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Western Copper & Gold

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September 16, 2024 at 8:30 AM (MDT)|Broadmoor Hotel & Resort

Sandeep Singh

Chief Executive Officer

Sandeep Singh joined Western Copper and Gold as CEO in February 2024. He was previously the President and CEO of Osisko Gold Royalties where he led a successful turnaround of the company resulting in significant relative outperformance. For the fifteen years prior, Mr. Singh was an investment banker focusing on the North American metals and mining sector with BMO Capital Markets, Dundee Securities, and ultimately co-founding Maxit Capital, a leading independent M&A firm.

This is an automatically generated transcript. Denver Gold Group cannot accept responsibility for mistakes, errors, omissions, or any action taken in reliance thereon. Use of this transcript is governed by Denver Gold Group’s Terms of Use.

Sandeep whenever you're ready. Great. Thanks very much. Good morning, everyone. Hopefully you can hear me. Ok. And there's the clicker. again, Sandeep Singh, Western copper and gold, we have a large, we call globally significant copper gold project in Yukon. Canada, Northern Canada. and happy to be talking you through it this morning. Where should I be clicking this? Oh, there we go. I will be making forward looking statements as I do so. So please be, be aware. We're traded in Toronto and New York under the ticker symbol, wrn have a strong balance sheet at the moment with ended June 30th with 77 million Canadian in cash, no debt. So we're funded, we believe to some pretty meaningful catalysts. And I'll explain to you what that is. on the right hand side there, you'll see our share the list. We'll talk about some of the strategics on that page namely Rio Tinto and Mitsubishi materials, but beyond that, some pretty strong institutional shareholders as well. But plenty of room we believe to kind of continue to grow that tent because this is a story that I believe needs to be put back on some radar screens. By that. I mean, these big copper poor freeze, copper, gold, poor freeze are just big projects in general tend to go through phases where progress is a bit slower for us. That was the last decade in the 2000 tens, where meaningful technical pro progress, excuse me was made. But in a market where there wasn't enough equity to push quickly big projects and small companies necessarily weren't in vogue. But if you look at it over the last few years, I think the progress has been quite a bit faster. We've taken the pro we've taken the resource and doubled it from an MN I perspective. We've gone back to feasibility study stage in mid 2022 which is quite current. And over that time period attracted those two major major endorsements from some of the smarter names in the copper sector. Touching on that just briefly as I mentioned, Rio Tinto has invested nearly $40 million Canadian over five different investments since May of 2021 Mitsubishi Materials, $21 million in March of last year. We are the only junior company that they've ever invested in the equity of. So two strong partners, we've benefited mightily from their technical expertise. They're both on our technical and sustainability committee. And their rights you'll notice are, are listed at the bottom of that page, fairly standard, they have the right to maintain their stake. They're on that committee, as I mentioned and both those sets of rights expire around spring time next year one, I'll jump ahead just starting with the endowment to give you a sense of the scale of this project. It's nearly 11 billion pounds of copper, 21 million ounces of gold. Most of that in the MN I category, individually, those endowments would be significant together. They're, they're quite staggering. And then you'll notice on the right hand side, the split in terms of of value, nearly half copper, a third gold, and the rest meum and, and silver when you look at and that's using 360 copper long term and $1700 gold. If you use current swap prices, that split between copper and gold becomes quite a lot more similar going forward. quite like this mix. I think when you're thinking about multi decade type assets, which this is, it's nice to have that natural hedge built in. Whereas those, you know, copper and gold tend tend to have a little bit of uncorrelated aspects to them. But going forward for the next while I think both are, are gonna be tremendously supportive to, to this project. So I think this slide with a better narration tells you a lot that you need to know about casino, which is the name of our project in the Yukon. It is largely a mill reserve that you see in the bottom left hand corner there, 1.2 billion tons of 0.4 copper equivalent. That's the pit out line which gives you a 27 year mine life in the feasibility. Importantly, that's only a third of our overall resource. You've got 3.6 billion tons of mineral endowment. One of the things that changed with this project since the last decade that I referenced is just the overall scale of this project. It was always known as having a significant amount of 0.4 copper eco material, but it got quite large enough to attract those, those major sponsors that I mentioned. that reserve is also at a 0.43 strip ratio. You'd be happy in this type of deposit to be in the 1.5 to 2. having a large earth moving operation where you're essentially only moving the rock you care about at a 0.43 strip ratio is a huge advantage. So that's one kind of ma major kind of change over the the last several years. The other thing that happened is that core zone where you see the hotter colors really got flushed out. So within that reserve, there is 430 million tons of 0.6 copper equivalent. So 50% higher grade and the strip ratio is almost negligible at 0.26 also an advantage that's sticking out of the ground. So it's a starter package. It's a start of life of, of this deposit leading to very quick payback. So using 360 copper $1700 gold, which you'll hear me repeat often throughout this, this presentation. It was the baseline we used in our feasibility. The payback is about three years, 3.5 years. In those first four years, there's an after tax billion dollars, Canadian of cash flow every year during that phase. And obviously, if you up your commodity price forecast that goes up commensurately. So that combination of very quick payback and then very long life, you know, either 27 years based on the feasibility or conceivably quite a bit longer. If you start to add that other material, that's quite special when you layer on top of that, the fact that it's roughly 12 1300 m elevation. So quite low. The metallurgy here is exceptional. No real nasties in the concentrate. We produce a high gold copper concentrate or will excuse me that Mitsubishi covets as I suspect others do as well. You know, that's a pretty special equation and that's what led to the progress here at casino. This is just a little bit of a zoom in on that core zone. This is drilling that Rio Tinto wanted to see when they came into the project in 2021 really to confirm that that core zone does what it's meant to which is underpin the payback. So you'll notice, you know, 290 m of 1% copper equivalent, right from surface, very consistent, 66 m of 2.5, same thing, right from surface, very consistent. Historically, we have a hole here of nearly 700 m of 1% copper equivalent that ended in mineralization as well. So pretty special part of the deposit. And it's our starter zone, I'll jump ahead to this slide which is quite busy. but hopefully underscores the the economics of the project which are hugely robust. So if you look at that purple color, that's the 360 $1700 gold case that I referenced in the feasibility, that was our baseline at the time now seems quite obsolete. But that generated a Canadian to be clear, Canadian $2.3 billion N PV. The project, if you update that to more current prices, and frankly, I believe $4 is probably the minimum we should be using going forward from a long term perspective and updated for current gold prices, you get to $4.3 billion of Canadian N PV. So the optionality here is huge. Not only does the project work at pretty conservative long term prices given the size of our endowment, There's a significant amount of optionality to those rising prices and you can pick wherever you want to be on this page., whatever layer of conservatism you wanna take in terms of timing,, and, and, and, and, and beyond., you know, for instance, the FX rate here for the Canadian dollar is 80 cents. That's not the world we live in. If you update for the current FX, you add another penny, you add another $100 million for any penny of of FX move. So, you know, this is a hugely important asset. We're trading today at an enterprise value of 225 million Canadian. So a fraction of this value, the way we go out and you know, receive or, or, or you know, benefit from this increased value for our shoulders is to push it through the environmental assessment phase. That's the phase we're in. Now I mentioned we're funded to get to some pretty meaningful milestones. We believe that with a environmental assessment in hand over the next several years, we can go from 0.1 times or less of, of NAV to 0.5 0.6 0.7 potentially. you know, forgetting the fact that the underlying NAV will also grow as you start to use higher and higher commodity prices. So that's a pretty meaningful or hugely meaningful potential value uplift for shoulders and, and we're moving forward down that track to attain it. This is probably a better way because NAVS I, I should make the point that, you know, after year eight or nine with these long life assets, I think NAV S kind of undervalue these types of long life assets. No, nothing after year nine or 10 really hits the DC F calculation. It all gets discounted away. But those years I can assure you matter, these are the types of projects that will have the same N PV every 10 years for a very long period of time. These are the numbers I referenced earlier earlier. So during that payback period, it's 950 million, almost a billion dollars of after tax cash flow during the payback phase. And then it drops about a half a billion dollars of after tax cash flow for you pick your time horizon. And again, that's using pretty conservative commodity prices. I will jump ahead to talk a little bit about the infrastructure picture. So hopefully I've impressed upon you the fact that this is a globally significant asset, hence the endorsements that we've received, the economics are stellar and have huge optionality to it behind us. The backdrop for us is also improving, the infrastructure picture is improving and we've had tremendous support from both the federal government in the in Canada and the Yukon government to make this project more of a reality as we move forward. And that's again, one of the things that's changed from this project versus last decade is the infrastructure benefits that we're now seeing. So for us, that means three things, the road, the port and potentially power. So the road you'll notice is that line from Carmax to the casino copper gold project, you'll see that line in, in green and then brown that's about a 200 kilometer stretch where 80% of it exists today. Just, you know, not something that you drive a concentrate, concentrate truck on, but certainly useful in terms of of of a starting point. The federal government years ago, a few years ago, committed to spending 100 and $30 million of federal money to assist in in this road. And it's really just a road to the casino project, nothing else. It was part of the roads to Resources program in Canada. So they've committed to 100% of the funding for the green portion and 30% of the part, the funding for the, the brown portion. It's roughly 5050 that's the $130 million commitment that I referenced. Now, commitments from the government are great but more important. They've actually spent the 1st $30 million for the first stretch of road and we're now having discussions as to when and how the rest will come together. They'd like to see us progress further on the permanent track, which is fair. We'd like to see the road in place before construction begins. There's plenty of time to meet in the middle. So that's, that's one big step forward for this project. The second would be the port and you'll notice the anchor at the bottom of that graphic in Skagway. Skagway is in Alaska. That's where the concentrate out of the Yukon has been trucked historically up until about a year and a half ago. Larger volumes of concentrate than we would imply have been trucked out of that port in the past And last year, the government of the Yukon committed and passed through legislature 21 plus million dollars of funding to help secure, concentrate off, say offtake sorry, concentrate export facilities in the port of Skagway. That is Yukon taxpayer dollars helping to secure an exit from otherwise landlocked. Yukon. It's to everyone's benefit in the Yukon on the concentrator mining side. But really coming down the track, we're the next company that's going to be the beneficiary of it. That is currently going from essentially a term sheet or M EU phase between Skagway and the Yukon to a legally binding agreement. And we look forward to seeing the outcome of that hopefully later this year. That is another major deris element for this project. The third is really the potential game changer and its green power. So currently, our project works, I hope I've shown you that it works hugely well using LNG power generated in the Yukon. But the real game changer is to potentially connect the Yukon grid which does exist but is running out of power to the grid. In British Columbia, Yukon is undergoing a power crisis. There's a huge push to help. you know, it's, it's a small population but it's amongst the fastest growing in Canada and it needs power, it needs power today and it needs power for continued growth. This concept of connecting that grid to BC has been around for some time, but it's really gained momentum in the last few years. The government of the uconn is pushing for this. It has support from the premier in, in British Columbia. It has support, I would argue from the first nations on both sides of the border. So in our view, this is a win, not an if and the next major catalyst in this would be the results of a request from the Yukon government for roughly $60 million in funding from the federal government in a basket called the Critical Minerals Infrastructure Fund. So, critical minerals, copper and Molen infrastructure, power transmission. And again, from a catalyst perspective, we're looking forward to to that outcome this fall. that would go towards looking at routing, updating costs and, and initial consultation. So that's a pretty, that's another kind of billion dollar lever on the N PV chart that I showed you earlier, not only would it reduce our, our power cost by about half, but it would also eliminate the carbon tax that we are, I believe are the only Canadian company that's actually put that in our feasibility study. And it would make the copper, green copper, which would frankly make it, you know, you know, would be marked, marked improvement and, and, and let it stand alone from a go forward perspective. So again, that's the story from a western copper and casino perspective. As I mentioned, we're going through the environment, the environment, the environmental excuse me phase assessment phase. Today we're funded to do so. you know, it's a slow process in Canada. There's no getting around that, but, you know, once you do have that alignment, you know, there's no safer place to be going forward and as you're making decisions about where you want to build multibillion dollar multi decade mines, you know, that certainty and that stability that Canada provides is a huge is a huge benefit. We are not capable today of, of building this mine. I think that's a given. But we certainly have the, the stamina to take it to some pretty major deris elements. And then we believe it's an asset that's going to be hugely relevant in the sector going forward. So hopefully I've given you a flavor of casino and Western copper for those that didn't know it and an update for those that did and happy to take some time for questions. We'll open the floor to questions. Please raise your hand if you have one was the timing on power. Yeah. So look, that is a, that is a long term process. You know, these things don't happen quickly but nor, nor will the mine. I mean, you know, if we go fast, this is an early next decade type of mining scenario, there's plenty of time to let that power situation catch up. If you look back, even in the last two years, there's been meaningful progress on that, on that path. I think if we fast forward in another two years, it will continue to be the case. So, so yeah, I think having that flush out over the next little while as we push through the permitting or the assessment and then permitting phase, you know, that picture should become quite a bit clearer to be frank. Again, we don't need that, that power solution. It works quite well as it is. But it would be frankly a nice shot in the arm for the project, Cindy. Thank you very much. Could you just detail the specifics of the carbon tax, perhaps the impact of the Conservative Party and just the relationship with the first nations? Sure. So again, the carbon tax and I made a quick reference to it. that is eventually under the current liberal government, there is a view that to emit carbon in Canada, the cost will be 100 and 70 it will wrap up to 100 and $70 a ton. As I said earlier to our knowledge, we're the only company that has put that into our feasibility study. Bit of bad timing as the feasibility study was coming together, it was a very, you know, topical standpoint in, in Canada. And the view was from our technical consultants that unless you had a letter from the government saying you have some other arrangement, you have to hit yourself with that, that negative in those economics, I showed you earlier, it was negative $1.8 billion of uns discounted cash flow, you know, huge, you know, huge kind of endorsement for this project that the economics are still so credible with that. But obviously, you know, we don't expect to pay that. We expect to have some type of stability agreement. You know, the reference was to the Conservatives, they're running an ax the carbon tax election platform if they're successful, which the polls certainly suggests federally that they will be. and they carry through with that, then that carbon tax goes away, you know, immediately and then obviously, if we connect to the grid in the future, not only does our carbon tax go away, but our power costs go down as well. So again, important. but the fact that the economics of this project are as stellar as they are with that in place just shows you the, the importance of this. I think the other question was in terms of relationships with first nations. Look, we, we, we've been in the Yukon for quite a while. We've maintained a very positive social,,, presence, and, and try to do things the right way. Certainly there's no project here unless we can garner support from our, our first nations. Importantly, with our key first nations Selkirk, there is quite a bit of familiarity with mining. There's been mining on their territory, they understand the good and the bad. and we have a very positive dialogue. So we're in the process of working with them to garner that support. And and happy with how those discussions are going thus far. Excellent. Thank you. If you have any further questions, please follow up with sandeep outside and with that, we'll move on to our next next session.


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