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Bellevue Gold

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September 16, 2024 at 4:10 PM (MDT)|Broadmoor Hotel & Resort

Darren Stralow

Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer

Mr. Stralow is a mining engineering graduate from the Western Australian School of Mines with over 20 years’ industry experience, predominantly in hard rock underground mining. He joined Bellevue two and a half years ago and has overseen the transition from explorer, to developer, and now to producer - with one of Western Australia’s newest, large scale, high-grade, underground mining operations. He has extensive experience in strategy development and execution, building and operating modern underground mining operations, business integration and transformation, and building high performing teams.

This is an automatically generated transcript. Denver Gold Group cannot accept responsibility for mistakes, errors, omissions, or any action taken in reliance thereon. Use of this transcript is governed by Denver Gold Group’s Terms of Use.

Welcome to the Denver Gold Forum. Darren Stra. Thanks. We appreciate the, the introduction. It's always nice to be here, you know, 12 months on from saying that we're, you know, in the final stages of building a mine to, to actually having a, a built mine and a build operation with a pretty strong growth story ahead of it ready to go. So, look great to be back at the forum and I'll take you through the BVI story. So look been a, been a very busy 12 months from, you know, first turning on our processing plan in October last year. So just under 12 months ago, first gold was about the 25th of October. We've just done a whole bunch of a ramp up delivered into our first guidance, which was, you know, 80,000 ounces in the first half of 2024 produced $40 million of free cash flow in the June quarter, which was a really good, you know, you know, aspect of just to show that the mine was performing and could produce free cash flow and we also did a lot of work on the technical side in terms of updating the resource, putting out a 1.5 million ounce reserve. and then doing a full sort of growth study and full potential study on the project just to show, you know, the production that it was capable of. you know what that is. you know, on the right hand side here is, I'll talk a bit about today is a five year plan which has us on a pathway to producing 250,000 ounces by Fy 28. In the meantime, we'll be, we'll be reducing our oil and sustaining cost by 250 bucks an ounce over that time. And it's a, it's a relatively simple process. It's just about getting into the, the work areas to increase the pro production from the mine, taking the mine from a million ton per annum, mined and processed in Fy 25 to 1.6 million tons in fy 28. We just did a recent equity raise where we reshaped our balance sheet and that really gives us the, the firepower to, to unlock that plan and, and achieve it in the short-term. So look just quickly touching on the balance sheet, proforma post equity raise that leaves us with $100 million of cash. There's $100 million of debt which is proposed to be repaid in 2027. And, you know, we're just in the, the final process of negotiation with our Linda Macquarie to, to document that which is expected within the next month. You know, as a part of that we took on some hedges. So, you know, you can see our hedge book there, you know, about 30% of our production is hedged for the next few years and 70% is still exposed to the the spot price. You know, just a, you know, a good reminder about Bellevue. It is a very high grade and high quality ore body. You know, you see some of the the hits that you get through, you know, the the sweet spots in the ore body like this Deakin area here. You know, this is an area that we've been, you know, we sort of discovered back in February. in terms of the high grade shoot,, it formed a part of our production for the last couple of quarters and will form part of our production going forward. And that's just a, a small part of Deakin. We've actually discovered that, you know, the the opportunity for multiple high grade shoots across the entire, you know, deacon zone. And this is looking for, you know, the, the zones of all that have, you know, the same characteristics as the high grade shoot that we hit. So, you know, nice and thick, high grade high purity and, you know, following this up with tighter space drilling is, is what we're doing at the moment. And any out performance through further high grade shoots will be over performance on the five, the five year plan that we've put to the market. You know, it's not just deacon, that's good. We've got,, another part of the deposit called Bellevue South, very similar looking rocks. So, you know, thick, high grade, high purity. and this is something that will really come into, you know, the second half of the F I 25 schedule and into Fy 26. So look fantastic rocks and all that together, you know, we've got a three, so some states of the US, there's only seven assets that fit that criteria and Bellevue is one of them. What separates Bellevue from the others. It's the is, it's the only one that's held within a single asset company and it's the only one that has, you know, a, a 40 plus percent growth profile over the next few years in front of it. So quite a significant asset and we're very, very glad to own it at Bellevue. So if I run through and just talk about where we are just to, to give you an idea. Give you the background on, on, on Bellevue, we're in the northern Goldfields of Western Australia. So we're on a, a Greenstone belt called the Agnew Maluna Greenstone Belt, which is about four hours drive north of Kalgoorlie. You can see Bellevue in the middle here. You know, we're surrounded by some, some pretty significant and well-known, West Australian assets. You've got Galia just off the page down the Goldfields Highway down here. You've got Jundi and Wiluna, which are, are pretty significant systems., just to our north and our nearest neighbor is, is Agie Lawler, which is owned by Goldfields, which has been consistently running for for 25 plus years now. Just with a rolling sort of two year mine life. And we think that that Bellevue will eventually get to that stage too. So where we look, you know, Bellevue was mined as a, a sort of a single load mine down here back in the 19 eighties into 19 nineties. next to it was discovered a nickel mine up in the top right corner here called Cosmos and the whole mining tenement became about nickel for the next 20 years. It wasn't until 2017 that there was some modern exploration done on Bellevue and we found parallel loads. So two parallel loads, you know, extension north and south of the original load and some flat dipping loads that connect it, which is really where we've built out that ore body. And you can see it's not just a, you know, a single load that we're chasing to the middle of the earth here, either either, you know, it's multiple loads spread out over circa, you know, 2.8 kilometers. You know, you can see those multiple loads I'm talking about here with Tribune, with Bellevue, with Deakin. and essentially, you know, very well drilled out within the zone of of the mine but not well drilled outside because, you know, we had enough, enough answers to, you know, justify going forward on the thing. So, within that mine corridor, it was about getting the intensity of drilling in there to derisk the the ramp up. But there's not a lot of exploration outside of that mine corridor. And that's something that we can do from the underground platforms that we've built. Now, what we did do is we build the mine was really tried to derisk the ramp up by doing a lot of great control drilling. So we've essentially drilled the majority of the, you know, the operational areas out to, to 20 m by 10 m with oriented diamond core. The reason for that was just to make sure that we knew when we were going in there, you know, to do narrow ve mining for the most part that we knew where the where the oil was going to be. And, and that's really deris it from an execution perspective. And you've seen that in our ability to hit our guidance, you know, after the drilling, we put the development in, you can see some of the great development faces there. You know, it's very,, very competent rock there. It's very hard rock at Bellevue. But you know what you mine is, is, is what you get. So it responds really well to, to drill and blast. And,, you know, we're, we're starting to see those development rates increase as well sting. You know, this is what provides the majority of the feed to our, our mine. You know, some of it's narrow vein, but there are some, some sort of wide zones as well. You know, we've been soaping since September last year now, so about a year. and we're achieving all the parameters that we wanted to. So,, you know, it's going very well and, and, and that sort of leads into the next bed. You know, really what unlocks productivity at Bellevue and how we get ahead here is about putting the infrastructure in place to, you know, leverage off and to get increased productivity over the next couple of years. So, we were restricted at times over the last six months in particular, as we, you know, ramped up the mine and we, you know, sometimes had to choose between scoping and development., but all those bottlenecks are now being removed. You know, we've just got a, the, the finalization of a of a major ventilation project. You can see down on the on the bottom right here. We've got two of these van installations, you know, these are $5 million installations that, that, that literally get commissioned in the next two days and, and then we'll be up and running and that increases our underground ventilation by 50% immediately. So by the end of this week, we'll have 50% more vent underground. That means that our reentry times will be quicker. We'll have more work areas available for us and we really increase the productivity of our underground. So look o off the back of, you know, the, the better balance sheet, the, you know, the operational experience that we have on site, we've put together this five year plan which has us growing from 100 and 65 to 100 and 80,000 ounces this year. up to 250,000 ounces by fy 28. What it needs us to do is is spend a bit of money on growth capital. So this is finishing off all of the infrastructure projects. This is opening up two new mining areas being Deakin North and Tribune and by bringing them on early that, that really unlocks our ability to, to hit that run rate in coming years. You know, I talked about the, the throughput rates. What I might do while I'm here is focus on this graph on the bottom right of the page. Here you know, Bellevue we always talked about and anyone we've talked to about Bellevue over the past few years, you know, it's been about high grade core of about a million ton per annum. It's 6 g per ton, which if you have a look at these gold bars here, that's about the million ton per annum mark. And, and from a mining perspective you, you see on this graph what we're going to do. So we, we circuit 800,000 ton this year, we'll be at the million ton per annum run rate for two years, then we'll increase to 1.2 million ton per annum in fy 28. And that's what really drives that increase up to 250,000 ounces. But, you know, when you think about the high grade, makes money at an incremental processing cost, you know, that that plan is, is fully designed out. So, you know, you can see our design here in Fy 25 the two new mining areas being decking north in Tribune that we're going to mine out to. and then that really adds up to, to being, you know, consistent production from multiple mining areas over multiple years, which are, you know, underpins that growth plan. You know, another key bit that comes out of it is, you know, our ability to reinvigorate our exploration. So in that plan, we've got $30 million for this year and next to spend on drill drives and exploration and, and, you know, we expect that, you know, we, we will continue to spend money cos we expect to, to, you know, find the, the increase, sorry, the extensions to the ore body, particularly to the south, but we'll be in a position where you can see these drill drives that we're building out. This will give us ability to drill, you know, the, the ore body at depth, the or the ore body to the south, like like Deakin. And then this is Tribune in Bellevue South that we be able to draw from the drill drive here. So this is all costed into that plan and expected to, to realize a whole bunch of answers that we can add years and years onto that, that mine life that we were showing you and look why we're confident on it is that we actually have the science to back it up. So, you know, particularly down to the South down here, you can see these down hole em targets., you know, Bellevue is a very high puritt ore body and you saw the puritt in the development and, and you can see it in the drilling here. You know, by, by targeting that period, you, you can actually light it up in down Holy M surveys and you know, down Holy m usually only works for base metals deposits. But because of the, the P type content at Bellevue. You can actually see it in that and we've got down Holy M plates. You know, if I show you the, you know, particularly that southern area that, that we can target a different color out here. But importantly, you know, when you actually ju just look at the continuation of the, your body so that dark blue fault, there is a fault called Keler. You can see our Viago ore body hit it and come out the other side. It's got about 100 and 20 m of down thrust. You can see this is our, our deacon main area here. You look at that same down thrust and this is our deacon South target over here, we've got down hauling M plates that, that are, you know, indicate that it's gonna be there. We just simply haven't been in a position where we've been able to drill it to date and that's something that we're, we're going to, to be able to do. You know, how are we gonna be able to do it? Well, we're gonna build the development drives out to get there. So, you know, you put those em plates on, you have a look in that North South horizon, you know, you look at the extent of Bellevue up here and then the extent that we're gonna open up through that exploration, drilling to the south there. and our ability to, you know, drill this out at depth drill Deakin to the south and then, you know, drill off that southern drill drive. It's gonna open up heaps of the ore body that we just haven't been able to access to date and find some ounces, you know, excitingly. I was up on site not last week, the week before, just before we came overseas and this drawing turned up. So this is, you know, an extra drawing on site that's gonna be dedicated to exploration. You can see on the, on the bottom left there. you know, the pipeline of, you know, highly prospective targets that we have on site that we're gonna be, you know, following up systematically. We're still gonna be, you know, got the, the drills in place to, you know, convert the inferred to indicate it and keep, you know, converting the 3 million ounce resource and adding to our 1.5 million ounce reserve. So, you know, as we go forward, we just get access to more areas and we can we can put it all together, you know, what, why is that exciting? I mean, I'm sorry, and the other thing that we're doing, you can see the guys in the room here, but we've we've signed up to verify A I and the targeting stuff there. If you want to know about that, just talk to JP down here. But that uses all of the science based stuff and use computer learning to, to help indicate where or is expected to be and, and we're gonna be drilling some of those targets as a part of that upcoming plan. So the, you know, where we sat with Bellevue is before we started building the mine, you know, we were spending a considerable amount on exploration, you know, year in year out and we saw those reserves and resources increase, you know, up to that 3 million ounce resource base, you know, while you build the project down here, you know, our money was going into great control drilling. So we didn't do any exploration during that time. You know, that's 2.5 years of no exploration drill holes. And what we saw was the, the resource base leveled off, but we were able to increase our reserves and increase the indicated part of that resource. You know, we wanna give exploration a shot in the arm and by spending that money, you know, over the next three years, $75 million we expect to have, you know, a significant increase in the amount of ounces and, and mine life that we find at the project. So look, that's, that's really the high level Bellevue story. You know, we think we've got a fantastic asset. We've put a really solid plan that's underpinned by, you know, proper designs on the table. We've got the management team that's here to see it out. And you know, we still are, are very excited about unlocking the exploration potential of the project. Thank you. Thanks Darren. We've got a couple of minutes left. So if there are any questions from the floor, please raise your hand and the microphone will find its way to you before that gets there. Darren, just quickly for me, the recent equity raising you did, it was 100 and $50 million from memory 120 went to pay off the banks. Macquarie is still there with 100 or so. Is there a reshape of the amortization profile on that? And if so when yeah, so the reshape of the amortization will be all to 2027. So it'll match when you know, we'll have higher ounces, we'll have lower costs. and also the the expansion capital spend finishes by then. So look, it'll be very well covered from from cash flow. And in fact, if the gold price stays where it is now, we'll have that paid off pretty quickly. Cool two minutes, Darren one from me. Probably something I should have asked everyone today. But how are you seeing costs obviously with the fall out of sort of nickel and probably the better availability of workforce. Is that going to be helpful to the margins and stuff? Yeah, so we look helpful to margins is gonna be relative because typically with costs, you see them rise, you don't see them fall, you see them rise and then stabilize and then rise and then stabilize. I think we're, we're getting into the second half of that though is that, you know, if you look at post COVID, the West Australian market went crazy. You know, nickel was going, was going hard. Lithium came on the scene and all of the projects made such high margin on paper that they were able to pay premium for, for everything. And there was a lot of demand for people, equipment suppliers, everything over that period. You know, we're now seeing a bit of a a leveling in the market in that, you know, a few nickel mines have closed, a few lithium projects put on ice and for the first time, you're actually able to, you know, have multiple people applying for roles. You're you're not seeing you know, such high turnovers and seeing that stabilization in your in your cost base. So, you know, I think that the the margin expansion is going to be from the cost based stabilizing and the gold price continuing to go up Damo. Thank you very much Darren.


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