Imperial Metals Corp Aktie

Hello, and welcome to the Annual and Special Meeting of Shareholders of Imperial Metals Corporation. Please note that today's meeting is being recorded. If you participate in today's meeting and disclose personal information, you will be deemed to consent to the recording, transfer and use of same. If you disclose personal information of another person in today's meeting, you will be deemed to represent and warrant to Computershare and the company that you first obtained all required consents for the disclosure, recording, transfer and use of such personal information from all appropriate persons before your disclosure. [Operator Instructions]

It is now my pleasure to turn today's meeting over to Larry Moeller, Director and Chair of Imperial Metals Corporation. Mr. Moeller, the floor is yours.

Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Larry Moeller. I'm a Director and Chair of Imperial Metals Corporation, and I will chair the business of today's meeting. I welcome you to the company's Annual and Special Meeting of Shareholders. We are pleased to host the meeting through this virtual meeting platform accessible to all our shareholders regardless of physical location to participate, submit questions and vote.

The polls will close after the vote has been called for the last motion, so we encourage you to vote now if you have not already done so. I am joined by Brian Kynoch, Director and President; Darb Dhillon, Chief Financial Officer; and Sophie Hsia, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary.

I will now proceed with the formal business of the meeting, followed by a presentation, after which we will accommodate questions. I officially call the meeting to order and appoint Sophie Hsia to act as Secretary of the meeting. For the purposes of this meeting, I appoint Computershare through its representatives to act as scrutineer of the meeting to compute the votes of the polls taken at this meeting and to report to the Chair.

Only registered shareholders who held shares in their name as of April 1, 2026, the record date of this meeting, or their validly appointed proxy holders are entitled to vote at this meeting. Those that are not registered shareholders or duly appointed proxy holders are not able to vote at this meeting. If you have questions about the matters before this meeting, we ask that you submit questions or comments at any time by clicking on the Q&A tab.

I would ask you to limit your questions to those matters directly relating to the specific matters being considered and we will respond to any other questions at a later time. Note that after the formal portion of this meeting, there will be an opportunity for questions. I will now commence the formal business of the meeting. The business of the meeting is described in the Management Information Circular dated April 1, 2026, which accompanied the notice of meeting.

We will conduct the votes on the matters before us by poll. On a poll, every shareholder entitled to vote on the matter has 1 vote in respect of each share entitled to be voted on the matter and held by that shareholder. You may vote online any time during this meeting until I announce the polls are closed. The final voting results will be available on SEDAR+ and Imperial's website.

The notice calling this meeting and the other required materials were mailed to shareholders of the company on April 9, 2026. These documents and the proof of service is retained with the records of this meeting. I declare a quorum is present. I have before me a preliminary scrutineer's report and declare that a quorum of shareholders as required under the company's articles is present and that the meeting is regularly called and properly constituted for the transaction of business.

The last annual and special meeting of the company was held on May 21, 2025, and I direct that the reading of the minutes of that meeting be dispensed with and that the minutes be approved as if read. Darb, are there any questions?

No questions at this time.

Thank you. The next item of business is the presentation of the annual consolidated financial statements of the company as of December 31, 2025, together with the report of the auditors. The consolidated financial statements, together with the related management's discussion and analysis, were mailed to shareholders who had requested a copy and are available on SEDAR+ and Imperial's website. Darb, are there any questions?

There are no questions at this time.

I declare that the financial statements of the company for the financial year ended December 31, 2025, and the auditor's report thereon have been received. A reminder that you can submit questions or comments at any time by clicking on the Q&A tab. On March 24, 2026, the Board of Directors repealed the Company's Advance Notice Policy. As a result, the company does not require advance notice of director nominations in connection with the meeting.

The management nominees for election to the Board of Directors of the company are outlined in the Management Information Circular of the company dated April 1, 2026. Any shareholder who would like to make a director nomination may use the Q&A tab of the virtual meeting platform to do so. There are 7 directors to be elected by the shareholders of the company who shall hold office until the close of business of the first Annual Meeting of Shareholders of the company following this election or until their successors are elected or appointed.

Carolyn Anglin; David Edwards; Brian Kynoch; Pierre Lebel; myself, Larry Moeller, Janine North and James P. Veitch have been nominated as directors for the ensuing year or until their successors are elected or appointed. Each of the persons nominated has confirmed that he or she is prepared to serve as a director. I will now take a moment to review any director nominations submitted.

There are no nominations submitted at this time.

Thank you. Since there are no other nominations, I move to elect the directors. Voting is open to registered shareholders and appointed proxy holders to vote for 7 directors during this meeting until I announce the polls are closed.

The next item of business is the appointment of auditors. Deloitte LLP, the current auditor of the company, is proposed as auditor of the company to hold office until the next Annual General Meeting of Shareholders. As Chair, I propose the following motion: that Deloitte LLP be appointed auditor of the company until the close of the next Annual General Meeting of Shareholders and that the directors be authorized to fix the auditor's remuneration. Darb, are there any questions?

No questions at this time.

Thank you, Darb. The next item of business is to approve the amendment to the amended and restated share purchase plan. As Chair, I propose the following motion: that the amended and restated share purchase plan of 2026 be approved, the wording of which resolution is set out on Page 26 of the Management Information Circular dated April 1, 2026. Darb, are there any questions?

No questions at this time.

Thank you. There being no further questions, I declare the polls now closed for the approval of all matters before this meeting. I would ask that the scrutineer compile the final report regarding the results of voting on all business matters and results will be published by the company on SEDAR+ and by news release. I direct that the results be included with the minutes of this meeting.

If you have any questions, you can submit them now by clicking on the Q&A tab. Imperial knows of no other matter to properly come before the meeting. Therefore, as Chair, I propose the following motion that the meeting be terminated. Darb, are there any questions?

There are no questions.

Thank you, Darb. Being no questions received, I declare the motion carried. Thank you for your attendance. Now I turn the meeting over to Brian Kynoch for his presentation.

Thanks, everyone, and good afternoon. Thanks for attending our Annual General Meeting. I'm going to give you a presentation updating the status of our major projects. And after the presentation, we'll have a question-and-answer session. I'd like to note that some of the comments I make may contain forward-looking statements, which are uncertain and the actual results may differ from those expressed today.

Imperial's motto is discover, develop and operate, and this is our goal, and we've been quite successful at achieving those goals over the last 35 years. Arguably, we've been BC's copper miner. We've discovered the Northeast Zone, the White Pit at Mount Polley, 10 million tonnes at 0.9% copper. This discovery paid for the purchase, exploration and permitting of the Red Chris Mine. We also discovered the block cave deposit, the East Zone at Red Chris that will likely become one of the best mines in BC.

As to development, we've permitted and developed 2 mines in BC, Mount Polley and Red Chris Mine. As to operations, we've been producing copper continually in BC since 1991, 35 years, Goldstream Mine, Mount Polley Mine, Huckleberry Mine and Red Chris with over 2.7 billion pounds of copper and 1.7 million ounces of gold produced from those mines.

With Mount Polley, Huckleberry and our share of Red Chris, we're well positioned to participate in the expected boom in the demand for copper from electrification and AI. And as all 3 of the mines that I mentioned also produce gold, which is contained in the copper concentrate, we are well positioned to take advantage of gold's upward bias as it reacts to the developed world's high debt and ongoing deficit.

A little snapshot of our results for 2025. So it's a great year with good production and high gold prices, we achieved a record revenue of almost $700 million and a reduction of our debt of almost $200 million.

Exploration. So this year, we are focusing on Mount Polley and Huckleberry. Given that an operating mine you can turn exploration into success and cash flow more quickly given the time it takes to permit new mines. But along with that, we're going to do some exploration at 2 high-grade gold deposits located along the BC Coast, Porcher Island and Pandora. And the logic here is both those are relatively high grade on the coast and have potential for being direct shipping ore deposits. In other words, ones that we don't need to build a mill for that should shorten the time line for permitting.

Over the next few slides, I'll go through Mount Polley or in the different order, Red Chris, Mount Polley and Huckleberry. So Red Chris, a good year at Red Chris. Good production of copper and gold, along with good -- with the increase in gold price. We're about to convert Red Chris from an open pit mine to a block cave mine. And the block cave mine at Red Chris is on Canada's list of nation-building projects. And once in operation, the Red Chris block cave mine is expected to increase Canada's copper production by 15% and employ 800 full-time workers.

So block cave, it's not brand new, but it's a relatively new way of mining. You go underneath the deposit, you undercut the deposit and you open it up so the rock starts to fail. So it breaks up under its own weight with no blasting. You extract the rock from the bottom and convey it to surface. Conveyor will use electricity, not diesel. So we're using electricity. And then you process it in an updated -- in the updated plant that currently treats the open pit ore.

Other couple of slides on the block cave. So some of the work to -- that has to be done to convert this from an open pit to a block cave mine being Red Chris includes some of the things noted on this slide. There's 38 kilometers total of lateral development. We need to excavate and install an underground crusher, underground workshops. There's 4 surface vent raises and 8 underground vent raises to get ventilation to the bottom. And in addition to that, the process plant is going to be upgraded with a secondary crusher, added grinding capacity and an expanded flotation and concentrate load, we'll be making more concentrate, more copper and gold than the open pit mine is currently making.

And of note last -- we actually -- it's maybe hard to see here, but that Nagha Decline on the slide. The access to the bottom is actually in place down to the extraction level. And that work has been undertaken prior to a feasibility study with the advanced development that we've agreed to do with both Newcrest and Newmont. However, following last year's groundfall, a substantial amount of work on upgrading the ground support on the main ramp and the conveyor decline has been undertaken, and we expect to have that work done by the end of 2026.

And our partners, Newmont expect that we'll get the feasibility study and a final investment decision for the block cave at Red Chris either late 2026 or early 2027. One other point at Red Chris, the -- in addition to the East Zone and the East Zone is where the feasibility study is being completed on Macro Block 1, 1 of the 3 macro blocks in the East Zone. There's a large target in close proximity, and that's the East Ridge. And on this, you see some block cave -- conceptual block cave shapes that Newmont or Newcrest actually did.

And you can see it's kind of like a 400 million tonne deposit, maybe 5 million to 6 million ounces of gold and 4 billion to 5 billion pounds of copper in it at any rate. There's a lot more at Red Chris than just the East Zone. So it bodes well for the Red Chris Mine having a very long life.

Move on to Mount Polley. And as at Red Chris, we had a good year, good production. We met our targets for both copper and gold. And along with that, we had a dramatic rise in the gold price, which really helped our financial results.

At Mount Polley, last year, the majority of the ore came from Phase 4. And I don't have a pointer, but the very lowest part of that pit that you see on that slide, that's the bottom of Phase 4. And then on the left-hand side, where the Phase 5 line goes down to, that's us bringing down the pushback in Phase 5. So Phase 5 is the east -- a pushback on the east wall of the Springer Pit, and it's going to supply the ore this year, along with lower grade stockpile.

So we expect copper production to be lower this year. And you see both Phase 5 and Phase 6 noted on this, and we're going to look at some slides in -- our cross-sections in a minute. Phase 5 is a pushback to the East and Phase 6 is a pushback to the Southwest.

We'll look at the next cross section, which is the cross-section that are shown on that last slide. It's through the Springer Pit. And you can see Phase 5, which is underway right now. And you can see at the top of Phase 5, not sure. I think this is maybe about July. That's where Phase 5 pushback was thinking about July. And on this slide, you'll note there's only a little tiny bit of Phase 6 shown because this is a slide on the east side and the pushback for 6 is really to the south. We'll see it on the next slide.

And I've had them add to -- we're looking at pit expansions and 2 potential pushbacks, 7 and 8 are shown on this slide. Go to the next one. So this is a long section and now you got North-South. So now you can see the Phase 6 pushback clearly. It's to the -- mainly to the south. Again, you can see the proposed 7 and 8, and you can see the C2 and WX pits. The C2 and WX are more gold dominant than the Springer Pit is.

So exploration at Mount Polley. So you see on the slide here, 62 million tonnes of reserve and 181 million tonnes or 188 million tonnes of resource. So the drilling this year kind of -- we're going to -- we're working in the area of the Bell pit. You can kind of see in the very middle of that slide. There's an area that's sparsely drilled between the edge of the Bell pit and the Cariboo pit, kind of the area between the Cariboo and the Bell. We're drilling there as well.

We've done some more drilling in the C2 Zone. And anyway, a little bit more in the C2, relatively shallow right now. We're looking to expand the open pit in the C2. And way up on the top of the slide, you'll see a small pit called the Boundary Zone. We've done a bit of drilling there. It's a very small, like 500 million, 600 million tonnes of quite high grade. And so we're looking at that and seeing if we can maybe bring that forward. The plan before was to mine that at the end of the mine life, maybe bring it forward and help us either with this year or next year, increase our production.

Anyway, targeting converting a large portion of that resource into reserve and gathering information required to confirm the potential of those 7 and 8 pushbacks. The Huckleberry Mine, it's a copper moly mine, but it actually produces gold and silver as well. And it was an operation from 1997 to 2016 when the mine was put on care and maintenance.

Copper production at Huckleberry is about 45 million pounds a year. It was a bit higher in the beginning, a bit lower in the end. And there were about 7 years of production left in the mine plan when operations were suspended. So this year, we've begun to do the preliminary work on the cost of restarting Huckleberry, and we're targeting to have a completed reopening plan by the end of 2026. And that includes a mine plan optimized with the diamond drilling we've been doing in the last couple of years.

Go to the next slide. Again, you can see there's 35 million tonnes of reserve and 181 million tonnes of resource. So again, this drilling not only can we get more information for the pit we plan to mine, but convert some of that resource to reserve. We had a successful drilling program in 2025 and another phase of drilling was just completed earlier this year, and we're awaiting the results. When we get those results, we'll generate a new block model for the main zone deposit, and we plan to optimize the mine plan for this pit by integrating gold and silver into the mine planning where it's available.

Historically, gold and silver, the mine just produced it. We didn't know the grade that we were going to get from the pit, but it was always payable in the copper concentrate. We want to improve the modeling of molybdenum grades and include them in the mine planning. Again, for a lot of Huckleberry Mine life, moly wasn't included. We kind of made what we could make, but we didn't include it in the economics.

And the third thing we want to introduce into the new block model is actually know how much of the rock is non-acid generating and can be stored outside the TSF, rather than, in its kind of last history the mine assumed, all the waste rock would be needed is potentially PAG and had to be stored in the TSF and submerged, which meant that we had to build TSF quickly. So we'll try to get a model where we use all 3 of those things and improve, as I said at the top of the slide, try to make Huckleberry a better mine. And with that, I'll take some questions if you have any.

There are no questions at this time.

We'll give everybody a minute then. Okay. As there are no questions, that closes our meeting for this year, and thank you so much for attending.

This concludes the meeting. You may now disconnect.