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Paramount Gold Nevada

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September 17, 2024 at 4:20 PM (MDT)|Broadmoor Hotel & Resort

Rachel Goldman

Chief Executive Officer

Ms. Rachel Goldman is the CEO and director of Paramount Gold Nevada. Prior to joining Paramount, Ms. Goldman spent 20 years in capital markets with Canadian based boutique and bank owned firms, and most recently as Managing Director Institutional Equity Sales for Desjardins Securities. Over those years she developed strong working relationships with institutional investors throughout Canada, the US and the UK, and helped to connect numerous public companies to key investment decision makers and improve their market profile. Ms. Goldman holds a Bachelor of Commerce with a Major in Finance from Concordia University and serves as an independent director of Red Pine Exploration (TSXV: RPX), and the Denver Gold Group.

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.

To give you an update on what's happening with Paramount. And it gives me an opportunity to reflect back over what's happened over the last year. And so we've actually had a pretty dramatic end of Q end of last year, 2023 Q 4 was quite significant for us in terms of a number of corporate developments. So maybe just for a little bit of history about Paramount. Paramount Gold, Nevada is actually Paramount 2.0 if you will, the first Paramount was called Paramount Gold and Silver and it was sold to core mining back in 2015. And at that time, we spent out Paramount Gold Nevada named such because we have the large Sleeper property in Nevada. But at that time in 2015, it was around a $1200 gold price environment. So Sleeper is a large property with a low grade resource, interesting but not economic. So the following year and he acquired the Grassy Mountain project in Eastern Oregon. And so since 2016, that's really been the focus for the company is to advance grassy and we've done that through, you know, advancing through various stages, PFS two feasibility studies and starting the permitting process in Oregon, I will spend a bit of time on permitting in Oregon because this has the unique characteristic at grassy of being the very first project ever to move through the permitting regime. So it's something that up until this point, we've been working on this for about seven years of permitting. Although last, like I said, at the end of last year, we've had some significant developments corporately that allows us a lot more visibility on when these permits are going to come to fruition. So between our two assets, I mentioned Sleeper that we have in Nevada and Grassy Mountain in Oregon, we have a total of 4 million ounces. So that does accrue a million ounces in Oregon and 3 million ounces in Nevada. Our cash balance as of the March 31st quarter, that was our last reported quarter was very robust and this is part of what our catalysts were from the end of last year. We do have a junior end, however, so we'll be reporting our 10-K next week, probably midweek. We were also benefiting from some very significant major shareholders who've been supportive of our endeavor to advance grassy through permitting as really being the biggest value creating opportunity that we have in the portfolio right now. So the recent news I alluded to is that back in November of 23 the state of Oregon issued to us something called a notice to proceed. Now, this is the first time this has ever been done in the history of Oregon under their modern permitting regime. So what that meant was essentially that after basically a fouryear review period of our applications with the different changes and modifications that they requested and that we worked on with them, they deemed that the application was complete and that they were prepared to move on to the next steps of the permitting, which is the completion of an environmental evaluation, which has actually just been done, which will then allow the agencies in in Oregon to start drafting the permits. And so that notice to proceed was a condition precedent for us to close on a very important financing which completely changed the current mindset in the company, which was, we did bring in a $15 million royalty convertible note. So this is a product that starts as a convert that I'm paying interest on 10% interest I'm paying in shares. We worked with spra resource and streaming. Some of you in this room would have heard from the earlier panel, the streaming and royalty companies. And I have to say that having ability to access this type of capital from partners who understand what it is like to be trying to keep a company funded in a very challenging capital environment. We're quite grateful to have that. It also allowed me the opportunity to pay off all the debt that we had in the company and to keep to stay funded through to our final permits which are now expected at the end of last year. So really everything that we've been seeing happening about Grassy has been about permitting. So the second line of, of news that we have relates to the federal permitting side where the BLM also filed the notice of intent to start the N EPA process on Grassy. And they filed that in March of this year. And essentially at the time they did, they also provided dates on their own deliverables for this process, which isn't something I'd seen before. And my understanding, it's actually not, not all that common but perhaps a new phase for them per perhaps, maybe signaling that there is a bit of a loosening of the permitting regime in the US. So Grassy Mountain. We are very fortunate that to permit the first mine in Oregon, we're on the eastern border with Idaho. So certainly people who are familiar with Portland, the beautiful coastal west. This is not a place that you could build a mine, but eastern Oregon it's quite remote. We have one aerial photo here that just shows that we have nothing directly around us, even though we're close to some good population centers and the access road to the project. For those of you who are familiar with Nevada topography is not dissimilar. So the point here is that we're close to these population centers. People have known about this project for decades. They're very enthusiastic to have the jobs. And so that's put us in a position where we have very strong county level support. We have bipartisan level support at the state level. I'd say even the governor, I probably can't quote her. I don't think she would stand in the way of seeing this project move forward considering what in a significant economic contributor it can be. So we'll create about 300 jobs while we're in construction and then probably another 100 jobs which will pay roughly twice the median household average for our part of the state. So certainly very significant. The project that we're looking to build, I've mentioned earlier, we have a million ounces at grassy. But what we're looking to do initially is to build a small high grade underground mine. And the reason for this, that you'll see in a couple of slides this would have set up actually is a very nice open pit. It would have been quite economic. However, our interpretation of the social and cultural dynamics of the very first project to move through. Permitting, suggested to us that if we could make a small footprint underground mine work, it would probably be more palatable for the agencies in a big open pit. And I'm pleased to say, I think we made the right call. I think that there's still potential in a future scenario perhaps to look at an open pit expansion. But I think for the agencies to gain a comfort level for the first time they're going through this type of work, the underground footprint work better for them. And fortunately the economics on it as I'll show you now work very well for us too. So of this roughly 400,000 ounce reserve just under 7 g a ton mine that we'll be building will be a small operation. 757 150 ton a day cil operation. We will produce do a on site roughly 50,000 ounces of gold equivalent annually. And this initial Capex, it was outlined here in September of 22. That's actually an increase from the original feasibility had been done in in in 2020. So we have seen an uptick in the inflation there. Certainly this is a study that would have to be updated prior to us going into production, making construction decision. However, I'm thinking that we might see less inflation from these following three years than we did from the prior two at the end of the day. This does kick out, as I mentioned about 50,000 ounces gold equivalent annually for an initial mine life of eight years. And I'd like to stress that this is really just an initial mine life. We see a number of opportunities for mine life extension. But even at the base study case that we ran at 1750 gold price. It'll generate free cash flow annually of about 50 $40 million. Excuse me, after tax, which compares to our current market cap of about 27 million. So the study metrics, as I mentioned, we ran the base case at 1750. I do include a couple of other upside cases here at 2100 and 2500. Not surprisingly the after tax return increases, commensurately, the payback period decreases and the free cash flow in a $2700 gold environment would probably be closer to 75 million annually. So I mentioned earlier that previous owners of this project viewed it as a an ideal open pit target. And I think this image helps to explain why that would be. So the lower grade mineralization that I can point you to, which is in the purple here of the purply blue color at the top, that's only about 50 m from surface. And even the mine that we're building, which is really what's embedded in the hot pink at over 3 g per ton. That's only about 100 and 50 m from surface. So it's quite shallow. So certainly, as I mentioned, that would have been a great opportunity, a great way to develop it. But you you need the social license and for the permitting as this being the first project to move through this regime, really the small under on mine with future potential for growth was the best route to go in terms of mine life extension. Certainly because of the million ounces, there are you know, on this image here on the screen, only 400 are in this current mine plan, there's certainly opportunities to see more of that mineralization work its way into a future mine plan. I would also say that although there are about 500 holes into this deposit, we haven't fully drilled off at depth and there's certainly going to be some opportunity for exploration once we have a production decline that goes in, and our geologists have also identified a number of near mine exploration targets. In addition, we have an exploration property that's about 12 miles away, which could all be ultimately feeders into a a grassy mountain production scenario. The final point I'll leave you with, with grassy. Before we move on to permitting is that the permitting in grassy at in Oregon is a little bit different from some other jurisdictions. It is pay to play. So we are responsible for reimbursing the agencies for the work that they do in assessing our permits, which is why although we have opportunities for exploration at grassy and certainly opportunities for exploration at our other assets in our portfolio, notably at Sleeper, the capital really needed to be patient to wait for permitting. And so these are, these are capital allocation decisions that we will revisit when we, when we progress through the permitting. So as I mentioned at the state level, we received this completeness determination and notice to proceed in Q four. The environmental evaluation work is being done by Stan Tech. It was recently completed and it should be getting its official sign off from the Oregon Agencies in early October. The next deliverables then from them will be draft permits which we anticipate sometime in late Q two, followed by final permits in Q four. And then flipping to the federal side, as I mentioned with the receipt of the NO I in March earlier this year that started the, the process for them officially of the the the EIS work which is being completed by HDR. And as I mentioned, the BLM did stick these targeted dates out there for when they think that they'll hit completion. So essentially all the permitting appears to be converging for a Q 4, 2025 result. So I I also mentioned at the outset that we were named Paramount Gold Nevada because we do own the historic Sleeper property in Nevada. Some of you in this room might know about Sleeper. Some may not. It has a very, very storied past. It was a very high grade producer for a 10 year period, mid-eighties to mid-nineties from an open pit heat bleach and mill scenario. It average had grades of 7 g a ton. So I'm sure it's no surprise that we no longer have 7 g per ton in Nevada at the very moment. Otherwise, we probably would not be talking a lot about Oregon. But what we do have at Sleeper is an asset which again, we've been, we've owned since 2010. The gold price has probably more than doubled in that period of time. And what we've been doing at Sleeper is all of the reclamation work which we've won awards for in order to keep it in good standing. But we also had to go through a process of updating the resource database. This was for two reasons. One is that we're a US listed company. We have to comply with something called SK 1300. So in generating an updated technical report to comply with us regulations, we also needed to, to verify and digitize all the data that had been sitting in the database for Sleeper, some of which goes back 3040 years. So, but what I will tell you about Sleeper is, it's a very large land position. So we have 40,000 acres here that are largely contiguous. If I can direct your eye to the little yellow blob, that was the past producing pit and that's where our current 3 million low-grade ounces sit. But outside of, of that, there has not been a lot of drilling done at Sleeper at all. In fact, all the drilling that's been done historically, really centered around that old pit for the very reason that it was, it was a high grade vein that they were mining out. But the rest of our land package is virtually a white map. And so this for us represents a tremendous opportunity that it had been in the portfolio somewhat as a I could say, a backup plan for permitting in Oregon. But now that we have better visibility on the on the permitting for Oregon, it really does provide us with an opportunity to look at what could be a better development scenario for for Sleeper rather than it just sitting in Paramount's portfolio without any capital being allocated to it. We have one other small greenfields exploration property in our portfolio. It's called Bald Peak. It sits in Mineral County Nevada if you think we have our hands full with the other two and you're wondering why we picked this up. It was because our geologists were extremely attracted to what they saw in terms of the surface showing of gold. The fact that the the property which is in the red outline sits on a parallel structure to Bodi aurora and borealis which have been important open pit mines and you know, it was a very limited initial capital to spend to exercise the option, which is why I couldn't say no to it. So we are pretty excited about this as an exploration target. We did shoot a lot of we shot the Geophysics here. We took our own surface samples, everything yielded gold up to almost 11 g per ton. We received the drill permits and we have a number of drill ready targets. However, again, it's a it's a capital allocation decision and that while we still have some wood to chop in terms of getting the permits over the line for grassy, this is waiting for us to be in a position to be able to drill it with respect to our team. John mentioned at the outset we used to work together. So I spent 20 years in capital markets. The rest of the management team did work together through paramount one as well, which as I mentioned was sold to core, that was a $200 million transaction at the time. So there's some good institutional knowledge that exists within our team at the board level. Great cross section in support of the dis different disciplines and importantly from the Seabridge contribution as well with Rudy Franck as our chairman and Chris Reynolds is our chair of audit. So what you should expect to see from us over the next 12 months, again, catalysts all relate to permitting because permitting Grassy is really our best value creating opportunity. So the environmental evaluation as I mentioned should be signed off on early next month. The BLM will have the EIS the draft EIS available we expect in February and then we'll start seeing the draft permits from the state and the final eas from the, from the BLM and then culminating in final permits from the state as well. Ok. So paramount by the numbers, we have a small market cap $27 million. Today, we have endeavored to keep our share count low. So we only have 67 million shares outstanding. And you know, we think we trade obviously at a valuation that should see some appreciation as these desking initiatives continue. But at the same time, we're not in a situation where we need a higher gold price to be able to deliver on the catalysts that we see ahead specifically for Grassy. And as we look for development opportunities for Sleeper to find ways to create more value for our shareholders. And with that, I will take any questions please che but you certainly don't see that every day. A seven ground baton heap lift operation. I was just curious whether any drilling has been done at the residual heaps out there. We, we haven't been doing any drilling at all at Sleeper. I mean, it's something that we would very much like to do. We did a little bit of drilling in the fall of 2021 mostly because we had, we had some extra capital. We could put in a small program test, a thesis that our geologist had about the the range front fault. So just east of the old pit, I'm trying to just trying to see maybe this one's the best one to show it. So just east of, of where that old pit would have been, there's a range front. They had a thesis about that. So we, we were able to put in a few holes and at that time, we get, we got over a grand per ton, you know, so, so clearly, there, there is a lot that can be done here, but it needs a better capital allocation component than, than what we can afford to do at this juncture. Any other questions from the audience? I got one, you, you've got some interesting levers here to pull out. If we look forward beyond permitting, would you look to stream the silver or potentially, you know, monetize one of the non-core assets in Nevada. We could certainly do that With, as part of our deal was streaming, they do have a roofer on up to $60 million stream for construction financing for Grassy. So if a stream was, was going to be part of the solution, certainly, they would be in full position for that. You know, and I think it boils down to the economics. You know, we, we've already the royalty convertible note that we issued to spra at their option does convert into a 4.75% royalty on Grassy. We also have then a buyback option for 50% of that at the 2nd and 3rd anniversaries. which I would, I would gander at these, these commodity prices would be exercised. But we, we do have a lot of options ahead of us. And I think what we recognize is that we're literally the world experts in permitting in Oregon. So it's for us to get it over the line on permitting. And you know, as we get there, evaluate what are the best development scenarios for both these assets. So I think there's, there's much more openness to perhaps partnering or transacting Sleeper now that we see visibility at grassy permitting. And likewise, when we get to the finish line with Grassy, I think we'll also have opportunities to assess the best path forward. Right? Ok. Well, well, set up with a tight share structure there. Yeah. And yeah, with that. OK. One more, one more in the back. There you go. It's up and Rachel just one more question. Just so I've got it right. The original project that you talked about talked about is in Oregon. But this Sleeper project with a 3 million ounces in, just want to make sure I got that right. Thank you for your question. All right. Well, we're out of time. Thanks very much Rachel.


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