Mining, Tania Barreto, Director of Investor Relations for the company, and finally, Mark Petersen, the company's Senior Exploration Geologist. How's everybody doing today?
Excellent, thank you.
Great, thanks, Romeo.
Awesome. So here's how today's going to work, just for the folks in the room. First, there's going to be a very brief introductory presentation, mostly for those in the room who aren't really familiar with the stock, but then I'm going to ask some of the great questions that came in in advance over email. But after that, I am going to open it up to the live audience here today. So I do really want this to feel like an interactive conversation. I want to make sure people in the room feel heard. So there's a chat button in the bottom right of your screen. You can ask questions during today's event, and I'll be able to get to them right after we've gone through both the presentation and the questions that came in advance over email. The only other piece of housekeeping I'll give you today is this event is being recorded and will be available to people who have registered. It'll pop right in your inbox probably later this afternoon, possibly as late as tomorrow morning. Without further ado, I know you've heard enough out of me. I'll get to the meat of today's event and pass it over to the Wallbridge team for the presentation.
Well, thank you, Romeo, and welcome, everybody. Thank you for taking some time out, if you're in Eastern Standard Time during lunch hour, to listen to this presentation. I'm excited to be here. I think we've got a great opportunity at Wallbridge. We have exploration potential in the Northern Abitibi. We have two discoveries, Martinique and Fenelon, and we continue to explore at Martinique. And I think I'll turn it over to Mark now to give us an update on some of the accomplishments at Martinique.
Okay. Well, for the members of the audience who are familiar with the story, some of what I'll say is going to be a little bit redundant, but just for the benefit of anybody that's new learning about Wallbridge, I'll try to address everything for everyone. So this past year, we've been primarily focused on our earlier stage Martiniere Gold project. We've also been doing work on our flagship Fenelon project. But in terms of what we had available for financial resources at the end of 2024, it was very clear that really the most near-term low-hanging fruit opportunity for near-term value creation resides in Martiniere. We also did complete an updated PEA study on Fenelon, which Brian will speak to later on in the presentation here.
But what I want to cover right now is just kind of a summary to bring people up to date on what we've accomplished this year at Martinique, as well as a little bit of a thumbnail sketch looking forward on what we can expect, what shareholders and interested investors can expect between now and the end of the year.
So in 2024, when I joined the company, we had a multi-phase program going on, and much of that was at Martinique. And we began exploration drilling beyond the known mineral resources. We also updated the mineral resource for Martinique because a considerable amount of drilling had been done since the last one, which was completed at the end of 2022. And as we progressed through the program last year, and I was new, I was climbing the learning curve on all things Wallbridge and Detour Fenelon.
But it became clear to me that, and it was no surprise given the extensive surficial cover in the region, that Martiniere might offer an opportunity for a larger gold system than the drilling up until 2024 had really indicated. So we started stepping out along what we refer to as the Bug Lake Deformation Corridor. And on this map, that's just the two dashed pink lines that run from the upper left down toward the lower right. That zone is a pretty wide zone, and it's host to multiple subparallel shear structures that are basically structural controls to where gold mineralization is occurring along the overall corridor. So there's multiple systems in here to explore. So coming into 2025, to really shift focus away from near-close space to step-out drilling just to incrementally grow resources, which is important.
But really, to answer this question, is there a bigger size prize here at Martiniere? I had the sense that when I look at the resource statement, there very well could be. So we took a more aggressive exploration approach. And rather than focus on, for right now, delineating more resources, what I wanted to do was see what we can do to flesh out the broader geologic footprint. So it doesn't look like it at the scale of what's on your video screens, but the mandate that we set for ourselves was no holes closer than 150 meters apart in step-out exploration. And we started out in phase one, really focused on stepping out laterally along strike and across the zone. And then as we came into phase two, we were very happy with the results we got out of phase one.
As we came into phase two, we pivoted a bit to also explore the deeper projections along that Bug Lake Deformation Corridor. And specifically, we've been primarily focused on a trend between the area labeled there as Dragonfly, where there's a little bit of a resource that was delineated last year with a little bit of drilling that had been done, and the Bug Lake North zone, which is kind of more in the central portion of the slide, and the Horsefly zone as well. So the next couple of slides I'm going to show you will be some cross-sections. The first one will be a north-south section that runs right through a gap.
It's about a 500-600-meter gap that was in the drilling pattern between where we had resources delineated at Dragonfly to the east, to the southeast, and the Bug Lake North and Horsefly zones to the northwest. And really, there was no reason for it not to be prospected, but there really wasn't any properly directed drilling through that gap. So we started out in phase one with some holes to test that, and hole 121 returned some pretty significant results with good high-grade hits along multiple structures through the zone of deformed rock. Coming forward into phase two, which we began in mid-July, we decided, okay, well, we liked what we saw in 121. So we drilled essentially a step-out hole, stepping down 150 meters below hole 121. And once again, we hit multiple high-grade hits on multiple mineralized structures.
As you can see, just looking at the slide, we're not done. The system, the structures remain open vertically down dip, down plunge. Our suspicion that this system may have deeper roots than was originally shown in the historic drilling was kind of bearing out. Just before we go to the next slide, I just want to highlight up in the upper right in the Horsefly area. We delineated a small amount of open pittable mineral resource last year. This year, both in phase one and phase two, we've gone back because we had some holes that ended in mineralization. We've extended some of the previously drilled holes, and also we're stepping out more laterally to see what may be further outboard. Again, this is near-surface gold potential.
We're exploring both the deeper portions of the system as well as shallower upright around resources where we think we can get some good results. Now, if we go to the next slide, this is a longitudinal section. It covers approximately 1.2-1.3 kilometers of strike length running right down the trend between Bug Lake North and Dragonfly. There's some shaded outlines with dashed outlines. Those are the outlines of currently delineated mineral resources that are carried in our mineral resource statement. Everything else that's the slightly darker gray pattern, there are no resources delineated in those volumes, at least on this section. You can see, again, where our drilling in that gap zone between Bug Lake North and Dragonfly has returned positive results. I'm very pleased with what I'm seeing.
Also, what I want to just highlight here is I mentioned that in phase two, we kind of pivoted a bit. And that pivot was kind of a combination of continuing to drill laterally outboard along strike, but also to test deeper in this system with holes going below the nominal 400-meter depth limit of drilling. There had been drilling deeper than that, but really not very much. So those blue lines that are shown on here are holes that we have completed as part of phase two, but we don't have all of the assays back on those. And by last count, I think we had nine holes with assays pending in the Dragonfly Bug Lake North part of the Bug Lake Deformation Corridor and three pending holes in the Horsefly area. So stay tuned.
We anticipate we'll have all of our final results of phase two back from the lab come mid-November, and once we have those, we'll be compiling them into a news release that I would anticipate would be coming out in late November, early December timeframe, so I'll leave it at that and hand it back over to Brian to bring things up to date on what we're doing at Fenelon.
T hanks, Mark, a nd an excellent update. I was having some technical issues, and I skipped over a couple of slides, but I'll just talk to them right now. Our capitalization screen, we have two major shareholders being Eric owning 15% and Agnico owning 9.9%. Agnico acquired their interest when they acquired Kirkland Lake Gold, and they've been supportive, participating pro rata in all of our financings to date to maintain their interest at 9.9%. We did two recent transactions, which we will respond to in the question and answer period. Some of the pre-sent questions addressed it. We improved our cash position by CAD 8 million with respect to the sale of the Detour East property to Agnico. And our most recent CAD 4.7 million receipt of our refundable tax credits. It's a very favorable incentive by the Québec government to encourage employment in the far north.
And 20% of our non-Québec flow-through finance expenditures qualify for this incentive. You get it after you file your tax returns for the year, and they do an audit to ensure compliance. So we received those earlier this week. With all of that, we're looking to close the year with about CAD 15 million in the bank. And before we get into the PEA and stuff like that, I'd like to talk about where we were last year and where we are this year. Last year, we developed a plan to complete a preliminary economic analysis on the Fenelon project. We told the world we would achieve it by the end of March. And not only did we achieve the study and the news release by the end of March, we also filed the tech report at the same time.
In order to do all this work in the fall of 2024, we looked at our cash position. We looked at the refundable tax credits we had just received, and we raised about CAD 7 million, including Agnico's participation, to top things up to do a small program. At the time, it was very difficult to finance junior equity markets. There was no interest in investing across the board. We were advised by a lot of people, "Just go pens down and wait for a better market." But we wanted to keep together the team. We wanted to continue to advance the project. So we came up with a smaller, which turns out to be a very successful program, focusing primarily on Martiniere. Again, our plan was to complete the PEA. We delivered. Our plan was to complete the exploration on Martiniere.
It's virtually done, and some of the regional work we had planned has been allocated to follow up on Martiniere because of the successes. As Mark mentioned, news flow will be coming out. We're currently developing a plan for 2025 on where to from here. Yes, we've learned a lot. We didn't have a lot of news flow this year because it was a small program. We will assess our news flow going forward. We will assess looking at more virtual conferences like this in the future to keep the communication open. Next slide, please. So again, when we put the study together, long-term analyst consensus price was $2,200 an ounce. Today, long-term analyst consensus price is somewhere between $2,700 and $2,800 an ounce. But we can't put together a study and change it after the tech report is done. Annual production is 107,000 ounces a year.
Good free cash flow at $2,200 gold. Our CapEx and sustaining capital will get into that in the following slide. Cash costs are very respectable, and all sustaining costs are very respectable. Our after-tax NPV at $2,200 is great, and considering that as substantially below current spot prices and attractive rate of return. I get a lot of questions on sensitivity to higher gold prices. How 43-101 works, in order for me to quote any of these numbers, they have to be included in our tech report. We sensitize our tech report up to $3,000 gold, and you can see at $3,000 gold, we have a $1.4 billion NPV, 34% IRR, and most importantly, a payback of 2.4 years, so all I can say is that today, it would be even better, but this is the sensitivity provided in our tech report.
And in order for us to update that, we'd have to engage, rewrite our tech reports, and at this point in time, we need to focus on our deliverables for next year and deliver again. The PEA was based on first principles. We started with a clean slate. We looked at some scope optimization that was involved in it. We did trade-off studies, some trade-off studies, and we integrated existing infrastructure. There is a ramp there that a bulk sample was completed in 2018, 2019. We will use a small portion of that ramp to access the underground workings, but it's in the plan, and OpEx, we did a detailed review. We looked at comparables for similar size operations in the Abitibi. The timeline, there were some of the questions that came in earlier.
Two years pre-production, 15 years by a ramp, and at the end of the mine life, there's an open pit potential in the Gabbro, but that is surrounding existing adits, so normally, you start with the open pit potential, but we would ramp down near the end of the mine life just to support the existing infrastructure that's in place. We've applied for an allocation for power from Hydro-Québec. The allocation will be finalized when we complete a feasibility study, but we're keeping them informed as we're progressing. It's a great asset because with an allocation and building this power line, which is in our cost estimates of CAD 29 million, we have access to, at current prices, CAD 0.055 per kilowatt-hour power cost, so it's something we're continuing to pursue, and it could be very, very helpful as we develop Fenelon going forward.
The layout, and again, this is a PEA. There is very limited engineering, so there's a lot of additional work, a lot of trade-off studies to do to go to a pre-feas and ultimately a feasibility study, but this is an indicative of what things could look like, and when we put the study together, we focus on risks. One, we decided we did a tonnage grade analysis, and the sweet spot seems to be around 3,000 tons a day. We built the plan based on a 3,000-ton-a-day operation, and again, it's a PEA mine plan, so it includes all resources. That plan, please go back. That plan allowed us to, one, eliminate a shaft construction as the previous PEA done, focusing on the highest margin ounces as we developed this, focused on risks, dry stack tailings.
Yes, it was a little bit more costly, but it's the most effective way when you're looking at building tailings in the Hudson Bay Lowlands, focused on all of the waste rock ultimately winding up underground. We would use paste backfill. So again, focusing on risks that will pay dividends when we get to a permitting phase, when we're in negotiation of our IBAs with our First Nations partners. So we've taken a look forward to figure out the best way to go forward with this project. The camp on the right-hand side, everything in blue is there today. Everything in white will be added. So it's about 10 km away. Myself, having spent some of my career in camps, it's nice that it's 10 km away because it will be quiet in the evenings or during the days when people are relaxing, unwinding, and ultimately sleeping.
The metallurgy, there was some metallurgical work done a few years ago. The indicative recovery is about 96%. Clearly, that's something that we could do in our next year's plan is maybe we do another metallurgical test because as the ore body evolves, there may be areas with a little bit different mineralization that we need to do some work, and we will look at that. Very conventional, simple flow sheet as indicated in the bottom left-hand corner. Our production is 107,000 ounces annually. You can see there's the life of mine indicated production and grade. The really sweet thing is during the first five years as you're working towards payback, and that's why we get such an exciting payback in this operation. It's 127,000 ounces a year. So great startup and a great opportunity, even at $2,200 gold, to pay back the construction costs quickly.
This slide, I won't talk very much about it, but this is the $2,200 gold indicative free cash flow for Fenelon. Details of our capital allocation. The costs for the mill and the tailings are included in here. Dry stack tailings is a little bit more expensive, but it is the right thing to do from a risk management standpoint. Underground equipment, during the initial construction phase, it's quite nominal, but we will use contractors and ultimately go to an owner-operated fleet during the sustaining period. Our sustaining capital expenditures are including certified rebuilds of all our equipment based on the OEM recommendations. So it's fully baked in. I don't want to put out numbers that are not deliverable, but again, it is a PEA, and there's a lot of work to go to pre-feas and feas to really look at some various trade-off studies.
So what we have at Wallbridge is a long-term platform for growth. We've got a positive PEA with a 16-year mine life that, based on the PEA mine plan, mines out about half of the overall resources. So it gives an opportunity to grow in the future. Let's focus on the quickest path forward, and then we can always expand in the future. Martiniere, near-term value creation potential. Mark and his team have developed a very systematic plan to look for opportunities to enhance the gold footprint, and we will continue working on that next year. The team is strong. Our technical team has a breadth of experience. Mark's been in the industry for about as long as I have, maybe a little bit longer. So very experienced, great team leader, and a great economic geologist. The location, we're in one of the best locations in the world.
There's a highway that runs within about 30 km of the property. We have a logging road that runs up to the camp. So we have year-round access. The incentives offered by the Québec government are sensational. One of the things we looked at, and another thing when we decided on making a 3,000-ton-a-day operation, we looked at permitting. 5,000 tons a day seems to be a number that you would need approval from the provincial regulators as well as the federal regulators. Anything below that is just provincially. So to start off with one party in the room as we advance the project is probably an efficient way of managing it and deal with after payback and expansion scenario.
It is a smaller scale mine, but as we see the success that Artemis is achieving right now, much larger open pit mine, but the same concept, start off small and grow into it. We respect our shareholders. We respect the environment. We have great community relations with the surrounding communities. Our First Nation partners are very supportive. We have pre-development agreements with our two Cree partners of Waskaganish and Washaw Sibi. Hopefully, before the end of this year, we'll have a similar agreement with our Algonquin partners at Pikogan. With that, Tania, I'll let you talk about the next slide. One of the things we're focused on is now that the quiet year is just about over, how do we go forward marketing in the future? Tania, why don't you talk briefly what our plans are for the balance of this year?
Sure. Thanks, Brian. So to conclude the formal presentation portion of today's call, I'll just quickly summarize our plans for the remainder of the year on the IR and marketing front. Later on this month, we'll be in Montreal and explore, which is put on by AEMQ, which is the Association for Exploration in Québec. In November, we will be in Europe for the 121 conference in London and the Swiss Mining Institute conference in Zurich. In December, we'll be doing the Mining Virtual Investor Conference, which is put on by the OTC. And before the end of this year, we will also be engaging with Crux Investor, the John Tumazos's Group, and Torrey Hills, which are providers of virtual interviews and retail marketing webinars, that sort of thing. And just to add a little bit, I'd just like to look forward to next year. As we know, the market is turning.
Gold is at a record price. So we will be adding more retail marketing to our IR plan. Once we finalize the budget for next year, we'll have more details on that. And finally, for anyone who'd like to know what we've done this year to date, all of our marketing events, conferences, webinars, etc., are all on our website. And I'd encourage you guys to take a look if you want to look back to see what we've attended so far this year and listen to any of the corresponding webcasts. And I think now I'll turn it back over to Romeo and open up the Q&A portion of the webinar. Thank you.
Awesome. Appreciate it very much. Like I said earlier, I do have quite a number of questions that came in over email in advance from investors. I'm going to read exactly as they were written. Once those are done, I appreciate everybody's patience. We'll get into some of the questions in chat. Still tons of time for today's event. I just want to make sure we get to as much as possible, and a lot of people did send in questions in advance, so I do want to tackle those. Before we get started there, though, I did want to throw it to you, Brian, first, just to ask if you're aware of the comments on chat boards and the sentiment of some of the shareholders in recent days.
Yes, I'm aware of them, but our disclosure policy prohibits us from engaging in chat room and message boards. However, any shareholder who would like to speak to me directly, you're always welcome to call me. My cell phone number is on the bottom of every news release we issue, so you can reach me at that number anytime.
Awesome. Okay. Appreciate that. One question that came in is, why wasn't Brian? Why weren't you at Beaver Creek, the investment conference?
Well, unfortunately, I couldn't attend it there because there was a death in my family before the conference, and I was unable to attend. Mark attended as planned and is probably the best person we organized to attend the Beaver Creek conference. And our meeting schedule was quite full for the three days.
Appreciate that. One question that came in over email is, have you considered selling Fenelon or Martiniere?
We always review options to unlock value for our shareholders. From time to time, we discussed internally what's the best forward for those projects, but I believe in the current market, it would be very difficult to sell our advanced projects at this time.
Okay. Appreciate that. One is, when will you begin commercially selling your gold in the future? What's the timeline to development and obstacles to overcome to make that happen?
Thank you. And referring back to the presentation, there's a six-year timeline, two-year I think there's a six-to-seven-year timeline. We need to complete a pre-feasibility and a feasibility, obtain all permits, IBAs with our First Nations partners, get electrification from Hydro-Québec prior to construction. So this could take a few years to complete. And then, as we indicate in our presentation, the construction phase is a couple of years.
Appreciate that. One person, this is an accumulation of a number of different questions, so I'll just kind of throw one version of it at you, which is, what's the realistic stock price forecast? To the best of your ability to answer.
Well, we don't provide stock price forecasts. However, we believe our valuation has improved since July, but we believe we're still undervalued. That's why we're going to focus on a lot more marketing going forward because we have a projected decent cash balance at the end of the year, and the market is substantially approved for junior equities.
Okay. One question that came in is, is your plan to build and operate or just to explore and sell? Or what at least is the thinking right now?
Well, we're here to enhance shareholder value. We need to continue to take our projects forward. We need to continue to explore Martiniere. We need to look for regional targets, probably do some drilling on Casault to earn into that 50% interest of that joint venture. And as we continue advancing de-risk, if somebody taps us on the shoulder and says, "I got a deal for you," it's our job to listen to it. And if it's with merit, we'll bring it to our shareholders.
Okay. One person asked, again, this is to the best of your ability. This person notes they're an industry person. They're interested in what partnerships Wallbridge has with larger miners to grow Wallbridge mine to the next level.
Well, you know what? I've been in this industry for a long time. I sat on the boards of Maverix, a royalty company that was acquired by Triple Flag. I sat on the board of Equinox when it was sold to Barrick. I was on Alamos's board over the years. My career was with Kinross, Western Goldfields, and ultimately New Gold before Wallbridge. So I have relationships with many executives in the industry, which I reach out from time to time. As for Wallbridge, we have an excellent relationship and support from our 9.9% shareholder of Agnico Eagle.
Okay. And this is, again, this is a combination of quite a number of questions. But that's really, how can you explain or how do you speak to the fact that the share price doesn't seem to have moved like the rest of the market for gold companies in the same position, despite millions of ounces of gold in the ground and the rising price of gold?
Well, that's a challenge. Since the end of the summer, our stock price has tracked well with the price of gold. Some have done a lot better. Yes, we are still undervalued, and we will review this, address it. We're already addressing it with our Q4 marketing plans on how we go forward, how do we garner interest in our stock again, and stay tuned.
Okay. One was the sale of the property to Agnico to get some operating cash? What, if any, value was retained on that property should ever go into production? And how much of Wallbridge's money was spent total on the block of claims you divested of?
It seems like three or four questions. But anyhow, Agnico approached us to acquire 100% of the Detour East property for CAD 8 million. We retained a 2% NSR on the property, but Agnico can buy it back for CAD 4 million. So for all intents and purposes, we'll get a CAD 4 million payment at some point in the future if this project advances. Agnico was about to invest to a 50% interest. A joint venture would be formed, and they could increase their ownership to 75% by spending $27.5 million over the next five years. In the future, as a partner and a joint venture partner, we would be subject to dilution if we could not fund our share of expenditures with the ultimate prize or not prize, but the ultimate low mark. If we couldn't fund our expenditures over the years, we would be diluted down to a 1% NSR. Detour Lake Mine, which is just on the other side of the border, as we all know, has proven and probable reserves of 19 million ounces, measured and indicated resources of 15.8 million ounces, and inferred resources of 6.7 million ounces. This was at the end of last year. It could be decades before Detour East property forms part of the future production of the Detour Lake Mine. Detour East property had limited historic exploration and requires a significant investment to convert the prospect into a resource and ultimately producing mine. We held the property for about four months after the Balmoral acquisition before signing the earning agreement with Kirkland Lake Gold that Agnico inherited when they acquired them and spent less than CAD 5,000 in holding costs on the property at that point in time. We believe this is the best outcome for our shareholders as the proceeds will be used to advance Fenelon and Martinique projects.
Awesome. One question. Will you drill one or two deep holes, 1,000 meters in Martinique to demonstrate both continuity and openness of depth?
Mark?
I like that question. Yeah, I wouldn't rule it out. We've already extended our drilling down with some holes down to 800 meters, and one thing I didn't mention, I'll mention it now, is our program this year and my team really impressed and grateful for how well their drill planning has always hit the structures that we know about and are targeting and then also are hitting structures that we didn't know about but can carry mineralization, so the systematic approach we've taken has been paying off. To answer the specific question, would we drill a couple of deeper holes on the order of a kilometer or so? I don't have immediate plans to do that right now, but plans like that, if we were to do it, it will emerge out of our analysis of all of this year's results once they have all of them in hand. One thing I should also just mention, while we're drilling anywhere, anything that we're drilling, whether it's Martiniere or Fenelon or even an earlier stage reconnaissance-level prospect, we're always updating our geology in a 3D model because that's really what we hang our decisions on. So we do this in as near real time as we can. So once we have the assays back from the rest of phase two, we'll be scrubbing down everything, sanity checking what we think we know versus what we know for fact. And then we'll just see where our interpretation leads us as we develop our plans for next year. But it's a great question. And yeah, I like finding more gold. And so far, this year's program has been checking a lot of the boxes in that direction.
Great. This is a question I get fairly often for a number of mining companies, but it's getting over email. Are you ever going to open a mine at this point? So I guess just speak to timelines.
Yeah, I think that I've answered that question with an earlier question.
Perfect. Yeah, I agree. One is, I think we've already tackled this a bit, but just to throw it to you guys as well. What is Wallbridge doing to get more investors involved in the stock, and what are the possibilities of progress and more gold discovery with the current budget?
Well, the current budget for this year is virtually complete. We will demobilize the drill later on this month, as Mark mentioned, gathering assays, doing all the geological work, and have some news flow in late November, early December. So that program is done. It's been an exciting program. Martiniere seems to be coming together nicely, and we're excited about our plans for next year, but we need to see the results of this year and develop our plans from that, so that's yet to come, and we're coming off a year where we had a limited program because when we had to finance it before the end of last year, the market was in a much different place than it is today, so it's exciting. We're all encouraged, and at the same time as focusing exploration on Martiniere, we will focus on some exploration on Fenelon and some of the early studies required to continue to de-risk Fenelon, but again, details will be provided as we put our budgets together for next year.
Got it, and I know we've already tackled this a little bit, but it's just directly from investors. I wanted to read it pretty much exactly as they wrote it. They say they're a long-term low investor. They're in this to make a profit. We have great drill results, record high gold prices, and still very little movement or less than they would hope. They're curious what, in your opinion, is going to be the catalyst that gets this off the line? What needs to change to facilitate the desired action north on share price?
Well, I think that it's all about exploration success, which we demonstrated this year, continue to de-risk and advance Fenelon, marketing the story, getting out there more often. We will have more money to do that next year. We will do more virtual events. And you can see we've got a pretty packed agenda for the balance of this year. One thing that I really focus on, and I'm proud of the team, is they all worked their guts out to get our PEA done by the end of March and file the tech report before the end of March. We guided to the market that we hit our goals, and we will continue to hit our goals.
Okay. Thank you. That's the end of the questions came in over email. As promised, I appreciate everybody's patience in the chat. I got about 15 minutes to run through those questions, starting with the ones at the top. Like I said, I'm going to only tackle every issue once. If you do feel like you haven't been heard or still need more information, let me know in the chat, but I'll also be sending through the questions to the teams, they'll be able to get back to afterwards. Started off, and there's a number of questions in the chat about this, so I wanted to throw it to you right off the top. Can Brian speak to why someone like Denis Laviolette would be so interested in taking over the helm at Wallbridge? And what does he see here that excites him so much that you guys have not been able to present to the market thus far?
Well, you know what? I answered this question earlier, and our disclosure policy prohibits us from engaging in chat rooms or message rooms. You can call me and ask me questions, but I don't know what his end game is and talk to Denis.
Thanks. Fred Yakman from the chat asked if you consider getting an equity injection from your First Nation partners?
That's always something to consider. We could, but in my past experience, it takes a long time to achieve, and it's probably something you want to consider once you've got the PEAs done and you're negotiating your IBAs because it's a great way to get them involved and give them an opportunity to participate like every other shareholder.
Okay. MLB from the chat asked, if you had only one area of the total site to work with, which would you do and the reason for that?
Well, we're focused on two areas primarily: Fenelon and Martinique. Fenelon because it's more advanced than Martinique, Martinique because it's very exciting, and that's where our exploration pizzazz is right now, and one is more of de-risking and advancing, and the other one is looking for additional discoveries.
Okay. Sorry, I'm just scrolling through the chat just to make sure. Sorry, you guys are active. I'm just trying to make sure I catch everything here. Ganesh, just at the bottom, I appreciate your efforts. Hopefully, disconnecting share price to the ounce in the ground is resolved and Wallbridge gets more love from the market from all of us. I appreciate that. Walking up here. One person asks, are there prospects of the board considering a change to the policy on engaging in chat rooms?
Absolutely not. It's not indicative of the whole market out there. So just about every company that I've ever been involved with and I know of prohibits entering these discussions because it risks selective disclosure, and we cannot take that risk. It's not good governance.
From my observation, almost every company has this policy in junior mining that they can't engage on boards. It's certainly not unusual. There's one that came in over email a bit later, actually, and this is directed specifically at Mark, and that's, what do you think is your biggest exploration priority for the rest of this year?
Oh, for the rest of this year, that's pretty straightforward. As I mentioned previously, gather up the rest of our Martiniere results to see what that all looks like. A little bit of a, when I mentioned the term sanity check, to be a bit more specific, what I mean behind that is we're going to take a hard look at what do we think we got for our efforts? What do we think we got for the investment we put into the ground this year? Does it move us closer to a multi-million ounce opportunity? We know where the resource sits today.
It's on the order of 730,000 ounces all in both categories. But really, again, the sense I have about Martiniere and also given the address where we've got multi-million ounces sitting at Fenelon, everybody knows how big Detour is. There's no reason Martiniere couldn't offer a more substantial, more robust-sized resource. So that's part one. Part two is really looking forward into 2026. What are our plans ultimately going to look like? 2025, in terms of exploration, was effectively entirely or nearly so focused on Martiniere alone. Brian already mentioned that next year, we're going to continue to put a lot of our efforts into pursuing this size of the prize question in Martiniere. But also, we have opportunities right around the Fenelon deposit itself and the broader claim block there.
And in the background, we have our regional reconnaissance team doing basic boot leather geology and consolidating the geophysical data and doing reinterpretations along those lines. And Brian mentioned as well, we have an option with our partners, Midland Exploration, who've been great to work with. But we do have a commitment in that option agreement to spend on the order of CAD 1.2 million next year to reach our 50%, our first threshold of 50% interest in the Casault properties. And we fully intend to integrate that work into our program for next year. So stay tuned. Once we have a full budget and plan fleshed out, we'll be able to inform the audience in the new year what it all looks like. But one other thing I should mention on Fenelon alone, technical studies.
There's a lot of just low-cost desktop work that we can do to continue to advance that project forward toward a better prepared, better informed decision to pursue a pre-feasibility study, so we have a lot of things in front of us to do, and we're going to be trying to attack all of them or to the extent we can, given the resources we'll have come the end of the year.
Great. Thanks, Mark. I appreciate that context. Brian, here's one that's kind of an amalgamation of a couple of questions in the chat, and that's, have you communicated with all of your major shareholders recently? Are you in communication with all your major shareholders?
Yes.
Great, and I do want to let everybody in the chat know, obviously, Brian's always happy to speak with shareholders directly via phone or email. Those are very easy to access. I believe his phone number is at the bottom of pretty much every press release Wallbridge has out, so not too tricky to get in touch with. I will throw it to Brian, Mark, and Tania just for some last words to wrap up today before we jet out, and for those who do have additional questions, please feel free to shoot them in. I am going to send the transcript over so the team can get out to you via phone or email, but Brian, Mark, and Tania, I'll throw it to you to wrap up. Brian, I can start with you.
First of all, thanks everybody for attending. I think it's a great opportunity to update you. We originally planned on having this earlier in the week, but it was decided to wait until we got our tax credit so everything was in the public domain and we can have an open discussion. It's great. I look forward to working with you in the future, and I'm very excited about our plans for next year and where we go forward with this opportunity. And thank you all.
Awesome. Mark and Tania, if you got any last words, I'll throw it to you. Otherwise, we'll wrap up for today.
I'll just end with a small confession. When we started drilling this year, that gap zone that I spoke about in between the Bug Lake, North Horsefly resources and the Dragonfly resources, I didn't have a lot of hope. I figured we'd drill a couple of holes in there and not find anything. Well, guess what? I was wrong. And wrong in a very good way. So I guess all of that really just goes to support the old adage, you're only as smart as your last drill hole. Stay tuned. More to come.
Awesome. Well, Tania, Brian, Mark, thank you so much for today. I really appreciate just letting us go through all the questions. I know these events take a long time just because there's a lot to get through, but really appreciate everybody running through it today. And everybody in the chat, thank you so much for engaging today. I know we got through a lot of materials, so I really appreciate everybody's attendance. I know taking up an hour in the middle of the day is always a lot, so I really do appreciate everybody's time. Hope everybody has a wonderful end of the day.
Thank you.
All the best.
Thank you, everyone.