How do Site Visits Help Evaluate Mining Investments?

Yeah, I think one of the main differentiators that you know you from a geology perspective, but as well as other members of the investment team really bring to the table is uh you're actually doing site visits.

Um you know we've talked before uh you and other members of the team have visited more than 40 countries and on average you do up to 30 site visits a year.

Um can you talk a little bit about what that evaluation process looks like when you go to these mine sites? you know, rather than read off a site visit evaluation checklist, maybe it's easier to give you a couple of anecdotes to illustrate some of the points.

There's some things that you can only see through the lens of experience.

Uh I'll anonymize the companies in the examples perhaps but I remember you know going to a site where a project was under construction and the company had told the public that they were going to be producing concentrate in 3 to 6 months and they had a percentage of completion out there which when I went and looked at it there was just no way you know they didn't have nearly enough structural steel out.

There wasn't concrete floors in the workshops.

There was delays on mining projects are a big deal.

They cost money.

You know, often you've got debt providers who want to get paid back.

So, you know, I formed an opinion that that was not going to happen and we were able to adjust accordingly.

There's times where well at all times culture is important and culture is you know not something you can pick up across a 20inut speed data to conference.

It's one of the things you see better when you're in it.

There's been times where we visited a site thinking the comp thinking that the company was overvalued and maybe a potential sell, but you get there, you talk to management, you realize that there's a shared vision across different departments.

You see the mill foreman talking about how he's got an inexpensive fix that can lift recoveries.

You see the technical services team working together to optimize the mind plan in real time because there's changes dayto day and you know everyone's not just you know they're not arguing about where the goal line is.

They all know that they're arguing about how to get there fastest.

And you know there's times we've left site thinking it's a cell but realizing it's not it's not it's actually an ad.

And you know, these guys do have some uncertainty in what they're doing, but they're all pulling in the same direction, and we needed to be part of that.

So you know these are some soft things and hard things that you can only get from site visits.