Nuvau Minerals: A Forgotten Quebec Mining District Gets a New Look

0:16Mining Stock Daily: All right, everybody, we continue along here on day three of the Beaver Creek Precious Metals Summit. And actually, we're going to introduce a new story that catches some attention here in this gold market. And that is Nuvo Minerals. They do trade on the venture exchange with the ticker symbol NMC. Happy to welcome in Christina McCarthy, the one and only CEO of the company. She is so active. I don't even like your name is everywhere. Everywhere. I mean, I've been around in the markets now for 18 years, which I'm aging myself saying that. But I mean, thank you for having me. It's fun to be here.

0:53This conference is so lively this year. And I will say to that, I mean, back when I worked for Rob McEwen, we were in the circuit constantly. So that's probably why that's maybe the names in the circuit still. And so we're on a few boards as well. But really trying to create awareness around Nouveau Minerals, which is my baby now. Yeah.

1:16Mining Stock Daily: You've had a few successes in recent years too. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. I mean, my most recent one would have been us. I'm the founder and former CEO of Paycore Minerals. We went public and 11 months later we got acquired. I mean, it was the day that we announced a$20 million oversubscribed bought deal at 4 p.m. when that announcement, we ended up getting an offer to acquire our business from I to acquire our company from I-80 Gold. So and it was a not so great market and at a$90 million valuation. So it was a really fun time. I mean, it was bittersweet because I just raised the money to really start drilling that company.

1:58But it was a great opportunity. And I think for I-80, it's district scale opportunity.

2:04Mining Stock Daily: Well, you are trying to replicate or repeat that success here with Duvo. And so let's do kind of take a deep dive into the company. Obviously, we got to maybe start out with Thundermine. That's where the recent drilling has come from. So maybe give us the, you know, the 30 foot view, 30 ,000 foot view, and then dive in what the exploration strategy is. Yeah, for sure. So this one is interesting because, and most people don't know this, but we were, we only just acquired 100 % of this asset in March, 2026. So very recent. And then we finally got the first drills off after the spring runoff for July.

2:40And this would have been, so we were restricted to where we could drill and what metal we could drill for. So until our deal closed with Glencore on 100 % basis, we were restricted to where we could drill for base metals, and we were restricted to drilling any gold targets at all. And so this was one of the more favorable ones. It was looked at in the 1950s for copper. They realized there was these gold-bearing structures there, followed up with six holes in the 1980s, and discovered that there, in fact, was gold there when they were looking for copper. So we drilled our first couple holes there, and we had 139 grams over a minable width, the 4.45 meters.

3:21We did a 50-meter step out and hit over 17 grams higher in the system, so closer to surface. We hit 17 grams over just under 3 meters. So really exciting story because we've announced four holes out of 10. Seven out of those 10 holes actually had visible gold. and really this is, I mean, the gold story here is so exciting because this, again, this is the first ever opportunity that we've ever been allowed to start drilling for gold on this massive property package.

3:53Mining Stock Daily: Yeah. What was it before? What were they drilling before? They were looking for copper mineralization before and then realized, and that was in the 50s, right? And so, and this is, this property is, I mean, it hadn't been drilled for 40 years until we came back and drilled and it sits right and this is actually the part that's so exciting is um if you know at all the epitivi and you know the the deformation zone the sunday lake defamation zone is so well known because that is the detour discovery which is now owned by agnico that is the fenelon discovery which is owned by wallbridge and you saw the recent investments into that agnico made into that company well this sits on that deformation zone and it's so it's so key because this property has never been explored for gold.

4:38And why is that? It's because Glencore is a base metal company. So why would they ever explore for gold? They've only ever explored for base metals and they had to be large at that. And this actually was a non-core asset for them. They acquired it through the acquisition of Extrata. And so you've got this history and legacy of base metal companies that did no exploration for gold. And so this Thundermine Target sits right there near that structure which is a huge structure for a gold discovery.

5:07Mining Stock Daily: Yeah so tell me about the the early stage exploration here specifically with Thundermine and the entire Madagami area because it was previously a kind of a copper project historically a copper project what was available to you and maybe what did you need to kind of uncover to make it more of a pure gold drill program to go after like what didn't you know at the time? Well, again, this is so we knew that this was there, but this is only one gold target of, you know, I'd say I've got four really good ones that I'm excited to drill. And but this package is 1400 square kilometers. I mean, from east to west, that's 85 kilometers long.

5:48So you could fit the Sudbury Basin, the impact zone into this property. You could fit 10 countries into this property. and so when you start talking about you know what what didn't you know and what we there's so much to uncover here it's less than five percent explored for for base metals and never explored for gold so if you think about the possibilities and opportunities for discovery you know there's so much structure here and with this one specifically again it was you know it was one that seemed like an easy target for us because there was a historic drilling from the 50s that showed there was some structures and what and what's really exciting about this one is so when I was in research um we went to the Lomac Signa Lomac mine and I covered that story back then internally and we we I remember taking a sample of that core a sample from the mine and you know brought it home I still have it in my garage because my kids don't let me throw out my samples out I'm a geologist and have many rock samples laying around but um that sample looked very similar to the geological signatures that you see in what we were seeing in the core here at Thundermine looked very similar to the geological signatures that you saw at Siglo and Back.

6:59So you said these high-grade quartz tourmaline veins, and then there's this broader disseminated package that's, you know, we've got 180 meters of lower grade, so like you're 0.6 grams per ton. So that matters in this market, in this type of gold environment, because it was a later event that happened. So you got this VMS, this base metal event, and then a later event, which is a gold event that came in later and brought in this sort of totalite intrusive that's hosting this broader gold discovery. And so it was for us, we think to ourselves, okay, well, how can we repeat this anywhere else? And so what was really actually amazing is we, so we know, so the Brace Meck mine was the last mine that was producing when Glencore was producing and actively producing in June 2022 before they shut down.

7:50And so that mine is, you know, basically picture like a corkscrew going down to the ground 1 ,400 meters. And so they had a finite day to leave. They left on very disciplined on that day, left or down there. That's where we're going to go mine first. But what's interesting is that in the footwall, the geologists that we know from Glencore that work with us today, they said there's VG in that wall. They wanted to drill it, but it's like we're base metals. Focus on base metals, guys. And so then the one geologist took a sample from the wall. They did a, so they took a sample from the wall. And one of the samples that they got in the trench was a 40-gram sample and a 19-gram sample.

8:34actually think was above 40 grams and so we decided let's confirm that with a bit of drilling so we went and did drilling from surface to see if if that in fact we could confirm it and we did so that was exciting because we're seeing that in the footwell and that's like 25 meters from where they were already mining base metals so you think about you know the cost of capital here and how the gold story here running parallel to the base metal story could really reduce the cost of capital on the broader scope.

9:03Mining Stock Daily: Yeah. Christina, maybe let's, as of where it sits right now, is this a pure exploration story or is it potential restart? Yes. And this has only become, I mean, especially at this conference, because those results were just hot off the press the last two weeks. And so, you know, at this conference is provoking a lot of that thought. Are you exploration? Are you development? Well, here's the thing about the development. And this is part of the discipline that I had when we were working, when I worked for Rob McEwen at McEwen Mining is, Christina, we need to have the cash cow machine. That's your producing.

9:42That's your producer to fund all of the exploration. He was 25 % owner, chief owner. He did not want to dilute himself by constantly raising capital for exploration. And so when I look at this as a development story, we have a fully permitted mine. And now we have the option to buy the fully permitted mill from Glencore for$5 million. And we assume no liabilities. And that's such a, that's, I mean, how do you know how it's, it's the, you think about our market cap. We're 60 million market cap. And we have about 400 to 500 million of infrastructure here with the mill when we acquire it. And that, I mean, that alone is an incredible value.

10:24and we had G mining do our mill assessment, do our PEA. And so we know the value of what that is. And we had the A team do our mill assessment. And so when you look at, and so, and I will say, they're not the kind of guys that give you a marketing piece to walk around with. They give you scientific, here's the facts, like it or leave it. And so we had a very good PEA in 2023. And so we're actually updating that PEA right now, which will come out next month and at the end of October. And I think it's going to be extremely exciting when you see we're adding a fourth mine. You know, we have an initial cap of$172 million.

10:59I think that's going to be lowered. Right now, it's a three-year payback. That could likely be come down. We're going to increase our resources and the confidence of the resource. There's a lot of things to look for in this PEA. And I think it's going to be, it's going to really show the sort of a more, a more path to the plan here and getting the story turned back on. And like I said, you know, having this mill running, you know, we already have with 10 years of mine life right now today, we already have more mine life ahead of us than Glencore did when they were operating. so it's already and if you have the infrastructure right there with such a low cost of capital to turn it back on sure we're not like a 40 or 50 million ton deposit here but it makes no sense to not use that infrastructure turn it on continue to develop the baseline that the base metal story and you know 13 years 15 years six whatever it is and because this will this mine will be running for decades.

12:02It makes no sense to not. You leverage that, use that as the cash to fund all of that exploration. And you know, like they say, when you own the mill, you own the district. And I think that we could be a consolidation hub having this mill in the motogamy, not only just the motogamy camp, but in the district, you have a lot of base metal studies or base metal companies around us that are likely going to want to utilize our infrastructure. Yeah.

12:30Mining Stock Daily: Well, that's kind of been an ever-going story up in that region of Quebec, a lot of toll milling type of scenarios. That story continues. Before we later, Kim, big picture question here. I mean, you basically have an off-the-shelf type of restart potential here, right? And you mentioned an updated PEA that just weeks away here. And obviously, we have an incredible bull market for us as we speak. And so how aggressive do you go without going so aggressive that you forget to maybe dot the I's and cross the T's and do the really important stuff? But what's the urgency like right now? Well, we want to get this PEA done because we also want to attract certain investors.

13:16And one of them is Investment Quebec. Investment Quebec is the government. And they're directly associated with the other entities within the government, your environmental, your natural resources. And so having them in our share registry is important for that further support of mining in Quebec. And so we quite like the, you know, we have support in Quebec right now. I mean, even from the locals of Motogamy, the town of Motogamy has about 1 ,400 people in it and growing. and those people are still there. So this mine coming back on stream will give about 400 jobs to the community. So when you think about sense of urgency, I mean, they would love for this to happen yesterday.

13:59But for us, we're going to do it in a very conservative and methodical way. For us, it makes sense to get that PEA done to attract the likes of the, you know, Investment Quebec kind of funds because you do have to have a level of certainty and a path forward in order to attract that type of investment. So that's what we're moving towards is making sure that we can, you know, produce and make sure we can show a very viable plan in terms of a way back to production. And, you know, and even when I think about turning this mind back on, you know, we're 87 million shares out. And I would love to think of ways to do this in a non-dilutive way and be very disciplined with our issuance of shares.

14:41And if you look at, you know, the Skeena deal that was done in June 2024, I mean, that was a lovely deal. and the market responded well to it. I mean, we don't need$750 million. Again, closer to$100 million is what we'll need. But I think that that was a very elegant way for them to announce to the market that we are fully de-risked from a finance perspective to get this mine into production in a non-dilutive way. And so we will happily explore some of those avenues forward to be able to advance this story and further de-risk it and really a disciplined approach in our capital structure.

15:19Mining Stock Daily: Yeah, yeah. Very good. Okay, this is one of the more interesting news stories we found. There's a reason I asked you to come on, so I appreciate you, Christina, for doing this. Nouveau Minerals does trade on the venture with the symbol NMC. Enjoy the last day tomorrow. The last day. Yeah, yeah. Ready till 630 today. Very good to see you. Thanks so much. Thanks so much for having me. the information presented should not be considered investment advice mining stock daily and 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