Big Salt Deposit, But Can They Get it Financed & Built on Time? | Atlas Salt CEO Interview

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This video is sponsored by Terrahutton, who makes the invisible, investible. Today in the CEO BBQ, Salt Development in Western Newfoundland, together with Atlas Salt. But if you're short on time, subscribe to our free newsletter, and once a week, we'll send you a five-minute summary of all interviews we put out, theresourcetalks.com for a free weekly newsletter. Now, although this company has not paid us for the production of this video, you should still understand that we are not financial advisors, and this is not intended as financial advice. It is a broad, general, and in-personal piece of information intended only for those who know and understand the risks of junior mining, of which there are many. Before moving on, read the company's official filings on SitterPlus.ca and do your own due diligence. Pause the screen and read all the disclaimers I've shown you because your capital is at risk. If this isn't clear, go to the last section of this video for a longer explanation of the risks and biases and do not consume this content if you don't agree with everything said therein. Moving on, Atlas Salt's flagship project is the Great Atlantic Salt Project in the St. George's Bay Basin of Western Newfoundland. It's roughly two kilometers from the existing turf point, deep water point, and it's also adjacent to the Trask Canada Highway, which is something that we will touch upon because it does matter for a bulk commodity like salt. This is a large deposit, a very large deposit actually. It's a shallow flat-lying evaporate halide body within Devonian and Carboniferous strata. And the most recent feasibility study here shows probable reserves of 95 million tons grading almost 96% sodium chloride, which is salt, sitting within a much larger indicated resource of 383 million tons and inferred resources of 868 million tons. So again, this thing is big. The company is currently executing early works and site preparation activities following provincial approvals in last year in 2025, while advancing detailed engineering with Hatch, which is something that I'll also touch upon.
Additional geotechnical and hydrogeological work is also ongoing and there are ongoing discussions with Endeavor Financial on the path to project financing, which of course I'll be asking about later on as well. The most material and near-term catalysts are securing a binding commercial agreement because there is something in place, but it's not a binding commercial agreement for port access. And also closing that financing package needed for the CAPEX, which again, that's a big project, so CAPEX is not low.
$589 million Canadian dollars of initial CAPEX, all of which is going to be discussed, and all of this is going to be part of the discussion, but also it's going to be part of the initial steps that would allow the company to develop or start developing and hopefully hit their production target of 2030 So we're very close to that, and all of that is going to be part of the conversation though. Now for some of the numbers and more details, Atlas Salt is listed as sold. So I guess creatively it is actually SALT on the TSX-V in Canada where the average daily volume over the last three months has been about 300,000 units. The 52-week high is $1.76 and the 52-week low is just $0.36.
With a little over 124 million shares outstanding and a $205 million market cap, today this is $1.65 stock with a 50 and a 208 moving average at $1.27 and $0.90 respectively. So the stock is now trading above both those.
There are some options outstanding, but there are no warrants. So the number of fully diluted shares is actually close to that number of shares outstanding. So $133 million fully diluted, again, close to that $124 outstanding. The last time Atlas raised money was very recently, just last month in June, in a bot deal live financing that raised about $15 million Canadian dollars with again, no warrants on that financing. Now, how far does this $15 million get them? What work does it actually buy them? And will they be back to the market before they have a financing package from Endeavor? There are all questions that I'll be asking later on in the conversation. But for this to actually become a conversation though, I will unfortunately have to shut up. And Nolan, I'll give you the word here. But first of all, thank you for sitting down with me today.

**Nolan** (4:23)
Yeah, thanks for having me. I mean, after that intro, where can I buy?

**SPEAKER_1** (4:31)
There's a lot more left to talk about before we can actually talk about that. Although I will ask you about you buying your own stock. Of course. I'm gonna be looking forward to the conversation though. You seem to be relatively close to a production decision, so more advanced than most companies I interviewed. So this should be interesting. And let's maybe actually kick it off right there, like the business strategy. What's the plan for you going forward? Do you see yourself pushing this project through the Lausanne curve or are you gonna be kind of building it up for sale?