Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Dolly Varden Silver (TSX-V: DV)(OTC: DOLLF) CEO Shawn Khunkhun on Multi Kilo-Silver Grades, M&A & Exploration Upside in 2022

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Dolly Varden Silver, Mr. Shawn Khunkhun. Shawn, how are you today, sir?

Shawn Khunkhun: Gerardo. I am grateful to be on, thank you so much for this. And I'm grateful to be the CEO of Dolly Varden we've got a tremendous company here and I'm excited to talk to you about today's news and other things we're working on.

Gerardo Del Real: Well listen, let's get right into it. We have, a situation where I think your timing on the pending acquisition is brilliant. I think it's mutually beneficial to both companies. And I say that in part, because of the large capital inflows into BC. I think this is not going to be the last time and of course I'm referring to Newcrest and then the multiple deals that have happened here over the past several months, but I don't believe this will be the last time that we hear of a major coming into the area and writing checks that are consequential. And look, if you keep having the type of exploration success that you're having in combination with a proposed acquisition, I think that's likely to go through you're going to hit the sweet spot, especially if we get kind of precious metals market that I believe we’re due for this year in 2022. You just intersected 354 grams per tonne silver, over 12.28 meters, and 1,220 grams per tonne silver, over a 0.7 meters and correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe those are true widths, correct?

Shawn Khunkhun: Absolutely true widths on the 12.28 meters of 350 gram silver, absolutely.

Gerardo Del Real: Walk me through this release and the latest set of results. And then let's talk about what comes next.

Shawn Khunkhun: Thank you. Okay. So before I get into today's results, I just want to touch on results that we put out on December 20th. Because I think it's important to look at the entire 2021 drill program and what this all means. So, if I can paint a bit of a picture here for your audience, we've got the Dolly Varden project, which is four deposits that make up the mineral resource. Three of the deposits are clustered together, Dolly Varden, Torbrit and North Star, and then two kilometers away we have the Wolf Vein and the Wolf Deposit. And on December 20th, we stepped out, it was a hundred meter down dip step out, and we hit some high grade at Wolf. I believe the numbers were about 1,500 grams per tonne, over a meter. And that Wolf step out was significant because we've got this two kilometer gap from Wolf to Torbrit that we're starting to infill.

We're starting to show continuity. We're starting to show expansion of silver mineralization on the property. So that happened in December. Now today's results. There was a few major takeaways that I think your audience should focus on. Number one, at Torbrit, we have something called the Kitsol Vein and the Kitsol Vein is a vein that is not part of the Torbrit ore body. There's a gap in between Kitsol and Torbrit. What we did today with this 1,200 gram per tonne result, that result came in between. We infilled the gap between Kitsol and Torbrit. So we're showing continuity, we're showing connection, we're showing expansion. And then, I think another big characteristic to focus on here is multiple holes intersected over 4,000 gram meter silver. So these are, these are wide like veins. If you look at some of the images on the press release, we put out about seven images and there's one image where we show over the core length, the silver grades, and what you're seeing here is continuity.

You're seeing so much continuity of grade that it would suggest that this is amenable to mine via bulk mining method. So your costs are going to go down when it comes time to mine, mine these hybrid silver veins, they're, these are not narrow high grade veins. These are wide veins. And so these are some of the takeaways we're showing connection, we're showing expansion, we're showing width. And then the other big breakthrough for me was we drilled towards a deposit called North Star. Gerardo, we've got this in some of the areas of the property, we've got some sediments that cover the surface. We drilled through those sediments and we found that same volcanic package of rocks that hosts Eskay Creek, that hosts Bruce Jack that is continuous along a 15 kilometer corridor. And we hit mineralization on our way to North Star. So North Star is wide open for expansion now.

And the key is when we, some of our exploration tools that we are using to vector in the new areas… so radio metrics, which were showing potassic alteration, having that sediment cover, that airborne radio metrics didn't penetrate through the sediments, but we drilled through it. We found the same package of rocks. So to simplify this, what I'm trying to say to you is we've now defined 15 kilometers of strike length, where we've got this volcanic package of rocks, where we can start proving out continuity. And this goes nicely to this proposed acquisition of Homstake Ridge, because at Homestake they've got three deposits. One of them's Homestake silver, and there's a tremendous growth potential. I really think this is one large mineral system. And, we're going from 44 million ounces at Dolly Varden to a proposed 137 million ounces of silver equivalent with the new acquisition. But it's really, we're in our infancy. That number should grow exponentially now that we are corroborating and validating our exploration model.

Gerardo Del Real: You have a 5.4 kilometer long unexplored area that trends towards those gold and silver deposits at Homestake Ridge. And you mentioned in the release, how this is the first time in the over 110 year mining history of the Golden Triangle that this trend is consolidated. How exciting is it for you as a CEO to have the resource base, the proposed resource base that you'll have here soon, assuming it all goes according to plan and still have blue sky exploration upside the way that you do?

Shawn Khunkhun: Gerardo, I've been in this business for 18 years, I've seen good cycles where you go back to 2010 where you could raise the equity at the right valuations to really advance projects. I have such an appreciation for where we are right now in terms of a company, a project, a camp. I came into Dolly Varden and your viewers and our shareholders should have the confidence in us as a management team now that we have really played our hand very, very well here in terms of being able to unlock the discovery potential of the region, to accretively propose an acquisition, and to really take on the growth of a trajectory here that's taking us to, from a small 20 million company, we close this acquisition, we're 165 million dollar market cap. And we're doing all this at a time where gold and silver prices are not exploding to the upside.

Our share price, if you look from where we proposed the acquisition on December 6th, to where we are today, we're appreciating at a time where most of our peers are down. And what that tells me is if we can have this type of growth and this type of success in a market that’s sideways or down in precious metals, what are we able going to be able to do when the tide turns, and we've got the wind at our backs. This is also happening at a time where, I attended a breakfast this morning at AME Roundup that was sponsored by Newcrest. And Newcrest VP exploration came up and addressed the room and talked about the acquisition of Pretium, talked about the interest they bought into Red Chris. Talked about their desire as the number three gold miner on the planet to go to number one. And this is a camp that they have invested almost $4 billion into just on the M&A side.

And it's a camp that they see themselves operating in for the next hundred years. And the fact that Dolly Varden is now putting a serious mineral inventory at grade, in that camp, it's exciting. And it's my job, Gerardo, as the CEO to take this project as far as we can, and to work with companies like Hecla, like Newcrest, and look to maximize the value to our shareholders. And I'm blessed by having some of the best scientists, the best explorers, the best engineers. We've got a phenomenal mineral endowment. We've got room for expansion. We've got capital in the treasury to unlock that. And it's all happening at a time where generalists aren't even here yet.

And I used to look at companies like Skeena that have gone from pennies to dollars, from a $35 million market cap to almost a billion dollar market cap, but that's not really forward looking. That's looking at what's happened today. Think about where a company like Skeena's gonna be, or where Dolly Varden will be when there's some real price discovery on these metals. And silver is not trading at $20 an ounce, it's trading at, there's some real price discovery, and there's so many fundamentals that tell me that these prices are going higher and we've got grades that support economic development. It's a very, very exciting time.

Gerardo Del Real: You can see a sector rotation in the overall indices. You can see it in the crypto space. You can see capital looking for a newer and safer home. I have to believe, if past this prologue as Rick Rule likes to say, that some of that capital is going to make its way into the precious metal space and the related equities. And for those that are high risk, high reward minded, I can't think of a better sector right now then the resource space for risk reward propositions. Anything to add to that there, Shawn?

Shawn Khunkhun: You know, just on the macro side, look, you look at all, all these other sectors. And the only sector that was up in, in January was energy. Everything else is down. Tech's down, it's way off. You look at some of the assets that are competing with us. Crypto, way off. 50% off its highs, 20% off this year to date. Where else can you get store value, security, store your wealth – precious metals. And the nice thing about buying into a precious metal's equity, particularly one that's got a track record of growth, is regardless of what the metal does, if we're growing inventory accretively, if we've got a low discovery cost, if we've got a team that can continue to show exploration success, our company's going to increase in value. Regardless if metals go up. And if we do have the metals go up in our favor, which you and I both think they will, it's going to further exacerbate and exaggerate that move.

So, just stay tuned. If you're our shareholder, please vote in favor of this transaction. It's accretive for shareholders. We'd love to talk to you. All of our contact information's on the website. We've got our vote on February 22nd. Once we vote for that transaction, once we turn that corner, we are looking at one of the largest drill programs we've ever seen. We've unified this belt, and yeah, as you can hear in my voice, Gerardo, I'm very excited about what 2022 is going to do for Dolly Varden and our shareholders.

Gerardo Del Real: Can't wait to have you back on. Thanks again for that update, Shawn.

Shawn Khunkhun: Okay. Thanks, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: All right. Cheers.

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