1,700 Metres at Altar: Aldebaran Delivers a Standout Copper Hole

0:16All right, everybody, welcome back into Mining Stock Daily. I'm going to wrap up my corporate updates here today with one from Aldebaran Resources. They do trade on the Venture Exchange with ALDE and on the OTCQX with ADBRF. The company's been publishing more drill results out of this past current program. A lot of infill going on here to convert a lot of that inferred resources into higher confidence measured and indicated. And this morning's highlight hole, hole 260, oh my gosh, did not disappoint. Over 1 ,700 meters, a 0.45 % copper equivalent. That was the headline hole and it would be in any other case.

0:59But John Black, CEO of the company, is joining us for his comments. John, good to see you. My goodness, 1 ,700 meters. That's the longest hole you guys have ever drilled. Yeah, we've got holes that are longer than that, but not continuously mineralized like this. So this is, we're certainly pleased with this. As you mentioned, many of the holes reported today our infill hole. So what we're trying to do is improve the confidence in the deposit. We're trying to convert as much of the remaining inferred to measured and indicated as possible. We're pretty fortunate that our most recently reported resource is about two-thirds measured and indicated, but that inferred that's still there, we need to get that converted over.

1:42So this hole is in an area where it should be a good hole. It's just it came back better than expected and a longer run, more continuously mineralized than expected. So I think this is a good indication of the size of deposit we have and the continuity that we have within this deposit. And we're very happy to see that the market's back pretty robust now and we're getting reactions to these type of holes. We've been frustrated in our most recent release where we put out pretty similar results that didn't quite get the traction that we did today. So good to see that people are recognizing this for what it is and recognizing that we're still significantly undervalued for the size and quality of asset that we have.

2:26John, I mean, your stock was up more than 18 % now that the market's closed. So that's a wrap on today's trading. We'll see you follow through the rest of the week, obviously. But just given that you've now gone through a full day of trading, what was some of the feedback you gotten? And, you know, why people stepping in now, you know, and not, as you mentioned previously, when you put in just as good of holes before. I think a little bit of it is we're back in the autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. And we're just seeing a lot more activity, a lot more awareness of the potential leverage for good copper projects right now.

3:05As you and I know, Beaver Creek was kind of record attendance this year. and not only were there a lot of people there, but there were a lot of new faces, a lot of new money coming into the sector, a lot of people realizing the importance of having exposure to copper. And I think it's just kind of, you keep hitting with good results on this and then when you get into a market where people are looking for opportunities like this, this was just an opportunity to remind them of what we have. And when you take a look at the market cap of the company right now compared to the asset we have, we're pretty clearly undervalued.

3:41So I think this is one that have been, it's been on a lot of people's radars and this was just the catalyst necessary to get people to pounce on it today. All right. Well, that whole 260, that was obviously the headline hole, but it wasn't the only hole reported today. You did republish results from hole 266, 265, 269, 271. A lot of decent continuity in here, John. I mean, you're talking, I guess, you know, 840 meters to over 900 meters in either one of these holes respectively from roughly half percent to just a little bit over that. Anything that really stands out, you know, you keep seeing more results from this conversion program.

4:25Anything that stands out of Altar that may be, you guys as a management team surprise you a little bit despite you know having your your eyes and boots on the ground for so long not particularly it's it's behaving well it's like like i mentioned it's it's doing what it should do on this and that we're showing that there's a there there are three distinct kind of higher grade cores to the system and then surrounded by large areas of of lower grade material but continuously mineralized and so So those are holding up well. They're doing what we want to. Keep in mind of these holes, there are also a handful of these holes that are purely geotechnical holes.

5:04They're drilling off into the very margins of the system to gather information that we can use to constrain pit slopes and things like that. Most of those are expected to be very weakly mineralized or even dead. There are some pleasant surprises, a low-grade material there that will probably help us on strip ratio as well. So overall, it's behaving as a big three-dimensional porphyry. That's the beauty of porphyry systems is that you have pretty continuous, predictable mineralization in them. And that's certainly what we're seeing right now. You have been pushing the depth extents outside of the mineral.

5:43You're finding mineralization outside of that 2024 conceptual resource pit here, John. When this program's all said and done, are you looking at expanding that pit, expanding its dimensions to get everything in there? Or do you leave enough a little bit kind of blue sky at the bottom there to be attractive for maybe somebody else? Great question. And we're right in the throes of that right now. So as you recall in our PEA, we chose to do a smaller open pit and then selectively mine higher grade portions of the deposit with bulk underground block cave mining methods. And that gave us the best economic return on it and also met some key parameters.

6:28We wanted to make sure we had at least 100 ,000 tons of copper per year production while long mine life and we maximized NPV and IRR. And we wanted to keep that capex low on the front end of the project because turning this into a super pit would be attractive for companies with really deep pockets. But the capex goes up a lot and kind of restricts the number of potential parties that would be able to go forward with that. So when we looked at that, it was a little bit different than the resource we put out was just constrained by a pit. as we redo the mineral resource estimate that's in process right now the the next mineral resource will be constrained by a pit and then probably also at depth constrained by reasonable assumptions for material that could be mined by bulk underground mining methods so we that deep those deeper portions we focus on the higher grade mineralization and make sure that we're capturing those and being able to use those in potential block caving scenarios later in the mine life.

7:33Okay. You did talk about the radio porphyry target here. And obviously Altar, you know, main gets majority of this attention, but 30 ,000 meters of drilling into radio, that is something that you can actually add ounces with. Maybe let's revisit radio here, John. Why is this important now and so much dedicated you know meters drilled into radio what is it going to add to Altar that maybe the market is overlooked it's important to note that the the meterage into radio was drilling that was done previously so that wasn't in the last field season we just hadn't included that into a resource because much of that mineralization is it's very attractive grade and notably higher gold content to it, but it's also quite deep and in a vertical body.

8:23It's kind of a classic, we call them a pencil-shaped intrusion that has higher grades associated with it. And when we originally envisioned the project as completely open pit, we didn't see that easily falling into the scenario. But as we developed the PEA last year and realized that the best way or a very good way to go forward with the project would be to have an underground component, it opened that back up, but we didn't have a resource on that mineralization. So this time when we do the mineral resource estimate, we are incorporating that in, but it's important to note that's not, it's not like we suddenly drilled it last year.

9:00This was drilling from previous years. We're just, with the opening the door to potential underground mining on this, it was important to get that captured into the mineral resource. Will it most likely be an inferred resource or will you be able to convert some of that to M &I? We'll have to see. It's a judgment of SRK who's doing the mineral resource estimate for us. We'll see. We're anxiously waiting to see how much. I would suspect a lot of it will be inferred out there because there's less drilling. It's deeper mineralization. But let's see how that comes in. And probably important to remind everybody listening too that that updated mineral resource estimate with all the assays in now and everything done and the geologic models done and everything, we're working hard on getting that ready.

9:47So we anticipate that'll be in October or latest in November on this. So we're probably within a month of being able to see that new resource estimate. Okay. And then the pre-feasibility study completion next year. Next year for that. And other important catalysts between now and then is we'll be submitting for REGI qualification to obtain those very attractive investment incentives to move forward with the project. We plan to have that ready for submission in the latest part of this year or at the latest in January or so of next year to get that in. And that takes four to six months for approval typically.

10:29So we'd like to have, be in a position to have that approved mid next year when we're getting close to having the pre-feasibility out. Okay. Do you expect any more drill results to come into the market prior to that updated mineral research? No, this batch was our last one. So this was all the, we drilled up until June last year. And this is, the assay labs were a little bit slow this year and we had to recheck a few things on stuff. So this is the final batch. We don't have any more drill assays that'll come out. And given the amount of snow we have on the ground drilling, we'll probably start up a little bit late this year.

11:05So I wouldn't, it'll be some time before we have new assays now. Okay. Very good. Well, I was going to ask you, I mean, it is kind of getting, you know, it's approaching field season down there in the Southern, in the Southern Hemisphere. John, what does a field program and Altar look like this season with all, you know, the resource update and the PFS, you know, the desk work? kind of being really important, what does a field season look like? Field season will involve a lot of additional geotechnical drilling, a lot of site evaluations. We have to do condemnation drilling in areas that we plan to put, say, tailored storage facilities, a lot of drilling to define where we can find water and how much there is.

11:48Some of that is, a small amount of that's necessary for the pre-feasibility, so it'll be prioritized up front in the field program. But much of what we'll be doing is really work that leads towards the data necessary for feasibility. So, and then it's also important, I think, to remind everybody that after many years of effectively drought conditions in this part of the Andes and very low snow totals, we kind of got spoiled being able to drill up to June. And for the past few years, we would be going into camp this week and starting up in the 1st of October. But we have a lot of snow on the ground and we anticipate a lot of runoff.

12:32So we will be late on getting our fields. Every program, some programs have even announced that they won't go in until January this year. It's just the results of El Nino or super El Nino conditions and extraordinary snowfall on the projects right now. that means we'll probably start up a few months late. And we'll let everybody know when we have a better idea. We're ourselves and some of our neighbors are cutting in through the snow right now and starting to get the first look at what the conditions really are. And we'll depend a little bit on whether we get late spring snowfalls down there that could complicate things more.

13:10But anticipate a slightly later startup than normal. Okay. Okay. Now that you've had a chance to come up from air following Beaver Creek Precious Metal Summer, you and I have tabled that conversation. So we did not chat on the record, I might add, at Beaver Creek. And then you followed up with Denver Gold here, John. Any sort of takeaways that you gained from those two weeks? Maybe not specifically with Aldebaran or maybe of Regulus, but any sort of kind of market insights that you gained that things are potentially moving? Boy, it's clear that we're moving into a very robust market, both copper and gold, and probably particularly copper right now.

13:52The number of major companies that were present at Beaver Creek was noticeably higher, and they were sending business development teams instead of just exploration teams and seeking out companies with assets like we have to learn more about what our intention is and going forward with projects. So that was very welcome. Not surprising at all. We've been seeing this anyway with both companies, but it really, really ramped up on that. Also, it was interesting. We met a lot of new funds this year that I'd never heard of before. And these are groups that haven't particularly invested in metals or mining before, but they're aware now of the importance of critical metals for energy transition.

14:41and they are making dedicated efforts to move into the space. And so we're seeing new players, new money come in. There's more money available for financing. I anticipate this will lead into quite a bit more M &A activity over the next months and year or two. And so these are the moments that we live for in these markets. We see these conditions probably once every 10 or 15 years where we get into a robust market. Now, having said that, I think the word that we heard most commonly from major companies and a few banks and others is the word discipline, where everybody's promising to be disciplined on their approach and not go too crazy on chasing things right now.

15:27We kind of laugh to ourselves because I've been through maybe five of these cycles and everybody promises discipline going in. And sooner or later, people start making moves and that's thrown out the window and everybody wants to land on a spot. So we like how this is setting up. These are the moments we live for. Okay. All right, John, thanks so much for your time. Good to see you. Good to spend some time with you and the team up in the mountains the other week. and obviously that resource estimate most likely will be the next time you and I chat. That's going to be an important one. We'll certainly want to catch up.

16:02There'll be a lot to talk about on that, I'm sure. Yep. Just weeks away, it sounds like here, either late this month or into November. All right. Aldebaran Resources, once again, is trades on the venture with ALDE and on the OTC QX with ADBRF. They are a partner of the podcast. I'm also a shareholder of the company. John, have yourself a great rest of your week. Thanks so much. Great. Thanks, Trev. We'll see you. The information presented should not be considered investment advice. Mining stock daily and its affiliates are not responsible for any loss arising from any investment decision in connection with the material presented herein.

16:35Please do your own research or speak with a licensed financial representative before making any investment decisions.