'd like to come back to it because I think it'll give you a visual idea of some of what's to come here. The style of mineralization that we've drilled so far is. You know, the mineralization is hosted in kind of these silicified ribs. If you look across the image, particularly on the right-hand side of the image, you can see these resistant linear, you know, steeply dipping features, and those are the upper expressions of the type of mineralization that we've drilled in. As you look across this image, you can see that there's a whole bunch of those kind of trending across that 5 km trend here.
You know, we don't know yet whether all of these are equally mineralized, but, you know, these would be very, very similar in nature to the mineralization that we've tested at depth. I just wanna take your eye back to that, you know, that very small postage stamp in the lower, kind of middle part of this image that we've tested. As we step out and as we start to test some of these other silicified ribs that we see on surface, well, we'll see what we hit. We're very excited about the potential for, you know, for more of the sorts of structures that we've already hit with the drilling to date. In terms of next steps, drilling is finished for the season.
All of the results are out with the news release yesterday. We're currently very busy doing targeting and planning that next program, which is gonna be significantly larger than the 5,000 m that we've drilled so far. We're expecting that program to start once we get through the Southern Hemisphere winter, so probably early in Q4, meaning sort of late September, early October. You know, we're still in the midst of planning next season's program, but tentative objectives for that are extension and further definition of that high-grade vein system that we've hit so far, so kind of better definition of what we've hit in that initial block area. We definitely wanna step out and start testing some of these other silicified structures that we just looked at on the previous image. I mean, this is...
You know, we've tested you know, a very small part of an 11 km, 11 km square target area here, and you know, we see surface evidence of silicified structures, so we didn't definitely want to test some of those. Then we wanna start vectoring into the center of the system. You know, we don't know exactly what the division between those three objectives are, is going to be, but we're gonna wanna test all three concepts in next season's program. You know, we're super excited about the results so far. I mean, this is pretty amazing
I don't think either Bob or I have seen, you know, these sorts of results this early in exploration on any project that we've been involved in, and, you know, we're very excited to see where this takes us next. That concludes the formal presentation from me. I mean, I'd like Bob to maybe fill in any gaps or any things that he thinks I've missed.
Thanks, Bud. I just want to leave, I guess, three main concepts that this really brings forward to me. The first is proof of concept. You know, this is a very large 11 km square alteration zone that we see here. It's geologically plausible that it was created by a big barren or low-grade porphyry system. I mean, that does happen in places in the world. The, the accordance of these few holes with these high grades in the veins are telling us that this is not one of those systems. To me, you get a multiplier effect with it. The fact that we've got this much metal in a, in a small area tells us that the porphyry system that created all of this mineralization is significant, and creates a lot of metal, and it's a very compelling exploration target.
I think it's really important to keep in mind that Lunahuasi, on its own, is very, very important. I'm just scanning through the questions here, and there's lots of talk about the porphyry system, and how are you gonna find it, and where is it, and how big is it? You know, even if we don't find an associated porphyry system to this, Lunahuasi is a very significant mineral deposit. I think one way to look at that, if you just take those holes and average out the grades over the entire length of the hole, you get, you know, 5, 600 m of over a percent copper equivalent. You're into the sorts of widths and grades that we see in the Aurora Zone at Filo. That tells you that it's the same amount of metal in this system.
What's unique about it is that that metal is concentrated into specific structures and specific veins. I think that's a very good thing, because when it comes to a mining perspective, one way to think about it is you've got the same amount of metal. The grade is an order of magnitude higher, which means that metal is in an order of magnitude, smaller volume of rock. You think about that through to a mining operation, your production rate is an order of magnitude less, you know, your infrastructure is less, your capital cost is less, but you potentially get the same amount of metal out of it. I think that's exactly the target that you wanna find, particularly in an area like this, is something that's very high grade. This would be an underground mining target.
It's fundamentally different from the large open pit projects that we see elsewhere in the, in the vicinity, but that's a really good thing. It makes it much easier to do. So even if, you know, we are obviously gonna spend time looking for the porphyry, I think there's a good indication that this whole system is going to turn into something very significant. I wanna make sure people recognize the significance of Lunahuasi. These veins are those kinds of widths and grades, Wojtek mentioned the vertical extent. Those are on par with some of the peripheral vein systems to some of the bigger porphyry systems in the Andes and also in the South Pacific. There's some really good examples there. Then fundamentally, it is still very early days here, right?
This is the fan holes, that were drilled in the first season. We hit on every single one of them. It's telling us that there's a lot more work to do here. We've got a really good crew down there. We've been doing this kind of work for 15 years, and we know how to explore these systems, we know how to work in this environment, and we're all full speed ahead right now in the planning stages to launch a much bigger program up here, starting in the South American spring, and generate a lot more results throughout the upcoming summer.
Yeah, I think that's a really good summary of some of the really important points. I guess one thing. You know, just to give people maybe some comparables. You know, one of our potential exploration models here is the El Indio system, which is about 150 km to the south here. That was a extremely significant bonanza gold, silver producer that, you know, that operated in the 90s and into the early 2000s. All of that mineralization for what was a major mining complex, fit into a box that was 500 by 400 by 300 m or something like that.
When you're looking at grades like this, you know, your scale sort of changes and the volume and the search radius is quite different than the, you know, the porphyry system. I'd reiterate what Bob said, like, we are gonna look for the porphyry center here, and that's gonna be super interesting, but none of that should overshadow the importance of grade and the sorts of grades that we're seeing here. I think you'd much rather have, you know, 10x the grade and one-tenth of the volume. That's, that's what it's all about. You know, you're moving less material, you're building smaller facilities to produce the same amount of copper. You know, that's definitely something to keep in mind.
Just for reference, and, you know, as geologists, we always like to use analogs and look at exploration models. Wojtek mentioned the El Indio deposit, which, you know, we would use as an exploration model to try to figure out what this might be and how to explore it, and that was a total of 23 million tons, and the grades were 6.6 gold, 50 g per ton silver, and 4% copper. You know, we are definitely seeing those grades in every one of the holes that we've drilled here. You know, I guess the point is, we don't need 1 billion tons of this material to make a compelling ore body. If we get in the range of 20-50 million tons of this, we've got something extremely valuable.
You know, with the holes that we've drilled so far, certainly are on the way to that kind of the size of this.
I don't know if we should maybe, Jim, move on to answering some of the questions?
Yeah, just a reminder for people on today's call, if you do have questions, use the navigation pane, click on the Q&A button, we'll get to your questions. Also, I think, Wojtek, the last time you read through the questions on your own and then answered them. Do you wanna do that the same?
You know, I think it might work better if you do it, if you don't mind.
I don't mind. Also I know that there was one person that had their hand raised. If that's, we'll get to that in the order that that came in as well, if you're okay communicating directly with somebody if they have a question. Are you okay with that?
Sure.
Okay. Let's go through the questions then. First one, congratulations on the results and on the choice of the new name. I would like to know what has led you to interpret with so much confidence that the center of the system may be to the west? Is it because of what you see in these holes?
Does geochemistry have more weight in this or the geophysics campaign that was done a few months ago?
Well, I think, yeah, so both Bob and I can answer that. I mean, I don't. I guess I don't want to have too much confidence. I mean, there's, you know, there's two choices basically in what we see for where the center of the system might lie. I think, you know, as you look to the west, you see, I mean, you can see it in the image here, you see a lot of strong alteration. You would expect that the intensity of alteration would increase towards the center of the system, and we'd see more of a, you know, kind of a Filo type, pervasive, texturally destructive, kind of overwhelming alteration.
We think we see that as we look, you know, into that 1.5 km to the west of drill hole two. Another candidate for the center of the system is actually off to the east. Further down the valley, and further down the valley, there's a lot of cover, but in the edges of the valley, and you can just kind of see it, a little bit of it in the photograph. I mean, we do see evidence of porphyry-style alteration outcropping on the, in the sides of the valley. There's some historical drilling down there, you know, 1 km or 2 km down the valley that hit porphyry-style alteration. I think the jury is still out.
You know, it could be off to the east, it could be off to the west. Just to, I guess, preempt some of the other questions I see a little bit further down, I think, you know, we're pretty happy with the land position that we have here. You know, I mean, who knows? You know, a lot more work needs to be done. Who knows whether there will be mineralization on some of the ground that some of our sister companies hold? I don't really want to speculate on that. We're pretty comfortable with the ground that we hold, and we're pretty comfortable that the ground we hold, you know, has significant potential.
Whether or not any of that, extends onto some of the ground that sister companies hold, you know, their exploration will show that down the road. We're comfortable with our land position. We're comfortable with the, you know, with the targets that we see on our ground.
Excellent.
That covers the next two questions.
Okay, we'll go to: What about proximity and risk if the core of the system actually is on Lundin or even Filo grounds? You already answered that. Yeah.
Yeah, I You know, who knows, right? Like, I don't really want to comment on other people's ground. I think, you know, there's exploration programs, I think being planned by both Filo and Lundin Mining that will show us.
You know, this is a big system, you know, we'll see. We'll see how far it extends.
We'll go to the next question. If it has not already been mentioned in the webinar, roughly how many meters do you think you will aim to drill next drill program? Which is followed up with, "I figured the area is so big in scale that it might need an absolutely huge program with a large number of drills."
You know, there's a balance there, and Bob can comment as well. You know, at these early stages, I think one of the things, I mean, you can always do a lot of drilling, you can always spend a lot of money, but the trick and the challenge is spending that money intelligently.
I think in the early stages, it's important not to throw too much at it, because you can kind of get out past your data. Sure, you can be drilling holes, but you're learning so much from each hole that it's important to kind of have a staged program. I think a good illustration of that is what we did this year. You know, we had no idea what we were gonna hit, so our initial plan was two holes. When we succeeded, you know, on those holes, we expanded the program, and I think you'll see that approach from us going forward. You know, tentatively, you know, we would see maybe a three or four drill program.
Then, you know, as we gain confidence, as we open up the logistics, as we open up the roads, we would look to expand the program. You're not gonna see us, you know, throw 10 drills at this right away. We, you know, we need to develop the road network, we need to learn a lot more about the system. The, the bigger programs are much more appropriate further down the road when you know, more about the system. I think you'd see it. You can anticipate a significantly larger program than what we did this year, but, you know, not like we're not gonna go drill 50,000 m and throw 10 rigs at it.
We just don't have the road network or really the knowledge of the system yet to intelligently do that. I don't know, Bob.
We're still early stages in the planning, but what I envision next here is the two components. One is a resource drilling program at Lunahuasi. I mean, we definitely are at the stage now where we know we've got a big enough system with enough grade and enough veins that we need to do the drilling to put together a resource there. That's probably a couple of drills doing fairly close-spaced drilling, and that's multiple holes off the same platform. Logistically, it's pretty straightforward. Also some further afield drilling back up on top of the plateau and from the cliffs, and that's much more focused, target-driven exploration that, you know, we need to compile all the geochemistry data and alteration data that we also collected last season.
That's kind of testing point targets and seeing what else we can learn out there. It's those sort of two components that we'll be working on.
Yeah, I see a question here: To what extent is finding the porphyry the main objective next year versus... I mean, I think it's a little bit of both. You know, like, I think, as we've said, I mean, we, you know, we are gonna try to find the center of the system. That's important. I think they're all sort of equally important objectives. The high-grade vein swarm in and of itself is a really impressive target. We wanna make sure that we better define that. I mean, I think we can walk and chew bubblegum. You know, like, we can try to vector into the porphyry center, and we can, as Bob said, continue to define super interesting high-grade mineralization that we're, that we've already drilled.
You know, you'll see us initially doing a little bit of both, and then, you know, kind of see where the program takes us, and see if there's any part of that that needs to be expanded.
Next question. Maybe, I'll skip one here. "With these systems, is it possible to have a relatively barren porphyry feeding it?
I mean, you know, I think that's the proof of concept that Bob alluded to. I think initially, for sure, you know, before we drilled these holes, you can get big alteration systems that don't have a lot of metal in it. What I think this year's program has proven is that that's not the case here. I would say it's extremely Well, it's basically, you know, we know that it's not a barren porphyry that fed this, because it pumped a huge amount of metal into the rock. I guess, you know, before we drilled these holes, we didn't know. That's why we needed these holes. This could've just been, you know, a very large, flashy-looking alteration system without a lot of metal. We now know that's not the case.
It's a flashy-looking alteration system with a huge amount of metal in it. It's impossible that the porphyry that fed this is barren. It clearly brought a lot of metal into the system.
As a follow-up to that, can you talk a little bit about some of the legwork you're doing to track down the porphyry, and will geophysics play a large part in that?
Yeah, I mean, I think it's gonna be. This kind of exploration isn't really rocket science. Like, this is where the really good exposure helps. You know, the center of the system is likely to be where we see the most intense alteration. We can see that visually. Some other targeting techniques that we're gonna use here, we're thinking about flying a drone mounted hyperspectral survey, which looks at in detail at the alteration minerals. You know, that could help us vector into the center. That's the sort of vectoring that was extremely useful at Filo. You know, there's probably limits to how much geophysics we can do on that steep slope.
We've used the techniques that have worked at Los Helados, that have worked at Filo, to the extent that we can. That's magnetotellurics. We've done IP surveys. We're potentially gonna do drone magnetics. We're gonna throw everything at this to help us vector into the center of the system and to help us explore the, you know, the vein system that we've already hit.
With all the success at Lunahuasi, is there a risk that Los Helados is being put on the back corner, back burner? Or do you have a plan to move both projects forward? If so, how? Is there spin-off potential for one of the two?
Well, we've still got some more results to come out on Los Helados, I would say that, you know, I don't see much of a chance of Los Helados being put on the back burner. It's, I mean, you know, it is one of the challenges. I mean, I guess it's a first-world problem to have. We have two really good projects here, we're gonna have to figure out how we work them both. Los Helados is a, you know, is a really interesting, really good project in and of itself. It's a little bit overshadowed by the spectacular results from Lunahuasi, that's a project that we wanna keep moving forward as well. We've had a lot of exploration success there, extending the satellite high-grade zones.
We see, you know, some pretty interesting new targets that have come out of the work that we've done there this year. You know, we're gonna look for a way to be able to move both projects forward. I mean, we're not currently thinking about a spin-out. I think it's, you know, it's still really early days at Lunahuasi, and I think, you know, while the spin-outs have been, you know, very successful for the NGEx group of companies in the past, I think a big reason for that success is that a lot of careful planning went into them. You know, spin-outs are actually administratively or paperwork-wise, they're pretty easy to do, it's thinking through why you're doing it, making sure that you're going to...
you know, that 1 + 1 is gonna be more than one. You know, you need to... And I think we need a little bit more work at Lunahuasi before we, you know, before we're ready, before we're ready to do that. So no current spin-out plans, but, you know, if these projects develop the way that we think they're going to, and we, you know, we if we saw an opportunity to create as much value as we have in the past, we'd definitely consider a spin-out in the future.
Given yesterday's results, does an open-pit concept make more sense now than it did before?
I don't know. Bob, do you wanna take that one?
I know open pit concept where we understand that.
I guess here at Lunahuasi.
No, it doesn't, I think that's one of the key takeaways from this, is that Lunahuasi is fundamentally different, which I think is very, very positive, right? It's exactly what you wanna find in this location is something that's high grade enough and enough veins that it could be mined potentially as an underground operation. It's really much more efficient, much cheaper, much easier, so. Lunahuasi is not the kind of deposit, well, that we've seen so far that you would consider open pit mining.
From Gabriel, "Will you be able to place a road and drill rig right above the silicified structured on the cliff face? If not, from where would you be able to target the area underneath the cliff face?
I mean, we'll see. You know, our guys are very, very good at road building and logistics in this part of the world, and I know Gabriel has been to site. You know, you've seen some of the roads that we've been able to build. This is really more of a steep slope, and we're pretty confident we're gonna be able to get roads pretty far up that slope. We're gonna test as much of it as we can. You know, we're not gonna be able to get roads in everywhere, but I think a combination of drilling off the roads that we're able to get up that slope and drilling from the top, we're gonna be able to get pretty good coverage. We're comfortable that we're gonna be able to, you know.
I think it's important to keep in mind the scale, and the photograph there is a good representation of that. The hole that we drilled, hole 1 from the top, I guess the vertical distance on that photograph from the skyline down to the bottom of the valley is about 750 m. If you look at where hole one is, that was a 900-something meter hole. I mean, it drilled down the entire vertical distance of the cliffs and then some, as did hole five, which is drilled from the bottom of the cliffs. It was another 900 m hole. You're drilling more than the height of that cliffs down below, which gives you 2 km of relief.
You know, we will look at getting roads up on the cliff face. We've done it before. Yeah, Gabriel, you were up there, driving over the Aleksita Pass from Los Helados, which is a pretty interesting piece of road. Again, we've got experience doing this. We are able to target, you know, that entire cliff face from drilling, from the plateau, starting up there and then drilling that far down.
Mm
relative to the depth of our drill holes, the relief there is not actually that much.
I think maybe then I see the next question here: "Do you see these results being encouraging enough to launch year-round drilling later this year?" I mean, I guess we'll see. You know, like, drilling year-round is all about whether the extra cost and the extra logistical challenges of drilling through the winter translate into shareholder value, you know? If we think that, you know, there's value and we're gonna create value by, you know, undertaking the extra cost of drilling through the winter, we will. That's something that we'll have a better sense for after the next program. There's no real reason that we can't. We're drilling up year-round at Filo. This is a significantly more protected environment. You know, if we can drill at Filo, we can definitely drill here.
It's just the question of value. Sometimes it's not a bad idea to take a bit of a break. Like, to be honest, this winter, we're pretty glad to have a little bit of breathing room to be able to effectively plan the next program, rather than, you know, have everything on top of us. If we think that a winter drill program would continue to add value for us and justify the significantly higher costs, we would definitely do it.
Can you describe the alteration halo into the wall rock? Does it change much vertically over the 850 m depth?
The alteration-
Yeah
... is at sort of two scales here. The one scale is the background wall rock alteration, which is propylitic. It's a kind of propylitic alteration you see with some quartz sulfide veins in it that carry chalcopyrite. The importance of that is that alteration is peripheral to a porphyry system. It's the kind of alteration that you see outboard of a, of the porphyry. That's what gives us confidence that these veins are not in isolation. They actually are in the peripheral alteration zone to a porphyry system. The specific alteration associated with the veins is advanced argillic alteration, clay alteration, which is typical of these structures, and it's very tightly restricted. You don't get much of a, an envelope of alteration on either side of the veins.
The alteration from the center of one of these structures outward, Joe Wolf, would be but kind of vuggy silica in the center that's been flooded with sulfides, and, you know, that's the high-grade portion of the veins grading out to advanced argillic kind of clay alteration. Once you get outside that vein envelope, you typically in the style of propylitic alteration that you typically see in the halo of a porphyry system. As Bob Carmichael said, you know, that's our evidence that in these drill holes, we're in the halo of the system rather than right over the top of it. You know, these veins and this style of mineralization is not that different in character from some of the high-grade mineralization that we see at Filo.
The difference is, at Filo, these structures are sitting right over the top of the center of the system, so the alteration between veins is much, much more intense. You know, here we know that we're lateral because the alteration between the veins is propylitic, which is a, you know, a distal style of alteration.
Just to finalize on that question, it doesn't change much vertically.
Yeah
Under, nor is there a very strong zonation. At least what we know about the mineralization, we do see some zonation patterns, but that's quite unusual over 850 m.
Yes.
I think that speaks to the strength of this system, and I think it's very positive for how big the exemption is going to be.
Follow-up question from Gabriel: "In the news release, there was an allusion to the center of the system potentially lying west of the discovery holes. What indicators do you have that would lead you to think that rather than the potential center being east towards Portones?
Well, I think as I said earlier, we don't know that yet. I mean, the two candidates are for the center of the system are either to the west, where we see some of the most intense alteration visually, or to the east, which is into the area that Gabriel is referring to as Portones. It's one of the two, and we don't know which one of those it is yet. You know, we'll probably test both ideas.
Follow up from Joe, "Are these veins or veins and breccias? Are there any core photos available?
Yeah, I mean, they're both. You know, there are massive sulfide veins, and then there are sort of vein breccias. We have both styles of mineralization, and there's some good pictures of them in our corporate presentation.
From Joe Wolf, "What is the long range plan for return on investment?
That's a softball pitch. The long range plan is for a huge return on investment. I'm not sure how else to answer that. I mean, I think if you look back at the history of NGEx and the NGEx group of companies, I mean, we've had a pretty remarkable return on investment. You know, we started out in the original NGEx. You know, market cap is only one measure of it, but, you know, we started out with a market cap of around $ 40 million. The three NGEx daughter companies today, Filo, Josemaria, now part of Lundin Mining and NGEx, you know, those are worth over $ 5 billion. That's been a pretty good return on investment.
You know, past returns are not guarantees of future returns, but, you know, we definitely set our sights high.
Hopefully that answers your question. Next one, "Can you talk a little bit about funding going forward?
Well, you know, we're a junior exploration company. We're equity financed. We typically raise enough money to, you know, cover a year's program. We raised $30 million at $ 2 last October. You know, our job is to spend that money as effectively as we can. I think this year we've done that in spades, both at Lunahuasi and at Los Helados. As an equity finance junior company, we will definitely raise money again at some point.
Okay. "Looking to the fault-controlled veins of El Indio as a model, has the team been able to map where any controlling faults to the veins at Lunahuasi may lie?
I mean, I think the short answer to that is yes. I mean, I think, you know, Well, first of all, we're in a 1 km wide structural corridor, which is basically what you see in this image. You know, that's basically the 1.5 km structural corridor that runs all the way from Filo in the south up to Los Helados in the north. This is a major structural feature. You know, we're right in the middle of that at Lunahuasi. The surface expression of some of the structures within that are those silicified ribs that we talked about earlier and the structures that we've hit in the drill holes.
Yes, I mean, we have been able to map, and I think we've hit some of the controlling faults in the drilling. That's what the mineralized structures that we've hit are.
As a follow-up to the press release, can you add a little bit more light on the comment, quote, "Possibly underline the extensive alteration zone immediately to the west of this season's drilling," unquote. What specifically led to this as an early target? Will that be the initial target in the spring?
You want to take that one, Bob?
Yeah, I mean, we've talked about it already.
Yeah.
I mean, just looking at the imagery of the alteration, the type of alteration leads us to believe that maybe it's to the west, but we don't know. The targeting that Aaron mentioned was the geochemistry and geophysics, and the hyperspectral survey that we completed this year, the surface work, that will help us to refine the targets there.
Yeah, I think we've also answered the spinout question. You know, we're not currently planning a spinout. If we think we can create shareholder value through a spinout, we will consider one in the future. Yeah, any zones of supergene enrichment? No. Not so far.
Don't really need them.
Gabriel's looking for a little bit more elaboration on hole four, specifically as to the different mineralogy.
It's just we're looking at zonation, I guess, again, with the El Indio reference, that deposit was clearly zoned from pyrite and enargite massive sulfide veins similar to wurtzite and to quartz gold veins with some truly amazing bonanza grades within them. You know, when you get into these systems, typically they are zoned. It can be laterally or vertically, part of your exploration vectoring is trying to understand what that zonation is. You know, again, we're early days. We've only got six holes into it here, we're just speculating on what some of the zonation might be what we see different in the various holes, that was one thing we picked up on hole four.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think, you know, in general terms, what that question is getting at is that, as Bob said, these systems are zoned. You typically get more copper at depth, and then they tend to become increasingly precious metal rich as you go up. So far we've largely been drilling in the, in the copper-rich part of the system, despite some of the, you know, the local bonanza-grade gold hits. You know, one of the things that we'll be looking for as we work our way up and laterally in the system is a more precious metal rich part of the system.
You know, maybe some of what we're seeing in drill hole four, which kind of hit higher up in the same structure that we hit in hole two was, you know, some indications that that might be true. As we work our way up in the system, we're gonna get into higher gold and silver zones.
I think we may have answered this regarding the spin-offs.
Yeah.
Financing, we covered that. From Connor, "Any potential permitting challenges associated with a much larger program for next year?
I mean, You know, we're permitted for the drilling that we wanna do. We're kind of working on a couple of things to do with getting more water supply and all of that, but nothing out of the ordinary so far.
Can you tell us a little bit more about the different copper, gold, silver zones, if there are differences in the elevation direction of the system?
I think we kind of answered that.
Covered that?
Tends to be more gold and silver upward in the system.
I think we may have answered this one, too, regarding timing from assays from Los Olivos.
Yeah, we're expecting those shortly in the next week or 10 days.
Is there an equivalent to these high-grade veins in Filo?
Bob, do you want to take that one?
Yeah, I mean, there may be. There are some pyrite and argillite veins at surface near Filo called the Maranceles veins, which has always been an exploration target that, you know, Filo has just had a lot of other higher priority exploration targets to drill. Definitely it, it stands to reason that you're in a very similar system, same part of the world, same age, same overall structural regime, that these kinds of veins may also exist peripheral to Filo and to Los Olivos for that matter.
Once upon a time, Cerro Blanco was thought to be the most promising target, then you hit Los Olivos. Curious if you will drill this target next season?
Well, some of the other questions are, you know, kind of, I guess, hinting at how much we have on our plate. I think there's, you know, there's probably a little bit of a bandwidth limit to how much we can do. We don't have current plans to drill Cerro Blanco, you know, that's definitely another high potential target on our, on our ground. We'll try to get to it. I'm not sure that we're gonna be able to do that this coming season.
How do you see the structures hosting high-grade, high sulfidation mineralization relating, joining the regional north-south structure hosting the Filo-Los Olivos structure? Do you see the local structure trending far beyond the scale of drilling completed to date?
I mean, I think as we mentioned earlier, you know, Filo, Lunahuasi, Los Olivos all sit within the same north-northeast trending structural corridor that is 1 km or a 1.5 km wide. They're all kind of within that structural zone. We can see that, you know, kind of at various different scales. We haven't spent a lot of time tracing that, you know, where those might go outside of our land position. We've, we've kind of focused on what's within the boundaries of our land position.
How do you feel NGEx now fits into the overall corporate objectives of the Lundin Group in the district?
I don't know. I mean, You know, the Lundin Group is not a corporate entity, so, you know, there, I guess there aren't corporate objectives, you know, 'cause Lundin, you know, I guess what makes us a Lundin company is that the Lundin family trusts are our largest investors. You know, we run NGEx for the, you know, for the benefit of NGEx shareholders, not for any kind of larger entity. I think, you know, our focus is gonna stay on adding as much shareholder value as we can for NGEx shareholders, and anything that, you know, anything else that happens in the broader environment is not really in our control and not something that we spend a lot of time thinking about. We're focused on shareholder value for NGEx
Apologies there. How far away could a PFS be?
At Lunahuasi? Quite a long way away. I mean, you know, we've got, you know, six holes into the core zone. You know, we're a long way away from a resource, let alone engineering studies. I mean, I would say those are three to five years away.
Just from a logistics standpoint, Wojtek, we did come up against a one-hour mark. Are you okay continuing on? There's a handful of questions that remain, as you can see.
Yeah. Sure, yeah, we can keep answering questions.
Okay. Just wanted to make sure you were good with that. Any concerns from a development standpoint about the proximity of Lunahuasi to glacial areas?
I mean, you know, glaciers are an issue in, you know, in this area. I think you can see from the photograph that, you know, we're not, you know, we're not under any kind of glacier. I mean, I think in the immediate exploration area, We're not concerned.
Again, the one of the advantages of a potential underground target here.
Yeah, which.
Much smaller.
Yeah, which would have even less impact.
Would this mineralization be amenable to processing through the Josemaria plant flow sheet?
that would be an excellent question for the Lundin Mining guys. I don't know. I guess, you know, we haven't done any metallurgical test work here, and I don't know the details of the Josemaria plant flow sheet. It's certainly close to the Josemaria plants. We're only 7 km or 8 km away, so I would think that's something they would probably look at at some point.
Here's an interesting question, kind of around valuation. "Congratulations on the good work. As a shareholder, having trouble understanding what I actually have. How to value Los Helados versus Lunahuasi. What are your thoughts?
Yeah, I mean, we get that question a lot. You know, I was on a, on a roadshow, and I got that question a lot. I mean, the short answer is, it's a hard question to answer, and you know, I'd probably refer you to some of the analyst reports that are out on us where, you know, people have. You know, Los Helados is a much more advanced project. There's a lot more data, there's past engineering studies, all that sort of thing. I think people have been able to, you know, look at some of the development concepts around Los Helados, including potential synergies, with Caserones, and various analysts have modeled out, you know, what the value of Los Helados might be in that scenario.
I think there's, you know, there's reasonably good information out there on what, on what the potential value of Los Helado s is. I feel at this point, you know, Los Helados probably accounts for a significant proportion of our value. I don't know exactly what that is, but, you know, it's a more advanced project that's been easier for people to wrap numbers around it. Lunahuasi is still earlier stage, and I think, you know, people, investors struggle to figure out exactly how to value that. I think, you know, a good starting point would be to look at some of the, the analyst reports that have looked at the potential value of Los Helados, and then I guess whatever's left over is the value the market's currently attributing to Lunahuasi.
I, you know, I would say, I would say that still Los Helados more than justifies, you know, a significant proportion of our current market cap. I would say that the market is still significantly undervaluing the potential that we see at Lunahuasi.
Just as a follow-up to that, I think in the previous call that we did, you may have mentioned this to me before, something to the effect of, you know, the value of the company, sort of pre-discovery hole at Lunahuasi, was something, that was all basically attributed to Los Helados, the incremental add-on-.
Yeah
Since the discovery hole. Is that a fair way to still look at it?
Yeah. I mean, that's probably the most recent market data that we have. I mean, one thing to do would be to look back at what the value of NGEx was the day before the Lunahuasi announcement. I mean, at that point, I think it'd be reasonable to expect that all of the valuation was attributed to Los Helados , then all of a significant proportion of the value that's been added since then can be attributed to Lunahuasi. I mean, it's a bit of an art, not a science. I guess, as an investor, I would take both approaches.
I would look at, some of those analyst reports that look at the, you know, the potential value of Los Helados. You know, on the market side, you can look at what the value of NGEx was before the Lunahuasi discovery for a proxy valuation of Los Helados.
Perfect. Can you talk about the company's current cash position?
Yeah. Our most recent financial statements came out, you know, Q1 financial statements, I think we had $11 million in cash. That's the most recent financial information that's public.
Okay. Have you sampled the outcroppings of these pillar-like silicified structures? Are these outcroppings well mineralized?
Yeah, not all of them, but some of them, yes. We've gotten, you know, good rock chip samples out of some of those silicified ribs. That's why we're encouraged about the potential underneath them.
This is, next question is similar to something that I've often asked you in the past, with all the great work you've done, can you talk a little bit about your level of excitement on these holes compared to earlier companies?
Ooh, great question. I think both Bob and I should answer that separately. I, you know, it's my excitement level is super high. I mean, I've been doing this, well, Bob and I have been doing this for a similar amount of time. I have never drilled holes like this early, and I've been involved in several discoveries. I've never drilled holes like this early in a program. It's super exciting. I don't know, Bob?
Yeah, you get very few chances in a career to drill holes like like hole number two. You know, starting off in an area like that's never been drilled before, you know, that's covered by talus, you don't have super strong surface indications or specific surface indications of mineralization. When we were drilling that hole, you're talking to the geologists at site, and to get those kinds of results out of an initial, an early-stage hole like that is the kind of thing that happens, you know, three or four times in a career.
Yeah. I'd say if you're lucky, that happens. I. You know,
If-
I would say if you're lucky, that happens once in your career. I mean, you know, we did not... You know, these were... Holes one and two were initial scout holes, just kind of-
Mm.
You know, the original idea was just to get a general sense for the system, and there wasn't a whole lot more that went into targeting those holes than, "Let's drill one at the top, and let's drill one at the bottom," you know, kind of wherever we can get in relatively close to where we had some geochemistry. Like, that was about it. There was not, you know, geophysics or any other sophisticated targeting. You know, that hole was sited, you know, the criteria for that was, "You know, that looks like some pretty good alteration. Let's see if let's get as close to the base of that as we can and put a hole into it." To hit what we hit, you know, with that sort of...
I mean, that's there's nothing wrong with that kind of targeting, but to hit, you know, what we did, is remarkable. It just does not happen very often.
I don't wanna drift into the realms of superstition here, but the geologist who was on the rig when we drilled hole two-
Yes
... Leticia Gonzalez, who's one of our key geologists down there, who a couple of years earlier, was also the geologist on a hole for Filo, which was hole 41, which, some of you might remember.
I, that's actually an interesting coincidence or maybe it's not a coincidence. The same geologist, was running the program at the time that the two key holes at Filo and at Lunahuasi were drilled.
I think that hole two is in that realm of significance, that hole 41 was to Filo. It's a huge step change in the profile of the project. It immediately changes your perspective on what the project can be, what kind of mineralization you can discover there, what sort of system it is. It fundamentally changes everything about the project, how you value it, how you explore it, and what you think you can find there. hole two is one of the most significant holes I've certainly drilled in my career.
Yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, I'd like to just bring it back to scale here. You know, what you see on this image, and I think it'll probably just highlight the stage that we're at. You know, 90% of the drilling that we've done at Filo is within a, you know, about 5 km by 1 km wide strip, you know? In that sort of area at Filo, we've got probably more than 200 holes. In exactly the same size area, you know, right now we've got eight holes, and you can see that they're kind of clustered in two places.
You know, the sort of scale and the sort of potential that you have here is, you know, or the footprint here is similar to what we see at Filo, but we're at, you know, at a fraction of the drilling density and still, I would argue, a fraction of the fraction of the valuation. I think, you know, there's a lot of potential upside here, you know, on something that we're really on the early stages of exploring.
A couple of questions remain. One is the elevation difference between here and Filo.
Well, that, the drill holes one and two are on the same plateau that Filo sits on, so it's roughly the same at the top. The other drill holes are 750 m below that. The top two holes are roughly the same elevation as Filo, and the bottom holes are 750 m lower. The last question is, I think, an excellent one to end on. Leticia, who is the geologist that was in charge of this project for us, she has a dog named Luna. Did that have anything to do with the name Lunahuasi? If you ask Leticia, she would say it has everything to do with the name of the project. If you ask me, it was because of that super cool photo. I don't know. The truth is somewhere between the two.
Mm.
It's a nice coincidence that, Leticia's dog is named Luna.
That's fantastic. Well, I think that gets to all of our questions. Maybe I turn it back to you, Wojtek and Bob, for any closing thoughts.
Yeah. Do you wanna go first, Bob, and then maybe I can wrap it up?
Yeah, I guess it's just what's coming out of us. We've got one news release left for Los Helados, you know, and all this. We've talked about Los Helados, we certainly can't lose sight of it. It'll wrap up the results that we got this year. You know, we did do a bunch of geophysics there in addition to the drilling, and came up with some pretty compelling targets.... I think the holes that we drilled there with the discovery of Fenix and Alicanto have also changed our perception of what Los Helados is, and what's left to be discovered there. We'll highlight some of those ideas in the upcoming news release, and probably expect more work at Los Helados next season as well.
Just, you know, what we've tried to get across here, some of the main ideas that, you know, this is, Lunahuasi is fundamentally different than the other deposits we've discovered in this area, and I think in a good way. I think this could turn into something that's actually preferable to a large porphyry deposit. We are still gonna search for that. There's a lot left to come on both projects.
Yeah, I think the final thought, you know, I would leave you with is, you know, grade is king. Grade is really, really important, and this is by far the highest grade, these are by far the highest grade intercepts that we've drilled anywhere in the district. To get those sorts of results this early, is I think really significant. You know, I think we're both extremely, and our whole team is really, really excited to keep exploring this area. I think we're, you know, I think we're on the threshold of defining something quite remarkable here in a district that's already got, you know, a couple of quite remarkable deposits.
You know, I think you'll be hearing a lot more about this area, a lot more about Lunahuasi, and, you know, next season's program is going to be super exciting to follow. Hopefully many of you will be along with us for the ride.
Excellent. Wojtek and Bob, I appreciate it. Congratulations on success to date, and look forward to continued development. With that, we are all set to conclude. Thanks everybody for joining us.
Great. Thanks, everyone.
Thanks for attending, everyone.