Fortitude Gold - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Executive Summary

• Q1 2025 delivered net sales of $6.536M, net income of $1.249M, and diluted EPS of $0.05, with mine gross profit of $3.335M; year-over-year sales fell 20% while profitability improved versus near breakeven in Q1 2024.
• Costs rose sharply: total all‑in sustaining cost (AISC) increased to $1,404/oz from $777/oz; management cited lower grades, heavy waste movement, and the layback to access “Pearl Deep” as drivers.
• Strategic pivot: monthly dividend reduced from $0.04 to $0.01 beginning May 2025 to fund the Pearl Deep access program (six-month ramp/layback) and bridge permitting delays; management targets extending Isabella Pearl operations into H1 2026 and expects cash to decline through 2025 before rebuilding thereafter.
• Near-term catalysts: potential County Line permit in “~6 months,” boundary expansion to include Scarlet/Scarlet North, and Pearl Deep access milestones; realized gold price uplift ($2,861/oz) supports margin resilience despite lower volumes.
• Street estimates were unavailable due to limited coverage; no formal 2025 production outlook given amid permitting uncertainty.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Profitability returned: $1.2M net income and $0.05 diluted EPS despite lower volumes; mine gross profit reached $3.335M.
• Strategic mine life extension: “We are excited for the results of the recently completed analysis of the Pearl deep which is targeted to extend mining at Isabella Pearl well into the first half of 2026” — CEO Jason Reid.
• Commodity tailwind: realized gold price averaged $2,861/oz, supporting price realization despite fewer ounces sold.

What Went Wrong

• Volume and revenue compression: gold ounces sold declined to 2,336 from 3,970 YoY; net sales fell 20% YoY to $6.536M.
• Cost inflation: AISC rose to $1,404/oz (from $777/oz YoY), with management attributing the increase to lower grades, greater waste movement, and the deep layback to access Pearl Deep.
• Liquidity trajectory: operating cash flow was negative (-$2.371M) in Q1, and management guided to a cash draw through year-end 2025 before rebuilding as Pearl Deep ore is accessed.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Welcome to the Fortitude Gold 2025 first quarter conference call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode, and the question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad, and please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Jason Reid, CEO and President of Fortitude Gold. The floor is yours.

Jason Reid (CEO and President)

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Fortitude Gold Corp's 2025 first quarter conference call. Following my brief comments and associated presentation for those who joined online, we will have a brief question-and-answer period. Joining me on the call today for the Q&A portion will be Ms. Janet Turner, our Chief Financial Officer. Let me remind everyone that certain statements made on this call are not historical facts and are considered forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, as described in our annual report on Form 10-K and other SEC filings, which could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by our comments.

Forward-looking statements in this earnings release that we issued yesterday, along with the comments on this call, are made only as of today, April 30th, 2025, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update any of these forward-looking statements as actual events unfold. You can find a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures referred to in our remarks in our Form 10-K filed with the SEC for the year ended December 31st, 2024.

First quarter financial results and highlights included $6.5 million net sales, $1.2 million net income or $0.05 per share, $21.4 million cash balance on March 31, 2025, 1,780 gold ounces produced, $30.6 million working capital as of March 31, 2025, $3.3 million mined gross profit, $1.4 million exploration expenditures, $1,033 total cash cost after byproduct credits per ounce gold sold, $1,404 per ounce total all-in sustaining cash cost, $2.9 million dividends paid, and 619 ounces of gold bullion held in the treasury. The company's management, in conjunction with a third-party engineering firm, recently completed an analysis of the potential to develop and mine a mineralized gold zone trending southeast deep from the bottom of the Isabella Pearl Pit. To access this oxide gold mineralization, construction of a modified pit ramp and a southeast pit wall layback is required.

This opportunity is estimated to extend the Isabella Pearl mine operations into the first half of 2026. This mineralized zone of the Isabella Pearl deposit lies outside of the company's original reserve and was previously not targeted for gold extraction. However, while waiting on the permit backlog, coupled with the significant recent increase in the gold price, the company has the opportunity to extract this gold zone located within the permitted pit. The company has begun operations to access this deep gold mineralization and is advancing both the modified access ramp and pit wall layback. This program is projected to result in a decreased cash balance through year-end 2025, as it is estimated to take six months to reach the top of the mineralized zone, followed by a projection of increased cash balance once we mine and process this deep mineralization into the first half of 2026.

While we are ready and anxious for the Trump administration to fully address and rectify the permit backlog created by the past Biden administration, Biden's legacy of anti-resources unfortunately continues to weigh on our company's original business plan by prohibiting and delaying the layering of multiple mining operations and associated production on top of one another. While we are confident we will receive our County Line permit under Trump's pro-business and pro-resource administration, it is unknown how long it will take the new administration to unravel the legacy permit backlog, which elevates the need for the company to conserve cash at this time. Though the company ended the first quarter of 2025 with a strong cash and cash equivalent balance, both the Isabella Pearl pit wall layback and the legacy permit backlog delays require strategic deployment of capital.

While gold production continues from our Isabella Pearl's heap leach pad, residual leaching is variable and challenging to forecast. These drivers necessitated the decrease in monthly dividends to shareholders from $0.04 per month to $0.01 per month beginning in May 2025. This redeployment of dividend cash toward the ongoing Pearl Deep mining and to offset the County Line permit delays is also targeted to eventually construct County Line with our own cash. With all the stated caveats on dividends as modifiable and not to be considered a guarantee, I believe our commitment to continue a dividend at this time speaks volumes on our corporate goal to return as much cash back to shareholders while balancing the needs of the operation and future growth. Thankfully, the brutal four years under Biden are gone. Had they continued, the company would have joined the ranks of exploration companies much faster.

Fortunately, Trump's second term provides exciting rejuvenated optimism for continued mine building and future gold production. We continue to defensively position the company to overcome the challenges created by the Biden administration while targeting to offensively position the company to permit and build our next mines under the Trump administration. With that, I would like to thank everyone for their time today on this conference call. Operator, if you can open up the lines for possible live Q&A.

Operator (participant)

Thank you, sir. At this time, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For those participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before asking your question. One moment, please, while we pull for questions.

Jason Reid (CEO and President)

Operator, while we're pulling for questions, let's get to a couple of email questions that came in. The first one is from Chris, last name starting with R. Is it fair to assume County Line and Golden Mile must be approved this term? I'm assuming you mean term under Trump's term. Let me address both. One, County Line should not only be permitted this term but this year and hopefully in the next six months. It's long overdue. The mine is to be mined as an aggregate. There's very little to review on this permit. Again, we would have liked it years ago, but yeah, we expect it hopefully within the next six months.

Golden Mile obviously can be a little longer, but we're also looking forward to this new administration and hopefully having some better success getting permits to drill like NOIs at Scarlet, for instance, because during this downtime of not being able to build mines, we discovered this area 700 meters away from the open pit called Scarlet. Our last drill program on the last pad ended in gold. They would not give us another NOI for various reasons I can go into if anybody cares, but for the time being, I won't. We look forward to getting another one so that we can see how much this gold mineralization expands. I believe that Scarlet will actually fit in between both County Line and Golden Mile.

Yes, under this overarching term of the Trump administration, we look to get as many permits as possible, which include the ability to mine County Line, to mine Golden Mile, and then to not only delineate but hopefully add Scarlet into that mix in between the two. The second question from Chris is, how should we look at East Camp regarding breaking ground? Five years? East Camp has both gold mineralization on the north and the south, the north veins and the south lithocap. Very exciting exploration to come, but it's still in the exploration phase. We're still delineating. We're still exploring. It's an absolutely huge district. We're very fortunate to be on the gold this early, but yeah, we're years and years away. We need to define enough to make a production decision. It's a ways out.

Obviously, we would like a situation where we bring County Line, Scarlet, and Golden Mile online, which would give us plenty of time to do that. Thanks, Chris, for your question. Another question email from Thomas, no last name. One, regarding the decrease in revenue, I'm curious if the company could not acquire ore from another close mine and haul to the leach pad. Would that be feasible? If not, why? No. A, there aren't any. B, heap leach pad is sacrosanct. That would actually impact our business plan if we were having to build heap leach pad space for somebody else. Yeah, that's just not feasible. Good question. Two, about the dividend cutting, I get it. Wouldn't it be prudent to continue to distribute as the revenues decreased? I get it. Wouldn't be prudent. Sorry. Wouldn't be prudent to continue to distribute as the revenues decreased.

Was it necessary to be aggressive in the cut? Why couldn't we be more phased in this decrease? Some investors are being scared away from the stock and maybe giving room to speculators. Yeah, everybody has their own opinion on this. Some people say, you just should have cut little by little by little. We're of the opinion you make one cut deep, and hopefully that's the last one you ever make. That's what we did. I think to come out with press releases to cut over time, not prudent. Secondly, we have a lot on our plate. These delays have been plaguing us for a while. We truly believe we'll get these permits under the Trump administration. He's got a lot of backlog to clear. It's not just us.

I think tech came out with an op-ed piece where they actually posted a whole letter to the president-elect when he was elected saying, "Please clean up the permit backlog. We want to build a mine in the U.S." It is everybody in this space. The backlog, while it is going to get cleaned up, we have no doubt. We do not know the timing. Secondly, we have Pearl Deep, as I mentioned. That is going to take some cash to get to it. Again, it was an area we never intended to go after, but you do what you have to when you are waiting around. Plus, with the $3,000 gold price, that made sense, but it is going to drain cash first half of the year until we can start to build it back up. Another reason to be more prudent on the cut.

We got a mine to build, County Line. Given all of that, it just made sense. It really did not come into focus until a few weeks ago. It came into focus when we finally got the analysis done. We used some third parties for portions of it to make the decision to go deeper. Once that happened, we realized, "Okay, if we are going to do this, which we never intended to do, we are going to have to drain our cash for a while." Within days of making that decision, we press released the fact we cut our dividends. That is kind of some thinking behind why we cut and how we cut. Hopefully, that helps. The third part is regarding the permitting, any news, any expectation on when it will be approved? I do not have any news on that.

I watched the president put out executive orders to expedite things. That's great. It'd be neat to see that actually happen, and I think it will. We have a pro-business, pro-resource president in, and that's the most important thing. I've shuddered to think had Harris won the damage that another four years of no permits would have done to this company. If you think the last four years have been brutal, that would have been brutal. Anyway, as far as permitting, we're going in the right direction. Again, big backlog to clean out. Fourth part of your question, assuming the permits go through this year, what are the investments to be done in 2025 and total cost? Okay, Pearl Deep. Pearl Deep, we made that decision a few weeks ago once the analysis was finished.

That's, again, going to drain our cash through the year-end until we can reach that mineralization, and then we expect it to increase cash. That's a big one. County Line, I'd love it to get permitted in a couple of months. Might be six months. We're expecting it at least within six months at this point. For sure, this year, that'll be another cost or investment, if you will, to build County Line. Those are the kind of big things in front of us. Finishing Pearl Deep and County Line. I think I got through that. Thank you, Thomas. Operator, are there any live questions? Because there's a bunch of questions on the platform. Let's get to some live questions if there are.

Operator (participant)

Yes, sir. We do have a couple of questions on the line. Our first question is coming from John Bair with Ascend Wealth. Your line is live.

John Bair (President)

Thank you. Good morning, Jason.

Jason Reid (CEO and President)

Morning, John.

John Bair (President)

Even though we've got a more positive attitude towards natural resources, mining, and so forth, it's going to take time. You've kind of alluded to this. It's going to take time for the BLM to staff up to handle the increased number of applications for permits and so forth. My question, I have two parts. Have you had any indication that the BLM is actively trying to expand their permitting review workforce? Jason, to that, Nevada, do you feel is pretty adequately staffed to handle their jurisdiction?

Jason Reid (CEO and President)

Okay. Yeah, great questions, John. As far as the BLM, and I think I've mentioned this in past conference calls, it was like a light switch when the election happened. When Trump won and he was president-elect, that next week, the BLM's attitude changed. They were like, "Hey, maybe we can look at more than one thing at a time." A, that's good. B, the BLM for the better part of two years said, "Sorry, we're half-staffed. We can't get to things." That changed. We're hearing that they're close to fully staffed. That's in our local BLM office. Now, Greg and I just heard that in some of the other offices around Nevada, they're seeing some fluctuation in their BLM office as employees are taking the offer buyout of retirement. There's some shifting going on depending on what office.

The last I've heard on our office is that they're staffing up, which is good. When you come back to the overarching BLM, there was a female candidate, I believe she was from Colorado in the oil and gas space, pro-resource. They put her name up for the BLM lead. I do not know the reason why, but she pulled her name a couple of weeks ago. I was sad to hear that. I thought she would have been great. It also kind of delays the lead person, if you will, that will manage the entire BLM. I have yet to hear who they're going to put up. That person needs to be instated. I think that will help. Once the lead of this agency is placed, I think things will also move quicker. It is kind of a mixed bag, John.

I mean, we're hearing some positives. The attitude overall has changed, which is great. It comes back, and it's just my hunch. It's just my gut feeling, but it's everything I've witnessed over those last four years that there's something from above that was stopping permits. Again, when you have a group like tech write a letter to the president-elect saying, "Hey, please fix your permit backlog so we can build a mine," you know things have reached a critical mass. I believe they did everything they could to just create the biggest quagmire they could because they were anti-resource, which is ironic. Everything we use in life is either grown or mined. If you point at it and say you can't say it's been grown, it's been mined. Miners are very important, and this administration gets it. The last one was clueless.

Anyway, we are seeing some headway. To your point, it does take time. One fortunate thing is County Line is effectively mined as an aggregate or a gravel pit, if you will. We're not building a process there. I know you know this because you've followed us for a while, but others may not. We're not building anything there. We're not building a heap leach pad. We're not building a process. We're not doing all these disturbances that have the regulators reviewing anything. They're going to review an old mine site that's already scarred, and we want to go in and mine it and truck the ore to Isabella Pearl. Once things start to break free, I do believe things will move pretty quick. That also translates in our ability to build this. We don't have to go build a process.

We don't have to go build a heap leach. We get to leverage everything that's right down the road and truck the ore. This should be built faster than almost any mine could be built if you're doing it this approach. A lot of positives, still some questions on some clarity on who's going to lead the BLM, but we're getting there, John.

John Bair (President)

Yeah. My other question regarded how the company is addressing these continued long lead times with regards to permitting activity on other prospects that you have, particularly, let's say, East Camp Douglas. I know you did speak to that a little bit earlier in the call. Has that changed your outlook on when you might submit an application either to get the ability to do some exploration drilling and so forth?

Jason Reid (CEO and President)

Yes. We talk about this a lot on our weekly conference call internally. It's come to light fairly recently that the BLM effectively didn't look at Golden Mile at all.

John Bair (President)

Oh, jeez. Wow.

Jason Reid (CEO and President)

That's disheartening. That's disheartening. On top of that, right? On top of that, between the time we applied and submitted our permit, they've since gone in and changed some rules, which may require us to go redo studies. To me, that is just so wrong that you can sit on a permit, do nothing, change the rules, and then say, "Hey, now you got to go back." That was the previous administration's movement. That's how they slow things down. I'm optimistic all that will go away. Effectively, I mean, now we're kind of retooling our brain that Golden Mile is starting from scratch. That's disheartening to think we turned that in years ago. Again, anybody who's a shareholder in this company that voted for the previous administration or its anointed Harris voted against this company's interests, voted against your interests.

These are hard truths that you need to hear because those are the kind of things we're dealing with. Yes, they absolutely play into what we're going to do with these permits going forward. We're going to submit every single permit we can under the Trump administration. If it goes back the other way, we know their playbook. They can stall nine ways to Sunday. The biggest thing is getting County Line in. I love hearing the fast track that the Trump administration is talking about. I've asked to be signed up for that. We've asked to be included. I don't know if we will be. Nobody really knows how that's going to look. They put verbiage in some of the documents that it's a 28-day process. How wonderful would that be if we could get Golden Mile included in that?

Because we are so advanced in County Line, we're trying to weigh whether if they give us the opportunity to sign up for the fast track, whether we throw County Line in that, or we really believe we're close there. We absolutely are trying to get Golden Mile in if they'll take it. There would be nothing better than to get that in short order and have that in the queue to build after this. It goes deeper than just these bigger permits. I mean, to have the BLM say, "No, we're just going to give you one NOI for this mineralization because it's too close to your operations." Those kind of things, they're challenging. Again, I think it's going to turn around. At least we're a pro-resource administration now.

John Bair (President)

Great. Thank you very much for taking the questions. Good luck going forward.

Jason Reid (CEO and President)

Thanks, John.

John Bair (President)

Yep.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We have a question from James Blanchard with Helvetia Equity Management. Your line is live.

James Blanchard (Senior Managing Director and Partner)

Thank you. Good morning, Jason. Two questions. The first is your all-in sustaining cost at a dramatic increase year over year. I was wondering if you could explain what happened there. My second question is, where are you with the state of Nevada? Obviously, they need to provide permits as well to move forward on County Line.

Jason Reid (CEO and President)

Yeah. The all-in cost is going to fluctuate depending on what we're doing. What we're doing right now is we're mining less. In fact, until we get to this deeper portion of the Isabella Pearl, we're not mining much at all. Because we're getting to the end of the Isabella Pearl's mine life and mining some lower-grade ancillary parts like Civet Cat, if you're familiar with the deposit, there are three primary areas, and Civet Cat was the lowest grade, that ultimately impacts your costs. In the earlier days of Isabella Pearl, when you're putting higher grade on, your costs are lower. That's just a function of where we are in the evolution of the Isabella Pearl, that these costs are creeping up as a function of the grade we're mining or the continued waste we're moving.

Like I mentioned in my statements and I believe in some of these comments, we're now going after the Isabella Pearl deep. There's not much mineralization from this layback all the way down till we get to the bottom. That's all cost. Yeah, we're moving a tremendous amount of waste to get to this future zone of mineralization that will impact our cost negatively because we're not putting gold on. We're just moving waste. Hopefully that sheds some light on how that cost fluctuates. As far as the state of Nevada, I don't know if you listened to some of my last comments, but Nevada, I think, is through its struggles as far as staffing the BLM in some offices because some people are leaving and taking the buyout that's being offered.

In our case, I mentioned on the last Q&A that our local office, we're actually hearing they're staffing up and closer to full staff. That could change. Maybe if they're offered buyout, some people leave. I don't know. That is the last I've heard. We've heard that it's actually moving in a positive direction. I'll just reiterate that it'd be great once the administration puts its BLM head at the federal level in and the individual that was put up withdrew her name. That is still in flux. In the end of the day, these agencies are actually paid by us, I mean, by the permit fees and such. There should be some incentive there. Hopefully, does that answer your question, James?

James Blanchard (Senior Managing Director and Partner)

Yeah, absolutely. That makes perfect sense on the cost. I appreciate you explaining the dynamics.

Jason Reid (CEO and President)

Yep. Yep. All right. Any other questions? James?

Operator (participant)

We currently have no further questions on the line, sir, at this time.

Jason Reid (CEO and President)

Okay. Perfect. Because we have a ton of write-in questions. I don't know if we're going to be able to get up to all these, but let's give it a shot. The first one, Ray Lee. Is the BLM new leadership been put in place by new administration, and are they hiring people? Yes. The new lead has not, I mentioned, but they are hiring locally. What is the grade of the additional section of IP deposit you've decided to mine? This is outside of our resource, so we're not going to put any numbers to it. We don't have it in a P&P. We know there's some mineralization down there. The thing about this, irrespective of grade and more importantly of the layback, a ton of waste to move. That's what hurts the economics of this.

Like I mentioned, we wouldn't actually go after this back when we were mining the Isabella Pearl years ago because it didn't meet the criteria of being economic. The fact that we're at $3,000 gold even pushes it into economics. I'm going to be real hesitant to give specifics on it because, A, it's outside of the resource. In no world would I put a number of ounces to it because I'm not allowed to. We have internal estimates, but we believe that this will not extend the mine life and add some cash to our account after we sustain the cash drain. We'll build it back up. The third part of your question, I calculate that cash on hand and the leach pad inventories exceeds the company's market cap. Right? You're right. You're right. Okay. Moving on.

After you receive the permits for County Line, what do you anticipate annual production to be? Give a range. Yeah. Until it drops in, we don't know. It also depends on how long we want to mine it. If we pulled it all off in one year, we get 40,000. If we pull it all off over time, which will be two plus years, which will be the case, it'll be closer to 20. It'll probably be the latter just as a function of time. In our original business plan, it was to layer mine on mine, have permits in hand, and do this. We're in a situation now where we're having to conserve cash. We're mining deeper at Isabella Pearl. At this point, it would make sense just to put County Line behind that. We finish the Pearl and then do County Line.

That would be less on an annual basis if you're layering less. Having said that, maybe we'll be in the position, depending on when it drops in, to layer. There are a lot of unknowns. That is why we specifically put TBD on a future date on how much. Just generally speaking, county line is not the same as Isabella Pearl on grade or size yet. There is still some upside there. There are areas of county line that we'd love to drill, and we plan to. We do need permission to do so. With the free-up of hopefully a lot of these permits, we'll be in that position. Hopefully, Harvey, that gives you a sense that we'll probably push it out at least two years. You are looking at 20 coming from just that, not including the residual. All right.

The next question, Scott McLeod. Can you shed light on why we are holding ounces of gold in the treasury? Good question, Scott. It's just my opinion and management's opinion and the board's opinion to put your money where your mouth is. Actually having gold as the asset and then something we produce is a good thing. Obviously, if we need that, we could sell it and turn it into cash. Yeah, it's sure paid off to have gold in this big move up. Yeah, it's just kind of putting our money where our mouth is. I also think if every gold mining company held some gold in the treasury, taking that gold out of circulation, that would also help the gold price as well. It's just more philosophical, I guess, Scott. Okay. Good question though. Another question from Scott again.

Question for the permit environment at this time. How many permits have been issued to mining operations in the first four months of the year in Nevada? Good question. I don't know the answer to that one. I'm going to guess not many. Trying to figure out how quick we might get ours. I don't have any insight onto that. I just know when I go to the Denver Gold Group and talk to the peers of all these mining companies, everybody who operates in the U.S. or Nevada for that matter are waiting on some form of permit. They sure wish and think it should have dropped in earlier. Again, I don't have any insight on I don't know that answer on how many have been in the first four months. I'm going to guess not many. All right. Moving on. There's a lot of questions.

Again, we may not get to all these. Craig Hooper, do you have any preliminary budget for cash costs needed for the IP extension? I think you mean IP extension. I heard six months, but any cash budget? Also any expectations of how many ounces available? Yeah, I'm going to stay away from ounces as a function of it's not in a resource. We're not allowed to even talk about it. It's mineralization. Again, we never actually thought we'd go after this. Having to pivot, adjusting to these delays with the gold price increase allowed us the ability to go get it. We did extensive analysis. Our biggest concern is this is deep, so there's portions of the deep pit that turn into what we call oxide transitional, meaning that it goes from oxide to sulfide. We cannot process sulfides.

That's a whole different process that we don't have. We just chase the oxide. We really looked hard to make sure this area was still in oxide. We did this extensive analysis that took many more months than we had thought it would take. We estimated approximately 10% of this estimate to be in oxide or the transitional, excuse me. We've done everything we can to ring-fence that we believe this is oxide and going after it. I'm not going to mention ounces. Look, at this point, it's unimportant. Isabella Pearl is not our future anymore. It was a wonderful deposit. We hope to find more of them. It's on to the next mines. It's on to County Line. It's on to Golden Mile. It's on to Scarlet North. The other portion of that was cash budget.

Yeah, I'm not going to delve into the cash budget other than to say, and I'll say it again, we will drain cash through the end of the year. Expect it. When the next quarters you see cash drain, we know it's coming. It's for a goal, and that's to hit this mineralized zone in which we aim it to go the other way. Thanks, Craig. Next one, Chris Warford. What drilling plans do you have for this year? Last PR for East Camp showed that it was an older result in the assay backlog. Are there any new drill results? Good question. I mentioned on the last call, I'll mention it again here, that we have cut way back on our drilling as a part of the conservation of cash. We did that quite a while ago.

Yeah, those last drill results that came in were a function of some assay backlogs. There's not going to be a lot of drilling results in the near future because we're not drilling a lot. I think our next drilling, and we're pushing to get approval to do so, is at that Scarlet that I mentioned earlier on. I mean, again, it's 700 meters away from Isabella Pearl, and we ended our last drill program in gold. Good grade. We want to flesh that out, see how much that is, delineate it. I think our next drill program will hopefully be that. No, we cut way back on our drilling quite a while ago as a means of conserving cash. Okay. Good question. Next question, Kevin Douglas. Curious the time for the last submittal of IP permit relating to the submission of County Line permit.

How long between separation of each permit request? Okay. We got our original mine permit for Isabella Pearl back under the first Trump administration. We did not receive a single new mine permit under Biden. We fought tooth and nail during the Biden administration to have the ability to go deeper in the Isabella Pearl. We were given the runaround. I'm going to take you into the weeds on this one so you can see how we were pushed around. We asked for what's called a minor modification to an already existing mine. They came back and said, "We believe it's a major modification." I went to the lead BLM person in the state office, and I said, "Is this a done decision? Who made the decision?

Do they have the knowledge to make this decision? The response was, "It's a done deal." Six months later, they come back and they say, "Oh, it's a minor mod." Okay. That person's mistake costs 6+ months of time. This is just to go deeper on an existing mine. I said, "Okay, we're done then. We get the permit." "No, no, no. I'm going to attach it to your five-year annual renewal that goes to comment period." "That's not in the books. That's not in the regulators." "I don't care. I'm attaching it to it." We had to wait for that. These are the kind of hoops we had to do just to get a permit to modify an existing mine. Again, that sheds light on the previous administration's ability to shut things down, let alone issue a new mine permit.

I think to me, it means less between permit submissions and means more of who's in there being the oversight of this. Having what I hope is a very pro-business, pro-resource BLM lead will dictate everything below. Lead being the federal will dictate everything below. I hope to never get more runarounds like that. Because in the end of the day, those decisions that were made on the BLM side were completely wrong. It proved out as such. They just ad hoc said, "We're going to stick this to the other permit. Let it go to comment." You can't even explain this stuff. Those are the kind of runarounds we've got. Hopefully, they're gone. All right. I took you guys way into the weeds on that one. Thanks, Kevin. Next one, Ron Darcy with the depressed stock price.

Is management of the company considering buying back or accumulating shares? Many of its long-term holders continue to purchase at this price. Yeah, as far as company buybacks, we'll probably not do that. I did that with a previous company. I could not believe the hate we got for that. They said, "No, if you're going to do any of that, then you need to do you should just increase the dividend." As far as individuals, I'm not going to speak to individual purchases or sales of my team. But yeah, management bought hand over fist this company the minute we started trading. And we were some of the largest individual buyers. I think that speaks to our commitment. Yeah, good question, Ron. Okay. Jennifer Taylor, if you see the permits, would you look to restore a dividend? If so, when might you be able to do?

How long without the permit can you maintain the dividend or maintain positive cash flow? Great questions, Jennifer. First of all, I would not say we would restore the dividend. I think you mean return it to what it was. I want to put this in perspective. As a junior mining company, there are hardly any other junior miners paying a dividend, let alone ones that are sitting struggling trying to wait for permits. I think the fact we continue to pay a dividend speaks volumes. I made that comment in my early comments. The dividend, as always, cannot be looked forward as a guarantee. I can say we got tremendous hate coming inbound when we cut this dividend. I will also tell you from the flip side of that, I maybe have had one or two emails over the last four years thanking us once for the dividend.

The entitlement of this dividend of, "Oh, it's ours," and, "Oh my God, you cut it and you're awful and you're the worst management ever and you ruined my life." Really? We are a junior mining company, and the fact we actually pay a dividend, I think, speaks volumes. Could the dividend be cut, Jennifer? Absolutely, it could be cut. We consider cutting it completely. Just because we do not know how long it is going to take for the backlog. There are a lot of unknown questions. In the fog of war, it is tough to see forward from today looking forward, right? Today looking back, everybody is like, "Oh, yeah, I called that. I could see that coming." No, you cannot looking forward. Nobody has a crystal ball. As far as the dividend, I think this management is very pleased that we are continuing to pay it.

But it could be modified. Someday, hopefully up. Could be down too. I just want to be very clear that the dividend is absolutely not a guarantee. Great question, Jennifer. Okay, another one. Scott McLeod again. Once we get our new permits, County Line, Golden Mile, would a new administration be able to take them away? Or once we get them, we are good as long as we do not violate them? I think it would be a very slim chance they could take them away. That would blow up the entire industry. Even an administration worse than Biden, if they went in and started pulling stuff, that would rock the mining to its core. Mining gets rocked to the core and everything as we know it stops. Just think of all the metals in your cell phones or your car or your houses, whatever.

Yeah, I can't see a world in which they'd ever take them away. They can just not issue more. That's what we're living on. Okay, good question. Steven Banker, how have you thought about bringing in a partner to help with the large CapEx projects? We've always intended to pay our projects with cash flow. That was one of the decisions to be conservative, cut the dividend, make sure we have cash flow to build County Line. We hope to be in the position to build Golden Mile. As far as Golden Mile goes, we've already not only designed and ordered all that equipment, tanks, etc., but we've purchased it, and it's been built, and it's laying in our laydown yard. We have probably $13 million-plus invested already in Golden Mile. All that equipment is sitting on our laydown yard, ready to go.

We hope to build the remaining with cash. Bringing in a partner, I don't know what you mean by partner. If you mean by another company, no. Joint ventures rarely work. There are very few projects that will ever sustain two companies as a given revenue source. No, we're trying to build everything with cash flow. Good question, Steve. Another one by Jennifer Taylor. Did management sell a significant amount of shares at year-end? Jennifer, you would be referring to probably me. I'm not going to speak to any of my associates. I sold a few shares after 10-K. We have very few trading windows as management. Probably one of the biggest trading windows was right after a Q. I sold some shares, a very, very small percentage of my holding.

Many of those shares were actually my daughter's, but I have to list them as mine. A large part was a function of tax season and some continued overhang from a divorce. Yeah, I sold very few shares. It was immaterial to my holding. Hopefully, that helps answer your question on that. With that, I think we're going to end it as much as we've gone pretty long. If I did not get to your question, if you're in the queue, I apologize. Feel free to reach out to Greg and myself. We are around most of the day and can answer your questions. With that, operator, let's close the call.

Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's call. You may disconnect your lines at this time. We thank you for your participation.