Continuous mineralization over 905 meters! Auro Metals' gold-copper resource potential confirmed once again, with Phase II drilling driving long-term growth.

Title context: Continuous mineralization over 905 meters! Auro Metals' gold-copper resource potential confirmed once again, with Phase II drilling driving long-term growth. Text: At a time when global mining capital continues to chase high-quality copper-gold assets, large, shallow, highly continuous porphyry deposits have become scarce targets, and Auro Metals Inc. (TSX-V: AURO; OTCPK: AURFF) is a typical example of this trend. On September 15, Auro Metals Inc. delivered another major exploration boost, with its Phase I drilling at the Santa Barbara copper-gold mine achieving another breakthrough. All three latest drill holes intersected stable mineralization, with the core hole DSB-68 setting a project exploration record of 905.22 meters of continuous mineralization, averaging 0.60 g/t gold and 0.12% copper. Combined with previous drilling breakthroughs of multiple high-grade mineralized intervals, this fully validates the project's core characteristics of a world-class porphyry deposit"thick, continuous, and open at depth"opening up new imaginative space for resource scale. "Drill hole DSB-68 achieved the best mineralization results, with mineralization still present at the final depth of 1,282 meters, fully confirming the potential for continued extension of mineralization at depth. Drill holes DSB-69 and DSB-70 respectively verified the openness of down-dip mineralization and the characteristics of high-grade enrichment at depth. The latest drill hole data continues to confirm the exceptionally large mineralization scale and excellent mineralization stability of the Santa Barbara copper-gold mine," said Victor Feng, CEO of Auro Metals. The Phase I drilling program completed a total of 22 drill holes with a total footage of 11,047.35 meters. Currently, assay results for 17 drill holes have been disclosed, with data for the remaining 5 drill holes to be released successively. At the same time, the company announced the successful completion of the Phase I 10,000-meter drilling program, with the Phase II 20,000-meter deep drilling program set to fully commence. With the launch of the Phase II drilling program, the logic of project resource expansion, grade upgrading, and reserve upgrading will continue to strengthen, and the company, as a high-quality copper-gold exploration target in South America, is entering a clear window for valuation re-rating. New and old results resonate, once again confirming scarce high-quality resource endowment According to the announcement, all three drill holes are located in the southern part of Santa Barbara, which is the core section of the project's porphyry mineralization system. Consistent with the design approach of previously announced drill holes in Phase I, these drill holes were designed to verify the continuity of mineralization between mineralized intervals in historical drill holes, while also exploring the extension of mineralization along the up-dip, down-dip, and deep directions. Assay results show that drill hole DSB-68 intersected 905.22 meters of continuous copper-gold mineralization from 56.5 meters to 961.72 meters, averaging 0.60 g/t gold and 0.12% copper. The drill hole reached a final depth of 1,282 meters, making it the deepest and longest drill hole in the project to date, with weak mineralization still present at the final depth, clearly confirming that the ore body is completely unclosed at depth, thoroughly breaking the original understanding of resource boundaries and greatly enhancing the overall development value of the deposit. The other two drill holes also performed impressively, forming a multi-point verification pattern. Drill hole DSB-70 intersected 262.5 meters of continuous mineralization, averaging 0.71 g/t gold, including a deep high-grade interval of 100.45 meters with gold grade exceeding 1.01 g/t. Drill hole DSB-69 intersected two continuous mineralized intervals of 103.05 meters and 200.55 meters, including a 57.83-meter ultra-high-grade interval with gold grade as high as 1.06 g/t. The clear stratification and continuous stability of high and low-grade intervals fully confirm the project's top-tier resource endowment. More critically, this latest breakthrough is not a single accidental positive but a continuation of the project's sustained exploration delivery since 2026, with multiple batches of drilling data forming a complete logical closed loop, thoroughly validating the project's scarcity. In June this year, drill hole DSB-54 delivered a 705-meter ultra-long mineralized interval, averaging 0.61 g/t gold and 0.1% copper, including a 235-meter core high-grade interval with gold grade reaching 1.00 g/t. In July, drill hole DSB-59 delivered a 625-meter continuous thick mineralized interval, averaging 0.64 g/t gold and 0.1% copper. In August, drill hole DSB-61 delivered a 496.5-meter ultra-long mineralized interval, averaging 0.76 g/t gold and 0.12% copper, including a 212.5-meter core high-grade interval with gold grade reaching 1.12 g/t. From 625 meters to 705 meters and now to this breakthrough of 905 meters, the project's mineralization length continues to set new records, with frequent enrichment of high-grade intervals. From an industry benchmarking perspective, mainstream large porphyry copper-gold mines globally generally share the characteristic of "large ore body scale but low grade," while the Santa Barbara project combines the triple advantages of exceptionally large ore body thickness, stable continuity, and deep high-grade enrichment, breaking the industry's conventional endowment shortcomings and representing a very scarce high-quality resource. This has also become a key catalyst for the project's value re-rating. Exploration pace fully accelerating, dual logic of resource upgrading and reserve expansion landing As of now, the 2026 Phase I drilling program at the Santa Barbara copper-gold mine has been successfully completed, with a total of 22 drill holes and total footage of 11,047.35 meters. Currently, assay results for 17 drill holes have been disclosed, with data for the remaining 5 drill holes to be released successively, continuously providing performance catalysts. "The Phase I drilling perfectly achieved three core objectives: comprehensively verifying historical exploration results, densifying drill hole spacing in inferred resource areas, and obtaining fresh core to support subsequent metallurgical testing," mentioned Victor Feng. The company's Phase II 20,000-meter drilling program has fully commenced. With the addition of three kilometer-class drilling rigs, the project's overall drilling depth and operational efficiency have been greatly enhanced. Based on the key characteristic that multiple deep holes in Phase I were still in the mineralized zone at final depth, Phase II drilling will focus on three core directions: tackling the deep extension area of the ore body, filling in blank blocks of known ore bodies, and extending exploration to verify new targets delineated by historical geophysical surveys and surface sampling, completing the largest-scale and deepest exploration operation in the project's history, and continuously driving the project's resource scale to achieve leapfrog upgrading. With the launch of the Phase II drilling program, Santa Barbara is expected to continue producing more thick, high-grade new mineralized intervals, continuously driving resource upgrading and bringing more surprises to the capital markets. Location and asset advantages stand out, broad space for company valuation re-rating The Santa Barbara gold-copper mine is a large porphyry gold-copper high-quality asset acquired by Auro Metals (formerly Tincorp Metals Inc.) in May this year, holding 52 square kilometers of exploration rights. The project is located in the Zamora copper-gold metallogenic belt in southeastern Ecuador, one of the world's top gold-copper metallogenic regions, home to multiple large producing mines and advanced development projects, with extremely favorable metallogenic geological conditions. In terms of resources, according to the NI43-101 standard Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) report disclosed by the company on April 9, 2026, using a $25/tonne NSR cut-off grade, the project's measured + inferred resources total 235 million tonnes, containing 128 tonnes of gold (4.11 million ounces) at a grade of 0.54 g/t, and 224,000 tonnes of copper at a grade of 0.10%. Combined gold equivalent is 134 tonnes (4.30 million ounces) at a grade of 0.57 g/t. At the same time, preliminary metallurgical test data validated the project's economic feasibility, with gold recovery as high as 85.5% and copper recovery reaching 19.6%, placing it at a relatively good level among similar porphyry deposits, with solid economic development value, providing strong support for subsequent development cost control and profit release. From a commodity fundamentals perspective, the new energy industry continues to boost rigid demand for industrial copper, gold's safe-haven and value-preserving attributes remain solid long-term, and copper-gold co-occurring assets combine growth elasticity with counter-cyclical advantages, with solid valuation fundamentals. In this exploration cycle, the project has repeatedly identified ultra-long continuous mineralized intervals, breaking through market expectations layer by layer and continuously repairing the market's value perception of the project, already bringing multiple surprises to the capital markets. And the landing of this 905.22-meter ultra-ultra-long complete mineralized interval fully confirms the project's potential as a super-large porphyry deposit, further solidifying the company's valuation re-rating logic, with extremely ample upward repair space. The market's pricing logic for Auro Metals is shifting from a pure exploration target with high uncertainty to a growth-oriented mining company with a clear value realization path. With the successive disclosure of assay results for the remaining 5 drill holes in Phase I, the continuous production of new thick, high-grade mineralized intervals from the Phase II 20,000-meter deep drilling, the landing of metallurgical test results, and the updating and upgrading of project resourcesseveral important catalysts landing one after anotherAuro Metals' asset value re-rating will also usher in a new starting point.