Hello, and welcome to Virtual Investor Conferences. On behalf of OTC Markets, we are very pleased you have joined us for our third day of our Precious Metals and Critical Minerals Conference. The next presentation of the day is from District Metals. Please note, you may submit questions for the presenter in the box to the left of the slides. You can also view a company's availability for a one-on-one meeting by clicking Book a Meeting. At this point, I'm very pleased to welcome Garrett Ainsworth, President and Chief Executive Officer of District Metals, which trades on the OTCQX Best Market under the symbol DMXCF, and on the TSXV under the symbol DMX. Welcome back, Garrett.
Hey, thanks very much, Greg. Yeah, pleasure to be here, and I think before I get started with the presentation, I'm just gonna address some media that came out of Sweden last week. It's in regards to the Swedish government talking about removing a municipal veto on the processing of uranium and then looking to start an inquiry or investigation into mining of alum shales, with potentially putting on a new municipal veto on mining of alum shales. So, I mean, the first thing that needs to be fully understood here is that the uranium ban in Sweden was lifted as of January 1st, 2026. That has not changed. That is not threatened at all. District Metals, you know, our plans for 2026 remain the same, which I'll get into further in the presentation.
But, yeah, we're business as usual on that front. So this proposed inquiry into mining of alum shale, by the government, it is, very much political. We are in an election year in, in Sweden, so it's a political maneuver, and it should be, understood that, that in 2020, so six years ago, the, the Swedish government, they did an inquiry into alum shale at that time. And the results of that inquiry came up that there are no increased environmental risks with mining alum shale compared to mining of any other type of mineral deposit in Sweden. So again, six years ago, nothing's really changed on that front. The proposed inquiry that the government has stated won't come out until after the, the election in September of this year.
And one last note on all of this that's very important, is that the Geological Survey of Sweden is actually reviewing our flagship Viken Deposit as a deposit of national interest. We've been told that if we get this designation, or we should get this designation, hopefully within the first half of this year, and deposits and projects of national interest, you know, have a precedent in Sweden of overriding municipal vetoes. So all very good information to know, and with that, I will proceed with the presentation. So District Metals, we're a mineral exploration and development company in Sweden. We've got five uranium projects. Like I said, the uranium ban on exploration mining was lifted as of January 1st, 2026. We also have two base metal polymetallic projects in Sweden as well.
Just the cautionary statement you can find on our website and other news releases. So when I get asked, "Why Garrett, should we invest in District Metals?" And here are the four key points. It's all about the people, you know, the team that we have, track record of success from discoveries through to development, production. We have a deep knowledge of how to market the company, how to finance the company as well. And Sweden is an amazing country to be in. It's ranked number six by the Fraser Institute as investment attractiveness. It's very much pro-mining. And then our flagship project is the Viken Project that hosts the Viken deposit. It's the largest undeveloped uranium deposit in the world, but very significantly, it has large resources of vanadium, potash, molybdenum, nickel, copper, zinc.
There's also potential for rare earth elements as well that we'll look into in the future. And then we also have four advanced stage exploration uranium projects that include Sågtjärn, Nianfors, Ardnasvarre, and then the Alum Shale properties, where the Alum Shale properties, essentially where we're trying to discover another Viken deposit, because the Viken deposit is comprised of Alum Shale. So a bit about the team here. I'm a geologist by training, a uranium geologist. I spent much of my career in the Athabasca Basin, looking for and discovering high-grade uranium deposits. I was VP Exploration for Alpha Minerals, and took a lead role in the discovery of the Triple R deposit in 2012. That was bought out by Fission Uranium in late 2013 for CAD 189 million.
Won an industry award for my time there, for my efforts on that discovery. Then in 2014, I went on to NexGen Energy when the market cap was CAD 50 million. Had a lot of success with the Arrow Deposit discovery when I'm with the technical team as VP, Exploration and Development. When I left in 2018, the market cap was about CAD 3 billion. NexGen's market cap is upwards of 11 billion right now, so, you know, a very good success story. Then I got a hold of District Metals as a shell company in 2018, and got into Sweden in 2020. So, Marlis Yassin, our CFO, she's played critical roles in certain things, such as getting our Nasdaq First North listing that we got about a year ago.
So we trade on the TSX Venture, OTC, and also in Sweden on the Nasdaq First North Growth. We've got the local experience with Hein Raat and Rodney Allen, both having decades of experience with Boliden. We've got a deep bench of uranium experience with Jeremy, Joanna, and Galen, who all worked at NexGen. The board is very well-rounded off, with Doug Ramshaw having a technical and also broker background, Jonathan Challis, with a mine engineer and broker background. And then we've also got Sophia Shane, who was with the Lundin Group for 28 years, has a lot of contacts that have opened up for us in Sweden, especially. And then Rita Bennett is our advisor on marketing, corporate communications, and she's also with Discovery Group as their president.
So very proud of the team that we have here. And then the share structure, you know, we're largely high-net-worth institutional. There's been some pretty big volume lately, so, I mean, we have to sort out exactly how this balance is shifting. Usually, we find out around financings as we check in with shareholders. But you know, there's some very significant shareholders that have come in from family family groups well known in the industry, as well as you know, Rosseau Asset Management , MM Cap, Sachem Cove, Extract Resources. There's you know, strong support out of Calgary with National Bank. Obviously Sweden, we have a large pool of very significant shareholders, family offices and funds, also in Belgium and Spain as well. So it's a, it's very diverse and strong shareholder registry.
I'll mention we have about CAD 8.5 million in the treasury right now, and we're fully funded for our plans for this year. For those of you that don't know Sweden as a mining jurisdiction, like I said, it's ranked number 6 by the Fraser Institute. It is a powerhouse for metals, for the country itself, but also for the EU in terms of iron ore, copper, lead, zinc, silver, and gold. The major players are really Boliden, but BHP and Agnico Eagle are also in country, LKAB. You know, we find, like, the permitting process for what we have to do is very straightforward. We're well supported by all the government agencies, and the system is very, very clear. So something happened in late 2022.
The government that came in at that time was very pro-nuclear, and at that time, they said they were gonna lift the ban on on uranium exploration and mining, and that's what exactly they did with a vote in November of 2025, and then it became legislation on January 1st, 2026. But a lot of this is driven behind them wanting more cheap energy, such as building 10 more reactors by 2045. They've done a lot of moves to advance that, and this has led us to build up our portfolio of uranium projects that you can see in the figure there, with Viken being our flagship. And again, our Viken and Alum Shale properties are alum shale targets, and then Ardnasvarre, Sågtjärn, Nianfors, those are hard rock uranium properties, which are higher grade on the uranium side, but lower tonnage.
Let's jump into the projects here. So our flagship Viken property, it's... The history here is it was discovered in the late 1970s by the Geological Survey of Sweden, but no real significant work was done on it until the last uranium cycle, where Continental Precious Minerals drilled a bunch of holes. They did mineral resource estimates, preliminary economic assessments. They reached a market capitalization of CAD 330 million. Obviously, Fukushima hurt them quite badly, and then in 2018, that is when the ban on uranium came into effect and really was the final blow for Continental.
But then we were able to get a hold of the Viken project when, you know, before the uranium ban was lifted, and since then, we've updated the mineral resource estimate on the Viken project that you can see in the dashed pink line here. We've also flown the entire property that we've staked up to be quite large. Now, 38,000 hectares with a survey called MobileMT that has shown some very exciting results that I'll get into further down. And then our next-door neighbors, Aura Energy, they're Australian and LSE listed. They have the west extension of our Viken deposit that's in that yellow-orange outline, and it's their Häggån deposit that they've advanced through with scoping studies.
So we're a little bit behind them on that front, but, I mean, we only came into Sweden really three, well, two years ago, 2.5 years ago for the uranium, whereas Aura's been in country since 2008. So here's our updated mineral resource estimate on the Viken deposit. So the larger category is inferred, 4.3 billion tons material containing 1.5 billion pounds of uranium, 24.3 billion pounds of vanadium, and then there's billions upon billions of pounds of molybdenum, nickel, copper, zinc.
There's also very significant potash, K2O, 160 million tons, and there's also potential for rare earth elements that really haven't been looked at in the past, but this is something that we will do in the future when we start assaying our drill core going forward. So here's the mobile MT results that I mentioned, the entire, you know, Viken property that we have in the black outline. Again, 38,000 hectares. We flew fairly detailed survey here, and it picked up the conductive response within the Viken deposit itself because graphite is conductive. No other rock in the area has graphite or is conductive, so it stood out quite nicely.
But we were very, very pleased to see that, you know, target areas A, B, and C are showing larger and stronger signatures than what you see at the Viken deposit itself. So it's pretty clear for us to draw a conclusion that it's very likely that there's multiple Viken deposits within the Viken property itself. It's all about finding the right place to move forward with a potential mine. So I also mentioned our Alum Shale properties. This is where we are looking for another Viken deposit, and I believe that, you know, we have a very good chance of doing so. So we flew this MobileMT survey on all of our Alum Shale properties last year.
So it's about 70,000-75,000 hectares that we flew, and Österkälen is one of those projects that is within our Alum Shale projects, and it showed a very large 8 km long by up to 3.5 km wide conductive signature. It's very shallow. It's never been drilled. There's just a thin cover of soil on it. You know, the Alum Shale is a very soft rock, so it doesn't outcrop very often unless you go into creeks or you're on the shoreline of a lake or whatnot. But you know, very clear that there's good potential to discover a Viken-type deposit at Österkälen, and I'll definitely say the same thing for our Tåsjö property , which is, again, within the Alum Shale properties.
You know, we've got some very significant, conductive anomalies that were, again, from the mobile MT results, especially target area A, that shows 20 kilometers long by up to 5.4 kilometer wide zone of high conductivity with very, very shallow and thick nature. Again, these have never been drilled, so I'm very excited for us to get around to drilling it, later this year. You know, I get a lot of questions about, "Oh, Viken deposit, that's a really low-grade uranium, deposit, so why, why should that be interesting?" You know, I'll point back to the last uranium cycle and shortly thereafter, when in Africa, where it's low-grade uranium, there were two multi-billion-dollar monetizing events. Uramin was bought out for $2.5 billion by Orano.
That was for Trekkopje uranium deposit and some other, some other, African assets. And then, in 2012, Extract Resources was bought out for AUD 2.2 billion by CGN, for the Husab deposit, which is actually currently in production right now. You know, the big difference between these deposits is they're, they do not have any vanadium that they're producing, or potash, or any of the other metals, like molybdenum, nickel, et cetera. So it's... These are strictly uranium, and they're low grade, and, there's deposits and mines in this part of the world that have shown very significant monetizing events during past uranium cycles. So I've updated this table. I've shown this before.
As of yesterday, obviously, our share prices came off quite significantly since those media reports coming out of Sweden last week. We have dropped to an extremely low level when it comes to the enterprise value divided by inferred resources at $0.04. And looking at our peers, you know, it's almost at $5 per pound in the ground based on the inferred resources, or up to $4.21 on the measured and indicated category. So definitely good to see, you know, the valuation gap here and the potential opportunity. All right, so I'm gonna talk a little bit about the hard rock uranium projects that we have in the portfolio.
So, I mean, going back to those media reports, where they're going to be lifting the Municipal Veto on processing of uranium ore. So these hard rock uranium projects that we have, the three of them, if this goes according to what the government has said last week, then these projects will be free and clear for exploration and development, but they will also not be subject to any Municipal Veto. So again, I said they're a little bit higher on the uranium side. So the Sågtjärn deposit is about 0.07% U3O8, having about 1.14 million pounds. It's open in all directions. Some of the drill intercepts are very significant.
They're very shallow, that have been drilled here, and really, the last exploration that was done was in the late 1970s and into the early 1980s. So, this is a very good project for us going forward as well. And then Nianfors is very similar to Sågtjärn. It has a very large, uranium boulder field, at Majsvarvet, so over on the east side here under Nianfors number two. Almost 1,000 mineralized boulders, averaging 0.16% U3O8. But some of these boulders actually went up to 1.4% U3O8. They also have some yttrium that was assayed sporadically, and molybdenum as well. And the Geological Survey of Sweden put an exploration target estimate at Majsvarvet at, you know, 13 million pounds or more, grading 0.07%-0.14% U3O8.
So it's actually never been drilled. This, this estimate was based upon outcrop and the boulder field, and again, never, never been drilled, and Majsvarvet is sitting actually in a nice area that is not too long ago, being, being clear-cut of trees. Then we have Ardnasvarre. So this is a bit further up north and has potential for basement-hosted mineralization, also unconformity and sandstone mineralization as well. So at Labbsjö, you've got uranium mineralization within the basement. At Vuobsjåkk, you have mineralization at the unconformity and into the sandstone, and these age rocks are the same as what you see in the Athabasca Basin, which is very interesting. So, there truly is potential here for unconformity style mineralization.
I mean, we see it at Vuobsjåkk, at the boulder field, where there's mineralization, you know, at that conglomerate contact between the basement and the sandstone. Has not seen any significant, you know, modern-type exploration, so we're really excited for this project going forward as well. And let's just finish off here, talking about, you know, what the plan is for this year. So we've started a preliminary economic assessment at the Viken Deposit that'll be out in Q2 of this year. We've submitted all of our exploration drill permits for our Viken and Alum Shale Properties. After the PEA is done in Q2, we'll start an Economic Impact Study that will look at, you know, tax revenue, direct and indirect jobs, and other strategic benefits locally and nationally for Sweden.
We'll have that out in Q3. Hopefully, we'll be drilling later in Q2, and we'll also start some field work at our non-alum shale projects, being Ardnasvarre, Sågtjärn, and Nianfors. Then we'll start our MobileMT survey at some new alum shale mineral licenses that we staked up late last year, and start drilling at the Viken project, hopefully, and then results will start coming in in Q3, Q4 for drilling, for the MobileMT results, and then also for the field work that we're doing at Ardnasvarre, Sågtjärn, and Nianfors. So just to... I'll actually just summarize what, you know, what you get with District Metals here, a very strong team, technically and, and otherwise, in uranium and base metals. We're in a top jurisdiction in the world.
We've assembled an amazing portfolio of uranium properties that we're focused on right now. We also have optionality with our base metal projects, where we're looking for option partners to bring in, and then we have a very strong share registry that I'm very proud of, that's been very supportive throughout our development. So I think now I will be good to take questions. So let's start. Down at the bottom: Do you think something essential and fundamental in the company has changed after the dramatic fall of the stock price last week? It's business as usual for District Metals.
We plan on continuing with our work plan for this year, so this has not changed at all, and we're really looking forward to executing on everything that we've laid out in our news release that we put out in January, stating, you know, all the activities, the PEA, the EIS, the drilling, the MobileMT survey, and the field work. Next one. Considering there was a study conducted in 2020 into the mining of alum shales, how could the result of any new study this year yield a different conclusion? The science could not have changed in six years. Please comment. I couldn't agree with you more.
This inquiry into Alum Shales was done six years ago, and, and the investigators came back with, that there are no increased risk with mining Alum Shale over any other type of mineral deposit, in Sweden. So I do not see how, you know, nothing's changed in six years in terms of there's been no knowledge, that has come forth to counter that otherwise. So we'll, I mean, again, but I point back to the, the inquiry that is being, you know, proposed by the government is highly political, and we are in an election year. That is so important to note. All right, so introduction of a new ban. Oh, wait, it's not a ban. There's not a, there's nothing being discussed about a ban. That's very important.
So introduction of a new veto does not affect companies like District that can already proceed with the mining of uranium business. So if the inquiry into mining of alum shale, which probably won't be ready until after the election in September, if that comes out, and it states that they do recommend a municipal veto, for a municipal veto for mining of alum shale, it's not a ban, it's a veto, so it means you have to work with the municipalities, and get their blessing, obviously, to move forward. But then there's also a potential other mechanism is if the Viken Deposit gets designated of national interest, then it's helpful in dealing and working with a municipal veto. All right, so the Viken Deposit contains a very large amount of potash. Where does Sweden and the EU currently obtain their potash from?
And how important is potash to Sweden and the EU? This is a great question. So, you're correct. There is a lot, 160 million tons of potash in the inferred category of the Viken deposit. And it, you know, the current sources for potash for the EU come from Israel, come from Belarus and Russia. So obviously, the last two are not the best places to be getting potash from. I believe having a source of potash coming from Northern Europe, for Europe is an extremely important commodity to have, and I think it makes the Viken deposit, it makes alum shale that much more valuable.
I mean, one should note, like, the alum shales, when they break down, they create a soil that is extremely fertile and, and, you know, plants grow on it extremely well, and it's largely because of the, there's just so many minerals and potash within the alum shale. It is not a toxic, toxic rock by any, any means, like it's elevated, in, in many important nutrients for growing, growing plants. And I think that's, you know, that's not understood well enough, and that's why in previous inquiries, it has been, identified as not being any more of an environmental risk to other mineral deposits in Sweden. All right, so when will you know or be able to speak to the quantity of rare earth elements in the Viken Deposit? That is a good question.
So we decided not to re-assay all the historical drill hole for the Viken Deposit, because then we would have had to take that and do metallurgical work on it, and it would have slowed down the process of doing a preliminary economic assessment. And we decided it's really important for us to get out a preliminary economic assessment as quickly as possible. So the best way to do that is work with the existing data that we have. So that's the route we're gonna take. But going forward, so when we drill target area A and B later this year, we will drill wider diameter core, and we will assay for all of the rare earth elements.
You know, it's possible that the PEA from its original position could move up to target area A or B, based on what kind of drilling results that we get there. Then we will include the rare earth element component to it, but we'll need to do metallurgy. We've been looking at a metallurgical processing called Pug Roast, which is very good at breaking down everything. It just totally obliterates the alum shale and liberates a lot. So it's used quite often for lithium and rare earth elements. So it's a pretty exciting new technology that I think could be very applicable to the alum shales. What does HNW mean? So that HNW stands for high net worth. So, you know, typically, there's a bunch of definitions for that.
It can be anyone with net worth over CAD 1 million. By some, you know, Canadian standards, it can be over CAD 5 million, but it's generally an experienced and experienced investor that has a certain portfolio. How are we doing for... It's 30 minutes right now, so maybe I should end there and say, you know, please reach out to me at info@districtmetals.com with any more questions, or also reach out on the one-on-one meetings. Happy to chat with you on there as well.