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SLIDE 1. Title Slide: 38th Annual Mining Forum Americas
Appreciate that, Don. Thank you.
SLIDE 2. Forward-Looking Statements
Thank you for listening to me today. Good morning.
SLIDE 3. An Established Gold Producer Growing Ounces and Free Cash Flow
What a difference a year makes at Wesdome.
Today, Wesdome is a safer, a stronger, and a more financially resilient company.
With two high-grade Canadian mines, with increasing production, and with growing free cash flow, what a place to be. We have record reserves, we have eight-year reserve-backed mine plans at both of our operations, and what's most exciting is we have a significant pipeline of organic opportunities ahead of these plans.
What's also quite exciting is the fact that we have the financial capacity to fund this growth internally while still returning capital to our shareholders through our ongoing share buyback program, as well as our recently initiated dividend.
This is the opportunity I want to focus on today. A strong producing business that can fund its own growth with exploration that can add material talk to the share price using the mines and the infrastructure that we already own – capital efficient value creation. And I'm going to try and explain to you a bit today through this presentation about why we believe it so much.
SLIDE 4. Two of Canada's Highest-Grade Producing Gold Mines
It all starts with the quality of the assets, which I believe lies in the DNA, the genetics. We operate two wholly owned Canadian mines, underground mines on the best greenstone belts in Canada.
Our Ontario mine, which is called Eagle River, is just north of Wawa, and our Kiena mine is lying in the prolific Abitibi region. This all-Canadian combination is rare.
Established production over the last three decades in two of the country's best greenstone belts in the world – in my view – substantial ground still to explore, and skilled teams that have been there and know how to do the work. Organic growth strategies focused on continuing to unleash the value in both of these mines to convert the exploration that we believe is lying in these beautiful land packages we own into resources, into mine plans, into production, and ultimately, into free cash flow, which is what Wesdome prides itself at, as being a high free cash flow generator.
Eagle River has operated since 1995 continuously and produced more than two million ounces of gold. Across roughly 400 square kilometers of land, we own the high-grade Eagle River mine, we own an old pit, which is called the Mishi Pit, and there's another underground mine called the Magnacon Mine on the property. We also have numerous zones that we know about and are lots of targets, which have some information on them, which we're super excited about.
Kiena also has produced roughly two million ounces of gold, and the thing about Kiena is its address. It's situated in the heart of Abitibi, and its ground covers two mineralized corridors. It includes areas that really have seen remarkably little exploration in an area which has produced huge amounts of gold.
At both our operations, existing infrastructure already gives us a ready-made opportunity to efficiently turn what we believe is in the ground into production and ultimately into value. And, as we execute on this strategy and we demonstrate the results, we believe that we can close the gap between the current market value of Wesdome and what we perceive to be the higher underlying intrinsic value of these assets.
SLIDE 5. Delivering Growth and Value by Filling the Mills
Our organic growth strategy is multifaceted, and it starts with filling the mills that we already own. This is something we started 2 to 3 years ago, and we are really excited about where this is going.
Both our mills have permitted capacity well beyond today's production. At Eagle River, we currently operate about 70% of our milling capacity and Kiena at about 40% of our milling capacity. That matters because increasing throughput through these mines and through this existing infrastructure, which is not only the mill but also the existing surface infrastructure, allows us a capital efficient path to higher production and also allows us to leverage a high fixed cost base in these very high-grade, low tonnage underground mines.
Filling the mills is the first phase of this strategy.
SLIDE 6. Multi-Year Exploration Strategy Focused on Growth and Discovery
The second phase is where we test the geology, and we test the development choices together so that capital growth remains capital efficient.
What we're seeing here is looking well beyond existing mill capacity, as well as all sources that are there, into regional structures, into district scale plays, into expanded milling, and into a larger mining footprint for Wesdome. Exploration is how we turn two good mines into much larger, very valuable, longer life businesses, longer life mining districts.
Historically, each of these mines have been perceived to be separate high-grade zones – they haven't been looked at as systems. Today, our drilling and our geological models are pointing us into a different direction. They're telling us the systems may be broader, they may be deeper, they may be different, and they have the potential to do something very different along the entire corridor of the properties that we do have.
It changes the question at Wesdome, which was there before but, how far does the ore body extend to just how big is the system that we own? How wide is the current Eagle River mine and Kiena mine? How big is the district, and how many opportunities exist on it?
With 55 million dollars expended on exploration or the equivalent of 270 kilometers of drilling in 2026, which is the second year of a program which is defined over 3 to 5 years, we are systematically testing the scale and the continuity of these targets to determine just how big these systems can become.
For shareholders, the value will come as we define this and convert this into resources first and then into production, which is where we are very smart – we're commercial in the way we're looking at this. And I believe the prize here could be somewhat material.
SLIDE 7. Exploration Targets
Over the last three years, we've spent a lot of time organizing and digitizing decades of historical data. When you have properties like we have, trust me, it's like a kid in a candy store with geology.
The question was, how do we bring this together? How do we understand these geological models? And how do we give ourselves a better pathway and view on the value that we own in front of us?
In June, we published 3-to-5-year conceptual exploration targets, and this was up to about 6.3 million ounces. But the point of this was to give investors an idea of scale, not you an idea of the size of the system. It's a 3-to-5-year plan – we want to hold ourselves accountable to the exploration potential that we actually have.
As drilling establishes continuity, geometry, grade, each of these successful results will add to our understanding and what it does for us is it helps us plan our next move, whether this be from a geological perspective or from a mining planning perspective.
This is why when you look at Wesdome and you look at the current reserve plans, they're merely a starting point for Wesdome. The understanding of these assets seems to be well beyond what we're seeing today.
SLIDE 8. Eagle River Intro
If you look at these assets individually, Eagle River sits on about 400 square kilometers, as I mentioned earlier. It's an underground, high-grade established mine. The size of that land is approximately the size of Denver, to put into context. That's a hell of a lot of land, and Wesdome is really just mining right over there right now at the bottom where it says Eagle River Mine.
SLIDE 9: High-Grade Eagle River Open at Depth with Potential Continuity
For many years, Eagle River was developed as a relatively narrow, high-grade vein mine. However, our new geological models are telling us something very different. They're broader. It's got a bigger scale. The high-grade shoots continue. There's a lot of parallel structures. There's more ounces per vertical meter in the upper sections of the mine.
To put into context, when you look at this mine, you might see laterally it's about 2.5 kilometres in width. It even extends beyond that when we look at the actual geology.
If you look at its width itself, the width of these particular sources, just have a look at the plan view at the bottom – that's showing you the width.
It's about 800 metres wide, and you might notice a number of zones that are running across that. You might notice the white areas in those, that diorite or that little circle area as well. That's not a factor of no zones; that's a factor of no drilling – there's a big difference.
And if you look at mining across these zones, we're mining between 100 metres deep and 1500 metres deep, depending which zone we're operating in. Is that a factor of whether they continue? No, it's a factor of drilling. Drilling continues to identify this high-grade mineralization across the entire current mine plan.
One recent intercept was about 618 grams per tonne over half a metre. But what was interesting about this intercept was it sat outside of the high-grade corridor. It sat in between the 800 Zone and the 300 Zone.
So, the question is, what's happening down there? We believe this mine alone has sufficient tonnes to actually fill the mill for many years to come on its own. Eagle River's system could demonstrate significant grade and significant scale with time, which could change our production profile as well as how investors may value it.
SLIDE 10. Eagle River Mishi-Magnacon
Mishi-Magnacon shows why Eagle River is more than just an existing mine. I mentioned to you earlier that we used to mine up in Mishi, and we had another mine called Magnacon. We've been doing a lot of work over the last three years as well.
The historic Mishi pit sits really close to infrastructure. In fact, you can probably throw a stone as well to our mill from where Mishi is. And we put about 500,000 ounces in the recent resource in inferred materials in June, and we've obviously been drilling this a lot more subsequently to that.
What we also see here is it continues to expand underground as well, which is quite exciting. It had quite nice grades too. Recent drilling has extended the mineralization nearly 1-kilometre beyond the current historical pit, while also confirming that the system continues at depth.
But what's more important for me is that we've identified a major structural boundary running about 10 kilometres across the Mishi-Magnacon corridor – known deposits that we thought existed on the one side with prospective ground sitting on the other side, which was not tested.
So, what are we doing? We're obviously drilling, and we're obviously trying to understand what's going on in terms of surface opportunities within this corridor.
But beyond Mishi-Magnacon, the other ones as well, which we put a lot of press releases out on too – we've got Cameron Lake Iron Formation, we've got Abbey Lake, we've got Dorset, we've got Feather River. You might see those, some of those belonged in the Angus portfolio, which we actually just continue to develop – these are really, really exciting too, and they're pointing in the direction of bulk scale opportunity in multiple areas on this property.
Mishi-Magnacon could be the lead ore opportunity. We are testing today whether these and the other targets could provide sufficient mineable reserves and resources to support a larger regional mill.
And obviously, all this connects into a broader strategy for the Eagle River District. Over the next 12 to 16 months, our team will provide the market, well we're hoping to provide the market, with a conceptual development framework for how this will work and how this will roll out, to give you a sense of the potential scale and the value of this particular trend up north, away from Eagle River. Eagle River will continue to mine and will continue to mine it well.
SLIDE 11. Kiena Intro
Our second asset is another exceptional address. Kiena sits in the Abitibi region, and it lies squarely between major producing mines.
And this is a really telling picture because – I'll give Northern Miner full credit for this because I love this picture – you might see the blue, it's 75 square kilometers, that's Eagle's portfolio, also Kiena's portfolio. You might see around it up north a number of mines up there, including Odyssey and Malartic, and you'll see below that Goldex and Lamaque and all those good things below that too.
There's a lot of drilling that's been done in this area, and there's a lot of drilling still to be done. If you stand on the mill, you'll be able to see the headframes for a lot of these mines around Kiena.
But you might notice that Kiena doesn't have a lot of mines on it. Again, not a function of the potential of Kiena, but merely a function of drilling.
SLIDE 12. Kiena: Multiple Paths to Future Growth
Kiena was long viewed from a lens of a single high-grade mining area, Kiena Deep. So, the last 10 years, what we've really been trying to do is just get the Kiena Deep's mine into operation. What we had to do was a lot of work in unlocking Kiena Mine in a different way, which we've subsequently done.
So, what we see today is completely different. We believe that Kiena has the potential to evolve into a district-scale operating platform built on three major districts.
The Kiena Deep, including incremental ore up north of Kiena, Kiena East, which includes a number of ore bodies, including Dubuisson, Shawkey, 134, Wish, as well as Kiena North, which is where an old mine was up north on a northern corridor, where we see a low grade so a low magnetic trend which we're actually interested in.
Kiena Deep is the foundation of the near-term strategy. It's where we're mining today, and our exploration is continuing to expand our understanding of the system. The idea here is to increase ounce per vertical metre.
We've developed new drilling platforms, and for those who know Wesdome will know that we didn't have drilling platforms. We were just trying to get down in the mine. Over the last two years, we built two platforms, and strangely enough, they're starting to deliver. It's not strange to me, but I'm being sarcastic.
And we've expanded our exploration program, and what are we seeing? A series of mineralized parallel zones next to Kiena Deep. Norbenite Footwall is a really good example of this. Its high-grade mineralization extends already 150 vertical metres beyond the current resource and remains open in all directions – up plunge, down plunge, and to the other side.
The interesting part about Norbenite is it was sitting on the other side of a fault, which we couldn't drill before, and we were able to drill it once the platform was there. There's approximately a 1-kilometre plunge right to the north alongside Kiena Deep that we're following up on. Our job now is to understand how much of this is mineralized, how much of that is mineable. And why it matters is because it increases ounce per vertical metre near the upper sections of a mine and allows us to just keep filling that mill.
Discoveries at Kiena Deep, as well as the Footwall Zone, have changed our understanding of the mine. Norbenite is merely one example of it. Norbenite could be a game-changer.
Looking further out, the second area that's evolving is Kiena East, which currently, like I mentioned, includes the four mineralized zones and we believe represents the next growth horizon for the Kiena Mine. You might notice that it's actually on infrastructure, so it's connected to the mill right now, in fact, through level 300, but we're choosing not to mine it right now because we're quite excited about it because we believe it might be slightly different.
Whilst it's in early stage, drilling is providing us a lot of information about its scale and its breadth. And what is particularly interesting for us is the combination of broad mineralization, multiple high-grade structures, and a very large prospective host environment.
Our next phase of drilling is designed to answer one key question. Can these historically separated zones be connected to form a larger, continuous mineralized system with the scale to support a future mining area? How deep does it go? We only drilled this baby till about 300 metres, we've been subsequently drilling it to 600 metres, we're throwing holes way below that.
We're extremely excited about what we're seeing here. If we can demonstrate continuity and establish the geometry of this particular system, I believe that Kiena East could offer a substantial opportunity in terms of long-term resource growth and value. What we're caring about is optionality in terms of production capability, and this is another one of those.
Finally, there's a longer-term prospect, which I would be remiss not to mention, but I don't really talk about it because it's in the longer-term strategy.
This is on Kiena's Northern Corridor, where we're beginning to test an area of the property which is starting with the Cisco Mine, which is a previously mined area in the 1920s to 1940s. We mined about 900,000 ounces there at about 9 grams a tonne.
But what was interesting about this was the deepest hole went about 700 metres below surface, which is relatively modest or relatively shallow by Abitibi standards. We're beginning to drill Cisco, or we began to drill Cisco during the summer. We are following up on understanding the low mag area that's on the Northern Corridor, that lies between Wesdome on this side and Cisco on the other side. It's about 900 metres below surface, which excites us a lot. And we tried to systematically test this Kiena district up north for mineralization which is beyond the current plan as well.
So, this is a longer-term strategy, but you'll see results of those coming through. We're obviously planning the mining side of this while we're doing this, too. I have scenarios on every single thing this possibly could be.
So, when you look at Kiena, you need to look at Kiena a little bit differently. You need to look at Kiena as not only Kiena Deep, so what you understand today and the Kiena incremental zones that are near a surface to fill the mill, but you need to look at this from Kiena East as well and Kiena North.
What could this become, and how significant is the property in which we own? This is why Kiena remains a really important part of Wesdome's growth story.
SLIDE 13. Long Track Record of Shareholder Value Creation
Wesdome has a long track record of creating shareholder value. One of the characteristics appreciated by investors is that we measure growth on a value per share, not growth for growth's sake, and I feel very strongly about that.
Since 2016, production per thousand shares has tripled. Operating cash flow per share has moved from about 16 cents to about $3. Mineral reserves per thousand shares have almost tripled from about 3.5 ounces to about 9.2 ounces, and we achieved this with all limited dilution. These results set the standard for the next phase.
Exploration success, capital expenditures, whatever we do will only be measured on strong economics and value per share.
SLIDE 14. Higher Quality Across Key Benchmarks
Those per share results reflect the quality of our assets and the discipline in deploying capital and the discipline in the way we run this business.
The next slide compares Wesdome with the peer group and senior producers on measures that matters to owners, whether this be free cash flow generation on return or return on capital employed. On several of these measures, both of those, Wesdome not only competes with peers, but it does really well relative to the senior producers.
Our aim is to keep doing the same thing over and over again and to maintain this discipline.
SLIDE 15. Upside Opportunities Not Captured by the Market
So, if I summarize, I want to close with the investment thesis for Wesdome.
Today, the market can see Wesdome's current production. You can see our current reserves. You can see a three-year cash flow outlook of more than a billion dollars.
What is harder to value is the full scale and the potential of the mineralized systems that we are drilling. Our foundation at Wesdome is very strong. We have significant upside with the drill bit, and importantly, we have the proven track record to convert discoveries into ounces, production and ultimately cash flow.
We have the team, we have the financial capacity, and we have the discipline to pursue this opportunity while evaluating each investment, whether they be organic or inorganic, through one lens – does it create value per share?
We know that there's a gap today between Wesdome's current market value and what we perceive to be the intrinsic value underlying in these assets. I know that closing the gap requires evidence.
My team will prove to you that this is going to happen.
For investors, the opportunity is straightforward. Convert what we are discovering into meaningful per share creation. And with our $5 billion CAD valuation, this creates significant talk in terms of share price growth as the value of both of these assets start to become relevant and clear.
Thank you.
