B2B (00:01): Our guests today are Marshall Koval, Chief Executive Officer, and Scott Hicks, VP Corporate Development and Communications at Luminex Resources. Luminex trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under the ticker LR and OTCQX symbol LUMIF. Good day gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today on B2B Interviews. B2B (00:31): Gentlemen, I thought you might begin with a brief introduction and overview of the company. MK (00:35): Sure, Todd. Luminex was a spin out from its sister company Lumina Gold in 2018 and the strategy of our group, which we call the Lumina Group, has really been to separate our most advanced projects, which at the time was the one in Lumina Gold, and then spin out the other assets and look to do the same thing over time and create value for shareholders that way. All the projects we had in Ecuador at the time, with the exception of Cangrejos, went into Luminex. Our main project today is the Condor Project, which is about a six and a half million out sold project with a bunch of different deposits comprising that and then a very large land package throughout the rest of Ecuador with a heavy focus on the trend below and above Fruta del Norte and Mirador, which are the two operating mines in country right now. Our work is continuing at Condor with money that we raise in the capital markets and we're onto some pretty new exciting drill results there in an area we call Condor North. Then we have partnerships on some of our early-stage copper projects. We have a partnership with Anglo American, obviously a very large-scale copper producer. They're working on our Pegasus project in the north of the country and we have a partnership with Jogmec, which is a Japanese group, on our Arcadias project and they're doing some drilling there on a copper pour free target. Then the rest of the projects in the portfolio, we look to continue doing early-stage field work on those and we're continually evaluating other partnerships to help de-risk these projects without necessarily risking our capital, so it's a bit of a mixed strategy in this company. We have Condor, which is the gold project that we're using our own money on, and then taking a bit of a partnership approach on a lot of these earlier stage copper projects throughout the country.
B2B (00:01): Our guests today are Marshall Koval, Chief Executive Officer, and Scott Hicks, VP Corporate Development and Communications at Luminex Resources. Luminex trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under the ticker LR and OTCQX symbol LUMIF. Good day gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today on B2B Interviews. B2B (00:31): Gentlemen, I thought you might begin with a brief introduction and overview of the company. MK (00:35): Sure, Todd. Luminex was a spin out from its sister company Lumina Gold in 2018 and the strategy of our group, which we call the Lumina Group, has really been to separate our most advanced projects, which at the time was the one in Lumina Gold, and then spin out the other assets and look to do the same thing over time and create value for shareholders that way. All the projects we had in Ecuador at the time, with the exception of Cangrejos, went into Luminex. Our main project today is the Condor Project, which is about a six and a half million out sold project with a bunch of different deposits comprising that and then a very large land package throughout the rest of Ecuador with a heavy focus on the trend below and above Fruta del Norte and Mirador, which are the two operating mines in country right now. Our work is continuing at Condor with money that we raise in the capital markets and we're onto some pretty new exciting drill results there in an area we call Condor North. Then we have partnerships on some of our early-stage copper projects. We have a partnership with Anglo American, obviously a very large-scale copper producer. They're working on our Pegasus project in the north of the country and we have a partnership with Jogmec, which is a Japanese group, on our Arcadias project and they're doing some drilling there on a copper pour free target. Then the rest of the projects in the portfolio, we look to continue doing early-stage field work on those and we're continually evaluating other partnerships to help de-risk these projects without necessarily risking our capital, so it's a bit of a mixed strategy in this company. We have Condor, which is the gold project that we're using our own money on, and then taking a bit of a partnership approach on a lot of these earlier stage copper projects throughout the country.
Good day and welcome to another B2B exclusive. Our guests today are Marshall Koval. Chief Executive Officer, and Scott Hicks, VP Corporate Development and Communications at Luminex Resources. Luminex trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under the ticker LR and OTCQX symbol LUMIF. Good day gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today on B2BIinterviews. Thanks. Thanks for having us, Todd. Gentlemen, I thought you might begin with a brief introduction and overview of the company. Sure, Todd. Luminex was a spin out from its sister company Lumina Gold in 2018 and the strategy of our group. Which we call the Lumina Group, has really been to separate our most advanced projects, which at the time was the one in Lumina Gold, and then spin out the other assets and look to do the same thing over time and create value for shareholders that way. All the projects we had in Ecuador at the time, with the exception of Cangrejos, went into Luminex. Our main project today is the Condor Project, which is about a six and a half million out sold project with a bunch of different deposits comprising that and then a very large land package. throughout the rest of Ecuador with a heavy focus on the trend below and. above Fruta del Norte and Mirador, which are the two operating mines in country right now. Our work is continuing at Condor with money that we raise in the capital markets. And we're onto some pretty new exciting drill results there in an area we call Condor North. Then we have partnerships on some of our early-stage copper projects. We have a partnership with Anglo American, obviously a very large-scale copper producer. They're working on our Pegasus project in the north of the country and we have a partnership with Jogmec, which is a Japanese group, on our Arcadias project. and they're doing some drilling there on a copper pour free target. Then the rest of the projects in the portfolio, we look to continue doing early-stage. field work on those and we're continually evaluating other partnerships to help. de-risk these projects without necessarily risking our capital, so it's a bit of a mixed strategy in this company. We have Condor, which is the gold project that we're using our own money on, and then. taking a bit of a partnership approach on a lot of these earlier stage. copper projects throughout the country. Certainly very intriguing. We'll return to the partnership opportunities in a moment here. Expand a bit more, if you would, on some of the core assets, the more advanced plays, and give us a better sense for where you are today in terms of exploration, drilling, resources, et cetera. Basically, we put out a PEA and we were looking at open pit targets. And we had a new discovery when we put the PEA out in 2021 called the camp zone. The camp zone is a near surface underground target with higher grades, three and a half plus grams per ton gold and some silver. What we looked at, we didn't feel that we were getting much value in the market. for the exploration drilling that we were doing, so we tried to put out to the market. roughly what the economics of this northern area at Condor. That northern area is comprised of the camp zone, underground target and then. three open pit targets and we looked at a 25,000 ton per day project with about a 12 year mine life. Basically, the camp zone was about two and a half thousand tons per day. and the rest came from the open pit. The project looked halfway decent, but it had a. high initial capital cost of about $600 million US to build. We went back and we did some more exploration work and we've come up with. some new targets for higher grade underground targets near surface. We discovered this area that we're calling the Kius West, which is adjacent to the Kuis open pit, and we've had some really good drill results there. We are getting a lot of intercepts that are five meters plus five gram per ton gold type of values along with some additional silver. We've drilled about ten holes there now. Scott, I don't know how many holes results we put out yet. About five so far, Marshall. Then, adjacent to that, we continued a hole through the Kius West Zone and we intersected the structure Ruiz, which we just put out the best drill intercept. that we've had. Five meters of 30 grams per ton gold and some associated silver. What we're doing now is we're trying to rescope this project. The camp zone had about 600,000 ounces of gold in the PEA that we did and what we're trying to do, between some additional drilling at Kuis West Ruiz and we are also drilling at the camp zone, we're trying to define. between a million to a million and a half ounces of gold, this higher grade near surface underground gold, so we're actively drilling now. We have about 17 holes into these areas, probably about seven or eight thousand. meters of drilling so far. We have two rigs in the field right now, so if we're successful. in identifying a similar zone at Kuis and Ruiz to the camp zone then we can go back. and look at updating the PEA, a lot lower initial capital, smaller throughput, concentrating initially on later in the mine life, start to bring in some of the open pit targets. To give you a little bit more of an idea, I'm getting into a fair amount of details, but the camp zone was about 500 meters along strike and the Kius West zone seems to be a similar structure right now, roughly 500 meters along strike, so we're starting to drill that to depth. That's really the plan of what we're trying to do in this northern area of Condor right now. Impressive. Now, will the company look to additional strategic or joint venture partners moving forward on any of these projects and will you, in fact, consider M&A activities as a catalyst towards continued growth? I think at Conor North, Todd, we're calling that our core project and. I don't think we would look to JV that. It's interesting, there's this large section in the center of Condor that has more pour free style deposits versus the epithermal system that Marshall just described at Condor North. It's a bit of a different beast. More tonnage, lower grade, different processing methods, so there's some very interesting areas in this. We already have 3.6 million ounces of gold defined in that area and about 400 million pounds of copper and that area wasn't included in the PEA that Marshall just described. Then, also to the east of that, there are some pure copper targets called El Heto where we did a little bit of drilling in the last year. We drilled about four holes and there was about eight holes there previously. In this area, I think there is an opportunity to bring in a larger, perhaps more copper focused player to help us delineate and advance the central area of Condor. Then, obviously outside of Condor, we do have a number of properties and in those properties, we're always talking to people and always evaluating joint ventures. We've completed four different partnerships over the on different properties to help advance those and de-risk them. Gentlemen, what is it then that is so unique about Luminex? What is it that defines and differentiates this company from others in the industry? I think from our perspective, Todd, we, we were an early mover in Ecuador. When the concession system reopened in 2016 and into 2017. We had a very good database throughout the country of soil and rock samples. We were able to successfully bid on a lot of very prospective areas. I think that's why we've been so successful in For those of your viewers that maybe follow real estate more than mining, think of it as a bit of a real estate play in some regards. The system opened in 2016/2017 and has been shut to new concessions since. and it will reopen again. But right now, if somebody wants to come into Ecuador. and explore on different projects, they have to go through existing landholders. if because there's no new exploration tenements getting Unlike Lumina Gold, our sister company, which has a defined very large-scale project, we have a lot of greenfield exploration potential in this company, so it's a different point of the risk curve and it's a different point of the development curve, but it's exciting because that's where new discoveries can come from. Yeah, and the only thing I'd add to that geologically, Ecuador from politics and stuff hasn't. Geologically been systematically explored, so the potential for discovery in the country is quite high. You can look at projects like Soul Gold, Kabel, that was a new discovery, Warinsa, some of the stuff we did, Cangrejos for instance, so that's attracted a lot of the major copper players. Pretty much everybody's there. We're starting to see quite a few of the gold companies come into countries, so I think the outside exploration potential for new package like we have is part of what's attracted our partners. Indeed. Let's talk a bit more now about the expertise in place here. What more can you tell us about this present board and management team at Luminex? Marshall's on the board as well as Lyle, so two people from management have. A long experience at the Lumina Group and working with Ross Beaty, our major shareholder and founder. We have John Wright, who is the ex-chief operating officer of Pan American Silver and has built a lot of projects over the years and he's also on the board of Silver Crest that just completed their mine in Mexico. We have Don Shunka, who is ex Raymond James and is the chair of the audit committee and we have David Farrell, who's on the board of Fortuna Silver and has also been with companies that have advanced a lot and built a lot of projects. It's a good board, a lot of people who've worked together for a long time. and it's a great technical team for the same reason. Just a lot of expertise and a lot of time working together makes things move faster and easier in the industry for sure. Yeah. One other key guy I'd like to point out is Diego Bennell Kasar. Who's a well-known, well-respected, experienced years ago, worked on Condor, but his knowledge in country led us to a lot of these properties that we acquired when they opened up the concession system, so he's been a real key player. Diego has 40 years' experience in the industry, pretty well known through Ecuador and knows Ecuador from a geologic point of view really well, besides political and operating in the country, and he's the president of Luminex. Well, certainly an experienced and impressive team in place here. Gentlemen, briefly in closing, let's recap. Why should investors take an interest in Luminex and. what are some of the milestones we can use to track the. progress of this company going forward? Todd, I think the key answer on Luminex is really these new structures that Marshall talked about right at the top here. These are very exciting areas that are directly in the center of our already identified PEA area, which had about three million ounces in it, so the fact that we're going to be able add more ounces that are high grade and these new underground targets right in the. center of the PEA area, that's huge for value. It'll also, as he said, let us rescope the project to a smaller throughput, lower CapEx project. Our initial PEA was very good. 190,000 ounces a year of production and low cost in the $800 ish range per ounce, so those are very attractive elements to the project. But in this type of market, we're seeing people just want less CapEx and less risk. to getting projects built, so being able to rescope it with these higher-grade ounces will be key. We're going to have news flow off these areas right into 2023 off the current drill results that we're drilling right now. Then, in the back pocket, we have Anglo American, who's going to be looking to drill these copper pour free targets at our Pegasus project. They're funding that with their money and we're getting zero value for that in the stock right now, so to the extent they have any success at Pegasus, I think that'll be a very positive catalyst for the stock going forward.. Well, that is certainly a very compelling story, gentlemen. It was a pleasure speaking with you today. Thank you for joining us on B2B Interviews. Thanks Todd, Really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks Todd. Our guests today have been Marshall Koval, Chief Executive Officer. And Scott Hicks, VP Corporate Development and Communications at Luminex Resources. Luminex trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under the ticker LR and OTCQX symbol LUMIF.