Tim Smith of GoldMining Inc. (TSX: GOLD) and U.S. GoldMining Inc. on Advancing 32M Ounce Portfolio of Gold-Dominant Assets in a Rising Gold Market

Tim Smith: Thanks very much, Gerardo. Yeah, appreciate the introduction there. Yep, first time. Excited to make the move to join GoldMining and U.S. Gold. Two weeks in and loving it!

Tim Smith: Absolutely. Let me start with a little bit of history. As you mentioned there, most recently, I was with Newmont Gold for the last three years, and, prior to that, Goldcorp. So six years there with North American-based majors working primarily in North America, primarily Canada.

My role with Newmont was regional director of generative exploration. And what that really meant was that I was working outside of the mine sites contributing towards greenfields exploration but also some of the early-stage projects. That included continuing work with Coffee in Yukon and also, most recently, the acquisition of Tatogga, or Saddle, as Newmont has now renamed it, in the Golden Triangle.

Amazing experience working with both of those companies. Amazing people to work with. Incredible breadth of assets and geological style… so that really helped cement my North American credentials, I guess, in geology.

As you mentioned, before that, I landed in Canada in 2010 and got the job with Kaminak, their Coffee deal, up in the Yukon, and that was just an incredible ride. I'm thrilled that I was willing to pack up my family from Perth, Australia, at the time and move up to Vancouver to do that work.

Tim Smith: Yeah, absolutely. And as some of my colleagues have asked, why leave a safe job with a major? Well, the fundamentals with GoldMining and U.S. Gold are just fantastic. Such a large asset base: 16 million ounces in Indicated; 16 million ounces in Inferred; 11 major properties across five different countries, all within safe jurisdictions in the Americas. Just have so much respect for the portfolio that Amir and Garnet amassed over the last 10 years.

I like the assets and there's a tremendous amount of untapped potential there. And I like the strategy, too, that GoldMining has. They acquired these properties during the downturn; acquired them cheaply. Immediately, we're already seeing a big multiple in our current valuation and we see huge upside in increasing that. There's a lot of untapped potential. And we see a long bull market ahead for gold. We believe that these are assets that our peers in the industry will want to acquire.

And I think, thirdly there, I like the team. I worked with Alastair Still for five, six years… first at Goldcorp and then at Newmont before he came and joined GoldMining. Huge respect for Alastair… really like his style, really business savvy individual, great geologist. And as I already referenced, looking at what Amir and Garnet have done here… just excited to come and join the team.

And finally, my colleagues. What Amir and Alastair have done here in terms of putting together — quite recently, two of us have joined, myself and my colleague Eric Chen just joined this year, and last year, Sam Mah joined — there's a core group of technical expertise with a lot of experience.

So I'm really happy that we've got all of the bases covered from exploration to resource estimation to mine geology. And cumulatively there, we're somewhere in excess of 100 years’ experience.

Tim Smith: Sure, and I started some of that work with Alastair, actually, so we've got a lot of internal experience within GoldMining in terms of what the majors were looking for. And Alastair and I were doing that together in Goldcorp between three and six years ago.

Look, you have to be living under a rock to not know that discoveries, globally, are not keeping pace with mine production… that reserve depletion is outstripping the pace of discovery. You just have to Google gold and reserve depletion or gold supply and demand to find all matter of articles on that… so no need to belabor that.

But if you look at the majors, there's Newmont there producing six to seven million ounces per annum; Barrick producing four to five. It's challenging to replace those sorts of reserves every year. And the assets are getting older, the assets are getting deeper. Exploration is going to play a part but acquisition is going to have to prop that up if they want to maintain or sustain their production profile.

And we believe that they're looking for development opportunities such as the assets that we have in GoldMining. These are advanced projects with resources, and some of them have preliminary economic assessments.

And that's part of our plan is essentially to build that up and deliver what they're looking for, which is a quality geological model that underpins a quality resource model and provides mining optionality. Mining and processing optionality; that's essentially what they're looking for and what we're getting prepared here to start churning out with these assets.

Tim Smith: I don't know about a rush but certainly it's going to be sustained. We've seen some fairly recent activity…. some big announcements quite recently with Kinross acquiring Great Bear's Dixie Project, and, if we go back a year, Newmont acquiring GT Gold's Tatogga Project in the Golden Triangle.

We're going to see these development opportunities being acquired and the companies that own them. So that’s certainly going to be sustained. Whether there’s a rush to that… look, if gold cracks $2,000 and stays there, yeah, I think the fundamentals are strong for that.

Tim Smith: Just really excited to be here… looking forward to keeping you and your listeners updated, Gerardo. Thanks very much for your time today.

Tim Smith: Right on. Bye now.