White Gold Corp. (WGO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

From today, very international crowd, so I appreciate people joining us all the way from Alaska and Australia, looks like. Really appreciate your time. I'm excited for this conversation today. We got with me today, Tara Christie, CEO of Banyan Gold; David D'Onofrio, CEO and Director of White Gold Corp; Mike Burke, Director and VP, Corporate Development at Sitka Gold; and finally, Jordie Mark, CEO of Blue Jay Gold. Everyone, how are you doing today? So really quickly do housekeeping so we can get to the good stuff quickly. There is a chat function at the bottom of the screen. I've got some prepared questions, but please feel free to ask questions at any time during today's event. Chances are, I'm not going to answer questions about individual securities that are presented on the panel today. But please do still ask them. I'll make sure the correct teams get those afterwards, and they'll be able to reach out to you with an answer. But if you get anything broad that gets into the conversation, I will certainly try to weave it in particularly towards the end. I'll also say that there's a request meeting button at the bottom of your screen for attendees. You can request a meeting with any or all or select of the speakers and their companies that are represented today, so please do feel free to hit that. I'll be passing it along to the team afterwards. The only other thing I'll say before we get into the fun stuff is this event is being recorded. The replay will be available this afternoon Eastern time. It will come right in your inbox doing this exact same link, but then also on 6ix's YouTube Channel. But I know there's quite a few of us here, and I got a lot of stuff to go over. But first, what I want is each 30 seconds to give retail investors the kind of one line version of your project, where it sits on the curve from grassroots to production. So go ahead and start with you, Tara, if you don't mind.

Thank you, Romeo. Great to be here. So Banyan has our Ormat project. It's an advanced stage road accessible project in central with 8.6 million ounces across inferred and indicated resources. And now we're moving from demonstrating scale to demonstrating economics with our first PA expected in the fourth quarter. And meanwhile, we're drilling 70,000 meters in 2026 very, very focused on some of the higher-grade domains, particularly early in what we believe the mine sequencing will be resource conversion and of course, district discovery. So that puts us both on the discovery side of the can curve as well as advancing towards development.

Awesome. Mike, I'll give you some chat here.

Yes. So the RC Gold project in the can as well, obviously, we all are in the same time stone Gold Belt as Banon. So we've been exploring there for about 5 years, outlined 3 deposits. with if you combine everything about a little over 5 million ounces of gold. So we're in the advanced exploration stage, we those deposits, none of them are drilled off, and we're testing a couple of new zones this year. So hoping that will perhaps have 5 deposits at the end of the year. So 60,000-meter drill program, we're over 45,000 meters into that. So lots of news flow for the rest of the year.

Awesome. David, I'll throw it to you.

Nice to be here. Our projects are in West Central in the Klondike -- this was the part of the economy theme is 125 years ago with the on the gold rush is still an incredibly active classroom in a can. In fact, is over 20 million ounces of plastic gold falling in this region. 1 of the most prolific gold fields in Canada probably around the world. But it wasn't until fairly recently when our partner, Sean Ryan is able to start to be able to discover some of the source of this coal and other hard rock discoveries. To date, the company has delineated a 3 million-ounce resource. We're in the midst of our largest exploration program ever. It's a very high-grade resource for 1 zone, all of which are open for expansion. And what else is very unique about the companies. As Sean Ryan was able to identify these mineralized systems use that same protocol to test in fact, the entire region and we now have a van package, which is comprised of 21 different properties, over 300,000 hectares. So a true is scale opportunity in an area where you've done that is also seeing additional infrastructure in mines being built with the Talproject outhustling discovery.

Thank you, David. And Geordie, I'll have you wrap up this intersection.

Yes. Thanks. Good day, everyone. Yes, Blue Jay in the Stella project, we're an advanced stage Explorer. We're really leveraging from historic production on the site. It's -- we have a high-grade resource, creating around 8 grams gold equivalent coming out to getting closer to 1 million ounces, and we're just newly listed started drilling initial results came out a couple of days ago. We continue to drill through October and hopefully later in the season. So lots of results to come on a district scale, high-grade gold, gold silver system, very accessible. So we're actually south of Whitehorse, the capital. We're in a younger set of rocks -- and it's really, really nice to be proximal to infrastructure in that sense. It looks like all the projects here are sort of really read successful and really ready to go.

Yes, exciting. And I certainly have questions about all the roads coming up, so going for those. This next question, I'll turn to Tara, just because you're a multigenerational Yukon plasmin. It's kind of family deal for you. And you're in 1 of the territories biggest plata operations before Banon. You've watched this territory through a few cycles at this point. What do you think makes the current moment in Yukon different from anything you've seen before?

Well, Yukon's always have the geological potential. But I think we're seeing things really coming together. Gold prices are great, and they're really bringing serious capital strategic attention from group companies don't matter. And I think we've got some of the largest Canadian deposits now developing. And that is making us really hit the spotlight. We've got governments that understand that we need infrastructure and that permitting is important to actually have time lines. And I think if they can execute that and deliver on all of those commitments of that vision, it's going to make a we have the potential to have Canada's newest mines in the territory. And we've got companies that really understand what it's going to take to get there, both from the environmental and the social and our obligations are much higher, higher than ever. So I'd say now, our credibility matters more than -- and we're particularly in light of all the recent events that have happened in the Yukon mine not only is going to have to be technically sound, but environmentally responsible and really built on those durable relationships with our now self-governing First Nations in the Yukon. And I think that's something that everyone in this group is very focused on and Banon, in particular, -- we think we know what we've got to do to get there, and we are really driven towards advancing WOMAC.

I'll stick with you just for a second because I want to put some scale on it. Max now saying at 8.6 million ounces across categories. after the May resource update. The indicated ounces up about 60% in a single year, which is from where I said, very impressive. Walk us through how the deposit gets that big, that fast.

Well, and we were so invisible for such a long time, partly because we made our -- put our first resource out in 2020. So that was COVID when you were marketing. But it started with the geology and then a very systematic drill program to define it, and then getting the geological model. And so at that 60% increase in indicated was based only on 43,000 meters. Look, what we're going to do with 70,000 meters with our best model and our best targeting. So yes, it's been a long story of just systematically drilling out power line and then now moving to the Airstrip deposit, which was always higher grade. Remember, it was always 15% higher grade. And found some of that even higher grade now, both in airstrip and powerline. So course, the infrastructure you mentioned roads, having a road really helped us to efficiently drill that out our all-in drill cost. We've added 100 ounces for every meter we've drilled, and that's partly because of exceptional infrastructure that we have on the project, roads, power, cell phone service and that enables us to effectively drill year round. We'll drill until mid-December and start mid-January. And that's going to let us advance this very, very quickly, and it's really the story on how we got here, too.

Awesome. It's a quote I often quote from Baron Kingparadigm, is a visible goal of the sexy but a road is much sexy. And I sat. Mike, I got one for you, with 60,000 meters drilling this year, we've seen drill results such as all 121 at Blackjack that intersected mineralization down dip below the current resource pit and recently results from Rosebel that extended mineralization along strike and additional 400 meters to a total of 1.6 kilometers. What's the focus of your program right now? And how do these results impact the project?

Yes. Well, you mentioned Rusal second. Russo was really only discovered last year. We only acquired this property in late 2025. That's the project portion that we acquired from Victoria Gold. We just accelerated the payments. So we own the Ross cable deposit 100% now. So it's a pretty early stage but advanced exploration target. We really don't know the footprint. It's near surface. So half of our drilling, half of that 60,000 meters is directed at that to expand that deposit, see what the footprint is. And we're working on that. We still haven't found the limit. So we've been getting great results, as you mentioned, to the east as well as below the current kind of pit limits of that 2.5 million ounce resource that we have there. So yes, Ross Goble is kind of transitioning into probably the best deposit on the property. Black Jack though is a great deposit as well. But as you mentioned, we've drilled some deep holes there, so our deepest toll goes over 1.1 kilometers. So again, that's got a down dip component that we haven't defined yet. So that's definitely later in the stage of these deposits. They're all at surface, near surface deposits, but Black Jack is showing that potential at depth. And then some of our drilling at Black Jack, there was a hole that we drilled that's about 150 meters east of Black Jack trending towards the IGR deposit. And we have mineralization there as well. If you kind of go into our press releases, you look at this Lamproprdike that connects the black jack the Saddle Zone and the age. We get mineralization associated in the hanging wall of that die, and we're starting to follow that geological theory that there's a linkage between these two deposits. So the focus is to increase that resource find the limits of these deposits as well as we're testing a poll other advanced targets, the contact and the bar pores that are all within a kind of a 5-kilometer area. So really to understand those deposits and deposit areas and kind of quantify that, keep the exploration going but focus on determining the amount of ounces of gold we have. So we can look at the feasibility of bringing this into production as well.

Awesome. Thank you, Mike. Geordie, I was excited to see this week, first assay as a public company came out 32-meter down plunge extension at Gokan Creek, creating over 8 grams gold equivalent. So I know that you've compared the system to Fresno and Pachuca tell you more about that. I'm eager to hear your take.

We're very excited about the results coming out of Schukar Creek, and it really delivered into some of the visions we saw and why we picked it up. And we like Scokin Creek within the stellar the stellar project for us, 170 square kilometers, it truly is a district scale system. And the analogy there that you bring up ultimately is that we get to see variation in large-scale epithermal system. So it's a magmatic epithermal system driven by you've got form of production at a site of near surface mineralization that was in low sulfuation epithermal system. And when you're looking at districts, you want to see potential for high-grade mineralization extending on cross-sell intersections well to depth. And we have that at surface-related mineralization in low sulfuration systems at Mt Scokin, and the creek is is a lower section of intermediate sulfidation high-grade gold silver mineralization. When we're starting to already see very interesting facets of our main cat veins that could potentially relate to the underlying magmatic drivers to debt. So we think we get to see that vertical preservation of the geological system with grade -- we know we've got the size of the structures to be able to host mineralization along large conduits. And the new age work that we're actually putting in there with hyperspectral logging, et cetera, is able to really on earth new observations on multiple pulses of hydrothermal alteration go towards making the coupon Creek and at Mt Schukar. You can see these overprint. Geologists weren't able to do that before because the technology wasn't there. So we're really excited about the opportunity to be able to unravel this large-scale magmatic hydrothermal system with high-grade mineralization that extends across 25 kilometers has almost 1 million ounces of 8 grams gold equivalent. We think there's a lot of opportunity to be able to examine that more predictively going forward. So a great opportunity to get in there through the framework year of exploration and look to extend known mineralization along strike land.

Good to see those results be editing. So I was happy news this week. David, I want to jump to you because the market got its first real look at White Gold economics in August. From my view, $1.9 billion NPV, 38% return, payback under 2 years, all very sterling numbers, obviously. And you priced all that at 3,600 gold, while spot still seems to be playing every day, somewhere between 400, 300 and 4,500. Why did you guys choose to run it conservative when you could have printed a take your headline, let's call it?

Yes. Thanks for your point. It's a huge milestone for white gold to be able to demonstrate such strong economics on a very first pass. I'm very conservative. But to point out that was by design. And I mentioned this in the past and for those that don't know, I'm also a principle of the power on capital, where we've been investing in financing exploration projects for over 2 decades now. We do everything with our investor had on first. We want to be able to ensure that all of our efforts and all the capital is going to be going towards directing the value of the company to increase the value for our shareholders. And over the years, we've been fortunate to be involved with some of the most successful exploration well stories in the market. And what we've always learned from that is you want to sort of take your time to do things right. Stretching yourself in advance, maybe to capture a little bit of attention from the market, there's no point in doing that. This project here in particular, it's one of the most exciting companies we've ever actually been involved. It's been 10 years now, and when we were presented the opportunity by Sean Ryan 10 years ago, we were -- we fell off our chairs. The opportunity to own this enormous land package in this prolific area in Canada, in the Yukon, so little work that's been done and the work that happened that has been so successful. It was almost sounded too good to be be true. And the fact that -- entire can in one company was unheard, right? Our dream here is that this could be a kit-only 90% of the activity of valor in one company. I believe that's also what attracted our larger shareholder and partner Mike to be part of our company. And we're very pleased now after 10 years to be able to hit this milestone and deliver this 3 million-ounce resource. But frankly, as people read the would notice, we've only actually used 2 of our 3 million ounces, actually less than 2. And the reason there is this is just the start. I think us and all these other great companies are working out, we're just getting enrolled. There is so much more discovery economic. That 3 million house, 2 million ounces. That's great. It puts us on the map. This PA now demonstrates that this project is one of the largest and most profitable development companies projects in Canada. But we're in the midst of this big program. We've just built on our team. We bought [indiscernible] huge part of the great bear successor of Vimeo, a mining engineer who understands what it the next level, also great relationships in the institutional community. So we wanted this as a tool to be able to go to speak to some of these more sophisticated and large institution. But if we're right, firmly believe there is millions and millions more ounces to be done on this project alone and within the rest of our land package that they need better value for us as a company, to get this out there, let's be insert. Let's leave a lot of meat on the bone. We're not tying here to try and get a squeeze every last ounce of it because we're very confident that there's so much more value and that will be demonstrated with the drill bit and additional studies going forward.

Appreciate it. One last one before I get to a question for all of you, and it is Tara, can we talk about August hole. 14 meters of 13 grams including a meter of 142 sits at and ground the research model currently calls unmineralized in the largely undrilled gas between powerline and airstrip, so I guess my question is, how much deposit might be hiding in the space between your deposits?

Well, I can't put a number on it yet, but the area is like 500 meters by 1 kilometer. And certainly, our geological model is projecting these high-grade zones up towards surface. That intercept was about 100 meters depth. So lots of potential filling that gap. So mind to the gap or mine the gap, I think, is an interesting -- for us, what it could mean is it changes the mine sequencing, a little bit of the grade profile early in the mine plan? And why didn't we drill it off? Well, we kind of thought it was obvious that there was probably mineralization between the two. Of course, that didn't come through in the actual resource. We didn't really understand that there will be that higher grade zone potentially through there. So until we did our modeling this year. So yes, we have already put a few holes into that area that we can drill when it's summertime, a few of those holes and a key part of it will need to be drilled in January when the ground is frozen, and that's one of the reasons why it wasn't drilled is because it's quite swampy through there. So you want to really hard frost and a little bit of snowpack, so you don't have to build roads through that area. So that's going to be something for people to look forward to because we are going to drill it out before our next resource update, not before the PEA and all of the 60,000, 70,000 meters that we're drilling this year will not be part of our PEA. And similar to David, we're looking for incredible conservative PEA that demonstrates strong economics.

Great. I got one for all of us. So I have -- we'll call it a bummer question before, I think a fun question. And that's -- you're all four companies at very very different stages, which I think makes this conversation so interesting. But you all work up to one of the same problems. Gold is in the mid 4,000s and junior valuations just haven't kept pace. I'm curious for all of your perspectives. I will head all of you for this one. Geordie, I can start with you, why do you think the market is still slow to pay for ounces in the ground? And what -- is there a time or is there an event that helps actually close that gap?

Yes. I think -- this is part of a natural evolution of a bull cycle around commodities, I think, and the natural investors sort of wave and interest generally comes into equities at a larger, more liquid, and that's certainly more paramount in the current sort of what sector cycle. So you come into streamers, royalty companies versus go into producers at a great time. I mean the last 18 months, all you had to do is produce and you produce free cash flow growth under the balance sheet, so easy producing. I'm not going to say it's not and you need technology to be able to do it. But they had free cash flow growth given the sentiment of the commodity price. And I think naturally, that ultimately gives focus in terms of keep to your knitting. I think the next couple of years are going to be very exciting in terms of -- with the commodity price cycle, free cash flow balance sheet is bolstered gold producers being in the best balance sheet position they've ever been in as a sector. I think we're looking at a wave now looking at moving from free cash flow growth from sentiment-driven commodity price. appreciation to looking at free cash flow growth being driven by production growth and to be able to show that you need to have the assets to be an asset portfolio to do that. So I think the natural evolution is to move into a consolidation phase. And I think with certainly the backdrop of geopolitical uncertainty heightening globally into many areas where gold is produced in areas that are less stable. I think Tier 1 jurisdiction assets like Canada will have a premium to look at those that are in test actions that are road accessible, have infrastructure and eCom is a perfect position for that. So I think there's going to be more eyes. And we've started to see that with Agnico. I guess David is a partner there. coming in and acquiring and consolidating in Finland. So I think that will continue. I think that's the -- that will be the canary in the cage, running to further consolidation because assets are hard to grow. They take time, as Tara said, that first resource in 2020. It takes time to do that. You can't just grow it over night. So if you're already there, you're close to infrastructure, you're in a really good position.

Great. David, I'll let you get in on this.

Geordie is absolutely correct, right? The first thing is there's a cycle within the cycle, takes some time for the capital to filter down to the smaller companies. So I think we're fully seeing that play out. It usually came from 18 months to 2 years or a little longer. We started to see that happen. There's maybe even a little bit of a reset here, right? The gold price went up in January, Honor if you all be down to 4,000. So that people got streamers in the sectors of capital left, it's coming back in, it's probably going to start coming back in at the top and filter its way down, and that just has to play it out -- itself out. But in the meantime, what's nice is companies like our sphere they've been able to be well capitalized, do a lot of their work and continue to build value, which is ultimately the #1 focus are going to be -- that is a company that we can control. The market will do its own thing. But Geordie brought up a good point about the M&A, right? As an investor -- from investors standpoint, you want to be skating where the puck is going. So this is probably the area which has the most risk-reward type potential within the sector at this point in time, I would think. And then when do people realize maybe what are the other factors? There's been a lot of other competing sectors that have done very well, right, especially in the U.S., you have this big AI whom people have done well with technology for 10 years. So why do they have to go a different sector at this point in time. So what's going to cause that shift? Continued performance by the larger companies with production and profits and dividends and share buybacks. I think that is starting to get the generalist attention. And then as they turn their attention, eventually, it should continue to filter down. But it's also got I think going to be this M&A really weeks people up as Jeremy mentioned, get started. We've seen the transaction in Finland. We saw a big transaction by an in Viana and look at the prices that were paid on a dollar per ounce base keeps significantly higher than the average we're seeing. So that's a good sign where the companies are trading at. And it is a fact that producers -- if we're in a consultive industry, every ounce or how they produce, they have to replace that on their balance sheet at some point in time. I think they're a bit of a hiring phase or doing well, but at some point, the analyst saying, okay, what is your production profile for 2030 and 235?And once that happens, I believe there's going to be a bit of a FOMO amongst that community to ensure that they have the assets in place and in good jurisdictions, as Georgie mentioned, I think in Canada, in the Yukon, that is a very, very favorable characteristic of all of our projects for that as well.

Great. Mike, turning to you next, when do you think we'll start getting fairly rated for the ounces they've got in the ground.

Well, it's a tough call, but a wise investor, I know said "I smell an opportunity, right? And I think that's one of the underlying points here is that there is an opportunity because we are undervalued, but we're also early in the curve. As I mentioned, our very first drill hole is 2020, and we've had a rapid growth in resources since then. So we're starting to get market attention, the style of deposit that some of us are looking at the intrusion-related gold deposits are a fairly new deposit type that's pretty prolific through Yukon Alaska. David's discovery is not all that old either in the white gold district. That's a new district. And Geordie is sitting on what I feel is one of the most underrecognized areas in the Yukon, and that's good to see new life coming into that. really, there's a lot of stories in the Yukon that haven't received a lot of attention. They've gone through cycles, and this is a maturing cycle for the con. Our political alignment, different things going on are really important now. But yes, that -- plenty of reasons why we're lagging behind. But I think the youth of some of our discoveries is part of it. But going right back to the start, what I said, I smell an opportunity, and I know that investor is going to recognize that quote. It was his son that told me he heard that growing up many, many, many times. So that was a young fellow, a mining engineer that did some soil sample and work with me and my Simon a project. So it was fun working with them and getting insight into his dad and that's a famous quote. I won't tag him, but he knows who he is.

That's fine. I appreciate that, Mike. And Tara, I'll give you last word on this topic.

Well, I think higher gold prices we've seen are really -- they don't translate into valuation and ounces in the ground. Gold price alone is not going to remove development risk. So my job is to execute a program and a strategy which removes those risks one at a time. And so market is not going to pay equally for all ounces in the ground. We've seen that across companies. And my job and our plan at Banyan is very systematically to remove that gap. We're converting scale to economic evidence that this project is a credible line with we want to see strong, early years of grade and production sensible use of capital. And I think having this clear execution strategy and it goes hand-in-hand with our marketing strategy, and we got recognized by getting included in the GDXJ, which is bringing a whole new range of institutional positive investments for us. So following that plan, executing our strategy, communicating with the right funds at the right time, is how we are building shareholder value. And we've seen it working in our share price and our strategy through the fall, I think, is going to continue to get us more visibility and close that gap along with some great drill results. We've got higher grade and following up on our new discovery. So Romeo, that's a challenge that you've come on. Why do we close that gap and Banyan is working hard to do that.

And these forums are great for helping people understand it. So thank you for arranging it. And Yukon really has not been on the map in some of the other places in Canada, Tara, that's sort of that's where they went. And but the geology is certainly there. And what's remarkable what I love as an investor, the work is getting done and treaty productive show me another part of the world that's delivering this kind of success per meter drilled. I don't think you can, especially in the chilled type jurisdictions. So that's going to draw the attention. It's nice to see the brokerage communities now start to put up more and more research that will help. So all the moments starting to build, I think it truly next.

So for the hundreds of investors in the room, please tell your friends about the COMT to take a look. I want to start talking about those sexy roads that we talked about earlier because I do want to get infrastructure. And Tara, I'll start with you. There is federal backing for connecting the Yukon grid to BC, and every one of you here, I think, very correctly, market's access is a differentiator. So how much does infrastructure actually move the needle on project economics versus just being a great slide to have in your deck?

It's moved the needle for how we've got here and how fast we've got here and how fast we're going to move forward development. I think in RPA, there'll still be a cost for infrastructure because it's not like having a road means there's no cost. It's how much upgrading do you need to do, how much already exists? And I think for us, because there's already some federal funding that's earmarked for the road near us, the highway from mail or Stewart crossing to Mayo and even beyond us and across our property, I think we're going to see some additional in the near term to help us with our infrastructure cost. So of course, we can't put that in our PEA either for power or for roads because you need to actually base it on what exists now. But certainly, that infrastructure tie is really important. But the other really important project, which puts enough power in the grid for us is, of course, that WhiteHorse power center project, which the Yukon has already announced, which puts another 160 megawatts into the grid. And we all know that there's hydro power in the grid and we have surplus hydro power now in the summer for projects. So I think getting these important conversations between industry, the federal and territorial government and then using those funds to really help Canada and Yukon in particular, to get some more projects moving forward. get more tax money to our government, I think, is going to be really key. So infrastructure is move the needle, and it's going to for all of our projects. But I think we need to get some of these federal projects moving, and at least the conversations are started, and we're starting to see some action.

Great. No, I appreciate it. Geordie, I'll throw it to you to talk about Blue Jay's infrastructure.

Yes. Blue Jay, we're a little different, obviously, we're South. And we take advantage of access via highways to go from Whitehorse to Skagway, where just to turn off there. So halfway half an hour down from White Horse, we turned off the highway and then we got a public road street into site. So nicely accessible, a little bit an hour's drive away from White Horse a little bit over. So we've got really good access there. But for us and infrastructure is important, and there are many facets to what infrastructure represents. You can look at where the electrons come from. Our road access is important because, obviously, that gives you economics for transport. Then there's the other facets related to workforce and workforce availability in terms of execution and where your workforce is for future operations, et cetera. So you've got to look at a range of things power people, land transport integral components to not only exploration efficiency, but also stepping up on looking at how you go into developing a project and development viability over the long run. So we think we're pretty well positioned there being 60 kilometers copies from the ones gateway, if you wanted to access the virtues of that in the future in terms of production. I think Yukon will over time for many different projects as ulcers its mining sort of fleet going forward. So we're good for our people. We're pretty proximal to it. I'd say, on a hidden corner of the Western Seaboard in North America in some degree.