Earnings call transcript: Fortitude Gold Q1 2025 sees steady EPS

Fortitude Gold Corp (FTCO) reported its Q1 2025 earnings with net sales of $6.5 million and an earnings per share (EPS) of $0.05, aligning with market expectations. The company’s stock saw a modest increase of 1.23% in after-hours trading, reflecting a positive market reaction. Notable for its impressive 14.72% dividend yield, Fortitude Gold remains focused on strategic developments and cash conservation despite challenges in the mining industry.

According to InvestingPro, the company exhibits several strengths, including strong liquidity and significant shareholder returns. InvestingPro analysis reveals 8 additional key insights about FTCO’s performance and outlook.

Key Takeaways

• Fortitude Gold’s Q1 2025 EPS met market expectations at $0.05.
• Revenue reached $6.5 million, supported by strong mine gross profit.
• The company reduced its monthly dividend to conserve cash amid permit delays.
• Exploration activities focused on potential mine life extension at Isabella Pearl.
• Stock price increased by 1.23% in after-hours trading.

Company Performance

Fortitude Gold’s performance in Q1 2025 reflects its strategic focus on maintaining operational efficiency and financial stability amidst industry challenges. The company achieved a net income of $1.2 million and maintained a robust cash balance of $21.4 million. Despite a challenging permitting environment, Fortitude Gold is strategically positioned to capitalize on future mining opportunities.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $6.5 million
• Net Income: $1.2 million
• Earnings per share: $0.05
• Cash Balance: $21.4 million
• Working Capital: $30.6 million
• Mine Gross Profit: $3.3 million
• Exploration Expenditures: $1.4 million

Market Reaction

Following the earnings announcement, Fortitude Gold’s stock experienced a 1.23% increase in after-hours trading. The stock’s performance aligns with its 52-week range, with a high of $5.73 and a low of $3.14. The positive market sentiment reflects investor confidence in the company’s strategic direction despite current industry challenges.

Executive Commentary

CEO Jason Reed emphasized the company’s resilience, stating, "We continue to defensively position the company to overcome the challenges created by the Biden administration." Reed also highlighted Fortitude Gold’s unique position in the industry, noting, "As a junior mining company, there’s hardly any other junior miners paying a dividend."

Risks and Challenges

• Permit delays continue to impact operational plans.
• The mining industry faces a significant backlog in permitting processes.
• Cash conservation measures may affect future exploration activities.
• Fluctuations in gold prices could impact profitability.
• Changes in regulatory environments pose potential risks.

Fortitude Gold’s focus on strategic developments, such as the potential mine life extension at Isabella Pearl and preparations for new projects, positions it to navigate industry challenges effectively. The company’s conservative cash management strategy and continued dividend payments underscore its commitment to shareholder value, despite a significant 48.91% year-over-year revenue decline.

For comprehensive analysis and detailed insights, access the full FTCO Research Report on InvestingPro, featuring expert analysis, peer comparisons, and advanced financial metrics.

Full transcript - Fortitude Gold Corp (FTCO) Q1 2025:

Conference Operator: and welcome to the FORTITUDE GOLD twenty twenty five First Quarter Conference Call. At this time, all participants are on a listen only mode and a question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. And please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Jason Reed, CEO and President of Fortitude Gold.

The floor is yours.

Jason Reed, CEO and President, Fortitude Gold Corp: Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Fortitude Gold Corp. Twenty twenty five first quarter conference call. Following my brief comments and associated presentation for those who joined online, we will have a brief question and answer period. Joining me on the call today for the Q and A portion will be Ms.

Janet Turner, our Chief Financial Officer. Let me remind everyone that certain statements made on this call are not historical facts and are considered forward looking statements. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties as described in our annual report on Form 10 ks and other SEC filings, which could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by our comments. Forward looking statements in this earnings release that we issued yesterday along with the comments on this call are made only as of today, 04/30/2025, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update any of these forward looking statements as actual events unfold. You can find a reconciliation of non GAAP financial measures referred to in our remarks in our Form 10 ks filed with the SEC for the year ended 12/31/2024.

First quarter financial results and highlights included $6,500,000 net sales, 1,200,000.0 net income or $05 per share, dollars 21,400,000.0 cash balance on 03/31/2025, ’17 ’80 gold ounces produced, 30,600,000.0 working capital as of 03/31/2025, ’3 point ’3 million mine gross profit, 1,400,000.0 exploration expenditures, dollars $10.33 total cash cost after byproduct credits per ounce gold sold, dollars $14.00 4 per ounce total all in sustaining cash cost, 2,900,000.0 dividends paid and six nineteen ounces of gold bullion held in the treasury. The company’s management in conjunction with a third party engineering firm recently completed an analysis of the potential to develop and mine a mineralized gold zone trending southeast deep from the bottom of the Isabella Pearl Pit. To access this oxide gold mineralization construction of a modified pit ramp and a Southeast pit layback wall layback is required. This opportunity is estimated to extend the Isabella Pearl mine operations into the first half of twenty twenty six. This mineralized zone of the Isabella Pearl deposit lies outside of the company’s original reserve and was previously not targeted for gold extraction.

However, while waiting on the permit backlog coupled with a significant recent increase in the gold price, the company has the opportunity to extract this gold zone located within the permitted pit. The company has begun operations to access this deep gold mineralization and is advancing both modified access ramp and pit wall layback. This program is projected to result in a decreased cash balance through year end twenty twenty five as it is estimated to take six months to reach the top of the mineralized zone, followed by a projection of increased cash balance once we mine and process this deep mineralization into the first half of twenty twenty six. While we are ready and anxious for the Trump administration to fully address and rectify the permit back backlog created by the past Biden administration, Biden’s legacy of anti resources unfortunately continues to weigh on our company’s original business plan by prohibiting and delaying the layering of multiple mining operations and associated production on top of one another. While we are confident we will receive our County Line permit under Trump’s pro business and pro resource administration, it is unknown how long it will take the new administration to unravel the legacy permit backlog, which elevates the need for the company to conserve cash at this time.

Though the company ended the first quarter of twenty twenty five with a strong cash and cash equivalent balance, both the Isabella Pearl pit wall layback and the legacy permit backlog delays require strategic deployment of capital. While gold production continues from our Isabella Pearl’s heap leach pad residual leaching is variable and challenging to forecast. These drivers necessitated the decrease in monthly dividends to shareholders from $04 per month to $01 per month beginning in May 2025. This redeployment of dividend cash toward the ongoing Pearl Deep mining and to offset the County Line permit delays is also targeted to eventually construct County Line with our own cash. With all the stated caveats on dividends as modifiable and not to be considered a guarantee, I believe our commitment to continue a dividend at this time speaks volumes on our corporate goal to return as much cash back to shareholders while balancing the needs of the operation and future growth.

Thankfully, the brutal four years under Biden are gone. Had they continued, the company would have joined the ranks of exploration companies much faster. Fortunately, Trump’s second term provides exciting rejuvenated optimism for continued mine building and future gold production. We continue to defensively position the company to overcome the challenges created by the Biden administration while targeting to offensively position the company to permit and build our next minds under the Trump administration. With that, I would like to thank everyone for their time today on this conference call.

And operator, if you can open up the lines for possible live Q and A.

Conference Operator: Thank you, sir. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue.

And for those participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your One moment please while we poll for questions.

Jason Reed, CEO and President, Fortitude Gold Corp: Operator, while we’re pulling for questions, let’s get to the couple of email questions that came in. The first one is from Chris, last name starting with R. Is it fair to assume County Line and Golden Mile must be approved this term? I’m assuming you mean term under Trump’s term. Let me address both.

One, county line should not only be permitted this term, but this year and hopefully in the next six months. It’s long overdue. The mine is to be mined as an aggregate. There’s very little to review on this permit. Again, it’s we would have liked it years ago.

But, yeah, we expect it hopefully within the next six months. Golden Mile, obviously, can be a little longer. But we’re also looking forward to this new administration and hopefully having some better success getting permits to drill like NOIs at Scarlet for instance. Because during this downtime of not being able to build mines, we discovered this area 700 meters away from the open pit called Scarlet. And our last drill program on the last pad ended in gold.

So they would not give us another NOI for various reasons I can go into if anybody cares, but for the time being I won’t. And we look forward to getting another one so that we can see how much this gold mineralization expands. But I believe that Scarlet will actually fit in between both County Line and Golden Mile. So yes, under this overarching term of the Trump administration, we look to get as many permits as possible, which include the ability to mine County Line, to mine Golden Mile and then to not only delineate, but hopefully add Scarlet into that mix in between the two. The second question from Chris is how should we look at East Camp regarding breaking ground?

Five years? East Camp has both gold mineralization on the North and the South. The North veins and the South litho cap. Very exciting exploration to come, but it’s still in the exploration phase. So we’re still delineating, we’re still exploring.

It’s an absolutely huge district. We’re very fortunate to be on the gold this early. But yeah, we’re years and years away. We need to define enough to make a production decision where so we’re it’s a ways out. But obviously, we would like a situation where we bring County Line, Scarlet and Golden Mile online, which would give us plenty of time to do that.

Thanks, Chris, for your question. Another question, email from Thomas, no last name. One, regarding the decrease in revenue, I’m curious if the company could not acquire ore from another close mine and haul to the leach pad. Would that be feasible? If not, why?

No. It’s A, there aren’t any B, heap leach pad is sacrosanct. That would actually impact our business plan if we were having to build heap leach pad space for somebody else. And yes, that’s just not feasible, good question. Two, about the dividend cutting, I get it.

Wouldn’t it be prudent to continue to distribute as the revenues decreased? I get it. Wouldn’t be prudent. Sorry. Wouldn’t be prudent to continue to distribute as the revenues decreased.

But was necessary to be aggressive in the cut? Why couldn’t we be more phased in this decrease? Some investors are being scared away from the stock and maybe giving room to speculators. Yeah. Everybody has their own opinion on this.

And some people say, hey, you just should have cut little by little by little. We’re of the opinion. You can make one cut deep, hopefully that’s the last one you ever make. And that’s what we did. I think to come out with press releases to cut over time, not prudent.

Secondly, we have a lot on our plate. These delays have been plaguing us for a while. While we truly believe we’ll get these permits under the Trump administration, he’s got a lot of backlog to clear. And it’s not just us. I think Teck came out with an op ed piece where they actually posted a whole letter to the President-elect when he was elected saying, please clean up the permit backlog.

We want to build a mine in The U. S. So it’s everybody in this space. So the backlog, while it’s going to get cleaned up, we have no doubt, we don’t know the timing. Secondly, we have Pearl Deep, as I mentioned.

That’s going to take some cash to get to it. Again, it was an area we never intended to go after, but you do what you have to when you’re waiting around plus with the $3,000 gold price that made sense, but it’s going to drain cash first half of the year until we can start to build it back up. Another reason to be more prudent on the cut. And we got a mind to build, County Line. So given all of that, it just made sense.

And it really didn’t come into focus till a few weeks ago. Came into focus when we finally got the analysis done. We used some third parties proportions of it to make the decision to go deeper. And once that happened, then we realized, okay, if we’re going to do this, which we never intended to do, we’re going to have to drain our cash for a while. And within days of making that decision, we press released the fact we cut our dividend.

So that’s kind of some thinking behind why we cut and how we cut. Hopefully that helps. The third part is regarding the permitting, any news, any expectation on when it will be approved? Yes, I don’t have any news on that. I watched the president put out executive orders to expedite things.

That’s great. It’d be neat to see that actually happen and I think it will. But we have a pro business, pro resource president in and that’s the most important thing. I’ve shudder to think had Harris won the damage that another four years of no permits would have done to this company. If you think the last four years have been brutal, that would have been brutal.

So anyway, far as permitting, we’re going in the right direction. But again, big backlog to clean out. Fourth part of your question, assuming the permits go through this year, what are the investments to be done in 2025 and total cost? Okay, Pearl Deep. Pearl Deep, we made that decision a few weeks ago once the analysis was finished.

That’s again going to drain our cash through the year end until we can reach that mineralization and then we expect it to increase cash. That’s a big one. County line, I’d love it to get permitted in a couple months, might be six months. We’re expecting it at least within six months at this point. But for sure this year, that’ll be another cost or investment, if you will, to build County Line.

So those are the kind of big things in front of us. Finishing Pearl Deep and County Line. Okay. I think I got through that. Thank you, Thomas.

Operator, are there any live questions? Because there’s a bunch of questions on the platform. Let’s get to some live questions if there are.

Conference Operator: Yes, sir. We do have a couple of questions on the lines. Our first question is coming from John Bear with Ascend Wealth. Your line is live.

John Bear, Analyst, Ascend Wealth: Thank you. Good morning, Jason.

Jason Reed, CEO and President, Fortitude Gold Corp: Good morning, John.

John Bear, Analyst, Ascend Wealth: Even though we’ve got a more positive attitude towards natural resources, mining and so forth, it’s going to take time and you’ve kind of alluded this, it’s going to take time for the BLM to staff up to handle the increased number of applications for permits and so forth. My question, I have two parts. Have you had any indication that the BLM is actively trying to expand their permitting review workforce? And Jason to that, Nevada, do you feel is pretty adequately staffed to handle their jurisdiction?

Jason Reed, CEO and President, Fortitude Gold Corp: Okay. Yeah. Great questions, John. As far as the BLM, and I think I’ve mentioned this in past conference calls, it was like a light switch when the election happened. When Trump won and he was president-elect, that next week, the BLM’s attitude changed.

They’re like, hey, maybe we can look at more than one thing at a time. So a, that’s good. B, the BLM for the better part of two years said, sorry, we’re half staffed. We can’t get to things. That changed.

We’re hearing that they’re close to fully staffed. That’s in our local that that’s in our local, air BLM office. Now Greg and I just heard that in some of the other offices around Nevada that are they’re seeing some fluctuation in their BLM office as employees are taking the offer buyout of retirement. So there’s some shifting going on depending on what office. The last I’ve heard on our office is that they’re staffing up, which is good.

But as when you come back to the overarching BLM, there was a female candidate. I believe she’s from Colorado in the oil and gas space, pro resource. They put her name up for the BLM lead and don’t know the reason why, but she pulled her name a couple weeks ago. I was sad to hear that. I thought she would have been great, but it also kind of delays the the lead person, if you will, that will manage the entire BLM.

And I have yet to hear, who they’re gonna put up, and then that person needs to be instated. But I think that will help. Once the lead of this agency is placed, I think things will also move quicker. So it’s kind of a mixed bag, John. I mean, we’re hearing some positives.

The attitude overall has changed, which is great. And it comes back and it’s just my hunch. It’s just my gut feeling, but it’s everything I’ve witnessed over those last four years that they were there’s something from above that was stopping permits. Again, when you have a group like Teck write a letter to the president-elect saying, hey, please fix your permit backlog so we can build a mine. You know things have reached a critical mass.

So they I believe they did everything they could to just create the biggest quagmire they could because they were anti resource, which is ironic. Everything we use in life is either grown or mined. If you point at it and say you can’t say it’s been grown, it’s been mined. Miners are very important and this this administration gets it. The last one was clueless.

So anyway, that we are seeing some headway, but to your point, it does take time. One fortunate thing is County Line is effectively mined as an aggregate or a gravel pit if you will. We’re not building a process there. I know you know this because you’ve followed us for a while, but others may not. We’re not building anything there.

We’re not building heap leach pad. We’re not building a process. We’re not doing all these disturbances that have the regulators reviewing anything. They’re going to review an old mine site that’s already scarred and we want to go in and mine it and truck the order Isabella Pearl. So once things start to break free, I do believe things will move pretty quick.

And then that also translates in our ability to build this. We don’t have to go build a process. We don’t have to go build a heap leach. We get to leverage everything that’s right down the road and truck the ore. So this should be built faster than almost any mine could be built.

And if you’re doing it this approach. So some a lot of positives, still some questions on some clarity on who’s going to lead the BLM, but we’re getting there, John.

John Bear, Analyst, Ascend Wealth: Yes. My other question regarded how the company is addressing these continued long lead times with regards to permitting activity on other prospects that you have, particularly, let’s say, Camp Douglas. I know you did speak to that a little bit earlier in the call. But has that changed your outlook on when you would might submit an application either to get the ability to do some exploration drilling and so forth?

Jason Reed, CEO and President, Fortitude Gold Corp: Yes. We talk about this a lot on our weekly conference call internally. It’s come to light fairly recently that the BLM effectively didn’t look at Golden Mile at all.

John Bear, Analyst, Ascend Wealth: Oh, jeez. Wow.

Jason Reed, CEO and President, Fortitude Gold Corp: And that’s disheartening. That’s disheartening. And then on top of that, between the time we applied and and submitted our our permit, they’ve since gone in and changed some rules, which may require us to go redo studies. To me, that is just so wrong that you can sit on a permit, do nothing, change the rules and then say, hey, now you got to go back. But that was the previous administration’s movements.

That’s how they slow things down. So I’m optimistic all that will go away. But effectively, I mean, now we’re kind of retooling our brain that Golden Mile is starting from scratch. And that’s disheartening to think we turned that in years ago. So again, anybody who’s a shareholder in this company that voted for the previous administration or it’s anointed Harris voted against this company’s interest, voted against your interest.

And these are are hard truths that you need to hear because those are the kind of things we’re dealing with. So, yes, they they absolutely play into what we’re gonna do with these permits going forward. We’re gonna submit every single permit we can under the Trump administration because if it goes back the other way, that’s we know their playbook. They can stall nine ways to Sunday. So, yeah.

But but the biggest thing is getting county line in. I love hearing the fast track that the the Trump administration is talking about. I’ve asked to be signed up for that. We’ve asked to be included. I don’t know if we will be, and nobody really knows how that’s going to look.

They put verbiage in some of the documents that it’s a twenty eight day process. How wonderful would that be if we could get Golden Mile included in So because we are so advanced in County Line, we’re trying to weigh whether if they give us the opportunity to sign up for the Fast Track, we throw County Line in that or we really believe we’re close there. We we absolutely are trying to get Golden Mile in if they’ll take it. There would be nothing better than to get that in short order and have that in the queue to build after this. But it goes deeper than just these bigger permits.

I mean to have the BLM press BLM say no, we’re just going to give you one NOI for this mineralization because it’s too close to your operations. Those kind of things, they’re challenging. But again, think it’s going to turn around. At least we’re a pro resource administration now.

John Bear, Analyst, Ascend Wealth: Great. Thank you very much for taking the questions and good luck going forward.

Jason Reed, CEO and President, Fortitude Gold Corp: Thanks, John.

Conference Operator: Yes. Thank you. We have a question from James Blanchard with Helvetia Equity Management. Your line is live.

James Blanchard, Analyst, Helvetia Equity Management: Thank you. Good morning, Jason. Two questions. The first is your all in sustaining cost had a dramatic increase year over year. I was wondering if you could explain what happened there.

And then my second question is where are you with the state of Nevada? Obviously, need to provide permits as well to move forward on County Line.

Jason Reed, CEO and President, Fortitude Gold Corp: Yes. So the all in cost is going to fluctuate depending on what we’re doing and right we’re doing right now is we’re mining less. In fact, until we get to this deeper portion of the Isabella Pearl, we’re not mining much at all. So because we’re getting to the end of the Isabella Pearl’s mine life and mining some lower grade ancillary parts like civet cat, if you’re familiar with the deposit, there’s three primary areas and civet cat was the lowest grade, That ultimately impacts your costs. In the earlier days of Isabella Pearl when you’re putting higher grade on, your costs are lower.

So that’s just a function of where we are in the evolution of the Isabella Pearl that these costs are creeping up as a function of the grade we’re mining or what we’re the continued waste we’re moving. Like I mentioned in my statements and I believe in some of these comments, we’re now going after the Isabel Pearl deep. There’s not much mineralization from this layback all the way down till we get to the bottom. So that’s all cost. So yeah, we’re moving ton tremendous amount of waste to get to this future zone of mineralization that will impact our cost negatively because we’re not putting gold on, we’re just moving waste.

So hopefully that sheds some light on how that cost fluctuates. As far as the state of Nevada, I don’t know if you listened to some of my last comments, but yeah, Nevada, think is through its struggles as far as staffing the BLM in some offices because some people are leaving and taking the buyout that’s being offered. In our case, I mentioned on on the last quest q and a that our local office, we’re actually hearing their staffing up and closer to full staff. That could change. Maybe if they’re offered buyouts, some people leave, I don’t know.

But that’s the last I’ve heard. We’ve heard that it’s actually moving in a positive direction. And then I’ll just reiterate that it’d be great once the administration puts its BLM head at the federal level in and the individual that was put up withdrew her name. So that’s still in flux. But in the end of the day, these agencies are actually paid by us.

I mean, by our the permit fees and such. So, yeah. There should be some incentive there. But hopefully that does that answer your question, James?

James Blanchard, Analyst, Helvetia Equity Management: Absolutely. That makes perfect sense on the cost. I appreciate you explaining the dynamics.

Jason Reed, CEO and President, Fortitude Gold Corp: Yep. Yep. All right. Any other questions? James?

Conference Operator: We currently have no further questions on the line, sir, at this time.

Jason Reed, CEO and President, Fortitude Gold Corp: Okay. Perfect. Because we have a ton of writing questions. I don’t know if we’re going be able to get up to all these, but let’s give it a shot. The first one, Ray Lee.

Is the BLM new leadership been put in place by new administration and are they hiring people? Yes. The new lead has not I mentioned, but they are hiring locally. What is the grade of the additional section, the IP deposit you’ve decided to mine? This is outside of our resource.

So we’re not going to put any numbers to it. We don’t have it in a P and P. We know there’s some mineralization down there. The thing about this, irrespective of grade and more importantly of the layback, ton of ways to move. So that’s what hurts the economics of this.

Like I mentioned, we wouldn’t actually go after this back when we were mining the Isabella Pearl Years ago because it didn’t meet the criteria of being economic. The fact we’re $3,000 gold even pushes it into economics. But I’m going be real hesitant to give specifics on it because, a, it’s outside of the resource. In no world would I put a number of ounces to it because I’m not allowed to. We have internal estimates, but we believe that this will not extend the mine life and add some cash to our account after we sustain the cash drain, we’ll build it back up.

And then the second third part of your question, I calculate that cash on hand and the leach pad inventories exceeds the company’s market cap. Right, you’re right. You’re right. Okay, moving on. Harvey Bohlen, after you received the permits for County Line, what do you anticipate any new production to be?

Give a range. Until it drops in, we don’t know. But it also depends on how long we want to mine it. If we pulled it all off in one year, we get 40,000. If we pull it all off over time, which will be two plus years, which will be the case, it will be closer to 20,000.

And it will probably be the latter because just as a function of time. In our original business plan, was the layer mine on mine, have permits in hand and do this. We’re in a situation now where we’re having to conserve cash, we’re mining deeper at Isabella Pearl. At this point, it would make sense just to put County Line behind that. So we finished the Pearl and then do County Line.

So that would be less on an annual basis if you’re layering less. Having said that, maybe we’ll be in the position depending on when it drops in to layer. But there’s a lot of unknowns. That’s why we specifically put TBD on a future date on how much. But just generally speaking, yeah, County Line is not the same as Isabella Pearl on grade or size yet.

There’s still some upside there where there’s areas of county line that we’d love to drill and we plan to. But we do need permission to do so. So with the free up of hopefully a lot of these permits, we’ll be in that position. But hopefully, Harvey, that gives you a sense that, yes, we’ll probably push it out at least two years. And so you’re looking at 2020 coming from just that, not including the residual.

All right. The next question, Scott McLeod. Can you shed light on why we are holding ounces of gold in the treasury? Good question, Scott. It’s just my opinion and management’s opinion and the board’s opinion to put your money where your mouth is and actually having gold as the asset and then it’s something we produce is a good thing.

Obviously, if we need that, we could sell it and turn it into cash. But yeah, it sure paid off to have gold in this big move up. And yeah, it’s just kind of putting more money where our mouth is. I also think of every gold mining company held some gold in the treasury, taking that gold out of circulation, that would also help the the gold price as well. So it’s just more more philosophical, I guess, Scott.

Okay. Good question, though. Another question from Scott again. Question for the permit environment at this time. How many permits have been issued to mining operations in the first four months of the year in Nevada?

Good question. I don’t know the answer to that one. I’m going to guess not many. Trying to figure out how quick we might get ours. Yes, I don’t have any insight onto that.

I just know when I go to the like the Denver Gold Group and talk to the peers of all these mining companies, everybody who operates in US or Nevada for that matter are waiting on some form of permit they sure wish and think it should have dropped in earlier. But again, yeah, I don’t have any insight on I don’t know that answer on how many have been in the first four months. I’m going guess not many. All right. Moving on.

There’s a lot of questions. Again, we may not get to all these. Craig Hooper, do you have any preliminary budget for cash costs needed for the IB extension? I think you mean IP extension. I heard six months, but any cash budget.

Also any expectations of how many ounces available. Hey, I’m going to stay away from ounces as a function of it’s not in a resource. We’re not allowed to even talk about its mineralization. Again, we never actually thought we’d go after this, but having to pivot adjusting to these delays with the gold price increase allowed us the ability to go get it. So we did extensive analysis.

Our biggest concern is this is deep. So there’s portions of the deep pit that turn into what we call oxide transitional, meaning that it goes from oxide to sulfide. We cannot process sulfides. That’s a whole different process that we don’t have. We just chase the oxide.

So we really looked hard to make sure this area was still an oxide. And we did this extensive analysis that took many more months than we had thought it would take, but we estimated approximately 10% of this estimate to be in oxide. So or the transitional, excuse me. So we’re we’ve done everything we can to ring fences that we believe this is oxide and going after it. But I’m not going to mention ounces.

Look, this point, it’s not important. Isabella Pearl is not our future anymore. It was a wonderful deposit. We hope to find more of them. But it’s on to the next mines.

It’s on the County Line. It’s on the Golden Mile. It’s on the Scarlet North. And the other portion of that was cash budget. Yeah, I’m not going to delve into the cash budget other than to say, and I’ll say it again, we will drain cash through the end of the year.

So expect it. So in the next quarters you see cash drain, we know it’s coming. But it’s for a goal and that’s to hit this mineralized zone in which we aim it to go the other way. Thanks Craig. Next one Chris, Warford.

What drilling plans do you have for this year? Last PR for East Cam showed that it was an older result in the assay backlog. Are there any new drill results? Good question. I mentioned on the last call, I’ll mention it again here that we have cut way back on our drilling as a part of the conservation of cash and we did that quite a while ago.

So yes, those last drill results that came in were a function of some assay backlogs. There’s not going to be a lot of drilling results in the near future because we’re not drilling a lot. I think our next drilling, and we’re pushing to get approval to do so is that Scarlet that I mentioned earlier on. I mean, again, it’s 700 meters away from Isabella Pearl and we ended our last drill program in gold, good grade and we want to flesh that out, see how much that is delineated. So I think our next drill program will hopefully be that, but we cut way back on our drilling quite a while ago as a means of conserving cash.

Okay. Good question. Next question, Kevin Douglas. Curious the time for the last submittal IP permit relating to the submission of County Line permit. How long between separation of each permit request?

Okay. We got our original mine permit for Isabella Pearl back under the first Trump administration. We did not receive a single new mine permit under Biden. We fought tooth and nail during the Biden administration to have the ability to go deeper in the Isabela parole, and we were given the runaround. And I’m gonna take you into the weeds on this one so you can see how we were pushed around.

We asked for what’s called a minor modification to an already existing mine. They came back and said, we believe it’s a major modification. I went to the lead BLM person in the state office and I said, is this a done decision? Who made the decision? And do they have the knowledge to make this decision?

And the response was it’s a done deal. Six months later, they come back and they say, oh, it’s a minor mod. Okay. So that person’s mistake cost six plus months of time. This is just to go deeper on an existing mine.

So I said, okay, we’re done then. We get the permit. No. No. No.

I’m gonna attach it to your five year annual renewal that goes to comment period. Well, that’s not in the books. That’s not in the regulators. I don’t care when we’re attaching it to it. So then we had to wait for that.

So these are the kind of hoops we had to do just to get a permit to modify an existing mine. Again, sheds light on the previous administration’s ability to shut things down, let alone issue a new mine permit. So I think it it and to me, it means less between permit submissions and it means more of who’s in there being the oversight of this. So having what I hope is a very pro business, pro resource BLM lead will dictate everything below. Lead being the federal, will dictate everything below.

And I hope to never get more runarounds like that. Because in the end of the day, those decisions that were made on the BLM side were completely wrong, and and it proved out as such. And then they just ad hoc said, you know, we’re gonna stick this to the other permit. Let it go to comment. You can’t even explain this stuff.

So those are the kind of runarounds we’ve got. Hopefully, they’re gone. All right. I think you guys weigh into the weeds on that one. Thanks, Kevin.

Next one, Ron Darcy. With the depressed stock price, is management of the company considering buying back or accumulating shares? Many of its long term holders continue to purchase at this price. Yes, as far as company buybacks, we’ll probably not do that. I did that with a previous company.

I could not believe the hate we got for that. They said, no, if you’re going to do any of that, then you need to do it. You should just increase the dividend. As far as individuals, I’m not gonna speak to individual purchases or sales of my team. But, yeah, you know, management bought hand over fist, this company, the minute we started trading.

And we were some of the largest individual buyers. So I think that speaks to, our commitment. And yeah. Good question, Ron. Okay, Jennifer Taylor, if you see the permits, would you look to restore a dividend?

If so, when might you be able to do? How long without the permit can you maintain the dividend or maintain positive cash flow? Great questions, Jennifer. First of all, I wouldn’t say we’d restore the dividend. I think you mean return it to what it was.

I want to put this in perspective. As a junior mining company, there’s hardly any other junior miners paying a dividend, let alone ones that are sitting and struggling trying to wait for permits. So I think the fact we continue to pay a dividend speaks volumes and I made that comment in my early comments. So the dividend as always cannot be looked forward as a guarantee. I can say we got tremendous hate coming inbound when we cut this dividend.

And I also tell you from the flip side of that, I maybe have had one or two emails over the last four years thanking us once for the dividend. So the entitlement of this dividend of, oh, it’s ours and oh my god, you cut it and you’re awful and you’re the worst management ever and you ruined my life. Really? Like, this is we’re a junior mining company and the fact we actually pay a dividend, I think, speaks volumes. Could the dividend be cut, Jennifer?

Absolutely, it could be cut. We consider cutting it completely, just because we don’t know how long it’s going to take for the backlog. There’s a lot of unknown questions. In the fog of war, it’s tough to see forward from today looking forward, right? But then today looking back, oh, everybody is, oh, yes, I called that.

I could see that coming. No, you can’t looking forward. Nobody has a crystal ball. So as far as the dividend, I’m just I’m I think this management’s very pleased that we continue to pay it, but it could be modified. Someday, hopefully up.

Could be down too. So, yeah, I just wanna be very clear that the dividend is absolutely not a guarantee. But great question, Jennifer. Okay. Another one, Scott McLeod again.

Once we get our new permits, County Line Gold Mile, would a new administration be able to take them away? Or once we get them, we are good as long as we don’t violate them. I think it’d be very slim chance they could take them away. That would blow up the entire industry. So even a administration worse than Biden, they went and start pulling stuff.

That just that would rock the mining to its core. And mining gets rocked to the core and everything as we know it stops. Just think all the metals in your cell phones or your car or your houses, whatever. Yeah. I can’t see a world in which they’d ever take them away.

They can just not issue more. That’s what we’re living on. Okay. Good question. Steven banker, how have you thought about bringing in a partner to help with the large CapEx projects?

We’ve always intended to pay our projects with cash flow. So that was one of the decisions to be conservative, cut the dividend, make sure we have cash flow to build County Line. We hope to be in the position to build Golden Mile. As far as Golden Mile goes, we’ve already not only designed and ordered all that equipment tanks, etcetera, but we’ve purchased it and it’s been built and it’s laying in our lay down yard. So we have probably 13 plus million dollars invested already in Golden Mile.

All that equipment is sitting on our lay down yard ready to go. So we hope to build the remaining with cash. But bringing in a partner, I don’t know what you mean by partner. If you mean by another company, no. Joint ventures rarely work.

There’s very few projects that will ever sustain two companies a given them revenue stores. So no, we’re trying to build everything with cash flow. But good question, Steve. Another one by Jennifer Taylor. Did management sell significant amount of shares at year end?

Jennifer, you would be referring to probably me. I’m not going to speak to any of my associates, but I sold a few shares after ten ks. And we have very few trading windows as management. And probably one of the biggest trading windows is right after a queue. And I sold some shares, a very, very small percentage of my holding.

And many of those shares were actually my daughter’s, but I have to list them as mine. And a large part was a function of tax season and some continued overhang from a divorce. So yeah, I sold very few shares. It was immaterial to my holding. But hopefully that helps answer your question on that.

With that, I think we’re going to end it in as much as we’ve gone pretty long. So if I didn’t get to your question, if you’re in the queue, I apologize. But feel free to reach out to Greg and myself. And we are around most of the day and can answer your questions. So with that, operator, let’s close the call.

Conference Operator: Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today’s call. You may disconnect your lines at this time. And we thank you for your participation.

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