Investor Insight

Sun Summit Minerals is targeting the delineation of a multi-million-ounce gold-silver resource at its flagship JD project. With strategic positioning in an emerging consolidation hotspot, compelling valuation metrics, and a track record of discovery, Sun Summit is primed to deliver substantial value creation in the coming quarters.

Overview

Sun Summit Minerals (TSXV:SMN,OTCQB:SMREF) is a Canadian mineral exploration company focused on developing its district-scale gold and copper projects in British Columbia.

The company has completed its 2025 exploration programs at the flagship JD Project and its inaugural exploration program at the Theory Project, located in the Toodoggone District.

Complementing JD and Theory is the company’s Buck project, a large, bulk-tonnage gold-silver system near Houston, BC, with an initial NI 43-101 resource estimate and significant exploration upside.

With capital in hand, a five-year exploration permit secured, and a camp established at JD, Sun Summit is executing a focused strategy to build scale, unlock resource potential and drive shareholder value. Under the leadership of its new CEO, the company has re-focused its strategy with a sharpened vision, a strengthened technical and leadership team, and a portfolio of high-quality, strategically located assets positioned to drive long-term shareholder value.

Company Highlights

• Tiered Exploration Strategy: Sun Summit Minerals is advancing a focused portfolio in British Columbia with its flagship JD Project in the Toodoggone District as the primary discovery driver, supported by early-stage exploration at the nearby Theory Project, and complemented by the Buck Project in central BC, a strategic asset with a published mineral resource estimate.
• Strategic Location: Sun Summit’s assets are located in well-established and mining-friendly regions of British Columbia. The flagship JD project and early-stage Theory Project are situated in the prolific Toodoggone district—home to Thesis Gold and Centerra’s Kemess Mine, while Buck lies in Central BC near the Blackwater, Huckleberry, and Equity Silver mines.
• Potential for Multiple Expansion: Trading at approximately US$38/oz gold equivalent (EV/oz) based on Buck alone, with no value currently ascribed to the JD Project, the company represents a deep value opportunity compared to its next-door neighbour, Thesis Gold, which trades at approximately US$136/oz. Success at the drill bit from ongoing exploration at JD could support a higher valuation over time.
• Experienced, Capital Markets-Savvy Leadership: CEO Niel Marotta brings 30 years of capital markets acumen, including experience from Fidelity and Orezone. The broader team includes senior geologists and advisors with decades of success in gold discoveries and mine development in BC.
• Positioned for Consolidation: With majors like Freeport, Centerra, and Skeena investing heavily in adjacent properties, Sun Summit’s flagship JD Project is strategically located and advancing at the right time in the Lassonde Curve to benefit from industry-wide M&A and consolidation trends.

Key Projects

JD & Theory Projects

The JD & Theory projects span more than 25,000 hectares in the heart of the Toodoggone mining district in north-central BC, one of Canada’s most prospective belts for epithermal gold-silver and porphyry copper-gold systems. The district is home to Thesis Gold’s Ranch and Lawyers deposits (4.6 Moz gold equivalent, C$700 million market cap), Centerra’s Kemess underground development, and TDG Gold’s Shasta-Baker project. Infrastructure around the project includes hydroelectric grid access, the nearby Sturdee airstrip and all-season roads.

Results from the 2025 drill campaign at Creek Zone

The JD project hosts a 4.5 km mineralized corridor, known as Creek-Finn, with multiple underexplored targets showing evidence of both high-grade veins and broad disseminated gold systems. Historic and recent drill highlights include:

• 2.1 grams per ton (g/t) gold over 122.5 m including 121 g/t gold over 1.5 m (CZ-24-004)
• 11.7 g/t gold over 22 m including 61.2 g/t gold over 4 m (CZ97-008)
• 7.3 g/t gold over 35.7 m including 215.4 g/t gold over 1 m (JD95-0472)

The Creek Zone features high-grade epithermal veins within broader disseminated zones, supported by strong IP anomalies and gold-in-soil results up to 12.2 g/t gold. The Finn Zone hosts near-surface mineralization with extensive historical drilling (~270 holes) and is open in all directions. Other targets include McClair (porphyry copper), East McClair (copper-gold skarn) and Moosehorn.

Sun Summit Minerals has completed its 2025 21-hole, 6,864 -meter drill program, successfully intersecting gold mineralization in all holes. The results have defined a northwest-trending, structurally controlled zone measuring approximately 750 meters by 300 meters and extending to a vertical depth of around 150 meters. The zone remains open both along strike and at depth, highlighting significant potential for further expansion. A five-year permit secured in April 2025 provides exploration continuity through 2030.

Sun Summit can earn 100 percent of the JD project by making staged cash/share payments and completing work commitments through 2029. Following the completion of its 2025 exploration program, the company closed an $11.5 million financing on December 23, 2025, fully funding the 2026 exploration program and strengthening its ability to advance the earn-in without near-term dilution.

Buck Project

The 100 percent owned Buck project spans 52,000 hectares and is located near key deposits, including Artemis Gold’s Blackwater (8 Moz gold), Imperial’s Huckleberry copper mine, and Newmont’s historic Equity Silver mine. Buck features near-surface bulk-tonnage gold-silver mineralization with porphyry copper-molybdenum potential at depth.

In February 2025, Sun Summit published its inaugural NI 43-101 mineral resource:

• Indicated: 1.15 Mt @ 0.519 g/t gold equivalent (19,100 oz)
• Inferred: 52.2 Mt @ 0.489 g/t gold equivalent (820,400 oz)

Mineralization remains open in all directions.

Buck is considered a strategic asset providing leverage to rising gold prices and future transaction potential, but currently receives minimal capital allocation as JD is prioritized.

Sun Summit can earn 100 percent of the JD project by making staged cash/share payments and completing work commitments through 2029. With ~C$6 million earmarked for the project this year alone, Sun Summit is expected to fulfill its 2025 and 2026 earn-in obligations without additional equity raises.

Management Team

Niel Marotta – Chief Executive Officer and Director

Niel Marotta has three decades of capital markets experience, including a successful tenure at Fidelity (FMRCo.), where he managed the top-performing Select Gold Fund and oversaw >$1 billion in AUM. He was previously VP at Orezone Resources, where he helped lead its C$350 million acquisition by IAMGOLD. Marotta has raised over $1 billion in financing and is driving Sun Summit’s transition from a legacy explorer to a discovery-focused value generator.

Brian Lock – Executive Chairman

A veteran of the mining industry with 40+ years of executive experience, Brian Lock has led multiple public companies, including Castle Peak Mining and Scorpio Gold. His expertise spans project development, M&A and corporate governance.

Waseem Javed – Chief Financial Officer

A seasoned mining CFO, Waseem Javed ensures disciplined capital deployment and financial controls. His experience spans junior explorers and mid-tier producers across Canada and the US.

Ken MacDonald – VP Exploration

Ken MacDonald is a registered professional geologist with over 30 years in mineral exploration and permitting in BC. Formerly with the BC Mines Branch and multiple juniors, he leads Sun Summit’s technical programs and NI 43-101 compliance.

Christopher Leslie – Technical Advisor

An expert in porphyry and epithermal systems, Christopher Leslie led the discovery of the 8 Moz Blackwater deposit while at Richfield Ventures, and later served as VP exploration for Tower Resources. He was instrumental in advancing the JD-Theory project during its prior ownership.

Robert D. Willis – Senior Advisor

Founder of several successful exploration companies, including Pioneer Metals and Manhattan Minerals, Robert Willis has 35+ years of technical and executive experience across North and South America.

Terry Salman – Strategic Advisor

Founder of Salman Partners and one of Canada’s most influential mining financiers, Terry Salman has backed dozens of successful juniors over a 40-year career in mining investment banking.

Investor Insight

Transition Metals offers investors exposure to discovery-driven upside across critical and precious metals through a proven project generator model, a diversified Canadian asset portfolio, and a capital-efficient strategy designed to minimize dilution while retaining meaningful discovery and monetization leverage.

Overview

Transition Metals (TSXV:XTM) is a Canada-based, multi-commodity exploration company focused on the discovery of critical and precious metals exclusively within Canada’s most prospective and stable mining jurisdictions. The company has assembled a diversified portfolio of exploration projects spanning platinum group metals, nickel, copper, gold, silver and uranium, providing broad exposure to commodities central to electrification, decarbonization and long-term resource security.

Operating under a disciplined project generator model, Transition advances early-stage assets through geoscience-driven exploration before strategically bringing in partners to participate in funding drilling and development. This approach allows the company to preserve capital, limit shareholder dilution and retain upside through royalties, milestone payments and equity interests, while maintaining operatorship and technical control during key exploration phases.

Transition’s portfolio includes flagship assets such as the Saturday Night/Sunday Lake PGM projects near Thunder Bay, the Gowganda Gold project in Ontario and the Pike Warden polymetallic system in Yukon, alongside a pipeline of additional opportunities across Ontario, British Columbia, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories. Led by an award-winning technical team with a proven discovery record, the company is positioned to create shareholder value through discovery, disciplined capital management and strategic asset monetization within a secure, Canada-focused footprint.

Company Highlights

• Multi-commodity exploration company with a portfolio of projects and royalties, covering gold, nickel, copper, platinum group metals (PGM), cobalt, tungsten and more located in mining-friendly jurisdictions across Canada
• Flagship PGM exposure at the Saturday Night/Sunday Lake projects in the Thunder Bay region
• Discovery-focused project generator model designed to minimize shareholder dilution while maximizing exploration leverage
• Strong treasury position complemented by marketable securities, milestone payments and royalty interests
• Proven management team with multiple industry discovery awards and a long track record of value creation
• Exposure to critical metals themes supported by government funding, flow-through incentives and secure jurisdictions

Key Projects

Saturday Night / Sunday Lake (Ontario)

The Saturday Night and adjacent Sunday Lake projects form one of the most compelling emerging PGM exploration stories in the Thunder Bay region. The properties are associated with early-stage Midcontinent Rift-related mafic-ultramafic intrusions, analogous in age and style to major North American PGM-Ni-Cu deposits such as Eagle (Michigan), Tamarack (Minnesota) and Thunder Bay North (Ontario). Sunday Lake hosts thick, laterally extensive zones of PGM mineralization, while drilling at Saturday Night has confirmed a large rift-related intrusion with basal PGM-Ni-Cu mineralization. Ongoing and planned drilling is focused on expanding the mineralized footprint and testing the basal contact geometry, positioning the project as a potential district-scale PGM system.

Gowganda (Ontario)

Gowganda is a 100-percent-owned, 87 sq km gold project in the historic Gowganda silver-cobalt camp, where Transition reports it made a gold discovery in 2010 less than 1 km from a paved highway. The company describes a widespread gold mineralized system over ~1.25 km of strike, with “visible gold at surface” and highlights including 97 grams per ton (g/t) gold over 40 cm (channel sample) and drill highlights including 2.4 g/t gold over 7.1 m and 82.5 g/t gold over 0.4 m (within 35 m of surface).

Dessert Lake (Northwest Territories)

Dessert Lake is a strategic uranium exploration opportunity in a large, underexplored basin that shares geological similarities with the Athabasca Basin, which hosts a significant portion of the world’s high-grade uranium deposits. Transition holds the exclusive right to stake claims and is seeking a partner to advance the district-scale opportunity, noting prospective settings along the Wopmay fault and along the basal unconformity/crustal fault intersections.

Pike Warden (Yukon)

Pike Warden is a large polymetallic project situated on the northern margin of the Bennett Lake Caldera, one of the largest collapsed caldera complexes in Canada. Pike Warden is an emerging epithermal gold-silver/porphyry copper system near the Yukon–BC border, ~70 km southwest of Whitehorse, where Transition retains the option to earn 100% of the 41 sq km property. Transition reports 25+ zones of gold-silver-copper-molybdenum-lead mineralization identified to date and sampling highlights up to 48.1 g/t gold, 11,270 g/t silver, 7.49 percent copper, 2.37 percent molybdenum and 59.6 percent lead, with recent work and targeting supported by geophysics and systematic sampling.

Jolly (Ontario)

Jolly Gold is a large, 100-percent-owned and optioned land package covering the western extension of the Beardmore–Geraldton greenstone belt, with multiple undrilled occurrences of high-grade gold mineralization. The company highlights major and splay structures intersecting favourable stratigraphy, describing the target as a camp-scale exploration opportunity.

Cryderman (Ontario)

Cryderman is a gold project in the Shining Tree West camp located along the Ridout Deformation Zone and sits 55 km east of IAMGOLS’s Côté gold project and 16 km west of Aris Gold’s Juby gold project. It is a gold-mineralized system over ~500 m of strike hosted in N–S trending, multi-phase quartz-carbonate veins. The company reports channel sample highlights including 9.15 g/t gold over 1.07 m (with additional high-grade sub-intervals).

Maude Lake (Ontario)

The Maud Lake project is a high-tenor nickel-copper-cobalt-PGM magmatic sulphide system located ~10 km north of Schreiber, Ontario. Transition reports surface sampling up to 6.23 percent nickel, 0.719 percent copper, 0.085 percent cobalt, and 1.042 g/t PGM (platinum+palladium+gold), and notes drilling that intersected a semi-continuous zone of magmatic sulphides near the base of a gabbroic intrusion including 20.01 m averaging 0.33 percent nickel and 0.28 percent copper (including 4 m averaging 0.61 percent nickel and 0.52 percent copper).

Homathko (British Columbia)

Homathko is a high-grade, drill-ready gold prospect exposed by receding glaciers in British Columbia, with an interpreted lode gold system traced along ~1.5 km of strike and grab sample highlights up to 87 g/t gold.

Island Copper (Ontario)

Island Copper is an IOCG (iron oxide copper-gold) opportunity north of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, with Transition reporting two separate mineralized showings along Highway 556. Recent samples and historical drill holes returned values up to 9 percent copper.

Wollaston (Saskatchewan)

Wollaston Copper is a >30 sq km property in north-central Saskatchewan south of the Athabasca Basin, where Transition describes two sediment-hosted base metal target opportunities. The company cites historic drilling by Noranda (1990) including 10.82 m grading 0.25 percent copper and 7.4 m grading 0.49 percent copper (both within 40 m of surface), and a separate zinc showing with 17.0 m grading 2.52 percent zinc and 4.0 m grading 7.18 percent zinc, within the Wollaston Supergroup.

Pipestone (Ontario)

Pipestone is a 33 sq km gold project in the Porcupine camp ~25 km north of Timmins, covering ~13 km of interpreted strike extension of the Pipestone structure (one of two main structural breaks recognized in the Timmins camp). The property is subject to a participating joint venture with Gowest Gold, with provisions for dilution to a 2 percent NSR (with a 1 percent buyback for $1 million).

Bancroft (Ontario)

Bancroft is a southern Ontario nickel-coper-cobalt-PGM greenfield land package that has benefited from ~$5 million in exploration expenditures and includes drilling intersections of 5.05 m averaging 1.98 g/t PGM and 60 m of 1.34 g/t PGM. It comprises 2,789 hectares of mining claims and is located less than a 2-hour drive from Toronto.

Management Team

Scott McLean – President, CEO and Co-founder

Scott McLean has over 30 years of experience in mineral exploration and corporate leadership. He spent 23 years with Falconbridge Limited where he was involved in the discovery of the Nickel Rim South deposit in Sudbury, Ontario. For this work, he was named Prospector of the Year (2004) by the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada. McLean is responsible for corporate vision, capital structure, governance and investor relations, and also serves as an executive director of SPC Nickel Corp.

Greg Collins – Chief Operating Officer and Co-founder

Greg Collins is a professional geologist with more than 25 years of experience across gold and base metals exploration, resource estimation, mine planning, operations and management. His career spans Canada and international jurisdictions. Collins is a founding partner and COO of Transition Metals and is also CEO of Canadian Gold Miner.

Carmelo Marrelli – Chief Financial Officer

Carmelo Marrelli is a chartered professional accountant and principal of The Marrelli Group of Companies. He acts as CFO for a number of public issuers on the TSX, TSX Venture Exchange and CSE, bringing financial, governance and regulatory expertise. Marrelli holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Toronto and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators.

Bill Stormont – Business Development

Bill Stormont is a capital markets executive with experience in institutional equity (buy-side, sell-side and fund management), investor relations and stakeholder engagement. He has served in equity analyst and institutional sales roles, worked as a European equity fund manager, and supports business development, partnerships and strategic communications for Transition Metals. Stormont holds an MBA from the University of British Columbia.

Tom Hart – Chief Geologist

Tom Hart is an award-winning geologist with over 40 years of exploration experience across government and industry, including Inco and the Ontario Geological Survey. He specializes in lode gold and base metal systems and has expertise in soil, till and rock analytical methods. Hart was co-recipient of the Northwestern Ontario Prospectors Association’s Discovery of the Year Award (2004).

Benjamin Williams – Exploration Manager Geologist

Benjamin Williams has more than 10 years of geological experience and has been with Transition Metals since 2018. He obtained a BSc with Honours in Geology from Saint Mary;s University, Halifax, followed by Graduate work at Carleton University in Ottawa, where his work focused on igneous petrology and isotope geochemistry. Prior to joining Transition Metals, Mr. Williams worked in collaboration with the Northwest Territories Geological Survey, as a Senior Mapping and Research Assistant, where he conducted various value-added mapping and isotopic research programs on Neoarchean volcanic belts within the Slave Craton, with a focus on VMS-style mineralization.

Sarah Reese – Project Geologist

Sarah Reese is a geological engineer with a Bachelor of Applied Science in Geological Engineering from Queen’s University. She contributes to field programs and geological interpretation, while developing her professional expertise through ongoing education and field experience.