Gold mews

 [Music] I'm Charlotte McLoud with investing news.com and here today with me are Rob mckuin chairman and chief owner of mckuin rinning and Michael meding vice president and general manager at mun copper thank you both so much for being here great to have you pleasure thank you sh thank you so much sh of course really good to be speaking with both of you again and it's only been a few months since our last conversation but a lot has happened we're of course as usual going to talk about what's happening at MCH raining

and M copper but as usual before we go there I thought that we would take a broader look at what's going on in the golden copper markets so beginning with gold I'll ask you rob we've we've seen alltime highs in Gold since we last spoke and I think that when investors are looking at what's going on with the gold price they're starting to feel like this is a real move so I was going to ask moving forward into 2024 do we need to see some consolidation in the gold price or do we have space to move higher

this year I think we have space to move higher and you're starting to see a number of large names in the investment industry predicting higher prices you have had City Bank come out and say $33,000 before the year's out um Bloomberg came out and said $7,000 for 2025 so that's not very far away and then you had Pier Lon enter into the game and say1 19 to $20,000 um you know I I just feel I mean Central Bank buying has been at a record in the last a record for the last 30 years for years uh the last you know last year and

the year before um The Brick countries divesting of dollars and moving into other assets to hold on to such as gold has been a big factor as well um I the whole sector has been underinvested for quite a while and I think it pois to move we inflation isn't going away and even when interest rates Rose in the late 7s and early 80s uh gold was climbing think it's heading higher and and copper the other day I got a someone sent me an article from the London Financial Times I mean there's been people saying

all right Goldman Sachs copper is the new oil uh there's a shortage develop well this was some commodity fund manager and he had a the next three four years he put out a $40,000 per Tony copper price um which I thought was a little high but that I mean that's some of some of the the scope that you're seeing in this market right now that people feel there's a real shortage there's not a lot of new mines coming on stream a lot of the existing mines are seeing uh their grade falling and and as such

their production falling so it's a positive environment for gold and copper buyers silver buyers too okay I think it's really good to go over that and we'll I'll ask Michael about copper as well in just a moment but before we leave off on gold I wanted to mention one point that we spoke about earlier in the year which was I think in that past conversation about three months ago investors were looking at what the gold price was doing and they were looking at what was happening with

gold stocks and feeling some frustration that gold stocks weren't moving as much as they hoped now I think that's beginning to change and I wanted to get your sense of what you're seeing happen there with the gold stocks and whether you feel like they have now at least begun to respond to what the pric is doing with the price up over $2,000 an ounce people are looking at Junior explorers and saying what have they found and could that really grow um you're watching the high cost producers

suddenly start performing because now they're moving into the positive territory and on their earnings and there's some m&as still going around as people say well maybe it's faster and possibly cheaper to buy the ounces than drill and wait for the results so companies with you know indicated and measured resources I think that are still lagging behind or subject to possible con consolidation it has in the past it's moved and I think we're moving into a period like that again okay that will be interesting to

keep an eye on definitely and now Michael I'll ask you about copper I know it's exciting to go over what's going on in Gold but definitely can't forget copper which also I believe recently hit its own all-time high although briefly so we've been talking for some time about the inevitable copper Supply Crunch and what that could mean for prices but for me I don't think I was have expecting prices to move quite so soon so for you when you look at what's going on in Copper what do you think has

sparked this price increase that we've seen I think there um shortterm crunch in terms of Supply but more importantly there's a long-term demand Outlook that is very strong I mean depending on um who you ask in terms of forecast in agencies um there is a demand between 2035 and 2050 of somewhere between 50 and 68 million tons of copper where the world at the moment consumes about 25 mil tons of copper per year and out of which 20 is from miles and five is from cycle that means um that if you compare this to the

biggest producer which is chil with some between 5.5 and 6 million ton that means we need sumwhere between um five and eight times Chile uh on top of what we currently have to be able to um satisfy that demand going forward so I mean even even if you don't uh subscribe to those very complexive outlooks um coopa has a very positive momentum and this SL it to stay significant uh over the next decades yeah in terms of um price support okay and Rob I know you talked a little bit about copper briefly at the

beginning but did you have anything to add on Dynamics right now and why we started to see the price move at this time I don't have firstand I read some reports there was a short position out there and someone got expected uh the price to fall and it hasn't and they're scrambling to cover their shorts and I think that's that's probably going to be a theme going through the metals Market I mean it was a space everybody didn't have a lot of um optimism up about and so there were people shorting

a lot of metals a lot of stocks and they're uh suddenly finding that was the wrong debt to make and and most of the trading is C certainly the stocks was thin so trying to uh cover a position drives the price up much faster okay and I'll go back to Michael during our last conversation we spoke about Argentina's new mining friendly government and what that could mean for copper as well as Losa zulos so at that time it was still pretty early into this regime change so I wanted to check in

now and see what changes you started to see so far what we have seen is that um that's something that already started during the presidential election I mean and there was a clear understanding from the different candidates at the time that mining uh would be M would be seen as a major building block um for the economy for Argentina for the future um just to give you an idea I mean if you take the five largest or the five projects that are most advanced of terms of copper they could be um about 20% of

what uh Argentina exports at at the moment in the agricultural sector which is the engine for for Argentina's progress so the thing is that within within a very short amount of time just just five copper projects could could have a very significant space and and what is also interesting to see is now uh with um with present relay and power uh which uh the team and and Rob can probably talk about that in the mid had the pleasure to meet and to discuss um his plans for Argentina and how we can contribute with the

loses what is interesting is um so um I was just at at the mining care in South 1 that run over three days and that's where our project is located in the province of southw every 3 years there's a mining Fair here and then what was interesting to see is the attention the mighty FS received over 22,000 attendees in those three dates uh mean there were over 22,000 registrations in total and what is interesting um is that besides um the attendance of a total of eight Governors um in the province which

is outstanding we also saw a lot of diplomatic Personnel uh embassies um the Canadian the German uh the Brazilian uh and others that attended this mining fair and I think this is just Testament to the importance that mining can play um in Argentina but also a testament to the importance of critical minerals uh to the world as we can see through the attendance of the of all the embassies so it's really um significant shift um both politically as well as um Geo geopolitically that we see that has

proven the interest Us in this in this mining F that is very interesting thank you thank you for going over that and I'll go back over to Rob so Michael you had mentioned that Rob had the chance to meet with president mle and I'm wondering if you could share some takeaways from that meeting certainly uh our meeting lasted about an hour uh in the first 15 20 minutes he was outlining what he hopes to achieve in the country and set it on a track that it becomes an attractive destination for foreign Capital as Mike

said is removing the foreign exchange controls uh putting in a stability agreement to arm the concerns of investors about expropriation or excess taxes um lowering the tax rate significantly um we did a rough calculation just on our copper projects and if they do what they're talking about you could conceivably see a an improvement in the net present value of the project of a billion dollars um so it would I sense there certainly at the pdac in March in Toronto there were a number of people it was like there was

standing on one side of a fent and Argentina was on the other and they were looking in and saying if he's really able to do this this is a country that's rich in natural resources um and could become quite a center of mining um when I I asked him if he knew the story of Sleeping Beauty and he said yes so they said well Argentina is this beauty with Rich natural resources and she was put to sleep by the uh nasty populist governments of the past um and he's come along and he's The Prince and

he's kissing her waking her up he like being called the prince but it was but that's really what's happening here that I mean along the spine of South America you get 40% of the world's annual production of copper um if those other mines came in those other deposits next to Los aulus are brought in suddenly those Argentina plus those two other countries will be producing over 50% of the world's annual production of copper I mean it's serious um so um it's it's very encouraging he

talked about his popularity has gone up since he was elected despite the fact that the inflation is still very high um that so his popularity has gone up he's been able to generate a budgetary surplus um Trade Surplus rather and and there are a lot of people that are commenting in a very positive way about Argentina now and optimistic and hopeful that he's able to put this through so um I I think there'd be a rush of companies going in there if it looks like you can have a sustained um lower tax rate and a

stability agreement so it's a good place to be right now I think seismic change in the politics it does sound Big and of course so as all of this is going on I believe the qm copper has recently completed a drilling for a feasibility study for lulus and with that due to be complete in the first quarter of 2025 so I was going to ask Michel so that's first quarter of 2025 for about a year away from that what is work at lulus going to be looking like over the next year or so as you move toward

that so we're going to do two things um first of all we're going to um continue um with our with all the technical works with the engineering required to get to Fe feasibility a level of accuracy for for the publishing of our visibility by first half of of next year end of q1 is as you said that's the plan uh on the other hand um we ped out the press release 16th of May um where we showed not only the the potential to extend um significantly our our deficit we have seen extension to 400 met to the north

of the pit about 700 meters to the to the South so there is additional work um that we can decide to do to further expand this already very very vast resource base and on top of that uh we had um we have done some work about 3 kilm to the east of what we call Laina so the well back wellas is is located and with that's within our our properties as well and and we did some exploration work we did some um prospecting work we did some hyperspectral work we did some geophysics then we decided to drill a

hole and we thought well it would be on the outer edge of what we consider to be a significant anomaly we have seen anomally of about 2 by 2.5 kilm on on on Surface and um we are currently Opa GE um chemistry for that for that over but based on based on what we have seen from our GEOS um we think there is um there's a mineralized popular system there and that's something that we want to put on the table to to be further developed um as we approach again spring um and and summer in in this year in the

southern hemisphere so that would be the the the work coming October November this year very exciting it is very exciting and so lots to do but very exciting okay and one thing I want to ask so we've been talking a lot about what's going on at muan Copper but of course muan mining has Assets in areas other than Argentina and as we see with Argentina changes in government can really make a big impact on the mining industry or we can see that perhaps they will going forward and of course so we also have coming up a

election in the US and I was going to ask you Rob so we've it looks like we're heading toward War Biden or War Trump and we've seen both of them in presidency we we now know kind of what that looks like so as we head toward this election what what consider ation are there between these two choices for the whing industry in the US Biden shut down the um Keystone Pipeline is increase the cost for holding claims in the US uh changing the mining law there um rather than shortening the permitting

time he extended permitting time um and what's really curious there the US um Department of energy was putting money into Africa to develop a rail line to get it ananan copper um and I thought isn't this strange they're looking for critical minerals uh they're scouring the world for them putting money in different countries when in fact there's a lot of potential still in the in America and it seems very peculiar to me that they're spending money outside the country when

they could be encouraging expenditures in the country creating employment and a stronger tax base so they seem to be saying one thing we need these but trying to kill the industry at home so um I would say Trump is probably more inclined to favor the development at home rather than Biden that sounds that sounds pretty likely I think based on on what we know of the two all right so before I let you go I did want to check in with what's going on at M qm copper in terms of developments so recently the company has

released its q1 results so I was going to check if there are any highlights you would want to share there and about a month ago the company announced plans to require Timberline resources so again was going to ask you if there are any highlights you would share there for investors maybe talking about the rationale between that acquisition okay um Lan mining as since we closed on our first financing for muan copper has increased and that' be since beginning of September 20 2022 is up 300 % outperforming gold silver copper dowo

NASDAQ um GDX gdxj by a very wide margin um so we have some development projects one um in Timmons at our Fox complex will'll be starting to drive a ramp on our stock West deposit and going over to stock East that opens up and extends a Life by about six years um we're drilling over at our gry Fox property where there's already a million ounces to find um and recently we put out a release today that um our geologist is conceptual but think that the re Fox deposit of a I ounces is sitting on top of the Black

Fox mineralization and black fox has already produced a million ounces at the mine but there's a three kilometer distance between gray fox and black fox that hasn't been well explored so rather excited by the deeper targets um and then down in Nevada you mentioned Timberline it's about 30 km away from our Gold Bar operation and we feel there's material we could take from there that's already broken and put on our heat bleach pad extending gold bar but we also think there's quite a bit of

potential sitting at Timberline so that's another attempt to extend the life by going after what's close to our existing operations to share the cost of GNA and that over a a larger production base and then we Los aulas Mike assembled a huge drill crew down there he had 22 drills uh on the property at Los aulus making it probably one of the most active drill sites in South America and between when we put the Pea out for Los aulus last June and now there's a 100,000 meters of drilling

results from that to go into the bankable feasibility study and there is as Mike said we've been able to find mineralization 400 m to the to the north of our model pit and 700 meters to the South granted it looks like at both ends it's going deeper but it's still showing there's mineralization and then 3 kilomet away to the east we're picking up copper oxide on Surface we're picking up veining similar to lurus and Molly signature that suggests there's Molly's often associated with

copper copper being more mobile there's another area there that only one drill hole no assays yet some visuals that that you see a gleam in the geologist eyes but we have to wait for the assays but that could open a whole new realm and and that in turn lifts the value of mchan mining's interest in Los ofas right now we we wanted to separate it so we could Finance separately uh without duding thean Mining and uh we've been able to raise the value from 200 to 800 Millions um through our investments and

some of the partners that have come in you know fourth largest car manufactured and the second largest Mining Company and all right that was really good to go through and on that note I'll I'll turn it back over to Michael and ask if there's any final thoughts that you would leave investors with well I think that um Argentina is certainly um a country to look at um specifically the province of sang so there's lots of activity going on um now and um we think in the future and um that's tun for the results on no

exploration on I I could say because I'm a gold bug uh I Tre look and I may have shared this with you before Charlotte but I look at a non-old deposit and try to put it into a gold equivalent to get a sense of its size and importance so allow me just to say if you took the current copper price which is about 2352 last couple of minutes minutes ago and the current copper price of 468 divide 468 into copper price into the gold and it takes 503 P of copper to equal 1 ounce of gold divide that 53

into our resource base of indicated and a verd of 37.6 billion pounds of copper that equates to um 74 75 million ounce gold equivalent deposit um if you look at the projected annual production of 321 million pounds of copper a year over the 27-year life of this mine that's equivalent to about 640,000 ounces a year at a cash cost of a17 a pound that's a $540 an ounce equivalent and cash and all in 8825 now to me that's a really big gold deposit and if you were to look at the Timmons gold Camp one of the most

prolific gold producing areas in the country over the last 100 years it's produced 70 million ounces of gold here we're looking at one deposit equivalent to 100 years of production from Tims so it's it's a big uh very profitable project to be very profitable you can produce a at a17 a pound and it's trading at 470 right now heading to 40,000 Tony um it's an interesting deposit and it's large um and we're putting a lot in it push it as quickly as we can okay I think that's that's a nice

place to wrap up always I enjoy that comparison I think it's very helpful to look at it in those different ways so thank you both very much for going over what's going on at M and Mining as well as muu and copper and in the golden copper markets all right thanks Charlotte thank you so much thank you and once again I'm Charlotte McLoud with investing.com and this is ran and Mike thank you for watching if you like this video make sure you subscribe to our Channel we'd also love to hear your

thoughts so leave us a comment below we'll see you next time [Music]