Enjoy this extended conversation with Mr. Matt Wood, President & CEO of Steppe Gold (TSX:STGO). Frankly, I was very impressed with the vision Matt conveyed for the company. Rethinking the geological model and mine plan conceived by Centerra into something that works for a new public company is brilliant. But the idea is nothing without execution. Listen closely to hear some important information from Matt on that in this deep-dive interview. Thank you, Matt!

Peter Bell: Hello, I'm Peter Bell and I'm here with Mr. Matt Wood, President & CEO of Steppe Gold. Hello Matt!

Matt Wood: Peter, how are you? Very good to speak to you today.

Peter Bell: Absolutely. Our first time speaking and I'm doing well here. It's February 13, 2019 and things continue for Steppe.

Matt Wood: Yes, things have been a little bit slower than we'd hoped but things are going extremely well. We're building our first mine and we're fast-approaching first gold production from our ATO Gold Project.

Peter Bell: It's quite an interesting story. It's a small cohort of new producers in any year, when it comes to gold mines and juniors that have one flagship source of production like your company here, and there's so much that goes along with that. It can be a very significant exercise in wealth-creation for a lot of people.

Matt Wood: For sure. That's reflected in the share registry we've got. As management, we've got a large chunk of this company and we're certainly aligned with any success the company will experience in the future.

Peter Bell: There are so many other people, too! I wonder how many gold mines there are in Mongolia these days?

Matt Wood: There are a couple, but they are privately owned. Obviously, there is the large Oyu Tolgoi project with Turqoise Hill and Rio Tinto. They are a large producer of gold themselves apart from their copper production. There is no other company such as ourselves. We purchased the ATO Altan Tsagaan Ovoo project from Centerra a couple years ago. We've been pushing that very hard. We did the only IPO of a mining company on the TSX main board last year for a resources company when we raised $25 million. We're backed by Triple Flag Mining Finance, who are a fantastic group of guys in Toronto. They are our streaming partner. We did a small gold and silver stream on the oxide project to raise some money. We've been extremely well-backed and were the only ones who were able to get an IPO away last year on the Main Board, as I mentioned, and the company is building it's first mine. We're not just a group of guys talking about building a mine, we are actually doing it. We're nearly finished our capital expenditure on the project and are moving into an op-ex phase. The project is going extremely well.

Peter Bell: So many things to talk about with all of that. Just to point out to people who might look at the stock chart and think, "Oh, something is wrong here. Something is broken." No, these are the markets. This is what happens sometimes.

Matt Wood: That's a valid point. We did a $2 IPO and everyone thought it was cheap. It's 75-80 cents now, so it's got to be twice as cheap now at least. And we've added a lot of value since then. We've had some spectacular exploration drilling results. We've got this new Mungu discovery to the north of ATO. It's only half a kilometer away. That's going very well. And we've nearly built our mine now. We're gonna be cash-flow positive and producing gold in a matter of months. I think the company has been oversold. The markets are very bad and there's certainly a focus on other sectors, such as cannabis and things like that. There's a risk-reward profile and I think companies like Steppe, in particular, who are doing real things represent compelling value. Especially at these levels.

Peter Bell: Absolutely. And the execution risk on the production side here -- to see the photo there of the site under construction, it's a pretty simple circuit you have planned out there.

Matt Wood: Yes. The ATO project is a +1 million ounce deposit at the moment and we think we can see a 3 million ounce ore body there. What we're talking about and what this development is only the top 40 meters of this project. It's open at 300 meters depth, but the oxide project is the weathered part of those ore bodies is what we're mining now. We're building this little heap leach from that and it's a low cap-ex project and operating costs are going to be very low, sub $500 an ounce, and will produce over 40,000 ounces a year for 4-5 years. That's a project where we've nearly spent all the cap-ex already. We've built that project for under $20 million. We're still completing construction of the ADR plant today and when we turn that on we're gonna start producing gold. The open pit at ATO 1 has been running for 3 or 4 months already. Initially, it was free dig material for the first zero to 3 meters depth. We're now blasting. That's going extremely well. Our full crushing circuit has been put together. It's a two-stage crushing circuit -- a jaw crusher followed by two cone crushers producing a 25 millimeter product. That's operational and is running around the clock now. The leach pad has been completed. Cell 1 of the leach pad is now being stacked. We've already stacked 95,000 tonnes of material on that leach pad. We're targeting irrigation date for once we get 200,000 tonnes on there. The ADR plant is being finished. Everything else is happening. We've already got tonnes on the leach pad, which is what I meant by moving from a cap-ex phase into an op-ex phase. We're spending money on mining and crushing now. It's actually happening and it's going extremely well.

Peter Bell: I wonder about grade-control. Any sense for the stuff that's been mined and been stacked already?

Matt Wood: We haven't put out any official numbers on that. We're only down 4 meters in the open pit so far, so it is just the beginning. The grade reconciliation has been exceptional on the positive side. We always suspected that as we drilled this out on 30-by-30 before we started mining it. We expected and had seen high-grade zones between that drill pattern that weren't reflected in the resource model. It probably won't be this way over the long-term, but we are initially seeing that grades are approximately 50% up onto the leach pad. That is from sampling after the crusher, before stacking. We're probably 50% up on block grade, which is an exceptional result. We are very pleased.

Peter Bell: Amazing. I'm glad to hear that you are doing that kind of sampling when it's coming out of the crusher. I'm sure that's standard operating procedure but it's good to check.

Matt Wood: Absolutely. This is a product which actually crushes and leaches very well. For those with similar geological knowledge out there, this is a mid-sulphidation epithermal. At ATO 1, we are mining an epithermal sinter cap. It's like a limonite, silica cap that's sitting on the ore body that is 30-40 meters thick. It crushes down into a yellow, quartz gravel and the precipitation rates are excellent. It crushes well. It's not producing any clay. It's producing a beautiful product. As I mentioned before, it looks like the grade looks like it's substantially up, as well.

Peter Bell: Congratulations.

Matt Wood: And there's more to talk about regarding the grades, as we've seen that elsewhere on the project in the deeper parts of the ore body below 40 meters depth where we've been doing some of the infill and exploration drilling. As we infill, we do see these higher grade results. Historically, Centerra spent a substantial amount of money on this project and drilled 60,000 meters. They never saw any visible gold on the project. We've now seen visible gold multiple times on this project and are seeing results with +100 grams on a regular basis now.

Peter Bell: Some of the results from the fresh stuff down there sounds pretty hot.

Matt Wood: That's phase 2 of the project. Phase 1 is a heap leach operation, which we're already mining, crushing, and stacking. Very soon we'll be leaching. Phase 2 is an expansion project, expanding that initial project into a CIL operation -- 2 million tonnes per annum producing 150,000 ounces a year. Again, a very low strip ratio and large open pit.

Peter Bell: One question about the geology that had stuck out for me. The zinc -- are you seeing that in the oxide domain?

Matt Wood: No, we're not seeing any zinc in the oxide. Leached zinc is very mobile. We are seeing a little bit of lead, but nothing that causes a problem or anything like that. Nothing that we're gonna recover. In the fresh rock, there is certainly a zonation from high-grade precious metals with silver-gold to zones of lower grade gold-silver to zones that contain a substantial amount of sphalerite and galena, which is lead and zinc. This project has already had an internal feasibility study done on it by Centerra and there was always a plan to put a flotation circuit next to the CILto pull out a lead concentrate and a zinc concentrate. ATO 2, which is not an ore body we're looking at mining now particularly in the oxide zone, does have a lot of lead-zinc in it. We're actually doing a new feasibility study on the fresh rock project now, which is something we're working on, and part of that will be deciding on at what stage we're going to phase-in the flotation circuit and start mining some of these zones that have lead-zinc in them. They're economic zones -- they will be profitable to mine.

Peter Bell: Interesting to hear mention of the sinter in the schematics of pipe 1. There's some mention of clay in that geological diagram, good to hear that you're not encountering too much or any of that and it's not causing any problems.

Matt Wood: Particularly ATO 1 -- it has basically no clay in it. It's a sinter and when you get below the sinter, the transitional zone is 1-2 meters wide and then you're into fresh, hard silicified rock. The classic oxide zone is what's often called free-dig material because you can mine that without blasting, but that's not something we can do -- we've had free-dig material to 2-3 meters across the ATO 1 pit and then are straight into hard sinter. We've been blasting now.

Peter Bell: Have you bought your own rigs, equipment, and fleet?

Matt Wood: No, we're using Mongolian contractors for that. We use a Mongolian exploration contractor for our drilling and have 2 Mongolian earth-moving contractors for mining and staffing. They're doing a fantastic job. Mongolia has a lot of those skillsets and they do it extremely well. We're presently a Mongolian company. We don't have a lot of ex-pats on site and that's one of the reasons we keep costs down. We don't have a lot of high-paid mercenaries on site. The locals on site are well-educated and very well-experienced. They are building a mine in their own country and are doing a fantastic job of it.

Peter Bell: The operational cost numbers -- the three hundred and something dollar number I've seen mentioned a few places would seem to grab people's attention.

Matt Wood: That's exactly right. This is gonna be one of the lower cost gold mines anywhere in the world. It's a very robust operation, which is testimony to the quality of the team of guys that have put that together and are building it now.

Peter Bell: Surprising to hear that you're doing that with contracted fleet. You'd think the costs would be higher.

Matt Wood: Correct. We're a small company building our first mine -- we could afford to build the mine, but we can't go out and purchase a fleet of trucks, excavators, bulldozers, and the like. We've purchased the ADR, which was done by a Chinese group Xinhai who does a lot of gold plants in China and elsewhere around the world. The crusher we have is a typical crusher as you'd see on the side of the road, it's a semi-mobile and modular unit that was purchased in China as well. That's fully operational now and is doing a great job. What we've done is over-specced a lot of this initial project so that when we do scale-up the cap-ex is slightly less. The crusher is over-specced, it's also modular as I mentioned so we can put another one next to it. Very quickly, we can up-scale this project. We've built a 200-300 man camp, messing facility, and and hotel on site. That's well and truly over-specced, as well. And the back end -- the gold room in the ADR plant is over specced as well. For us to go from a 40,000-50,000 ounce heap leach scenario to a 150,000 ounce scenario doesn't require a lot of changes -- it's a cutback on the open-pit, some CIL tankage, a grinding circuit, and probably another crushing circuit right next to the one we've got.

Peter Bell: That's the beauty of all the modular stuff. And the CIL plants have a small footprint compared to the heap.

Matt Wood: We'd have to put in a tailings facility, as we don't have a tailings dam for the heap leach but this project is fully permitted for that sort of development. That was done by the prior owners. They did a full feasibility study based on a heap-leach, CIL, and flotation. That was approved. That was the basis for the mining license granted for the project.

Peter Bell: Wild! Wonderful to hear all that runway ahead of you. And a million-plus ounces on the books with the extension at depth is wonderful.

Matt Wood: And we've got a lot more drilling to do on that, as none of those things are closed-off yet. We've shut down exploration for the time being simply because it's all-hands-on-deck to get this project into gold production. We're a small company and we're maximizing our available funds to ensure that we can turn this into a profitable operation, which will pay for more exploration. At the moment, there isn't a whole lot of exploration going on but that will kick off soon enough. As I mentioned before, we've got some fantastic results from our initial drilling particularly at ATO 4, which we've shown looks a lot bigger than what we purchased. Moving from ATO 4 into the new Mungu discovery is important as Mungu already looks like half a million ounces that isn't on the resource balance sheet at present.

Peter Bell: I saw the point made that Centerra did a lot of good work with the drilling and the trenching -- the meters they racked-up there are impressive -- but some of their interpretation could have been better? Apparently it left some opportunity for you to come in and do things differently.

Matt Wood: Yes. We've certainly benefited from that. I think the Centerra group did a great job on the property, but their interpretation of the data probably wasn't optimal. We're not absentee landlords or anything. We're on the project and we've got a fantastic local team. We're equity holders in this, so we're spending a lot of time making sure we get this right. Consequently, we've had some huge wins in the exploration side. Likewise, Centerra was trying to build this giant, frankenstein project all at once but we've phased it out and are building a heap leach first then stepping gradually into a CIL and a flotation circuit after that for the zinc. In places like Mongolia, that's a much lower risk and much happier way to build things. I think we've been proven correct on that, as well.

Peter Bell: That's great to hear. I wondered if it was about rethinking the geology or the project planning in some way.

Matt Wood: I think it's both. We pulled the entire development plan apart and started again, which we continue to do. And on the geology side of things we've had substantial wins. Not so much on ATO 1 as I think they understood ATO 1 very well. We've done basically nothing on ATO 1 apart from mining it. On ATO 4, in particular, they totally misunderstood that. We've proven already that's substantially bigger and ATO 4 is, in fact, probably exactly the same ore body or at least part of the same system as the Mungu discovery, which was an exploration project where they didn't really know what it was. We're getting some spectacular drill results from both those, including zones with +100 grams per tonne gold. Our team have done an exceptional job.

Peter Bell: These pipes and all the geology of these systems can be a little tricky!

Matt Wood: Yes, they certainly can. Mid-sulphidation epithermals can be tricky. They are structurally-controlled, largely. It's all about understanding the geology and the structural controls. That's something Centerra did wrong -- they tried to bulk-tonnage everything at once. I think you've got to look a little bit harder and understand the structural controls. When you do, that's when you start seeing these +100 gram per tonne intercepts -- that shows you are understanding how these ore bodies are behaving. ATO isn't just sitting out there by itself, it's part of a larger gold-silver-epithermal belt called the Ulaan graben, which trends into Russia. The geology doesn't change when you cross a political border. If you cross the Russian border, there are a number of multi-million ounce deposits on the other side of the border that have been mined for up to 100 years in one case. These are large, well-understood deposits. If you look at the drill cores and some of the ore samples -- they are identical to what we have at ATO.

Peter Bell: It's wonderful to hear it all. Pipe 1, it looks like it's so close to Pipe 4, I'm surprised it's so different.

Matt Wood: Pipe 4 isn't actually a pipe at all -- it's a structurally-controlled epithermal. It's probably the same, as I mentioned before, as Mungu. Pipe 1 looks like a breccia pipe. It looks like it has a fault offset, which we're trying to understand. Pipe 1 has been very well-drilled by Centerra, but it's open at depth. We're putting together some targets at depth, but we're not planning a lot of work at ATO 1 other than the mining program. ATO 4 was well and truly misunderstood.

Peter Bell: Great to hear when it's misclassified from the start. Great opportunity for an explorationist to come in.

Matt Wood: Certainly. That's the basis for a lot of famous stories, isn't it?

Peter Bell: Yes. And the other basis is going deep! These epithermal systems can stretch out pretty far laterally, but these pipes are thought of as being directly above big intrusions. Looking at the holes, I didn't see much below 300-350 meters

Matt Wood: That's right. This hasn't been drilled to any real depth at all. We understood that very early. As part of building our structural model, we got SRK involved. We've had a structural report put together by them and that's something we put a lot of time into understanding. We always figured that if we understood what we have already then we could chase it at depth more effectively. Again, we're a small company and we can't go drilling deep holes and miss targets -- it's an expensive exercise. You really need to understand those ore bodies where you can see them first and then chase them with a lot more confidence at depth.

Peter Bell: I've been following Chakana Copper since 2018 when I had someone introduce me to the concept of some of these smaller breccia pipes with tourmaline and sulphide-rich cementing that goes on in some of those. I've tried to go back and read some of the Sillitoe papers to see if they're the same thing, but I'm not a geologist!

Matt Wood: I think the zones you're talking about are probably deeper in the system. And that's quite interesting. If you look at some of the deeper drilling results down towards that 300 meter, then you are starting to see signs of copper mineralization, including a couple very nice results. I think that zone that you're talking about is probably around 400 meters. And that's untested. I think that a bit deeper than that there is probably a porphyry copper. I don't know how deep down that is, but these are boiling zones above that. The sinter indicates it was right on the surface. The next series of breccias down are probably the ones you are talking about, and they are usually quite perpipheral to the copper porphyry below that. I think we are seeing that whole system there. We are seeing copper already in some of the deeper holes, very interesting copper numbers, but we're talking about a couple drill holes that were drilled years ago. That's something we're looking at ourselves.

Peter Bell: Good. Take your time, right? As you say, those are high-risk drill programs.

Matt Wood: That's right. At the moment, we're focused on building this and putting it into production as soon as possible. We are very close to that. We're hoping that, by mid-year we're well and truly into cash flow.

Peter Bell: It's interesting that you have some visibility on the full menu there. Whether you're able to tackle all of them now isn't at issue because you've got access to good contractors. It's amazing to hear how you can go after all these things over time.

Matt Wood: And the mine contractors are all doing very well. We've started off with 12 hour shifts, just day shifts, but we're coming through a pretty brutal winter out there and have just moved on to double shifts. We've put the crusher onto a double shift. Mining will go onto a double shift. The final construction of the ADR plant fill go onto a double shift in the beginning of March. That whole process is going extremely well.

Peter Bell: Thank you for mentioning winter. I saw info on the climate conditions in the technical report and it sounds like it can get brutally cold and very hot as well. It sounds like there's some wind, too?

Matt Wood: From a Canadian perspective, the weather's probably a lot like Edmonton. That's how I'd describe it. We certainly see days in the middle of winter where it gets close to -40. In summer, we probably see days that are low 30s and above. What we don't see is a lot of precipitation. We don't get a lot of lost time due to rain. Over this winter period, we've had very little lost time due to snowfall or blizzards. It's quite a dry environment.

Peter Bell: And I'd think that's good for the heap.

Matt Wood: That's absolutely right.

Peter Bell: Water, generally -- I saw mention of deep wells nearby in an old study? How's the water situation?

Matt Wood: As part of their feasibility study, Centerra had defined a bore field with a water resource. We've since defined another one, which is within 50 meters of the plant and the leach pad. We drilled 2 holes into that and there's a lot of water around in some of the more recent sediment basins out there away from the epithermal. Water has not been a problem. I don't see it as a problem, even for an expansion into a much larger flotation operation -- I just don't see water as an issue.

Peter Bell: Great to hear. There was talk of a pipeline that was a couple kilometers or something.

Matt Wood: That pipeline was in the Centerra feasibility study from a water resource bore field to their proposed plant site. That's something we could do in the future, if we need to pull upon that water, but we've got existing water right on site next to the plant now.

Peter Bell: Thank you. You see these photos of the relief and the topography in this area -- it's amazing how it all looks. And then to think about the full cartoon of a deep intrusion with porphyry all the way up to epithermal stuff at surface -- it's a pretty unique example to have all that accessible in a mountain plain setting. Easy place to work, safe place to work.

Matt Wood: It's a fantastic place to build a mine. It really is. You couldn't ask for a better place anywhere that I've been for a mine like that. It's a great environment. We've got a lot of support from the local populace, as well. Local, state, and federal government -- this is champion project in Mongolia headed-up by our in-country CEO, Bataa Tumur-Ochir. He's doing a fantastic job locally to promote what can be done in the middle space in country.

Peter Bell: I wonder about electricity?

Matt Wood: At the momement, we're fully diesel. All of our power is diesel. We've got a generator running the camp and another one running the crushing circuit. We will have another generator running the ADR plant. At the moment, it's all diesel. We're looking for a number of options for the CIL plant, subject to our new feasibility study. As part of Centerra's study, they looked at a number of potentials including pulling electricity off the main grid. That's got some potential to it. Otherwise, an expansion to the diesel case which could be a bit expensive. Or renewables or even a coal-burner or something like that. We're looking at all those numbers now for expansion cases. At the moment, it's a small operation and it's a lot quicker and cheaper to go with diesel.

Peter Bell: There are all kinds of wild discussions out there with people talking about small nuclear reactors, even. That's not really a reality yet, but when you have the connections and political support it changes the way some of those big dreams look.

Matt Wood: Certainly. From a wind perspective, that's something we're looking at. We're out on the Mongolian steppe. It's windy. And it's windy a lot of the time. We should be looking at renewables like wind power, in particular, to provide some of that base electricity load we will require for a larger project. As you say, politically that resonates extremely well and could get a lot of support.

Peter Bell: I wonder about the market. Thinking about some of these exploration stories that are having some great success, one in Red Lake Ontario particularly where an analyst was quoted as giving a couple hundred dollars an ounce for the implied valuation multiple on a resource there? I thought, wow, that's a significant valuation multiple. If you were to take the one-point-something million ounces on the books for Steppe gold here, that kind of number would be significantly above where the market is now.

Matt Wood: And we're building a real project! We're not talking about exploration, we are actually doing it -- this is going to be producing gold bars in a matter of months. On top of that, we've got this very large project beneath us with over a million ounces. We will probably add another 1-2 million ounces to that. Then, we do have some exploration ground in the south of the country at our Uudam Khundii property. That's in the a gold belt where some other companies have had some spectacular success and put together a million ounces in a number of deposits around us. We control the center of that belt with 14,000 hectares. Just with rock chipping, a huge soil sampling program, and a fair chunk of geophysics, we already have four discoveries there including one very large discovery called Golden Arrow. That is something that is 3 kilometers long and half a kilometer wide, but has never had a drill hole put into it. We're looking at a number of other opportunities in Mongolia. Our ambition is certainly to go to Mongolia to build a 40,000 ounce heap-leach. We want to build a 5-10 million ounce resource base and see if we can get to 200,00-400,000 ounces per annum. That's why we're in Mongolia -- we want to be the premiere precious metals company in the country and we've got a strategy in place to do that. We IPO'd this company on the main board of the stock exchange and markets have been difficult. We've had some delays on the project, although we're still under on the cap-ex side. Our shares have fallen back, but the company has still progressed. We've still got our assets. We haven't lost anything. Everything is looking better than it was. We can see some real value in the future.

Peter Bell: I guess the thing that people wonder about is the short mine life.

Matt Wood: Well, that short mine life is only on the oxide project. There's a million ounce fresh rock below that, which will have, subject to the completion of a feasibility study, a 10-20 year mine life 100,000-150,000 ounces per year. That ends that conversation very quickly.

Peter Bell: I don't know quite what Mr. Market is thinking. It may be that the cohort of new producers has a fair amount of wreckage along the "Golden Runway". The last few years in Canada, there have been some disasters among new gold mining companies. The typical performance hasn't been that good. I look at Atlantic Gold as one of the few that's bucking that trend and reminding the markets that you can go into production and things can go well!

Matt Wood: I agree with you. That's the reality of it -- it's very difficult for small companies on limited budgets to build their first gold mine. That's a tough business. We're well and truly into it -- we've nearly spent all our cap-ex and are very close to pouring our first gold. Certainly, that may have been one of the reasons why we've been sold down a bit, but that's why I think there's a real value proposition in the company now -- it's all going to change very soon. To pick up shares at 80 cents that were two dollars not long ago where everything is probably valuing at three, four, or five dollars today -- that's a fantastic buy.

Peter Bell: And there's a catalyst, potentially, for the market in recognizing that things aren't a disaster here when the first quarters come out. Being on the big board, there are more eyes on you. I wonder about analyst coverage?

Matt Wood: I think we're going to see more of that as we get closer to production. We're seeing more interest. We're running a broker-analyst tour in May and I think we'll see a lot more coverage coming out of that.

Peter Bell: Good. Use the internet to your advantage! That local population is pretty tech savy. I've met a couple Mongolian people in Vancouver who are pretty engaged. They use social media aggressively.

Matt Wood: Our team is going to be at PDAC. I won't be there, but our Mongolian CEO Bataa Tumur-Ochir will be there. Our VP Exploration will be there, too. Aneel Waraich will be there, as well. We are gonna have quite a good team there and I welcome people to come by the booth to chat with the team and get a better sense for Mongolia. I've been in Mongolia myself for a long time. My wife is Mongolian. I've had a lot of success there and I think it's a fantastic place to do business. By all means, people should stop by the booth at PDAC to get a better understanding of what the company is doing and how we're going in Mongolia.

Peter Bell: Very cool to see mention of a prize that you were awarded at some point in time, too.

Matt Wood: I was awarded the Order of the Polar Star for contributions to Mongolia. It's the highest award a foreigner can receive in the country. It's by Presidential and Parliamentary decree. It's something I'm very honored to accept. I'm the first foreigner in the mining sector ever to receive a Polar Star.

Peter Bell: Wow. I don't know the story there -- was it a coal company?

Matt Wood: That's right. One of my other companies in the past in Mongolia was a coal company called Hunnu Coal. That was a company I founded with some Mongolian business partners of mine. We took it from a $20 million IPO on the Australian stock exchange to a $0.5 billion takeout in under two yeas. It was IPO of the Year in Australia for all sectors and was Mines and Money 2012 Deal of the Year. We built a fantastic business in Mongolia with Mongolian people running it. Again, we had hardly any expats in that company. We built a company we were proud of and someone offered us a lot of cash to pay-out to our investors. That was the success of Hunnu Coal. And now we're doing it in the gold space.

Peter Bell: Exactly right. This could happen again. As tough as things could look right now, the next 18 months could always be very interesting.

Matt Wood: Absolutely. I think the next 18 months are extremely interesting, particularly for Steppe Gold as we look at additional acquisitions, are well and truly into production, have completed a feasibility study on the fresh rock to demonstrate a long mine on another profitable operation, and start putting some exploration results for our UK project in the south of the country. As I mentioned earlier, we'll be doing some more acquisitions to grow this business further.

Peter Bell: It's great to hear you convey that vision and ambition. Markets seem to need bigger and bigger all the time. It's good to have a firm foundation to stand on and going into production with ATO does that, but the big vision to get people excited -- what takes this company to a $1 billion valuation?

Matt Wood: That's where we want to take it. We want to be a billion dollar gold company. That's why we turn up to work everyday. That's what we want to do.

Peter Bell: The streaming with Triple Flag Finance and all, there's no forward sales or other hedging?

Matt Wood: No. They've got a stream on the heap leach, which is 25% of the gold production at 30% of spot. There's a small ongoing trail after that on the gold side of things. We had to give away some upside to fund all of this, but we are a small company and we need good backers behind us. Triple Flag has been an absolutely fantastic backer for the company. Not just as financial backers, but they all come from very strong technical backgrounds. We're a small company and sometimes you can't afford that expertise. Not only have Triple Flag provided necessary funding, they have provided great guidance and technical expertise which has been beneficial for the company. They are a very strong partner for us.

Peter Bell: I see them here-there and they seem to be picking up some very aggressive positioning. A very bullish group. Looking forward, I keep my eyes peeled for where we might see leadership in various sides of the business and their name is one of the ones that keeps popping up.

Matt Wood: Yes, I understand that.

Peter Bell: A pleasure to chat with you today, Matt.

Matt Wood: Much appreciated, Peter. I love telling the story.

Peter Bell: Matt Wood, President & CEO of Steppe Gold. Thank you very much.

Matt Wood: Thank you, Peter. 

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