Contango Ore Q4 2025 Earnings Call - Debt and hedges near extinction, merger to lift cash above $100M and 2027 set up as a cash-rich year

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Into the room, I will say good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where in the world you’re signing in from. I’ve got with me today Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, CEO of Contango Ore, and Mike Clark, the company’s CFO, to discuss both 2025 year-end earnings and guidance for 2026, 2027, among other things. Keep a broad list of topics today. Here’s how today’s gonna work for those of you in the room. I see at least, geez, looks like 40 who have never been in the 6ix webinar before. This next part is mostly for you. I’ll say that, I’ve got some questions for the gentleman, just to get us started. The chat is interactive. There’s a button on the middle bottom of your screen.

If you pop that up, you should be able to ask questions any time during today’s event. We’ll try to get to as many as we can. We are trying to stick to about half an hour today. The recording, we believe, will be available about 4:00 P.M. Eastern time. It’ll pop right in your inbox. It will also be available on 6ix’s YouTube channel at that time. Enough of the boring stuff out of me. I wanna get right into the good stuff. Mike, that means I will start with you. So you are on mute before you start. The cash distributions from the Peak Gold JV came in at $102 million for 2025.

I’d love if you could walk us through how that flows down to Contango’s balance sheet and what the unrestricted cash position looks like today, versus where you started the year. You are on mute, though, Mike. Sorry.

Mike Clark, Chief Financial Officer, Contango Ore: Good morning, everyone. Thanks for the question. The way that we account for the Peak Gold JV is equity accounting, because we own 30% of it. What you see happening is we recognize 30% of the net income of the joint venture, which for 2025 was $88.6 million. You see that go into our statement of operations with a corresponding increase to the investment in the PJV on the balance sheet. The $102 million distributions actually is a direct increase to our cash with a corresponding reduction to the investment of Peak Gold.

What you would’ve seen at the beginning of the year was a balance of $60 million in that investment on the balance sheet, and that’s been reduced to $47 million at the end of the year, which is the difference between the 102 and the 88. To answer your second question, it’s the cash increase from $20 million to start the year to $65 million at the end of the year. That was primarily driven by the equity raise we did in September. That’s really what drove that. The profits from Manh Choh effectively funded our pay down of the debt for $37.5 million, and the realized hedge losses of $63 million, which was coincidentally about $100 million. Those funds more or less took care of paying down our debt.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Great. No, I appreciate that very much. Rick, I got one question about AISC. That came in at about $16 per ounce sold in 2025, which is, I believe, almost right on guidance, like almost exactly on guidance. Now the 2026 number jumps to that $2,200-$2,300 range. What drives the increase, and how much of that is just the math on lower ounces versus cost inflation? Just what are we looking at there?

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: Yeah. Obviously, yeah, we’re pleased to be slightly under guidance. I think guidance was $1,625, so I think good, you know, good job there. In terms of next year, or I should say this year, 2026, guidance has always been higher because of the mine plan. The mine plan is there’s more stripping. We’re switching from the north pit to the south pit. Because of that, a lot of the fleet sort of mine fleet is distracted. They’re doing a bunch of pre-stripping. That results when you’re stripping waste, that’s a higher all-in sustaining cost on a you know across the board basis.

That’s the main driver of the increased cost is, you’re doing a lot of pre-stripping, in 2026. That’s why you see the cost go down in 2027, because now you’re just mining ore, and in fact, a bunch of the fleet’s gonna go away. That’s just the, you know, sort of the sequencing of the mine plan. That’s the big driver. Now, a couple of things, in terms of continued guidance going forward. If that’s based on the mine plan, and we’re, you know, executing the mine plan, you know, plus or minus, you know, where it was originally in terms of grade and things like that, grades and tons, ounces delivered.

where we are starting to see inflation, in particular, wage, more wage-related inflation. It’s relatively small, but we’re certainly-

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Sure.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: Seeing that. I think that’s in general what the gold price still tells you, right? Gold price is going up. It’s usually an indicator. The other thing, obviously, the recent developments related to the Iran war and the closing of the Straits of Hormuz, that’s probably inflation, potential inflation to come.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Sure.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: You know, in rough numbers, a third of our costs are related to transporting the ore from Manh Choh to Fort Knox. If we see higher diesel prices as a result of a, you know, a $200 spike in oil costs, which some people are talking about, if that happens, obviously our costs are gonna go up. That’s more of a cautionary thing. We don’t have anything now, and obviously we buy fuel in advance, in Alaska, particularly and for this project, particularly. A lot of it is locked in. I don’t have any sort of specific numbers at this point. I noticed, I just got back from traveling, and I was seeing in the lower 48 a lot of really high costs for gas and diesel.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Sure.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: Haven’t seen that here, interestingly enough. Again, I think we buy a lot and it gets barged up and it gets stored, so we have a lot of storage capacity in Alaska. But I think it is something that we certainly expect to happen if the Iran situation continues.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Sure. Again, it makes sense. Appreciate it. Mike, on another quick accounting question. I know you raised $50 million in September and another $50 million in February, but the credit facility already down to under $15 million. How should investors think about the capital structure from here, especially going into 2027 when distributions could be, you know, north of $165 million?

Mike Clark, Chief Financial Officer, Contango Ore: Yeah. The debt’s around just under $15 million right now. It’s scheduled to be down to $10 million at the end of this year. The hedges are scheduled to be down from. We’ll pay down another, deliver another 11,000 this year, with 15 in the remainder of this year. Our objective still is to early deliver into those and potentially early pay off that debt. Either you’re gonna see the debt and hedges all kind of extinguished by the end of this year or in early 2027. Now, how that kind of ties through to our cash is, you know, we have what 65 to start the year. We got exploration and development expenditures at Lucky Shot and Johnson Tract. You’re gonna see us spend, you know, around $40 million on those projects.

What you should see is with the Montrose profits, with the expenditures on those projects, our cash should stay relatively flat for this year. You should see year around, say, $60 million. Going into 2027 and 2028, you’re gonna be debt free, hedge free, and generating a significant amount of free cash flow from Montrose. You know, and we’ll continue to put money into the Lucky Shot and Johnson Tract and Kitsault, but you should still see us be able to fund all those planned expenditures while the cash is continuing to grow by a significant amount over the next couple of years. Anything to add to that?

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: Yeah, I’m just gonna add, obviously once the merger is completed, which is coming up here very shortly, Dolly Varden comes with a significant amount of cash. So, you know, Mike’s $60 million number is actually gonna grow significantly over $100 million with the Dolly Varden merger. We’ll let all that kind of come out in the wash when we come out with new financials in, well, for Q2, I guess.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Sounds good.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: You are.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Okay. Coming in with cash always sounds nice to me. It’s like, there you go. I got one question that just came up, reading the PR. The transition from the North Pit to the South Pit creates this kind of four-month lag between mining and then getting credited. I wonder if you could just explain the mechanics for folks who might not be familiar with how Fort Knox does batch processing arrangements. Just give us some color on how that works.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: Yeah. Just, you know, the batch processing, basically, it’s the middle month of every quarter. That’s sort of the target plan. You know, it can vary a week or two on either side of that, just depending on conditions, weather conditions and, you know, when everything’s ready. It is a little confusing when you look at things that are mined at Montrose and stockpiled at Montrose. That’s the 225,000 ounces of gold that’s mined and stockpiled at Montrose. It’s not processed yet. If you took 30% of that, you get 63,500. You’re like, "What’s going on here?" Because you’re saying you’re gonna produce, you know, between 40 and 45. That’s the confusion.

You take that ore, and 4 months later it gets transported and batch processed and sold, and Mike gets a check for it. That takes 4 months. That’s the difference between what’s processed and paid for and sold versus what was mined in a particular quarter or a particular year at Montrose. If you’re looking at, you know, why is one number only 30% of the total of mined is 225, it’s actually a big year for mining ounces.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Sure.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: They don’t get processed till four months later, which is obviously 2027 is the benefactor of that, which is part of why 2027 is such a banner year. As we mentioned, we’re doing a fair bit of pre-stripping on the South Pit while we’re finishing up mining on the North Pit. It’s one of those good news, bad news things. The good news is there’s more ore in the North Pit that we’re finding at the bottom of the pit. You know, and that’s not uncommon. You know, it’s a venture, too, so it’s not like it’s not doubling the size or anything. But it is more. That delays moving all that equipment over to the South Pit, because once you’re done with the North Pit, we’re filling it back up, right?

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Right.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: That was part of the mine plan. That’s part of that sequencing that we’re talking about. The bottom line mined at Montrose is the ounces that are sitting on a pad at Montrose is different. There’s a four-month lag between the ounces that are processed and sold and Mike getting a check in, like I say, about roughly four months later.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Awesome. No, appreciate that. Just the mechanics of it, I think it’s helpful for people to get an understanding of. Speaking of 2027, which I think we all know to expect to be a pretty sexy year at this point. Mike, I’ll ask you. Gold production guidance for 2027 is 75,000-80,000 ounces at cash costs of $1,200-$1,300. So obviously at today’s spot prices, it’s pretty wild margin. What are the assumptions baked into that number, just so folks understand?

Mike Clark, Chief Financial Officer, Contango Ore: Yeah. Yeah. It’s basically based on what’s in the feasibility study and what’s in the mine plan, you know, with some updates for actual costs and the tons and grade that we’re mining in front of us. But really what’s really driving that is, you know, what Rick talked about is, you know, that huge amount of pre-strip done in 2026. You’re getting all the benefits in 2027. Additionally to that, you know, that grade is much higher in 2027 and you’re processing a lot more tons. So all those things drive to a much lower cash cost and all sustaining costs. I think the remaining life of mine AISC is about $1,700 when you look at all the remaining years of the mine.

You just have one, you know, 2026 is a higher year, and 2027 and 2028 are much lower, but it all averages out. So yeah. Does that answer your question?

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: I think so. Yeah. No, appreciate it. I wanna move over to Lucky Shot, though, for a second. So Rick, I’ll throw this to you. I know you’re targeting 400,000-500,000 measured and indicated ounces to support a feasibility study with a production decision, I think in 2027 is what you’re targeting. So I got two questions for you, which is, one, what are you seeing with early drill results? What are they telling you so far? And what does the classic Contango DSO approach actually look like in practice at Lucky Shot?

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: Yeah. Because Lucky Shot’s a fully permitted mine site, and, you know, it’s, it technically is an operating mine, even though we’re not, you know, producing gold, we’re doing all the things that you would if you were mining from a mining standpoint, from a permitting standpoint, particularly. We’re, we’ve got a roughly 18,000-meter drill program under way now. We’re in the next month or so, we’ll finish up the drilling in the West Drift, and then we’ll bring the miners in and continue putting underground development in. That’ll give us a bit of a breather to do some other work. We’re particularly excited about the Cam Vein, which we, I think we talked about on the last webinar. You know, that’s a new discovery.

It’s a vein at right angles to the one, the Lucky Shot vein that we’ve been drilling, and it’s very high grade. I mean, it’s averaging a couple ounces per ton. We’re gonna put together a specific plan to continue to explore that. It’s because it’s at right angles, it’s at a sort of an awkward angle to drill from the infrastructure we have in place. We’re going to some extent extending the drift to get underneath the vein, ’cause it’s basically dipping back towards us.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Sure.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: It’s offset by the Lucky Shot Fault, which of course we put the West Drift in over to the Lucky Shot Fault because we know the Lucky Shot Fault offsets the whole Lucky Shot vein system over to the Coleman. Somewhere around 150 meters is what we’re estimating. That means the, you know, the hangwall side on the, on the Lucky Shot Fault for the Cam Vein is quite a ways below it. We gotta drill that, and we wanna get the infrastructure underneath on the, on the footwall side of the Lucky Shot vein, to get that going. Those are the sort of the modifying, you know, adjusting the program as we’re moving along here.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Sure.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: Obviously, you know, we’re targeting 10-15 grams for the Lucky Shot vein, and if we’re hitting, you know, 50, 60 grams in the Cam Vein, well, guess which one I wanna drill first? I mean, it’s not-

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Sure.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: It’s not too hard. We do need to get the extra infrastructure in place to do that. Once we bring the miners back, that’s certainly one of the top priorities that we’ll do. Just overall, the exploration program will take most of the year here. That might actually go into a little bit into 2027. Then, once we have all that information and data, we’ll roll that into a feasibility level mine plan and transportation plan. We’ll decide where the ore is going. You know, is it going up to Fort Knox? Is it going over to Asia? Is it going to a tolling operation in BC?

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Mm-hmm.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: British Columbia. Those are all options that we’re looking at. You know, that it’ll be a feasibility light. I kind of refer to it as feasibility light because we’re not building a mill and a handling facility. It really is basically just a mining plan.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Sure.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: A transportation plan. Transportation’s, you know, pretty simple. Put rocks in a box. Just decide where they’re going. That’s it. That’s what we like about the DSO model. It is simple. Simple’s good.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Sure.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: That being said, our program this year will cost about $25 million, and so far we’re tracking pretty well on our drilling costs. We’ll get the miners back and we’ll see how the costs are going there. I feel pretty comfortable about that budget. Once we have all the data and complete a feasibility study and lay out the infrastructure necessary to start mining, we think that’s another $25 million to be spent in 2027, which should then get us in place to produce gold in 2028.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Awesome. Jumping around to Johnson Tract. I’m gonna hit you on every project here, so get ready for that. I know it just landed on the FAST-41 dashboard in January. For anybody unfamiliar with that program, I know there’s a lot of Canadians in the room. What does that mean for the permitting timeline, and what’s happening on the ground at Johnson Tract this year?

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: Yeah. FAST-41, and I’ll always point out it doesn’t mean fast as in quick. It actually stands for Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act. It was an act of Congress recognizing that permitting roads and any infrastructure was taking far too long. That was the purpose of the permitting council in coming up with the FAST-41 program. Basically, a permitting council is a coordinating agency amongst the federal agencies that are involved in your project from a permitting standpoint. For us, that means the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. They are the lead federal agency.

That’s because they’re the ones that have to issue sort of the dredging permits of the project, which is a 404 permit, to build the road connecting the mine site to the coast, the port site. Then the other thing is a port authorization. That’s a combination of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Coast Guard, NOAA, and National Marine Fisheries Service, and then there’s state permits involved as well. Now, the states are participating in the process.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Mm-hmm.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: The state permits aren’t actually listed on the FAST-41 dashboard. The dashboard, what’s referred to as a FAST-41 dashboard, is a website that has all the projects that are covered under the program. You can go there. You can track the process of delivery of the information to the agencies, review, and then when a document’s determined to be complete is the terminology, then it goes on the dashboard. We submit projects or plans. They get reviewed and authorized by a variety of agencies. Again, ours are U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Park Service, because we’re doing the road building and the port will be on, I mean, part on Park Service land.

NOAA, NMFS, National Marine Fisheries, and then Fish and Wildlife are involved, Coast Guard. What we like about the process is it’s transparent. It’s all out there for everybody to understand what’s being reviewed, what plans are being reviewed and what the timeline is. This is the important thing from our standpoint is you work with all the agencies, you’re agreeing on a timeline to get your permits, your final permits from the federal agencies, and that is on the dashboard. It’s March 2028. There’s actually a date, I think, on there, but the only one I remember is March. Then you work backwards from there.

Yeah, everybody has a job to do and an expectation that it gets done so that the next thing that needs to happen, the work can be get done to get out in the field, the work can be reviewed properly and organized and kept on task. That’s the important thing from our standpoint. We should get our permits by March 2028.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Great. No, appreciate that. Now one last project. I’ll say assuming the merger with Dolly Varden goes through, which I know you and Mike can’t say so, but I will say probably looks pretty good. I’d love if you could outline the exploration plans of Kitsault this year.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: Yeah. First thing on the agenda is an updated mineral resource estimate and by the end of Q2 of this year. That base incorporates about 200,000 meters of drilling that Dolly Varden has done over the last three, four years. It’s a substantial mineral resource update. From there, we’ll outline what our exploration plans for this year. We know we’re gonna spend about what? About $25 million in expenditures. That’ll be about 50,000 meters of drilling. Now, where that 50,000 meters is going to be, I don’t know exactly, but I’ll take a bit of a guess or wild guidance and say, you know, a third to three quarters of it is gonna be infill drilling.

’Cause what we wanna do is do a preliminary economic assessment under Canadian parlance or an initial assessment under U.S. parlance to, you know, say, "Here’s the plan." Lay out a plan for developing the Kitsault assets. There’s five deposits.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Mm-hmm.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: You know, between Corbet and Dolly Varden, and then going up both, Homestead Silver and Homestead Ridge. We wanna, you know, lay out an overall development plan for that. A good part of the drilling is gonna be directed at infill expansion. You know, there’s obviously some high grade holes that we, you know, add another 2 or 3 holes on, we can continue to expand the known resource. As long as we’re not getting too deep, you know, we kinda wanna stay focused on developing a 10-year plan for the assets. I’d say, you know, a quarter to a third of the drilling would be for greenfield exploration, upside new targets.

There’s a multitude of new targets to evaluate on a very large land position. It’s the southern triangle of the Golden Triangle. It’s good hunting ground.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: There you go. That’s certainly lots to explore, so that’s exciting. Now I know I’m gonna kinda give a wrap up question before I get into all the stuff that came in over email and the chat, which is pretty active. I’ll get to you guys in a second. I’ll say, with the vote, I believe tomorrow on the merger, and expected to close towards late March, once you’re operating as Contango Silver & Gold, which I believe is the new name, how does the combined portfolio change the way you think about capital allocation across all the projects?

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: Mike, you wanna start on this one, and I’ll give you. You talk about it from a financial standpoint.

Mike Clark, Chief Financial Officer, Contango Ore: Yeah.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: Maybe the money we don’t have.

Mike Clark, Chief Financial Officer, Contango Ore: It doesn’t change much for us ’cause we already have our plans with Lucky Shot and Johnson Tract. We know we’re more or less fully funded to deliver on those plans. Kitsault’s just kind of the fourth leg of the chair, I guess, coming into the company. I think there’s a little more work for us to do on, you know, the MRE and the drilling this year to kinda decide what our plans will be for 2027 to 2028. You know, I still think there’s plenty of cash available to fund that internally. You know, we’ll need to do more work to get there. I don’t think much changes. You know, we’re gonna close this merger at the end of March.

We’re gonna have over $100 million in the bank. We’ll have 33 million shares outstanding. We’re nearly debt free and hedge free. We’re gonna be in a good position to work on all these assets and, you know, be done with these hedges and the debt. Rick, is there anything you wanna add to that?

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: Yeah. I was just gonna just emphasize that, you know, we still wanna stay focused on getting out from underneath the hedges. I think we’re a long ways there. You know, I think if we deliver in this current batch and the next batch, we’ll be sitting in a really good position for the future. You know, the market right now, and I think the war in Iran has the market a little bit freaked out. Naturally people go to the dollar when there’s uncertainty going around the world, and that’s certainly what we have right now. Gold is priced in U.S. dollars, and so strength in the dollar weakens gold.

It’s a little frustrating to see the equities all get punished as much as they have, but it’s sort of a risk off environment, so just gotta muscle through. You know, the assets are still there. The gold and the silver’s in the ground. As a former associate of mine once said, "It’s not steam, so it’s not going away.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: There you go. Well, I appreciate it because I had a what the four letter word is going on with the markets question that we can now skip because I think that gives some color to people in the audience. Now there’s one. Four people asked this question. I don’t think you can answer it, but I’m a good soldier, so I’m gonna ask it anyway. Rick, that is people are looking for an update on acquisition of a permitted mill.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: Yeah. Stay tuned. We’re working on a number of opportunities, and we are going to be patient. We’re not trying to rush into anything here. We think there are a couple of good opportunities, two or three different opportunities we’re taking a look at. Just stay tuned. We’re definitely working on it.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Perfect. I had one. There’s a couple people asking just the question generally, and I think this is for folks unclear on how mining works. People note that you mine a lot more than you actually produce at Manh Choh. Just some confusion there. Love if you could give some color to what those numbers mean and why that looks like that to investors watching.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: I’m gonna guess it’s this difference between how much is mined in a year versus how much is processed in the year and the four-month lag that we talked about.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Sure.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: I had, like I said, some inbound emails this morning asking that. I think pretty much that same question, you know. Looking at the guidance, you’re gonna produce 225 ounces of gold. That was what the question was. Well, why isn’t that, you know, 130% of that 62,500 ounces? I said, "Well, yeah, but it’s mined. It’s not produced. It’s actually mined and sitting on a pad." There, where we have this, you have to build the pad up, and then while you’re building the pad up, you’re transporting it and building another pad up at Fort Knox.

The, you know, by the time it actually gets processed in the middle quarter, middle month of every quarter, Mike getting paid for it. It gets processed, gets produced into doré bars at Fort Knox. Those go to the refinery. They produce four-nines gold, and they sell that four-nines gold. Mike eventually gets a check. That’s that four months. All those things have to happen. That’s that four-month lag period.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: There’s nothing I like more than days when Mike gets a check. Those are the better days. I’m jumping into questions from the chat today. One we’ve kind of already gone over, but I’d love just a quick recap. I think it’s helpful. David says he’s a Dolly Varden shareholder. He’s looking forward to the merger. What’s the update? What’s the timeline from here? I guess the best way to answer that.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: Mike, do you have that one too?

Mike Clark, Chief Financial Officer, Contango Ore: Sure. Yeah, no. The vote for both of us is tomorrow morning at 10:00 A.M. Pacific. We expect that to be successful. The BC courts need to approve it on March twenty-sixth, and that’s when it’ll close. You will see Q1 consolidated between the two entities. You know, we’ll plan to give more guidance in April on plans moving forward. Just need to get there first. Don’t wanna.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Sure.

Mike Clark, Chief Financial Officer, Contango Ore: Yeah, as I don’t know what else I can add to that. Yeah, everything’s looking great, so.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: I’ll just say we will press release the results of the vote and when the court approves. We’ll make sure shareholders know all these steps are actually they’ve happened and when the timing’s right.

Mike Clark, Chief Financial Officer, Contango Ore: You’ll see news tomorrow, after market.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Great. Stay tuned, folks in the chat. Jan has a question, one of those impossible questions, but I’m still interested to hear your perspective on it. Jan, any expectations on a re-rating of the stock anytime soon?

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: I mean, there is a couple of different triggers here that I would think would help re-rate the stock because, as you know, we just talked about. You have had a you know $200 decrease in the gold price and which is you know de minimis in terms of percentage, and yet the equities are all up you know 10%+. It is a risk-off environment. War is a risk-off environment. I mean, that is all you can say. It is you know or we are not you know the $5,000 gold price is. We are gonna make a lot of money at $5,000 gold. If you just do quick math, it is not hard to figure out.

This is a very, very profitable company, and we’ve got lots of ounce, lots more ounces of gold that are being developed. We’ve got the cash to develop them, and the cash flow to continue to advance them. I, you know, yeah, short answer, I think there’s a hell of a re-rate story here, on a number of different fronts. The fact that, I don’t think we get a lot of value. I think we’re being valued fundamentally on our cash flow from Manh Choh.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Sure.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: Which will dramatically increase when we stop delivering in the hedges, when the hedges are gone. That’s imminent. I think there’s a lot of value that we can add that we should be able to capture with as we advance Lucky Shot, and I think there’s a lot of cash we can or a lot of value we can add as we continue to advance Johnson Tract and Kitsault. Look, I mean, we’re gonna continue to you know put out these banger holes that are always among the top 10 intersections worldwide. You know, we’re not gonna stop doing any of these things, and we have the money to do them all. Yeah, I think a re-rate’s in the cards, and I think the merger should start to

You know, obviously we’re gonna do a lot of marketing on what this combined company is and how strong it is as a producer, developer and explorer.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Awesome.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: We’ve got four big districts to continue this effort. You know, I think we’re all pretty excited about what we can accomplish here.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Awesome. A lot more to come. I know we’ve hit the half an hour mark. There’s two more quick questions. I’m just gonna throw those. One, Rick, I’ll throw to you, and then one I think is for you, Mike, to close us off. Rick, a contact from the chat asks, what’s the plan for the life of mine at Manh Choh? Are Kinross and Contango planning to add a few years to it? Where does that stand right now?

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: Yeah, short answer is, yeah, we’d love to add a few years. We’re spending about $5 million on exploration this year. I’ll say that’s, you know, near mine exploration. It’s not looking at new stuff way far away. I’d say, there’s good potential for that, for, you know, extending the mine life a year or two. One thing I’ll point out is, we said this before, that the feasibility study was done at $1,400 gold. You know, Kinross are pretty sharp operators. They know the gold price is $5,000. We’re sticking to the mine plan. We’re mining to the mine plan in terms of grade and, you know, grade, tonnage and ounces delivered to the mill.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Mm-hmm.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: We’re not throwing the other stuff away.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Sure.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: It’s in a great big stockpile. You know, when you get done with the mine plan, the feasibility level mine plan, we’ll take a look at how much of that material should you know pays for going to you know being processed at the Fort Knox Mill at a $5,000 gold price. Obviously, it’s not something you wanna plan on and tell and give guidance on now because we don’t know in three years if we’ll have $5,000 gold. In three years, probably before that, in you know say two, three years here, we’ll have that, we’ll make that decision. It’s like doing a feasibility study all over again on this mineralized waste material. It’s categorized as waste, but we know it’s got a lot of gold in it.

It’s low grade, you know, so we gotta, you know, we’re not stockpiling high grade. We get high grade out to the Fort Knox Mill as quick as we can.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Sure.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: I see that’s an upside and then, you know, just the new exploration, finding more ore around the edges, things like that. Yeah.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: All right. Just to answer, sorry, two other questions that just came in at the same time. What is the current, according to the current feasibility of Manh Choh mine life? When will you start looking at the rest of that material?

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: The mine life goes to 2029. I would say it’s probably, you know, second half of 2028 when you start really putting some numbers to paper.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Awesome. Think that answers both those last questions that came in. Mike, last one for you from Subash. Are you preparing the 2027 budget consolidating numbers from Dolly Varden already? Is that how you’re thinking about preparation of 2027?

Mike Clark, Chief Financial Officer, Contango Ore: Yeah, I have a 2026 and a 2027. There’s a little bit more refining to do, but we do have the numbers. You know, that’s gonna be a project over the next couple weeks. We got high level numbers. We just need to get more into the details and make sure we’re not missing something and we’re getting rid of some of the redundancies. Yes, we have a budget. I just don’t know what we’re gonna spend in 2027. I know what we’re gonna spend in 2026.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Sure.

Mike Clark, Chief Financial Officer, Contango Ore: I just don’t know where, but it doesn’t really matter, because it’s flow through. Into 2027, you know, we’ll put a placeholder for some work. You know, we just don’t have that yet, and we probably won’t have that until the end of the year for Dolly Varden. I know more or less what we’re gonna spend at Lucky Shot, Johnson Tract, and what’s gonna come in from Manh Choh for the next three years.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Awesome.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: Yeah. Key driver for 2027 for Kitsault is gonna be that PEA or the initial assessment that we’re gonna get done.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Okay. There is one question that came in just at the end that I’ll sneak in, but we’ll call it the last question for today. Wesley says he’s heard Kinross has problems with their Fort Knox Mill foundation. He wants to know, does this have the potential to impair processing of Manh Choh ore?

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: I haven’t heard of any mill problem, foundation mill problems or anything like that. I mean, that mill’s been operating for 30 years, so those are things that usually show up early in a

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Sure.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: Early in a plan. You know, they did have the belt fire, conveyor belt fire. There was a workaround for Manh Choh ore with just using rented crushers, because our ore is pretty simple to work with. Yeah, I don’t. I’m not aware of any foundational issues.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Awesome. I’ll close it there then. Rick, Mike, thanks so much for letting me really even go on five minutes over, which is good for us actually, so that’s not terrible. Thank you so much. I know boats tomorrow, so everybody stay tuned for more news from Contango as we go forward. Gentlemen, thanks so much. For everybody in the audience, thanks so much for joining us.

Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, Chief Executive Officer, Contango Ore: Thank you.

Mike Clark, Chief Financial Officer, Contango Ore: Thank you.

Unknown Moderator, Earnings Call Moderator, 6ix Webinar: Cheers, everyone.