Amex Exploration plots phased path to gold production at Perron as Eldorado raises stake to 27%

Amex Exploration (TSX-V: AMX, OTCQX: AMX-EF) is laying out a three-stage path to production at its Perron Gold Project in Quebec, with two economic studies expected in early 2026 ahead of a planned bulk sample at the high-grade Champagne Zone.

The project hosts 2.3 million ounces of gold across all resource categories, with 1.6 million ounces in the measured and indicated bucket at an average grade of 6.14 grams per tonne. The standout is the Champagne Zone, which holds 831,000 ounces at 16.2 grams per tonne — roughly half an ounce of gold in every tonne of rock. "When you have these kind of numbers, high-grade, you're right beside the town, right beside the city, you've got workforce, it really makes the numbers really, really compelling," President and CEO Victor Cantore said on The KE Report.

The previous preliminary economic assessment (PEA) used a $2,500 base case for gold but ran a $3,400 spot sensitivity, with current prices roughly $1,000 an ounce higher than that. That study produced a 107.6% post-tax IRR (internal rate of return — the annualised project return), a 0.4-year payback (about five months), and a $1.8 billion post-tax net present value at a 5% discount rate, against an initial capital expenditure (capex — the upfront cost to build the mine) of $146 million, with annual free cash flow averaging roughly $300 million.

**Bulk sample before toll milling before plant**

Rather than jump straight to a full-scale processing facility, Amex is sequencing the project in three steps. First, the company has applied for a 40,000-tonne bulk sample permit at the Champagne Zone. At the zone's grade of roughly half an ounce per tonne, that translates to 20,000 to 23,000 ounces of recovered gold — well over $100 million of revenue at current prices, according to Cantore. "That pretty much takes care of your phase one initial capital expenditure," he said.

Phase two uses toll milling — sending Perron ore to a third-party processing facility — to generate cash flow for the first four to five years of production. Cantore said pre-tax cash flow during that period is expected to run about $300 million, more than enough to cover the $191 million growth capex for a dedicated plant. The phased structure, the CEO argues, lets the company "mitigate the risk from a technical side and also from a financial side, where usually failures come from not sizing the mill properly." Exploration drilling will continue in parallel, meaning the eventual mill could be sized larger than currently envisioned.

**Metallurgy is unusually clean**

Metallurgical work (testing how ore behaves through recovery processes) on the Champagne Zone returned 99% gold recovery in testing, with 75% of the gold captured by gravity separation alone on the front end of the circuit. Cantore suggested the company may be able to skip flotation (a step that uses chemicals to float mineral particles to the surface) entirely and run material straight to cyanide leaching, simplifying the flowsheet. Other zones — Gratien, Western Denise, Team — averaged around 98% recovery. For the economic studies the engineers are using a conservative 95% recovery figure.

A secondary credit, not booked in any study: about one million ounces of silver in the resource. Even at a 50–60% recovery, Cantore estimates that could add roughly $50 million of revenue at current prices.

**Royalties and capital stack**

There are no streams or royalties on the project beyond a single 1.5% net smelter return royalty already baked into the PEA. Cantore said the silver by-product doesn't need to be monetised via a streaming deal because it flows alongside gold production and the project's capex is comparatively modest.

**Ontario expansion and exploration**

The Quebec-side land package covers 45.6 square kilometres in the Abitibi Greenstone Belt, but Amex has more than tenfold'd its footprint through two recent acquisitions (March and December, including the Abbotsford and Hepburn projects) and additional claim staking. The company now controls more than 70 kilometres of strike length and 500 square kilometres of total land. Management describes the Ontario ground as a "potential mirror image" of the Perron block that hosts the existing 2.3-million-ounce resource, with historical copper-gold showings including intercepts at 6.79 g/t and 4.79 g/t. The area has seen limited modern exploration.

The 2026 drill program will run "a little over 100,000 metres" across both Quebec and Ontario, with metres allocated to whichever zones return the best results — the same playbook that built Champagne.

**Financing and the Eldorado relationship**

Amex recently closed a $37.25 million financing, of which $25 million was a charity flow-through tranche priced at a premium. Eldorado Gold, which first invested in February 2024, provided 64% of the round, lifting its stake from roughly 17% to about 27%. The placement came as Eric Sprott reduced part of his holding via a block trade; Cantore called the shift "neutral" and read Eldorado's increased position as a strong endorsement. The two companies now operate a technical committee with two representatives each.

Analyst coverage is provided by Canaccord (Jeremy Hoyt), National Bank (Rabih Nizami), Haywood (Pierre Viancourt) and Ventum, with a new Ventum analyst to be assigned.

**Near-term catalysts**

Cantore flagged several expected milestones for the first quarter of 2026: the bulk sample permit, definitive agreements with one or two toll mills, an exploration agreement with Ontario First Nations, an MOU with the Pikogan First Nations on the Quebec side covering bulk sample and production, and continued drilling results. The two economic studies covering Phase 1 and Phase 2 are the largest single items on the calendar.