Mr. Simon Dyakowski reports

AZTEC COMMENCES RC DRILL PROGRAM AT CERVANTES PORPHYRY GOLD-COPPER PROJECT, SONORA, MEXICO

Reverse circulation drilling has commenced at Aztec Minerals Corp.'s 100-per-cent-owned Cervantes porphyry gold-copper project in Sonora, Mexico. Aztec plans to drill over the next two months to expand the main California zone target with stepout drilling. Previous drilling in 2022 at the California zone target discovered extensive oxide porphyry gold-copper mineralization with drill intercepts of up to 1.5 grams per tonne gold over 137 metres and 1.0 g/t gold over 165 m*.

The drill program has been optimized to focus on expanding the California zone oxide mineralization, which remains open laterally in every direction, with a minimum 11 holes and 1,600 m of RC drilling in this current stage of exploration. The California zone porphyry target has a footprint of over one kilometre by one kilometre exposed to date. The planned drill targets have utilized information gathered during the surface road cut sampling and detailed one-to-200 scale geologic mapping program conducted in the first half of 2023. The surface program enhanced the interpretation for exploration targets to potentially expand the gold mineralization at the primary California target zone of the property. The mapping confirmed the presence of phyllic and potassic alteration zones of the previous drilling and their being key to metallization. The project is currently permitted for an additional 17 drill hole locations for a second stage of the drilling to be designed subject to the results of the initial stage of RC drilling currently under way.

The primary objectives of the coming drilling programs are to continue to define the open-pit, heap leach gold potential of the porphyry oxide cap at California, test the downdip extensions of the silicic-phyllic alteration in the Qfp intrusive for deeper copper-gold porphyry sulphide mineralization underlying the oxide cap and test for extensions of the California North target.

Aztec will be participating in the following coming events and conferences:

• Nov. 1 to Nov. 4: New Orleans Investment Conference, New Orleans, La.;
  • Booth No. 216; luncheon presentation on Nov. 2 at 12:35 p.m. Central Time;
• Nov. 13 to Nov. 15: Precious Metals Summit, Zurich.

Cervantes project overview

Cervantes is a highly prospective porphyry gold-copper project located in southeastern Sonora state, Mexico. The project lies 160 kilometres east of Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico, within the prolific Laramide porphyry copper belt approximately 265 km southeast of the Cananea porphyry copper-molybdenum mine (Grupo Mexico). Cervantes also lies along an east-west-trending gold belt 60 km west of the Mulatos epithermal gold mine (Alamos Gold), 35 km northeast of the Osisko San Antonio gold mine, 45 km west of La India mine (Agnico Eagle) and 40 km northwest of Santana gold deposit (Minera Alamos).

Cervantes project highlights:

• Large well-located property (3,649 hectares) with good infrastructure, road access, local town, all private land, water wells on property and grid power nearby;
• Nine prospective mineralized zones related to high-level porphyries and breccias along a 7.0-kilometre east-northeast corridor with multiple intersecting northwest structures;
• Distinct geophysical anomalies, California target marked by high-magnetic and low-resistivity anomalies, high-radiometric and chargeability anomalies responding to pervasive alteration;
• Extensive gold mineralization at California zone, 118 soil samples average 0.44 gram per tonne gold over 900-metre-by-600-metre area, trench rock-channel samples up to 0.47 g/t gold over 222 m;
• Extensive drilling at the California zone, intersecting gold oxide cap to a classic gold-copper porphyry system, drill results up to 1.49 g/t gold over 137 m and 1.00 g/t gold over 165 m;
• Excellent gold recoveries from preliminary metallurgical tests on drill core from California zone; oxide gold recoveries in bottle roll tests range from 75 per cent to 87 per cent;
• 3-D induced polarization survey conducted in 2019; IP chargeability strengthens and broadens to greater-than-500-metre depth over an area 1,100 m by 1,200 m, and extends strong chargeability anomalies to the southwest covering Estrella, Purisima East and Purisima West, coinciding well with alteration and gold-copper-molybdenum soil geochemical anomalies.

Additional targets

Purisima East: outcropping gossans, altered and mineralized diatreme breccias and porphyry intrusions marked by a 700-metre-by-600-metre geochemical soil anomaly in 193 samples that average 0.25 g/t gold; a small historic glory hole mine, where rock chip sampling returned high-grade mineralization up to 44.6 g/t gold.

Estrella: outcrops of gossan and sulphides in silicified Paleozoic sediments near quartz porphyry dikes with rock chip samples up to 3.9 g/t gold and 2,010 parts per million copper.

Purisima West: a mirror image of Purisima East in size and type of gossans, altered and mineralized breccias, and intrusions in association with gold and copper soil anomalies.

Jasper: 2017 trenching returning skarn/replacement-type mineralization up to 0.52 per cent copper and 0.62 g/t gold over a 92.4-metre length; in 2022, RC drilling found a broad zone of copper-gold mineralization in JAS22-001 of 0.215 per cent Cu over 69.9 m.

California North: coincident IP chargeability and gold-copper-molybdenum soil geochemical anomalies with demonstrated gold-copper mineralization by RC drilling; it is a northern extension of the California target;

Other targets: porphyry alteration and geochemical soil anomalies marking the Jacobo and Brasil prospects, but more work is required to expand and define these targets.

* Grade-thickness in metres-grams per tonne means the result of multiplying a drill hole intercept length, measured in metres, by the grade of the gold values in the intercept; the resulting compiled number is measured in grams per tonne. Grade thickness is not to be construed as gross metal value, nor as a resource estimation. The California target does not have a current, compliant resource estimation at this point.

Allen David Heyl, BSc, CPG, vice-president, exploration, of Aztec, is the qualified person under National Instrument 43-101, and supervised the Cervantes exploration program. Mr. Heyl has reviewed and approved the technical disclosures in this news release.

About Aztec Minerals Corp.

Aztec is a mineral exploration company focused on two emerging discoveries in North America. The Cervantes project is an emerging porphyry gold-copper discovery in Sonora, Mexico. The Tombstone project is an emerging gold-silver discovery with high-grade carbonate replacement deposit silver-lead-zinc potential in southern Arizona. Aztec's shares trade on the TSX Venture Exchange (symbol AZT) and on the OTCQB (symbol AZZTF).

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