Categories: Energy
Topics: General Energy

Patriot Battery Metals (TSX-V: PMET)(OTC: PMETF) CEO Blair Way on New Sub-Parallel Trend, More Spectacular Results at CV-5 and Hitting High Grade at CV-13 at Corvette Lithium District

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the President and CEO of Patriot Battery Metals, Mr. Blair Way. Blair, how are you today?

Blair Way: I'm doing great, Gerardo. How are you doing?

Gerardo Del Real: I am fantastic. Everybody has been eagerly awaiting the next set of assays. You just completed a $20 million flow-through financing at 109% premium. Congrats on that. That, of course, was over a week ago and you just had some more drill results that are absolutely phenomenal. Triple-digit meterage on the mineralization front, near at or above 1% lithium. You've extended the strike length again at the CV5 pegmatite, and CV13 is already looking like that's going to be another cluster to keep track of. So a lot there in the intro. How are you feeling about everything, Blair?

Blair Way: Feeling great. Obviously, closing the $20 million financing was a big deal, and there's a ton of work that goes on in the background to get that done. And, of course, during that time, we couldn't release any assays. Once you're in the financing, you got to sort of sit on all the material information. The labs are asked to hold onto that, as they will be as we're going through the ASX listing. But now that it's done, the financing, the $20 million financing is done, we've had a stack of data to go through, as you can see from the press release. But extending this thing to 2.2 kilometers at CV5, the CV5 pegmatite, and we're continuing to see the big intercepts that people are starting to get pretty comfortable with. It's just great. We've got a stack of holes here. We're going to have to then sit on a batch of holes until we get through the ASX listing and then we're going to have another big bag of assays to come out as well.

Gerardo Del Real: I understand you are traveling, correct? You are meeting with a lot of long-term investors that participated in prior financings. We've had discussions in the past about December and January and some of those shares that are becoming free trading. And, look, let's be very frank, we talked off the record. I'll say it on the record. I know that a group on our end of it, between five or six of us, there's several million shares that are in very strong hands. Those are long-term committed shareholders. I know that you are meeting with several large shareholders on your end and it sounds like they're inclined to be in this for the long haul. Am I inaccurate in that?

Blair Way: No, absolutely. I mean, there are people that understand the scale, which I've talked many times about on this thing, and we are just getting started. Obviously, we've done a lot of drilling this past winter and summer. We'll finish up this drill program very soon in the coming days, and then we get all these assays. It feeds into the model, which we'll then be able to determine scale and confirm scale. But 2.2 kilometer strike length, people can do the math. That really is the key, and our investors are behind us.

The Australians love hard rock lithium projects and we have something, as we've mentioned many times, something I think is very spectacular and special. And, yeah, meeting with investors and just making sure they're still comfortable and understand, and certainly I have no inclination to believe otherwise. The investors have backed me all this way and as have you guys, and it's fantastic. We just got to keep moving the thing forward. We're going to keep drilling. We got $20 million already planning out for a winter drill program into the spring. We just have so much blue sky ahead of us. I don't see any reason why anyone would be liquidating their shares anytime soon.

Gerardo Del Real: Agreed, agreed. We have to talk about CV13 a bit because I'm excited about CV13, but I'm also excited about the note in the release that mentions outlining several secondary and subparallel trending pegmatite lenses, the largest, which was discovered in hole 22-040 at the west end of the drill area. Now, you talk about it being traced for approximately 700 meters in strike length. It remains open. Tell me about that. The grades there, again, right at near or above 1% lithium over significant widths. How is that going?

Blair Way: Well, as you can see by the hole number. Hole number 40, that actually was a hole that I was at site back in June when it was drilled. But because it was only one intercept... we have mentioned it before in previous press releases, people may or may not picked up on it. But we didn't feel the inclination to really highlight it until we could see whether it was a trend or whether it was just a little berg that had broken off of the main trend. But it certainly appears to be and is proving out to be a decent size parallel trend, subparallel trend or secondary trend. And so as we've drilled, continuing to drill to the east of hole 40, we have seen that extending to 700. So now it deserves to be sort of given attention. The potential for this is great. It adds quite significant tonnage as we continue to delineate it out.

The reason we discovered it is it was actually a late night drilling call, and we could've called the drill and had the drill go on standby. We just thought, oh, just let it keep running, let's see what it hits. And sure enough, and we've done that before in hole number 17. So we're becoming more inclined to say, well, if we're not sure, let's just drill a bit longer, especially it's a night time. Let the guys keep drilling rather than stand it down and the rig goes on standby. We're paying for it anyway. So hole number 40, we drilled through the night. and lo and behold, in the morning turned out we had that 50 odd, 52 meter intercept.

So that was pretty exciting, but you can't go crazy on it. We've got to have other holes to the east and the west to understand what is going on. And now we feel comfortable talking about it being traced for at least 700 meters. And as we drill more and more, we'll find out how those trends or those subparallel trends pinch and swell along trend in parallel to the main CV5 trend. But it's fantastic. It just adds more tonnes. That's the name of the game.

Gerardo Del Real: Speaking of more tonnes, let's talk about CV13. You have three rigs working right now, two are at CV5, one is at CV13. You mentioned in the release that each of the first nine drill holes at CV13 have intersected minerals of spodumene pegmatite, which range in widths from approximately two meters to 22.5 meters, if I recall that correctly. I know this is very early, but again, you have to be excited about this other pegmatite cluster and hitting on 100% of the first nine holes as it relates to spodumene pegmatite. How are you feeling about that and what do you understand of the model at this early stage?

Blair Way: As you said, it's very early. What's great is we are seeing the pegmatite intercepts at depth. We're getting decent size intercepts and it's a big... it's still a big area. And you can imagine even if it is similar in scale, which we hope it to be as to what we found at CV5, it needs a lot of drilling to delineate it out or to define it. And there's glacial till in between the outcrops and we have to somewhat educate a guess the alignments and positioning the drill hole so we get the right intercept. So there really is an element of teasing it out, but we couldn't be happier that so far every hole we've punched down there has hit the pegmatite, the spodumene-bearing pegmatite, and we just have to keep working away at it.

So this winter we'll continue to drill CV13 as we will continue to drill CV5. But we couldn't be happier. We've got almost two kilometers of trend at CV13 yet to be explored and there's a ton of holes. You can see how many holes. We've got 80 plus holes that we've drilled at CV5 corridor. So we've got a similar amount of drilling, at least, to drill at CV13 to fully understand what's going on there.

Gerardo Del Real: You still have over 40 holes that have assays pending. It looks like to me like you're going to have news flow all the way through January, and I mentioned the $20 million flow-through financing. We know where that's going. What comes next? Set the table for us a little bit.

Blair Way: Yeah. We've got a fairly busy few months ahead of us. We've got obviously these assays to go out. Then we really are in the process of filing our prospectus because we can't file our prospectus until we get these assays out because they're material for moving forward on the project and getting the prospectus fully up-to-date. So we get the prospectus out, that goes through the process. It's a financing that's run down here. We haven't defined exactly yet what sort of quantum of financing it'll be, but that will be announced in due course. And then it goes through the process of running that financing through and closing and enlisting on the ASX, and all going to plan, that will be towards the last week or second week in November.

During that time, of course, we can't put any more material news out, or if we do, we have to do an addendum to the prospectus. So, ideally, we'll ask the lab to keep doing the work, but hold the assays till we'll have another block to come out, ideally, the end of November after the ASX listing to just keep people's interest levels. I'm doing road shows here in Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth, and the level of interest is just great. They really do understand hard rock lithium projects down here, and the level of interest is just spectacular.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, they've made a lot of money with hard rock lithium plays. You, of course, on the board level, are very well represented in that sense. It sounds like it's going to be a phenomenal holiday to end the year and awesome New Year, and I can't wait to see the pending assays as they are released. Blair, anything else to add to that?

Blair Way: No, I think that's covered it all, Gerardo. We've got a great set of results we're putting out here. We've got the Aussie listing and then we've got some more results taken us well into the new year, and then we start drilling again. Probably before the last assays arrive, we'll be doing more drilling again now we're fully funded with our $20 million flow-through financing. So I couldn't be happier.

Gerardo Del Real: Great work. Thanks for the update. Thanks for the time. Good luck out there.

Blair Way: Thanks, Gerardo. I'll talk to you later.

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