AbraSilver CEO: Diablilos Now Fully Permitted and Heading Into Construction

## A year of milestones, executed in order

AbraSilver Resource CEO John Miniotis joined The KE Report to walk through what he describes as the busiest stretch in the company history. The narrative is unambiguous: the Diablilos silver-gold project in Argentina is no longer a project-in-waiting. It is fully permitted, the feasibility economics are out, the early construction capital is in the bank, and the company is staffing up for a formal construction decision targeted for the first half of next year.

## The 2026 milestones, stacked

Miniotis runs through a tightly sequenced year:

- **March RIGI approval.** Argentina 30-year stability agreement, which he calls crucial in Argentina, gives Diablilos long-term fiscal and regulatory certainty. - **April through June Full environmental approvals** from both the Salta and Catamarca provinces, plus the prior federal step. Miniotis claim is that Diablilos is now the largest fully permitted, construction-ready silver-gold project anywhere in the world. - **May Updated resource estimate.** Gold resources grew roughly 50% and silver resources roughly 25% versus the prior estimate. - **June Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS).** The headline numbers, as cited by the CEO: a 3 billion after-tax NPV (net present value what the projected future cash flows are worth in todays dollars) and a 40%+ after-tax IRR (internal rate of return the discount rate that makes the project cash flows break even on NPV). Miniotis is careful to note this is the base case, not the ceiling. - **July Over 50 million raised**, including another private placement with Kinross, which the CEO describes as a very supportive shareholder. Early works construction is now fully financed.

## What transitioning to developer actually looks like

Three months ago, the talking point was transition. Now the CEO says the company is fully executing on it. The visible pieces:

- An agreement with Worley for continued critical-path engineering. - Long-lead-time items going on order. - Site infrastructure being upgraded, including expansion of camp capacity. - A new project director, John Naisbitt a mine builder with 45 years in the industry, prior stints at Eldorado Gold, AngloGold, and Goldfields, and over 30 years across Latin America, now relocating to Argentina. - Jeremy Whalen promoted from SVP Projects to COO. - Marie Inkster moved to Executive Chair; per the speaker, she is a former CEO and CFO of Lundin Mining. - Wendy Kaufman appointed as a director and chair of the audit committee, bringing 30+ years of financial-side experience including two decades at Inmet Mining.

## Government relationships, on the ground

Miniotis recently returned from Argentina with Naisbitt, Whalen, and Inkster. They met with the Secretary of Mining in Catamarca, the governor and minister of mining at the provincial level, and the federal Secretary of Mining Luis Lucero in Buenos Aires. His read: alignment at every level, with conversations moving beyond the abstract into hiring numbers, procurement, and community economic impact. The CEO argues that permits are one thing and relationships are another, and that Diablilos has both.

## The trade-off studies that are not in the DFS

This is the section the CEO flags as most likely to be mispriced. The DFS is built only on the tank-leach portion of the resource about 100 million tons of oxides. The May resource estimate also contains another ~130 million tons of lower-grade oxide material that the DFS treated entirely as waste. The plan is to run that material through a heap leach circuit (a lower-cost process that drips leach solution through crushed ore piled on an impermeable pad) in parallel with the tank leach. The CEO frames the upside as roughly half a million ounces of additional gold production from material that would have been mined and moved anyway.

Beyond the heap leach, the tank leach itself was sized at a conservative 9,000 tons per day. Miniotis says there is room to double throughput to 18,000 tons per day in a later phase. A PEA (preliminary economic assessment an early-stage scoping study) on the heap leach is targeted for the end of October, with a PFS (prefeasibility study a more rigorous intermediate-stage study) expected next year.

## Exploration upside the market is not crediting

Miniotis is explicit that Diablilos still has meaningful exploration upside, which is unusual for a company at the DFS stage.

- **Cerro Viejo**, roughly 4 kilometers north of the Oculto deposit. Five initial holes drilled; all came back mineralized, with broad copper intercepts. Follow-up drilling of four to five more holes is planned. The mineralization is in sulfides, which the CEO frames as longer-dated optionality. - **Condor-Yacu**, to the south. Two initial holes earlier in the year returned what the CEO calls the best holes the company has ever announced: 72 meters at 18.7 g/t gold, 117 g/t silver, and over 2% copper from surface. Drilling is restarting shortly, with the goal of pulling this target into the next resource update next year. - **Laco Pita**, in San Juan province, near the Los Azules copper project and the Lundin/BHP play. AbraSilver retains a 20% interest carried by partner TEC Resources, which can earn up to 80%.

## Catalysts to watch

The CEO frames the near-term path as:

1. Heap leach PEA due next quarter (target: end of October). 2. Ongoing exploration news flow from Cerro Viejo, Condor-Yacu, Oculto, and Jack. 3. Continued team additions. 4. Acceleration of early works construction, with a formal construction decision targeted in the first half of next year. 5. Optimal financing package for full construction secured before year-end across debt, streaming/royalty, and offtake options. Production target: before the end of 2029.

## The bear case the CEO is pushing back on

The host raises the recurring skeptical take that AbraSilver is just stringing it along waiting for a buyout. Miniotis answer is to point to capital deployed, team built, permits in hand, and studies underway and to the optionality embedded in the DFS base case. The valuation framing in the interview: at roughly 5x NAV on a DFS that is explicitly the floor, the market is not paying for the heap leach, the throughput expansion, or the exploration pipeline.