Changing the room. Quite quickly, I'll say good morning, good afternoon, good evening, depending on where in the world you're signing in from. I've got with me today Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, CEO of Contango Ore, and the company's CFO, Mike Clark. Gentlemen, how are you today?
Good morning, Romeo.
Morning.
Evening for me, but we're opposite ends of the world today, I think, so there you go. Here's how today's going to work. I think a lot of you in the crowd are familiar with this process, but bear with me for a couple of seconds. It is, of course, an interactive event, so in the bottom right of your screen, you can use the chatbot at any time during today's event. I've already got some of the questions that came in over email, so I'll be sure to address those as soon as I'm through the questions that I've got, both Mike and Rick. Today's event is also being recorded and will be available probably at about 2:00 P.M. or 3:00 P.M. Eastern Time at the latest, so you can expect it to pop right in your inbox. It'll also be on SIX's YouTube channel.
In the future, it'll be on Contango Ore's YouTube and also their website. Let me get right into the meat of today's event because we did have some production updates from Manh Choh. I'll say, Rick, this marks the third consecutive campaign where you've exceeded the original 15,000-ounce guidance, this time delivering just over 17,000 ounces. I'm curious, do you still think this year's going to conclude in line with guidance, or does this, at this point, consistent outperformance suggest the original guidance might have been too conservative?
Yeah, I mean, our guidance comes from Kinross, the manager and operator of the Manh Choh project. I think it's fair to say that they will consistently be conservative in giving guidance. I think that's good for us. We're not going to get out ahead of our skis, so to speak, so we'll stick with the guidance they provide. So far, they've not updated that, and we do point out that the mine plan is sort of set a year ahead of time. And in the fourth quarter, that's the beginning of winter, and it tends to be the one that has the least amount of production, so we'll stick with our guidance as is. I think in terms of the total ounces produced, I suspect we'll probably slightly exceed the 60,000, and our cost guidance, all-in-sustaining cost guidance, has remained at $1,625.
So right now, I think, again, the first two quarters, we don't have a third quarter yet. That'll come in another month or so. But we've definitely been under in terms of our all-in sustaining costs. So we hope that trend continues. But the all-in sustaining cost does include capital that you're using going forward in terms of purchasing replacement fleet and things like that. So we'll stick with our guidance.
No, makes sense. Now, I know based on the release that you're running a test campaign blending Manh Choh and the Fort Knox ores at a one to 10 ratio. I'm curious if you could just walk us through the economic basis here. What kind of cost savings per ounce are you targeting? And if it does work out, how could this change the economics of extracting those lower-grade oxide ounces from Manh Choh that you otherwise wouldn't be processing?
Yeah, I mean, I guess I'll start with sort of, keep in mind that the feasibility study mine plan, which is still the basic mine plan that we're mining to, was done at $1,400 gold, which in today's world, that seems amazing. But it wasn't that long ago that that's where a conservative estimate of long-term gold was. So clearly, we're certainly stockpiling low-grade material that is, and I'll call it potential ore because it wasn't part of the original mine plan, but it makes money now. So yeah, this test batch of running low-grade Manh Choh ore, which is a gram, and blending that, and it's oxide. That's another thing to point out. It's not the sulfide ore. It's the oxide.
Blending that with your traditional run-of-mine Fort Knox material, which is in the 0.6, 0.7, and this is the mill material, not the stuff they put on the heap leach, obviously. Seeing those two things go through the mill at the same time, it's obviously a much larger scale mill that's used for the Fort Knox ore, which should lower costs. And then blending it with the Fort Knox ore, we're expecting to see lower overall consumables as well, things like cyanide and cyanide destruct circuit, things like that. So if the test proves out, that means we can basically process that sort of one-gram-tight material that isn't really currently part of the current mine plan. So that would, and it's a fairly large stockpile that we've built up of this. I think it's actually, yeah, it averages about a gram.
So if you kind of look at it on the big scale, if it works, we've basically increased the mine plan and the mine life by adding this lower-grade material and hopefully then making extra cash flow from that.
Great. No, I appreciate the insight into that. Just one of those lines I was like, "I should ask for more detail on where you want to go with that." So I appreciate it. One thing that's kind of buried into this really, honestly, pretty packed release is it looks like the village of Dot Lake is dismissing their lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers. To me, it's pretty significant. So just looking for your perspective, what are the practical impediments this litigation was creating for operations, and what doors does this dismissal now open for the project?
Yeah, it wasn't really hindering us in terms of our day-to-day operations at all. This is one of those sort of clouds that hangs over any project. People don't like litigation. We don't like litigation. Originally, there were four aspects to the lawsuit that the court dismissed, three of them right off the bat, and I think in the end, they just decided that the fourth one really didn't hold water. The plaintiffs decided that the fourth one didn't really hold water. I mean, you're challenging a 404 permit, which is a wetlands dredge and fill permit. Wetlands were filled three years ago, and the mitigation work was completed three years ago. So from a practical standpoint, it's a little hard to understand what the lawsuit was really about. So yeah, we're glad to see it gone, but it was really more of a nuisance than anything else.
That's how everybody likes to see lawsuits in the rearview mirror, so good to be behind it. Michael, I'll get you in here. I know you're now projecting over 100 million in distributions for 2025 based on $3,500 gold, which is a number that already feels like so long ago at this point. But I'm curious if you could break down the sensitivity here. For every, let's say, $100 move in gold price, what's the approximate impact to Contango's cash distributions? Just want to try and zero in on the operating leverage here.
Yeah, so I guess I would look at this from kind of a hedge perspective because our distributions are technically unhedged, and then we have to fund our hedge losses out of excess cash. But when I look at it, including the hedges, the net impact to us for every $100 is about $1.5 million of free cash flow to the company. If you looked at it from an unhedged perspective, assuming our hedges are behind us or we're talking about 2027 and onwards, then it'd be about $5-$5.5 million of free cash flow for every $100 swing.
Great. No, appreciate that.
Yeah, when you look at that, we only have 15 million shares outstanding. It's pretty significant on a cash flow per share basis.
Yeah, that's real leverage for sure. One thing I noticed, the 0.214 ounces per ton head grade this campaign was really slightly below plan, but it seems like you compensated with higher recoveries at 92.5%. Just thinking about that, what grade variability should investors expect campaign to campaign, and what levers do you have to kind of manage that variability?
Yeah, so you'll recall that the feasibility mine plan grade was eight grams. And so obviously, again, it was done at a much lower gold price. So as the gold price continues to increase, you can afford to blend more lower-grade material and still generate a very strong positive cash flow. So that's kind of the dynamic that takes place. You basically lower your effective cutoff. And then the other driver here that is more of a chemical one, we want to maintain a two to one ratio of oxide to sulfide, which, of course, as you get deeper and deeper in the orebody, becomes more and more difficult, which is part of why we want to look at that lower-grade oxide material because that's what you use to sort of your blending material, if you will. And it's at one gram.
So if your mine plan was eight and you've got this extra material of one gram, you're blending enough of that in there to keep this two to one ratio of oxide to sulfide. So that's kind of the main drivers.
No, I appreciate that. I was zooming out for a second. I mean, it's three campaigns, three beats on guidance, which is a pretty rare consistency. I certainly don't see it very much. I'm curious what operational practices can you credit that reliability to, and how does this track record, in your opinion, position Contango differently than other early producers who are kind of working out their kinks, figuring out the operational challenges?
Yeah, I mean, that's the case with any startup operation. Last year was a startup operation, and look, when you start up, at least in the Manh Choh ore body, it was all oxide. And so your oxide is your best recovering material, and it tends to be usually the best grades because gold has a tendency to sort of be upgraded in that oxide cap, if you will. So you don't want to waste those years or those quarters of production, and so we had above guidance again last year as well. I think we've actually consistently been since we've been reporting, we've been above guidance. In terms of just operational efficiencies that you work in, you recall we had talked about in the winter months picking up ice and snow on the trucks.
And now we've put in some cattle guards that kind of rattle the trucks as they go across, and that shakes off the ice and snow from all the flaps and the tire wells and things like that. And it's really just practical stuff. And it's amazing that a truck can pick up two or three tons of ice and snow and/or mud. And to address the mud, we put in a wash plant. So it's a pretty powerful-looking series of sprayers that just wash the wheel wells out and gets rid of two or three tons of mud or ice and snow. And that means you can load the truck with three tons more of ore. So those are just kind of practical things that any operator looks at and says, "Okay, well, there's water accumulating in the stockpile area. That's not a good thing.
So let's bring in some more fill material and some proper drainage and keep the water away from the stockpile areas." Just those kind of operational things that you just pick up. And when you're trying to get something in operation, you're in a hurry to get it going because you want your cash flow. And then you say, "Okay, well, we kind of screwed that up, and we need to fix that." So that's pretty much how any operation works.
Yeah, I like the mix of high-tech and low-tech solutions with the fancy spray machine and the cattle guard. Both are important. Now, I did have one question about extending Manh Choh's mine life, but there was one that came in from an investor, so I might as well read theirs. He notes that he's very pleased with the progress in stock valuation, but he wants to know what plans the Peak Gold JV has to increase the longevity of Manh Choh. Wants to know if the resource is being drilled currently and what's the potential impact on the resource.
Yeah, short answer is, yeah, there was a little over $5 million exploration program this year. We haven't seen a whole lot of results from it. As you know, the two ore bodies in north and the main pit sort of dip in opposite directions towards each other, so that corridor of mineralization is what we are prioritizing right now. We kind of refer to it as the mine X. I expect we'll be able to report on that later this year as all the drill results come in, and I certainly, as a geologist, expect to find a few more, I'll call them bits and pieces in and around the mine site, and again, the pit bottoms were done at a $1,400 gold price. If you use the $3,000 gold price, you'll be able to expand those pits a little bit just based on that.
And then we've got these low-grade stockpiles that we've been talking about earlier and doing the test blended run. All of those things are going to combine, I think, to potentially increase the mine life by a year or two. That's our hope and expectation.
Okay, great. Michael, I'll get back to you for a second. With over that $100 million that we talked about in expected distributions this year and Lucky Shot and Johnson Tract progress, now next progress is funded from the recent capital raise. What's the realistic timeline investors can look to to eliminate the remaining debt on that credit facility?
Yeah, I think my answer is subject to seeing the 2026 mine plan from Manh Choh, which we should expect in the next month. But based on kind of our internal models and what we think the plan will look like for next year, we think we can deliver into all the hedges before the end of next year and pay off the debt before the end of next year. We have until mid-2027 if we want. To take it to the next step, I think Rick and I are still talking about this: focusing on just delivering all the gold into the hedges as quickly as possible so that maybe they can be done by September. You would do that if you assume that gold prices are going to continue rising or stay flat.
But we're going to monitor that and kind of just monitor cash flows. But we have plenty of cash. I think we're going to finish the quarter with about $105 million in the bank. There are some sizable payables going out immediately thereafter for bank debt hedge loss and then some payables to the JV for our shipment. But there's a lot of free cash, and we're going to spend $40 million next year, at least on Lucky Shot and Manh Choh, or sorry, Lucky Shot and Johnson Tract. So plenty of cash to do all those things and while also paying off the debt in hedges. And we'll update once we get the budget for 2026 for Manh Choh, and that'll tie it all together, and we can give a more clear response. Rick, anything to add?
Yeah, no, I think that's it. We'll be opportunistic about drawing down the hedges more aggressively than what is possible. I mean, because we have a hedge delivery schedule worked out with the bankers, but we can always early deliver if there's opportunity to do so.
Great. And I will get back to Lucky Shot and Johnson Tract in just a second, actually, but I wanted to wrap up with another question on Manh Choh. So looking ahead to 2026, I know you've established a consistent rhythm with these campaigns at this point. What does the preliminary mine plan look like for next year? Are we talking about a similar four-campaign structure? Where does success of the blending tests and the other operational improvements, could that change the production profile? Just looking at what can folks in the room expect for next year?
Yeah, I'd say more of the same. The original mine plan for 2026 was a low part of the overall mine plan, but as you point out, this test run of the low-grade oxide material could certainly work into that plan to increase overall production from what was originally planned, and then I'd say the other thing is we're adding the fleet's basically operating more efficiently, the trucking fleet, so I think those are all sort of incremental benefits that we'll see be incorporated into that 2026 plan.
Yeah, awesome.
Give us a month or so, and we'll get that. Traditionally, we get that in mid-October, mid-late October, and we have an internal discussion, and then we usually approve it in the November joint venture meeting.
Great. So watch this space.
Watch this space.
Watch this space. I do want to get just an open question. Can you lay out the plan for Lucky Shot and Johnson Tract from here? What's up next? What can investors look forward to?
Yeah, so I was just talking with Dave Larimer, our exploration manager, and we're getting the drill crew mobilized. I think hopefully it'll be up and running by the end of the month or very first week of November. And it's basically just an underground drill. We'll just have a single drill. We've got the west drift completed and in place and ready for the drill to get set up, but we're just going to drill a whole series of fan shots across the footwall of the vein structure. So it's just literally a series of fan holes that come across the ore body. They'll be relatively short holes, 20- to 30-meter sort of average length. And we'll probably have a few out the end of the drift.
We had to hit some high-grade sort of extra subsidiary vein mineralization that's at right angles, actually, to the standard Lucky Shot vein orientation. So we'll be evaluating that structure as well. But we'll start, we should start end of the month, first week of November, and then we'll be drilling through the holidays and probably take a bit of a break through the holidays. And then we'll get the mine crew in there and extend the other workings so we can create more access for the drill to keep going. So we'll be drilling in there for probably the next 12 to 18 months.
Great. Now, one thing, obviously, your share price since last Christmas has had a good run, but I'm looking at Contango, and it's generating substantial cash flow from producing asset in a safe jurisdiction with gold at all-time highs. So there is still, I think, to me, obviously, a bit of a disconnect between the company's current valuation and even just the underlying cash generation capability. So what catalysts do you think are going to help the market get to properly valuing this story from here?
I think it's getting more news out and just demonstrating that Lucky Shot, first off, is moving forward to a mine construction decision, and again, we're using our DSO model, so when we say mine construction, it's sort of a, I call it sort of feasibility light because we're not building a mill in a tailings facility and a big power plant and all that, so it really is a mine plan and a transportation plan, and so for Lucky Shot, again, it's a fully permitted mine site, and our transportation plan is basically putting rocks in a box and hauling them down to the railroad, which is 20 mi away, so it's a simple plan. We've got a number of opportunities where to process the ore, including Fort Knox. We think that's a viable alternative, but we have a couple of others that we're looking at as well.
The nice thing about the railroad is that it goes north to Fairbanks, but it also goes south to Seward, which is a port in Alaska that's on the Pacific Ocean. It can go a lot of places from the Pacific Ocean. It can go over to Asia for processing or to mills down in British Columbia. Those are sort of the three main alternatives that we're evaluating. As the mine plan for Lucky Shot comes together, I think the market will start to appreciate that although it's a small high-grade mine, it can generate a huge amount of free cash flow. This is sort of back of the envelope, our estimates, but a mine that would produce, say, 40,000 ounces of gold a year can generate $80 million of free cash flow.
I mean, so again, for a company that's got 50 million shares outstanding and generating over $100 million of free cash flow itself from our Manh Choh operations, now this is all work that we can self-fund at this point, and that same approach and logic works for the Johnson Tract project. It's just a couple of years behind Lucky Shot because we have to actually build the tunnel and get underground and build the tunnel there, and so in that sense, it's a couple of years behind Lucky Shot. But it is basically the same plan, wash, rinse, repeat sort of approach. It's good grade. Johnson Tract is a beautiful ore body. Averaging, as we've talked about, 40 meters wide for an underground mine is an exceptionally large stope. So it'll be relatively inexpensive underground mining.
So I think the next catalyst for Johnson Tract is receiving the permits from the state, which we expect to do by early next year. And then we can talk about mobilizing equipment and getting ready to construct the road and get the camp upgraded and then start advancing our tunnel.
Great. I like you should get T-shirts made, rocks in a box on a railroad. Sounds like a John Steinbeck novel. I like it. It's a good turn of phrase. I got one more for you, Rick, and then I'll get into questions that are in from the chat, but also one lengthy one that came in over email, and that's really what comes next for the company. You've laid out the next couple of years, but can you lay out just a long-term strategy? Give me the far future version of what Contango looks like.
Yeah, I guess the way I would frame it is right now we have a solid five-year plan to increase production just over more than 3X from our current 60,000 ounces of gold production a year at Manh Choh, including Lucky Shot and Johnson Tract over the next five years, getting to 200,000 ounces of production, and so I think, and we can self-fund that, and I think that's an important thing, so we can be producing 200,000 ounces of gold with 15 million shares outstanding. And we think our margins are going to be comparable to what we have at Manh Choh. Actually, Johnson Tract, based on the preliminary initial assessment, we're substantially lower all-in sustaining costs than Manh Choh, but just stick to simple math, we'll be generating a very, very strong amount of cash flow for a company our size.
So what's the next step is to basically extend that to a 10-year plan. And so we're looking at opportunities where we can continue to grow the company organically through an M&A strategy and acquiring other properties where we can apply a similar approach. As I said in the past, we might, if there's opportunity to acquire a mill and use that as a central milling complex, we sort of get the advantages of a direct shipping ore DSO model combined with a hub-and-spoke model of owning your own mill on the water that can receive high-grade ores from wherever. Now, once you're on a barge, you've got rocks in a box on a barge. There's a lot of flexibility in that model. So we like the model. It'll be focused on high grade.
I don't see us going after, say, low heap leach sort of grade opportunities at this point in time. But so basically, you've got a good solid five-year model. Let's make it a good solid 10-year model.
Yeah, I like rocks in a box on a barge. You've got a sequel already, so I like it. A couple of questions from the chat. One, just a great question. That's something I should have thought of. Can you speak to the situation of the Tetlin Tribe? Have they been able to use their royalties to improve their quality of life?
Yeah, no, great question. And short answer is yes. I mean, it's not a large tribe. They have set up, and obviously, I don't want to speak on their behalf. It's their business. But from what we understand, they have set up effectively a sovereign fund that is putting money away. I'll use the term half. I don't know that it's actually half, but a significant portion is going away to fund future requirements for the tribe, and part of it's being distributed. So I think they've been very thoughtful about how they are taking this wealth generated from the royalties and spending it on things they need today, but also thinking about things that they need and they're going to need in the future. And of course, the other aspect of the working relationship with Tetlin is the jobs and the training and the advancement in their careers.
So it's really worked out well, I think, for them. And I think they've been very thoughtful about how they've approached this from the beginning. So we have a lot of respect for Chief Michael Sam and the council there. They've done a good job of managing their lands. And this is what self-determination is all about. And it's a big deal in Alaska. And I know it's a big deal in a lot, but a lot of Aboriginal First Nations in Canada. And so this is where it happens on the ground. It's good to see.
Awesome. A couple of questions. I think two more for you, Rick, and then I got one long one for you, Mike. Apologies. It's a multi-part, so I'll hit you with those. But Bevan Sweet from the chat asked, can you speak to whether your acreage holdings are prospective for rare earth metals or minerals?
Short answer is no. Although I'd say the Tetlin lands are quite extensive, we've never evaluated them for rare earths, and that certainly is not a focus of ourselves or Kinross for the Tetlin lands. And our other projects are sort of gold, copper, silver focused. So I think short answer is no.
Great. As we start with, dear Rick, love the work you do. As you mentioned a few times, Contango is looking for a mill to acquire. Curious, in that case, if you're going to have an option to acquire a mill within the next few years, what happens with the ore from Manh Choh? Does that ore have to be sent to the acquired mill or to the end of mine life? Is it stuck being processed at Fort Knox? Curious if there's obligations or if you get to decide where it goes.
Yeah, no, we formed a joint venture, the Peak Gold Joint Venture, 70/30 between ourselves and Kinross. And the whole purpose of that joint venture is to mine ore at Manh Choh and send it to the mill at Fort Knox. So Manh Choh ore would be dedicated to go to Fort Knox. And so we would envision this for our Johnson Tract, for 100% owned Johnson Tract and Lucky Shot projects.
Perfect. Like I said, Mike, I got a multi-part one for you here, but it starts with, and I know we've already touched on it, but could you elaborate in detail the hedges that you still have? We'll start there.
Sure. Easy one. There are 49,300 ounces of hedges remaining, including the carry trade up until end of October of this month. And those are scheduled to be delivered into between December and, I guess, technically June of 2027. But as I said earlier, I think we will find ourselves in a position where we can start delivering all the next gold into that and have an objective of trying to get out of having them all done by the end of September of next year.
Great. Next, what's the average gold price you sold this year?
It's around $3,300, which is the average price year to date. We started the year, I think, at about $2,600. And so now we're at $3,800. Our strategy with gold selling is the minute that we get a shipment, we sell that gold. So we basically sell it at the moment, the earliest moment we can. And because of the arrangement with Kinross and the joint venture, we can't afford to take risks on gold going up or down between shipments. So that is basically the spot price on every week that we've sold this year.
Great. They want some napkin math also. It's what improvements can come on a yearly basis with 3,800? And let's look forward to 2026. What does 4,200 look like?
Hard for me to answer that without seeing the 2026 plan from Kinross. So give me a month. I can answer that for you. But I think you just kind of, if you just assume we're fully hedged for next year and then go back to my earlier example, I think you just assume at $4,200 gold, you're going to make another $6 million from $3,800 a day or whatever it is. But it's about $1.5 million more net to the company a year, including the hedges. Unhedged, like I said, that would be five plus million per $100.
Awesome.
Yeah, and then other than that, the costs are fixed other than the royalties, so you just have the royalty that goes up with that, but that's de minimis. That's 6% on the gold price, but yeah, all the rest is for us.
Awesome. Rick, as last two questions, I'll throw to you. What's the estimated NPV of the two other projects under exploration, so Lucky Shot and Johnson Tract?
Yeah. So Johnson Tract, we actually have an initial assessment on, so I can sort of point to that and speak to that. So we did that. It's amazing because that was not even six months ago when we put that out. And we used a $2,200 gold price. And we debated whether we should use 2,000 or 2,200. So we used 2,200. And I think the NPV was $250 million. At today's gold price, we're about $600 million NPV on the project. So it's a very robust project, and it's going to generate a huge amount of free cash flow for the company. Lucky Shot, we do not have a similar initial assessment study. What our objectives are is to have a mine that's producing about 40,000 ounces of gold a year, so a relatively modest amount of production.
Because it's very good grade, we think our all-in sustaining costs are going to be similar to what we see at Manh Choh, which means you're generating about $80 million of free cash flow at what, about a $3,200 gold price. So yeah, these high-grade projects are great because they just generate a lot of free cash. And I think that's what our business should be about. I understand I get the whole leverage to gold or silver, but not all ounces are created equal. High-grade ounces are definitely worth more than low-grade ounces. So we're going to stick with that model.
If you could take a second and meditate on $100 million of cash. Nice to hear. Good to focus on, and the last part of his multi-part question, thanks for all the questions, by the way, is are there any other companies that you know of using a DSO model that people can point to to look at?
I'd say there are certainly in Australia, you see this model used a lot more with sort of a central mill, hub-and-spoke kind of a concept. I don't think you see it used very often as we've done with Manh Choh, where you've got sort of excess capacity at someone else's mill, and you sit down and you work out an agreement with them, and I do think there's more opportunity for that, but you have to have sort of the excess capacity and/or if you have high-grade ore, high-grade ore, there's always an opportunity to displace low-grade ore, which was the case at Fort Knox. I mean, Fort Knox is less than a gram average grade, and our feasibility grade was eight grams, so there's a business transaction to work out there, and I do think there are more opportunities to do that elsewhere.
But as we've talked about, we like the idea of if there's opportunity for us to own a mill, that's something we will definitely take a look at. And then we can, do like the Australians do, and have a DSO and hub-and-spoke sort of combined mining model. And we think that there's a lot of merit in that.
Awesome. I got two last real quick ones from the chat, and then we're going to call it for today. One is, when can we expect an SEC filing that discloses the participants in the capital raise?
Michael, let you answer that one.
I don't know the answer to that. Actually, I don't know, and I don't know when it will be public, but I'm guessing in their next quarterly filings of the two funds that participated, so I'd put that at mid-November is a guess.
Yeah, fair enough. And Tim from the chat asked, we kind of already touched on this, but just we'll use it as an opportunity to give closing remarks, Rick. Is what key lessons or efficiencies from this third campaign are going to carry forward to improve Manh Choh's long-term performance and cost structure?
I think it's kind of doing more of the same, and make these incremental improvements. And I don't know if there are more cattle guards that we can put in place or more wash stations, but it's those kind of just boots on the ground. Here's what we can do to just tweak the operations and make them more efficient. I do think this blending test run that we're doing is an opportunity to get more ore and extend the mine life and/or get more ore sooner in the next two, three, four years here. So we'll look forward to updating everyone on the results of the test batch or test blended batch, I guess we're calling it. And meanwhile, just sort of continued incremental improvements.
Again, I mentioned the truck efficiency, just making sure the trucks are full because we respect the weight restrictions, but we want to make sure we're not if there's another ton of ore we can put in the truck and meet the weight restrictions. We want to make sure we're doing that and not going light.
Awesome. Well, like I said, we'll wrap it up there. Rick, Mike, thanks as always for running us through, giving us some extra context and going through grilling as always for a million questions. So really appreciate your time. If anybody has any additional questions, please do shoot them through or pass directly through to the Contango team. But any you send through to me, I'll make sure the team gets them. But Rick, Mike, thanks so much. This was great. Hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.
Thank you.
Thanks. Cheers.
Cheers.