Categories: Base Metals / Energy
Topics: General Base Metals / General Energy

Patriot Battery Metals (CSE: PMET)(OTC: RGDCF) President Blair Way on Recent Name Change, Revamped Structure & Next-Steps for Flagship Corvette-FCI Project, Quebec, and Freeman Creek Project, Idaho

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president of Patriot Battery Metals, formerly Gaia Metals — Mr. Blair Way. Blair, you've been busy. How are you?

Blair Way: I'm great, Gerardo. It's great to be finally chatting again and give you a bit of an update. It has been an exceptionally busy few months… that's for sure!

Gerardo Del Real: You know, it has. We recently participated in a financing — full disclosure for everybody listening or reading the interview — with Patriot. And frankly, with the market cap, with the share structure post-rollback, I'm excited for what the second half of the year looks like. 

And I wanted to provide everybody — not just that subscribed to the financing but also that was a shareholder of Gaia Metals prior to — an update on what they can expect during the second half of this year.

I know you've been busy. Everything took a little bit longer than we all hoped it would take but it's here now. And it seems like the share price has responded pretty well to the activity. I sense that that activity will continue to keep up here in the second half.

Blair Way: Absolutely. As we've said, it's been a busy few months. Some of it is more housekeeping, cleaning up, and getting things sorted out in order to make the second half of the year, really, more focused on the meat and potatoes, of course, which is moving the ground forward, doing the work on the ground to prove things up, or certainly define what we have in front of us. 

So the next six months, certainly until Christmas, is going to be even more busy… just a different type of busy. So it's ground-based busyness and, as you said, the share price appears to be holding up pretty healthily. And with the news flow and the work that we have planned ahead of us — I'm very optimistic of what we'll have to talk about.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Let's talk the focus as far as the metals. The name is Patriot Battery Metals, which, of course, implies battery metals will be the focus. We know that you have a very prospective gold property in Idaho [Freeman Creek] that has seen drilling and that I actually really like. 

But it's also clear that the flagship up north [Corvette-FCI] merits pretty immediate attention because of the potential for multiple battery metals on the property. And again, this isn't a greenfields property; it's had some excellent results in the past, right?

Blair Way: Absolutely. The Idaho property [Freeman Creek] is a great property, and we can touch on that afterwards. But certainly, Quebec has always been in our minds… the work that we have to do. And with the way the markets have changed and the amazing focus that is on the battery metals — and here we have this fantastic property in Quebec [Corvette-FCI] that is basically permit-ready. 

We've done quite a bit of groundwork in the past, admittedly, back in 2019, prior to some of the work we did in Idaho. But that property, we've got the copper; we've got lithium, and then, of course, the gold on top of that. We've got these trends that need to have the work done to understand them.

But when you have outcropping of pegmatite with massive spodumene crystals — we're looking at 200 - 300 meters just that we can see as outcrop — we need to push that forward. So that was a focus of the company back in the Gaia days when lithium was a more hot commodity. 

But it's really come full circle again, and lithium gets the focus. We've got the copper, and that was something that we really came across in the last few days of our program on that property in 2019 — and that needs to be pushed further. So as we've mentioned, we're looking at the different types of work we can do to help us target the copper, and, obviously, focusing on the lithium. 

But having said that, Idaho; even though we've got two regions, or two trends, in Idaho — and the northern trend, the Carmen Creek trend; the one we didn't drill — actually does have a very high potential for copper as well. So we certainly haven't put that on the back burner… it's just on the side burner right now. We’ll be looking at that and gaining a better understanding of what the copper potential might be as well as the gold. 

But compared to the Golden Dyke, which we did drill — and that certainly was a gold, sort of, lower grades, larger-scale targets — the Carmen Creek has definitely got potential for some battery materials as well as the gold.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. So just to be clear, the Corvette-FCI property will see exploration and a work program, potentially?

Blair Way: Absolutely. We're working on that now. And certainly, we'll be letting shareholders and investors know what the plans are on that property. But we're just stitching some of that up now and, certainly, news flow over the coming weeks… we’ll share that more clearly.

Gerardo Del Real: Share structure — and you know this because you're very familiar with my mentor [Jeff Phillips] who preaches this… it's the first thing that he looks at and the way that I was brought up in the business — but share structure is so important for a company. 

And it was the one hesitation that I had with Gaia when we initially got involved. There was a warrant overhang. I would love for you to just address where it's at now and what motivated the rollback.

I know we've talked about it briefly in the past, publicly, Blair. But I would love for you to just talk to shareholders a bit about the motivation and why you're in such a great position now moving forward where, frankly, any bit of good news is going to have a really material effect on the share price to the upside, right?

Blair Way: For sure, ‘rollback’ is an ugly word. And we certainly labored over the decision to do it. But we did have, as you said, a bit of a hangover with a whole bunch of warrants out there that were not working for us. 

And we had to find a way to fix that. And that's why a modest rollback still gave them the potential to stay in and still certainly make some returns on their investment. But without that share structure reconfigured with this 3-to-1 rollback, our ability to actually move the company forward was limited or certainly restricted.

And as we know, we did quite a bit of work to try and make some changes and move the company forward in January-February, and our share structure was working against us. And as you say, it's an age-old adage that… if we don't have the right share structure, we can do all of the right things — and it doesn't achieve the results. 

So we're very confident or comfortable with the share structure we have now and our ability to move the company forward in a meaningful way.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent! And again, just for those that maybe haven't kept up or are new eyes to the story — where is the share structure; how does it look as it currently exists?

Blair Way: Yeah, so at present — I haven’t got the numbers exactly in front of me — we have the original float, post-rollback, is just over 10 million shares. So that's our current float. And then, post-financing, we're in about 34 [million shares]... yeah, post-release of the hold on the recent financing, we’ll be about 35 million shares. So those are great.

Gerardo Del Real: So we're talking market cap, ‘tiny’ — post shares being released — market cap of C$13 - C$14 million, right?

Blair Way: Yeah, we're still very much at the early stages of the company. And with the work that we have planned ahead of us and the treasury that we have to support that work — we are just in a far better position to be able to realize that value and have it demonstrated in our share price.

Gerardo Del Real: …and fully-funded to execute on those exploration programs that we discussed earlier… 

Blair Way: Absolutely… that certainly is our plan. We are looking at what we have to do and what we can do. And certainly, we're well-positioned to be able to achieve those outcomes.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent! Blair, thank you so much for the update. I know there's going to be a lot more to talk about here in the coming weeks. I'm looking forward to having you back on. But thanks again for getting on the call today.

Blair Way: Yeah, it's great to have a chat and I look forward to talking again. Thanks, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: Alright, I'll let you get back to it… I know you're busy!

Blair Way: Thanks, cheers!

Gerardo Del Real: Thank you.

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