Hi, my name is Sean Whiteford. I'm the CEO of Next Metals Binding. We trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange and on the NASDAQ. We've been on the show before. We have our two assets, copper, nickel deposits in Botswana, and we're here to talk more about that. We are, okay. We saw you back in May. You made a bunch of statements to me about what you would do. I just wanted to check up and see where we're at. I mean, first up, we talked about the, you know, well, an updated resource. So how did you get on? yeah i think we checked our notes it was a significant resource upside potential uh as talked about in may yeah then we uh we did both uh uh at selkirk and in saliba so we introduced two updated mres selkirch we grew by 70 percent um to contain metal content um uh went from 44 million tons in 2024 to a combined 93.3 million tons this year um 78.2 million tons is that indicated uh status as well so that was a major and that was driven by metallurgical recoveries which we talked about in may so that resource now 1.3 billion pounds of copper equivalent on 100 basis so that grew uh and then recently we just even this week we announced sleeping north we can get into that a little bit later incredibly incredible growth there we have we were at about 28 million tons combined in 2024 we're now at 50.9 million tons and growing um the resource uh you know this probably was a surprise to the upside for us and how much how how much growth there is there but it continues to uh and the drill the drill that continues to show the upside there okay so and can you just talk to me about the the type of i'm trying to work out how your thinking evolved as that that drilling was happening because it talks about moving um in you know more into the indicated category and notice that you didn't maybe get hit the three quarters that you were aiming for it was it was like half right but so what what What was sort of changing and evolving as you were drilling? At Salibi? So Salibi North, we went, we tripled the indicated from 3 million tons to just about 9 million tons. So that was a great result. That's infill drilling. That's really good conversion rates from inferred to indicated. It's gone incredibly well. We also increased the grade with the infill grilling. um and then on the inferred side uh i think you know we're nine million tons there or just over nine million tonnes as well and we've we've actually significantly increased the grade in the infer because as we go deeper on slaby north and we talked about this you might have as well we see the copper grade come up and both the copper and the nickel grade has come up as we go deeper in slaby North and in that at over at uh slaby main 70 or 90 over 90 percent of the increase in the resource there was in the flexure zone um we didn't talk we might have talked about that in may but we did a year ago the flexural zone did not exist that's in a year's worth of drilling we've increased that resource by 72 and we still have the flexor zone is a borehole em model plate which is 700 meters by 700 meters probably a quarter of that maybe up to a third We don't even have a drill hole in yet because we've been following this trend of thicker, high-grade, massive sulfides. And we will be drilling those, but that just shows the upside potential there as well. Okay, coming back to what you said about North's indicated almost tripling, right, with better grades. What does that do in terms of unlocking in practical terms for a restart? Sure. So both of these, it's unique to us, both Sleepy Main and Sleepy North, I would say the first, because, you know, because they shut down, because the smelter broke down, they didn't run out of ore. And when the smilter broke, they just had to stop mining. So what that means is there's two years, roughly two years worth of underground development already in place at both Sleeply North and Sleeply Main. You can go underground at both mines, go to the stoves that we're operating, see the massive sulfides, see the drill holes, they're waiting to be loaded and blasted. So when we see at Sleepy North, we have 9 million tons of an indicated, that, you know, a good chunk of that sits in ready, already developed infrastructure, underground infrastructure. So in a startup scenario, we can start incredibly quickly on the mining side. We still need to build a concentrator and a tailings facility. but on the mining side we're incredibly well positioned that way right okay and so just want to make sure i'm i'm hearing you probably when you when you talked about sort of the um was it 75 of north to be indicated was that mainly from like was that new discovery or was that just kind of unfinished conversion drilling it's conversion yeah so it's filling in some gaps yep yeah it's conversion drilling so it has come up and you know you you hope you have a good conversion rate or ratio when you take inferred indicated and we did we had a really good conversion ratio so more times and higher growth okay and the other thing that's obviously changing out there's is is metal price um so yeah how much of the kind of resource growth came from actual drilling versus metal price and recovery assumptions 2024 uh so it was offset um we had higher nickel in 2024 uh but a little much lower copper than we do right now uh so at offset basically their grade was maybe a bit of a factor but not as much as uh which you might think right now so right okay okay now and then obviously with north um i think you well often maybe it's suggested it's kind of turning towards main right so in terms of um the drilling have you or will you be able to establish a connection do you think and and what's the knock-on effect there with the mine cloud yeah so this is a great part of what we released this week is really uh from an exploration geology point of view uh is incredibly intriguing um the hinge was a uh was a theory right from the start from when keith morrison uh finished the asset purchase agreement it was okay the sleepy north and sleepy main are either mining towards each other maybe they join together and that join was what would be called the hinge zone it might be you know a great place to explore for two two and a half years three years of drilling at sleepy north we had no indication actually the direction of sleepy north was trending or striking was away from sleepy mate so we didn't all right it might not work but that's okay sleepy north or sleepy main just keeps going until now now as we drill deeper down plunge on sleepy north it's lifted and it's changed direction pretty dramatically so it's almost like a hockey stick um that has changed and so it could definitely and it right now is trending right towards where sleepy main is so we have a couple holes there um what's what's strengthening that argument it's change direction but the copper grade is coming up and getting closer to what we get at slavery main we see that that's that's evident and then we had the dr peter lightfoot who's considered one of the world's experts in magmatic copper nickel deposits said right look at you we we saw in the core we see some different hosts uh the infibillite host okay this looks different um we peter looked at the thin sections and the chemistry of it yeah this is very different this is what you see in in the keel of these intrusions intrusive bodies that hold the metal the deepest part and and so that now is you know everywhere around the world uh norilsk uh voices bay eagle tamarack uh they all use the keel um as a vector into additional uh metal or resource mass of sulfide so now we know where that is or you know that's a good indication of their the potential for that 1.5 kilometers in between the two deposits is real we see we have a couple holes into it which have the keeled geochemistry high grade mass of sulphides in the little thinner but the key is where where is the thickening that's all that's that's where we vector index so that that area in between the two deposits is wide open now it's uh we've always thought it was because the borehole am said all right there's more mineralization here but now we have geochemistry we have drilling that shows there is massive sulfides we have borehole am uh as well that shows the potential is there so um your question is what does it mean um we have 50 mind planet plan potential you know changing mind planning um i'd also like you if you can expand on this kind of this keel i mean it's like keel of a boat right but it's a it's an actual trap for you know heavy metals but you mentioned if you also mentioned a few companies there where you know there's different sorts of outcomes the next person was going to be like well how do you know where to drill i guess the the downhole work is fine but how do you optimize how do you efficiently drill because i don't have that where it goes yeah and so others that they follow where that chemistry takes them so we're bringing in a group out of cape town they're called tech uh geological they're experts in structure structural geology um so they're on site now actually and doing an interpretation of our structural structure is really important at at uh at slib where you have folding we get thickening of sulfides uh so combination of of the uh of the geochemistry and the structural interpretation will help further define where we're going to drill borgolium has worked incredibly well can we define uh and and target based on structural interpretation where we think there might be thickening so that that's the next okay and um just not and then they said you know at what point do you start to understand how that does change mine planning down the line that's all the upside right so that is so we're at 50.9 million tons right uh 18 million tons of sleeving north we we think we can mine there effectively that that shaft is still in good shape some refurbishment 750 000 tons uh per year there that's a lot of resource there right already on the other side sleepy main a year ago when we looked at doing the pea um we said okay we can put in a raise bore here because we have all this underground infrastructure we take advantage of that put a raise board which is a very effective way of putting in a shaft um you do it from the bottom up instead of doing uh going from the top down so that made sense then and uh now that we've added 72 more resource and it's thicker and it goes down plunge and we're following it putting in a raised bore uh in the old resource doesn't make sense uh that's in the wrong spot um if you look at sleepy main they have a 300 meter shaft two three three kilometers away where we're mining that shaft is in the wrong spot right so you don't want to do that again so where ultimately is where a shaft would new shaft would go we don't know yet because we have this uh one and a half kilometer um area in between that is highly prospective that might be the best place for that shaft so we put in our note this week our press released is that hey we're going to delay the pea to look at alternatives of of extracting resource uh from sleeving main using the underground infrastructure is always in place without putting a shaft in um so that's underway uh and that will be again we have 35 million tons there and growing uh at sleeving maine uh so we're then you know the resource on both sides is significant for a startup's that you know for any startup and then what's in the middle which is yet to be discovered which you think is high perspective is adds on at the end of my mind okay i'm glad you asked i was gonna ask what was it gonna hold up there because whether shaft location sounds like a yes on that um production scale or my sequencing etc um just just to to that point on on mains it it is mainly uh inferred i mean how much of the immediate work will be about conversion i think so we're going to have to find a fine balance of conversion uh which would be most of it uh drilling and then still doing the resource uh upside potential drilling a component of what you're going do for a drill budget with that but next step is is conversion drilling um and for us getting it to indicated is probably as far as we would go uh so it uh that's roughly we're at 200 meter spacing roughly now that gives us inferred we'll go down to 100 meter roughly to get to indicated uh and that will be the basis of the the resource okay and i just want to and again i want to be clear about how you intend to kind of move forward is with with north is there any thought or any discussion about uh um it being able to kind of support a smaller first stage facility before you clearly define main or do you need to do this all at scale we would look at that as well in a pa um north on its own but if we can you know a lot of resources even uh oh you told me for example they bring a lot of a resource on a conveyor so it's conveyed out so we'll look at conveying we'll look at there's another technology called railvair it's a great technology it's used in Canada and elsewhere now it's basically conveyor it's kind of like a roller coaster that uses brings the ore up that way underground and trucking still you can still truck as well So we're going to look at all of those things as a trade-off. So you could still have development at Slavey Main coming up out of that number two underground infrastructure and Slavery North in the combination of the two, and then you decide where to put a new shaft down the road. Okay. And in terms of the kind of resource model, some of the reading that recovery rates, nickel 56%. I mean, what limits that recovery, first of all? And secondly, how much more work and at what level will you be looking at the kind of recoverables and payables for this pre-PEA or for the PEA? Yeah, that's good, Chris. So, good question. The flow sheet development work we did on Sleavy last year was based on a 50-50 blend of Sleazy North and Sleawy Main. um where do we ultimately going to be on that 750 000 tons at sleepy north where are we going to land at sleepy main we don't know yet is it 750 is it a million is it 1.2 so that blend will have to reflect what we what the mining rate will be um what's limiting the copper recovery is quite good um for us that's not the issue it's nickel and nickel has always been harder to float for most people so we're working on that um we do uh we play with you know a variety of grinds we wanted a mechanical flotation we haven't looked at other types of a flotations like a jameson cell for example we haven' looked at that so there's a lot more work to do there we but we're we're hopeful we can get into the 60s on the nickel recovery which would be significant in overall economics um by working on all those things i just mentioned okay this took money um you you had about 10 million bucks in the end of september um where does that where does it get you through to think that you know some some commentary in marketplace expectation you'll need to raise some money at some point maybe causing undue pressure on the stock at the moment but what where are you yeah that's right we put that out in our note as well um yeah that gets us into the new year um we uh we're still drilling uh we still have five drills on site uh still expanding the resource uh we we've started on the Selkirk PEA uh we had the budget for that we're we're a long ways along the Sleavy PEA we've just extended that because we want to figure out what we're going to do on the mining side yeah we every junior needs to raise money at some point we're no different I think yeah that is having an impact on our share price uh fairly or unfairly uh we put out fabulous news um but Everybody thinks, all right, may we take advantage of the situation where they need to raise money. Importantly, what we put out in our press release this week is that we've engaged National Bank in a process to do a non-dilutive financing. That is our goal, is to do whatever we can to not have to go back to the market for a dilutive equity financing. we have assets we've talked about selkirk being one of those things we want to monetize and unlock the value of and and we've been doing we've Been in this process for a while we we know and we knew you know you do have to raise money at some point so we're doing our very best not to have to go back to the market right and I'm sure there's as with all of these things you can't really say too much about it and say well I'd say at this moment in time but okay but that that's the intent okay that's that that's the intent correct when you kind of um look back to last year you know the pre-you pre-your arriving obviously but um you know you raised it raised a a whole bunch of money there's great sort of great expectations but i it's why i kind of started the conversation about well what have you seen as you've drilled is this better than you thought and maybe there's an opportunity to maybe play this a slight different way in terms of the resource size the the grades you're finding are obviously higher um has that changed your thinking somewhat i mean i'm trying i'm just trying to say is i'm try to get to is like should i give you a little bit more slack and even if you do raise some money um is it because there's good reason it's not the case if we got this wrong i think uh be honest to say we we've exceeded expectations on the resource side for sure and and both on selkirk and saliba and the grade is uh has come up in both um or sleeping north uh in in particular uh as we go deeper and sleep a main copper is the same the nickels coming up are saying that so both sleeping rain sleeping north exceeded expectations selkirk certainly the size did the contained metal came up metallurgy has really helped there um i'm gonna use a term from stefan ion who's uh uh als atb cormark this week his note said world-class resource formerly conferred that was from stefan who's phd in economic geology um and he also said one of the world's largest high-grade magmatic sulfide nickel resources is in the hands of a junior so people that know these things uh see it yeah and we've uh and not only are we at 50.9 million tons but the resource upside potential is is is there uh and it's uh it's significant so we still uh still have a lot more surprises ahead of us i think okay you can see a few things left to execute on um into with you so you want to be clear you're gonna reserve judgment as to when you decide to put the pe pea out as long as the trope it keeps giving you the good news is that is that what we're hearing right we'll do these things in the background in terms of how we look at or like a trade-off study basically how do we how can we extract uh resource out of slavery main underground infrastructure by not putting in shaft and there's lots of ways to do that um so that's part of what's going on right now okay um well like i like said i was you know looked at look the notes uh last night um you deliver what you said you would i can't fault you for that um and obviously the market is being a bit tricky at the moment for for all folks um uh like stay in touch um as you continuing to execute on the plan and we'll see you soon. Okay. Great. Thanks for having me, Matthew.