Heliostar’s Ana Paula Story Shifts From Discovery to Execution

Trevor Hall (0:18)

All right, everybody, just a quick program, you know, it's only been a few days since we've heard from Heliostar Metals. In fact, we didn't update with them last week. So, quick turnaround this week here at the Beaver Creek Precious Metals Summit. They do trade on the Venture with HSTR and on the OTCQX with HSTXF, Charles Funk, CEO of the company. So, Charles, welcome back to Colorado.

Charles Funk (0:41)

Great to see you in person.

Trevor Hall (0:42)

Yeah, how have you been? How was the first couple days?

Charles Funk (0:45)

Very busy.

It's incredible to see, you know, I think there's a calmness to this market that's unusual. There was euphoria last year in this account this year.

Trevor Hall (0:55)

Yeah, it's probably the best way to describe it. So people have been asking me, like, was this year any different than last year? Like, honestly, it felt like last year was very jubilant. This year, it's almost like cautious, like cautious jubilation.

But I like the way you put it.

Charles Funk (1:11)

No, I think people are just getting on with their business and people can afford to because they're funded. So it's clearly a bull market.

Trevor Hall (1:17)

Yeah, yeah. We've been able to settle in to $4,000 gold without actually like celebrating with the milestone of actually been here before.

Charles Funk (1:24)

Isn't that insane? It's insane that that's the new normal.

Trevor Hall (1:28)

All right. Okay, let's kind of jump in and follow up from last week's conversation. But, you know, a few days ago, you did give us that Ana Paula update kind of quickly. That feasibility study is 34% complete, I believe is what you said.

What have you learned in that first third of the study here for Ana Paula? That's going to be a huge milestone for you guys.

Charles Funk (1:46)

Yeah, I think the biggest thing that we've learned today was that we had a nine year mine life in the PEA, and we were targeting 10 years at 100,000 in the FS. I think we're quite confident with that trajectory, having done 25,000 meters of drilling. So I think that's the biggest step change. We've also got some optimizations that we're working on as well, that I think will lower our costs and increase the economics of Ana Paula.

Trevor Hall (2:07)

Okay, resources in the final stages, you've had more spectacular hits, more exploration. Tell us kind of where that direction with the drill programs going now.

Charles Funk (2:18)

Yeah, there's two parts of it. We had to do quite a bit of inferred resource conversion to make the feasibility study, and that's gone very well for us. You get blasé at drilling 50 to 100 meter intercepts at 10 grams per tonne gold. It's a unique ore body. Where we've had particular joy recently and we're continuing to drill and we have some more results to come is in the expansion zone underneath.

We should have probably stopped drilling at the 25,000 meters in a strict sense of what will be the feasibility study. We've done about another 10,000 meters because of the results down deep.

We've hit 100 meters at 5 grams. We consistently drill 10 to 20 meters at 5 to 25 grams per tonne gold down there and it's open. So we've pushed that a little bit and we think even within the bounds of the feasibility study, I think there's more resources beyond that. That's what this information and drilling showing us. Yeah.

Trevor Hall (3:10)

Feasibility studies, obviously, huge de-risking moment. If we look back at the last six months, what are the major things from Ana Paula technically that have been removed from the risk category? In comparison, looking ahead six months, what are some of those technical risks that still need to be answered?

Charles Funk (3:28)

Yeah. So I think the biggest two things we've removed is the confidence that resource is there to support the mine life. We've also effectively completed all the metallurgy that we need for the feasibility study. So getting them out of the way helps set our cutoff grade that then leads into the mine design work. So looking forward, it will be about a third of the way through the mine design, the mill design, and the tailings work. So having the resource and the MET done then allows us to move and de-risk those steps.

We'll also submit the updated permit to change from the open pit to underground in the next couple of weeks, and obviously that's a huge de-risking step to have done and in progress.

Trevor Hall (4:04)

Anything on the MET recovery stuff that needs to be optimized? Do you feel confident where it's at?