MIDNIGHT SUN MINING: THE FIRST RESULTS ARE IN....

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 3:00: Midnight Sun
2. 3:00 – 6:00: Midnight Sun
3. 6:00 – 9:00: Midnight Sun, Kevin Bonnel, Adrien Koko, First Quantum
4. 12:00 – 15:00: Lumana
5. 15:00 – 18:00: Midnight Sun, First Quantum
6. 18:00 – 19:42: Midnight Sun

Notable quotes from "MIDNIGHT SUN MINING: THE FIRST RESULTS ARE IN...."

• Can see for yourselves what's going on and why everyone is getting so excited about Midnight Sun. Let me give you some context.

  about Midnight Sun · at 0:20

• And provided an incredible opportunity which completely changed the game for us. That twist was the fact that first quantum which is one of Africa's largest copper producers…

  about First Quantum · at 5:56

• Enough to attract a couple of the top geological minds in the business to this project. Kevin Bonnel and Adrien Koko.

  about Kevin Bonnel · at 7:25

• The first results. Let's set the benchmark. Okay, I'll give you a bit of a comparison to Lumana. And Lumana is the best because not only is it Barrack's flagship, but it is the…

  about Lumana · at 12:24

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Kevin Bonnel — Person · 2 mentions · first at 7:30
• Adrien Koko — Person · 1 mention · first at 7:30
  Enough to attract a couple of the top geological minds in the business to this project. Kevin Bonnel and Adrien Koko.

Companies & orgs

• Midnight Sun — Company · 15 mentions · first at 0:26
• First Quantum — Company · 2 mentions · first at 6:00
• Lumana — Company · 2 mentions · first at 12:28

Concepts & topics

• Dumbo — Concept · 2 mentions

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 This is the story of a stock that has rocketed in value over the last year. In fact, at times, it's increased in value by up to eight times. And throughout that whole period, we've been taking our cameras behind the scenes so that you can see for yourselves what's going on and why everyone is getting so excited about Midnight Sun. Let me give you some context. This all began with the crazy idea of a new video series to go on the Real Vision YouTube channel. Welcome to an exciting new series on our YouTube channel. We're following the fortunes of a mining company. And as we all know, mining is a crazy and exciting world full of risk, but also extraordinary reward. It's a gripping and potentially very lucrative story and we'll be following their progress to see where it goes next.

1:08 Stay tuned. At the time, we had no idea how prophetic that description was going to prove. You have to remember that back then when we first started this, we had no idea where this project was going to go. It's fair to say that some people immediately spotted the value of this unprecedented access and quickly showed their appreciation. But of course, you can take a horse to water, but that doesn't mean it's going to drink. And right from the start, there were cynics and keyboard warriors who were only too happy to throw mud at this new video series.

1:54 and they weren't always eloquent in expressing their views. To be fair, those comments came at a time when no one had heard of Midnight Sun and the share price was just 25. Now, just over a year later, it's sitting comfortably above $120 and has even peaked at $2. So, a lot of people will probably have made a lot of money since this video series began. But listen, this video isn't just about showing off and being proud of the huge price rise in the Midnight Sun stock price. No, it's about explaining why it's done so well, and more importantly, why there still might be a lot more upside to come. Let's start very quickly with the big picture.

2:52 and why an investment in copper might be such a good idea. Right now, as the world moves towards electrification, there's a huge demand for copper for multi-deades going forward. We're now going to be in an increasing copper demand market. New projects, new deposits, new mines need to come on stream in order to satisfy that demand. If there are no new copper mines coming on stream and no major discoveries made, then we're in a serious deficit and we have a serious problem on our hands. That is very clear. The demand for copper just keeps on growing. In fact, it's almost insatiable.

3:33 And that means the hunt for new copper deposits around the world is ever more urgent and they become ever more valuable. Even so, you might be asking yourselves why Midnight Sun, a Canadian mining company, chose to focus on Zambia of all places. Everybody should have a magic list of ingredients that they're looking for in the ultimate project. Grade geology scalability and jurisdiction. We have a 500 square kilometer project, multiple mining companies completely surrounding us. We have a very clear goal in both finding a multigenerational asset and then developing that multigenerational asset to the point that it is appealing to a major mining company at the point that we're ready. We will put this target up for sale. Even in that early video, right from the start, Midnight Sun were very open about their strategy. But you've got to remember that Midnight Sun still had to prove the existence of a

4:38 new copper deposit. And this is when things got tricky. They needed more money to take things further. We have discoveries across our property from the northeast corner to the southeast corner. And we know that we have something going on on that property that warrants investigation. And there's a good opportunity for us to discover a transformative copper deposit, but we need funding. Our project alone is 506 square kilometers. It takes an incredibly large amount of funding, a large amount of cash in order to carry out the amount of work that you need to actually move these projects forward. Midnight Sun ended up in a position where for many, many, many months, we couldn't raise money. We were running on fumes.

5:22 Just imagine how hard that must have been. You don't have the cash on hand to properly substantiate what your early findings might indicate. But Midnight Sun absolutely believed in their early findings and they weren't giving up. We started going to conferences. We started doing interviews. We started media. And while all of this was happening, we kept a key conversation underway with our neighbors, one of the largest copper producers in the world. And it was this conversation that took an exciting turn and provided an incredible opportunity which completely changed the game for us. That twist was the fact that first quantum which is one of Africa's largest copper producers and which owned the Canangi mine which is right next to the midnight sun site turned out to be in desperate need of copper oxide. And guess what? We had the oxide copper material on our property. We'd found it in drilling numerous times and we knew

6:27 there was material there. We're going to explore to see if we can find enough material to not only solve their issue but unlock a brand new revenue stream for us both.

6:37 This opportunity changed everything and investors loved it. We took our story to the market. We went to potential investors and showed them that we had an opportunity for near-term cash flow and we set out about the plan of raising $3 to $4 million. What started out at $3.3 million ended up at 10. With money in hand, Midnight Sun were finally able to accelerate their progress and begin full testing of their site. This was a pivotal moment in our story and Midnight Sun wanted to get it right. They didn't want to rush this without making sure that they had the very best team in place when it came to the geological testing. We've been lucky enough to attract a couple of the top geological minds in the business to this project. Kevin Bonnel and Adrien Koko.

7:33 These guys have discovered and worked on deposits all over this belt. They've done it before. They've done it over and over again. Some of the biggest copper deposits on the planet. They see the potential on Midnight Sun's property. And now we've got them working for us and driving our Soul Wazy project forward. All the pieces are finally in place. Midnight Sun were now ready to go allin on the next stage of their journey and that was to map out the scale of their potential deposit and get the data to prove what they had all been dreaming about for so long. Dumbo is our flagship. The 20 km long soil anomaly is covered by what we refer to as a vegetation kill zone or a copper clearing. And that's a biological anomaly that is caused by high-grade copper in soil that becomes toxic to vegetation. How big is that system? And so that's what we set out to do. So we came up with a plan using methodology

8:32 developed by Kevin Bonnel. The programs we've launched are going to tell us, how much copper we have, how big these systems are, how deep it is, and to show us the path to developing them.

8:44 Crunch time. The full testing program was underway. And so unsurprisingly, the wider team from Midnight Sun flew in from all over the world to follow its progress.

8:56 Once you arrive in Solazi, it's a different look than what people expect. It's very green. There's a lot of farming. There's there's a lot of cattle ranching and it's very green and kind of closed in. So, you're driving through trees and you're driving along these roads. As you get closer to the Dumbboya soil anomaly, the vegetation starts to decrease. And it's really odd because you're, you know, you're surrounded by trees and grass and plants and all of a sudden you come through and into the the what we refer to as the copper clearing or the vegetation kill zone and it all stops. That's it. There's no trees and you are in this wide open area where there is no vegetation. There's no trees. It's just barren. And to be perfectly frank, it feels strange. This is basically just an area where no trees, no vegetation can grow because the copper in the soil is such high-grade that it's toxic to plants.

9:53 And any geologist that is truly trained in the copper belt, that knows these deposits, that knows these systems, will immediately recognize that oddity when they come across it. It just it stands out like a sore thumb. You can't miss it. The copper clearing itself is on a little bit of a slope and at the very top of that slope there's a rock ledge or a step and it's about two feet high and it runs for probably 300 ft or more at surface and it's completely barren. That exposure is actually part of the top of the Dumbo system and it's one of the only spots that we can actually see the sulfide system coming to surface.

10:31 You can take a rock hammer, break a chunk of it off, and you can see what the Dumbo system actually looks like. You can see borite, you can see calcite, and these are the copper minerals. Um, they're actually the ultimate copper minerals. They're visible to the naked eye in that material. So, you can actually see the blobs of the copper that are there. Um, it's pretty pretty incredible. And and really, I mean, you can't miss it. It's most of that stuff's been weathered, so it's green and colored and it's it's incredible.

10:59 So that's what's at surface level, but what's going on below the ground? That's what everybody really needed to know. Now what we have to do is we have to correlate that data. We have to take the samples at surface, the drill results, and we have to correlate it somehow and we use a tool called dipole dipole IP. And that's basically a geohysical survey. And what that means is we stretch a cable across the ground and shoot an electrical pulse into the ground. Then we measure how long any metallic portion of the rock holds onto that charge and how long it takes to dissipate. Now that's an ultra simplistic way of describing what this does. But we measure both the chargeability and the resistivity of that metal. And that gives us a picture of the depth of the mineralization, the angle it's sitting and all that stuff and creates this road map and puts all that data together for us so that we can

11:55 build a model and start drill testing all the way along. And so we've done that. We confirmed the first 11 12 km of mineralization. We still have 9 km to go. And let me tell you, when you get that call from your geological team telling you that they're on it, there is nothing more exciting. And and this might be actually the most exciting moment in my entire career to date.

12:18 Of course, they were excited. But after the excitement comes the tense wait for the first results. Let's set the benchmark. Okay, I'll give you a bit of a comparison to Lumana. And Lumana is the best because not only is it Barrack's flagship, but it is the geological analog for what we see at Dima. So when they started drilling at Lana and what they were looking for they found you know 10 to 20 m thick intercepts of copper mineralization that range from.3% up to maybe.5 or 6. The average grade of that deposit is 0.52.

12:57 We have a system that's in the basement rocks. Our initial drill results weren't 10 or 15 or 20 meters. They were 38 mters. They were 49 mters of much higher grades 51% 48%. We even had a 7 m intercept of 1.1%. Lumana is 4 km long. Dumba is 20. If that entire system is mineralized the way that we think it might be, just try to think about how big that that system could actually be. It's it's staggering. You know, we have to kind of ground ourselves and go there's a lot of testing involved. There's a lot of work to do, but at the end of the day, nothing like that has ever been found in this region before. A lot is happening.

13:49 But what happens next? Well, as you might remember from the very start of this video, in the very start of the series, the plan was always to prove the existence of a massive copper deposit and then exit to one of the many big players in the region. I asked Adrian about this and how these latest results might impact on that process.

14:15 That is our strategy. That's been our strategy from day one. Um, and we're not veering off that path. That's exactly what we're doing. We're sitting in the heart of the richest copper belt in the world or certainly one of them surrounded by all of the biggest major mining companies, only three of which actually have an operating asset and all of the others are looking for one. So if we have the only asset marching towards, you know, through the discovery phase towards development and we can deliver a brand new tier one system, we will be in the eye of the storm for M&A. And that's exactly where we want to be. We want everybody wanting this asset. We want to prove that it's real as quickly as possible and then we can focus on making an exit by selling this to the highest bidder.

14:59 So, a lot is going on and a lot could happen maybe very quickly. But I really wanted to know how the guys at Midnight Sun are feeling right now. Well, I think you can probably guess.

15:12 I can't even explain the the euphoria that exists around a discovery. You're waiting on pins and needles for drill results. You're getting that call in the middle of the night that they've hit mineralization. You're you're I can't even explain it. It is just absolutely euphoric. You have a strategy. You have a plan. You execute. And the key is execution, right? None of this matters if you can't execute. We've executed it every step of the way, even to the discovery phase. So now, I mean, the excitement amongst our team, it's it's it's incredible. And you know, I'm lucky that I get to be the one that goes out and shares it with the world. The excitement level, it's uh there's a lot of sleepless nights over here. Let's put it that way.

15:53 At this point, the big question for me, and I think probably for a lot of you, was how does all of this affect the valuation of Midnight Sun? Now, so when you start to look at how this can affect a company like ours, you have to look at the bigger picture of where these assets can go, what they can become, right? So today we're looking at the largest demand for copper the world has ever seen. Exacerbated by the fact that two of the biggest deposits in the world, First Quantum's Cobra Panama mine and Grassburg have been shut down, cutting off the world supply of copper to a degree. And AI data centers and EVs pulling in demand that the world's never seen. So you have this ultimate environment for copper. Copper price has gone up to almost $5 a pound now. and brand new discoveries. So, what can they become? If you look at Lam Moana, and I always drop back to Lana because the analog's identical, okay? You have the

16:50 right geology. They're right beside us. It's the exact same thing. And our team's led by the same guy that unlocked Lamana. So, when you look at Lamana, Beric purchased Lana from Equinox 20 years ago, $180 a pound copper, and they paid $7.3 billion for an asset that was 900 million tons. that didn't hang together and they had to spend 15 years trying to make it work before Kevin came in with his team, unlocked the Lana system and gave them a worldass asset at 1.62 billion tons. So what is that 900 million ton deposit worth today at $450 or $5 copper? What is a system that's one or two or three or four times the size of that worth? It it boggles the mind. It's tough to even put a number to it. And of course, every step of the way, every set of drill results, every time we get closer to showing the world what that is, it should reflect in the company's share price and market cap. And that's the

17:50 entire goal. Deliver, execute, give everybody what they're looking for, give them the drill results, give them the block models, show the world how big it is, and do it as quickly as possible. And and that's really it. But, you know, when you start to think about the numbers, um, it gets incredibly crazy really quickly.

18:08 Okay, let's pause this story for now. And I say pause because there is obviously so much more to come. But right now, we're at a point where the first results have come in and they're delivering the evidence of the large copper deposit that Midnight Sun were hoping for. The next series of tests are to define just how big that deposit might actually be. We hope to reveal those results in early December. So, make sure you stay with us for that update. And in the meantime, don't forget that the end game here is an acquisition, which becomes all the more likely if the shape, size, depth, and quality of this deposit proves to be everything that Midnight Sun believe it might be from their initial testing.

19:04 You know, I have to say that when we started this series, we had no idea that there would even be a copper deposit, let alone the roller coaster of a story that we've been following over the last 12 months. Honestly, it feels like we somehow have caught a tiger by the tail. So, like you, I can't wait to see what happens over the next two months. I'll see you in December.

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "MIDNIGHT SUN MINING: THE FIRST RESULTS ARE IN...."?

In order: 0:00 Midnight Sun; 3:00 Midnight Sun; 6:00 Midnight Sun, Kevin Bonnel, Adrien Koko, First Quantum; 12:00 Lumana; 15:00 Midnight Sun, First Quantum; 18:00 Midnight Sun.

What is mentioned in this Real Vision Presents episode?

6 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Midnight Sun, First Quantum, Kevin Bonnel, Lumana, Dumbo, Adrien Koko. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "MIDNIGHT SUN MINING: THE FIRST RESULTS ARE IN...."?

The episode runs 20 min; the transcript is about 3,182 words in 28 timestamped sections.

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