Aston Bay and American West Metals Announce Summer Exploration Program Set to Commence at the Storm Project, Nunavut, Canada

Drilling of large-scale regional copper prospects and resource expansion targets

Highlights:

• High-grade copper discoveries ready for resource definition drilling. Potential to rapidly increase the Initial Mineral Resource Estimate ("MRE" - see March 3, 2025, Aston Bay news release) through resource definition drilling of recent discoveries, including:

• Cyclone Deeps - potential continuation of the large Cyclone Deposit at depth with drill intercepts such as 10 metres ("m") @ 1.2% copper ("Cu") from 311m (including 0.5m @ 3.7% Cu from 315.5m)

• Cirrus Deeps - high-priority electromagnetic ("EM") target with stratigraphic setting similar to Cyclone Deeps

• The Gap - a strong EM anomaly confirmed as a priority copper target with drilling that returned 20m @ 2.3% Cu from 28m (including 8m @ 5.3% Cu from 39.6m)

Advancing regional exploration opportunities. Exploration of large-scale targets is prioritized for drilling, including:

• Tornado/Blizzard - located 5km east of the Storm copper deposits, the area hosts a 3.2km x 1.5km geochemical copper anomaly and two large EM plates yet to be drilled

• Midway - discovered by a single historical drill hole that intersected a total of 58m of visual copper sulfide, located approximately 5km to the west of the Storm MRE area

• Tornado South - A large structural hotspot representing a textbook setting for copper mineralization has been identified south of the Tornado/Blizzard area

Geophysics planned to generate new targets. A large airborne Mobile Magneto-Telluric (MMT) survey is scheduled for early in the season in the Storm MRE area and other areas of interest along the 110 km prospective copper horizon in 2025, with results expected to inform drill targeting and prioritization this season.

Preparations for the 2025 field season are well advanced. The sealift operation, completed in Q4 2024, delivered bulk supplies to Storm in preparation for the 2025 field season, significantly streamlining logistics to enable a short lead time for the start of drilling in 2025 and reducing 2025 costs by approximately $4.0m