B2Gold Corp.

all, I've been doing mining probably names for a better part of 10 years now and I try to do a little bit of everything and make some mistakes, figure it out.

To understand where a mine is located, the cost associated with it, you know, the real costs or the bribe costs or whatever the costs are or the royalty costs, you know, mining in Bali is different or Mali is different than, you know, mining in the Abitibi, right? And so trying to understand where the infrastructure is and, you know, we've, you know, B2 Gold is doing this project, you know, close to the Arctic Circle.

You can only get resupply it twice a year, right? right through through boats and so there's you know there's good geographies in in in um bad countries and there's and there's bad geographies in good countries so i think it's a little bit of nuance to to it all um that's that's kind of how i we approach it so okay

Let's talk about the best bang for buck right now within the mining sector.

It's been ramping up since 2021.

It was acquired from another company called B2 Gold.

And it's one of the largest gold mines in Burkina Faso.

It's also likely to produce more or about the same or more than the Sambrado project.

Um, I think a key component of our story here is our shareholder base.

Um, B2Gold, who is a producing gold company, owns 19.9%, and Alpayana, which is a, a Peruvian private mining company, owns 9.9. And they're, they're active technically.

The B2 geologist just left here.

Uh, Alpayana has been here.

And they deemed a value of 52 cents with that block, by the way, representing approximately 44% of Lightning's issued shares immediately before the distribution.

Also, B2 Gold got some shares, about 5.5 million of those shares, consequently held 16.3 million Lightning shares, or approximately 24.4% of the company immediately afterwards.

So basically what's going on here is that there's a block that's equivalent to almost half of all Lightning's share count.

It moved from a single corporate holder into the hands of B2.

They've, uh, you know, they've taken a lot of positions and a lot of companies, and that's probably what you have to do is you have to, you know, take a lot of positions.

I mean, you know, we've seen B2 Gold take, uh, you know, positions and, uh, things like Snowline and, you know, they also, you know, are down in, uh, um, South America too, taking some positions.

But we haven't really seen them take up to where they've executed on a buyout of one of those positions.

Does your fund buy in the open market or do you do the private placements, especially because you referenced the Vancouver promoters coming to you for money?

What drives who? So the value of the royalty versus the value of the money that's being put in as well as the decisions that that specific person can make?

yeah so michael garrigan he's our chief geological officer and director of the company um so again that's that's where you know him and i founded the company back in in 2023 and and again that's where we kind of thought we had the yin and the yang of a junior exploration company covers the fact that you know i come with that that knowledge and background in capital markets and then he's got you know about a 20-year career in in exploration geology, spent some time obviously with B2Gold and some bigger companies and has worked on arguably I think every continent around the world outside of Antarctica.

So a lot of experience in different jurisdictions and in different geological settings and you know, uh, yeah, he's, he's the reason why we have the projects that we have and why they're becoming what they're becoming.

Um, just very good at what he does and finding these, these systems.

Donations come from various sources.

Um, we have a, a big, uh, golf tournament that's sponsored by B2Gold every year.

We have individual donations.

Uh, a few private, uh, foundations donate to us, but most of it comes from our social enterprise.

I know.

So you've got B2Gold 9.9% shareholders.

They took five in, um, early in '23, and then they took another 5%, and they've topped up their way ever since, so that's a, a tidy little stake for them to have.

When you start actually thinking about who, who could buy this, I don't see B2 being, um, a, a, a natural kind of buyer of this one.

And then once you find one of the smaller caps you like, sometimes it will lead you to others, um, even just on a, uh, Zack's, um, quote page.

So one of the small stocks that I have followed for a long time is B2Gold Corp on the small cap miners, but it's not even that small anymore.

The market cap is 7.5 billion, and we do own it in the Value Investor portfolio.

They're in Canada, and they're mining in Canada, and, and they just got a permit for, uh, Mali, and so they will be in various countries.

You want a gold miner who's making money right now 'cause this is it.

This is when you do make the money, um, in a bull market.

So that's B2Gold Corp. It's very volatile and again, it's hard to own these junior miners, um, especially with all this volatility in the underlying metal.

And, uh, these ones will be more volatile than a Newmont or an Agnico.

We're gonna go through your past picks right now, uh, and take a look at how they did.

We're gonna start with picks from January 5th of 2026, and at the time, you chose B2Gold, BTO, on the TSX at $6.28. Now to 7.78, so 24% upside and 25%, uh, total return.

Do you remember why you picked B2- B2Gold, uh, right at the start of the year?

Uh, I thought that the company was cheap based on free cash flow.

I also thought that eventually they would get the overruns involved in their construction in northern Canada under control.