Cartier Resources: A $1 Billion Gold Project Ready for Its Next Chapter

0:17Trevor Hall: All right, moving right along here in New Orleans with the New Orleans Investment Conference, and we're connecting with an old friend of Mining Stock Daily, Mr. Philippe Cloutier of Cartier Resources. They do trade on the Venture Exchange with ECR and on the OTCQB with ECRFF. Philippe, good morning. Hello, how are you doing? Love starting my day out with a conversation with you. How's it going? Listen, we're wrapping up the year. We're finally getting there. It's kind of wild. It is wild. It's been a very long, good year, good year for gold. It's been up and down. The juniors are taking a beating recently.

0:56But listen, you asked me how I'm doing. I'm doing fine. The company's doing great. We're cashed up. We're just about to lead off into another part of the adventure, which is all good. So I'm a happy guy. Yeah, yeah.

1:10Trevor Hall: Let's maybe just pick things up from the last time. I can't actually – I forgot the last time we chatted. I think it was a month ago. I think we chatted with the updated TEA. Yeah. So maybe let's follow up with that numbers and just kind of lay another foundation there with what that represented and what happens next. But that came out with an after-tax MPB,$1 billion Canadian, and an IRR of 26.5 % using a$3 ,600 gold price. So you're right in there. And obviously those numbers, a lot of institutions that might be looking at these things early days, I mean, PEA is still a glimpse of what might be for Cadillac.

1:49Trevor Hall: But give us a chance. Were you happy with those numbers? And what was the big takeaway you've had over the last month? Well, we were extremely happy with those numbers, especially when it came in just north of a billion dollars. They used only half of the resource in the mining scenario. You know, it's minimum 16 years of 100 ,000 ounces per year production profile. But then the shocking number was the very low capex to build this thing. You know, almost 25 % of the ultimate NPV. And it gets even better because obviously we built this with a toll-meldling approach along the highway. But if we wanted to go even further, right, and focus only on the measured and indicated portion of the resource, well, we could go straight to feasibility.

2:41And then there's a whole different ballgame. the questions are why would you want to do that well just keep unlocking the value of this project and fast tracking it to production it's uh it's tearing a play a page out of the playbook of other you know competitors that are doing this you know waiting sitting around and waiting for somebody to take you out that's not a winning strategy you always have to take your project to the next level and the next level for this project is lining it up to be built right yeah okay so the one number

3:15Trevor Hall: that stuck out in my head 16 16 year mine life here yeah well that's minimum then that's yeah that's minimum uh obviously annual average annual gold production about 100 000 ounces per year on the mine life that's substantial and that number really sticks out because i think a lot of people in those early stage PEA days it's hard to find anything more than 12 years right Absolutely, and obviously all of the additional drilling that we've done so far was not even folded into this assessment. So we know this thing can grow, and specifically at the contact zone, which is 5 kilometers or 3-ish miles northeast of the main zone where the shaft and the ramp is, and that's really high-grade stuff.

4:02So it's kind of throwing the engineers off their game a bit, but then for them it's all upside. It's all future opportunity. By the way, the full 300 or 400-page report is due to be filed just at the end of this week as we speak.

4:19Trevor Hall: Okay, so anybody can just go flip through that one for a leisurely weekend reading. Well, I know most retail won't, but there are nuggets in there that are really nice. What nuggets do you think are important? What part of the section do you think people need to wade through? They could go right down to the opportunities and recommendations section. And I think a lot of the what's next is encapsulated there. And those are things that the board of directors and management will be discussing in the next few weeks. Quite honestly, by Christmas, some decisions will have to be made. Okay. So let's talk about where you go from now.

5:03Trevor Hall: You basically put a pause on a massive drill program. Yeah. The 100 ,000 meters. That's a pause. Now you're working into less exploration, more kind of behind-the-desk development with this PEA? On the one hand, it doesn't make sense to continue drilling when you've got something that's ready to build, right? Sure. Because people will value you as either an exploration company or a development company. And then if you continue just drilling off exploration targets, they're going to say, well, why did you even drill this off and do PEA on this thing, right? So there are strategic decisions to be made going forward.

5:47And really exciting times. Really exciting times. indeed then if one was to take this and break this down into any number of diamond drill programs it would be well north of 250 000 meters of diamond drilling that's extremely dilutive and you're only delaying what needs to be done that is to build it um you're you're probably going to say, well, Phil, building it is extremely delusive as well. Not in the same way, because you're actually crystallizing value, and ultimately you're going to be producing cash flow, and then you never have to go back to the markets.

6:32Trevor Hall: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. You mentioned the toll milling. To nobody's surprise, you're not the only development stage company that's talked about toll milling and the epitope. It seems like that's kind of the go-to scenario here. There's a lot of infrastructure available, but is it getting competitive? No. No. You know, feed the mill, when a major company says that, it doesn't sound very sexy. But let me walk you through this. Let's just use a round number. If they have a 10 ,000 ton per day milk and they're processing a gram per ton at the end of the day they're they're they're they're they're producing 10 000 grams um if they uh if the price of gold goes up they're tempted to process even lower grade material but that's not a winning strategy because if let's say you got you still have a 10 000 ton per day milk and you're feeding it half a gram so you're producing 5 ,000 grams per ton.

7:32So the cost per ounce for that miner is going up. The situation right now is worse because their mills are not completely filled up. So they're not running optimal. And there is mills available, mill feed available for Agnico, El Dorado, West Dome, IM Gold, and pretty soon Fresneo because they have to build the mill and they're going to throw a monkey wrench into the whole system because they cannot feed the mill. They have to build their own mill. So you're going to have excess mill capacity very shortly. Okay. And that's where Cardstay sits there and raises their hand and says, well, look, scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.

8:17Because building your own mill is a high-cost item on the CapEx. We have the benefit of only being a 20-mile stretch down the highway from these operating mills, which is not an option some other juniors have with more remote projects that need to be developed.

8:36Trevor Hall: Are you getting closer to making some sort of an agreement, tool milling agreement with a partner? Is that a catalyst? That is definitely a potential catalyst. potentially adds competitive tension because people cannot assume where we're going to send this. That's the next surprise. And then, again, the next surprise is actually looking at our project and trying to break it down into manageable pieces. We do have about 800 ,000 ounces of measured and indicated. With no additional drilling, we could go from PEA to feasibility and redesign something that can be fast-tracked. Well, that's my follow-up question.

9:23Trevor Hall: Is a PEA, does that establish a reasonable base to create a toll milling partnership? Or would a potential partner be looking for more of a higher-level technical report, like a PFS or a feasibility study? Yeah, a mining company always looks for the least risk document, and that's feasibility. And a lot of people assume that you have to drill, then do a PEA, then do a PFS, then do an FS. That's the roadmap. That's the roadmap. That's the set rules. But if you do a drill program and you want to go straight to feasibility, you can. The thing is, in Quebec, if you walk down the road of requesting permitting, you have to staple to that request a feasibility study.

10:09You can't do that on a resource assessment or a PEA. So there is value in going straight to feasibility, and the upside on our project is you don't need to do any additional infill drilling. You already have the measure that's indicated, and you already have a lot of infrastructure and qualified workforce. So hop, skip, and then jump, you're almost there, right? Yeah. So I think that's lost on a lot of people.

10:37Trevor Hall: So you and I are going to be chatting again in a couple weeks in Frankfurt. Yeah, just a couple weeks, actually. Knock on wood, maybe I'll have something more firm to orientation. But let me leave it with this, and then we'll do another follow-up conversation in another couple weeks. But is the game plan for Cartier, are we looking at a potential scenario? It's a strategic shift of the company where it goes from explorer to mine developer in 2027. Are we talking operator in 2028? Yeah, that is clearly an alternative forward. We don't really consider the markets because that's out of our control.

11:24But we do have$5 million in the bank. We do have an exceptional project in a superb jurisdiction, and the stage is set for this thing to go to the next level. And all it needs is a commitment on our part and on part of certain special shareholders. Okay.

11:48Trevor Hall: All right. We'll leave it at that. Yeah. We'll see you next couple weeks. Yeah. All right, Philippe. Thanks so much. All right. That's your update here from Cartier Resources. So as again, we'll be connecting with CEO Philippe Caldier here in the next couple of weeks when we're overseas for Frankfurt. It's a busy, busy November, guys. All right. More to come here from New Orleans. Stay tuned. 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.

12:18Trevor Hall: Please do your own research or speak with a licensed financial representative before making any investment decision. .