Arizona Gold & Silver Jump Starts Philadelphia Exploration After Evolution Mining Takes A C$12 Million Stake

0:00Welcome to the episode of Arizona Gold and Silver.

0:15Mike Stark: Arizona Gold and Silver is advancing the Philadelphia project in Arizona's Oatman Mining District, a region with roughly 2.5 million ounces of historic gold production. Drilling along Philadelphia's three-kilometer gold-silver system has returned wide high-grade intercepts, including a core running at 19.37 grams per tonne gold over 4.33 metres. The company also holds earlier-stage projects in Nevada and Arizona. Last month, Arizona Gold and Silver announced an investment by Evolution Mining, a senior Australian gold producer. Evolution took a strategic stake in Arizona, paying$12 million for a 9.9 % stake.

0:56Mike Stark: Mike Stark is CEO of Arizona Gold and Silver. Mike, welcome to Mining Stock Daily. Thank you, Michael. And thank you on a weekend as well. Thank you very much. Thank you for making time. Now, Philadelphia is your flagship project, Mike. You announced a number of high-grade intercepts. Currently, you're drilling to test whether that grade and thickness continues further down dip than a long strike. What have you found so far, Mike? We're really pleased with what we're seeing, Michael. And it's only going to get better because we've now increased the amount of drilling time. We've gone to a 24-hour shift on this particular area.

1:34And it hasn't let us down. We're waiting for results, as you can well imagine. But no, couldn't be happier right now. this drove that seems to continue to find grade that we're very pleased about.

1:47Mike Stark: Talk about grade and continuity that you're seeing along this. You did have a February announcement just talking about you seeing some structural complexities. Yes, we've got now, under current known, is 1.5 kilometers of continuous strike. We are looking to do the remainder of 1.5 kilometers with this new BOM permit, which will extend it to over three kilometers in continuous mineralization along strike. And that's called the Arabian fault, by the way. How many drills have you got turning there right now? We have one. We just advanced that to 24-hour drilling and we're in current negotiations for a second rake.

2:33That will be an announcement, I hope, in the coming weeks that we can announce to our shareholders. But at this point, instead of just reporting one hole at a time, we'll be able to do multiple holes at a time with the expediency of 24-hour drilling.

2:48Mike Stark: Looking ahead right now, how much more drilling are you going to be doing and what type of drilling are you going to be doing? We're strictly core now, Michael. Look, it's something that we've had a lot of discussion over. The fact is the people that have the interest in the company only want to see core, and I understand that. Core is the Bible. It's the truth. When you start dealing with RC, there's so many parameters. It's a great exploration tool. We're beyond exploration. Now we're going to make this defined. And the people that are looking are very pleased with not only what we see, but what the core is showing them.

3:26There seems to be, and we've used this term many times, a long ways to go on this vein. This is a vein on the red hills, by the way, called the peri vein. There's a long ways to go. The textures that we're seeing are still not what both Greg and Lex want to see. They want to see deeper down. And that could, and I'm always using the phrase carefully because you never know until you drill it, could potentially be deeper into the boiling zone where the rich environment lives.

3:57Mike Stark: Geology, can you explain a bit more about the boiling zone, Mike? You know, not being a geologist, but I'll make it in simple terms. The boiling zone is something where all the gold is actually comes to the surface, sorry, not comes to the surface, is found. So in the history books, the Oatman district, the Oatman mine came down to a level where they intersected a very large, rich area, which happened to be 1.1 ounces, 26 feet thick. That would be called the mineralization heart. And we have yet to see that in the textures that we have found so far. And we're only down 1 ,400 feet, vertical feet, that is, at this point.

4:39There's been several comments that this vein looks like we could be going to 28, maybe more, 2 ,800 feet. With the textures they're seeing right now, it is nowhere near the bottom.

4:52Mike Stark: Let's turn to your funding. In late August, you announced a$12 million strategic investment by Evolution Mining, which took that 9.9 % stake in your company. Per the terms, Evolution gets a board seat observer beyond the technical committee. It has a refusal on sale of 20 % or greater on Philadelphia. Where is the deal going right now with Evolution? Very pleased to have them on board. Look, a$25 billion company taking an interest in a junior. I could not be more flattered, but I'm also flattered at the vision that these people have. They see they're in line with us on what the potential here.

5:32And that excites me because then you're getting to somebody that has not only developed, they have four producing gold mines, excuse me, four, four producing mines in Australia, excuse me. and one here in Canada and Ontario. Evolution is hungry, looking to expand. And the only way to do that is you go out looking for next opportunities. One of the things that was talked about was, hey, we're looking seven years out for mine development. And I really, really enjoy that. That's the focus is how do we build this? How do we get involved? But more importantly, they want safe jurisdictions. They don't want to be plagued with permitting issues, government issues, and they don't have that here, nor do we see it at all.

6:19But what I'm really impressed with is the opportunity they see, the vision that we have is shared by them. They think this is going to be a very good, substantially, possibly a very large deposit. And if that's the case, they want to be first in. so we're worth working with a very versed very qualified group and the fact that they want to help on the technical committee is is an extreme please now we'll have four heads making these decisions we're just i mean i won't have to go into detail on who but we just formulated the team so the team will hopefully be working together very very soon and as a result of that now you have four qualified people looking at where to drill, what's the next best opportunity.

7:07They're having new data provided to them all the time, LIDAR, and that is just the beginning. The board seat is in the future. It's not right now, but it's in the future. And I welcome that as well. Look, again, it's help building. This is a very big, robust system that we've only scratched the surface on. The eastern anomaly, which may or not be known to many, is 15 times larger than what we're currently working on right now. That's an intriguing opportunity for shareholders.

7:39Mike Stark: Now, you also announced the Sorbi financing in the spring. That was an$18 million financing as well. So what is your current cash position, Mike? Our current cash position is very, very, very, very well. Look, we were originally working with$1 to$2 million exercises, and now we have in the bank, sorry, right now is about 16 million. And the Sorbi deals is starts to inject this month. And that'll be$750 a month for 24 months. And what I'm going to key on here, both these groups paid a premium to the market price. And what I'm more excited about, Evolution pushing being first in as a potential developer here and potential long-term investor, they paid a 60 % premium above the share price to get involved.

8:33I think that should really resonate to people that this is something that they see has got great, great growth potential. And the opportunity here is now.

8:45Mike Stark: You talked earlier about having the one drill rig and then potentially adding on a second. There's a lot of money that's flowing into the sector right now. Mike, what has it been like in terms of being able to get back your assays? Our assays are good. Why is this meaning in timelines in terms of kind of showing advancement? Yeah, and because of what we see, we put these on a rush. So our timeline is very, very quick. um normally there could be as much as a two and a half three month wait in our case it's less than a month and i'm very pleased about that but we see the value in getting this information back to shareholders quickly believe me it also helps us lex greg everybody on the team define hey you know what now that we see this grade we got to go here we got to go here and that helps the team make better decisions.

9:39Not that we've ever missed. And this is a qualified statement. We have not missed in a long, long time. So these guys are doing a great job.

9:49Mike Stark: Philadelphia is your flagship, but you do have other projects. You have the Silverton Antimony Gold Project in Nevada, Sycamore Project in Arizona. How are you judging in terms of like what resources you're allocating to these projects vis-a-vis Philadelphia? You did announce a 27-hole program for Silverton in June. Yeah, let me talk about Silverton. The results are in the lab on that. There's 11 holes that will be reported on, not 27, but 11. And once we get those back, we'll be releasing them. It is, the focus on Silverton was right back to day one while, why we took the property was a Carlin style deposit.

10:30The antimony at the surface further qualifies that this has something deep, rich in it. And that information that we'll get back from the lab will help us assist on that. So it is a secondary project, but we wanted to start some wheels turning on it. We will wait for those results to come back to define what the next steps are. And then if you wish, Sycamore Canyon is something that we were originally starting out with until Philadelphia came along. And Philadelphia, of course, is taking almost all of our attention and there's for good reason. Look, we have a lot to see. From a perspective, we've looked at just over 80, 85 acres out of 3 ,600 acres.

11:15It really deserves our full attention and we're giving it. That's the best reward we can give our shareholders right now.

11:22Mike Stark: How's the community around you? I believe Oatman has described itself as a living ghost town on Route 66. It's a tourism town. It is. And it's a delight to see. I encourage people, if they're down in the area, you've got to drop in. I mean, talk about stepping back in time. The old original buildings are still there. You walk into the bar, and there's dollar bills stapled to the wall. And not one. I'm talking thousands of dollars on the wall. I asked the lady behind the bar, and I said, can you give me any idea how much money is on the wall here? And she said, I have no idea. We actually had a total back like 1980.

12:02And she said, it's, you know, here we are 40 years later. So it's amazing to see that. It's amazing to see the lifestyle that had to be brought into that area to live in the heat during the summer months. And that, you know, they're miles away from infrastructure. Miles in that day. Today, it's only six miles away from anything you want, whether that's Home Depot, McDonald's, Starbucks, it's all there. So the infrastructure that we have within miles of us is incredible. I'll touch on a couple of other things. The power, it runs not only over top of the property, along the side of the property.

12:39Water, we've actually have our own water well. So we have water supplying, so we're not having to run or truck it in. And the biggest one is access. Where other companies, again, just because of situations, they have to helicopter crew, people, personnel in, or equipment in. we literally drop in off an old state highway and the new highway highway 68 which is four lanes drops right onto our driveway we drive right down the middle of our property access is incredible year-round drilling it's got all the components and we are in a mining friendly jurisdiction Arizona being in my mind the number two jurisdiction in the world for safe friendly operations.

13:24We have the Moss Mine six miles away operating, and then we have Gold Road, which is 14 miles away operating. So yeah, from a jurisdictional point of view, we have all the goods.

13:37Mike Stark: Can you talk about your runway? Sure, be glad to. Never had this before, Michael, and I'm really, really happy and pleased about it. The financings that we've now completed gives us an extremely long runway before any financial needs will be needed and approximately two, two and a half years, but even longer potentially because every single warrant and option is in the money. That presents about another$14.6 million coming into the treasury. So shareholders should be extremely pleased right now with that income, with what current treasury is available. There'll be no financings needed in the near future.

14:17Matter of fact, it's a two and a half year runway that could be extended. And that does not include the SORB warrants or the evolution warrants. So that will be on top of that, which would represent again, another very large amount of money coming in.

14:34Mike Stark: Lastly, Mike, key milestones, uh, 2026, 2027. 2026 um get hopefully down to about 2 000 feet on this vein uh that's approximately another 6 500 feet of drilling to do to get three rigs on the property by the end of this year is another goal that i have and and it's shared by management as well whether that would be two core rigs and an rig that's yet to be determined. And again, what we would do with maybe with that RC, and it could be core, is go down south. Let's start exploring south on the property, extending this to three kilometers in strike length. And then the other goal is to get some permitting done on that Eastern section.

15:22With the new data that we have been provided with, it's further defining where we need to put the permit in to say, we're drilling here.

15:32Mike Stark: Mike Stark, thanks to speak with Mining Stock Daily Thank you very much, Michael Appreciate the time And again, on a weekend, all the better Thank 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 Please do your own research or speak with a licensed financial representative Before making any investment decisions