Perpetua Resources

Phase A — Understand the business

Lens 1 · Company Overview

Perpetua Resources Corp. is a British Columbia-incorporated, Boise, Idaho-headquartered development-stage mining company whose entire enterprise value rests on one asset: the Stibnite Gold Project, 100%-owned, on the site of a historically mined and now partly abandoned/contaminated district on the eastern edge of the Idaho Batholith. It has no revenue, no production, and no operating segments — it is a permitting-and-financing vehicle that intends to become a producing mine. Listed on Nasdaq and the TSX as PPTA; classified as a smaller reporting company / emerging growth company (JOBS Act), i.e. it takes reduced-disclosure and auditor-attestation exemptions.

What the asset actually is — a dual-commodity story:

• Gold is the economic engine. LOM recovered gold ≈ 4,223 Koz (≈4.22M oz) over a 15-year mine life; the first four years are heavily front-loaded (1,852 Koz, ≈463 Koz/yr average) as high-grade Yellow Pine ore is mined.
• Antimony is the strategic differentiator. LOM recovered antimony ≈ 106 Mlbs, with ~69 Mlbs in the first four years. Antimony is a defense-energetics and flame-retardant input; the US imports >80% of its supply, historically ~63% from China, which banned antimony exports to the US in December 2024. Stibnite is positioned as the only advanced-stage domestic mined-antimony source.

Contract / payment structure: as a developer there are no offtake-based recurring revenues yet. Key commercial relationships are (1) government grants from the US Department of War (DOW, formerly DoD) — the company received $59.2M under a DPA Title III TIA since Dec 2022 (expired June 16, 2025, fully drawn) plus an ongoing OTIA/DOTC contract for up to $22.4M; and (2) a $2.9B senior secured EXIM loan approved 2026-05-21. The company is also in early talks with Glencore and others on off-site antimony processing and has a pilot antimony-trisulfide program with Idaho National Labs. A power purchase agreement with Idaho Power is not yet signed — a live cost/schedule input.

Main stakeholders: controlling shareholder Paulson & Co (John Paulson), ~53% of shares out; regulators USFS / USACE / Idaho DEQ; the DOW and EXIM as financiers; the Nez Perce Tribe and environmental NGOs as adversaries/counterparties.

Lens 2 · Supply Chain

For a pre-production miner the "supply chain" is really the build-out chain (what it takes to get to first pour) plus the downstream metal chain (where the gold and antimony go). Named nodes:

Upstream / construction inputs (into Perpetua):

• Mining fleet & earthworks: two 28-yd³ hydraulic shovels, three 16-yd³ wheel loaders, ~twenty 150-ton haul trucks; nominal 20 ktpd (7.30 Mt ore/yr) conventional open-pit hard-rock. Fleet/equipment availability is a named risk factor.
• Power: grid supply from Idaho Power — PPA not yet negotiated, subject to Idaho PUC approval; the TRS electricity cost is an estimate. Single-source chokepoint.
• Access infrastructure: the Burntlog Route — the access road whose construction began end-May 2026. Site access is a genuine physical chokepoint (remote Valley County).
• Financing "inputs": EXIM (~$2.9B debt) + the 2025 equity raise proceeds are the capital that lets construction proceed.

The company (conversion): open-pit mining of three deposits (Yellow Pine, Hangar Flats, West End) + reprocessing of Historical Tailings → flotation → two concentrate streams: a pyrite/gold flotation concentrate (LOM recovery ~87.1% Au from low-antimony material) and an antimony-sulfide concentrate (71.6% Sb recovery from high-antimony material).

Downstream / end customers (out of Perpetua):

• Gold → doré/concentrate into the global gold market (fungible; no concentration risk).
• Antimony → an off-site domestic processing facility (partner talks with Glencore et al.; INL pilot for military-grade antimony trisulfide) → defense primes and the DOW / Defense Logistics Agency (ammunition primers, night vision, nuclear applications) and flame-retardant / battery end-uses. This is where the strategic value sits, and where the chain is currently incomplete — there is no operating US antimony smelter of scale, so the processing route is itself a build.

Chokepoints / single-source dependencies: (1) one asset, one district — no diversification; (2) Idaho Power PPA unsigned; (3) the antimony processing leg does not yet exist domestically; (4) construction access via a single route in a remote, litigated watershed. Names present → lens satisfied.

Lens 3 · Competitive Advantages (moats)

The moat is unusual: it is regulatory and geological scarcity plus a national-security overlay, not brand or switching costs.

1. Permitting moat (the real one). A fully NEPA-permitted, ROD-in-hand, USACE-404-approved US hard-rock mine is close to un-replicable on any near-term horizon — US mine permitting routinely takes 10-15+ years and most projects die in it. Perpetua has the USFS Record of Decision (2026-01-03), the USACE Section 404 permit (2025-05-19), an approved Plan of Operations (Oct 2025), and a court-tested ROD (preliminary injunction denied 2026-05-29). This is a genuine barrier to entry that competitors cannot buy or build quickly.
2. Strategic-mineral monopoly-ish position. As the only advanced domestic mined antimony source, Perpetua is the natural counterparty for US supply-security policy — the source of its EXIM and DOW support. Bargaining power over the government buyer is real while China's ban holds.
3. Grade + scale. Total Probable reserves 104.6 Mt @ 1.43 g/t Au, 0.064% Sb, 1.91 g/t Ag → 149.9 t (≈4.82 Moz) contained gold, 67,443 t (≈148.7 Mlbs) contained antimony, 200.0 t silver. Front-loaded high-grade Yellow Pine gives a 2.4-year base-case payback.
4. Capital-partner moat. A ~53% Paulson anchor and a $2.9B sovereign-backed loan are a financing structure that a junior developer essentially never assembles.

Bargaining power the other way: weak over suppliers of construction, equipment and power (it needs them more than they need it), and the antimony processing buyer relationship is unbuilt. The moat is one-sided: strong versus new entrants and versus the strategic buyer, weak versus its own build-chain. Ground: no positioning.md/bottlenecks.md exists for critical-materials (KB wiki missing) — moat read is filing- + web-derived, not commercial-layer-derived.

Lens 4 · Segments

No reportable operating segments exist — Perpetua has a single asset and no product revenue; segments.csv is correctly empty. The economically meaningful "segmentation" is by reserve deposit and by metal, from the TRS reserve table:

Read: (1) Yellow Pine is the crown jewel — it holds the bulk of the high-antimony/high-grade material and is mined first (front-loaded gold + almost all early antimony). (2) All reserves are Probable — there is zero Proven. That is normal for a project of this maturity but is a genuine confidence caveat: the reserve is modeled, not yet mined. (3) Antimony is concentrated in Yellow Pine + Hangar Flats + the reprocessed Historical Tailings (an environmental-remediation upside — the mine cleans up legacy tailings while extracting metal). (4) No change to reserves since 2024-12-31. Geographic segmentation is trivially "100% Idaho, USA" — which is the entire strategic point.

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Phase B — Measure performance

Lens 5 · Earnings Result (latest print — Q1 2026)

There are no earnings to beat/miss — this is a spend-and-fund entity. The tape that matters is cash burn, financing progress, and construction milestones.

• Q1 2026 net loss: $48.6M (vs $8.2M Q1 2025), EPS −$0.39, weighted-avg shares 124.7M. The 6x YoY loss jump is the signature of a company shifting from permitting into early construction spend.
• FY2025 net loss: $100.4M (vs $14.5M FY2024) — driven by a $76.0M increase in exploration/pre-development expense and a $22.4M drop in grant income (DPA funds exhausted May 2025), partly offset by +$11.8M interest income on the larger cash pile.
• Balance sheet (YE2025): $714.2M cash + $59.5M restricted = $773.7M total; receivables $1.8M, payables $13.6M; effectively no debt yet. Mineral property carrying value $67.7M (not yet capitalized as development — the project has not met the capitalization criterion).
• The 2025 equity raise: 52.1M shares issued for ~$841.8M net, taking shares out from 70.3M (YE2024) to ~124.9M (Mar 2026). This is the war chest that funds early works and the EXIM down-payments — and the source of the dilution the equity story turns on.
• Guidance: management targets a full construction decision in H2 2026, contingent on full financing being in place; it will not start full construction until financing closes. guidance.csv empty (no revenue guidance to track for a developer).

Market reaction / what's priced: at ~$21 the ~$2.64B market cap sits roughly at the TRS base-case unlevered after-tax NPV(5%) of $3.46B less net dilution/risk — i.e. the market is not yet pricing the higher-commodity sensitivity cases (see Lens 11). No unusual accounting items vs. its own history; the loss growth is expected and explained.

Lens 6 · Earnings Calls (sentiment trend)

No transcripts on the shelf (transcripts/ empty) — for a pre-revenue developer the "calls" are financing/permitting update calls and press releases rather than results calls. From the filing narrative + web releases, the management message has moved through a clear de-risking arc over the last ~18 months:

• 2024 → early 2025: focus on securing the ROD (obtained 2025-01-03) and the CWA-404 permit (2025-05-19). Tone: "final permitting."
• Mid-2025: posting construction-phase financial assurance, conditional Notice to Proceed (2025-09-19), early works construction begins 2025-10-21. Tone shifts to "execution."
• Late 2025 → 2026: the message is financing — EXIM application (May 2025) → Congressional notice (board vote 2026-03-30, 25-day period expired 2026-04-24) → $2.9B approval 2026-05-21 → injunction denied 2026-05-29 → critical-path 2026 field-season construction begins.

Recurring phrases: "domestic antimony," "national security / defense energetics," "responsible mining / restoration" (the site is a legacy cleanup), "full construction decision in H2 2026." What they stopped saying: the hedged "if permitting is obtained" framing has largely dropped — permits are now assumed, replaced by "if/when financing closes and construction proceeds." That linguistic shift is the sentiment signal: the company has crossed from a permitting risk narrative to an execution risk narrative.

Lens 7 · Comps

Perpetua has no true peer — a dual gold+antimony, US-permitted, government-financed single-asset developer is idiosyncratic. The useful comp set is (a) other antimony/critical-mineral pre-production plays and (b) US-focused gold developers. Multiples for pre-revenue developers are P/NAV and EV/resource-oz, not P/E or EV/EBITDA (no earnings). The index carries no critical-materials peers (_index.json topic set has only PPTA under critical-materials), so peers are pulled web-side and are thinly/inconsistently sourced.

• P/E, EV/Sales, EV/EBIT, dividend yield, 5-yr avg ROE: n/a — not applicable (no revenue, no earnings, no dividend; ROE is meaningless/negative for a cash-burning developer). Reporting these would be fabrication.
• Analyst targets (a proxy for peer-implied value): consensus Strong Buy, avg PT ~$37.88 (range $32.00-$43.50) vs ~$21 spot — B. Riley $40 (Lucas Pipes), H.C. Wainwright $43.50. That implies analysts are underwriting closer to the higher-commodity NPV cases, not the base deck.

Lens 8 · Stock-Price Catalysts

For PPTA the tape reacts to binary permitting/financing/political events, far more than to any financial metric — the classic developer pattern. The >5% movers (last ~2 years, web-labeled):

• Permitting wins (up): FEIS + Draft ROD (Sep 2024); final USFS ROD (Jan 3, 2025); USACE 404 (May 2025); conditional NTP (Sep 2025); early-works start (Oct 2025) — each a leg up in the de-risking.
• Financing (up): EXIM application (May 2025); board vote to notify Congress (Mar 30, 2026); $2.9B EXIM approval (May 21, 2026).
• Litigation (both directions): the Feb 2025 NEPA suit and the preliminary-injunction motion were overhangs; the injunction denial (May 29, 2026) was a positive catalyst — PPTA rose ~6.9% on the early-works court win per Simply Wall St.
• Analyst PT moves (down): a B. Riley PT set below market triggered a ~7.8% sell-off (Mar 4, 2026) — evidence the stock had run ahead of at least one sell-side model.
• Commodity/macro (up): the China antimony export ban (Dec 2024) and the resulting antimony spike from ~$22k/t to ~$40-60k/t, plus record gold (>$5,500/oz in Jan 2026 ).

Pattern read: the market reacts to (1) permit/court decisions, (2) financing milestones, (3) China/antimony geopolitics, (4) sell-side targets — in that order. It does not react to quarterly loss figures (expected). The two biggest remaining catalysts are therefore the full construction decision (H2 2026) and antimony/gold price + China policy (the Nov 27, 2026 ban-suspension expiry is a scheduled geopolitical event).

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Phase C — Judge people & books

Lens 9 · Management

1. Track record — strong for this specific job. CEO Jon Cherry (appointed Mar 14, 2024) is a 33-year mining veteran whose career is almost custom-built for a contentious US permitting-and-build: senior leader on Resolution Copper (Rio Tinto/BHP JV), GM of Rio Tinto's Eagle Mine (the only US primary nickel-copper mine), and Senior Project Engineer at Kennecott Utah Copper; most recently Chairman/President/CEO of PolyMet Mining, where NorthMet earned "the highest rating the EPA has ever given a mining project," negotiated a Teck JV, and was sold to Glencore. He is a permitting/project-development specialist, not a promoter — the right archetype for the stage.
2. Tenure & skin in the game. Cherry is ~2 years in; CFO Mark Murchison succeeded Jessica Largent (Dec 2025). Insider ownership is dominated not by management but by Paulson & Co (~53%). insider-transactions.csv absent — direct exec ownership not quantified here (n/a).
3. Capital-allocation history. Rational and stage-appropriate: raised ~$841.8M of equity in 2025 into strength (large cash buffer before needing it), lined up $2.9B of sovereign-backed debt rather than diluting the whole capex, and is reprocessing legacy tailings (remediation + metal). No buybacks/dividends (correct for a developer). ROE/ROIC are negative by construction (pre-revenue) and not a useful signal yet.
4. Red flags. The dominant governance fact is Paulson control: under a 2016/2020 investor-rights agreement Paulson designates 2 board seats above 20% ownership and Marcelo Kim (Paulson) is Chairman. A ~53% holder can effectively decide outcomes and could act in ways not aligned with minority holders (related-party / financing terms). This is a concentration risk, not evidence of wrongdoing — but it is the single most important governance line.
5. Founder vs professional manager. Professional-manager team (Cherry/Murchison) operating under a controlling financial sponsor (Paulson/Kim). Implication: execution discipline is high; minority-shareholder leverage is low.

Lens 10 · Forensic Red Flags

Forensic read of a pre-revenue developer — the risks are runway, dilution, capitalization, and contingencies, not revenue-recognition games.

• Revenue recognition: n/a — no revenue. Grant income ($15.0M FY2025) is the only P&L "income" line and is recognized against DOW funding; it fell $22.4M YoY as DPA funds were exhausted (May 2025) — a clean, disclosed step-down, not an accounting flag.
• Capitalization policy: project costs are expensed, not capitalized, because the deposit has "not yet met the criteria for capitalization" as of Mar 31, 2026. This is conservative — the loss is real cash out, not deferred. Once the construction decision is made, costs begin capitalizing, which will change the reported-loss optics (watch for the switch).
• Cash vs earnings: operating cash burn tracks the net loss closely (SBC $1.8M/qtr, minimal D&A) — no divergence between earnings and cash. That is the good forensic outcome for a developer.
• Dilution / SBC: the material "quality of earnings" issue is share count, not accruals — 124.9M shares (Mar 2026) vs 70.3M (YE2024), plus 4.82M warrants and ~1.33M share units outstanding; total potential dilution ~6.15M instruments (currently anti-dilutive against a loss). Plan cap: 8,280,530 shares.
• Going concern: the filings do not raise substantial-doubt/going-concern language — with $773.7M cash the company has near-term flexibility and can "adjust planned activities through the next twelve months" if financing slips. But long-term liquidity explicitly requires the ~$2.6B project capex to be financed — the balance sheet does not cover the build; EXIM + further equity are required.
• Contingencies (the big one): environmental litigation and financial-assurance/surety obligations. Surety-bond covenants can trigger demands for additional collateral, straining liquidity. Reclamation/closure liabilities are long-dated.
• Cybersecurity / controls: as an emerging growth company it is exempt from SOX 404(b) auditor attestation — weaker external control assurance than a large filer.

Regulatory findings (required sub-section):

• SEC Litigation Releases / AAERs: None. No LR and no AAER naming Perpetua Resources in EDGAR EFTS for 2021-07-06 → 2026-07-06.
• Non-SEC enforcement (FTC/DOJ/FDA/consent decree/penalty web search): no material enforcement action found; the government relationship is supportive (DOW grants, EXIM loan), not adversarial.
• Item 3 Legal Proceedings (10-K, quoted, ``): two active federal matters. (1) A Nez Perce Tribe CWA suit, being addressed via good-faith discussions and a proposed South Fork Salmon Water Quality Enhancement Fund. (2) A NEPA suit filed Feb 18, 2025 in the US District Court for the District of Idaho by Save the South Fork Salmon, the Idaho Conservation League and other NGOs against USFS/USDA, seeking to vacate the ROD and the Biological Opinions. Plaintiffs sought a preliminary injunction (hearing May 28, 2026) — which the court DENIED on May 29, 2026, finding no irreparable harm; early-works and 2026 field-season construction proceed. The underlying merits suit is still live even though the injunction failed.

Net forensic verdict: books are clean and conservatively stated. The risk is not accounting — it is runway-to-financing, ongoing dilution, and environmental-litigation/financial-assurance contingencies.

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Phase D — Project & stress-test

Lens 11 · Forward Projection

EPS is the wrong lens — Perpetua will report losses until first production (targeted post-construction, i.e. not before ~2028+). The correct valuation frame is the project NPV under commodity scenarios, plus a runway-to-catalyst check. No forecast.ts create is logged (unattended --watchlist rule; and there is no committed EPS base case to score).

The central number and its flaw — the TRS deck is stale-low. The March 2026 TRS base case assumes gold $3,250/oz, antimony $10.00/lb (~$22,000/t), silver $40/oz, producing an unlevered after-tax NPV(5%) of $3.46B and IRR 23.5%, LOM avg EBITDA $766M, LOM avg FCF $607M, 2.4-yr payback, initial capital $2,576M. But the TRS itself publishes a price-sensitivity ladder:

The disconnect that defines the trade:

• Gold spot is ~$5,000+/oz (hit ~$5,589 Jan 2026; JPM sees ~$6,000 Q4 2026; Goldman ~$4,900) — i.e. ~50-70% above the $3,250 base deck.
• Antimony spot is ~$40,000-60,000/t (Fastmarkets high $59,750/t on 2025-07-04) — i.e. ~2-3x the $22,000/t base deck.

So current spot for both metals sits at or above the TRS's highest sensitivity case. Marked to something near spot, the project NPV plausibly sits in the $6-7B+ range rather than $3.46B. Against a ~$2.64B market cap, the asset is being valued at roughly 0.4x a spot-marked NPV — but that is not mispricing so much as risk discount: dilution to fund the build, execution risk, litigation tail, and the fact reserves are 100% Probable.

Base / bull / bear (project value, ``):

• Base: construction decision H2 2026; EXIM funds; metals normalize between the deck and spot → ~$4-5B NPV, market re-rates toward ~$30-38 (analyst zone) as construction de-risks.
• Bull: gold holds >$4,000 and antimony >$30k/t through first production; China ban persists past Nov 2026; on-time build → $6-7B+ NPV, PT $43+ achievable.
• Bear: capex inflation on the $2.576B estimate; construction/schedule slip; further equity dilution at depressed prices; metals mean-revert (gold to $3,000s, antimony back toward $20k/t on ban suspension) → NPV compresses toward the base deck or below and the equity is diluted into it.

Runway-to-catalyst: $773.7M cash easily reaches the H2 2026 construction decision and the EXIM draw — no near-term financing cliff. The long-term $2.6B capex is covered by EXIM + equity, not the current balance sheet — that is the funding structure to watch, not a 12-month liquidity risk.

Lens 12 · Bull vs Bear

Bull case. Perpetua is the rare US developer that has cleared both killer gates — it holds a court-tested ROD and a $2.9B sovereign loan — while sitting on ~4.8 Moz of gold and the only advanced domestic antimony reserve at a moment when China has banned antimony exports and the Pentagon is spending ~$1B to rebuild stockpiles. The TRS prices gold at $3,250 and antimony at $10/lb; spot is ~$5,000 and ~$40-60k/t. The base-case $3.46B NPV is therefore a floor built on conservative prices, and the sensitivity ladder ($5-7B) is closer to reality. Front-loaded high-grade Yellow Pine gives a sub-2.5-year payback; the antimony is a strategic call-option the market barely prices. A ~53% Paulson anchor and a permitting specialist CEO (Cherry) mean the balance-sheet and execution risk is as de-risked as a pre-production miner gets. Analysts (Strong Buy, ~$38 avg vs ~$21 spot) are underwriting the higher-commodity outcome.

Bear case (permanent-impairment risks). (1) Dilution is the thesis-killer — $2.576B of capex against a $2.64B market cap and $774M of cash means the equity is not funded through production; even with EXIM debt, cost overruns or schedule slips force fresh equity at whatever price prevails, and the 70→125M share count in one year shows how fast the count moves. (2) Litigation tail — the injunction was denied but the NEPA merits suit to vacate the ROD is still live; an adverse merits ruling or a Nez Perce settlement that constrains operations could impair the asset. (3) Commodity mean-reversion — the antimony spike is policy-driven; China suspended the ban to Nov 27, 2026, and any US-China détente or ban lapse re-rates antimony down and undercuts the strategic premium; gold at $5,000 is itself a stretched input.

Pre-mortem (18 months out, thesis broke — what happened?): Most likely path — a capex overrun + construction delay on a first-of-kind remote build forces a dilutive equity raise into a softer commodity tape (antimony ban suspended/lapsed, gold off its highs), and the merits litigation drags, so the stock de-rates on funding + timeline + waning strategic narrative even though the mine is still being built. Second path — a genuinely adverse NEPA merits ruling partially vacates the ROD and re-opens permitting.

Are multiples too high? No — on a spot-marked NPV the equity is cheap (~0.4x). The market is applying an execution/dilution/litigation discount, not exuberance. That is the correct posture for a pre-production single-asset miner and is why this is a "watch the build" name rather than an obvious long here.

Contrarian view (what the market refuses to see): The consensus frames PPTA as a gold developer with an antimony kicker. The more durable framing is the reverse — it is a US strategic-materials asset with a gold-funded balance sheet, and its real re-rating catalyst is not the gold price but US industrial-policy permanence: the EXIM loan, the DOW offtake path, and a bipartisan consensus that the US cannot depend on Chinese antimony. If that policy tailwind institutionalizes (multi-year offtake, strategic-reserve purchases), the strategic premium is sticky regardless of where China sets its export switch.

Lens 13 · Devil's Advocate (short-seller)

Dismantling the bull case.

• What structurally breaks the model: it is not yet a business — it is a ~$2.6B construction project that must be built on time, on budget, in a remote, litigated, high-altitude Idaho watershed, with no Proven reserves (100% Probable), an unsigned power contract, and an antimony processing route that does not yet exist domestically. Any one of these slipping impairs the equity via dilution.
• Revenue concentration: total — one asset, one district. There is no second mine, no diversification, no cash flow. A single adverse event (court ruling, tailings/permit issue, capex blowout) has no offset.
• Why the moat is weaker than bulls think: the "strategic antimony" moat is policy-contingent and reversible. China suspended its export ban to Nov 27, 2026; if the ban lapses or US-China relations thaw, antimony can round-trip from ~$50k/t back toward ~$20k/t, gutting the strategic premium and pulling antimony revenue back to the modest ~$10/lb deck. The permitting moat is real but still under legal attack (merits suit live).
• Most dangerous underestimated competitor: not another miner — it is China turning the export tap back on (plus recycling and existing global antimony supply, which Fastmarkets calls "ample" for 2026 on a supply basis ). Cheap restored supply is the real competitor to a $2.6B greenfield build.
• Worst capital-allocation / governance concern: Paulson's ~53% control with board designation and the chairmanship — a controlling holder can set financing terms and outcomes with limited minority recourse. Watch any related-party financing.
• Assumptions that must hold for today's price: EXIM funds on the indicated terms; the $2.576B capex holds; construction stays on schedule; the merits suit fails; and gold + antimony stay elevated long enough to fund and de-risk the build. That is a long chain of conjunctions.
• If growth/economics disappoint 20-30%: a ~25% capex overrun (→ ~$3.2B) plus a metals pullback toward the base deck compresses NPV toward $2-3B and forces dilutive equity — the stock could halve from a re-rate and a share-count increase simultaneously.
• Single scenario that permanently impairs: an adverse NEPA merits ruling that vacates or materially reopens the ROD — resetting the permitting clock on a project whose entire premium is being permitted. Plausibility: lower after the injunction denial, but non-zero while the merits suit is pending.

Lens 14 · Management Questions (ordered by information value)

1. Post the $2.9B EXIM approval, what are the remaining conditions precedent to first draw, and what is the expected date of the full construction decision and financial close?
2. What is the total funding gap to first gold pour after EXIM debt and current cash — and how much incremental equity do you expect to issue, at what assumed price, to close it?
3. How firm is the $2.576B initial-capital estimate given engineering is still progressing — what contingency is embedded, and what is your current read on cost/schedule pressure for a remote Idaho build?
4. What is the status of the NEPA merits litigation (not the injunction) and the Nez Perce discussions/Water Quality Enhancement Fund — what outcomes would materially alter the mine plan?
5. When and how does the antimony processing route get built — is Glencore (or another partner) a binding offtake/processing deal, and does it need its own capital?
6. What antimony and gold price assumptions will govern the financed project, and are there offtake or hedging arrangements (with the DOW/DLA or commercially) that lock in the strategic premium regardless of China's export switch?
7. Given China suspended its antimony ban to Nov 27, 2026, how do you protect the project economics if antimony prices normalize before you are in production?
8. What is the status of the Idaho Power PPA and Idaho PUC approval, and what is the downside if power costs come in materially above the TRS estimate?
9. What are the surety-bond / financial-assurance obligations and their covenants — under what scenarios could a collateral call strain liquidity?
10. How should minority shareholders think about Paulson's ~53% control and board rights — are there governance protections against related-party financing on non-market terms?
11. What is the reserve-conversion path from Probable to Proven, and does early mining/grade-control risk changing the mine plan or the front-loaded high-grade profile?
12. What is the realistic first-production date and the ramp curve to steady-state 20 ktpd, and what are the biggest commissioning risks?
13. What DOW/DLA offtake or strategic-reserve purchase agreements are in negotiation, and could they underpin a floor on antimony revenue?
14. How do you sequence legacy-tailings remediation with production, and what are the environmental-liability and water-treatment cost tails through closure?
15. Beyond Stibnite, is there any district or regional exploration/expansion optionality, or is this strictly a single-asset, build-and-deplete story?

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