Speaker 1: We think this next phase of drilling, based on the
knowledge of what we have and the way the targets
are shaping out and some of the trenching that we're doing,
we think it's going to really give us incredible opportunities,
not just on probability for potential discovery, but it's going
to give us scale, the scale that everybody likes with
this area. We've spoken to Samalis recently and we've shown
them these targets and we've shown what we're learning about
the project, and.
Speaker 2: They love it.
Speaker 1: They have not changed their appeal to it. We haven't
changed ours. Everybody on the team is very excited about it.
Speaker 3: The Financial Survival Network now more than ever, the Financial
Survival Network.
Speaker 2: Welcome. This is Financial Survival Network. I'm your host, Carrie Lutt.
We're sitting down with Ivan Beebeck, CEO of Copernico Metals
for a major sponsor update. I haven't great to see you.
Speaker 1: Hey.
Speaker 2: First, I know there's a lot going on with company.
Everyone's watching the metals price. This is gold, copper, even
silver kicking in till today thinking wow, this is the
big move. It's happening. Now. What's your take?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it certainly started you know, my take is
being twenty five years in the business, going through you know,
the two thousand era with the dot com run in tech,
and then watching it transition back to mining and metals
and that run that went through twenty twelve, and then
seeing things like the eight events, and we all know
there's considerable debt and some tariffs that are affecting a
lot of things around the world. The improved metal prices
is the first major box that we should all be
excited about because that's going to start to affect from
the top down some of the largest companies. We're seeing
companies like Agnacal Ego hitting record prices at all highs.
On the gold side, we haven't seen a big move
yet in the copper companies, but the copper price has
recently come off three ninety a pound in December and
it's pushing, you know, in the futures through five dollars
a pound. You know, my view is the cycle is
turning slower than everyone is anticipating, but it's turning bigger
than we've ever seen before in terms of the bull
market that we're headed towards. In terms of equities, there's
definitely a global issue with commodities, and copper is one
of the main critical metals, not just becoming recently one
in the US, but with China and everyone else in
the electrification of the planet. My view with the economy
is there is some concerns of a recession that is
anti or counter copper. The tariffs did put a premium
on US copper versus lame copper, which is trading less
per ton than US copper. So we're just going to
get through this first wave of the new administration as
these tariffs take their place, and you know, no matter
how the rules change or what's happening, it doesn't make
it easier to find major copper supply or copper deposits.
And that's there's going to always be that challenge, which
is perfect for US as looking for copper. As copper
prices are anticipated to a rise. You know what I'm
really encouraged by is each quarter of high copper prices
will really improve the bottom line on the larger companies
and the producers. You're seeing debt get cleaned up, you're
seeing share buybacks with some of them. You're seeing all
the things that are notoriously you know, consistent with the
start of previous bull market, so I think we're absolutely there.
The challenge isn't copper, it's quality copper. I think there's
plenty of low grade copper in the world, but it's
a time time crunch. How long will it take to
get the low grade copper or these you know, to
build new minds and get that copper supply to match
the demand. And that's really what's going to drive the
copper price here in the next few years to come.
As an explorer, you know, you have to be careful
here because copper exploration is very capital intensive. It requires
quite a bit more drilling the most goal discoveries to
really get that return for shareholders, and the bigger you swing,
the more expensive it is. So in the case of Copernico,
we are in a tremendous position financially, we have capital.
Into the middle of next year, we're finishing our first
twenty holes and starting to really understand the major opportunity
we signed up for, which is to go find a
tier one copper discovery, something to make a potential to
make the top ten or twenty copper minds in the world.
There was shortage is in the front of us. So
as an equity investor. I'm not worried about the share price.
I can't control that in in a soft equity market
for copper or metal stocks, but I am extremely, extremely
aggressive with strategy and building the fundamentals so that when
that market catches up and when we can reevaluate and
rerate with a better copper equity market, we have some
of the best things to drill in the world, and
that's what we're working to.
Speaker 2: Warrants on that note, So what's happening right now? I
understand you drilled twenty holes. Yeah, we drilled twenty holes.
This was our first look.
Speaker 1: We had a polygon that was designed back in twenty
eighteen nineteen, and these holes we had some hit great hits,
like nineteen meters of half a percent that's missing with
but we drilled a lot of i'll call it in
Layman's term, smoke, and we're seeing a lot of vectoring
that's taken us outside our polygon. There's an area on
the property called Firasso which has eight historical holes underneath
a substantial trench. They certainly confirm the third dimension and
it's a deposit expanding target. It's our best target on
the entire property. It's kind of what drove us for
the nine year way to bring this project online. We
are working and making advancements towards the permits to get
access to that area, and we would expect updates on
that sometime soon, probably in the middle of the year
here going into the summer. And a second to that,
we are also trenching and we're processing the data. Which
half of those holes are back. The rest will come
back at the end of April. And what we see
as a preliminary speculation to set the tone right is
we see a lot of vectoring to some really substantial
targets that are just outside our polygon. In addition to
areas like Firasso. If you looked at our last prest release,
we found two new areas, Antipampa and also typic Coniat
and these areas have We've been trenching on some of
these areas as well as other areas in the project,
and right now we're extremely excited with these projects coming
to light. There's some very very interesting findings that I
think will once we get results back in the next
few months here, we'll really set the tone from the
next round of drilling that we're going to do with
this project. So you know, the question that I had
and why it's been a bit quiet from us corporately
for the last few months, is you know, we wanted
to know is this system real and is it really big?
And the answer is yes, and yes, the bigger it is,
the harder it is to find sometimes. But the team
has done a remarkable job and there's some very very obvious,
substantial multikilometer drill targets that we've been vectoring towards, which
everyone will hear about on the back of the first
round of results. The areas we haven't drilled yet, like Sorry,
Firasso and Niok. These are really, really, really robust outcrop
targets with a lot of access to obvious surface minilization
and bedrock. These will be a big focal point going
forward in the next phase of drilling, and it we'll
expand into some of these other big targets that I've mentioned,
But this project has multi generational discovery potential. In the
next few months, we'll see a lot of trenches from
new areas. Some of the outcropped areas we didn't have
access to previously and now we do, and we're advancing
a substantial drill permit and increasing our polygon about four
times the size of what it was, so we can
drill all of these areas that I'm talking about and
have access to drill as many as two hundred holes
with multiple drill rigs. So we're setting ourselves up for
the next wave of drilling. We'll have a really good
summer with trench results that will lead into two other
targets that kind of compete with Firasso on appeal, and
we'll be drilling Fiaso first. We'll work through those targets
and see if we can start making these world class
discoveries we've talked about.
Speaker 2: So everything that brought you here and that led you
through nine years of labor to get the permits and
get financing everything in place, you're still absolutely sure that
you know you're onto something here.
Speaker 1: Oh it's you know, in terms of potential, it's gotten better.
I have a lot more conviction now than I did
before we started drilling and the first wave of drilling.
You know, we're all looking for those discovery holes. But
where are you in the system? Is the system real?
Speaker 2: Is it there?
Speaker 1: And it's pointing us towards you know, we're close, and
there's some very very big targets, and we still haven't
drilled the main targets that drove that exact equation of
nine years of waiting. We still haven't drilled that yet.
And we'll get to drill that later this year is
our goal. Hopefully by the end of summer, going into
the fourth quarter. That's our time frame right now. That's
subject to change. It could be better, it could be
a little bit later. That's just how pro works on
the permitting side. But nothing has changed from the scope
of it. On the negative side, it is just we
see it there. We're finding new things. The new things
we're finding are substantial. We got to work on more areas.
We're also trying to work on a new area called
Machuma Chai. There's a program going there. It's one of
our best footprints that we've identified in one hundred thousand hectares.
It's got the strongest copper and gold draining off that area.
This is a very under explored area as well, so
you will see a series of substantial targets come. You
will see it improved polygone so we have access to
drill where that all of the drilling we've done is
vectoring this and you'll see this get access to some
of the more obvious minializations such as set Piasso. But
this is just the beginning. And if you know scar
and discoveries, I know a few of them. One was
lost Filos in Mexico. It was whole seventy two before
they really hit it and knew they were on to
a twelve million ounced gold scarn. In some other ones
it's a whole one hundred and three. In the case here,
we have those holes already in an area that we
should be able to drill later this year and expand significantly.
Where we've tested and where we've drilled, it's given us
incredibly valuable information and we've shortened down that timeframe where
we don't think it's going to take seventy or one
hundred holes. We think this next phase of drilling, based
on the knowledge of what we have and the way
the targets are shaping out and some of the trenching
that we're doing, we think it's going to really give
us incredible opportunities, not just some probability for potential discovery,
but it's going to give us scale, the scale that
everybody likes with this area. We've spoken to s Alice
recently and we've shown them these targets and we've shown
what we're learning about the project and they love it.
They have not changed their appeal to it. We haven't
changed ours. Everybody on the team is very excited about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, that's that's what we want to hear. And
the window, the window is narrowing and the opportunity is there.
I'm holding shares, been holding them for years myself, and
nothing has changed my mind. So as far as the
next pro drill program goes, what can what can we
look forward to there?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, first we'll get the results out of everything
we drilled, will make a clear presentation to the market
about exactly where it's vectoring us and exactly those next steps.
This should really come out in the next thirty to
ninety days. That the results within thirty days, and then
the next steps will be quite formal because we're waiting
for other data from trenching some of these new areas
that we're going to want to be able to drill
as well, and so that will be the first few
months in front of us right now. And then secondly
would be advancing permits, which they could come relatively quickly,
but it is Peru and things tend to take time
on the from the side, things tend to take time
on the permitting side, And what I would expect on
the proving side would be to get to a point
where we could have a drill turning sometime in the
fourth quarter. That is a bit of a time for
cherylders to wait to turn the drill, but it looks
like we're going to have some really good catalysts from
some of these new targets that are quite robust. In
the meantime, we've also spoken openly and considered getting a
copper project in the US, and we've all seen a
big shift in the US towards the copper market itself
and mining in general, with the you know, favorable support
to advance and fast tracks a lot of good projects.
We'd love to have a US Brouvian portfolio so we
could and something we could drill in the near term,
and we've identified some substantial projects that we're in the
midst of completing due diligence. But we're really trying to
position the company so that it has at least two sombarros,
you know, in its portfolio. One of the US went
to Peru prior to we before we see this big
copper turn in copper prices and the copper equities, and
to quantify the copper price, we all just saw the
running copper that I think was primarily driven off tariffs.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I think if you look back to last May, when
copper was five dollars a pound on spot, that was
a much different copper equity market than there is today.
There was no tariffs involved at that time, and the
appeal to own and invest, and we did a large
financing in that environment was dramatically different. I think that
market's coming, but I don't think it's coming till the
second half of the year. So if you're a copper
investor and you want to be part of a major,
major opportunity where you could have multiple major discoveries, we
fit that profile. We're trailing at a deep discount to
what we think is the speculative value of what we're
seeing and what we have as an opportunity, and we're
not worried about that. We're more interested in about when
we turn the drills, when we get to that point
of really driving the catalyst and the company what does
that copper environment look like. Is it on track to
perform perfectly in line with our strategy and so far
I think it is. And as far as a US
copper asset, if we can add a substantial one into
the portfolio, this would give us the chance to de
risk any permitting delays or risks down in Peru and
give us something very local in the US and a
country that's really making advancements towards mining and making it
more favorable. So I think we could achieve a very
good premium out of a US copper success story that
we could add to Saber.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I think everyone in the sector looked
at the President's moves to speed up permitting in the
US and drilling and actual building of a mine that's
probably going to spread around the world. It seems to
me that's an exorable trend. It's been waiting to happen
because the electrification sounds great, but where's the copper coming from.
I think there's a wake up call across the planet
that without minds, you don't get the copper, and without
the copper, all your dreams, whether they're realistic or not,
are completely unachievable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, the electrification pathway is real and it's not
going to slow down. It's going to continue on. And
if you look at the reality and some of the
reports of how much copper is going to be needed
over what period of time and how much copper is left,
like some of the largest minds in the world are
halfway mined. And not only is that an issue for
a supply, but it's the depth of how deep they're
going to have to go to get the copper out,
And so the copper price has to perform from a
supply demand issue. In terms of the quality minds, if
you can find something like we're looking for as scarn,
scarns in a notoriously higher grade generally than most other
copper deposits, they're tricky, they take a bit longer to find,
but if you get them right, that's where you can
make a substantial value creation for shareholders and share price
and value of the opportunity. But in that case, I
see a challenge in the copper supply issues for quality copper.
I see that the timeline to bring these things online
is heavily impeded by a current ESG initiatives, various governments
and the US is certainly going to change that tone
within the US because they recognize that copper is key,
as they've identified it as a critical metal to the US.
And I think, as you said, you know, we've seen
a lot of impact on political geopolitics in other countries
when the US has either gone left or right with
its politics, and right now it's going in the right
direction for the next four years, and that gives us
perfect timing to see how much much much improved metals
and mining market that we think is just starting, albeit slow,
but it's on the verge I think of really breaking out.
Speaker 2: It really has to in order to in order to
get the metal that's necessary, the profit is going to
have to be there because the risk. We know the
risk isn't going down, so if the price doesn't go
up to compensate for the risk, it's not going to
be there. So it absolutely has to. I think this
just the beginning. It appears to be tariff driven, but
it could be much deeper than that, and that's what
we're going to find out later on in the year.
I don't appreciate you coming on as always again. Go
to Copernico Metals dot com sign up for notifications these
ticker symbols in the US CPPMF. In Canada COPR IVAN,
Happy drilling and we'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. I'm looking forward to a great
second half of this year with permits underway, a lot
of results that come both from drilling and trenching, and
a very exciting second half of the year. Thank you
so much.
Speaker 3: Carrie, the Financial Survival Network