Intrepid Metals Prepares for First Porphyry Test at Corral

0:18All right, everybody, moving right along here on this Tuesday. Well, very busy Tuesday. A lot of corporate updates here this week. I think everybody's coming back into the office from the summer vacation. But we're going to go back down to the state of Arizona here with our friends from Intrepid Metals. They do trade on the Venture Exchange with INTR and on the OTCQB with IMTCF, Matthew Lennox-King, CEO of the company. They have published some information, really starting, they're getting ready to drill that Corral Copper project in Arizona. So we're going to dive right into this as deep as we can here.

0:57Still early days here. But Matt, exciting days ahead here. You know, give us a sense. You've got a few targets here. Maybe what's going to be the lowest hanging fruit here, you think, here for Corral?

1:10Matthew Lennox-King: Great question. Yeah. And so everything really is getting rolling for us here. First drill will arrive on site second week of September, and we'll aim to get rolling pretty quickly on the heels of that. um the lowest hanging fruit look really is the high grade crd style mineralization that we've intersected in the last couple campaigns um we or the team i'll give the team credit has designed what should be a really impactful program um and that program as far as it relates to the crd drilling it's roughly 5 000 meters and it's all step out we're not looking at infill anymore. So we're looking at minimum 50 meter step outs from known mineralization.

1:56Matthew Lennox-King: And these are in the zones ranging from Holiday in the north down to Ringo and Clanton in the southern part of that CRD related trend. So super exciting there. And those are going to be shorter holes, sort of 150-ish to 250 meter holes. So things that we can bang out pretty quickly, start to get information back and ideally communicate that out to the market. Yeah. So how is your conviction here that there is indeed a porphyry source beneath that CRD system? Getting better all the time. I'm putting you on the spot here. Yeah. Look, I would say getting better all the time in that a lot of the work that you referenced in the intro, it has been specifically related to sort of teasing out and reinforcing those porphyry targets.

2:52Matthew Lennox-King: Ultimately, you know, drilling is the ultimate test, but we do have a pending IP survey as well. Yeah, we're seeing really interesting metal zonation. So definitely some very copper rich zones at surface, both through fracture sampling, but then also, So, you know, traditional grab sampling, you know, rock in a bag, send it to the lab kind of thing. So, yeah, it's very interesting. And, of course, there are no guarantees in exploration, but we think our workup is very solid. And the fact that we can see porphyry-related textures in outcrop or fragments of porphyry-related alteration mineralization in drill core, it's really encouraging.

3:38Mm-hmm. In these last couple drill releases, you do go through a lot of specific identifications of, you know, vectoring into a potential porphyry target here. And I don't necessarily want to go through these with a fine tooth comb because I am just not equipped enough to do that, to talk about mica alteration or AIOH wavelength vectors, Matt. Unless you really want to do a deep dive masterclass in these things, we can. But maybe, you know, if we kind of break it down, you know, for us laymans, what do you need to see here? What are the one or two additional pieces of evidence that you still want to see before you put that highest conviction behind one specific drill target?

4:27Matthew Lennox-King: Yeah, I think really it's refining things. I don't think there's any additional surface work that we want to see come in before we start prioritizing the porphyry part of the drill program. I think it's really collecting the data from the IP survey, getting the interpretations from that and just refining things a little bit more. I mean, there are certainly areas like the Curly Target in the western part of our property, right up close to Ivanhoe Electric. I'd be comfortable drilling that without an IP survey. But, you know, just while we're going through the high-grade CRD part of the program, it allows us to get that IP data in, refine the targeting, and really hit things properly with the highest amount of conviction.

5:19Okay. So you're allocating approximately seven holes, 5 ,000 meters for that first dedicated porphyry test with major drilling. are you trying to make a discovery here at this program here Matt I mean is that really are you swinging for the fence here or is it more just learning more about what you don't know

5:41Matthew Lennox-King: I think the goal is always to make a discovery when you embark on sort of this new new part of the program you know we understand the CRD style mineralization quite well at this point we know we can grow it um to what extent is all obviously the question but yeah look if we're if we are going through this portrait program and we're only getting new information but haven't made a discovery i think that'd be pretty disappointing from my perspective get given the um the amount of data that we've collected and the workup that we've been well working on to be completely redundant um but yeah a discovery i think would be ideal drilling into 0.3, 0.3, 0.3 copper, 0.3 gold over a reasonable width and saying, okay, yeah, we've hit it.

6:31Matthew Lennox-King: Now we need to do some vectoring and find the rest of it. All right. Well, and as you know, drilling exploration, it's really hard. Everybody wants to make a discovery. A lot of times those discoveries are harder to come by than one would anticipate. Numerous examples of that since we've started this podcast almost nine years ago. But you do have the CRD system here, and obviously that has super nice mineralization with it as well. Are you allocating any more capital to developing the CRD, or are we just really primarily focused on the porphyry stuff for now? No, this year's program, it's really 50-50 as far as allocation of meters.

7:13Matthew Lennox-King: So if you take the full 10 ,000 meters that we're planning, all core drilling, of course, 5 ,000 of those meters will go towards expanding the CRD zones and better understanding them of course with the balance being allocated to the porphyry program so yeah we at this point in time we still see it very much as a dual track approach yeah it's hard to ignore 200 meters at close to 1 % copper equivalent so we're going to keep chasing that for sure yeah yeah absolutely okay Okay. So what do you expect to have drilling beginning here, Matt? Yeah. Second week of September, barring something crazy happening.

7:56Matthew Lennox-King: So major drilling who we've selected as the contractor will have the rig and crew on site that second week of September. We've identified all our water sources for drilling. So should be that second week of September, um, rolling on the CRD. And I would expect, um, you know, we'd try, and this is all, you know, once the rock's in the lab, it's up to the gods, but, um, five, six weeks after the start of drilling, I'd hope that we'd have our first results out to share with the market. Um, I was actually speaking with a colleague of mine who is from major drilling, uh, earlier this year actually at the PDAC.

8:36And he was kind of expressing at the time, just some insights on contracting with drillers. And he said, if companies want to do a drill program, they don't have their rigs really locked down now. We're in such a market that it's going to get harder and harder to get those rigs locked down. It's not, you know, you can't just sign a contract and get a company to move a rig over there the next week. That's not where we're at. So I was just kind of curious with that story in the back of my mind, how challenging or how much lead way did you need with Major to really get that contract signed and get them, get equipment moving?

9:16Matthew Lennox-King: Quite some time. We really started the process of looking for rigs late April, early May. Talking to Major, a long year, you know, all your usual suspects. and yeah pardon me effectively the soonest anyone could mow was early September just because the utilization of the equipment and the crews is oh it's a real thing right now people are well capitalized and they're busy running their programs are they charging more now than they were you know three or four years ago when you were drilling in Nevada yep rates are higher rates are higher for sure we're in a broadly inflationary environment across the board.

10:00Matthew Lennox-King: So, you know, there's certainly nothing offensive, but yeah, you pay more now than you did back in 2020. Absolutely. All right. All right, Matt. So obviously a huge program. We look forward to seeing those results in due time after it commences here in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, what else should I have been asking you, Matt? I mean, you know, obviously this is a big step for the company. We're trying to prove out this porphyry theory. But what else am I missing within the story of Intrepid? You know, I don't think you're missing a lot at the project level, to be honest, right? You have the, we'll call it the original high-grade CRD mineralization that kind of underpins things for us.

10:45Matthew Lennox-King: We believe we can grow it. We believe we can add more value there. There's certainly the porphyry part of the story. you know outside of those zones at corral we do have the maddie prospect which appears to be an epithermal gold zone probably quite a big footprint we're waiting for some surface data there surface sampling data there to get kind of give us an idea of what the ballpark is but corral is underpinned by a large extensive intense hydrothermal system so So we believe that's going to pay off as far as multiple zones, multiple styles of mineralization. Looking then corporately, we've certainly stabilized our market.

11:29Matthew Lennox-King: We are very well funded at the moment. We've got roughly 19.5 million Canadian in the treasury as of today. We've got about 8.5 million in the money warrants out there as well that expire in March and October of 2027. So as far as this aggressive push on the ground, well, that's financed, fully financed, I guess you'd say, and backed by pretty significant treasuries. So we can keep going. And I think importantly that as we have success in certain areas, whether that's the CRD, the Porphyry or both, we can be flexible and expand that program to follow success. All right. Thanks, Matt. It's good to see you.

12:13We'll talk to you again here the next few weeks. Intrepid Metals, once again, trades on the venture with INTR and on the OTCQB with IMTCF.

12:23Matthew Lennox-King: Matt, have a great rest of your week. Thanks for your time. 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.