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GoldMining Inc. (TSX: GOLD)(NYSE-American: GLDG) CEO Alastair Still on Creating U.S. GoldMining Inc. Subsidiary to Focus on District-Scale Whistler Gold-Copper Exploration Asset in Alaska
Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of GoldMining Inc. — Mr. Alastair Still. Sir, it's been a bit. How are you?
Alastair Still: I'm great. Good afternoon, Gerardo. Great to speak with you this afternoon.
Gerardo Del Real: It's great to have you back on. We talked a bit off air, and, look, if there's one thing that the team at GoldMining — from chairman Amir Adnani all the way down — is the team knows how to unlock value. Very few teams and groups in the space use bear markets to their advantage the way that the team at GoldMining uses bear markets to their advantage.
And I think the company did a brilliant job of positioning and adding quality ounces for years on end while everybody was asleep at the wheel and complaining about the bear market. And now, with gold at US$1,970 [an ounce]… and looks like it's poised to break the US$2,000 mark… here you are announcing the creation of U.S. GoldMining for advancing the Whistler project in Alaska.
I would love for you to give us a little bit of perspective and context as to how this will roll out and why this approach.
Alastair Still: Absolutely, and certainly it's very exciting times. And I think you're absolutely right, it's all part of an overall strategy of creating value from this extensive portfolio we have in the Americas. We've talked about 16 million gold equivalent ounces Measured & Indicated and 16 million ounces gold equivalent Inferred — but sometimes that gets lost into the bigger picture. People don't see the granularity or see the value in the individual projects.
And really, our move with the creation of U.S. GoldMining Inc. is about daylighting that value and really unlocking the value on our Whistler project, which, as you say, in Alaska, is really one of our core projects. It's a very sizable land package. It's over a 170 sq km land package. It's got a very significant gold and copper resource on it, and it's only about 100 miles from Anchorage.
So it's a great part of the state; big resource; has been sitting idle for a number of years, and we're very excited to be preparing the next phase of moving it forward.
Gerardo Del Real: What's the timing for the creation of U.S. GoldMining, and then what comes next?
Alastair Still: Well, really what comes next is we are actively preparing ourselves to follow a path which we would say is broadly similar to what we had great success with last year with the creation of Gold Royalty Corp. (NYSE-American: GROY). We IPO’d that company and put a tremendous asset onto our balance sheet. That created a crystallized value of some C$100 million for the company.
That's the next path for us is to prepare a public vehicle for an IPO on this. Timeline on that, it varies. A generic timeline for launching an IPO is in the four to six month range. We, of course, will be trying to do it as expeditiously as possible, and we have a good start on that. We have a very experienced team ready for doing that.
But we're preparing our necessary paperwork. We're finalizing some terrific board and management appointments, which we'll have some news on coming out the next little while. But it's certainly very exciting times for our company.
Gerardo Del Real: A lot to look forward to. Can we get a brief overview of the remainder of the portfolio, which, again, is robust and is positioned beautifully for this bull market.
Alastair Still: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we certainly start with a core portfolio that has 11 projects all throughout the Americas with resources on them. Again, we keep emphasizing this large resource base; 16 million gold equivalent ounces Measured & Indicated; 16 million ounces gold equivalent in the Inferred category. It consists of gold as well as copper and significant silver.
Of course, we're very excited by the copper credits we get with our projects. We have announced, in this quarter, earlier this year in January, our first preliminary economic assessment (PEA) as a company. We put that out on our La Mina project in Colombia. Very excited by the economics on that project. It can produce over a million gold equivalent ounces in a 10-year mine life with strong economics and low cash costs of less than US$700 on an all-in sustaining unit cost basis. So very excited about that project.
We have another preliminary economic assessment underway on our São Jorge project in Brazil, and that's looking like a strong candidate to be our next PEA completed. Excited for both of those.
And even on La Mina, we see some tremendous exploration upside on the La Garrucha target, which is right beside the existing resource about 600 meters away. And we think a modest drill program could significantly increase resources on that project, which would further enhance the value there.
So lots on-the-go. And that doesn't even capture the recent exciting news we have by our shareholding in Gold Royalty Corp. They've announced the paying of their inaugural dividend. So we'll have dividend income coming from the shares we hold in Gold Royalty. That's a benefit the company has by holding those shares, and that dividend income is forecast to be about C$1 million per year on an annualized basis. So that's an exciting development.
And then, we haven't even talked about our uranium project. We have, of course, a project in the Athabasca Basin, which is all set for moving forward with someone who may be more focused on uranium. A large land package, prospective ground, and just ready to be the next target to be pulled and unlocked from our portfolio.
Gerardo Del Real: I'm looking forward to seeing the strategy with the uranium project. The gold portfolio portion of the company speaks for itself, and I think it's going to be an exciting 2022. Thank you so much for your time today!
Alastair Still: Absolutely! Great to be speaking again and look forward to giving you some updates in the very near future.
Gerardo Del Real: Alright, Alastair, safe travels out there!
Alastair Still: Yeah, you bet! Thanks for the call.