Outcrop Silver (TSX:OCG) - Moves Towards PEA with Resource Estimate Increase at Santa Ana

Rob Bruggeman (0:00)

Hi, my name is Rob Bruggeman. I'm the CEO of Outcrop Silver, which is focused on the Santa Ana Project in Columbia. And Santa Ana is quite unique because it's the one of the highest grade undeveloped primary silver projects that's listed and available for investors. And we intend not only to continue to grow it, but also to turn it into a mine.

Crux Investor (0:23)

Rob, we want to get into the resource update and obviously how things are kind of progressing since we last saw some 15 months ago on the way forward. But first, do you mind sort of introducing yourself to the folks listening and watching this or reading about it? Where have you been? What have you done? And how's that relevant to what you're being asked to do here?

Rob Bruggeman (0:42)

Sure, yeah. So my background is I am an engineer originally, but not a mining engineer. Really I'm a financial engineer more than anything else, let's say, in the sense that most of my career was spent as an equities analyst, also an equities trader, and then really focused on investment. But now I've been focused on the mining sector for the past 15 years. But what I'm trying to do is take that background in equity research and investment and apply it to the sector so I can find what I would consider good investment ideas and then where I need some help in terms of getting them to the finish line. That's where I step in and I call it active investment. So I invest and not only money but also my time, and I get involved at the board or management role. So a good example of that and a great success story has been Aberra Silver, where I got involved eight years ago. Market cap was sub $10 million.

Company was struggling and we built it up now to a company that's trading over $2 billion.

I was chairman most of the way on that path. I'm still on the board but taking a lesser role, and now I've shifted to Outcrop because I obviously love this silver space. I see similarities in Columbia to what happened recently in Argentina, and I see tremendous potential with Outcrop Santa Ana Project.

Crux Investor (2:17)

Right. Okay.

I'll say some other new members or new names that I didn't recognize from before. Who are they?

Rob Bruggeman (2:24)

Yeah, correct. So earlier this year, the VPX left. We brought in somebody new, Carlos Torres, and it was kind of fortunate. It's unfortunate when somebody leaves, but on the other hand, one door closes, another opens, and it was a good opportunity for me to bring in somebody new. And it's always very important for me to have somebody who's in country, which the previous VPX was not.

So Carlos is Colombian. He's worked on projects outside of Colombia.

But yeah, it's really good to have somebody there because I want them out in the field all the time. I think it's so important with an exploration stage project. The other great thing about Carlos is not only is he a geologist, he's worked on small operations and he's actually currently doing his masters of mining engineering. So he bridges that geological world with the mine build and operations world, which is perfect fit for the direction going.

Crux Investor (3:26)

Right. Okay. I know this is a new team, but I'm going to park back a little bit to what I heard or the company hoped to be able to do back in May last year, which was, I think at the time we had 37 million ounces of silver equivalent, spend another 12 million bucks and you're here to 60 I mean, the new resource recently, you nearly got there, 57.8 million ounces, so close enough.

But there's also hope that that 12 million would generate additional market value. It seems like, you know, broad day profits or a three month bump, you know, around Christmas, the market hasn't valued it. Was it a case they didn't value the geological success or were there other things that they perhaps were disappointed by?

Rob Bruggeman (4:14)

Like I said before, I come at these things as an analyst investor, right? And the markets tend to be forward-looking or equity investors tend to be forward-looking. Yeah, I guess they tend to be forward-looking, no pricing what they're expecting. And I think there's a bit of a case here where there were some promises made about resource size, timing of that, and it wasn't delivered. And there are a number of different reasons for that.

But still, I think that that kind of got priced into the stock, and then the stock got penalized when it didn't happen.