Contango Silver & Gold Inc. 0 Earnings Call

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where in the world you're signing in from today. I think almost all time zones are represented in our fairly large audience, appreciate everybody for joining me. I'm pretty excited. I've got a pretty elite panel with me today to discuss the never-ending drama of metals prices, how they impact mining securities. I've got J.P. Czarnecki, executive chairman of Grady Metal Resources, Vincent Metcalfe, president and CEO of Pecoy Copper. I got Shawn Khunkhun, president of Contango Silver & Gold, and Christian Aramayo, COO of Kuya Silver. We've got a lot of metals represented today. Should be a very good conversation. Here's how today's going to work. It's got a loose structure for conversation to get to the bottom of metals crisis. I'll also give each company an opportunity to speak to their projects.

That being said, I don't think we're going to have time today for questions about individual securities. I'll just note everybody in the chat, you can feel free to ask questions, and I will pass them through to the teams afterwards. It's likely we won't actually cover them during today's events, just for your reference. If there is a commentary in the chat that does speak to the conversation we're having, I'll try and work it in where I can. We'll be able to incorporate some of that commentary as much as possible. The other thing I'll say is today's event is being recorded and will be available to replay, likely in the early afternoon Eastern Time. It'll be in the same link. It will also be on SIX's YouTube page. Enough out of me, I want to get into the good stuff.

Let's start with the scoreboards. Gold sitting right now just under $4,000. I think it's the first time it's closed under four in quite some time. Silver's in the mid-50s after obviously briefly trading in the triple digits earlier this year. Copper holding near all-time highs, and tungsten's gone functionally vertical since China restricted exports. Between the four of you, I don't want to make you guys sound old because you're all actually quite young, but you have watched a lot of these cycles. Shawn, I'll start with you. Is this correction in precious metals, is it a normal correction or is it the start of something you think might be less friendly?

I think good question. I just want to start off by just zooming out and putting some perspective around this. If you go back one year, gold's up 20%. The GDXJ is up 40%. If we looked ahead a year and the price of gold was up 20% and equities were up 40%, I think we should celebrate that. I know it's doom, it's gloom. On my drive into the office this morning, I had friends saying, "No, it's over. It was nice knowing you." I think the reality is, look, we had such an epic year in 2025 where gold stocks were up 200%, the silver price was up 200%, and we had a monster year last year. I think it's unsustainable. That's why we had some sobering conversations at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference here in January when we saw the big surge to $5,500 to $120.

Those industry veterans, guys like Rick Rule, were up getting up on podium saying, "I'm selling," whether it's some physical. The good news is, from a longer-term perspective, the signs that you have at the end of a bull market, we didn't see. For example, the equities were not wildly outperforming the metal. The silver stocks were barely keeping in line with the silver price. We should see 300% outperformance at the end of a bull market cycle. To answer your question, I think this is a normal correction. If you look at historic bull markets, 20%-30% corrections, even 50% corrections of either the metal or the equities are par for the course.

Typically, where we are in terms of the seasonality, this is right on cue. The timing of this is right on cue. The depth of it is right on cue. I think this is a normal correction in a bull market. I think investors should be looking at where they can allocate at this time.

Mm-hmm. If I could add to that, I think that because I'm in copper now, but I spent most of my career in gold, I fully agree with Shawn. One of the things to keep in mind for investors is that 10-15 years ago, for gold companies, people were talking about $200-$300 margins. Even at $4,000 gold today, the margins are insane. The next few quarters are going to be great quarters. That's going to show the generalists that we're actually a good business to invest in. You're going to see, when you look at where Newco is right now versus where it was at the start of the year. The next quarters are going to be very, very good, I think that's very positive because they're going to reinvest in juniors and developers and new mines.

That's what you want to see in a bull market.

So- I think if you allow me to add a little bit to that, you see that currently defense is a very big bucket.

We are right now at $2.8 trillion worldwide defense. The metals, although USGS already has the critical metals, the specific percentage aside from titanium and tungsten, let's say, is not there. No investor has the visibility on what's in there. Once it hits, because U.S. is importing just about all silver, the one that I know the most, 64% of the silver, and the military is intentionally not reporting how much goes into the precision-guided munition. You need silver plate, you need gold plating for all critical, vital critical connectors like the Patriot system, the PAC-3 MSE, they use it. The new hypersonic weapons all use it.

AUKUS submarines all use it, we know that Australia is acquiring already nine of them. Boeing has never seen a pipeline with a demand as high as now. We have that all the mission-critical portions happy, there is no visibility, but it will deliver. In the next two or three quarters with the current arms race that we are seeing, we are going to see metals like silver, copper, gold going ballistic just because when the army needs it, they will just take it. We have seen before happening.

Sure. Speaking of defense panels, actually, J.T., I'll get you in to talk about the tungsten story over the last year. I referenced it in the intro, but I'd love to hear your perspective on why it's gone so vertical since the export ban in China.

Yeah. We are still from, at least from a tungsten perspective, we are still smack dab in the middle of a bull market when it comes to the particular metal. Just for anybody within the audience or that'll listen in on the replay, tungsten has had historically, on a tonnage basis, a price somewhere around sort of $29,000 a ton to sort of $32,500 a ton. Right now, we're currently sitting at about $305,000 a ton. When you look at what metals have gone parabolic in the last 12 months, tungsten is probably the outlier when it comes to how much it has run. Tungsten has a massive military defense application.

When you talk to the defense primes and you see that a month ago, Otis called everybody back to the White House and essentially, called out a state of emergency to replenish munitions and to arm the war fighter, given all the global conflict that unfortunately we're involved in, tungsten sort of leads the way in that. It's anything from fighter jets and the counterweights that sit in those fighter jets to armor-piercing munitions to munitions that actually have to defend upon that, those armor-piercing munitions, all of that is tungsten. Tungsten has been sort of historically about a 10 to 11% application into military applications. Everything that we're talking with the U.S. government about and with the defense primes, they see that amount tripling just in the next 12 to 18 months.

We don't have any domestic tungsten production here in the U.S. As you rightfully point out, Romeo, China cut us off the beginning of 2025. There was legislation passed in 2024 that bans all defense-related tungsten products from China and Russia and North Korea on January 1st, 2027. We unfortunately, as a country, have worked our way into a situation where we're in a pretty dire position. Tungsten right now is a simple supply-demand case. We can't import it from the three largest importers in the world. We had sunsetted all of our mines, there's currently no domestic production for tungsten. We're in a time in our history where global conflict is unfortunately what we find ourself in. That is really the backbone as to why the tungsten price has gone up a 1,000-fold in a 9-month period of time.

Yeah. Sure. It's hard to add momentum by the tungsten table because APT has been already banned by China.

Even if you start producing tungsten in U.S., in the middle of wherever you are, you still will need to depend on China for their controls, for their alloy, the technology. That has to be solved. I think that's what APT3 and the DOD warrants and all these incentives that are happening to companies like Alloy, MP Materials, Infinea Next are very happy, like bringing not just the material, but the technology to do it. Otherwise, you'll be like titanium. You can produce titanium sponge wherever, okay. You need magnesium. China controls 87% of magnesium. Even if you have a nice magnesium mine, whatever, what do you do with it?

Tungsten, I have a little bit different view. Tungsten is the one oddity where we're not dependent on China for processing. In fact, we have excess processing capacity here in the U.S. based on a couple of large players. What we have none of is domestic production.

And then- The bottleneck actually is the opposite for tungsten it is with other materials, is that we've got production capacity, nameplate capacity that can be added, but we don't have any place to get it from.

This is true. It's a precarious position.

It's just not there. Speaking about global economy for a second, Shawn, I want to get you in again, just because I was talking to your colleague, Rick Van Nu, and I was the company CEO, and Ronnie Stock earlier this week. Ronnie said the one thing that'll make gold really rip is if hikes come off the table. You don't need rates to lower, but the Fed has to take hikes off the table. We've also got Middle East pushing oil and inflation expectations around seemingly week to week. Honestly, before panels, I check the news 5 minutes before just to make sure I don't miss anything. Curious for your take on where you think the economy has to go, for precious metals to get on the move, and then I'll get into copper in a second.

That's a good question, Romeo. I don't know. I look back in history and there's so many little nuances to some general ideas that we have, and some of them are misconceptions. One idea is that, if you're in a rising rate environment that is ultimately negative for precious metals. If we look back at one of the greatest rises in the gold price in the early eighties, it was at a time when rates were actually rising. I would argue that it's also about the real rate of inflation, not just the nominal rate. Fed could be hiking, but until their nominal rate reaches the real rate of inflation, you could actually still be in a precious metals bull market. I think there's a tremendous amount of nuances. Look, I can't keep up with all the headlines and all the volatility.

For me, gold works in deflation, it works in inflation. For me, I try to look at it and keep it really, really simple. Whether it's wars, whether it's debts, these governments can't afford it, right? They just absolutely can't afford it. My protection against the funny money is the precious metals. It's that simple. I love that.

It's a classic pick. I think as Dan Rotten was on last week, who said, "Unless you see trust in fiat currency increasing over the next 10 years, gold remains a good bet." I tend to agree. Vincent, I want to get you in on why you think the copper price has held near its all-time high, and where you reckon it'll go in the near future.

Well, look, I think the main theme here in copper is that, obviously, there's been a lot of headlines. The copper concentrate market is generally tight. The refined copper market is pretty much balanced at the moment. It's more a geographical, I would say, distortion at times. You do see companies or countries actually stockpiling on some of that. I would say that the long-term outlook per se remains structurally deficient. Depends on who you look at, whether it's S&P Global, whether it's ICSG. You're looking at a market right now of around 28 million tons per year. When you look at the future, some say it's going to, 2040, you need probably another 7 million-14 million tons. It's either you need a 25% growth, 50% growth, depends on where you're looking from now.

That means a lot of new mines. I was in gold most of my career, but two, three years ago, when we sold our last company, I looked at the future and I said, "You know what? Where do I want to be in 10 years?" Copper was, I'm saying it right now, I didn't see the AI thing coming out, but I was looking at more kind of the structurally, for every copper mine being developed, you probably have 10 smaller gold mines or silver gold mines getting built. These big copper mines take a long time to get onto the market. We're looking probably at 17 years-20 years right now for copper mines to go from zero to production, and that's for new ones.

You see there's probably I was just on a call with Bank of America just before this call, and they have 43 new projects within, we'll call it the big companies, the top 10, top 15 companies, 30 of them have been on the shelves for 15 years. They're not bad projects, the main thing is there's probably either a community issue, there's either a metallurgy issue, there's either a permitting issue. There's a lot of projects out there, but the ones that actually get developed, there's not a lot of them. All that to say that now, when we were looking at it, we said, "Okay, we want to be in copper," it was more for an EV, for a structurally deficient market in the future.

Now you've got this AI theme that just came out two, three years ago now, or even we'll call it 18 months ago. It's not a black swan event per se, but it's going to change the perspective on copper. I think the general market hasn't really understood where this brings copper, because at the end of the day, whether you want more AI capacity, or you need more silver, you need more copper, you need more, a lot of these different metals because they all go into these chips and all go into these supercomputers and so on. I think that's what we don't fully understand yet, and I think that's whatever is being put out right now and with CapEx numbers for these AI, I think we talk about big CapEx in copper being $3 billion, $4 billion, $5 billion dollar projects.

When you look at the AI CapEx, I have a few investors that are in Hong Kong, and they're invested with these companies. These companies are talking about $100 billion CapEx. The raw material component is 5% of that. They just put, okay, $100 million. Now it's probably $5 billion for metal. They don't think of, oh, we need to build these mines. That's, I think, that's for me what's exciting when I look at the copper market five, 10 years down the road. I think the visibility of those projects is not there yet in the market. All we know is that we're going to need more mines. Like in all metals, the mines are getting lower grade. All the good projects are gone. The more difficult ones are the ones that are left.

If you're able to get your hands on a good project, I think you're in a very good position.

Yeah, no, appreciate that. Certainly, I think helpful perspective to know that the easiest mines are already done. Some people don't realize, I think, a lot of the time. Christian, I'm going to get you in because there was a question in the chat that I think is interesting, and there were a couple of people on email ask the same thing, and that's, is silver's industrial demand dropping, or is the reduction in price from January just based on its value as a monetary metal?

Okay. I think I will frame it like the divergence is telling us something very specific. The market has separated silver into two assets. It's currently pricing it just on one, the monetary silver. Silver trades like the cost in gold, let's say. Now it's entering industrial in terms of energy. We know all the increase in solar panel usage, in AI. It has corrected hard. Industrial silver, the silver inside the PAC-3, let's say, interceptor being produced right now and is restocked and depleted as the Western arsenals. The silver in torpedo batteries of Virginia-class submarines being built and the AUKUS silver, let's say, and the hypersonic weapon, that demand hasn't corrected at all. It's accelerating. Why is that? Because we don't know how much it is.

As I was saying, global military expenditure has reached almost $2.8 trillion in 2025. For the 11th consecutive year of increase. Hero grosses 14% to $800-plus billion. That's the sharpest annual growth since the end of World War I, more or less. That's a structural and spending commitment. It's not a quarterly data point. Silver was formally added by USGS as a critical mineral on November 2025, if I recall correctly, for the first time ever. We also know that U.S. imports 64% of the silver. It's not just a matter of if, it's a national security problem, so that the divergence that we are seeing or this location, if you want to see it, is between the monetary metal and the defense industrial metal is partially real, but just because we don't know the data yet, because we are still using inventories, existing inventories.

It will be reflected, the fact that silver demand is invisible. It wouldn't be reflected because silver demand is invisible to public data, but it does not mean that we're not using it. There will be a point very soon when we are going to see the silver spike going, the silver going ballistic again, and it's not because something funny will happen or something like, let's say, a squeeze or anything. It will be a real demand and supply issue. Just allow me to give you an example. The Manhattan Project case, let's say. For anybody, I understand that Jake is very involved in the defense. When the Manhattan Project need it, they secretly borrow 14,000-plus tons of U.S. Treasury silver. They use it for the electronic magnetic separation, for cores, for uranium enrichment, and everything that we know. What happened then? That's a different story.

What I'm trying to say is military does not do silver incrementally. When they need it, they just go and take it.

Sure. We are going to see that very soon.

What we are going to see is prices going up as we speak because how are the governments going to use their silver? Are they going to prioritize London sending it back to New York, New York sending it back to Shanghai, if they can do it again, or anywhere to India? Or if NATO said, "I need to restock my Patriot missiles for Ukraine. I need to restock my Tomahawks. I need to redo my F everything," because now we know all these kinds of things, okay, the fighter jets. Are we going to ask or are they going to just take it? We are seeing that they're just taking. The numbers are talking by itself.

The fact that no analyst has them, then there is intentional because no government want to say, "Okay, I don't have this." We are going to see silver now at 50 something, okay, going up again just because.

Yeah. The war teases. Well, I appreciate it.

Militaries and governments certainly work a little differently than solar panel manufacturers when it comes to purchasing, so fair enough.

I got to jump in because silver is my favorite subject here.

Please, go for it. First of all, I got to say, Christian, I love your perspective because we don't talk about military and the underreporting.

I just want to say thank you for giving that perspective. The only thing I want to add, though, is especially for new entries, new participants in the precious metals landscape, what you have to appreciate is in history, we'd only breached $35 three times, right? I know we're so focused on what happened from December to the end of January, right? Again, taking a step back, silver's up 50% in the last year. Silver equity is up 60% in the last year. We're at a price level right now. We're above the old price ceiling, right? What was the ceiling is now support.

Whether we incrementally lose that support for a nanosecond, to Christian's point, it's not going to matter because what we're setting up for is we're in a structural issue right now where we're mining less than the demand is. What causes these big price spikes now is you've got two competing forces. You've got the industrial user, and you've got, like Christian notes Gold's cousin. I like that. Speaking of supply shortages, actually, Vincent, I'll jump to you for a second because I know everybody in copper from BHP to the IEA says the copper pipeline is dangerously thin.

They usually use the word dangerously, which I find interesting. You're sitting on one of the largest undeveloped porphyries in Peru at Pecoy. Low elevation, close port, same belt as Cerro Verde and Quellaveco. If the deficit is as real as the majors say, what does it take to move a deposit like yours up the development curve? What do investors maybe misunderstand about timelines for copper projects?

Well, yeah, no, I think, right now, one of the stats that's going around right now is 96,000 tons of refined copper is your really going from really needing more and more metal. That's basically one mine. If you've got one mine that goes offline or that isn't in the pipeline, that doesn't show up, then the balance of the market is off. That's 96,000 tons of surplus on a 28 million ton market. It doesn't take a lot to move the copper prices. Obviously, the copper prices going up is going to help a lot. But I think what we've seen in the last year, whether it's Grasberg, Komokona, El Teniente, a lot of these mines are underground mines.

For the last 10, 15 years, we've looked at, or we've heard, especially on the base metal front and especially on the copper side, these big block caves were what the operators were looking at because, yeah, they do have higher grades. However, technically speaking and operationally, they're a lot tougher to operate. I think that's what we have for us is when you look at southern Peru, whether it's the Anglos, whether it's Southern Copper, Grupo México, Freeport, they operate all very, very big, large open pits, and they're not the highest grades in the world. Right now, Cerro Verde is probably around 0.24 copper. They do have some 0.3 days, and even if you look at the U.S. side of things in Bagdad, I think they're at 0.2, 0.3 on good days.

Looking at it from an operator point of view, having a low elevation, close infrastructure, a big open pit, that's simple. Right now, our mineralization basically sits within a hill. From a stripping ratio, we're going to be around 0.5 or so. All these things add to, I would say, the attractiveness of the projects. But most importantly, as it's the case in all countries, making sure you keep the communities on board, and being in an area where you're not in a close to a nature reserve or anything of that sort. The good thing with where we're at in southern Peru is that we are in basically mining communities. Most of the activity around us are informal or formalized mining. That's something that's part of their culture. They understand the benefits of the mining sector. That's something we're very lucky.

It's all about, and Christian knows that very well as well in Peru, is I think every area is different, and it's very specific. In Canada, I think there's places you want to go in Quebec, there's places you don't want to go. You just have to take care of the communities, and make sure they're your first point of contact in everything you do. I think that's where when a big company looks at saying, "We'll acquire a project," they want to know, have you lined up the community? What's your permitting status? What's the government status? Then after that, if you answer those questions, they'll look at your project. Because if you don't answer those, as I mentioned in the intro, there's a lot of these projects that are on the shelves, and they've been on the shelves for 20, 30 years.

There's a reason why they're there. I would say 50% of it, I would think, is likely because either the political front or the community side is not taken care of.

Yeah. Those are obviously things that investors should keep a clean eye on. While we're still on topic of shortages, I don't think there's a bigger shortage than zero for domestic production. J.T., I'll jump to you. I know the Pilot Mountain PFS came out at the end of June, showing a $660 million NPV at a base case price that's roughly a third below spot, so fairly conservative for today's pricing with Department of Defense already invested through DPA. Walk us through what the tungsten market reset looks like from inside the only U.S. project with a compliant PFS in hand.

Well, we've essentially, as a country, have to start from zero. Look, we took a contrarian view back in, call it 2022. Our jurisdiction is Nevada. Being able to have two world-class tungsten projects essentially in the same mineral belt in the number 1 mining jurisdiction in the world, as identified by the Fraser Institute, I think it was a bit of a gamble, but it seemed to have paid off. Our flagship asset at the time was Pilot Mountain. With Pilot Mountain, you've got a completed PFS. You have an investment from the Department of Defense that has been deployed. A big milestone for us as a company is we brought our company over from the AIM Exchange in London onto the New York Stock Exchange by the end of Q1.

We've really now started to build upon that, and we feel that the environment as it comes to U.S.-based tungsten mines sort of runs through us. The reason is that there are certain things you just can't fast-track. We're on year three of our baseline studies, right? We've completed multiple years of environmental impact studies, bugs, bunnies, everything else, birds, flora, fauna, you name it. We've got multiple years of studies. We completed the PFS, as we said we would by 30th of June. The economics came back, and they're as robust as I've ever seen on a project in my 20 years doing this. As you mentioned, $660 million at a discounted spot price. At spot price today, it's about, for our CapEx number, which is $288 million.

In the scheme of things, being able to add 15%-20% of the U.S.'s needs for tungsten, that's anywhere between a 6 and a 12-month payback. The economics, very robust. The deposit, we were able to increase the resource by about 40%. We're in a really good position. The market actually hasn't really recognized the fact that we have another world-class asset about 2 hours away, one that was at one point the largest producing tungsten asset in the United States. We ended up picking that up really right before the tungsten boom started to happen. We got it for a song. It has an estimated $40 million of infrastructure already on it. It's got the mill building and shell already built. It's got a 3,000 kW power station. It's got tailings, it's got stockpile, it's got water pipeline.

We added to the land package and actually bought the water rights next door. We're building a platform, is how we refer to it. We're building a platform to help bring tungsten back to the United States and help really re-arm the defense industrial base. It's been fun. It's been a bit trailblazing, too, as well.

Sure. We've been supported by just a fantastic tungsten concentrate price, which is what we're going to be producing.

Awesome. I appreciate that perspective. I think people forget defense metal sometimes in this environment, so it's good to have one of the trailblazers in America on the panel today. Shawn, I want to ask you a question about M&A, because people always ask about M&A on these events. You've actually lived it. I know most M&A deals have been consolidation between similar companies, but Dolly Varden and Contango took a different route, pairing a high-grade silver developer with a cash-flowing producer. What did you see in that structure that you thought the market would appreciate and that you thought would build a better company?

I've been studying and watching companies like Hecla, Coeur, First Majestic. You could say there's 10 primary silver producers out there, so there's only 10 choices. In the gold space, there's many multiples beyond that. So it's a small market, and so when interest does come in for silver, there's just a few go-to names. And we saw some of the greatest performance in the market in names like Hecla Mining in 2025. My thinking was studying the work Keith Neumeyer's done, the work Michael Saylor's done, is if we could position a company. First of all, we've been in a bear market. Up until 2025, for 15 years, we were in a very difficult landscape. And that landscape, what you saw in the M&A space is you saw the majors come together, whether it was Goldcorp and Newmont, Newcrest, Barrick Gold.

You had these mergers of the super majors. And what I think that's left is a void. There's a huge void in the mid-tier space, and what I was trying to create is a new emerging name for investors. I don't think it's appropriate that you can either invest in a $20 billion company or a $100 billion company or a starving junior. I think the market wants to see something where, in the case of the company that we've created here, you've got a company that's got cash flow. Okay? When markets go up, markets go down, we don't need to go back to market and issue shares. We're generating $100 million a year. We have $100 million in the bank. And what I really celebrate about the company is it's got the future pipeline already built into the company.

You've got the producing asset, but you've got 3 development stage assets, one that's going to be in production very quickly. What I liked is I'm emulating, I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel here. There's been some wonderful work done by some very successful entrepreneurs before me, where they've essentially leveraged the silver premium that companies celebrate, which trades at a premium to their gold peers. And by having one of the biggest and highest grade undeveloped silver projects in the safe world in the Kitsault Valley, the Dolly Varden project, and then marrying that with, as you put it, the cash flow of gold in Alaska, I just thought it's a company that I'd want to own.

If you like safe jurisdiction, you like high grade, you can buy Hecla in billions of dollars of market cap, or you can buy what I think is going to be the next Hecla in the company that we're creating, Contango Silver & Gold.

Appreciate it. Shawn, really quick, I'll just stay on you. Which of Contango's assets do you think is most mispriced by the market right now?

I'm going to draw a parallel here between Contango and silver. Okay? Stay with me. Stay with me here. This is a bit of a leap, but look, in all honesty, what's happened with silver is as industry has gone from 10% to 50%, silver kind of got mistaken. It was going through this identity crisis. Am I an industrial metal? Am I a precious metal? It underperformed. What you saw last year is it outperformed. Now, in Contango, you had two companies. One was a gold producer, one was a silver developer. I think when they came together, the market misunderstood, and there were some who were on either side of the transaction that didn't celebrate the rationale.

I think what'll happen, just like we saw in the case of silver, is as we continue to execute on our plan, right, as we move from a year of $100 million of free cash flow to, I think what could be a year that's closer to $200 million of free cash flow in 2027. As we deliver on the production side, we continue to execute on the drill programs and the permitting front on these other projects, I think the same fate will happen. I think, look, you can take one of our projects, Johnson Tract, that's got a $600 million NPV at $4,000 gold. That's the market cap of the company today. We have three other projects, plus we have cash, plus we're generating. I think they're all mispriced.

Sure. I think I knew there was going to be some medicine to take initially as two different shareholder groups, a lot of questions around the transaction.

I think as we execute, we saw it in the month of April. I'll close with this. In the month of April, we closed the deal at the end of March. The GDXJ was flat in the month of April. We were up 30%. For me, that validated the reasons to merge. I think as we continue to deliver, we're putting out a new MRE at Kitsault where we're going to increase the silver. We've got drill results. We've got the big production year coming in 2027. I think you give us 6 months, and this is going to look dramatically different.

Sure. I appreciate that. Vincent, I know you've got to head out a bit early, so I'll throw you a double question. One, I wanted to ask where you think M&A in the copper space is going. I know you already mentioned there are very few actually big projects left. I'll also give you an opportunity to just pitch Pecoy. There's some amount of people in the room. I'd love if you could give your perspective on why now is the time to look at the company.

Thank you very much. I think buildability is the main thing, right? Whether it's M&A or whether the big producers decide to build it organically, buildability is the main thing. That's one thing that we focused on when we looked at Pecoy, and we said, "How does this project actually get to the finish line, meaning to production?" When we looked at whether it was geologically, for those of you who are not aware of Pecoy, please send me questions afterwards. In a nutshell, this is a project that's been around for 20 years, in the private eye. It was never in the public domain.

The main reason behind that project and why it never went public is that you had different set of shareholders that held pieces of the deposit, and they never drilled it as a combined entity. What we did last year, we combined it. Then we went public with the asset. That gave us 50,000 meters of drilling that was combined. It gave us a really good base to start. When we saw the data, we literally saw holes from a geological point of view. That's what we're doing right now. We're drilling 40,000 meters within Pecoy in our second project called Tororume, which is 8 kilometers away. The main thing right now is what we want to show is how big is Pecoy.

We want to get to the levels of the Llorens and the gas bays and the larger players, because we think that asset holds that capacity to become one of those big major copper-gold deposits in Southern Peru. As I said before, the main thing for us also is buildability. We're in a great jurisdiction. We're six hours away from Arequipa, so we have all the providers, whether it's the drillers, whether it's the future contractors, everything's around our project. Most importantly is we also have a very good relationship with our communities. They see this as a very big positive for them in the future. We're only 85 km away from the coast, and we're low elevation. At 1,600 m for a big copper-gold porphyry makes a big difference in cost.

When you look at some of these high Andes projects, you're looking at $1,000-$1,500 a m to drill. We're drilling for around $400 a m at the moment, so all in. It does make a big difference. We're able to do a lot more with what we have. Importantly, whether it's in Peru or elsewhere in the world, having permits is very important, too. We inherited some permits on some of our claims, so we were able to hit the ground running and really start drilling. We now have three rigs on the site. We're going up to four this summer and then five. It's going to be, as I said, the main question we want to answer is how big is this deposit? Then following that, we're going to be looking at doing PEAs, PFS studies next year.

We're already starting a lot of that metallurgical work, the geotech work. We come from the mentality that you have to do things properly, so we do it once. Some people might think we're going a bit too intense, but that's the way we do things. We do it once, and we do it so that when the big companies come in, or if we end up building this thing ourselves, at least the work's done properly. When we look at it versus our peers, we're significantly undervalued. Mostly, I would think because we're a new company. We're not a name that's been around for five years.

I think that people and investors are going to come to know us, and I think Pecoy is going to become one of those names in the copper space within the next 12 to 18 months, that people are going to point to a very good project and buildability.

Romeo, I know this is Vincent's first time on your platform, I just want to say, I was a shareholder of his last company, Nomad, which was a successful exit, excellent operator.

That's great. I appreciate that.

Thank you, Vincent. I know you got to jet, for everybody in the room, there is a request meeting button at the bottom. You can request a meeting with any of the speakers' teams today. Please do feel free to use that at any point during the rest of today's event. It'll also be on the page after I close it off. Christian, I wanted to get to you, because I know as COO, you're the one actually running the Betania mine day to day. You had 100 tons per day, in March. You're targeting 350 by the end of the year. You've ramped the operation through silver from, geez, I worked with David from the low 30s in silver to over 120 back to 60 in 18 months.

From the operator's seat, how do you plan mine development and a 20,000-meter drill program around a metal that's moving like that?

Something important is that this 18 months of price journey, let's call it, has taught us operationally something I think most analysis miss when they look at the small underground silver mines from the outside, let's say. This price of volatility when we see it moves, it actually matters less than what you think for how we run the mine itself and matters enormously, like massively, on how we build our balance sheet. Let me explain that. At Betania, development decisions where we drive the ramp or which structure we mine, we chase, which stope we follow or develop, how deep we go, are driven by geology, not by silver at $60 or $120 because the current geology works even with silver at $15. We're committed to deeper in this 4 by 4.5 by 4.5 ramp.

The decision stands at any price that is above the cutoff. We are likely to see the grade profile that we are chasing won't change. We already have historical averages north of 18 ounces in certain zones. What I'm trying to say that the economic works either silver is at $19 for us, at least $19, $40, $120, or more. The question is always, are you developing towards your highest grade optionality or deluding yourself chasing tons of lower grade? This is the discipline that protects you when silver gets to $20, let's say, or $56 as today. Where price matters massively, enormously, is the timing when we need capital allocation. When silver was running high, $80, $90, $100, we used that window to strengthen our balance sheet. Now we came to this correction with a very healthy amount of money within Kuya's pockets.

That's why this is important. We are not making development decision with our hands over our heads. That is a real operational skill in this environment. Using the bull phase to build yourself the runway and execute to the bear phases without being forced to compromise. That's where, let's say, the operator and the market intelligence need to come together and see what portion is doing by who. I would like to add another layer that gives also attention to when we talk about the operations and how the prices might or might not affect operations. The replacement cost argument for high-grade silver. What that means is that this silver in the ground is becoming increasingly compelling. Where it's connected, why? Because as I was explaining in the beginning, it's connected to defense demand story.

With the defense rising to almost $3 trillion, there will be a point where we need to ask at what price does it become cheaper for a government to buy the silver in the ground rather than chase it on the spot market because the demand will rise very fast, and the decision will need to be taken fast. That's a replacement cost question. At a $56 spot with a six consecutive year of supply deficit and U.S., as I said, importing 64% of the silver, already declared critical as we already established. When will holding that silver and the U.S. becoming, or NATO, France, Germany, any country, becoming the owner of the silver from the moment it's in the ground and they might not care really of the grade that you are scoring as long as you can put metal on the table.

When will that decision and that approach will happen? I think the optionality is real, and we are about to see it very fast. We already have seen China constraining their export. Okay. You will say, "Okay, why does it matter to operators?" This is very important. If I would be a miner of an underground mine in China, and I am forced to sell all my silver to a Chinese government that will pay whatever price it takes. You guys, you really don't care about the spot market. You just care about how much metal you can put on whatever factory or whatever is required. It could be a moment where Lockheed, Raytheon, Leonardo, and all these big companies say, "Guys, I need silver. I really don't care." You can see NATO, you can see U.S., you can see G20 countries go ahead and say, "Yes, man.

I have one ounce silver here. I don't care. How fast can you put this silver here in this factory in Italy, here in this factory in Texas? How fast can you do that?" That moment is coming. As today, what we are seeing with silver, although it's at 56, a very high price, going to Shawn's point, it's one of the highest price. We were used, let's say when silver was at 20 something, everybody was saying, "Let's cross our fingers for silver to go above 30.

Yep. It was under 20 and at 55 we are saying, "Oh, silver is too low." It's not too low.

All silver mining companies are making money because processing silver is not as expensive as its current price. The problem is that we are seeing the correction. As I totally agree with Shawn, silver was considered, whether it's monetary, whether in industrial, how do I price it? It was, and importantly, the inventories worldwide were not being depleted at current ratio. With this current ratio and the speed that silver is being used without being able to recycle it or reuse it, we will see the demand going up, and 56, 54 is still a very high price for silver to go up.

Sure. I appreciate that, and over the course of this panel, both silver and gold have gone from red to black. For the Chinese central bankers watching, thank you very much. I'll get into government funding, and I'll throw it to you, J.T., actually, to start, because I did have one quick question on that. I know you already have the Pentagon, the Department of Defense, as an investor in the company. Washington's been taking equity stakes and writing off stakes across critical minerals. Do you think government money in this era is going to become a permanent feature of how mines get financed in the West?

It's a great question. I certainly spend more than my fair share of time in Washington, D.C. I think one of the consistent things that we've seen is an evolution of how the government wants to help. I think one of the things that falls under the radar is the permitting support reform and expediting processes that the U.S. government under the current administration has pushed forward. We've seen a very distinct evolution when it comes to the types of financial instruments that the U.S. government is offering. They've got equity and equity-like structures, and I phrase it that way intentionally because all equity is not created equal. A variety of debt structures, and within different departments, not all debt structures are created equal.

Certainly for us, when you look at some of the deals that have come out of, say, the Office of Strategic Capital, and specifically under the DPA Title III program, which is where our investment came from. You also have the CHIPS Act. Variety of things. I certainly think that while the current administration stays in office, I do think it's going to be a big part of their agenda. I firmly believe that critical minerals as a whole have become a national security priority. Whether or not the White House goes red or stays red or goes blue, I think this is part of the new norm going forward. I think support could evolve into other ways of doing things.

I certainly think that for the next couple of years, you've got to navigate the labyrinth, and you've got to be in the conversations, the right conversations. You've got to be executing on your project. That's the other thing. The current administration is very much focused on, if we're going to be involved in the project, we want a very clear path forward to get to revenue and get to production, which I don't think has been the case in previous administrations. It's a long-winded answer to your question, which is, I do believe wholeheartedly that the U.S. government, under the current confines, is going to stay involved and going to try and enhance domestic mining opportunities for critical minerals.

I personally have never seen mining feel more bipartisan in my life.

Very much so. Most parties in most countries understand that the current One of the interesting points I'd like to put out to investors and potential investors is our investment was actually by the Department of Defense, at the time, Department of Defense, was actually approved under the Biden administration.

Yeah. It was approved, and then what had to be requalified when the current administration came in office, it had to pass muster.

We have living proof of bipartisanship when it comes to funding for critical minerals projects.

Yeah, and same with FAST-41, which I know, Shawn, Contango's programs run. Also, people forget the Democrat initiative that's been supported by Republicans, too. Shawn, I got a quick one for you before I let everybody pitch their stock when we wrap up today. That's obviously, and I think people in the room understand this, metals prices are still, as we talked about, multiples of where they were two years ago, yet junior equities still trade at a weird fraction of what those prices imply. I'll just throw it to you for what you think is going to close that gap.

Yeah, I think we're starting to see the gap close, right? I think, the natural progression in when you come from a bear market, and we were in a long bear market, what happens is, leadership typically is with the crown jewel of the mining industry, the royalty companies, right? The royalty companies like Franco-Nevada and Wheaton Precious Metals, we see the multiples they're trading at. We see the record cash they're generating. Those stocks, those companies have appreciated. Another class, the large cap producers, like Agnico Eagle. If you bought Agnico in 2018 at $40 a share, I haven't looked at it recently, but you could've made 10 times your money.

As large investors start locking in the profits from the royalty companies and the large producers, and as those large producers continue to generate record cash flow, we're talking billions of dollars a quarter, you're starting to see the trickle-down. Now, I've been on calls over the last two weeks with a lot of institutional investors all over the globe. The one thing that I'm hearing from the institutional investor is they're coming down to the developer category. Right? They're initially looking for developers that are permitted, right? I think there's just a natural trickle-down that occurs, and then, as we progress from this bull market, we'll get to a place where the explorers will have love.

We'll get to a place where, you know we'll be at a top, Romeo, when we start valuing companies, not based on their cash flow, not based on their reserves, but on their acreage, and the prospectivity and the optionality. We're a long ways away from that. And one indicator your viewers can look at right now is the Venture Exchange Index. Historically, that was an index where 1,500 points to 2,500 points got up to 3,500 points in the 2007 market. Went almost back up there in 2010. I haven't looked at the Venture Exchange recently, but I bet you if I pulled it up right now, it's probably hovering around 1,000 points. I think we've got a broad-based rally that's going to take all boats up by about 300%. Within that, I was just at the Rule Symposium last week.

Rick Rule talks about 40% of the success is driven by 1% of the industry. What that translates for me is for all boats to be risen by 300%, you're going to have outliers out there that are 20 baggers, 50 baggers. To answer your question, it's going to come, and it's just naturally going to trickle down, and we started that process. We started that process in 2018. We're starting to see that move down to the unfunded developer category.

I appreciate that perspective. As somebody once told me, "You're nowhere near the top until you get free champagne at PDAC." For those who were there this year, a lot of domestic beers. Cash bar is still not there, all good. We got time for everybody to give just a quick minute pitch on why it's a good time to take a look at your stock. Christian, I'll start with you. Why would now be a good time for investors in the room? There are quite a few of them. Take a look at Kuya.

The first thing I will say is, if we have learned something is that with military tells that they lack something, most likely that's not the real thing. Where there, as you can see, everybody's talking about titanium and others, and rare-earth, and nobody's talking about scandium. That's very important when you weld everything, okay? The same thing happened with silver. There is a reason why it's not specifically declared in any of the U.S. military, NATO, Chinese or anybody budget that silver is there. It's under electronic and others. It's because the importance. Silver will rise a lot just because of that demand. You need to go to invest in companies that can put silver fast into smelter, meaning silver concentrate, silver dure, whatever that's doing. That's why we have built Kuya Silver.

We built Kuya Silver with the intention of discovering something and get as fast as we can to production. Not try to continue drilling forever because you can meet the cycle. The metal is required now. My recommendation to everybody who is listening here would be take a look at companies that are very good at making the transition from exploration to operation, and then that can sustain the operation. Exploration is one thing, and it will give you cash at some point, okay? The moment that generalist investors hit the mining environment as they are doing and treating commodities, different commodities, asset class, we will see gold and silver being treated in a very different way. We will see platinum being treated in a different way. I will see silver will have its own place at the table.

Companies like Kuya Silver that are growing their production and going to become one of the biggest players in one of the most important historical silver traditions worldwide will see an exponential increase.

I appreciate that very much. Jake, I'll throw it to you. Why is now a good time to take a look at Guardian Metal?

When you look at the macro trends right now, and you look at the fact that we still have no domestic tungsten production, and we're the nearest term solution, essentially in the western part of the U.S. Tungsten price has continued to skyrocket and has for the better part of a year. We've got import restrictions that have been in effect since the beginning of 2025. January 1st, 2027, no military application, tungsten or tungsten products are allowed to be imported into this country from China, Russia, and North Korea. We have two assets that have been past producing, so we were able to contribute a significant amount to the U.S. industrial base once we're in production. The sector has come off a little bit, so we are at a good price point for anybody that wants to come in and enter the stock.

We're a New York Stock Exchange-listed organization, just delivered a robust PFS. We've got a second asset that has ready-made product at surface with infrastructure already in place. We're Department of Defense-funded. The list goes on and on and on. We have never felt better about where we are as a company and where the metal is needed domestically than we do as we sit here on the 17th of July, 2026. It's a great time to get in and get on the tungsten bandwagon.

Awesome. Just before I go to Shawn, reminder that you can request a meeting with any of the speakers by pressing the Request Meeting button at the bottom of the screen. Shawn, I'll let you close it off today. Why is now a good time to take a look at Contango Silver & Gold?

Well, I just want to say for all the panelists here, all the companies here have treasury. Christian's a new friend, but I've known the CEO there, David, for 20 years. They raised when silver was $100 an ounce, right? They filled their treasury, and they did the right thing for shareholders. I think what you want to look for if you're investing right now is you want to stay away from companies that need to raise money at these depressed levels. That's my opinion. Specifically in the case of Contango, I think it's about the people. In mining, you're depleting your resources every day you wake up as a miner, right? You've got to trust the people are going to accretively replenish those resources. In the case of Contango, I'm the President.

Our CEO, Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, has built two businesses in Alaska that have become billion-dollar businesses. Contango's his third. In January, USD, we got up to a $1.1 billion market cap. Today, we're $500 million. We're a $500 million market cap USD with $100 million in the bank. We're generating $100 million a year. We're not getting any value for the large, high-grade gold and silver resources that we have in the ground. We've had a track record of executing. We've got a number of catalysts like the MRE, the big drill results. We're investing $50 million into drilling this year. For me, I'm putting my money where my mouth is. I made about a $600,000 investment in spring in the company. Rick recently bought shares in the open market. We think that we've been around a long time. We've seen a lot of cycles.

We've taken all those lessons, we're applying it to Contango in silver and gold. I think it's a great time.

Appreciate it. J.T., Shawn, Christian, and Vincent, too, who have to go. Thanks all so much for joining us. Great discussion. I know there were a large audience today, so appreciate everybody's attendance. Hope you guys all have a great weekend, the rest of your day.