Rule Symposium 2026: Rick Rule interviews Charles Downie, President / CEO of Eagle Plains Resources

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:01]This is Rick Rule for Rule Investment Media and the Rule Classroom, sponsors of the 2026 Natural Resources Investment Symposium held July 6th through 10th in Boca Raton or more likely via live stream from the comfort and convenience of your own home. A couple of conference notes before we begin the interview.

[00:00:21]The first is that we're going to give you more information over four days than you can absorb in four days. 46 hours uh of detailed content.

[00:00:30]To help you get your money's worth out of the conference, we interview every exhibitor and every speaker before the conference so that you have the ability to arrive at the conference and allocate your time and your resources more efficiently. In addition to that, we record the entire proceedings uh including all of the breakout sessions.

[00:00:48]And those recordings are available for you after the conference to refresh your memory or catch up uh on presentations that you didn't have time to hear.

[00:00:58]Further, every exhibitor at the conference has been vetted to the extent that nobody can appear on our conference floor if their shares aren't owned in the accounts of the conference sponsors.

[00:01:09]No guarantee that because I own a stock it goes up, but there is a guarantee that unlike any other conference on the planet, every single exhibitor has been vetted. And finally, uh an extraordinary offer.

[00:01:21]Whether you attend live or live stream, you have an unconditional money back guarantee. If you believe that you didn't get your money's worth, no questions asked, email me and you get your money back.

[00:01:32]Nobody else that I know of has enough conference confidence in their content to make you that offer, but we do. Let's begin the process now. Uh I have the good fortune to interview Charles Downey, CEO of Eagle Plains. Uh for the record, note the conflict. I've been an Eagle Plains shareholder for a very long period of time. Uh they follow the prospect generator business model uh which I've enjoyed. Uh so, Charles, first of all, thank you for decades of effort on behalf of exploration speculators, but thank you, too, for your sponsorship and support uh of the Natural Resources Investment Symposium.

[00:02:10]Thanks, Rick. Really appreciate uh the invitation and looking forward to uh participating this year.

[00:02:16]Tell me something about the uh uh life story of Charles How did you come to run a prospect generator? Uh and tell me why people should care about your answers to the nosy questions, which will follow.

[00:02:29]Well, I guess I I grew up in a in a mining community. My father worked for Cominco back in the day. He was an engineer, so I grew up in Trail and and Kimberley. So, I was always grew up in a mining town, always liked the outdoors.

[00:02:42]And when I was going to university, I graduated from University of Alberta in 1988. When I was going to university, I actually worked every summer for Cominco. And post-graduate, I continued on working for Cominco for a few years.

[00:02:55]And that was actually where I met, fortuitously, Tim Termuende, who uh him and his father actually started Eagle Plains. And we met together uh working at a the Snip Gold Mine.

[00:03:05]Um in uh up in the up in the Iskut area.

[00:03:08]And then after that, I did some consulting for a while, and then um started working worked for various companies, worked down in South America, Central America quite a bit. And then after that, started working pretty well full-time for Eagle Plains. And I started uh 19 uh I guess 1999 full-time Eagle Plains as the VP Exploration. And uh a year and a half ago, uh Tim kind of stepped back a little bit, and uh he's our executive chairman now, and I took on the role as president CEO.

[00:03:38]That's uh That's quite a resume. 27 years at Eagle Plains. Uh 27 years in prospect generation. So, uh let's begin the process now. Give us an overview of what Eagle Plains is.

[00:03:53]Um describe maybe how you fit in prospect generation and what specific areas of expertise you have for investors and for your joint venture partners.

[00:04:05]So, we I we're a little bit different than I think a lot of the other prospect generators. We we kind of look at it we have sort of a a five a five-pronged approach. So, we are a mineral exploration company, obviously we're project generator. We're also a corporate incubator um and we have a a geological consulting firm um wholly owned and then we also are a royalty company. So, obviously the mineral exploration we're company of geologists, we find projects. Um typically we stake them, occasionally buy them, but generally we do our research in-house and stake the projects.

[00:04:43]Project generation part of it comes in.

[00:04:46]Um we we've we self-fund some exploration on these early-stage projects and then we try to get them to the stage where we can get other people to come in and spend their money on it, which obviously is the the project generation part. You know all about that. Other people spend the money, de-risk the projects.

[00:05:03]Can move them up the food chain as they get bigger.

[00:05:06]Um and then the corporate incubator part, which is another big part of our business, is every three, four, five years, I guess we've done it five times now. Um we have a project or maybe a couple of projects that are sitting in our portfolio of 100 projects that we have. You know, we've always got lots of lots of product. Um but for whatever reason, if it's a a perhaps it's a regional play or specifically maybe a commodity focus, we'll take those projects, we'll bundle them up and we'll do a spin-out company.

[00:05:39]So, the Eagle Plain shareholders get a share or partial share of this new company and then the projects go with that new company. And what that does is it brings those assets together in a place where we are we are say we like to build these companies so we can sell them.

[00:05:55]Everything's together, easy to sell, easy to identify. It also allows us to fund that company separately from Eagle Plains without diluting Eagle Plains shareholders so we can go ahead and fund that other company, issue shares, raise equity over one year. It doesn't affect the Eagle Plains shareholders.

[00:06:12]And then at the end of the day when that company gets sold, either for cash or for shares, the Eagle Plains shareholders they get a dividend back.

[00:06:19]But they're still holding their original Eagle Plains shares and then they can continue to participate in Eagle Plains or they can participate in the next spin-out. And we've been very successful over the last I guess the last 20 years we've we call them dividends, but we've paid out about 150 million dollars to our shareholders either in shares or in or in cash deals.

[00:06:41]So it's been a very good Putting that in context two follow-on questions.

[00:06:47]I would suspect that the 150 million dollars that you've distributed substantially exceeds the amount of money that you have raised in Eagle Plains in total.

[00:06:56]>> by far. And tell me what the market capitalization of Eagle Plains is and how much cash you have now. What's what's this machine selling for?

[00:07:04]Well, so so yeah, so our our market cap right now is around 20 million.

[00:07:08]Um we've got 7 million in cash. We've got about a we also own some assets here like we own our own office building, we own a uh an acreage here where we store all the equipment from our consulting business. And we've got about another uh just around 3 million dollars in equity.

[00:07:23]So a lot of the deals we do we do for stock. So we've got a very very healthy uh portfolio right now on the on the equity side as well.

[00:07:30]>> your if your 20 million market cap half of it is accounted for by cash Roughly.

[00:07:36]and securities. So somebody's actually paying 10 million Canadian dollars for the physical assets, the real estate assets, the intellectual capital, uh and all the projects. Is that an accurate summary? That's very accurate summary.

[00:07:48]Yes.

[00:07:49]Uh if if I must say so, uh a very impressive statement of value. Tell me, uh to the extent that you can, looking backwards and looking forwards, are there special geographies or special deposit types or special terrains that Eagle Plains is either proud of or known for in the market?

[00:08:14]Well, we I got like I said, we have a a wide mix of commodities. When we first actually got the business going, our main focus was on SEDEX deposits in right around that we're based in Cranbrook, BC. So, that was kind of our main focus. So, I think we are zinc guys. We actually just finished drilling uh a Saskatchewan drink uh zinc project, George Lake.

[00:08:34]We're just uh we drilled that this winter. So, we kind of like the base metals. We're also very um We've been doing a lot of work in BC uh copper gold porphyries the last four or five years. We've got a very impressive um package of projects in there. But, we've also very diversified between British Columbia and Saskatchewan. So, we've been involved in working in Saskatchewan for 20 years, and we've been focused on uranium, obviously, cuz of we're in Saskatchewan. But, we've also got some really, really good um gold projects and some really good copper projects there as well.

[00:09:08]So, diversified commodity, uh base metals, uranium, precious metals, focused on Western Canada, I assume from the answers, Saskatchewan and British Columbia.

[00:09:19]Okay, got that.

[00:09:21]Uh tell me over the next 12 to 18 months, uh what some catalysts might be. Tell me some particular projects that you're excited about. Tell me something about Generative Concepts. Tell me something I mean, I realize this is a very, very, very long-term project. You've been at it yourself for 29 years, but tell me something about something that our shareholders might look forward to in the next 12 to 18 months.

[00:09:49]Well, the next 12 to 18 months, um obviously the markets are very good. Our business the project generator, you know, we rely on our partners to have money, which has not been the case for the last few years, but now our partners are all cashed up. And we've also got a lot of a lot of cash. So, we're going to be spending some of our money um on some drill projects, but our partners are also going to be spending money on drill projects. So, we've already um done two this year. We've done a one of our partner funded uh uranium projects. Um we just finished drilling that and we just finished as I mentioned our one of our base metal projects in Saskatchewan.

[00:10:22]But, um going forward, we've got uh one of our really exciting projects is the um the the theory project, which is in the Toodoggone near the near the kind of the area of the thesis and all the other projects up there. And that's an option with Sun Summit. And we had our first we had first uh program field program up there last year in like probably 25 years in this project and we made out like gangbusters. We found a bunch of new uh bunch of new zones of copper gold mineralization. We did some more advanced petrographic work. It looks like the setting is perfect for a you know, for a buried porphyry up there. We're going back there again this year with a bigger budget, probably around $800,000. So, we're very, very excited about that. In Saskatchewan, we've done a deal with uh a company called Excite Uranium.

[00:11:09]We optioned six projects. They're up in the northern part of the basin. Um kind of it's an area that's very underexplored. It hasn't seen a lot of work for probably 25 or 30 years, but our claims cover five historic deposits.

[00:11:22]And the budget this year up there is going to be around $7 million. That's going to include uh up to six drill programs up there. So, we're very, very, very excited about that as well.

[00:11:33]Uh if we do a little bit of arithmetic and we arrive back at the uh 10 million dollar Canadian enterprise value, uh tell me to the extent you can, and I realize this is a forward-looking statement, but over the next year or two, how much third-party capital will be spent uh on your projects? In other words, what's the sort of leverage I enjoy from a 10 million Canadian enterprise value?

[00:11:56]Well, you know, assuming that all of the current option deals went to fruition, I will I'll suggest it would probably be around between 20 and 25 million.

[00:12:08]Something in that order. I, you know, I I'm just kind of >> throwing that out there, but some something in that order, I would think, 20 to 25 million dollars. Yeah.

[00:12:18]I think it's important that people who are listening to this put it in context.

[00:12:22]Uh you have been in existence, uh Eagle Plains, for I don't know, 30, 25 >> Fourth oldest company listed on the venture exchange, the only one to never been who've never been rolled back.

[00:12:33]Right. You've had to uh issue very few shares. Uh you haven't had to slow up the capital structure cuz you use other people's money. You've distributed 150 million dollars worth of value.

[00:12:43]Uh you have net of cash and securities a 10 million dollar enterprise value, and other people are spending, uh we hope, 25 million dollars on our behalf. Is that an accurate summary?

[00:12:55]That's an accurate summary. I guess the other part, too, though, is that I didn't uh when I mentioned our five pillars, one of them is we have a wholly owned geological consulting company.

[00:13:05]So, that's a revenue generator for us.

[00:13:08]Like last year, that brought in almost 2 million dollars cash. So, which is another reason we don't have to go to the market because we've got cash coming in, and those those are it's TerraLogic Exploration. They work on our projects for our us, they work on our projects for our partners, but they They work for third-party people, too. So, I I look at it like a TerraLogic's a great thing. I look at it like we've got 50 or 10 or 15 geologists working full-time, but somebody else pays their wages.

[00:13:38]So So, in effect, you are, despite the fact that you're not producing, you're cash flow positive in your exploration activity. So, you have, in effect, a negative cost of capital Yeah.

[00:13:49]going forward.

[00:13:50]Uh Charles, to the extent that our listeners are interested in learning more about Eagle Plains before the conference, who in particular do they contact and how do they contact that person?

[00:14:03]They can contact me anytime. Yeah, um [email protected].

[00:14:08]And our investor relations is Andrew Wilson. He's [email protected].

[00:14:13]And we're available anytime to chat, for sure. And I I'd love to talk to you investors. I'd love to talk to people about the business. It's a It It's This is a really a really great time to be in the business right now.

[00:14:25]There's lots of excitement. There's lots of money around. Lots of discoveries being made. It's really uh it's it's great.

[00:14:31]Charles, thank you for decades of effort on behalf of speculators, particularly this speculator, of course. And thank you, too, for your ongoing efforts supporting our educational activities.

[00:14:41]It's been a pleasure interview you, and I look forward to hosting you uh July 6th through 10th in Boca Raton, Florida.

[00:14:48]Thanks, Rick. Appreciate it. See you in a couple months.