Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining Sidoti & Company's August 2026 Microcap Conference. Really pleased to be able to host 1911 Gold Corporation. Their ticker is AUMBF on the OTCQX exchange, but the main board is the TSX Venture Exchange. With us today is Shaun Heinrichs, President and CEO, and Suzette Ramcharan, Vice President of Investor Relations. The format of this is going to be a presentation. If you do have any questions for 1911 Gold Corporation, feel free to type them into the Q&A section at the bottom of your screen, and I am happy to ask on your behalf if time permits. With that, Shaun, Suzette, thanks so much for being here, and the floor is yours.
All right. Great. Thanks, Julio. It is great to be here with you, and appreciate the opportunity to make an appearance on the Sidoti platform. It is our first time, so it has been good so far. We are excited about the meetings ahead as well. A nice start. Obviously, good gold price environment today. Gold is up a couple hundred dollars almost, so it is a very nice price action. I would put 1911 forward to the investors on the call here, and then watching the viewing potentially later, is that this represents one of the best near-term opportunities for a leveraged exposure to the upside potential in gold. We are a late-stage development project with almost all infrastructure currently intact and in place. Over the next couple of months, we will complete the construction of the remaining key components around the mill for an operational start-up towards the end of Q4 of 2026.
There is a significant amount of underground mine development already in place. It is a past producer, having produced over 2 million oz historically, an existing 1.1 million oz gold resource still in the ground. We have a significant opportunity for a sizable increase to that resource ahead of us going into the fall. With that, I will launch into the rest of the presentation. These are some cautionary statements around forward-looking statements that I will make during the rest of the presentation, as well as a review of the technical disclosures and the approval thereof by our VP, Michele Della Libera. Our target and our focus is a 2027 start-up of operations. We are targeting an initial program producing around 25,000 oz, but a quick ramp-up to 45,000 oz-50,000 oz in 2028, and then targeting 60,000 oz by 2029-2030.
We do see a significant near-term opportunity to increase the overall production profile, but that is the baseline we are starting with. Those plans are in place, and the development required to support that is underway or substantially complete already. This is a low CapEx entry into a late-stage development project. As I mentioned, there is very little capital left ahead of us. We have raised some funds recently which provide much of the remaining capital. We also have the ability to draw on a credit facility, which I can point to, which will provide a lot of the remaining capital for the rest of the construction through the remaining part of 2026.
It sits in the middle of a very prolific, large Greenstone belt, the Birch-Uchi Greenstone belt, and you can see in a little bit, it sits just to the west of the Red Lake camp, which is approximately 100 km to the east of us. Great place to go looking for additional mines. We have a very large, prolific area around us. The mill and the mines that we're going to focus on sit in the middle of that project area. Strong management team. Significant technical background here. Operators in this group, as well as experienced geology team working in the development and drill out of resources right through to production. You have the right skill sets to operate this facility, and that is our goal, to get into production here towards the end of 2026.
On-site, we have extremely strong senior management personnel as well as a supporting crew around them. We are staffed up. We're well-equipped. All the appropriate infrastructure is in place. Final changes are happening, equipment's arriving, and things are continuing to advance at the mine site. This is our capital structure. Having just raised some funds recently, we're well capitalized. Over CAD 33 million was raised in there. We've got access to another CAD 20 million through our current credit facility. That's CAD 20 million. Most of the dollar amounts I'm going to quote in here are Canadian, just for everybody's reference. 357 million shares outstanding. Strong institutional foundation underneath us. Also, Eric Sprott sitting there at 12%, having participated in several financings over the last couple of years. Good institutional holdings, as I mentioned.
A couple of strategics in the mix gives us a strong basis upon which to fund further investments if required. We are close to cash flow, and we do foresee a minimal amount of remaining capital required on this project. This is where we sit, just north of Winnipeg in the province of Manitoba, almost right on the border with Ontario. We're about three hours north by car. Quick drive, quick flight. It is a rail hub in Canada, so a significant supplier and service provider network in Winnipeg, which gives us a significant advantage over a remote location where a lot of stuff would have to be flown in at extensive, expensive cost. This is a look at our property map. Again, this is the Birch-Uchi Greenstone belt I referred to. Further east past Red Lake there you see on the right-hand side would be the Springpole project.
That'd be the eastern part. We are the western part of that area. That property outline you see there is 62,000 hectares. There are other past producers on our project area. I'll point to them towards the end if we have time. We do have good road infrastructure through that property. I skipped over that part. We do have hydroelectric power coming to site, second cheapest hydropower in Canada. Here you can see a good snapshot of the surface infrastructure, the permitted tailings pond in the background with significant capacity remaining, and relatively inexpensive lifts required to expand that capacity. We're in a really good spot in terms of buildings available to us, infrastructure already on site. We are completing the construction of a crushing circuit, which just sits right on the other side of the headframe here. That is underway. Foundations are poured.
Buildings are being constructed offsite as well as the crushing circuit. Those are substantially complete and due to be delivered over the next six to eight weeks, and they'll be sitting on that foundation. The building will come up around it. We'll be commissioning that facility through the month of November, with the eyes on a December startup of the full mill. The rest of the mill, which you see just off to the side here, is already ready to go. It's operational. We commissioned the ball mill recently. We are advancing through several areas in there to bring that online, but it's all operational currently. We do have all the camp access and all the remaining infrastructure on site to staff the people we need to operate this place. Looking here is a snapshot of our production profile.
This is based on our last PEA that we did, which is also based on our last resource. Remember, I'm looking to have a significant update to that resource coming up in the fall that is going to have a big impact on our mine plans. Already you can see at a starting point, there's a quick ramp-up through 2027 into production, targeting an increase by the end of the year at a higher run rate. This is all about opening areas in the underground mine. As we advance into and open up new areas in the mine, additional mine crews, additional tonnage, going to the mill, and the mill has significant capacity for over 1,600 tons. So lots of room to grow and scale.
You'll see a regional opportunity in a little bit too that will be feeding this mill, and we have lots of capacity to accommodate those additional satellite mines on this project area. Even so, at a CAD 3,000 gold price, you're at a CAD 391 million net present value. You're producing over CAD 545 million of net of free cash flow from this operation. Again, that's only capturing half of our old resource. So between an increase in our resource in the fall, additional drilling to capture more of that in a mine plan, you're going to see a significant upgrade in this NPV and ultimately in these cash flows from operation. Low cost, $1,897. This is the one U.S. dollar amount that I will quote.
$1,897 all-in sustaining cost for this operation gives us high leverage to gold, and obviously we're trading at a CAD 4,400-CAD 4,450 today at gold, so a large margin over what our costs are at the current time. Here's a look at the underground mine. You can see all the infrastructure, all the development in the underground. This is an irreplaceable level of development in there. You can also see that the stopes that we're targeting, these green and red shapes represent indicated and inferred stopes as part of our mine plan. They're in proximity to current development, so there isn't a significant amount of capital required to get into these areas. It's more about building the ramps and the ore drives in order to establish the stopes, and to bring them into production. We see a lot of opportunity to grow this.
I'll get to that in a little bit. The next slide is going to focus just around a drill campaign that we did in one of the near-term targets. This is an area of production that we're bringing in over the next several months. On the backside, you can see a second target that we've drilled into. We're actually completing development into that target right now, and we'll look to have production from both of these coming over the next four or five months, sending that to the mill. There's a couple of other areas off of one of the ramp mines that we'll be looking to produce. We've drilled those areas out. They sit higher up in that ramp mine. You can see the ramp mine sitting here in the back right here. There's two other ones, one there and another one there as well.
Those other two are going to come online towards the end of 2027 and 2028. This initial one, this one that comes down like that, is coming online now. We're in there. We've dewatered a significant amount of it, and we've got resources higher up that we're advancing into currently. The plan is to stockpile ore, commission the mill, and start processing that ore towards the end of this year. This is a look at our geological map. The key takeaway here, without getting into the geology too much, is that our project within the permitted mine lease area consists of a series of shear structures intersecting favorable host rocks, the best host rock being the San Antonio gabbro. That's this one here. The other one would be the shoreline basalt, particularly around this dilational fold where you have a massive mine that's already been discovered.
When you look at those shear structures, you can see them cutting across this way. So they're east-west intersecting with these host rocks. Wherever that host rock's been intersected by a mineralized shear structure, you have potential for discovery, and that's exactly what's happened for us. We've drilled areas that were historically overlooked and made several discoveries. Four, in fact. One is just a recent discovery, which we'll talk about in a minute, but three other ones that we've now managed to drill and extend at depth. Those are better shown as on this slide here, you can see a visual of where these sit in proximity to the current mine infrastructure. Very close by, when you're going to SAM SE , which is here, and Shore, which is there, and the new target, Baker, you're stepping out to the southeast 350 m-500 m in that direction.
A lot of development already reaching into those areas or close to, so the capital here is minimal. It's not nothing, but it's a lot less than it would take to develop a brand-new mine. We are all ready within reach. We're able to drill these from underground, which is pretty exciting. So we can drill these at depth, whereas normally you'd have to do a 1 km- 1.5 km hole sometimes to be able to extend them to the depths that we're capable of doing from underground. Even more interesting is the San Antonio West project, which sits on the other side to the west, as you can guess. It actually closes the gap between the mine and the Cartwright resource that we already have. This is a resource that's never been mined.
Now we've got a big giant vein system between us and the Cartwright vein system. We're going to be able to mine towards that area laterally from the existing infrastructure and bring that ore right back to that shaft. The other key thing is that these are higher up closer to surface. We've got loading pockets, which is where you drop the ore in to put it in the skip and take to surface. Higher up in the mine, we'll be able to increase our throughput and production rates while we tap into these higher -grade new discoveries we've made around the mine site. For us, that's very exciting.
That is going to be somewhat of the transformation you see in the fall with an updated resource capturing these new areas, bringing that into our global resource, as well as bringing in some of the infill drilling, the higher density drilling we've done in the underground to improve the overall quality of our resource. This is a cross-section of those same areas, taking the San Antonio gabbro, that brown unit, slicing it in half and looking at those three areas to the east, the southeast. You got San Antonio Southeast, Shore, and that new one Baker, which sits out here. This is a new shear structure. I think there's only historically been one or two drill holes here, so this is a maiden program, maiden discovery by this company. 36.1 g/ ton there over 1.1 m. Nice starting point.
We'll look to start drilling that again here in the fall, and we're also looking for opportunities to drill it from underground, potentially from the Hinge mine. The next big picture for us is really the regional belt, 62,000 hectares of prospective area. Never really been drilled to any significant extent. There are several other historic producers, particularly down in this area, which are better on the next slide. What you can see on this one is just how the geology works. You can see the same systems that feed into the True North mine lease area, which is up here, which is what we were just looking at, coming back down into this area and feeding the same systems down here. You have the same types of host rock, same types of shear structures going into that area as what you have up at True North.
For us, that is the second priority, and our next focus for discovery. In fact, we've actually got one resource that we just came out with last week called the Ogama-Rockland resource, sits right there. Close to roads, about 45 km away by road. You can see that white line goes right out into that area. High grade, 712,000 oz at 6.68 g/ ton. Significant number of areas that are open. Even within the resource, there were some clear gaps in the drilling that we can fill in and add to that resource quickly. But then there are also extensional areas that we can be drilling, particularly up to the northwest on that project. There was open areas going up in this way. Over 1.5 km of strike length on surface there, so this is a big footprint.
True North was about 2 km. This is a slightly smaller footprint at the start, but significant depth potential. It is also a historic producer, 45,000 oz at 11 g/ ton were produced on that project right there. That was only out of one vein. We have 14 veins there. You can see that on this one, and there is a better slide coming up. 14 veins. We did 4,000 m of drilling. We added it into the historical database, updated the resource, and came out with a 712,000 oz, 6.68 g/ ton resource. So really good starting point. We will be back there in the fall. We will be drilling this out. This for us is the next near term satellite producer to feed ore to the mill. Higher grade likely than what is coming out of the existing mine lease area.
Smaller in scale, but very profitable in terms of grade. Close by in trucking terms. It is, as I said, 45 km. We put in a cost of CAD 14, CAD 15 per tonne in there for that trucking distance, so very economic. There are multiple areas down in the southeastern part of the project that are very prospective. We have one other key target that we will be looking to drill in the fall to start that program, and then continue to build that pipeline. This is a look at the vein structure. Here you can see the key takeaway is really we hit those veins over and over again. We are able to consistently and reliably intersect the structure of the Ogama-Rockland resource in our drill program, which gave us a high degree of confidence in there. This is again, just looking at the resource.
Key things to take away here is we cut it off at depth, 590 m below surface. We cut it off there. We also cut it off on the top here. That is not a great line, but it is what it is. 36 m of distance between the top of the resource and surface was kept as a crown pillar. That is just a gap between the development and the top to make sure you do not have any disturbance on surface. So key part of our initial program to develop satellite mines, have a hub- and- spoke type model on this project. That is what this picture is showing. So we see other opportunities. Ogama is our first priority following the build-out and development of the mine lease area, the extension of those new discoveries around the mine area itself.
Step out to Ogama, step out to other areas in central Manitoba where there is a lot of historic mining already, and significant upside potential. Then start to look at other parts of the property where we have significant gold findings on surface. Large kilometer- scale structures, with gold mineralization across it. Lots of drilling to be done. We intend to be a self-funding exploration company. By the time we are getting into those areas, we want to get into cash flow- positive territory here by mid to late next year, start generating significant cash flow from our current operations and self-fund all our future exploration and growth opportunities on the project. So coming up for us really is that resource. I brought it up a few times. I do not want to understate the impact that it is going to have.
We're expecting a significant jump in the size of the resource as well as the quality of the resource. We'll be scoping in the Ogama-Rockland resource on there as well, so you'll get a good global picture of the potential around the project. We're continuing to drill, so we'll be continuing to update those resources in the future as well, and particularly in support of our mine strategy and our mine plan. There'll be ongoing drilling and there'll be ongoing development updates as we step into Q4 of this year. There are many milestones to be achieved, the key one being the completion of that crusher circuit on the mill, and then the other one being the commencement of mining activity in the Hinge ramp mine. That was that first ramp I pointed to. We're already mining in the shaft.
We need to get the mining activity picking up in Hinge mine and stockpiling ore from there in preparation for the mill to start up. So lots ahead for us. I expect January, February, we'll be running more or less, at around 700 tons, 800 tons a day, maybe 600 tons, 700 tons a day to start. Then ramping up through 2027, continued increase in the monthly average gold processed through the mill, particularly as we open up new areas in the mine. And continued updates to the market with respect to our current mine plans, which are going to evolve significantly with the updated resource coming up. That's the extent of the presentation. I would like to give an opportunity to answer any questions to the viewers or anything that was written in or pre-prepared. That'd be great.
Great. Shaun, thanks so much for the rundown. Again, if you have any questions for 1911 Gold, please feel free to type them into the Q&A section. Happy to ask on your behalf. I guess to kick it off here, believe you guys raised about CAD 35 million, but I think you spent close to CAD 40 million, I think, in the first half. So if you could just talk through how far along the new kind of funds get you through—
Yeah.
—From a time perspective.
For sure. Last year, we raised a combined amount of about CAD 36 million, CAD 37 million in two separate raises. The bulk of those funds were designated development or exploration funds for the continued drill-out of the new discoveries, which I pointed to, as well as commencement of rehab and development work in the underground mine. We entered the year with those funds in hand, having done some spending. In February, March, we entered into a credit facility with Auramet, $30 million or CAD 40 million in total. We have drawn half of that.
In reconciling back to the number you gave, the bulk of those funds spent to date went to development in the underground, rehabilitating Level 16, Level 26 in the shaft mine, dewatering of the Hinge mine, and purchasing of equipment, and commencement of construction around the crushing circuit on the mill, as well as upgrades on the mill facility as well. We also acquired one camp building, and we have been in the process of completing the acquisition of another camp building to increase our total capacity on the mine site. Those works are substantially complete. Ahead of us remains the completion of the crushing circuit. Obviously, there is a number of bullet payments around the delivery of the building components and the crushing circuit, so that is coming in the next several months. I would say those were about half paid for at this stage.
We are probably looking at about another CAD 10 million- CAD 12 million to spend on those areas as those items are delivered, and they are put together on site. In the underground, it is going to be a continuation of the development program in support of production, which includes delineation drilling. That is part of our development cost. We spend around CAD 1.5 million- CAD 2 million a month on delineation drilling, on top of exploration drilling, and regional or resource extension drilling. That is ahead of us. We are funded for that at this stage with the draw of the Auramet loan. As we step towards production in kind of late December, January, February of next year, we will look to see whether or not we can probably bump up the size of the loan in order to support the working capital of the company during that startup period.
But we are in a good position to complete the commitments that we have ahead of us at this stage.
Excellent. For those of us new to the story, you own a mine and a mill that already exists and already permitted. Can you kind of just walk us through what still has to happen between today and the day gold is pouring, and roughly the expenditure?
Yeah. Look, our ideal scenario is the first gold pour is the end of December. That might not be the biggest bar we've ever seen, but let's say a more realistic goal is some time in January. So between now and January, what has to be done, continued underground mine development activity, so taking out ore preferentially at this moment from the Hinge ramp mine, because we'll be able to mine those. There's about four targets in there. We'll be able to mine those relatively quickly, and put that ore on the ground between now and November when the mill's starting to get going. We're commissioning the mill. Most of the work inside the mill itself is substantially complete. We're in the process of relining tanks, and that's mostly done at this stage, and once that's complete, that is it for the mill.
Completion of the crushing building is the biggest lead time item right now. We're expecting delivery of all the key components for the building envelope itself and the crusher that's going inside the building over the next six to eight weeks. Those will be put together on site, and then we'll be commissioning the crushing circuit through the month of November and early December, and then we'll have a full start-up of the mill. Once the mill is started, we'll first bed the mill with low-grade stock. So there'll be a couple of weeks of low-grade material going through there. Then we'll start to process ore. As the ore loads up, the carbon in the circuit starts to, in the leach circuit as well as your gravity circuit, we'll build up sufficient inventory of gold in-circuit to justify doing a strip through the refinery.
The strip is pulling the gold off the carbon, and then putting it through the smelter and pouring our first bar sometime in mid to late, I'd say January at this point. David, our mill manager, would say earlier. I'm still sticking to later. But that's the sequence of events. So first gold pour sometime in early Q1 of next year, and then there'll be a steady ramp-up of gold production. After that, then you get into a regular routine of filling up the mill, and filling up the gold inventory in circuit, and then refining it and pouring it and shipping it. So it should be relatively consistent at that point, with some volatility with respect to the areas that we're mining only, so yeah.
Got it. You talked about the Ogama region. How does Ogama potentially follow in True North's footsteps?
True North, the difference between True North and Ogama-Rockland is True North is permitted already. It already has an existing Environment Act Licence in place that is in good standing. We need to do the same in Ogama-Rockland. That is an area that sits in out of park area, off the road, historically disturbed. It is likely to be an underground mine, and minimal on-site surface infrastructure. Likely there will be a small building for people that are working in the mine, and there will be a small crushing and potentially an ore-sorting circuit in order to minimize traffic and minimize ore going to the mill. I think that that should be a relatively simple and straightforward permitting job. We are in the process of collecting the data in support of that now.
We are commencing that work now, taking baseline studies and looking at impact to the area, and obviously discussing with First Nations and communities around there as well, that activity, and it is ongoing. Once that work is complete and it is permitted for production, it is a relatively quick ramp. The ore comes fairly close to the resource, sorry, comes fairly close to surface, so we will be ramping in higher up into that ore, doing an initial bulk sample, and then upon completion of that, we will be focusing on the development of that mine, and then shipping that ore up to the mill. We do not have a tonnage on what is going to come out of there at this point, but it is likely to be higher -grade and a decent amount of material. It should push us closer to that 100,000 oz production target per year, if not over.
Got it. Gold prices are up a good amount this year. Your stock is down a little bit from the high. Just help us kind of understand why do you think that is, and then what needs to happen to close that gap.
Yeah. Well, look, my peer group is all relatively down except for a few that have held up fairly well. I think there was a lot of speculative fever in the market coming into January, February, and in March. It was a bit of a return to what we've seen in the past, and we've gone through a bit of a pullback with the uncertainties. Not necessarily uncertainties around mining this time. I think everybody's comfortable that mining companies are better stewards of capital than they have been historically. Just the gold market sentiment, in particular, has weakened over the last four months or so. We're seeing a return now to the gold price confidence. A lot of that lack of confidence was around the direction of interest rates and the follow-on impacts of higher oil prices and those kinds of factors.
Gold is definitely a sentiment-driven sector, and when sentiment turns, it does tend to have a big impact on the companies. I'd say as we get into production, we are likely to be less sensitive to that factor. We won't be completely immune to it, though, but you do tend to be a bit more resilient. As a development project, you're getting valued on future production, and when the top line goes down, your value goes down. We had some financing pressure in June too, so that's a bit of a 1911 -specific issue. We're now on the back end of that with the financing completed and visibility around what that looks like and where that takes the company. So I expect an improvement in confidence.
We are sitting at the beginning of a fairly significant news cycle for us, with a lot of deliverables coming for our investors to see the progress we've made. So I look forward to turning that sentiment back around and seeing 1911 being back up where it was before, and I'll be a bit of a leader, hopefully, in the peer group that I sit in.
Got it. Just last one to close it out here is just you mentioned financing's completed and you have some visibility in hand. How would you have investors track your success on progress in executing the plan over the next six, 12, 18 months from now in your view?
Yeah. No, look, people are invested in 1911 Gold somewhat for the exploration opportunity, but primarily for the delivery of production and the ability for 1911 to be one of the next companies to take advantage of CAD 4,500, CAD 5,000 gold. Our ability to execute on that startup plan is key. I'm sure that our shareholders would allow us a few weeks this way or that of missing our targets, but obviously delivery on them within a reasonable timeframe is going to see a confidence return to the company, and confidence in the thesis upon which they bought the company being reinforced. For us, it's that start-up in December. If we don't pour gold in December, it's not the end of the world. We're going to try.
But I think seeing that mill start up, seeing that mining production kicking up, seeing a steady progression of mining activity and then ultimately, obviously, that first gold pour and then a discussion around future plans in 2027. I think the resource, obviously, is going to help people see the size and potential of the things that we've discovered around the belt, and how those impact our resource and ultimately how they impact our mining strategy. Because that's really where it's going to come through, is mining resources higher up, closer to surface, higher grade, higher throughput coming out of the mine, and what that does for our production numbers is going to be key for the company. I think as those come through, as we meet our targets, this isn't an exploration story so much, and so our targets are pretty easy to measure.
We're either running or we're not. That's going to be very obvious to everybody if we know what we're doing very soon.
Great. Well, Shaun, Suzette, thanks so much for taking the time today.
Thank you very much, Julio. Great to be here.