[Music] welcome to CEO insights I'm Marilyn dezman with investing news.com I'm speaking with Kobe Kushner incoming CEO of Athena gold a junior exploration company with projects in Ontario and Nevada welcome Kobe yeah thanks for having me so yeah let's get down to it we've seen a noticeable shift in investment Focus from major gold mining companies towards Canada and the US what factors do you think um are are driving this trend and how does that impact the broader exploration landscape yeah sure well geopolitical


tensions are are certainly one of them uh you know some jurisdictions are perceived as more risky than others with places like Canada and Nevada perceived uh as less risky um you know I mean what we saw happen to bar gold and Mali is a is a great example of um of compan is wanting to get to safer mining jurisdictions you know we also saw in the last couple years Kos exit Russia completely so um there's also growing resource nationalism now especially with critical medals and I know Goen traditionally regarded as a critical


medal but governments are starting to treat it as such um and it's become more obvious as of late with the New Zealand actually just put gold on its critical medal list so you know given that most major gold compan companies are North American based uh so it's no surprise that they're now doubling down on projects that are Clos to I think the other thing that's driving companies here is uh it's simply the geological potential here so new discoveries continue to be made in our backyard you


know the Great Bear Discovery in Red Lake Ontario led to kros buying a Great Bear for almost two billion dollar and then in Nevada there's still some significant discoveries being made uh you know what I find particularly interesting is Anglo gold silicon Discovery Nevada's Walker Lane District because englo actually as South Africa they're not based out in North America so they're a a foreign major gold producer they've already finded 17 million ounces almost 17 million ounces


and Nevada so you asked how this will impact the the broader gold landscape and I think what it means is that we'll see a lot more future production coming from North America and probably more Ean heck of the on so given the shift how is Athena gold capitalizing on the increasing interest in North American Gold assets well I mean the Great Bear and the Silicon discoveries that I just mentioned happen to be right where we operate and it's it's always nice when your next door neighbors are investing heavily uh into


their projects so our newly acquired lar Lake Project it's in the Red Lake gold camp and it seems that every few years this Camp is blessed with like a new billion doll Discovery so so the famous Red Lake high grade Zone made gold Corp uh into a major gold producer uh the Gold Eagle Discovery you know led to $ 1.5 billion uh acquisition by gold Corp and more recently Great Bear uh was taken out for almost two billion by kenos just a couple years ago so uh Kos actually just put out the Pea um for the


great pair deposit uh last fall and the economics indicate that this is going to be a World Class M by all measures you know production a million ounces a year over the first eight years all in sustaining cost on the top Corner tile at 800 bucks us um per ounce so and it's it's a ston throw away from our Le Lake project and it's it's also continuous to us of course is uh Evolution mining which now runs the famous Red Lake gold mine um and then we also have West Red Lake you now putting Matson back in


production this year that's you know that's 10 km from us so uh something similar could be said about exceler Springs uh in Nevada which is our Nevada project so kinos is very active in the Walker L District they're in near Neer there and um just further sou is anglo's silicon project which I spoke about so Anglo gold is investing heavily in the Walker Lane Trend so last year to to give you some color there they put more than 40% of their Global expiration spend into this project and this is a


jurisdiction a country where they don't currently produce a single AMS of gold so you know what's that tell you so uh both projects that we uh that we operate are very are in areas that are very well heated so we should benefit from several neighboring mine operators investing in the area bringing in qualified people and infrastructure um and then with several different M operators all around us it's not it's not inconceivable that a Discovery at our projects could Garner major interest certainly a lot of


activities uh currently but do you see the Trend as a a long-term shift or is it more of a reaction to current market conditions or uh geopolitical factors yeah it depends how you look at it I think no matter what the consequence is long term whether or not the decision right now is short term so the political landscape is always changing uh country risk is always changing both Canada and Nevada have stood the test of time and I think a lot of Majors were burnt in in Prior Cycles by investing in


um call it non tier one tier 2 tier three jurisdictions so I think Majors have become a lot more risk ofers than they than they have been historically so I'd expect tier one jurisdictions to um continue to take priority for the remainder of this current gold gold run um and then you know to my point for about the consequence being longterm so mining is a long-term game right it usually takes over a decade to go from Discovery to actual production so it's a lot different from a junior investing in expiration versus a major


investing in expiration because Majors don't invest for a quick sale to another major right their their investment in expiration uh really only pays off once the asset starts to cash flow so when majors are investing an expiration for their non-producing projects they're investing with a long-term multi-decade view in mind so maybe this is a good time to talk about your projects as I mentioned earlier you have projects in Ontario and Nevada could you provide an update on these projects and and maybe some of


the upcoming catalysts that investors should look out for yeah sure so at our Lear Lake Project in the Red Lake District we recently announced uh graph samples um from our madeen prospecting program uh so we sample the high per graph sample return 373 GS per ton gold so that came right from the surface out crop um these are actually some of the highest grade uh graph samples surface ever publicly reported in the Red Lake gold camp and that's significant because Red Lake has produced over 30 million


ounces of gold and the LED Lake part none of those ances came from lared lake lared lake is a very underexplored part of this Camp so as soon as snow melts we'll be back out there we'll be doing property wide uh till survey that's current plan uh geophysics the lier is already done so the only thing uh remaining uh before we finalize our drill plans will be the Tilt jocam results um and then moving down uh South we also o recently completed a prospecting program at exceler Springs um we've put out some of the results we


put out the initial results and those initial results came from an undrilled uh Target but we sampled 6.6 kilograms over 6.6 kilograms per ton silver on this target so again this Target's never been drilled um and it's it's a ways away from where most the historic drilling at this project has taken place so you know the Buster and the Western slope Trend where we have drill results of four GS over uh four four g gold over almost 52 M um so the disc discover has already been made on this project we we


believe that there's more the real upside comes from the Blue Sky targets uh so we have additional results uh from this program that will'll be releasing to the market in the coming weeks and uh we're excited for that so stay tuned right we'll leave it at that thanks again Kobe for taking the time and sharing your Insight with me today thank you cheers and thanks everyone for watching join us again next time for another edition of CEO insights