AbraSilver's Phase 5 Closes Strong — DFS, EIA, and RIGI Are the Catalysts Investors Should Be Watching

AbraSilver Resource (TSX: ABRA, OTCQX: ABBRF) has wrapped the final assays from its Phase 5 drill program in Argentina. On The KE Report, CEO John Miniotis and chief geologist Dave O'Connor told host Shad Markwitz that Phase 5 was a clear success — mineralization remains open in both directions, with the focus now shifting to a stacked set of development catalysts.

**Phase 5 delivered where it mattered**

Miniotis called Phase 5 "a banner year for the company," with the drill bit pushing the envelope at Oculto and JAC while regional targets were tested in parallel. The point of the program, he said, was to firm up confidence ahead of the upcoming Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS — the final, bankable engineering study used to justify a construction decision) and to keep growing the resource at the margins.

That goal was met. At JAC, the last holes — meant to close off mineralization — instead kept returning high-grade silver and gold in step-out positions. O'Connor walked through the standout intercepts from the corridor between JAC and Oculto:

- 57 meters at 51 g/t silver, including 13 meters at 477 g/t silver - 17 meters at 432 g/t silver and over 1 g/t gold - 6 meters at over 1 kilo (1,000 g/t) silver and almost 2.5 g/t gold

"The area in between is well mineralized," O'Connor said. The team now has another series of holes planned to chase the margin further.

**Oculto East is the new focus**

The bulk of Phase 6 — already underway with two rigs and on the third hole — is targeted at Oculto East. That's the high-grade gold extension running east of the conceptual open pit, across three sub-zones. O'Connor described a "two-pronged" approach: stepping out systematically from the pit margin, and stepping out hundreds of meters beyond it to pin down the overall extension.

One of the three, the Cerro Bayo zone, hosts both shallow and deeper gold. Management is hoping to find more near-surface ounces to improve the stripping ratio (the amount of waste rock that has to be moved for every ounce of ore — a key driver of open-pit mining cost). If they do, O'Connor said, "the engineers are going to have to go back to the drawing board" on the mining sequence, since the original plan prioritized high-grade silver at JAC in the early years.

**The deeper targets haven't gone away**

The team is also keeping the porphyry-style (a large, deep-seated igneous-hosted mineral system) targets at Cerro Viejo and Cerro Blanco on the table — a single earlier hole returned 36 meters at 2 g/t gold at shallow depths, and recent surface channel sampling returned up to 18 g/t gold across a roughly 2 km by 1.5 km alteration footprint. The plan is to site shallow holes first, then deeper holes once the geometry is better understood. Regional targets Sombra, Phantasma, and Alpaca remain in the queue.

**Three catalysts, two quarters**

The bigger story for 2026, however, is the development pipeline. Miniotis laid out the timeline:

1. **DFS, due in Q2.** Phase 5 was the cutoff for drilling data going into the DFS. The new resource and reserve estimates will be published alongside it, then handed to the mine-planning team. 2. **EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment), still expected this quarter.** Originally targeted for year-end 2025, the EIA slipped a few weeks after Argentine government offices slowed over the holidays. Miniotis said there are "no major hurdles" and approvals remain on track for Q1. 3. **RIGI approval, also this quarter.** AbraSilver submitted its application under Argentina's RIGI regime in December. Approval would lock in a 30-year stability agreement — a foundational step toward project financing.

Final investment decision is targeted for before year-end 2026. "This year is transformative as we go from an explorer into a developer," Miniotis said.

**What RIGI actually changes**

Miniotis spent a few minutes unpacking the economic side of RIGI — the part that matters for project economics, beyond the headline 30-year stability commitment:

- Corporate tax rate locked at 25% - Export duties on gold and silver reduced to zero (historically 8% on gold and 4.5% on silver) - All foreign exchange restrictions eliminated — US dollar revenues from doré (semi-refined gold-silver bars poured at site) sales can be kept offshore rather than repatriated into pesos

Miniotis argued the savings are "hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, at current spot prices," and pointed to over $15 billion of projects that have already received RIGI approval in the past 12 months as evidence that Argentina is now attracting mining capital that had stayed on the sidelines.

**The valuation pitch**

Miniotis closed with the bull case. The company has added a slide to its corporate presentation showing the implied metal price in ABRA's market valuation. At $90 silver and $4,700 gold, he said, the pre-feasibility NPV (Net Present Value — the discounted value of future cash flows) — not even including the resource update going into the DFS — was over C$7.5 billion, against a market cap he described as "a small fraction of that."

Reverse-engineering the current share price, Miniotis argued, implies long-term gold of roughly $4,000 and long-term silver of roughly $22 — about 80% below current spot. "There's never been a bigger disconnect," he said. "It's definitely uncharted territory." If silver holds anywhere near $60 through production, he argued, the model would have to re-rate.

That's the company's framing, not an independent view. The point of the segment, as Markwitz put it, was that even allowing for a meaningful pullback in metals prices, ABRA has multiple near-term catalysts — DFS, EIA, RIGI — lined up to compress that gap.