Tiernan Gold

Thanks. Thanks, Heiko. Uh, welcome everybody, and thanks-thanks for the time today. Uh, my name's Fausto. I'm the CEO and president of Tiernan Gold Corp. Uh, relatively new kid on the block on the TSXV. We listed the company through an ITO of Railtown Capital at the back end of last year. Uh, two things I wanna leave you with in today's presentation. Uh, firstly, a tier one scale development asset in what's arguably one of the best mining jurisdictions in Latin America. And secondly, take you through why the next 18 months are the most catalytic in the company's history.

Um, standard caution here, I will be making forward-looking statements today. Um, I think as, uh, as my old boss used to say, the management team and I are certainly focused on turning a lot of these forward-looking statements into facts. [chuckles]

So, what do we have here? What's the opportunity? Um, massive resource base supporting a very substantial, uh, production profile of three hundred and thirty thousand ounces a year for the first ten years of production at all-in sustaining costs of below eleven hundred dollars an ounce. Uh, we're assembling a team of proven mine builders with extensive experience in Latin America, and we're in a prominent location, the Maricunga Gold Belt in Chile. It hosts, uh, multiple senior producers, major gold mines, and a number of development projects at various stages of, uh, of development.

We're looking forward to a catalyst-rich 18 months here. Uh, we have a preliminary economic assessment in place. The economics work. Really what we're working on now moving forward is the, uh, permitting as well as the engineering. We have a number of initiatives in flight as we speak. Geological model, uh, refining. We're looking to enhance our structural understanding of, of the geology at Volcan. Uh, we're looking to optimize our mine from a capital and operating cost perspective. Uh, we have an extensive metallurgical test work program currently underway, um, at, uh, SGS in, uh, in Canada. And in parallel, we're working on our permitting initiative supported by a very extensive four season baseline environmental campaign.

On the capital structure, I'll start by saying we are tightly held, as you can see by the pie chart here. Hoschschild owning sixty-two percent of our equity, twenty-six percent held by institutions, twelve percent held by retail and other shareholders. Around four percent of that is management and insiders. Very tight share structure, forty-eight point three million shares issued and outstanding. Fully diluted of fifty-five point two, which includes around five point four million warrants at six dollar fifty strike expiring in November of next year.

Um, why Hoschschild? Well, we concluded, uh, an ITO of Railtown Capital last year, launching Tiernan out of the Hoschschild portfolio as an independent listed issuer on the Toronto Stock Exchange Venture. Um, that was anchored by a fifty-eight point four million dollar financing that was supported by a number of blue-chip precious metals investors, as you'll see on the slide here. We have around fifty million dollars Canadian on hand, and that's more than sufficient to get us through all of our more significant catalysts, um, over the short to medium term. Uh, we are covered by Canaccord Genuity. Peter Bell is currently the analyst.

Execution capability and track record are the name of the game in this business. Our board, chaired by Jill Gardner, has the capacity and capability that one would expect from a senior gold miner. Uh, the management team that you see on the, on the slide here, this is the team doing the work, supported by a number of household names, um, uh, consulting and, uh, and engineering firms assisting us with the de-risking path at, uh, at Volcan. Across the board here, we've got decades of mine financing, mine building, and mine operating experience, with most of that experience in Latin America.

In terms of location, uh, two things I wanna leave you with on this slide. Firstly, Chile. Um, very stable regulatory framework, established infrastructure, real permitting precedents, uh, multiple operating mines, not only in our region but throughout the country. Uh, mining continues to be and will continue to be a very significant economic contributor in Chile, and it's business-friendly. This is why capital goes to Chile.

Um, I'll tell a very brief story. On a recent trip to Santiago in a cab from the airport to my hotel, the discussion with the taxi driver very quickly moved to the mining business. Uh, a comment that taxi driver made resonated with me. His, his comment was, "El sueldo de Chile es la minería" which when translated to English means, "Chile's paycheck is the mining business." That resonated with me. It says a lot. Um, our industry celebrated in our host country.

Uh, secondly, the Maricunga Gold Belt in the Atacama Region of Chile, um, hosts a number of operating mines, major developments, major projects, and a number of new mines currently under construction. Uh, you'll see on the graphic we're, we're in good company. A number of Kinross projects, uh, Rio 2's Phoenix Mine, Gold Fields' Sales Norte. Um, this is a prolific porphyry gold, uh, district that rewards scale, and we'll see a little bit later on that Volcan certainly brings scale. Um, over a hundred million ounces of past and present resources, um, across the belt.

In terms of our project specifically, the Volcan project, it sits on fifty-five thousand hectares, hundred percent owned by Tiernan Gold, hundred and fifty kilometers east of Copiapó, which continues to be a very well-serviced mining town in the Atacama region. On our resources, per our previous, uh, PEA, nine point eight million ounces of measured and indicated resources, an additional one point two in inferreds. Three points I wanna make on this slide. Very substantial resource base with attractive grades from a heap leaching perspective. Even on a strip-adjusted basis, still very, very attractive grades for heap leaching.

This is a very well-drilled deposit. Hundred and fifty thousand meters of dri-drilling have been done to date. Um, if we had to do this drilling today, it would cost us in excess of two hundred and fifty million dollars. And finally, all the resources that you see here are located within five thousand four hundred hectares on two mining concessions in the Dorado sector. There is more. Um, what is wrapped around this resource base, which is quite compact and mineable, is an additional fifty thousand hectares of prolific, um, exploration pr- exploration land. That's really where the, uh, where the optionality comes.

The potential at Volcan is substantial. Uh, six kilometers away at a target called Ojo de Agua, there was a historical intercept of a hundred and twenty-two meters grading one point four five gram a ton. That remains open. It included a higher grade, uh, intercept of over thirty meters at three grams a ton. Um, the six kilometers of strike extension that you see from Dorado to Ojo de Agua, uh, remains largely untested and hosts a number of old undrilled targets. So district-scale upside, um, wrapped around, uh, a resource.

The results of our pr- of, of our PEA, um, these are kinda the numbers that matter, I suppose. Uh, ore mi- ore mined, two hundred and ninety-three million tons at a strip ratio of one point five to one. Uh, annual processing rate of twenty-two million tons a year at a head grade of point six three gram a ton. Recovery of sixty-four percent, delivering aggregate gold production of just under four million ounces. Initial capital cost of around a billion dollars, delivering an NPV of one point five billion US at a gold price of twenty-four hundred dollars and an IRR approaching thirty percent. Uh, this delivers a very strong production profile for the first ten years of production, um, at all-in sustaining costs of eleven hundred dollars an ounce. That's bottom quartile of global cost of production.

Uh, the flow sheet here is deliberately simple. It's a conventional heap leach with three stages of crushing, that third stage being HPGR. Um, the important distinction I wanna make here is this pit was optimized at eighteen hundred dollar gold. Obviously, in a current gold price environment substantially higher than that, there's plenty headroom here, lots of leverage to a very supportive macro environment. Um, at current gold prices, the project prints an NPV in excess of five billion dollars and an IRR approaching seventy percent.

So what are we doing in, uh, in two thousand twenty-six? We've been totally focused on the disciplined de-risking of Volcan. Uh, and this is one of the reasons we've been deliberately circumspect on the promotion. We've been focused on building out a team, focused on surrounding ourselves with the right engineers, the right consulting companies to help us move Volcan forward. Five more substantive work streams we are busy with. Our geological model, enhancing our structural understanding, um, optimizing our mining capital costs and operating costs, focused on a very extensive metallurgical test work program that's currently in flight in Canada, um, supported by our ongoing efforts on permitting and environmental baseline initiatives.

This is an area where we can certainly point to good progress at Volcan. Uh, we initiated a core re-logging program at the beginning of this year, re-logged fifteen thousand meters of core, collected around six thousand four hundred TerraSpec measurements, and around eleven thousand six hundred high-resolution, uh, core photographs were acquired. This delivered a materially better understanding of, uh, of the mineralization at Volcan. Uh, we confirmed gold mineralization is controlled by veining intensity and alteration. Uh, the banded stockwork zones averaging point eight gram a ton gold are the primary hosts of gold mineralization. Uh, we identified nine major structures, um, identified as, as, as boundaries to the high-grade gold zones grading in excess of one gram a ton. And we identified two first-order gold mineralization trends, as you can see in the graphic there, the northeast gold trend and the northwest gold trend.

We're looking to extend this understanding across the entire deposit here, so re-logging additional core, looking to enhance our structural and alteration understanding of the deposit. In parallel, we've initiated a four and a half thousand sample bulk leach extractable gold, or BLEG, campaign to build a spatially informed recovery model across the entire deposit.

This is the, uh, technical heartbeat or the operational heartbeat of the business as we speak. Uh, technical work at Volcan advancing on a number of, uh, of fronts. Geology, we've spoken about the re-logging, we've spoken about the mine, new structures that we've identified bounding the higher-grade zones. We're now extending that understanding deposit-wide. From a metallurgical perspective, we've established HPGR as the preferred tertiary crushing route, and initial test work results that are coming out of SGS on the coarser bottle rolls are showing rapid gold dissolution and improved recovery across the five composites that we're testing. We're complementing this with a four and a half thousand sample BLEG campaign to build a spatially aware recovery model and enhance our geological interpretation.

From a geotech perspective, we do have relatively old geotech assumptions dating back to 2012. We have some field campaigns scheduled to complement and validate those historical assumptions, um, looking to replace them with, uh, more measured and current site data.

Environmental baseline and, and, and permitting, uh, spring and summer on the go in the Southern Hemisphere. Uh, we have baseline scopes agreed, and we've contracted with qualified Chilean, uh, firms under the management of GAC to advance those baseline campaigns. We do have three monitoring stations that have been running continuously since February. Um, the key permits for our baseline are in hand, and we're expecting to mobilize people in mid-October. Uh, this of course is weather-dependent. I'm sure you would've seen in the press more recently, La Coipa, Phoenix, Salares Norte all reporting very rough weather conditions, uh, driven by the super El Niño. So it's a situation we're watching quite carefully, um, before we mobilize people.

Water, we do hold two DGA rights on, uh, wells totaling seven point eight million cubes a year. Uh, we have previously disclosed that that's more than sufficient water to, uh, to support our operations per the PEA. Uh, we do expect to permit Volcan on these, uh, water wells, and we're planning an extensive hydro baseline campaign monitoring in excess of 40 wells. Um, whilst we do this, in parallel, we are continuing to assess both desalinated and hybrid, uh, water supply options to the project.

In brief, this is the headline here. We remain on track for the delivery of a forty-three one oh one and PFS in the first half of next year, as well as the submission of an EIA by the end of next year.

Uh, water, we still see water as a key advantage and key differentiator for our project. We do have permitted water extraction rights. We've had those since 2011. They're legally valid, fully drilled, cased. The assets are secure. Um, they're capable of a m-maximum pumping rate of a hundred and seventy liters per second. That represents a significant surplus over the a hundred and five that, that we require for our project. Uh, Golda on a previous estimate considered the, the wells were good for a hundred and twenty-four liters per second and had a life of thirty years. Um, like I mentioned earlier, we're planning an extensive hydro baseline campaign here to, to further understand the, uh, the well capacity.

Whilst we're doing that, we're obviously exploring various commercial ventures to bring desalinated water into the Maricunga via pipeline. Recently in Chile, new desalination law was promulgated around March, making it a lot easier to generate easements for these pipelines, um, from the coast. And the DGA does require us as part of our EIA to consider desalinated water sources to the extent possible. So we're in a good position here. We are continuing to advance the permitting of our project with the wells that we currently have whilst we continue to consider longer-term non-continental water sources, uh, for the project going forward.

Permitting roadmap and our upcoming catalysts, I think kinda two things I wanna lay out here, and I've mentioned them a few times. I'll reiterate them. PFS in the first half of 2027, followed by an EIA submission by the end of, uh, of 2027. We've got engineering basically running through pre-feasibility study into definitive and project financing. In parallel, we continue with our baseline studies, early c-uh, community consultation, uh, fieldwork and EIA preparation. Uh, you'll see on the timeline here we expect around an eighteen to twenty-four-month period, um, for our review of our EIA, um, community consultation, and ultimately the procurement of, uh, of our permits.

So in conclusion here, why, why invest in Tier 1? Well, I think, look, we are supported by a very favorable macro environment. I think you're gonna hear that from a number of issuers at this conference. What else do we bring to the table? Well, we bring a quality project in a prominent jurisdiction, three hundred and thirty thousand ounces a year for the first ten years of production, all-in sustaining costs in the bottom quartile at, uh, around eleven hundred dollars an ounce. We're assembling a leadership team, a proven leadership team with extensive experience of, um, in Latin America and, and generating shareholder value. Uh, we're partnering with, uh, name brands, um, in the engineering and consulting firms to assist us in our de-risking, uh, journey.

Uh, we are fully funded. The fifty million dollars Canadian we have on hand is sufficient to get us through our nearer-term catalysts, uh, in the pre-feasibility study, the EIA, as well as all the optimizations that we are applying to our project. And finally, we have a mineable resource, a defined resource that's wrapped around a significant land package with very substantial upside potential. Six kilometers of under-tested strike, multiple undr-undrilled targets offering a district-scale upside. That's me. Happy to take a few questions to the extent there are any.

Are there any questions from the audience for Fausto? Uh, why don't I start? Sure. Um, you talked about refining your geological model earlier in the presentation a little bit. Do you wanna maybe just go through the timing, how much time has been spent on it, what exactly you've seen, and most importantly, maybe any factors that came out differently from what you expected?

Yeah. So the historical estimate, um, didn't really have an underlying structural model. Um, that model was based on grade shells and vein density. Uh, the re-logging campaign that we initiated was really to start understanding the structural controls to mineralization. Our understanding is this is broadly a structurally controlled Um, deposit. So the initial re-logging that we did confirmed that. We've identified the nine structures, uh, bounding the higher grade zones. Uh, we're extending that across the entire deposit. That's probably gonna take us through to the end of the year, and we're looking to incorporate those findings into our, into our PFS. Obviously, as that work progresses and as it concludes, we're, we'll be in a position to, uh, to update the market on, uh, on how that's advancing.

Anybody else? I'll, I'll, I'll take one more then, uh, if I, if I can. Um, obviously in Chile there is always a lot of issues with water, uh, both, you know, getting it and then just desalinating it. Mm-hmm. Uh, you pretty comprehensively covered this in your presentation, but just as a thought, how much would it cost to build the pipeline and, uh, and just maybe even how much would it cost to build the, the desal plant as a whole?

Yeah, I think in aggregates, uh, you know, we're not blessed in the Atacama region with deposits like you see perhaps in Antofagasta where they can support very substantial additional capital. Uh, the estimates we've seen to date is capital costs in excess of one billion to 1.2 billion, uh, to deliver water to the Maricunga. Um, so certainly not a project that we would undertake on our own. Mm. Uh, but there's obviously the benefit here of coming together with a number of other issuers in the region. As you saw in the graphic, um, lots of us operating in, uh, the Maricunga Gold Belt, uh, to h- take the journey forward with the commercial ventures that are in Chile looking to, uh, to advance water into, into the region.

Perfect. This was great. Anybody else quick? No? Thank you very much. Thank you.