Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Ethos Gold (TSX-V: ECC)(OTC: ETHOF) President Alex Heath & Technical Advisor Dan MacNeil on Drilling Perk-Rocky Copper Gold Project

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president of Ethos Gold, Mr. Alex Heath and technical advisor to Ethos, Mr. Dan MacNeil. Gentlemen, how are you today?

Alex Heath: Fantastic.

Dan MacNeil: Not bad, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: Interesting day in the markets obviously, but that aside, I am incredibly excited for Ethos in 2021. Full disclosure, I'm a longtime shareholder, big fan of the team and I think Ethos is positioned to have one of the better 2021s in the space, to be perfectly frank.

Now, the recent bit of news, I think speaks to what we can expect the rest of the year. The headline read, "Ethos to Drill Perk-Rocky Copper-Gold Porphyry Target, Outlines Drilling Plans on Four Gold Projects and Announces Financings.”

So we'll talk financings in just a bit, but before we get into that, Dan I'd like to start with you, if you could explain to our audience a bit about your background, because it's pretty impressive. I know from your history, you don't impress easy, so anytime I see you latch on and come on as a technical advisor, working on a project with a company that, frankly, has a market cap that’s small, given the stature of companies you've worked with in the past, it's noteworthy. Can you explain that a bit to the audience?

Dan MacNeil: Sure, yeah. I'm an exploration geologist. I've been in the business for over 20 years now. I started, I guess the first half of my career working with some majors including Anglo American and Barrick. Barrick sent me to do a Masters on the Donlin Creek deposit in Southwest Alaska, and then I got into more working with junior companies, and again traveled quite extensively looking at magnetic hydrothermal deposits globally. But what attracted me to the Ethos story here is they've got a pretty deep technical team. There's a bunch of high quality explorationists there, and there was an opportunity to do some interesting collaboration and take a look at some pretty interesting projects in the gold space, I suppose.

Now, I guess to address your question about the Perk-Rocky project, this one did catch our eye. Craig Roberts asked us just to look at it in the very early days about a collaboration. And we said, "Yeah, this thing does look interesting." So, the most relevant feature of the project is that it's a very, very large hydrothermal system, which is evidenced by a big alteration footprint there. The footprint out there measures 8 kilometers by 5 kilometers. And it looks as though we see copper mineralization and gold mineralization exposed at similar levels. And that's a bit of a sign for geologists who do exploration in the porphyry and epithermal environment. And what that tells us is that the system may in fact be telescoped or overprinted. So that's a check box that we look for globally in these sorts of opportunities, which we really like.

Now, the other amazing thing about the Perk-Rocky project that caught our attention is, it's one of the few remaining very, very large footprints, porphyry footprints that you can drive to in British Columbia. So we really liked the access story there.

Gerardo Del Real: So the infrastructure, I understand, is top notch.

Dan MacNeil: It really is as good as it gets. The road that goes up there needs a little bit of clean up, but you don't often get this set up in British Columbia given the terrain. So this one's flown under the radar and it has a lot of even regional and property scale characteristics that we hunt for. So yeah, we've been bullish on this one since the beginning.

Gerardo Del Real: Now I understand that the company and the team believes that there may be one or more porphyry centers, correct?

Dan MacNeil: Yeah, that's right. When you see a footprint that's this large, you begin to be suspicious of a couple of magnetic hydrothermal centers driving it. And a lot of the work that was done in the past and the work that we've done in 2020, support the potential for there to be multiple centers out here. So you can think of that as a few scratch tickets if you like, on one property.

Gerardo Del Real: Walk me through the initial program. The release outlines three to four holes, totaling approximately 2,000 meters, and it says that you expect to begin sometime in May or June. Now, I'm assuming, of course, that if you're successful there, there's a potential for an expanded program. Would that be accurate?

Dan MacNeil: Yeah, absolutely. So the idea here really is to use a lot of the exploration work done historically, as well as stuff that we've done in 2020, to drill our favorite prospects first. So we've got a distribution of hold plan across the property that tests our best guess about where these centers are. So we'll deploy those drill meters in our highest compliments at the start sort of fashion, and we'll know fairly early on, whether we're into something interesting up there.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent, excellent. Alex, I understand that Perk-Rocky, Ethos has a 100% earn in option. Is that correct?

Alex Heath: That's correct.

Gerardo Del Real: Wonderful. And I also understand you're raising $1.2 million Canadian in a non-brokered private placement of flow through units. Obviously that money is going in the ground. Walk me through the remainder of the year. The headline outlines drilling plans on four separate gold projects. The Ethos team has been on a shopping spree, the past six to 12 months with what are you up to now? 10 district scale, gold projects, nine or 10?

Alex Heath: That's right. Yeah. We're at 10 at this point. So what we announced in this press release is really, we've done a lot of planning and preparation in the last few months here, including adding to our team with Rob Carpenter, Rob Brozdowski, Dan and Al. And now we've gotten to the point where we know what our top priority targets are. So starting with Perk-Rocky, it's the first to be off to bat for drilling. We've got our drill permit there, so it's just a matter of getting in there in May, June, like you described. And then as we described in this press release, we're also advancing Savant Lake, Shefferville, Toogood and Iron Point to the point where we would be drilling later in the year. So that's the use of proceeds. It's a small financing. It's just to top up and it's just so that we can advance all those projects to a drill stage.

Gerardo Del Real: Post financing, what does the cash position look like?

Alex Heath: Post financing, you're probably looking at around $6 million. We announced $1.2, but we're actually getting quite a bit of interest. So, there may be a change to that number, maybe a little bit more, but not significantly different.

Gerardo Del Real: We talked about Ethos accumulating 10 district scale gold projects. You outlined plans to drill four before year end. I imagine that the remaining projects are getting interest, given the caliber of the technical team from companies looking to maybe joint venture quality gold projects. Is that accurate?

Alex Heath: That's accurate. Yeah. Yeah. All our projects, we get significant interest, just based on the team itself and the locations. So, we're going to keep our options open. We'll look at anything. Our goal for Ethos is to make a discovery. And we're going to look at what's our best risk reward on each one of those projects.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, you have a market cap, sub $18 million Canadian. A third of it's backed by cash, $6 million in cash. You have one of the best technical teams in the space, a heck of a speculation at these levels. I'm excited for the drill program, the initial one, and excited to see what looks like a 2021 that's meant to generate some discoveries.

Alex Heath: Absolutely. We're super excited as well. I mean, like you said, there's not too many juniors out there that have this caliber of team, and also just the portfolio. It's already there. It's just a matter of, which one's going to hit. We don't know, and we're going to do our best to make sure that each one of those projects gets the capital it deserves.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Dan, anything else to add on your end of it?

Dan MacNeil: No, I think we covered it all off. The Ethos portfolio gets more and more exciting each month, because the technical team is really working tirelessly under the leadership of Rob Carpenter to find the best opportunities.

Gerardo Del Real: Wonderful. Alex, anything to add from you?

Alex Heath: No, I think just that we also believe 2021 is going to be really exciting. So stay tuned.

Gerardo Del Real: Fantastic. Thanks again, gentlemen, for coming on. I appreciate the time.

Alex Heath: Thanks for having me.

Dan MacNeil: Thanks a lot, yeah. Cheers.

Gerardo Del Real: Bye now.