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I want to turn my attention now to Silver. And the thing I really like to do is to get the people who are actually in that business, you know, who are on the ground because of course they're putting their money where their mouth is, but also they're paying incredibly close attention. That's why I'm really pleased that Jason Weber is giving us more of his time here. He's the CEO of Silver North Resources.
Jason, thanks for taking time. Let me just throw the big question out, of course, short and long term. What are your thoughts? I mean, we had that nice move in the spring and it seems to have quietened down quite a bit. But again, it isn't influencing my long term view. No, mine either. I think you're exactly right. And my pleasure to be on, Mike. Just thanks for having me here to talk about what we do.
I do agree. The short-term move we had sort of end of February through to end of May, I think that was a real eye-opener for a lot of people in that it was a very strong move. It wasn't driven by crazy things like silver Reddit crowd and stuff like that.
There was some felt like there's some real fundamentals behind it. And I think part of it is just the fact that the realization of what silver's role is industrially is much more widely recognized now. And we're starting to see, you know, you get the economic factors that affect the precious metals. I think that's a wonderful backstop for the price. And then now you add this fact that we're not meeting demand for silver on the industrial level.
And that I think that played a big role in that move. And I think, you know, when you look at it now, we're into the summer doldrums. Not surprising that things come off. The metal prices actually haven't come off all that much. We had a couple of really big down days that seems to really infect or affect the investment community's outlook.
But, you know, as we come back through the summer into September and onwards, I think that that silver, quote unquote, rally resumes. And maybe it doesn't start September 1. I think this is not something that's going to take off right away as soon as people come back from their summer holidays. But that longer term trend, I think, is in place and the fundamentals are there. I just I can't help but think that that's going to continue as we move forward.
Well, we can't wait for the MPs to come back from their summer holiday. My goodness gracious. Aren't they taking off right to the December now? I don't know what it is, but for the normal people, as you say, Hey, let me just ask, you know, now bring it down to you guys as junior minors. What's it like, what's the kind of environment you're, I'm thinking about how is it for raising money? Cause I think it was pretty good. You know, if we went back just a month or two ago, you know, and you know, challenges that you're facing now.
Yeah. So, you know, preceding that February start of the silver rally, and I'll speak for silver specifically, it was quite quiet. It was much basically a downtrend through the fall last year into the early part of 2024. And then at the end of February, it really kicked off.
Money raising was much, much easier. But some of that's just a factor of when your share price is moving. And what we see with silver stocks, even at the expiration stage where we are, you see...
the shares of a company trade almost with the price of silver, which is crazy for me in my 20 plus years of being in this business. When we were exploring for copper or gold or anything else, we wouldn't see that activity happening
Early on, that was much more a delayed response until the investment community sort of worked its way down the food chain to the small juniors like us. With silver, it was almost instant. So we really saw a period where your share price was up. If you announced a financing, your share price would be up 10%, 15%, 20%, 25% in the next few days. It was no problem getting orders to fill it up. And in fact, we were oversubscribing financings.
But that really kind of came to an end at the end of May. There was some big down days in silver and gold for that matter. But I think that really kind of put the halt on that activity.
Probably a big factor in that is that we were into the summer or what should have been the summer doldrums by that point. But the market had been hot enough and had been enough activity that it sustained itself, you know, further than it would in a normal year. And now that's really dried up. So I think we're looking at a quiet summer financing wise.
So if you haven't raised money for summer programs, I think it's going to be fairly difficult until we get into the fall period again and look at that kind of classical cyclical uptick.
Well, the key, of course, for investors is unless they're a short-term speculator, I appreciate that. But most people, I think, are looking at silver as an investment, you know, handling things like the renewable revolution that's going on out there and the needs that that gets produced. On my side, I look at it as, you know, a hedge against the declining purchasing power of the dollar. So we're looking a little longer term. So, you know, has anything changed in your long-term positive outlook? No, I think it's – I think that –
positive outlook for silver is very much intact. And I think when you look at just the fact that, you know, the money that was raised through to the end of May here this year is
A lot of that money hasn't even been put to use yet. So you don't have drills turning. You don't have discoveries being made. You don't have ounces added to silver deposits. So we won't see that for another two quarters, probably. By the time you start work, get your lab results back, we're into late 2024. And this is kind of the disconnect that's in place right now with the way –
quote unquote traders are. Back in the day, you would have an investor coming to your stock and they would hold for one or two years and give you a real shot at doing what you've said you were going to do. Now it's more quarterly. So I think we see this quarterly trading pattern, but as we go, I think we'll see investors coming back in and probably out again, but back in as that silver trend continues. So my outlook
is not changed at all, you know, as far as I look at it, being very positive going forward.
Now, obviously, this is a broad question. You know, I mean, we have to know individual circumstances, et cetera, et cetera. But just as a general rule of thumb, if somebody came to you and said, look, I'm thinking about investing in, you know, a junior silver. What's my time frame? A realistic one you just alluded to. Some people don't give it a chance to play out. But what would you say? I think you have to give a company a year. You have to give them a full season to invest.
Put their drills, their money to work, get those holes drilled, get the results back, and then actually interpret what those results mean. In an ideal world, we get super high-grade results over really wide widths, and it's a no-brainer. But life doesn't work that way. So you've got to give the companies a chance to evaluate what they're doing and see how it affects them.
their metrics going forward, where they're going to be exploring drilling their next holes. And then I think it enables everybody to make a better decision as far as what they're going to do with their investment dollars. And so for us as a company, you know, I really need that a year to really assess, you know, a program and what's been done. And it's just a fact of
These things take time. It takes time to get lab results back and labs are busy. It's slower than it used to be. So these timelines have been extended and we see that actually in all aspects of the mining business now. Everything's been attenuated.
Well, let me just finish with a couple of quick things here. You know, certainly the attitude about the need for something like silver or other critical metals, you know, we're talking about the battery revolution, et cetera, et cetera. Do things like government incentives actually work? They do and they don't. You know, there's a crazy thing going on right now where we're building these battery plants back east in Canada and that's government subsidized yet illegal.
We don't have the subsidies for the metals necessarily to go out and actually find them to supply the battery plant. And this is, I think that's one of the areas that really needs to be addressed. And, you know, the federal government's tried, there's, you know, there's critical metals flow through. Silver is not a critical metal. So you can't actually use that exemption as a silver explorer. But then again,
we go and play with CRA rules like the minimum exclusion rate, which actually has a hugely negative effect on companies' abilities to raise critical flow through. So, you know, we're kind of,
these things get introduced, but then they get knocked back by other government policy. And then you also get environments where investors will solely focus on one type of incentive and forget about, you know, some of the other incentives that are out there. So while they do work, I don't think they're very well thought through and they could work much, much better than, than what we see. So I think we,
What really needs to happen, though, is you have to be, if you want to build these battery plants in Ontario, fine, but you really then have to be pushing for more exploration, more development to feed the materials to those plants. Because the whole critical metal strategy is really around being your own domestic supply of the metals you need. Right now, we don't have that for these battery plants. So in all, I think it's failing.
Well, we see that across government, by the way. You read an Auditor General's report. As you see, they work at cross purposes. I mean, it's incredible when we had sort of these announcements, you know,
toward resources in general. And then, you know, then the environment minister announces we're not building any new roads. And I thought, well, that doesn't work. And that's typical. I'm not trying to just cherry pick something. That is absolutely typical. Yeah, we want battery plants. Well, you better make sure you got the metals to supply it. And silver is one of those metals, you know, into that. But yeah, it seems still confused. I
I don't know. I don't want to force you into the politics, but I think it's important for people to understand that we need more consistency in the direction we want to go, especially with major commitments. You know, in the battery plant thing, it's like 50 billion, you know, in some form of subsidy. And I'm saying, well, that better work.
you know, that really better work. So you better sit back and say, what do we need to do to make it work? And certainly critical minerals and things like silver have got to be part and parcel of that. Yeah, absolutely. Without question.
Yeah, I was going to say, you come on the show and I give you a headache by talking. The trouble is you've got to talk a little politics because the intervention and the footprints everywhere on that. Jason, let me just finish with saying I appreciate you taking time. And this is important information for people to understand. You know, we're going in a single direction. Silver's got a role to play. And there are opportunities, especially not when the...
You know, for traders, markets, they love it when the market's melting up, melting down. That's an opportunity. But I think this is a time to do some work, do some research, because I don't want to buy in when everybody else is already excited. Yeah, and I think this summer could be a great opportunity if this silver market does continue like we think. There's going to be some depressed prices. You've got companies doing drill programs that can lead to discoveries. Silver North will have two drill programs this year. Both of those could produce opportunities.
You know, silver discoveries that would send our shares, you know, obviously higher. You know, that's how our shareholders benefit. So I think there'll be lots of opportunities like that through the summer for any investor who's looking at these earlier stage opportunities. Well, we'll be paying attention, Jason. Jason Weber is CEO of Silver North Resources. Thanks for the time. Thank you. My pleasure.
