Banyan Gold (TSXV:BYN) - Franco-Nevada Backs AurMac Gold Project Ahead of PEA

Tara Christie (0:00)

Tara Christie, President and CEO of Banyan Gold. We have a very exciting project in the UConn, the AurMac project with 3.64 million ounces of indicated and 5 million ounces of inferred with exceptional existing infrastructure, roads, hydro power lines, even cell phone service. We've had a really transformative 2026, which has recently culminated in the inclusion in the GDXJ along with some great results, drill results from our 70,000 meter that we've been drilling this year, where we've added lots more high-grade to AurMac. We've drilled some deeper holes with results still to come, and we've made two new regional discoveries on our Nitra project. We're set up for success in 2027 with a very strong treasury of $100 million after this recent financing backed by Franco-Nevada.

Look forward to lots of catalysts that will enable us to drill 100,000 meters next year on AurMac and an additional 20,000 meters on our Nitra project.

Crux Investor (1:01)

Tara, good to have you here.

Tara Christie (1:03)

Good to have you.

Crux Investor (1:03)

Exceptional was the word you used in there, and I think it's exceptional. It was 2026, 2025 as well. So congrats. Thank you. From my recollection, that's about you're up nine times in that period. Okay, so that's exceptional. And I've been asked by a few CEOs how she's done it. So we're going to try and find out a little bit of how she's done it today. Okay.

And I guess we've got to start by answering the question about, you know, the drilling. You're an exploration company, come from an exploration company, but we're walking up towards a PEA as soon as I understand it.

Tara Christie (1:37)

We're running up to it almost.

Crux Investor (1:39)

Running up to it. This is big.

Does it need to be bigger or what's the actual goal for this PEA?

Tara Christie (1:47)

So for this PEA, it is based on the 2025 drilling. Everything we've drilled in 2026 is actually very strategically designed, knowing where the pits were, knowing what strip ratios we could improve.

What we're drilling this year is going to give you tangible improvements for the studies we do in 2027, 2028 That's a key difference for Banyan now. We are doing work now that's going to be catalysts in 2027 and 2028, which is very different from when you're just a junior explorer and you're worrying about the drill results next month and getting enough money and all of those challenges. We are very, very strategic now. This PEA, I've been asked, why don't you postpone it? If it's going to be that much better with 60,000 of that, 70,000 meters targeted at grade, at converting unmineralized areas that are high grade into, or, and yes, some conversion to indicated and some expansion in some key areas, why don't you wait? And my answer is, we need to become relevant politically. We need to be able to start scoping the project so that we're talking to communities and First Nations with here's what our project is going to look like so that we can start getting ready to get into the permitting process. So there's lots of reasons to delay it. And this is a waypoint. We know we've made it significantly better and we're going to do that even more with this large program that we're going to drill now.

So and I get the pushback from people, well, you only get one capital cost. You only get your best number first. And I'm like, I don't think so. If we want to move this forward, we need to be able to talk to the territorial government about being real about power. We need power. They're putting in power projects. They need to factor that. We need to talk to them about roads. We need to let them know how much tax revenue we could spend even if it's on the low side, because this PEA will be conservative. You know, you'll look at some of our drilling, like in the gap between the two pits, which, why didn't you drill that? We didn't drill it because it's really swampy. You need to drill it in the middle of winter. And we will do that in January, February, March of this year. But we drilled 14 meters of 13 gram material at like 65 meters depth. That is materially, it might even change the sequencing of our pits and be our new starter pit. So pretty, yes, we know this is one snapshot at what this might look like. We think the processing is correct. You know, a CIL with gravity recovery, 90 percent recovery, 40 percent from gravity.

So you need to start talking about a project, because there's competition out there. You know, we've got Snowline, we've got other projects in the Yukon that are, that will be going through the permitting process and are talking to governments. They need to know, know about ours. And federally, you know, look at Carney. He's prioritizing projects that are going to drive the Canadian economy.