Trilogy Metals

Thanks, Ross. That was a great presentation by Sandeep, and a lot of the themes that he was talking about aren’t dissimilar for us in the sense that we’re in the Arctic, and we’re really focusing on a mining district. So I wanna give you a bit of color about what Trilogy is all about and how things are advancing with respect to the project. I hope to leave about five minutes for questions, so we’ll go from there.

This is the area, and at the top we say, “Copper made in America,” and it really is about the great state of Alaska. And what I would say, and I think I’m being honest when I say that we’re talking about a mining district and the potential for a mining district in the Ambler area. This is an area that’s been well known and was discovered in the late 1950s, early 1960. The discovery hole at Bornite was 20 meters at 24%, and that was Kennecott that had that asset. And then it was dormant for 20 years, and nothing happened.

In the early 2000s, it was picked up by Nova Gold, and that was really based on a strong relationship that the CEO, Rick Van Nieuwenhuize had with Tom Albanese. And from there, what Rick was able to do was really consolidate the district. And not only did we have the Ambler Mining District, which included Arctic deposit, but he was able to come to an agreement with the NANA, which is the Alaska Native Corporation, to put the district together and bring Bornite in. That happened in around 2011, and in 2012, the company was spun out into a separate public company, and I’ll give you a bit of color as to the shareholders.

But what I would say differentiates us from pretty much any other story out there, first of all, we’ve got Arctic as a VMS deposit. It’s about grade. Arctic right now is about 50 million tons, and based on current prices, the effective grade is about 5.16%. So if we compared it to something like Cactus, which recently transacted, that would be about ten times the effective grade of the Cactus deposit. So what gives us real comfort is that we’re dealing not with just Arctic as a potential high-grade deposit, but the ability to extend it further into the district, and I’ll give a bit of color as to where that’s at.

The second deposit in the area that is already known is a Bornite deposit. It’s about 208 million tons graded about 1.42%, and in that deposit, there’s also a high-grade component which is roughly 40-plus million tons grading around 3% copper. There’s also 88 million pounds of copper in that deposit which had previously been in an inferred category, and that’s something that as we look at more studies, we’ll see how we move it forward.

You can see on this map that we have the Red Dog mine. The Red Dog mine at one point was the largest zinc mine in the world. So we’re in the same territory, and I would say the roadmap that we’re looking at developing Arctic is really following that model. We have a partnership with the great state of Alaska and Ada in terms of building the roads, similar to what Sandeep was saying about the casino project, and we have NANA as a partner in the district.

This is a summary of the resources. This is a 100% basis. Trilogy owns 50% of a JV. Our JV partner is South32. South32 has invested about $200 million in the JV and Trilogy, so I would say that they’re the smart money in the transaction. Our market cap is hovering somewhere around 600 US right now, and they came in at roughly just over 200 million, so they’re very committed to advancing the project.

We have a feasibility study on Arctic. Capital back in 2023 was roughly 1.1 billion. I’ll show you what that study looks like and also how it looks in current pricing terms. And then on the Bornite side, we’ve done a PEA, and we’re really starting to think about Bornite a little bit differently. We’re starting to think about how can we bring Bornite forward because the strategy that we’ve been looking at is Arctic first, Bornite second. And while that may be the ultimate strategy, we think there’s ways of unlocking value at Bornite on a go-forward basis.

These are the metals that are in the district. Obviously, copper, zinc, silver, and lead are the primary metals with gold as well. Cobalt, as I mentioned, at Bornite, and then there’s germanium in the district. In fact, Red Dog is a large germanium, gallium producer, and those are of special interest to the US and Canadian governments.

Land package is vast. You can see it’s a large area which has been largely unexplored. The total drilled meters in the district are about 200,000 meters, which sounds like a lot, but if you compare it to other VMS camps, it’s just a drop in the bucket. So this is why we’re so excited about the district and the potential because we know we have lots of targets to focus on and advance.

In terms of the resources, you can see that it’s more than copper. We’ve got lead, zinc, silver, and gold, but it really gives us flexibility in terms of how we look at mining. And when we look at the numbers in terms of the FS, you’ll get a sense of the ability to look at financing alternatives with respect to precious metals.

In terms of economics, on a base case basis, the asset was robust, but obviously on a spot price basis, we’re looking at $4.7 billion on an after-tax MPV. Even if you adjusted capital up 30%, 40%, it wouldn’t materially move the NPV on the project. We’re still talking about a project with over a $4 billion NPV in the current price environment. You can also see the capital intensity ratio. If it’s not the lowest, it’s close to the lowest out there, just hovering over $10,000 per copper equivalent ton. And the payback is quick, and the IRR is consistently over 50%, certainly in the spot price environment.

And this assumes a 13-year mine life. What we do know is that there was additional drilling done at Arctic in 2022, which wasn’t included in the resource. We’ve seen the numbers. It increases the resource by roughly 10%, which would mean that just based on the work that we’ve done today, we know we’re looking at a 14- to 15-year mine life on the basis of what we’ve already done on a drilling basis without any additional drilling at Arctic.

And in terms of the products that are produced, there’s three cons. There’s a copper con, a zinc con, what we call a precious metals con, which is really gold, silver, and more lead, but in terms of value, it’s precious metals. The big change that’s happened from feasibility study to today is the spot price of gold. We see that precious metals now accounts for roughly 20% of the revenue stream, which is actually more than zinc. When we were looking back at the feasibility study, it was 13% to the precious metals and 23% to zinc, and that’s flipped now. And that’s what gives us comfort that there’s an opportunity to look at additional financing opportunities with respect to the gold and silver at Arctic.

We started the permitting process. We’ve entered into the Fast Forty-One permitting process. We were accepted into that process recently. The notice of intent was just filed a couple weeks ago. We now have a roadmap to getting a final EIS by September of 2028. The specific milestones are very specifically set, so the next big date will be getting the preliminary draft EIS out in October of next year, and then we move into public comments with the final EIS expected in September of 2028. So we feel very confident in terms of advancing the process.

The person who’s doing the permitting, Ron Rimmelman, who’s leading the JV, permitted the Donlin Creek or Donlin Gold Mine. And the other thing that we’ve done in terms of permitting is we’ve incorporated the federal permitting with the state permitting. So that’s the first time that’s done in Alaska. And so this is about all of our permits that would be required to get us to a permitted position with respect to Arctic.

And at the same time that we’ll be doing that, we’ll be looking at the definitive feasibility study. So we have feasibility study at the Trilogy level that was based on a PFS that was done in 2023 at the asset level. We’ll be updating the asset level PFS to an FS, and we’re in the process of announcing a project director, which should be shortly, imminently. And that study would be available sometime in 2028. So if everything comes together, it puts us in a position to make an investment decision in 2028, having the permits in hand and having a DFS that allows us to advance the project.

In terms of Bornite, this is an asset that I don’t think a lot of people really understand. It was the asset that caused South32 to come in to invest in Trilogy when they made their initial investment in 2017. They spent $30 million drilling Bornite. In 2012, there was a hole that was drilled that was 178 meters at 4%, included a section that was about 35 meters at 12%. What’s exciting about Bornite is that high grade underground, and there’s a lot of opportunity to expand the resource there. And what we’re thinking about as we look at 2027 is, should we be factoring in more exploration dollars associated with Bornite, and should we revisit how we look at Bornite in terms of the opportunities in the district?

We did a PEA case on Bornite last year in 2025. We’re actually updating that case right now. And what I would say is that you can see how torque this is to copper prices with a 100% NPV at roughly $2 billion based on current copper prices. But what’s really exciting about this is if we’re able to do what we think we can do in terms of a current PEA, we expect that mine life to increase by 50%, and we expect increase as well in the after-tax NPV. And that’s before we start to think about how Bornite can fit into the development strategy longer term. But let me be clear, we’re permitting Arctic on a standalone basis. If we do something with Bornite, it will actually be after Arctic has already come into production, and we’ll look at some sort of brownfield expansion in the district.

These are the VMS districts, the world-class VMS districts. On our website, we have a slide that follows this. It really just shows all of the drill density in these districts. The Ambler Belt is the next world-class VMS district out there, and we have only just begun to conduct exploration in this area. So you can get an idea of the Ambler District. You can see on the left corner that Ambler is basically pretty much all white. The rest of those districts, whether it’s Bathurst, Slim Flume, Snow Lake, or Miranda, have been heavily drilled. So that’s what gives us confidence that there is a lot more VMS material in the district going forward. There was an announcement today from HudBay about Snow Lake and their continued expansion of that resource, and that’s how we see the story playing out in the Ambler Mining District.

In terms of partnerships, I mentioned South32. They now own about 5.7% of the stock, 50% of the JV. Nano’s our partner at the JV level, and they’re able to participate in any of the mines that are built, or they’ll take a 15% MPI. But the most important thing is that they already have a rich mining history, and as a result, we’re working with someone that understands mining. And they’re also thinking about what the future is at Red Dog and how this ties in to the next steps of development in the Northwest Arctic borough.

And then ADA is a development agency in the state of Alaska. As I mentioned earlier, we’re following the same roadmap for development of the Ambler Mining District by working with ADA. ADA would build and fund the road, and then we would end up in tolling arrangements where we would pay tolls associated with the road.

The road itself always gets a lot of questions. It has been a challenging process for sure, and in October of last year, President Trump issued a presidential decree reinstating all of the permits associated with the road, and the federal right-of-way permits were executed. As a result, we don’t anticipate issues with the road, although there will always be opposition, and we’ll see where that goes, but we feel like we’re in a strong position.

The other major factor that occurred earlier this year was the transfer of lands under Public Land Order 5150 that were transferred from the federal government to the state of Alaska. And why that’s important is that it takes the federal government out of the permitting process and the road itself. So right now what you have is you have state lands, you have ANC lands, and you have a right of way through Gates of the Arctic, but there are no federal lands with respect to the road, and that is key. Even if we went back to where we were before, the situation has changed simply on the basis that the federal government is out of the process.

So we’re working with the US Army Corps of Engineers in terms of the next steps. And what ADA is doing right now is they’re looking at financing options associated with the road. We expect to have a final estimate in terms of the cost of the road, and then we’ll begin the permitting process. In terms of when we would expect construction to begin, it’s a bit like Sandeep because... near ice road that would allow you to bring materials and supplies in. You’ll barge materials and supplies in, and construction of a road would occur concurrently with construction of a mine.

These are the updates in terms of what’s happening next. It’s gonna be updates on permitting. We’ll get our field season results, which is mostly to support the FS. We’ll look at a district-wide exploration strategy, and then there’ll be progress on the road expected in 2027, and we’ll be announcing a budget for 2027, which we think will be substantial relative to wanting to invest, not just Arctic, but Bornite.

Last slide, how do we look from a capitalization perspective? We’re sitting around $49 million in cash. About 17 will be pushed down into the JV. The JV will pretty much be fully funded for 2027 if we look at a similar field season that we had in 2026. If we decide to expand that, then we will contribute additional funds, and South32 will contribute additional funds. We feel we’re well-funded to an investment decision, and you can see what the shareholder base looks like. Electrum at 17%. They’ve been there from the beginning. Department of War is our newest shareholder, diluted down from 10% to 9.1. South32 at just under six, and management on a fully diluted basis has about 12%. So we’re fully invested alongside our shareholders.

And I will stop there, and I’ve got three minutes left for questions. Thank you very much.

Any questions from the room? If not, there’s a couple from my side, Tony. You talked about the permitting process, and I’d imagine that you wanna do the permitting, update the feasibility study, and then look more broadly at financing. But general thoughts on the financing, and a second question related to that.

Yeah, I think there’s lots of different financing options open. Obviously, with the US government as a shareholder in the project, I think that really opens up avenues that weren’t there before. So we’ll look at US EXIM funding, we’ll look at other funding, and we will clearly explore the ability of monetizing some portion of the gold and silver that are in the project. And we’ve already done some work on that, and it’s quite amazing the amount of funding that we could raise on the basis of 32,500 ounces of gold at the JV level, 2.8 million ounces of silver. I think we could pretty much fully fund the previous capital of 1.1. So I feel comfortable that we’ll have lots of options to look at the financing side. Our financing obligation is for half of that total, and we think there’s lots of ways of getting there, and we’re starting to explore it.

And I think your point about 2028, making an investment decision and the feasibility study, we’re very much in block and tackle mode now, and it’s continue to de-risk a project, look at how we can advance this project moving forward, and really unlock the value in the district, which I think is one thing that perhaps isn’t appreciated by investors, just how significant this district is, and particularly in comparison to the VMS belts out there.

And just a second question. You talked about making the FID decision in 2020 and then operations starting 2031. What does the ramp-up and the commissioning look like on that? It feels like quite a short period for the build.

Yeah. When I say 2028, I certainly say it from a Trilogy perspective, and so part of that will need to be consensus with our partner, South32. I think we’re optimistic that a three-year build is a reasonable time build for the project and the road, and then we would expect a very typical ramp-up period as far as production goes. But at this point, I think that would be part and parcel of a DFS work that needs to be done to get us to that decision.

Great. Thank you. Any last questions from the room? We’ve got another minute to take one if there’s any. Good. Okay. Thank you very much, Tony.

Thanks. Thanks very much.

Great presentation. Thank you.