Targeting First Gold in Mali Soon, But Will Permitting Cooperate? | Compass Gold CEO Interview

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This video is sponsored by Terrahutton, who makes the invisible, investible. Today on the CEO BBQ, Originic Gold Exploration in Mali, together with Compass Gold. 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, resourcetalks.com for a free weekly newsletter. Now, although this company has 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 impersonal 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, the flagship project for Compass is the Masala Gold Project. It's actually part of its broader Sikaso property in Surin, Mali. Masala sits on the Sankarani permit in the Ianfawila geological district, and I did have to practice in the mirror this morning to say all these names, but there I have them under.

Now, about nine kilometers from the village of Dalaba is where this project is, and so it's roughly 280 kilometers by road from Bamako or Bamako. I didn't practice that well enough. Geologically, the target is in, again, an orogenic gold deposits, an orogenic sheer hosted gold system. It's in the Berymian rocks as well, and gold associated with narrow quartz veins is sitting inside the strongly sheer graphite-rich Tarabala fold or Tarabala fold. The latest set of work was a 42-shallow diamond hole program completed in 2026 across 340 meters of the roughly 3-kilometer fold section inside the small mine permit or the application area, at least for that permit. And of course, the permit is something we'll talk about later on today.

But gold was intersected on all 13 drill sections, and in 35 of the 42 holes with results including 18 meters at 5 grams and 8 meters at almost 3 grams, and a bunch of other results in there that you're probably seeing right now. Compass is trying to move Masala directly from exploration into a small, shallow, open pit operation, rather than taking it through the normal full feasibility sequence. And that, of course, will be a big part of the conversation today as well. The company has published an internal four-year small mine case on roughly 518,000 tons of material and 5,700,000 ounces of recovered gold at 80% recovery. Or at least that's the assumption that they're taking, though. Metallurgical work has returned up to 61% gravity recovery and over 95% total recovery on one sample after cyanide bottle roll leaching. So again, 61% on gravity, 95 plus percent on cyanide CIL.

At $4,000 gold, that case shows about 62.5 million US dollars of revenue, about 43.5 million of EBITDA, and 32 million after tax included in the model, and that's all US dollars. The most important next step is getting to that level, though, and for them is getting the permit to actually go and build and then operate a mine, which is again, something that we'll definitely be asking some questions about later on in the conversation.

Maybe just briefly on the secondary stuff, outside of Masala, Compass controls a broader southern Mali land package of roughly 900 square kilometers across 11 exploration permits with Tarabala and Moribala among the better defined secondary gold targets. But again, those haven't really been the focus for the company so far. Getting into production seems to be the focus. So maybe just a brief update on them, if we have the time in the latter part of the conversation as well. Now for some of the numbers in more details, Compass is listed as CVB on the TSX-V in Canada, where the average daily volume over the last three months has been about 22,000 units. The 52-week high is 21 cents, and a 52-week low is 11 cents. With 154 million shares outstanding and a $22.5 million market cap today, this is a 14.5-cent stock. There are 39 million warrants and just over 8 million options, so the dilutive securities represent about 23.5% of the 201.5 million shares on a fully dilutive basis. Last time they raised capital was in February, raising just under $5.5 million Canadian dollars.

They did that in 19 cents with a full warrant at 25 for three years, as well as some broker warrants in there at 19 for two years. How much money have they got left now? How far does it get them? And when will they have to be back to the market? How are they going to finance the capex? All sorts of capital questions 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 already. And gentlemen, I'll give you the word here. But first of all, thank you both for sitting down with me today, Larry, and especially thank you to you.