Please disable any adblockers if the video is not showing below.

Heliostar Metals Corporation

View Company Profile

September 18, 2024 at 8:30 AM (MDT)|Broadmoor Hotel & Resort

Charles Funk

Founder, CEO and Director

Charles Funk is the founder, CEO and a director of Heliostar Metals, a company rapidly growing into a mid-tier gold producer. Mr. Funk has eighteen years of experience in company management, exploration and business development for companies including Newcrest Mining, OZ Minerals and Vizsla Silver. He has contributed to over $244.80 M in capital raised over the last 6 years, has been involved in all aspects of multiple project acquisition and disposition and has played leading roles in deposit discoveries in Australia and Mexico. Most recently, the discovery of Vizsla Silvers Panuco district in Sinaloa, Mexico. Mr. Funk has a degree in SpaceScience and a degree with Honours in Earth Science.

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.

Alaska presenting his managing director, Charles Funk. Good morning. And thank you very much for the introduction. Thank you everyone for attending our talk here at the Denver Gold Conference. It's a, it's been a wonderfully timed conference for Helios star because we've had the first chance to talk about our plans to grow our existing production in Mexico on the back of the acquisitions that we've made over the last 18 months. I'll note that we'll be making forward looking statements and you can find this presentation at the company's website. So from the very founding of Helios Star, we came about the business with possibly a different approach to a lot of small junior mining companies. We want to build a 500,000 ounce a year, mid tier gold producer. And this has been the front of our slide deck for an extended period of time because we think that there's a significant opportunity out there that companies like Helios Star can take advantage of these mega mergers of the gold companies. In my opinion, chasing ETF buying has left behind the natural starting space of the majority of gold mines in the world in that 100 to 200,000 ounce a year space. Our pension is to build a portfolio of those mines, hoping to recognize projects that have upside that can grow to become monster gold deposits and support our long-term growth to a multibillion dollar company. And we've made some very significant strides on that over the last 18 months. In that period of time, we have added 3.5 million M and I ounces plus another nearly three at the Sarah de Gaia deposit that needs an updated technical report. We have added two producing gold mines and we have two new production centers coming online that give us a permitted pathway to 100 and 50,000 ounce a year. Gold production. We've done all that since March last year for 15 million us. It started with the acquisition of the Ana Paula gold project in Guerrero in Mexico, a project that's had over $100 million spent on it and we bought it for a 10 million down payment and then 20 million in milestone payments, feasibility study, construction decision and commercial production. And we had AAA Major step forward in the middle of this year as we advanced the Ana Paula project in that Argonaut upon selling the Moino asset to Alamos in Canada, decided to divest its entire portfolio and we bought the Mexican component of those assets for $5 million.05 million of the cash flow between July and November when the deal closes. It's turning out to be an incredibly well timed deal for us. It's giving a significant free cash flow and a significant growth pathway that we'll run through today. We've been able to raise money in pretty tough capital markets to put this portfolio together. But the benefit of that is we have unhedged production that we're going to expand over the next 12 to 18 months. On Tuesday, last week, we announced 2 $5 million debt facilities, a, a sub 10% interest working capital facility and a 15% acquisition facility for that 5 million that we intend to pay back in Q one next year from the cash flow of the operations. We issued 1.5 million shares less than 1% equity in the company. And for that, we added the nearly 6.5 million ounces and canceled the 20 million obligation. It was a very beneficial transaction for helio star shareholders. So today we sit at 204 million shares outstanding just under 270 fully diluted. I note that 9 million Canadian of warrants are in the money of our stock. And we're fortunate to have some very high profile shareholders who've supported us in putting this the these assets together. Franklin Templeton's our major shareholder at reporting at 12% and then just under 10% we have Adrian Day's Euro Pac Fund, Eric Sprott and a number of other institutions. It's a very mature share registry for a company, Helios Star's size. My background's major companies, geology, business development. We were fortunate to add Greg Bush at the end of last year, a proven mine builder in Mexico who's built mines, operated mines in Mexico and was the CEO of Capstone for nine years. Sam Anderson, I give the credit to the the potential we'll talk about for Anna Paula. He joined us from Newmont when we founded Helios Star. There's a, a raft of benefits that come out of this transaction. The first is we are producing cash flow at today's gold price. A tremendous step forward to the company. From the day the deal was announced on the 11th of July. We have a very broad asset base that removes the single asset developer risk that we face. As Anna Paula alone. We had a very low acquisition cost, you know, less than $2 an ounce in the ground we paid for the M and I ounces. We eliminated the $20 million contingent payments that I talked about underrated. We got an incredible team in Mexico that helps us deliver our goals. A really strong group of, of process engineers, mine planning, financial and accounting and tax teams that'll help us become a mid tier gold company. And most importantly, we have a pathway to 100 and 50,000 ounce a year production with our permitted or permittable projects that should make a company significantly more valuable than Helio star's share price today. Our portfolio is distributed throughout Mexico, operating mines in Sonora and Durango. Our priority development project we'll talk about today, Anna Paula in Guerrero. I think this is one of the key slides for our business proposition right here. We'll start at the bottom left in the blue. We have ongoing production from San Augustine and the Colorado that's going to continue on to next year. We think we might have a bit of a win in some upside. We've noticed recently that there's a low grade stockpile at the Colorado that we're currently drilling off. I think we have the potential for considerably more production than people expect in 2025. Out of the assets that we've acquired. Then as we move to the dark blue, we're going to expand to longer life, larger production bases. The expansion of the Crest on pit at the Colorado is permitted. We aim to bring that on from mid next year and then we'll bring on Anna Paula in two steps, targeting an initial 50,000 ounce production step and then doubling that capacity to 100,000 ounces. And so we believe that we have the potential to be almost 100,000 ounce of production run rate if we can deliver on our goals by the end of 2026 2 years from now and expand that up to 100 and 50,000 ounces. What's most important on this slide is everything below that dotted line is either permitted or permittable. In the case of Anna Paula, it has an open pit permit. We're modifying that to underground for technical reasons. So we can deliver that today in the current regulatory environment in Mexico. Then above that line, we have upside in yellow. It's projects that need studies at these gold prices. The leach pads have the potential to deliver more gold to the company and we're doing some study work to trade off analysis on what's the best approach for that. And then in green is reserves about just under 100,000 ounces of reserves that could be mined over two years that does require a permit and we're submitting those permits and in the potential that the new president of Mexico is going to make them more easier or more available to get. That's just incredible upside for a helios star shareholder if that comes to pass. But I reiterate the key to our business model and the key to the acquisition that we made is our ability to grow to 100 and 50,000 ounces with projects that are either permitted or in our opinion permittable. In the current regulatory regime in Mexico, 100 and 50,000 ounce production pathway starts with the Colorado, which we'll talk through and then expands with Anna Paula in the two phase approach. I just touched on of the three operating mines. Our initial mine is Saint Augustine it's producing the bulk of our gold at the moment, we believe there's considerable upside at Saint Augustine, but it won't be our initial focus. One of the green areas that requires a permit for expansion is what we call the corner permit. There's two years of production at approximately 30 to 40,000 ounces of of, of t sorry, of nearly 50,000 ounces of recovered gold. Should we get that permit to continue to expand ST Augustine? But the excitement that comes from Helios Star and what we can deliver next year comes from the Colorado and Anna Paula. In my opinion, the Colorado has always been a great 50,000 ounce a year producer. It built Eldorado in the nineties. It had a large hand in building Argonaut in the 2000 and tens. And I think it's gonna build a third company with Anna Paula over the next decade. It's made up of three pits, the old El Dorado pit, the central Creston pit and the Eastern Vata Madre Pit. Again, there's a lay back that needs to be permitted. This is one of the green opportunities. Here's where we've had the short-term win. We believe currently we're drilling off this low grade stockpile for the potential to bring that into production next year. But I'll focus on the cut back or the expansion of the Creston pit that is permitted. If we cut a section through there, you can see the current resource boundary and the the permanent expansion of that resource boundary. The reserve in the tech report is 220,000 ounces in the most recent Argonaut. A if that represents additional drilling, it's a 380,000 ounce reserve at just under 0.9 oxide gold at just under 80% recovery. It's an incredibly high margin project that in my opinion, the sustaining stripping was just stopped by Argonaut as Moino needed capital and it's turned it into a Capex project. We think we can generate 6 to 8 years of production that are averaging about 50,000 ounces out of the out of the crest on expansion. It's got some tremendous deeper holes, 40 m at 3 g 20 m at 4.5 g. It's a very high grade, potentially very high margin or body that we're going to update and show the economics in a PFS in January and then make a construction decision in the middle of next year. The reason we're doing that at a slightly slower rate than you might think is because right now we're drilling in the shallow parts of the deposit. We believe that there's ounces up here that can materially improve the economics because they haven't been drilled or the drill spacing's been too wide to support a resource. So we would think that the drilling that we're going to do is actually going to further improve the economics of the expansion of the Creston pit before we make that construction decision in terms of growth. One of the greatest surprises in the portfolio for us is the expiration upside, the Colorado has huge underground exper potential. I showed some of those grades, all the resources are open. There's very little drilling as you can see in the gray dots here outside of the pit and to speak to some of those opportunities. Here's a two kilometer long gold in soils trend at 0.2 gold never been drilled and the cut off grade of the pit is 0.14. It speaks to the potential of the property and, and I believe we can expand the Colorado into a long mine life. It's always been a profitable mine for its owners and I I think we can continue that trend as we bring it back into production in the middle of next year on Anna PAA I, I've always maintained that Anna Paula is still the Ferrari in our portfolio. It's an incredibly high grade wide ore body and it's a very advanced project for its size to reiterate the starting comments. It's permitted for open pit mining. It's had over $100 million invested in it. We either own the surface rights or have 30 year access agreements on all the land that would be disturbed. There's a 412 m decline that you can see there. There's camp, there's power to site, there's high tension power very close. It's a, it's a, a very advantageous project to accelerate into production and it's been the company's focus over the last 12 months. Our plan is to deliver a feasibility study at the end of next year and make a construction decision. You can think of Anna Paula as a giant sea of low grade with a spectacular high grade core and the two major risks that the asset had is that the metallurgy of that low grade hasn't been great and we did not like that open pit approach. We've changed to underground for technical reasons. We get a simpler mine design, lower Capex. It's one of the few mines in the world that has lower Capex as an underground than an open pit as a function of the topography. And ultimately, we make more money. This is the economic driver of the Anna Pala deposit, an area that we call the high grade panel, an area that's 60 m wide, you know, well wider than the width of this room. And it's a large room at about 5.5 g. On average, it's 100 m tall, 280 m long. It supports a 700,000 ounce M and I resource and another 450 infer we believe that we can expand this resource to 1.5 million ounces. We announced this week that we've restarted drilling to do that expansion and you can see those holes here in black. Some pretty significant step outs up to 200 m, looking to step that high grade zone down, plunge and down dip. One of the big things that we learn is that it is a, a well drilled project broadly, but most of the drilling isn't at a favorable orientation for these high grade zones. So we've had considerable success last year drilling north to south holes. We added about 300,000 high grade ounces and we think the potential is to continue to add ounces by more accurately drilling this structure with the most appropriate step out of holes. We expect to have results from that starting in October. We'll ultimately feed that into a resource update next year that will feed that feasibility study. The reason the decline was going in in the first place you can see it stopped here 400 m down. Alio had it and they were operating mines in Nevada. So everything stopped when those mines started losing money, but they were pushing that decline in because of the expansion zone at depth. There's some incredible deeper results, 30 m at 30 g 40 m at 6 20 m at six that suggest Anna Paula could be a much bigger deposit. We need this decline completed to ultimately show that potential. It's tough to drill that from surface. So the advantage of the decline from a from a production sense, I is the ability to access the scopes, but it also has a resource growth benefit. We're not sure how big Anna Paula can ultimately grow, but it's in a land of giants. If you stand on the deposit and look to the south, here's Tox who I, you know, six years of quarter, in quarter out steady state production have a nearly 15 million ounce deposit in its mined history reserves and, and, and resources going forward. 20 Ks away. There's a 20 million ounce, sorry, 30 K's away. There's a 20 million ounce deposit at Los Flos. We are shallow in the geological system. We believe we have a huge amount of upside. We don't yet know ultimately how big an APP PAA could be. But our initial focus is to get to 1.5 million ounces above the decline. And then we'll see whether we have a monster gold deposit on our hands. We're going to develop an APP PAA in a two stage approach that initial 50,000 ounce step for about a 750 ton per day mine that's gonna probably be in the ballpark of a 50 million Capex and produce a gold concentrate. Then we aim to double the capacity, put Ac Il plant on the back end, paste back, fill the residual sulfide material a and produce at around 100,000 ounces a year run rate. We're currently in the middle of finalizing the flow sheet, doing a number of trade off studies and we'll formalize that at the beginning of next year, but move forward to complete that feasibility study. We're doing that because we think we can make some very significant free cash flow out of the core of the deposit. I note that there's a 200,000 out in zone at over 10 g per ton at over 60 m width that could drive some pretty spectacular early economics for Anna Paula. And so if you look then beyond, we own two very significant open pit projects that we will just park the nearly 3 million ounce Sarah de Gallo project and the 1.7 million ounce San Antonio project. They're long-term growth optionality for us as a company. But in the short-term, it's the Colorado and Anna Paula that drive the valuation of Helios star. The transaction added a material amount of resources at very low cost. And when we update the Sarah Dega Tech report, that'll become an even more marked expansion of our resource base. If you look at our value proposition, I think it's really clear. I think two things were happening. One, the financing that we did last year convinced the market that there's no equity to acquire the assets. So you see people starting to move into the stock and our share prices moving up. Over the last two weeks, if you compare us to what I believe are sort of the quality developers in Mexico, we have a materially larger resource base. Yet we trade at a significant discount despite having production and permits. So I think as we close this transaction, as I can clearly demonstrate the free cash flow and production guidance and the economics of these projects that over the next sort of starting in November to particularly January, I think there's a material rerate for us to move towards our peer group on a simpler, easy to explain narrative of Helios Star's value proposition. And here's the milestone and the news that I think gets us there. We've announced this month that the debt financing we've announced that drillings restarted at Anna PAA. We'll have those drill results commencing in October, we'll complete the transaction at the beginning of November and that's when we can start talking plainly with numbers and guidance. So we'll put out strangely as it is 24 production guidance in November this year. Once we own the assets, we'll put out the drill results we talked about of the expansion of the Creston Pit and then a couple of major shoes for us to drop. Initially this guidance, but then the potential to surprise people with production next year demonstrate the economics of the cutback of the expansion at the Colorado. Then as I touched on, we'll update that resource in late Q one with the drill program that we have underway at the moment. The three rigs nearly 12.5 1000 m program, then we'll turn that into the feasibility study in the construction decision, something in the order of a 50 million Capex to pull the trigger on, on the crest on expansion. Then we'll move on in the second half of the year for Anna Paula. And we'll then deliver the feasibility study for Anna Paula. Put together the finance package for a 12 month timeline to production at Anna Paula. It's a very exciting 12 to 14 months of catalyst for us as a company. If we deliver this, we deliver a materially more valuable company for our shareholders with very affordable cap XS and no significant equity dilution to achieve that rerate with permitted or permittable projects. It's going to be an exciting 12 months for Helios star. I might just ask AAA quick question that $5 million price for millions of ounces was impressively good value. To what extent do you think that's maybe a market comment around jurisdictional or, or technical risk? And, and what gives you confidence there? Yeah, it was in some ways, it's almost been a curse. I think if we paid 50 million, we might have got 50 million of value for the projects Argonaut. You know, they, they're an unusual portfolio in the sense that yes, you know, Mexico has am am low's not granting a permit, has created jurisdictional risk for investors in Mexico, particularly I think new Open pits, but nonetheless, we wouldn't have got this portfolio without that being the environment, we also wouldn't have got this portfolio if, if it wasn't sort of an adare and precious metal prices earlier this year. And we also wouldn't have got it if it wasn't the linchpin to selling the Nevada assets, the Mexican assets have to be sold. The, the an the Helios Star transaction has to close before the Nevada asset transaction can close. And so there was a number of effects and, and our relationship with Argonaut that I think led us to get AAA considerably below market rate and everyone looks smarter at today's gold price just to be clear. but broadly speaking, yeah, I think that might mark maybe a low point in people's opinions of Mexico that's now improving. Alright, great. That's that's it. Thanks. Thanks very much Charles. Thank you all. Thank you very much.


NOTICE

The Denver Gold Group does not make any express or implied condition, representation, warranty or other term as to the accuracy, validity, reliability, timeliness or completeness of any information or materials in general or in connection with any particular use or purpose presented at the Gold Forum. Denver Gold Group cannot accept responsibility for sourcing variances, mistakes, errors or omissions or for any action taken in reliance thereon. Use of this data is governed by Denver Gold Group's Terms of Use.

The Denver Gold Group does not represent or endorse the accuracy or reliability of any third party advice, opinion, statement, information or materials received during the Gold Forum.

INVESTMENT ADVICE - NO OFFER OR RECOMMENDATION

The Gold Forum and the information and materials presented at the Gold Forum do not, and shall not be construed as, making any recommendation or providing any investment or other advice with respect to the purchase, sale or other disposition of any regulated gold related products or any other regulated products, securities or investments, including, without limitation, any advice to the effect that any gold related transaction is appropriate or suitable for any investment objective or financial situation of a prospective investor. A decision to invest in any regulated gold related products or any other regulated products, securities or investments should not be made in reliance on any of the information or materials presented or obtained during the Gold Forum. Before making any investment decision, prospective investors should seek advice from their financial, legal, tax and accounting advisers, take into account their individual financial needs and circumstances and carefully consider the risks associated with such investment decision.