Intrepid Metals Launches New Drill Program at Corral Copper

0:17Mining Stock Daily: All right, everybody, welcome back to Mining Stock Daily's coverage of the Beaver Creek Precious Metals Summit. Moving right along here with our first day with a corporate update from Intrepid Metals. They do trade on the Venture Exchange with INTR and on the OTCQB with IMTCF. The Precious Metal Summit is always better when Matthew Lennox King is in attendance. He's been missed the last couple of years. I think you may have been here, but not in a CEO role. So welcome back. Thank you. One-to-one meetings? Like, here we go. Did you miss that? Yes. What else am I supposed to say? Yes. It's good to be back.

0:56Mining Stock Daily: Yeah, well, we're extremely thrilled to have you back here. But let's talk about the Corral Project. Last time you and I spoke, you announced a big drill program, 10 ,000 meters, I think it was. That's right. And since that time, drills are turning. Drills are turning. Yeah, we finally, in my opinion, others might disagree, started drilling last Wednesday. So we're on our first hole as part of that program. So we're looking at CRD, so carbonate replacement, solid mineralization, expansion drilling, initially up at our holiday target. And then we will move from there to some other target areas.

1:34We're keeping it slightly under wraps right now, but certainly all the surface work and target generation work that we completed this summer in the lead up to drilling has resulted in a couple of new opportunities that will work into the drill program. Okay.

1:50Mining Stock Daily: Why was that the highest priority starting target? A couple reasons. It's some of the shallowest mineralization. All right. And it's also on private ground that we control. So you just essentially, I'm being glib, but you essentially just plunk the drill there and start working. Okay. All right. You talked about a 50-50 split with this 10 ,000 meters, 5 ,000 on that CRD, another 5 ,000 testing that porphyry thesis, I would say, if anybody's interested in going back to that conversation we had about a month ago, please go do that. But which half of that do you think really has the potential to really re-rate the company and its equity?

2:35Excellent question. And I would say the potential of both those suites of targets we think is really high. we still think so if we look at the crd half of the program if you will like the initial part all those holes are designed to be 35 50 meter minimum step outs from known mineralization so we're going to ideally see a pretty rapid expansion of the footprint of those zones the size of those zones and what i made vague references to a couple minutes ago like there's a brand new target that we're going to test. It's in the CRD suite of targets, and it looks really exciting. You have a smile on your face right now.

3:19Mining Stock Daily: Yeah. Could be really cool. On the porphyry side, it's a target type that has not been pursued at Corral in the past. As you know, we've done a really methodical workup on those targets. The next phase of that is concurrent with drilling. We're completing a large IP and MT survey. At the same time, that's kind of the final ingredient that we want to work into those porphyry targets. And in conjunction with some existing ZTEM or ZTEM data that we have, there are some really interesting features at depth, sort of 500 meters to 700 meters from surface. So we're still relatively shallow that we will be testing in the coming months.

4:06So, look, if we drill 500 meters of 0.5 and 0.5, of course that could be a game changer. Sure.

4:16Mining Stock Daily: Well, and actually that's a good segue into my next question. Like, you know, with the drills now and turning, what does a discovery needle look like at Corral to really get this thing moving? And, you know, I mean, obviously 500 meters and 0.5, 0.5. Yeah. That would be amazing. But fundamentally, what does it need to look like? I think you want to see enough indication of alteration, mineralization, whether it's high-grade or lower levels, to be confident that we've tapped into the porphyry part of the system. If it's just some anomalous values in dead-looking rock, that doesn't really do it for anyone.

4:55But you want to see the full alteration speed and be able to say confidently that you're in the system. And if you're in the system, then I think you keep going because you have great variability in all the rest of it.

5:07Mining Stock Daily: You've got a healthy treasury. We do. Just under$20 million Canadian. So if things all go well in early stages of this program, can you quickly expand? Yes. Okay. Yes, we can. Yeah. So we have 19 million Canadian in the treasury currently. we're sitting on roughly eight and a half Canadian in the money warrants right now that come due in 2027. So realistically, if things stay the same, our funding needs are met for quite a while. Yeah, so provided there are drill rigs available, yeah, we could expand the program. Okay, very good. The copper market's obviously incredibly hot right now. Domestic, U.S.

5:51Mining Stock Daily: domestic Copper is definitely getting a little bit, feels like a pretty good premium. You know, that little cactus project close to you guys sold earlier this year. And so there's, you know, there's a lot of good wind to the sales right now for copper explorers. What is the most challenging part of being a copper explorer right now?

6:15That is a very interesting question. and I need to reflect for a minute or a second I think so part of in any exploration company it's really getting from concept to discovery and then discovery to potential resource initial resource and it's kind of navigating from your first exciting results through to some kind of project definition whether it's a resource PA or something like that. And I think it's navigating that space. Everyone loves exciting high grade drill results. It's like, okay, great. And then it's like, what have you done for me lately? Does this actually work? And I think it's probably navigating if you're funded, if the market's strong, all the rest of it, I think it's really navigating that period of time.

7:07Mining Stock Daily: Arizona, is it hard to find drills, work, you know, people to help out? It's very active right now. It's very active. Arguably, I would have liked to have been drilling a couple of months ago. That said, I am the CEO and pushing the pace is one thing we're supposed to do. But at the end of the day, it worked out well. We could have gone with a smaller contractor. We now have major drilling doing the work for us, who we have 100 % confidence in. They're one of the best of the best. So it did work out. But yeah, it's competitive down there. A lot of work going on. As an explorer, you know, if you are to make a porphyry discovery here and things look real positive, that's stage one.

7:53Mining Stock Daily: Stage two might be the hardest part, and that's really developing the porphyry. It's a lot of drilling, depending on the depth of this thing. You know, what is kind of the long-term strategy here, say, over the next two years, if a discovery, a bona fide discovery is made and you know you have to go harder, go faster? Yeah, for sure. For sure. So I think it's really still that two-track approach where that near-surface high-grade CRD-related mineralization is not going anywhere. So that'll always be some of the focus, given its grade and that it's relatively shallow. So you could see that advancing down a resource track.

8:30If we are fortunate enough to make that porphyry discovery or discoveries, then obviously you're going to allocate capital, time, rigs to expanding those. I mean, yeah, if you look, sorry, an example to look at would be the old Bisbee mining club hex down in Bisbee, right? That started off life as a high-grade CRD and then transitioned to mining the porphyry-related mineralization out of the lavender pit. So sort of step one, step two. That would obviously be the ideal scenario at Corral. It's too early for us to say that, but that's a really good analog to how Corral could with Good Fortune develop.

9:15What about expanding the portfolio outside of just Corral? Yeah, so we do have the two other assets in there, Tombstone South, which is of course south of Tombstone, and Mesa Well, which is earlier stage and up closer to Faraday's Copper Creek. I think until we have kind of reached a nice steady state at Corral, it's probably premature, given that we're still a relatively small outfit. And we think Corral has a lot of potential. That said, if there are attractive opportunities that come around, of course you have to look at them. Of course you have to evaluate them and see how they might fit within the portfolio.

9:56Yeah, yeah.

9:58Mining Stock Daily: Professionally, you're back in the game here. Yeah. What's the difference between this market and where you were three years ago? Oh, it couldn't be more different. You took your hiatus at a really appropriate time. It was, yeah, taking a hiatus in a rising bull market was outstanding. And now being back, and I think the biggest difference is that if you have a good project, you can now fund it. You can fund the work that needs to get done. and I think in a lot of cases we've seen that capital be put to really good use. People are making discoveries, people are advancing projects, people are consolidating assets and it's working the way it's supposed to.

10:46Whereas three, four, five years ago it wasn't working the way it's supposed to.

10:49Mining Stock Daily: Yeah, yeah. All right. Well you and I are gonna have quite a bit to talk about. Yeah. Probably is it reasonable to say maybe a couple months for first assays or? As you know, I'm an optimist. So I'm saying four to five weeks to myself right now. Yeah, stand to be proven wrong either way. But yeah, we'd anticipate from start to drilling sort of four to five weeks. Beginning of the winter, we'll say that. Yeah. Yeah, late fall, early winter. Yeah, for sure. Okay. Well, best of luck. Thank you. We'll be following the story as they are a current client here at Mining Stock Daily. So there'll be a lot of news here coming down pipeline, a lot more conversations between Matt and myself.

11:32Mining Stock Daily: Thanks so much. Enjoy the rest of your week. And I think everybody's going to be happy to have you back. Right on. Thanks, Trevor. All right. That's your update from Intrepid Metals, everybody. Stay tuned. We've got a lot more coming out over the next few days. 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.