Welcome to Virtual Investor Conferences. My name is Scott Powell, President of Skyline Corporate Communications Group LLC. On behalf of OTC Markets and Skyline Corporate Communications Group, we are very pleased that you have joined us for the third day of our Precious Metals and Critical Minerals Conference. The next presentation is from Founders Metals Incorporated. Please note that you may submit questions for the presenter at any time. You may also view the company's availability for one-on-one meetings by clicking Book a Meeting. At this point, I am very pleased to welcome Costner Morrison, who is the Director of Investor Relations with Founders Metals. The company trades on the OTCQX Best market under ticker symbol FDMIF and also trades on the TSXV under ticker symbol FDR. Welcome, Costner.
Thank you, Scott, and thank you everybody for joining today. As Scott said, my name is Costner Morrison. I am Director of Investor Relations with Founders Metals. I recently actually just joined the company four months ago, and it has been a very exciting time to have joined. We have seen several new discoveries, very strong drill results, and I am very excited to be here today to take you all through it. Just a quick disclaimer, I will be making forward-looking statements in today's presentation. Just a quick introduction to our leadership team, if you are not familiar with our story. Colin Padget is our CEO. He has been the CEO of Founders Metals since Antino was acquired at the end of 2022. He is a great leader for us. We have a couple notable members of our board of directors that I am going to speak about.
Vijay Kirpalani was formerly the director of Reunion Gold. That was the company that developed Oko West and sold it to G Mining Ventures for $950 million in 2022. Chris Taylor additionally needs no introduction. He was the Founder and CEO of Great Bear, which sold to Kinross for CAD 1.8 billion pre-resource. Our management team is composed primarily of geologists, so that is what gives us a very technical management team and is what alludes to our exploration-focused nature. Everybody on the management team is a geologist with the exception of the CFO. Why Antino? Founders Metals is advancing its 100% owned Antino Gold Project, which is located in southeastern Suriname. It is a large-scale gold district. It is the largest continuous land package in the Guiana Shield, composed of over 100,000 hectares of highly prospective Greenstone Belt geology, only 2% of which has been drill tested to date.
We have several high-grade discoveries on the property already, several of which are many kilometers apart. We are currently doing a 70,000-meter drill program, which is fully funded at very competitive drilling cost of $200 per meter. We have validation from a major gold producer in Gold Fields, as they have invested over $100 million in the company to date for a 19.9% interest. A quick overview of our corporate snapshot. As I mentioned, Gold Fields has a 19.9% interest. We are also supported by many very supportive long only and tenured institutional funds. Our share price is currently trading around CAD 8 for about a billion-dollar market capitalization, with $80 million of cash on the balance sheet. We are well covered from an analyst perspective. Price targets are now ranging from about $9 to $21.
This slide really speaks to why we are interested in the Guiana Shield, and the reason is that it is a geological analog to West Africa. West Africa is known for being home to several large-scale gold deposits. It is the same Greenstone Belt geology that is in West Africa that goes right through the Guiana Shield into the north part of South America and is because hundreds of millions of years ago, these two continents were connected. However, there is quite significantly less gold in South America that has been discovered to date, in this part of South America, I should say, with only 110 million ounces of gold that have been discovered here, compared to 275 million ounces in West Africa. That is starting to change. Just recently, we have had Omai, Oko West, Oko Ghanie, three very successful projects in Guyana, which are now valued between CAD 2 billion and CAD 3 billion.
A lot of success and a lot of recent focus on the Guiana Shield, and that is why we are very excited to be here now. We are across the border from Guyana in Suriname on the southeastern portion, as I mentioned, which is also no stranger to mining. There has been 25 continuous years of large-scale gold mining in Suriname, largely between Newmont's Merian Mine and Zijin's Rosebel Mine, which combine to produce about 500,000 ounces of gold annually. Beyond these two mines, there are several small-scale operations as well, which combine with these larger-scale operations to make gold very central to the Surinamese economy. It accounts for about 85% of the country's total exports and 30% of government revenues. It is a very exciting time to be in the country with the expected boom in offshore oil, with recent discoveries off the north coast of the country.
Similar to what Guyana has been going through with a strong resource boom and development of its oil industry, we see Suriname doing the same thing over the next few years. S&P actually forecasts the GDP of the country to double, so it is a very exciting time to be in Suriname as the country looks to unlock its resource sector. The one thing that mining does really well that oil does not do well is create jobs, and that is why we see the continued focus by the government to focus on developing its gold mining industry and add another large-scale gold asset to what is currently there. I will speak a bit about our projects. We often get the question about Antino and why we have not released a resource yet, given that we have been at this for about three years so far.
There is a number of unique things about Antino that make it a very different property, which demands a different exploration strategy. First of all, what is obvious is the scale of the property. It is 102,000 hectares. It is 55 kilometers from north to south, roughly the size of Hong Kong and 17 times the size of Manhattan. There is a lot of land for us to explore. We have already made 11 discoveries to date on this land property, and most of those have been concentrated in the middle of the screen there, where that was our original concession. It is 20,000 hectares, and that was the area that we have been working on since the acquisition of the property.
Now all the other land beyond that is about 80,000 hectares, and that was only acquired within the last calendar year, which we already have three discoveries on to date, in Antino North, Antino Northeast and Upper Antino West. Speaking about our main discoveries would be Upper Antino and Lower Antino. They are our two most advanced targets with about 100,000 meters of drilling to date between the two of them, and I will speak more about those in more detail as we go through the presentation. But a few other intercepts or a few other deposits on here that have company making intercepts that have seen less than 5,000 meters of drilling to date that have significant potential beyond our advanced targets would be Van Gogh, for example, has 28 meters of 7 grams per tonne gold in its first ever drill hole.
Maria Geralda with 22.5 meters of 12 grams per tonne gold in its third ever drill hole. These are deposits that only 5,000 meters of drilling have been done to date, so significant room to go back and test those further. Obviously I cannot pass the slide without speaking about Upper Antino West and the very recent 27 meter of 20 gram per tonne gold intercept that we intersected just about six weeks ago. Again, that is on our brand new land property, 1.2 kilometers west of our main Upper Antino zone, and that continues to be one of our most important focuses. Speaking about Upper Antino, again, this is our most advanced targets, right in the center of our concession.
It consists of high-grade gold mineralization across multiple shear zones, running 2.5 kilometers along strike from north to south, and about 750 meters wide between the Froyo zones and the Donut zones, currently drilled to about 450-meter depth. As I mentioned, the new West Zone is really the focus of our new discovery, which was only discovered in June, and then followed up just in August with a drill hole of 27 meters of 20 grams per tonne gold, 1.2 kilometers west of the main Froyo zone. Very strong metallurgical testing to date between 91% and 96%, and we do continue to be expansion focused. While a portion of our drilling is focused on infill drilling, Upper Antino, we continue to look to expand the footprints along strike, crosswise, and then at depth as well as it remains open in all directions.
One really strong expansion opportunity that we do see is between the West Zone and the Froyo Zone. There has been very minimal drilling to date between the West Zone and the Froyo Zone, and this is again the new discovery on the West Zone there. Those two drill holes that you see in the middle were drilled quite north of this section. This is quite a wide section, so there is a main area there that remains largely untested and has also yielded very significant auger anomalies that we do look to go back to. We look forward to going back there and drill testing that area. We see significant potential to expand the Froyo Zone between the West Zone, and we look forward to drilling that here in the near future as well.
The Froyo Zone is the main part of the Upper Antino Zone. This is the area that we have been primarily focused on since about 2023. It consists of high-grade mineralization from surface extending all the way to depth. One of its earliest holes was 15.5 meters of 31 grams per tonne gold. We had more strong hits, for example, 45.8 of 4 grams per tonne gold from 222 meters. Just recently, in the last months, we are really proving that the high-grade mineralization continues at depth, and that is evidenced by just last week, we announced 54 meters of 8.45 grams per tonne gold. One of the best intercepts on the Antino properties to date. A few weeks before that, we announced 28 meters of 14.27 grams per tonne gold.
This is really quite important because what you are starting to see is on the cross-section, a very strong mineralized zone that is quite continuous right from the surface, if you can see on that line there. It is also important because our thesis is that the orogenic gold system continues to quite a significant depth. Our Guiana Shield gold peers, Oko West, Omai, and Oko Ghanie all extend to about 1,000 meters. There is significant room for us to continue to drill this deposit to depth, given that we have only really drilled significantly to about the 250-meter level. You can see that about here is where most of our drilling has stopped to date. Lower Antino is our other advanced targets. We have put about 25,000 meters of drilling into Lower Antino to date, and it is composed of intrusion-hosted, consistent grade gold mineralization.
That is evidenced by the drill traces that you can see on the right side of the screen on the plan view. Mineralization littered from top to bottom on almost all of those drill traces. Characterized by broad intervals of consistent grade gold. For example, 90 meters of 1 gram per tonne, 81 meters of 1 gram per tonne. The way we see this playing out, given its proximity to Upper Antino, being only 3.5 kilometers east, is a bulk tonnage companion to the high-grade deposit at Upper Antino. We see the two bodies together, leading to quite a strong body of mineralization. We have also discovered high-grade mineralization in the Lower Antino body. For example, just in April, we hit 6 meters of 13 grams per tonne. We look forward to continuing to test the west zone where that high-grade mineralization was detected.
We also often get questions about how we are generating new targets, and I think this slide really speaks to one of our initiatives in 2026, which is our surface exploration program. We are actually currently doing a property-wide exploration auger sampling program. 35% of the 100,000 hectare package has been sampled to date, including the collection of over 10,000 samples. This is already leading to very exciting results. Not only is it highlighting some of the mineralization in some of our more developed areas, but for example, just below the initial concession, right about here, you can see this is an 8-kilometer gold trend that has never seen a drill hole. It is, again, in the newly acquired ground. That is an area that we look forward to following up in some area in the near future. This is a very capital-efficient exploration.
It accounts for a very small portion of our overall exploration budget. This has been a very effective way in helping us develop our target pipeline. Speaking about some of our more emerging targets, Antino North and Northeast, these were just discovered this year, two of our latest discoveries. At Antino North, we have mapped three shear zones, drill tested all three of them, and confirmed mineralization at all three of them. A discovery hole of 24.6 meters of 2.8 grams per tonne. That was released in about April. Northeast, I think is even more exciting. As you can see on that prior page, Antino Northeast, which is right up here, this is a kilometer scale gold anomaly. We drill tested it in July. The first ever hole returned 58.5 meters of one gram per tonne.
We've currently drill confirmed a strike length now of 1.2 kilometers, and we are actively drilling it up at Antino Northeast, and look forward to providing the market with new results there soon. At Maria Geralda, we recently completed a 74-hole deep auger program. The story behind this is, this goes back to what I was speaking about earlier. There was an early intercept of 22 meters of 12 grams per tonne. We followed that up with a few more drill holes, but couldn't quite intercept that same high-grade mineralization. This deep auger program really helped to inform us about the shape of the geometry. Now we look forward to going back there. We actually have a drill that's just moved to Maria Geralda, and we will be drill testing this further.
Now that we have a better understanding of the geometry, we look forward to hopefully being able to find that same high-grade mineralization and further expand the footprint of that deposit. Same story at Da Vinci and Van Gogh, where we had two very strong early intercepts. Given the success of the program at Maria Geralda, we plan to also go back and test Da Vinci and Van Gogh as well in the near future. This is sort of a fun slide that we've recently published, and it really is to explain the thesis about why we have this district scale approach to exploring Antino. If you compare the size of the Antino land package to the Abitibi Gold Belt, you'd have six very large-scale operating gold mines on the property. This isn't us waving our arms saying we're going to have 70 million ounces.
What it is just speaking to the fact that what we see developing at Antino is not just one deposit, we see multiple deposits. Given that we've only drill tested 2% of the property to date, that's why it's so important for us to keep going back and continuing to explore the lands and develop, hopefully, a district, which is already what we're seeing to play out with multiple deposits that are all several kilometers apart. This is just a quick comparison table compared to some of the other Guiana Shield projects. Antino compared to some of the other top projects in the Guiana Shield, has five of the top 10 drill results from 2026. Notably, the top three, all of which are from Antino, were all drilled within the last couple of months, all largely in new areas.
The West Zone has the best, or I think the second best, from a grade thickness perspective, intercepts on the entire Antino property. This was our first series of step-out drilling from Upper Antino West and intersected 27 meters of 20 grams per tonne. We've had two very strong results from the deeper regions of Froyo, and that's including the one that just came out last week, the 54 of 8.4 grams per tonne. A lot of very strong results from brand new areas. Again, we've not significantly drilled Froyo at depth, so we look forward to continuing to do that as well. This is going to be one of my last slides, but just speaking to sort of, again, what the thesis of orogenic gold in the Guiana Shield is that these things grow.
We're definitely not, in the near future, going to be publishing an initial resource. But at the time we do, it likely isn't the end, given the existence of multiple pits, kind of several kilometers apart, continued growth of mineralization bodies at depth. What we've seen in the Guiana Shield generally is, the initial resource is only a fraction of the total gold that's discovered over the mine's total life. And we're already seeing that start to develop at Antino with the discovery of multiple gold systems, and with continued strong success at depth as well. This is just to wrap up. Again, quite exciting news lately, some very strong drill results. We recently got the $77 million investment from Gold Fields to increase our ownership to 19.9%, which also consolidated 100% of the asset. It's royalty-free, which is, I think, quite rare in today's gold markets.
In terms of near-term catalysts, as I said, we're continuing to advance our 70,000-meter drill program. We're continuing to advance that property-wide auger sampling program, and which will hopefully yield to new discoveries. There's potential for further land consolidation in addition to the recent acquisitions from this year. And we'll continue to do follow-up work on the recent discoveries. That ends my prepared section. I'll now turn it over to Q&A, and it looks like we've already got some pretty strong participation, so let me just work my way through these. There's a question now about looking at opportunities to consolidate more land. I think if there is definitely a target, where you can see here would be this missing puzzle piece, which is right here. The right side of the screen is the Lawa River, which is the border with French Guiana.
This sort of trapezoid shape region is of strong interest. And if you were to go back to the auger sampling map as well that I illustrated, there is quite strong potential for that auger sample to continue into that region. So we do see very strong potential there, and that's an area that we're very interested in. Question about does owning 100% of Antino give us more flexibility in future strategic discussions? Absolutely. I think, yeah. We're certainly looking to continue advancing Antino as ourselves and we've obviously been very successful to date. We are a team of geologists, and we are actively looking to expand our team to bring on the necessary skill set that we would need to advance the project further. But having 100% of the asset definitely is enormous in terms of the flexibility that we need to continue advancing the property.
Where are the drills located at the moment? There are currently two drill holes at Upper Antino. One has just moved to Maria Geralda, as I mentioned. One is still spinning at Antino Northeast, and one is at Lower Antino. I guess I should elaborate a little about that as well. What we do, our drilling approach really remains 50% focused on Upper Antino and Lower Antino, the advanced targets, not just infill drilling, but also continuing to expand the footprint both along strike and at depth. The other 50% of our drill program is focused on the emerging targets, so that would include Antino Northeast, Maria Geralda, as well as drill testing any new targets that we identified through the surface exploration program. Question about Gold Fields and their ownership increasing to 19.9% and what their rights are.
Under the current agreement, they are not permitted to increase beyond 19.9%. We are able to freely entertain competing bids, and they do have the right to a board seat, which they have not yet appointed. 27 meters at 20 grams per tonne, is this the best hole in company history? Appreciate that. I believe statistically it is the second-best. There was a hole at Ginger early, which was 6 meters of 94 grams per tonne. But obviously given the width, it definitely is up there for sure. How does Founders balance defining what you have found with chasing the next big discovery? I think the best answer to that is again, what the drill program strategy is, being 50% focused on advanced targets, 50% focused on emerging targets. I think that one I have covered. Gold Fields went to 19.9%. Is that a takeover signal or just conviction?
I cannot obviously comment on M&A, but it is certainly conviction. I think one of our biggest strengths with Gold Fields is our technical partnership that we have with them. They are very supportive in regularly checking in on the Antino property, visiting site, helping us review, letting us leverage their technical staff to review the property and use that data to help us with our exploration program. So I think, obviously, $100 million is a significant investment for any company. It is Gold Fields' largest by a long shot, and I think that really just speaks to the conviction they have in our asset. "Costner, you have four or five active discovery zones.
Which one excites you the most right now?" I think, obviously, it will be easy to look at Upper Antino West as being the brand-new discovery, being a new parallel shear zone, drill testing that at its full extent, testing the range between Upper Antino West and Upper Antino, so a lot of potential there. But I think one that has been a little bit not as well represented lately and not generated the excitement it should is Antino Northeast. Again, just given it has already been drill tested to 1.2 kilometers of strike length, some early strongish intercepts. You can see the auger anomaly on that map there. Again, I think this is just one that we are not really getting the value for yet. Hopefully we can continue to provide the market with strong results to demonstrate the potential that is there as well. These I have already covered.
What's the bigger takeaway from October? Stronger grades, more width, or a larger system?" It's a bit of everything. I think the biggest takeaway was really just contextualizing what we have at Founders Metals. I think we recently got back from Beaver Creek and Denver Gold Forum, which are two of the biggest mining conferences that exist, and I think it was a really great opportunity for us to speak to our shareholders and really contextualize, look, now we have 100,000 hectares. We own 100% of the asset. It's royalty-free. We have a lot more flexibility now to advance the property on our terms. 11 discoveries, two of which are brand new and extremely exciting. I think those are the key messages for sure. "Maria Geralda's auger numbers look exciting." This keeps jumping around on me. There we go.
How soon do we get the diamond drills?" They are there as of yesterday, and we definitely look forward to getting the Maria Geralda figures after those very strong auger results. "What's got your geologists most excited? Deeper Froyo drilling or the new discoveries?" Tough. I think both. I think from a geology perspective, the opportunity at depth was always well forecasted, and I think given the other deposits in the area, Merian, Rosebel, we see those continuing to depth, and as well as obviously Oko West, Omai. I think the opportunity at depth was always there, but this Upper Antino West being brand new has been quite exciting and, not obviously a complete surprise, but I think 27 of 20 was quite an impressive result that I can't say we saw coming.
I think we're quite excited to continue testing there and see what comes up. "Three discoveries already this year. What's making your targeting work so well?" Again, this exploration property-wide auger sampling program. I didn't really go into full detail on everything that we're doing there, but obviously beyond that, property-wide airborne magnetics, geophysics. We're constantly doing trenching sampling as well. Really disciplines on that surface exploration program. I think that's one thing that we do uniquely that many exploration companies don't, is really focusing on the broader exploration potential. It makes up such a fraction of the overall budget, and it's obviously already paying dividends, so it's worth doing. "From your conversations with investors, what part of the Founders Metals story do you think the market is still underappreciating?" That's an interesting one.
I think I used to say the scale in the first few months of my role, when I was at Beaver Creek in Denver. I think that was the obvious one, was understanding how the potential for a hub-and-spoke model where you have 11 discoveries potentially, or several operating pits that are all feeding a central mill and that Abitibi comparison that I showed and what that could look like. I think that's still obviously a big thing. Obviously our share price has performed quite well in recent weeks, months. I think that message is starting to come through. Now I think it's really just continuing to emphasize the quality of the deposit. The continuity of the deposit's really important.
That's another one that I think with Upper Antino, these recent results of depth are really starting to show very strong continuity from surface of high-grade mineralization. I think that's another area of focus, but we're starting to really prove the evidence that we have to resolve some of those questions and continue to show what a strong asset it is. I appear to be out of time. Thank you all very much for your active participation, for listening to me today. You're welcome to follow up with an email. You can reach me at costnerm@fdrmetals.com. Thank you again for listening, and hope you enjoy the rest of the conference. Thanks very much.