This is the Investing News Network. I'm Georgia Williams and we're at the annual PDAC conference in Toronto. Joining me today is Derek Iwanaka, CEO and director of Prince Silver. It's nice to see you, Derek. >> Thanks, Georgia. Thanks for having me on. >> It's my pleasure. How have you been? >> H terrific. I mean, it's super busy and probably lacking a lot of sleep, but uh that's probably not unfamiliar with a lot of people here. >> Like the sleep deprivation is coming


from all the excitement at the conference. I'm assuming >> all that and the late nights. I mean, there's a lot of receptions in meeting with shareholders and potential new shareholders. So, >> fair enough. Fair enough. A >> lot of late nights. >> Yeah. Can we start with the ticker symbol and what exchanges you trade on? >> Sure. CSC is the main one. So PR RNC is the main symbol for us but uh OTC QB right now um soon to be I think OTCQX but PRNCF um on OTC. >> Perfect. And Prince Silver is a Nevada


focused silver exploration company as the name alludes. Can you tell us about your portfolio and your flagship namesake project? >> Sure. Yeah, Prince is definitely the one. And uh some people are now calling me the Silver Prince, but uh the it's definitely it's the project. And I actually don't know where the original name came from for the Prince project, but uh it's a past producing mine. Uh was operating from 1912 to 1949 and uh did not shut down because it ran out of ore. It shut down because of low metal


prices. In fact, the prices were so low it was 79 cents uh an ounce at that time for silver. So, uh, obviously economics have changed and it deserves a relook now. And, um, besides just what was left untouched, uh, in terms of what was mined before, we've been able to come in and start drilling down at depth and hitting, uh, so so far at least, some really interesting gold grades that were never even touched or uncovered back in the old days. >> Wow. And like you were saying, it's a


lot different metal prices now with silver, you know, touching all-time highs earlier this year. >> Correct. >> So, it's a good time to be involved in silver. terrific time actually. Um there is an ongoing fully funded RC drill program underway at Prince. What are some of the highlights so far? >> So we've only put out one batch of drill results so far. Uh that was in mid January and terrific results. I mean I I have to say I slept a lot better that night after seeing those results come


out. So uh you know we're just building up the confidence and building up towards getting a resource estimate out by before the end of the year. Uh so we should have our next batch of results I hope in the next week maybe two weeks time and that's something that really want I think investors are going to want to look forward to because I think every set of results that we get out is just kind of building on the confidence of uh this to turn into a real resource estimate before the end of the year.


>> Yeah. And Nevada is such a great jurisdiction to work in. And I don't just think that um they've been voted number one by the Frasier Institute. So what is it like working in in Nevada? So I'm just a new CEO. So I'm only three months in and I haven't done a ton of work in Nevada. So I'll be totally frank with that. But uh I mean from as you said Nevada's almost always been in one of the top ranking positions uh for the Fraser Institute as being one of the top


jurisdictions to be operating in. Uh so I'm not really surprised that it is ranked at the top and um you know so far it's been terrific and uh getting things permitted in my career anyways and I've been in this for over 20 years now is that this is probably one of the best places to be in in terms of permitting everything is quite straightforward and uh the mining laws gez a lot older than both of us combined >> right and you know I think I should clarify that it's they're number one on


the mining um investment attractiveness survey which is you very good for exploration companies. You want to be attractive to investors >> as it is. Yeah. I mean, if you've worked in most parts of the world, uh permitting can be a pretty slow process and land tenure can also be sometimes tedious and in this case in Nevada that that's not an issue. >> Yeah, it's good to know. >> Um, how will the results from the RC drill impact the way you conduct your minimal resource estimate? So I would


say we're going to start doing a internal resource estimate just so we internally have a better idea of where we stand with what what kind of inventory we have. So you know personally I'd like to see us get to about 100 million ounces of silver equivalent. Whether or not we get to that point with the current phase of drilling, we don't know yet. But if the drilling continues to go well and we can get to that number, we may just kind of cap it off at that point and then put out that study. If we're not there yet,


fortunately, we do have the fund funding to continue drilling and maybe we maybe it requires another five or 10 extra holes. We have the treasury to do that and that hopefully would top us up to getting to that 100 million plus ounces of silver equivalent. >> Yeah. In mid January, the company doubled its land position at Prince. What was the catalyst for this decision? Well, that the the first results that I just mentioned, uh that first batch of results gave us all the confidence in the world to try to stake up some more


ground. And so, fortunately, we were able to acquire all that land. So, now we're sitting at a little over,200 acres of of total ground. >> Yeah. Uh the company recently closed a $4.75 million upsized private placement. Where will you be deploying that capital? >> Uh all as much as possible into the ground really. uh but we also will do that that resource estimate as I said and then on top of that we're working on the metallergy so metallergy is really a key because we have silver and


manganesees which sometimes can be a challenge in in uh extracting that uh especially the silver so we're looking into the metaly and focusing a bit more funds on accelerating that >> yeah and as far as I know silver and manganesees are both on the critical metals list so they're great to have at your uh deposit >> that's correct and we also have uh zinc and lead, a little bit of copper, and then gold, which is not necessarily a um critical mineral, but it's considered


one of the strategic metals in the United States, which Donald Trump likes to talk about and has a fair bit of it in his apartment. >> Yeah. And it's more than $5,000 an ounce right now. So, that's also really good. >> Yeah. I don't know at this very minute, but but very close to it, for sure. >> Absolutely. Um what other announcements should investors be on the lookout for this year? Well, I mean, more drilling for sure and and thankfully we're going to have plenty of results to look forward to,


but uh on top of that, the resource estimate and then I would say that uh you know, I think we'll make some personnel changes and we can add some some uh bench strength to the team. Uh so, look forward to that as well. >> Yeah. Well, I look forward to speaking with you again and finding out more about Prince. >> Thank you very much. >> Thanks, Derek. Once again, I'm Georgia Williams and that was Derek Iwanaka, CEO and director of Prince Silver.