Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals / Gold Stocks

Headwater Gold (CSE: HWG)(OTC: HWAUF) CEO Caleb Stroup on Drilling for Gold in a Gold Bull Market

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO for Headwater Gold, Mr. Caleb Stroup. Caleb, it's great to have you on. How are you today, sir?

Caleb Stroup: Doing very good. Thanks a lot, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: Well listen, let's get right to it. The last time we spoke, we talked about the many catalysts that Headwater Gold had. That was a few months back, and we have, what feels like to me anyway, a drastically different gold market. Gold has flirted with the $2,400 announced level, currently trading right around the $2,335, $2,340 level, and to me, clearly looks to be headed higher. All this is happening within a backdrop of a dollar index that is right around the 106 level, which to me is as bullish as can be. Headwater has done a really, really great job of positioning itself for many, many shots for a big discovery. I wanted to have you on because you've had some news here recently that spoke to that a bit and hopefully get an update.

Caleb Stroup: Yeah, no, it very much looks like it might be our time to shine here in the gold sector. For those of us who've been building things slowly and carefully for the last couple of years, I think we're set up really well here. It's going to be an exciting year. With Headwater, we've, over the last two or three years, have been very aggressively exploring a big portfolio, mostly in Nevada. This year is set to be more of the same, a couple of big drill programs on our Nevada assets and a few more potentially that we're working on teeing up for a strong market, so we'll see.

Gerardo Del Real: For those that are not familiar, and I bring this up every time that you and I have a conversation, because I realize that, look, people in the gold space have been bored for the past couple of years. That sentiment to me is clearly changing now, and I'm getting a lot more questions, not just from the generalists, but from people that run big funds and run family offices and actually are looking to move capital out of other sectors and into the resource space. The questions that I'm getting tend to be really nuanced. I want to ask you about your business model again, because there are new eyes in the space that maybe aren't aware of the hybrid model that Headwater Gold deploys.

Caleb Stroup: Yeah, so we're a little bit different than your traditional junior explorer that may have one or two projects that they go out and promote and raise money and then go work on and drill, and then usually do it again. We have more of a split business model where we look to attract high-quality partners to advance several of our projects. We have a big portfolio of projects and several of which are currently under partnerships with Newmont, the world's biggest gold mining company.

Now, at the same time, we have a stable of properties that we do explore 100%, but by blending those two things together, we're able to massively dilute the amount of capital required and the dilution that we suffer at a corporate level as a result. We're still just sitting with just over 60 million shares after 3 1/2 years as a public company in the junior resource space. It's worked out very well for us.

Gerardo Del Real: As far as the projects that you have 100% ownership of or the option to have the entire project, which one will command the bulk of your 2024 exploration dollars?

Caleb Stroup: We're still kind of watching and waiting to fully allocate the final numbers of dollars and meters to see where this market heads. We do have plans to do some amount of drilling at our TJ Project in Northern Nevada. The full scope and scale of that, like I said, to some degree will depend on the market conditions. We're financed to do that right now. We've got just under $3 million in cash. The question is how big do we want to go? Well, that's kind of dependent on where this market goes. That's both with respect to that program and potential other programs within the portfolio too.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, lots of catalysts. We have the market that I think is the one that we've really been waiting for, it seems to be moving in the right direction. I'm looking forward to having you back on and really getting into the specifics of the individual programs because again, in the junior space, the name of the game is shots on goal, and you want not just home run swings, but you want singles and doubles and triples if we're going to use baseball parlance. We all love the home runs, but we know those are difficult to get to and it's easier to runs up with multiple hits. I'm looking forward to a lot of hits from Headwater this year. Anything to add, Caleb?

Caleb Stroup: Yeah, well, next time we should talk a little bit about our Spring Peak and Lodestar programs that are coming up here. We're looking to get started and early summer for two big ones there. Those ones will likely be the first ones out of the gate of the year, total between those two projects of over 10,000 meters of new exploration drilling. That'll be real exciting to watch that develop as well.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, listen, summer comes quickly, we'd love to have you back on. I want to emphasize one last thing for those that may be newer to the space or newer to Headwater. The emphasis on top-notch jurisdictions is something that's really attractive to me as a speculator in the space. It tends to be heavily, heavily North American-focused with obviously multiple, multiple projects in the Nevada region. Caleb, thank you very much. Anything else you want to add, sir?

Caleb Stroup: No, I think that covers it. Thanks a lot.

Gerardo Del Real: Perfect. Thanks for your time, appreciate it.

Caleb Stroup: Yep. Have a good one. Bye.

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