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

U.S. GoldMining (NASDAQ: USGO) CEO Tim Smith on Doubling Resource at Whistler Gold Project, Alaska

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of U.S. GoldMining, Mr. Tim Smith. Tim, how are you today?

Tim Smith: I'm excellent, thank you, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, listen, you're hitting the sweet spot of a gold bull market that I think is going to continue to run for quite some time, and I wanted to have you on. We chatted in person at Beaver Creek, but since then, you had an intercept last week of 652.5 meters at one gram a tonne gold equivalent from near surface, which is a very, very important point. And then you just followed that up with news today that you've more than doubled the indicated resource estimate to 6.48 million gold equivalent ounces, with an additional 4.16 million gold equivalent ounces inferred. This all, of course, at the Whistler Project in Alaska. You got to be thrilled. I'd love to start with that 652.5 meter intercept.

Tim Smith: Yeah, sure. So look, last time we talked at Beaver Creek, I know we talked about how excited I was about how well the drill season was going, and that we would be heading into news flow season in the near term. And that was middle of September. Here we are, early October, we've just brought out two major updates for the market in the past week. So yeah, first of all, last week, that drill result. Now, that was the re-entry of last year's standout hole. You may recall, hole three returned 547 meters at 1.06 grams per tonne gold equivalent. And we reported that back in January. And you may remember that that was mineralized all the way to the bottom of that drill hole.

And the reason for that is that, last fall, kind of around October, around Canadian Thanksgiving time, we got frozen out. Alaska's heading into winter at that time of year, our water source froze up, you need water for diamond drilling. So we had to postpone the drilling of that hole. But this season, as soon as we could get the drill back onto Whistler in early July, we re-entered that hole and we kept on quarrying. And the result of that, is that we've now extended that mineralized intercept from 547 meters right up to 650 meters at one gram per tonne gold equivalent. So we turned an excellent intercept into an even better intercept, which is pretty rare.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, one, yes, pretty rare, but so is having nearly 11 million ounces across all categories on a gold equivalent basis. You have to be thrilled with the updated resource estimate here.

Tim Smith: Oh, absolutely. As you hit on there, we've seen some growth in this update. So our previous estimate was 2.99 million gold equivalent ounces indicated, and another 6.45 million gold equivalent ounces inferred. We've now more than doubled that indicated. So what that means is, we've converted a big chunk of the inferred into indicated. We've now got 6.5 million ounces indicated and another 4.2 million ounces inferred. So if you take that into account, that more than doubling, it means that now, the Whistler deposit, the Whistler mineral resource estimate is cut at a higher confidence, it's de-risked, and those are now higher value ounces. So we grew the overall resource and deposit, and we de-risked it and increased that value of the ounces in the ground.

Gerardo Del Real: What comes next, Tim? Obviously, you're firing on all cylinders right now. I assume that you have to be excited about the gold price, the direction that gold appears to be headed. And again, you've positioned beautifully during the quiet times. A lot of eyeballs right now on the company. What comes next?

Tim Smith: Oh, that's great to hear. And look, we're really excited about the future. That Whistler resource update comes on the back of the 2023 drilling results. I emphasize that, because we haven't even included any of those 2024 results that we've announced so far, and there's more drill assays to come for the 2024 program.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, I'm looking forward to those assays. I'm looking forward to having you back on. Thank you so much.

Tim Smith: Thanks very much, Gerardo. Have a great day.

Gerardo Del Real: All right. Chat soon.

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