Categories: Base Metals / Precious Metals
Topics: General Base Metals / General Precious Metals

GoldMining Inc. (TSX: GOLD)(NYSE: GLDG) CEO Alastair Still on $119 Million Cash & Equity Holdings Position, Multiple PEA’s & Drilling

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of GoldMining Inc., Mr. Alastair Still. Alastair, congrats. This is a new position, relatively new, as of March the 31st. So congratulations are definitely in order. How are you today, sir?

Alastair Still: Well, good morning and thanks very much, Gerardo. Certainly excited to be here chatting with you today and excited to take on this new role. I did start with GoldMining last October and as a chief development officer, I got working with the team, got even more excited by the projects and when our CEO mentioned he was in the process of retiring, it seemed like a natural transition and very excited to take on a new role of CEO starting, as you say, April 1st.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, let's get right into it because it's very rare in this space that you're able to take over a situation where you have $119 million in cash and equity holdings and a resource base of over 20 million gold equivalent ounces and now some copper as well. You have 14 high quality gold copper projects throughout the Americas, and I want to get into those, but before we get into all of that, I would love for you to provide just a little overview of what attracted you to the GoldMining opportunity. It's one thing to be chief development officer. It's another to take the reins and oversee all of it, right?

Alastair Still: Exactly. Well, I'll be honest. I had a pretty long career working for major mining companies, almost 25 years, working at their operational level, working in corporate development, working in project development, building out major projects and when I saw this opportunity at GoldMining come before me, it was something I was very excited to join and be part of and what GoldMining has done is they've crafted over 10 years, a very sizeable and unique combination of resources throughout the Americas. High-quality gold copper projects, which really have been part of an accumulator model. Amir and his team have very astutely acquired these assets at good points in the market downturns opportunistic moments to pick them up at good value and I saw this as a chance or really a blank canvas to come in and create a new story as GoldMining starts to pivot towards just being an acquirer of assets to one where we can actually advance assets and start to unlock that value for our shareholders.

Gerardo Del Real: Let's talk about the value. I mentioned the $119 million in cash and equity holdings. The bulk of that equity holding position comes from Gold Royalty Corp led by David Garofalo, who I just spoke with a few days ago and obviously they had some big game-changing news here, in the past few days. Gold Royalty and Ely Gold decided to merge and create a leading precious metals royalty company. It's a deal that is very accretive. It's one that I know he's excited about and one that you have to be excited about given the equity holdings in Gold Royalty.

Alastair Still: Absolutely. I'm excited in multiple fronts. I also have two hats here in that I'm still the director of technical services for Gold Royalty. So I'm very much involved with that process and very excited by the Ely transaction and really the transformative nature of it for Gold Royalty, but one of the things I think that really want to emphasize here is GoldMining is still a major shareholder of Gold Royalty. I'm looking at the price of where Gold Royalty has been moving. We currently have 20 million shares in Gold Royalty and current performance, that's almost $150 million Canadian, the value of those shares. So even since the $119 number you mentioned earlier, that Gold Royalty value has been increasing, and that's really one of the unique attributes that GoldMining has. Not only do we have a sizable resource space of ounces of gold and copper, but we also have this strong financial position with over $7 million in cash at our last quarter end and this value of these Gold Royalty shares of almost $150 million Canadian really gives us a lot of optionality as we start to advance our own project portfolio.

Gerardo Del Real: Let's talk about your own project portfolio. I mentioned how busy it's been and you've announced resource estimates and initiated PEAs on multiple projects here recently. Walk me through what that's looked like these first couple of months because, man, you've been busy.

Alastair Still: Absolutely. I mean, one of the things that I'm very excited about is getting to work on our projects, but before we just jump into the projects, we're going through a very rigorous process of evaluating them, rating and ranking them to make sure we're putting our best value forward on the best projects we have and part of that is getting our resources to a comfort level, more confidence in them. We've announced a new resource update on our São Jorge project in Brazil. We're excited about that project. You will have seen on Monday, we've put out a new resource estimate for our Whistler Project. We updated the resource there. We're very confident and comfortable in that resource now, and this really exists a foundation which we can build upon. Good solid resources, and as you say, we've also announced and for the size of company we are, we've entered into agreements and we've began work with three separate PEAs or preliminary economic assessments on our São Jorge project, La Mina and Yellowknife and for a company our size, we're starting three PEAs. That's very exciting. As we do that work, we're starting to understand better those assets, understanding current metal prices, the impacts it has and starts to lay out a path of what the value is of these projects, so that we can go about the actual process of unlocking that value for our shareholders.

Gerardo Del Real: You're also, along with those three PEA studies, initiating drilling, or at the very least have drilling plans for the second half of this year in Colombia at La Mina. Walk me through that project and why you're putting drills there?

Alastair Still: Absolutely. And this is like a milestone moment for GoldMining and our team and I don't think in the last 10 years GoldMining has done any drilling. So, this is really a milestone first. It's a real catalyst for the company. We really pivoted to taking our assets and then starting to unlock the value.

So this project at La Mina is really a watershed moment for us. It's exciting. We have some permitting and regulatory work that needs to be done there. So a component of the drilling can satisfy that, but I think the target at La Mina is really exciting in the sense that there is a gold copper porphyry system there that has multiple fronts, multiple phases to it and some of those we've captured in the La Mina resource, but there's a number of other centers that we think remain untested and one of those is La Garrucha and that's certainly one of the targets we're testing. The previous operator there had done some drilling at La Garrucha with some success, never finished the work to complete it to a resource stage and we think this is an excellent target we can get into. Good infrastructure in the area and we've got a strong team who's based at Medellin to support our efforts there. So we're not going in blind. We have a good country presence. We know the conditions. We're consulting with the communities and very excited to be drilling on that project in the next couple months.

Gerardo Del Real: I laugh when you mentioned the drilling and the fact that you don't believe there's been any in the past decade, because I've always kiddingly joked with Amir. I'm a sucker for the drill bit, Alastair. I love seeing creation added via the drill bit. So while GoldMining was out brilliantly buying ounces on the cheap and credit to you, to Amir and the team. It truly has been brilliant to see the execution. I have always joked that I would pay more attention to the company once a drill was turning and here we are. I'm excited to see that happen. I'm excited to see some exploration work and, of course, excited to see the results from the three PEA studies and not to mention the rest of the portfolio, right?

Alastair Still: Absolutely, and I think you're right. I mean, this is what positions GoldMining in such a unique way is that we still have that solid resource base. We'll pick our best assets and we'll start doing the work on them to unlock that value. It's perhaps too easy to say all those assets get lumped in together and here's one big resource number. I think that deflects people from the actual value of each project, and if we were an individual, small cap exploration company, and we had one of these projects, it would be a company by itself and we've done 14 of them. So we really got to try and get that value daylighted. My background has come from operating companies, companies that have developed major gold projects. I'm excited by this portfolio. I'm excited to get to work on it.

That doesn't mean we turn our backs on the foundational history of GoldMining and we will continue to look at opportunities where we see a value creation in acquisition but this is a pivotal moment where we actually start working on our own assets to unlock their value as well and much like the case with Gold Royalty, that was really a value unlocking exercise. That was something that was created from within the portfolio. We've unlocked that and our value of those shares. Now just the loan on our value of the shares is almost $150 million Canadian at today's trading prices and exchange rate anyway. So that's one great example of what this portfolio actually holds.

Gerardo Del Real: Well said. I can't let you go without getting your take on the gold space. We've had a bit of a pullback, still really healthy prices. Given your background and your experience with major companies, you've seen many of these cycles, Alastair. Give me your take before you leave.

Alastair Still: I'm a Goldbug true and true, but we also have to temper reality and the gold price will move up and down. I think we're well positioned for a rising gold price. I think as well though, that we can't get caught up in the exuberance and make rash decisions on a spotted moment thing and I think our discipline in the gold price has been shown by our latest resource announcement. We've chosen for updates at our Whistler project. We used the gold price for our resources of $1,600 per ounce. Now that's significantly below spot. We think that creates further opportunity for us and room to grow upon that. That reflects our ability that we think these projects still have room to grow. We're still believers in the gold price and as you say, we've gone through cycles, we'll go through ebbs and flows, but we're very bullish about it and we think the time is exactly right for advancing these projects right now.

Gerardo Del Real: I've seen the team execute brilliantly during a bear market. I am excited to see what you and the team are able to do during what I think is going to be a historic gold bull market. Alastair, thank you so much for your time. Is there anything you'd like to add to that?

Alastair Still: No, a pleasure to be here and I say, watch for the news coming out as GoldMining starts to ramp up our activities. Very excited to be laying out more of that strategy and those results as we get into the second half this year. Thanks so much for having me, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: Thanks for your time. We'll chat soon. Bye now.

Alastair Still: You bet. Bye.