Stillwater West Triples in Size and Pivots Toward Development

0:16Mining Stock Daily: In this episode of Mining Stock Daily, we're going to get a corporate update on some critical minerals developments in the Stillwater District of Montana with Michael Rowley. He is the CEO of Stillwater Critical Minerals. They trade on the Venture Exchange with PGE and also on the OTCQB with PGEZF. I will admit, Mike, you and I don't do these updates nearly enough. But the project, the district, increasingly seems like month by month getting more and more important. Just where policy, domestic critical minerals policy, has been heading over the number of years. But first off, thanks for joining us on the podcast.

0:51Mining Stock Daily: How was the first day here? Oh, it's been excellent, and it's very good to see you again, and you're absolutely right, we don't do this enough. Yeah, so maybe for people unfamiliar or need to revisit Stillwater, give us that 30 ,000-foot view. Oh, you bet. Yeah, glad to. We had the very good fortune to acquire half the Stillwater complex. We share that with Sabanier and their producing mines and their smelter refinery complex in Columbus, Montana, just off of the complex. that's immensely beneficial to us. We have no connection with them but the fact that it's a pro-mining area and a producing district it's also produced historically it's worth noting that the chromium mines of America were there and they were subsidized by the US government in the 40s and 50s.

1:38All we're doing really is bringing in mine models from South Africa to a layered magmatic system still water complex that's not in Africa. It's the third largest in the world. The other two are in Africa. Bushville, Ivanhoe's Platte Reef project is a good example of where we want to go in terms of costs. And we've actually brought two senior people from that project to Montana. They're right now. Then we brought in Glencore. They've written three checks in three years for a 13 % equity position. So we're growing nicely, as you noted, and I'm happy to talk more about the district and what comes next.

2:12Mining Stock Daily: Yeah, well, maybe let's talk about the recent news. That was a new resource. August 27th, you put up a resource update. More than double the inferred resource. Maybe walk us through those numbers and everything contained. I know because of the polymetallic nature, the matrix of this, everything seems like nickel equivalent. But if you could break down what the equivalent actually comes into that. Sure. Yeah, and it's a harder sell in the retail crowd, but polymetallic is the wave of the future. and the biggest mines in the world are polymetallic. You know that. They're at least copper gold. That gives you the kind of flexibility through commodity cycles.

2:51Size we have for days. So we've brought together, you're absolutely right, we put out an updated resource estimate August 27th. We engaged Danny Grobler, Albie Britz, our two Ivanhoe fellows, together with the mine technical services team that did the Ivanhoe Platte Reef resource models. So that's huge, and that's part of what resulted in us tripling the tonnage. We now have 805 million tons in the inferred category and 29 million tons in the indicated, which is a first for us. Shows where we're going. 5 billion pounds contained nickel, copper, cobalt in that. 7.7 million ounces PGMs and gold.

3:31Within that, you've got a 0.35 % nickel equivalent cutoff, about half those amounts. And then further, 0.5 % nickel equivalent, highest grade cutoff. within that, further reduced contained metal, but it shows that we're open to mine models here potentially. And that's what comes next. We're pivoting. We're now big enough.

3:53Mining Stock Daily: Oh, you feel like you're big enough? Yeah, yeah. I mean, you'll see us grow it a little bit, and in the middle of this year's drill program, you'll see us pivot from growth to upgrading. That's what comes next. Wrap a PEA around this. Wrap our neighbor. Continue discussion about our neighbor's infrastructure in the broader district and what's possible that is a forward-looking statement there's nothing agreed to talked about but it's kind of obvious from what's there well you started doing you started moving more into indicators is that correct I saw yeah we debuted it is a maiden numbers and indicators 29 million tons very good one of the metals in the matrix that I want to kind of pinpoint is the rhodium yeah as I mean there's not very many I think I could count as many projects that have rhodium and less fingers on my right hand, right?

4:44Mining Stock Daily: Yeah. There's not many. There are two resources in North America that I'm aware of. And we're the biggest by far. And we're in a district that produces BGMs. The other one's Canada, right? Yeah, yeah. And it's not in a producing district. Other projects may have a small amount of rhodium, but it's typically just reported as a byproduct, if at all. Yeah. The big one is South Africa, UG2 Reef South Africa, is the world's rhodium reserves. Okay. So you mentioned you felt it's big enough. So I'm hearing this. In the back of my mind, it sounds like a strategical pivot towards economics, being a real critical minerals development play.

5:25Mining Stock Daily: That comes with a lot of pencil pushing, spreadsheets, but we also know we're in a very supportive policy for these type of things. Is it a strategic pivot now, now that you feel like the model is big enough? Yeah. Well, look, this is a really big district, and you've seen it in my slides. The JM Reef runs across the entire Stillwater Complex. We're only in a lower level of that, and by lower I mean stratigraphically. It's all on the surface. We could keep drilling for years if we want. That's not responsible. It's our job to deliver a really nice, say, 15, 20-year mine plan around something. We have that in mind already.

6:06You've seen Chrome Mountain, Iron Mountain separately grow up really nicely. We know that Glencore likes that mid-grade scenario. We like that. That's conservative. We've already got 255 million tons of that. You only need, say, 100 million tons to really build a good mine scenario. So you'll see us work up around that. We've also got really good historic metallurgy around that CZ. AMAC's called it camp zone. We shortened it to CZ. You see us report our sulfur numbers. We're actually high sulfur. This all suggests good metallurgy. We're watching our nickel tenors. We're expecting to continue what AMAC started in the early 70s as we wrap metallurgy and engineering studies around them.

6:51Mining Stock Daily: What about economic technical reports? Is that something on the horizon here? Yeah. 2027? Yeah, we're just working that out internally. Okay. But the resource, frankly, surprised us a bit. It's very positive. To the upside? Yeah. Positive surprise. And I think we can touch on U.S. government involvement next, but, yeah, that's also moving nicely. You've seen pictures of our congressmen, senators on site. We've met with governors, county commissioners, you name it. It's all positive. Let's talk about the government involvement. um it kind of you know we've had a continued conversation on msd and also other uh verticals and and and channels that we manage with clear commodity network about the policy and obviously the government's really good at writing checks but there's the follow-through is a little bit yet to be seen a little bit like something substantive um what role do you think you know still water can play for the domestic policy and what would be your ask from not only state government but you know from washington dc right it's a very pro-binding area and sabanier has been quite public about their challenges on costs so there's a real work together that's possible and that is a forward-looking statement but it's kind of obvious the infrastructure is there they already make a nickel carbonate product in Columbus.

8:18All we're talking about is expanding that. They already make PGMs from the highest grade palladium platinum mines in the world, right there in Montana. All we're talking to our congressman and senators about is expanding that. I don't know what form that takes going forward, but the pieces are there. And all we're saying to the DOE is that somebody's going to look really smart for bringing these together. So we're deeply engaged with government. We've been in front of them for years now. You've seen that in our materials. The U.S. government has stated a clear objective to accelerate this stuff and credit to them, they've deployed, by our count, over$20 billion to date in something like 80 deals.

8:58It's going the right way and you can bet that we're on that list. They've got David Copley now, senior mining executive, high level. I think you're right that a lot of the early funding didn't pan out. We're hearing that a lot of these DPA grants and things, did the juniors raise the money to match? These are matching grant fundings. The junior has to match his portion. That was not always the case. Still in progress sometimes. Yeah, yeah. So there's a real desire to push and accelerate. Now, a question to you. If you were Stillwater, 100 million market cap US right now sitting here, how would you take on, say, a$100 million body of work?

9:40You can't do that all with equity. We are happy to talk with the U.S. government about equity, but really, grant also makes sense. Equity could be a piece. And then once you have a mind plan, once you know what you're building, debt makes sense.

9:55Mining Stock Daily: Yeah. But wouldn't the government want to see de-risk economics like a PFS? I mean, do they need to see some sort of definitive study? No, they don't. The DPA, particularly Defense Production Act, Title III, 1950 Act, they've funded, I think, two dozen mine projects to date off the top of my head, matching grant funding, some of it quite early stage exploration, some of it just straight drilling to grow resources. That's a really good lever for us to work for a first piece. Yeah, okay. You've got Glencore in there, a strategic investor. You mentioned them briefly. obviously you have this updated resource, you have ongoing conversations with governments, potentially conversations with neighbors, a forward-looking statement, as you mentioned, but does Glencore's role in your equity begin to change at all now that the resource update is intact and you are looking to advance this?

10:54Mining Stock Daily: What does Glencore kind of bring to the table now that was different a couple months ago? Sure. They really like this resource. They're very engaged, and it's positive, actually. One to five geologists agree on targets and on plan. It's actually been a pleasure to work with them. They want to be in the U.S. They want to be in these metals in the U.S., and we're ticking the boxes in terms of where we're going. They've written three checks in three years to be 13%. They no longer have much of a technical team inside. All these majors, right, the big change over the past 30 years, they've pulled back from doing this kind of thing themselves.

11:39They grow by M &A. They basically farmed out to the juniors to replace the pounds and ounces that they're mining. That's basically what it is. It took us until 2023 to get these majors to a point where they would consider an equity investment instead of a project-level investment. It doesn't do us any good as shareholders to pass a project on to a major before a PEA or something. It really puts a pin in value. That's all we've been doing. They've been excellent partners to date, and we look forward to more from them. They're very engaged, and they like the team.

12:17Mining Stock Daily: Do they have any sort of relationship with Sabonier on any other front? They trade on very friendly terms alongside each other in South Africa. They cooperate on chromium sales, actually, and we have 6.6 billion pounds of chromium. We didn't talk about that earlier. We don't include chromium in our economics. It is a different beast, but it's there, it's real. Columbia University is now working on what we can say about its extraction and bringing it into the economy. You're sitting about$135 million market cap Canadian. You have a project of importance early stage, now with a big resource on it.

12:54Mining Stock Daily: You have favorable policy in the country that you're exploring in. What is the hurdle in your equity that you need to get over? What would be the catalyst to get that moving once again? Would it be economics? Would it be some sort of announced government partnership? Another check by Glencore? What would it be? All those things? Yeah, I think the government piece would be huge. And forward-looking statement, but I think that's coming in some form. they're certainly engaged yeah I will say it's always hard to sell a polymetallic project it's one thing that's against us I think it's better understood now but the retail crowd that drives price really wants you to be the flavor of the day and our pie chart is literally eight or ten like verse a lot a lot of things so yeah you know actually you asked a good question about earlier I mean we're half nickel by value but we have 1.5 billion pounds of copper in a producing district that actually produces a small amount of copper now so mania is the third biggest nickel producer in the u.s right eagle is number one and then there's cobalt pgms gold and additional yeah what is coming at it you know fast forward four months from now wrap up 2026 mike uh what's something that needs to get accomplished by the company before the year's end?

14:17Enunciate that pathway to a PEA and bigger things, and that's in progress. We're here at Beaver Creek now. We've had some excellent conversations. I think you'll see those continue. We are thinking of uplisting in the U.S., and that will be a QX first, I think, and then beyond that, somewhat share price determined. But get some of these catalysts behind us, and we'll look to an uplisting in a scale of a year or two. We're not pushing that. The greater thing and what you're on to there is timing of PEA and details around that. And from then, the bigger question is, to what extent are we working with Sabania's infrastructure?

14:55To what extent are we building our own? What is that mine plan? What is the mine scenario? We have high grade within mid grade within bulk tonnage. We have a lot of options in front of some. We need to start to nail those down.

15:06Mining Stock Daily: Is there some sort of like toll milling situation with Sabania kind of on the table potentially? Oh, yeah. Nothing's been discussed. It's clear that they've got a strike at one of their minds, and they've been clear that they may look at other options as they go forward. We've met with our congressman about exactly that. Senders, governor, you know. They've been clear that they would love to replace the 700 jobs that were lost two years ago. The local base is fantastic, and it's mining. and the good neighbor agreement that they have is a precedent setter for industry. So we'd love to continue that.

15:44Mining Stock Daily: Okay, very good. Well, I tell you what, when there's a strategic move announcement about what's coming down the pipeline, Mike, let's reconnect and talk about what's, you know, end of 2026, what 2027 looks like. There might be some more updates in there you and I can chat about, but I appreciate your time. It definitely feels like the next two years are going to be incredibly important for domestic, U.S. domestic critical minerals policy. probably more to come as this administration kind of begins to wrap things up a little bit and see what happens in the federal election in a few years but appreciate your time thank you so much thank you yeah glad to relate it i'd be happy to update if ever there was a project that was acceleratable it's this one yeah absolutely okay everybody that's still water critical minerals again trading on the venture with the symbol pge and on the otc qb with pgecf the information presented should not be considered investment advice.

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