Transcript was automatically generated.

0:00:02 – Announcer

Wall Street Unplugged looks beyond the regular headlines heard on mainstream financial media to bring you unscripted interviews and breaking commentary direct from Wall Street right to you on Main Street.

0:00:16 – Frank Curzio

How’s it going out there? It’s December 4th and I’m Frank Curzio, host of the Wall Street Unplugged podcast, where I break the headlines and tell you what’s really moving these markets.

So I promised you more interviews and we have a really really good one today, and it’s with someone. His name is Alistair. Still, Alistair is a rock star, the CEO of GoldMining. The symbol to that stock is GLDG. CEO of GoldMining. The symbol to that stock is GLDG, and I wanted to interview him today because, where this stock is trading, it offers you an unbelievable opportunity to make a lot of money in it. I’m not being salesy when I’m saying that After you listen to the interview, you’re going to see the same thing. There’s a reason why Amir Nani, who’s a chairman, are buying shares of the stock right now, and also he’s buying shares of the stock right now. So, not talking to my book, not talking anything, but I will tell you that I’m going to be active tomorrow because I just taped this interview. Okay, I’m going to have a quick turnaround. You’re going to get this, probably when the market closes. I’m going to wait till 12 o’clock noon and I’m going to be a very big buyer of the stock in the market where it is Okay. Again, it’s not sales pitch, it’s just.

When you listen to this interview and after I got through with it, I was like holy shit, because this is a junior miner. I mean, usually when you invest in junior miners, you have this chance for massive returns, right? Same with Bitcoin, same with biotech, right Risky industries usually high risk, high reward. This is a stock that offers incredibly high return potential, but probably one one-hundredth of the risk of investing in a junior minor. I mean, I’ve never seen a junior minor structured the way this is, and I’ve been analyzing this industry for well over 20 years. Okay, so enough of it. You could see for yourself. Take a listen to this interview. But again, I’m going to be active in the market. Tomorrow afternoon I’ll give you guys a chance to buy it. I don’t own any shares of this now. I am going to own shares tomorrow and that’s how positive I felt afterwards. But you make the decision after you listen to this. And here’s my interview with Alistair Steele. Alistair, thanks so much for joining us on Wall Street Unplugged.

0:02:15 – Alastair Still

Frank, pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me on today.

0:02:17 – Frank Curzio

No, no, it’s great. Thanks for taking the time. So I wanted everyone to get to know you. Okay, I know you very well I don’t know if my audience does or a lot of people out there Because you have a long history in the mining industry. You worked for over 25 years. You worked at Newmont, Goldcorp, Anico, Eagle, Kinross almost all of the majors. You’re Director of Corporate Development at Goldcorp. You’re a member of Engineers and Geoscientists in British Columbia, member of Professional Geoscientists Ontario. You had this long, huge list right and with this resume and I talked to Amir I’ve known Amir for a long time I feel like you could have either retired or got a job any single place you wanted to, even the majors why did you decide to take the CEO position at gold mining? I mean, what swung that choice for you to go there as a person and go anywhere in the industry? What swung that choice for you to go there?

0:03:05 – Alastair Still

as a person and go anywhere in the industry? Well, it’s a great question, and first let me tackle the first one. Certainly, retirement wasn’t an option, at least as far as my wife was concerned, so she didn’t want me home. But yes, I was at a crossroads of my career. I’d spent some 25 years working for major operating companies, the likes of Kinross, placerdome, goldcorp and Newmont, and after a merger occurred between Newmont and Goldcorp, I was faced with a decision I could transfer to the corporate office in Denver with Newmont or I could start something new. And I was at that stage of my career. I was looking for an opportunity. I knew this portfolio that Amir had assembled. It was exciting to me and I almost looked at it like a blank canvas. You know he had an asset portfolio, rich in resources, but really hadn’t done a lot of work. It really catered to my strengths, my belief in projects being a gold bug for years. I thought it was a perfect fit and that’s why I joined up with Amir about four years ago now.

0:04:04 – Frank Curzio

And how’d that conversation go? I’m curious because I never asked him about it, was it just, hey, we want to meet with you and I mean, when did you know like you wanted something big here, like, wow, this is really, really cool to come to this company. I mean, he’s so persuasive and he’s great and he’s a grinder. I love him, he’s one of my best friends. How did that conversation go, if you can say how it went, because I’m always curious with behind the scenes stuff.

0:04:25 – Alastair Still

Well, I mean maybe I should review this with Amir, but I’d like to think I didn’t play too easy at first. I think it made him work for it, which is good, and as you know he’s very persuasive and for me really, you know, the icing on the cake was when the additional notion of at that time we were just getting ready to spin out the gold royalty assets into another company and bringing the likes of David Garofalo and his depth of industry experience into the team on a related company. You know that was really the icing of the cake. Amir was a salesman and that just kind of finished off the deal where you know, saw the upward trajectory within the company, but also to grow these resources. You know, saw the upward trajectory within the company, but also to grow these resources. I really saw them as unloved sitting there and that was really got me excited about coming on board.

0:05:12 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, I want to let everyone know. This is a junior mining company, okay, and I’ve studied a lot of these, I would say 90% of the industry. I would tell you to avoid immediately. Remember, just keep that in mind, because when you look at this rockstar team that he’s talking about, you got Amir founder co-chair, david Garofalo If you’re not familiar with him, I mean he was mining person of the year 2012, 30 years experience, present CEO of Gold Corp when it was sold to Newmont, right, canada’s CFO of the year in 2008. You also have Tim Smith here, obviously, ceo for you, but also Merrick Guarnero, I believe, is still on the board of directors, who’s similar to the Kennedy name and one of the biggest names. I mean, he’s just a rockstar of 30 years and brought so many new technologies to Brazil.

It’s amazing when I see this management team, and not only that, it’s amazing when I see, when I look at junior minors. I think, okay, these guys maybe have one project here, one project there. You came into something where this was built for this moment, this was built. So let’s get all these projects as cheap as we can get them, because mining has been a terrible business for a while, right, the whole industry. Now gold’s come back, you’re not really seeing the benefits, but talk about the ounces that you guys have. Talk about some of the things that you’re doing, because when I see this company and you’re looking at, you know 20 million ounces of gold right, m and I and inferred. I mean this is not a small little company. You have so much optionality here. Talk about all these projects and not at once, but how big this is, considering most of these things. I see a million ounce deposit, a two million ounce deposit. This is much bigger than these things. I see a million ounce deposit, a 2 million ounce deposit.

0:06:47 – Alastair Still

This is much bigger than that. Well, exactly, and that was really what attracted me to the company, what really sets us apart from other companies is the number of projects in the portfolio, the depth, the diversity and really the optionality. And you think about this. You say well, we have a close to 14 projects in total. There’s some seven that have mineral resource estimates on them. All of those projects are in the Americas. We’re heavily focused on gold. Over 80% of the commodity exposure is to gold, but there’s this extra little bonus of copper almost 18% copper and copper is certainly a strategic metal, very important of the greening of the economy, very important as you get stakeholder approval and engagement with the local community. So, all of these factors coming together on the depth of a portfolio and that doesn’t even look at the fact of what we’ve actually put down as tangible assets into equities.

We’ve taken two companies over the last four years now and created two spinouts. We started with Gold Royalty Corp. We did that just over three years ago. We started by writing royalties on our portfolio of assets. We launched a new company called Gold Royalty Corp, launched on the NYC American. It was backed by again, remember this assets in our portfolio with royalties on them, that raised $90 million in its IPO. Really, I think that was an endorsement by the market of the underlying portfolios, again backed by our portfolio. That’s a great start. Today we still own over 21 million shares of gold royalty we’re the largest shareholder in the company. That company is now turning positive cash flow. Revenues increased multifold in the last couple of years and from a startup company to turning cash flow positive in three years. It’s a great accomplishment and has a tremendous trajectory for growth going forward. So that’s just one more piece of the puzzle.

And then, on top of that, you had a new IPO last year where we took one of our larger resources in Alaska, the Whistler Gold Copper Project. We launched that into a new vehicle on the NASDAQ, got very creative and called it US GoldMining Inc. And that project today is sailing along. We’ve brought in experienced management and board to run it From the likes of Newmont, the world’s largest mining company. We’ve brought in two senior geologists to lead the technical team there. And that company we own 80% of the market cap of it alone is almost equal to the market cap of gold mining and we have 80% ownership in that company. So there’s tangible assets with equities. We have a number of resource projects all throughout the Americas, giving optionality on which one, so you’re not betting all your chips on one horse. Here You’ve got multiple opportunities, multiple avenues to create growth, and we’ll get into I’m sure at some point in the interview a little bonus kicker with a uranium project as well.

0:09:41 – Frank Curzio

Which is really cool, which was given to Amir pretty much by accident, right. So something you didn’t know you had until you had it. But I want to talk about this because let’s go into gold mining first, right, so this is the hub, this is the company, right, gold mining, gldg. And when I look at $164 million market cap, okay, and you look at a trend that’s down when gold is up, right, and for me, I like having these interviews, especially when the price is right for people, because, again, when people are listening to this’t want to give it to them. When it’s, I think, people like to promote. When things are sky high, and sometimes the investors are going to come in there, it’s wrong. But here we look at $164 million, again, this is GL, this is just gold mining, the hub. Right, and talk about when I look over here and I go into US gold mining okay, I’m sorry for the CNBC chart, but I like for people to follow along. I mean you had great results. You spun this out, you know, whenever I think it was a 2023, if I remember correctly but I mean you just reported some great, great drilling results. Look where this thing has gone, right, I mean this is a gold stock, right? So this is a gold stock where people are used to seeing, wow, gold’s up and most of it’s kind of you know some of market cap. So 150 million, you own 80% of US gold mining. So 80% of 150 million is 120 million. Right, you own those shares.

Now let’s take a look at gold royalty. Because gold royalty, you own 12% of this number right here 215. So call that 26 million. So if you add those two investments, those stakes you have in those companies, that’s about $146 million. In those two positions you throw in your cash here. And I just want to show you this which is fascinating to me with gold mining I mean, if you look at the market cap at $164, you’re almost close, very, very close to that with these two investments along with your cash on your balance sheet. Very close to that with these two investments along with your cash on your balance sheet. Value in it alone. Right now, we’re talking about the value of those two spinoffs. If you want to call a gold royalty, a spinoff is worth pretty much more than your market cap, which doesn’t make sense. It means that you’re getting every single project, every single thing that I put up for free. Why the disconnect? Why are we seeing such a disconnect here?

0:11:55 – Alastair Still

Well, I think that’s the key question and where I think the opportunity lies. And specifically looking at US gold mining, as you say, we launched that company just last year. We own 80% of the stock. The stock two months ago was around $5 a share. Today, as we record this, it’s around $12 a share. We own 10 million shares of that. So that’s gone up as an equity value almost $70 million in two months.

And yet our company gold mining has remained flat. So either there’s a miss or a disconnect there in the tangible value we’ve added. But I think that just screams to the opportunity here. Where real value has been created has not been reflected in the parent company, the gold mining stock. And we can see that. The nice thing about US gold mining it’s a very small float, very tight structure on it and when you have good results which we have done we had a new resource on that project, we put good drill results on it it’s risen you can see that on your chart there it’s risen substantially yet has not been reflected in the 80% ownership that gold mining has in that stock. That screams as an opportunity to me that someone has missed the mark on where real value has been added.

0:13:04 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, it is incredible when I see the value of what’s going on, because really, you’re getting all the rest of the projects in your portfolio for free. Now I want to ask you something, because one your experience and this is what I love, and I love working with you guys is through your experience. When we’ve just seen, I’ll be honest, a really shitty market for a while, especially in junior miners, a lot of CEOs that I know have sat on their hands. A lot of CEOs have called me and said, hey, frank, these are mining CEOs and I’d be like I got this great biotech to pitch you. I’m like it’s usually the biggest red flag.

I feel like over the last eight, 10 years, when people were sitting on their hands, you were able to extract value right. So, extracting value where you have all this optionality with these projects where hey, okay, let know US gold mining and spin out the whistle project and look at the value, right, I feel like you could do this with so many projects. When did you come to that decision? Because I felt like, while everyone was kind of sitting on their hands and many people were sitting on their hands, I say 90% of the industry was you guys were grinding, providing and saying okay, how do we extract value? Because we have all this value from these portfolios. Let’s IPO two of these things. Let’s IPO two of these things. I mean, when did you come to terms with that? Because I think that’s fascinating. It just shows the experience coming out especially.

0:14:16 – Alastair Still

That’s why it’s important to have that with a junior miner. Well, I think really that illustrates the long-term view we’ve had on gold. That started with Amir more than 10 years ago. While the market was in downs and dips and down cycles, amir was the one out buying. He was thinking long-term. So he was picking up gold assets for basically 10 cents on the dollar, waiting for the right opportunity. And the right opportunity comes in a number of ways. It’s what the market will dictate you can do and also where you can add to your team.

When the market turned the right way, we added to our team. We brought in David Garofalo, brought in myself, we brought in a strong technical team that originated at Newmont and Goldcorp. So all the pieces came together right projects, the right time. It was the time to start showing this value and at some point it’s great to talk about assets, but really we’re very much about demonstrating the tangible value there and that’s why we did the launch at those times. The tangible value there and that’s why we did the launch at those times, uh, they weren’t done at the same time and that’s the to the point of. You know, we had to time it right where we have patience to wait and giving the optionality. You know it’s, it’s like getting a uh, you know, going to the, the practice rink and you’ve got a whole bag of pucks to fire the net and try and score some goals, rather than just one puck to shoot at it. That’s a nice thing here this optionality in this portfolio of multiple assets with a long-term view, full flexibility to extract value from it.

0:15:40 – Frank Curzio

Now I want to put something in perspective before we get to Ray, which I always love for a long time, and I was going to say I was going to make a joke about Amir, because I’ve known Amir for 15 years and the two industries he chose to really go into is uranium CEO of UEC and mining, and up to two years ago, because uranium is doing much better, I said you couldn’t pick any two other industries. But yet the grind and seeing him and always being positive and just waiting for this moment where gold is, I mean, it was perfectly built for this moment, except the stock hasn’t participated and yet I feel like it’s so de-risked because the investments that you have in two other companies are worth what the stock is right now. But I want you to talk about okay, you probably used to do presentations, if it’s a friend of geologists and mining audience Okay, let’s talk about your gold equivalent ounces, right so? Gold equivalent ounces? You put everything in, you put into gold, right so? Gold equivalent ounces. You put everything in, you put into gold, right? So your gold equivalent ounces. What I’m looking at is, you know, over 20 million, right? So when I look at over 20 million, I want you to explain how big it is. But before you do that, I actually brought up a graph and I want to show you guys. But I want to hear your thoughts on this as well. So when I look at this graph, I think people like 20 million. You know what’s the big deal.

2023, if you guys could see up here and I’ll blow this up and then bring this down. So this is 2020 to 2023. There’s only been five major discoveries. If you look at this chart right here, I mean you know all this right. I’m bringing this up when I tell you I was going to bring it up Alistair, but I know you know all this.

But just to bring the audience in, almost no discoveries. All the discoveries, all the total gold amounts to 0.6% that was discovered this decade. And if you look right here in 2020, 2024, look how much was like. This is the discoveries right. These are the five 2.4, 5.9, 4.2. These are the discoveries over the last four years and it says no gold discoveries in past 10 years are among the 30 largest right. So I don’t know if this is because there’s not been a lot of CapEx going on. It hasn’t been a great market. The point is, if you look at the past few years and how many ounces have been discovered, you guys are sitting on over 20 million, and I mean explain that to me, because I think sometimes that gets lost in people who aren’t in the golden through of how big your company actually is Well, exactly, and let’s start talking about those answers.

0:17:53 – Alastair Still

So we have 12.5 million gold equivalent measured, indicated, and then 9.7 million inferred gold equivalent. Most of that is gold. It’s about 80%, Just over 80% of that is gold. So it’s primarily a gold based gold equivalent. But to your point on discoveries in the last 10 to 20 years, let’s call it I’d lived through that working for the majors.

The majors for the last 10 years really were focused on bottom line operating results and when you’re focused on bottom line operating results it’s very easy in the short term to cut out expiration expenditures. You might not see the effect for five or 10 years down the road because you can have those savings today. They were so focused on dividends and short-term reporting they did scale back expiration and what we’ve seen now in the last five or 10 years, that’s a direct result. Now there are less discoveries being made, such that the major companies, when they report their production, they are now struggling and haven’t for many years now replaced reserves through expiration. So that puts them into an interesting predicament.

How do you replace reserves when you haven’t put the time in or the dollars into expiration, which can take years to bear fruit, if it bears fruit at all means. You have to go on an M&A front. You need to acquire assets if you can’t find them. That’s why I think what we have is even more special, because it’s becoming more and more scarce. The majors have holes in their portfolio. They haven’t replaced reserves, They’ve scaled back expiration. So projects like we have multi-million ounce deposits, many of them all in the Americas. They’re becoming scarce and highly sought after deposits, many of them all in the Americas they’re becoming scarce and highly sought after.

0:19:34 – Frank Curzio

So let me get your macro view of this, because I’ve heard this thesis before with the majors. But now they’re actually what I got wrong, recommending some of these things and looking at the majors right, seeing that gold’s going to go higher. I didn’t account for inflation. How much inflation? I mean just the amount when it comes to oil and sustaining costs. I remember they were under 1,000. I think Newmont just reported I don’t know 1,600 or something. I couldn’t believe that.

So even as gold moves up and your inflation costs move up, you’re not really going to see it on the margins, as they’re producing, right, you’re not going to see. But now it seems like they’re there, right, it seems like they have to do this. Right, they’re extracting as much as they can in the current projects, but not a lot of major discoveries. But we’re not seeing the huge M&A, we’re seeing a little bit now. When do you think that’s going to happen? Because now you can really talk about what gold price is really surging higher and it looks like that’s going to be the trend going forward. I wouldn’t be surprised to be over 3,000 pretty soon. But when do you think that’s going to happen Because we’re definitely in a different environment. I know a lot of people have been talking that was going to happen. But what’s going to change that where someone with that background that worked at these majors, when are they actually going to come and say, okay, need to be aggressive on the acquisition front?

0:20:50 – Alastair Still

And it’s a great question and we’ve seen this a couple of times in the last 10, 20 years times I’ve lived through working for the majors. While I was doing corporate development at Goldcorp, we did some $10 billion in M&A transactions in the years that I was there Very aggressive on M&A, very aggressive acquiring things. What year is that aggressive acquiring things? However, 2007 through 2014 were probably the busiest years when they were on the acquisition front.

0:21:17 – Frank Curzio

And what was the amount you said in the acquisition?

0:21:20 – Alastair Still

What was the amount? Over 10 billion of total M&A transactions. Yeah, it was a lot of transactions. That was divesting and acquiring as well, but what it really illustrated was the majors in that cycle, and Goldcorp wasn’t alone at that time. The majors in that cycle were willing to pay up and they paid up handsomely. Unfortunately, over time, the market showed that, hey, when things get frothy and things get into a frenzy, you can overpay and arguably, maybe in the past cycles that did happen.

We are seeing the exact opposite this time. We’re seeing assets out there which are worth fractions of what they would have been worth 10 years ago. We’re seeing a stronger demand for these assets and I think all the stars are starting to align here. The majors have to be on the M&A front. I think we’re going to start to see it. I think we’re going to see targeted acquisitions at a project level or a company level, or specific majors or intermediate producers, operators, developers will see holes. They’re going to look for synergies and look for smart acquisitions. I think they’ll get rewarded when they add assets to their portfolio that are a strategic fit and showing good value. I think there’s fundamental good value not just in our portfolio, but as the industry as a whole. There’s going to be a rise in M&A activity. Effectively, there has to be if the majors are going to keep up with their current production profiles.

0:22:40 – Frank Curzio

And I would think and this is probably a question you can’t answer, but I’m going to say it anyway With your background of being with these majors, I mean I would think you have to know what they’re looking for in certain projects. I mean I would think you have to know what they’re looking for in certain projects. I mean that could lead to your decision to actually, you know, run this company, right, I mean you probably know right, I mean there’s an idea that you have, which you know, have the experience of what kind of projects they’re looking for, right, I mean, is there? You know, it’s obviously geography, right, it’s obviously, you know, access to certain resources if it’s water close by and expenses and keeping them down, infrastructure and stuff. But it seems like a lot of your projects are in a pretty good position for something like this.

0:23:18 – Alastair Still

Well, exactly, and remember as you say, that was what I did for the majors for over 10 years. I would travel globally looking for M&A opportunities and the very first thing that you would do when you’re looking at a project is you look at the quality of the data. Is it sound data? Does it pass QA, qc, is there a solid geological model? If you can’t get past that front, you really don’t need to look further. So we know where the majors are looking, where jurisdictions, the quality they’re looking for. It’s almost like a checklist they’re going to go through and that’s why specifically look at the asset we put into US gold mining, our asset in Alaska.

We handpicked a team. I was able to recruit the director of North American exploration from Newmont to lead that operation. Tim Smith’s come in as our CEO for that company. Experienced explorationist, close to 30 years in the business. He’s worked for the majors, he’s run the majors projects and now we have him on our project. So we know the quality we have to put in. We know the standards the majors are looking for and that’s what I think the market will demand from us. It’s no longer good enough just to say you have answers. You’ve got to be able to demonstrate that with real, tangible evidence, good geology, good science behind it, because that’s the type of audience we’re looking for. It’s not just to preach these to the market. We need to preach these to majors and demonstrate our projects have real, tangible value.

0:24:41 – Frank Curzio

Now for the part that’s a little bit outside of your scope, because I know how much you love gold. So now for the part that a little bit outside of your scope, because I know how much you love gold, I know when Amir purchased some of these assets, there was something within one of these assets that was pretty incredible and this was the Raya Uranium Project. Right, raya it’s called. When I first filed Brazil Resources, I thought this was huge because I thought uranium just supplied demand and balances that we would see uranium prices skyrocket and took a lot longer. And now we have data center trend going on, right. So now it’s like uranium on steroids. Talk about this project, because this isn’t just like a little project in the middle of nowhere. I mean, just when you look at the location and where it is and the value that’s being placed on I don’t know if I say similar projects and there’s going to be more drilling on it, but just projects that are undeveloped is incredible and there’s zero value being assigned to this. Talk about Ray a little bit.

0:25:30 – Alastair Still

Well, I mean, let’s first of all take the elephant in the room here and say we’re talking about gold mining ink and yet they have a major uranium project in what is arguably the world’s highest grade uranium district yes, that’s not a misprint. What is arguably the world’s highest grade uranium district yes, that’s not a misprint. So GoldMining Inc does, in fact, own the Rhea Project, which is in the Western Athabascan Basin. It’s in Canada. It’s in Alberta, a prime mining country, some of the top uranium district in the world. It’s a massive project. It’s 125,000 hectares. That’s a huge land area. It’s got known uranium occurrences on it.

We’ve had it in the portfolio, as you say, for a number of years, since Brazilian gold was acquired in 2013. And through the long-term vision and strategy of Amir, we’ve had the ability to have this sit in the portfolio for 10 years, waiting for the right moment to bring it to light. And that’s exactly what we’re doing now. We’ve engaged with the process to start permitting on the project. We have a major partner with it right now Orano, a French multinational uranium producer, own a 25% minority stake. But this project represents some size and scale, with known drill targets, which is currently going through permitting right now for drilling.

It’s attracting a lot of attention and the reaction that you gave to it is exactly the reaction many people have, which is, hey, wait a minute, gold mining ink has a uranium property of scale and size. I said, yeah, absolutely, and now is the time to bring that to light and see if we can get some recognized value for it, because I think it’s totally under the radar. It’s on our books, but if you don’t dig under the hood, you’re not going to see what’s inside the engine in this one and here we have a great uranium project to show.

0:27:16 – Frank Curzio

And could you talk a little bit more, too, about just where it’s located? Right, I know you mentioned it, but just the grades that you’re seeing there are absolutely incredible and these are projects that maybe wouldn’t have gotten developed at 30, 40, 50, at 70, 80, 90, a hundred dollars a pound and we’re over 70 now. Just to see the right project and where it is, and if you really look at it, I mean it’s right, I mean this is pretty incredible where it is and it just shows, like you know, triple R arrow. I mean these are massive, massive deposits that you’re sitting there, which it makes sense to really. You know, I’m saying it because it’s not like this value is just sitting there and no one’s paying attention to it, but the history that you had spinning off some of these assets to me, I think this is a project that people would love to invest in, which gives you again optionality, where you’re sitting on something where look what you do with US gold mining, right, look where that stock went from five to 12.

And it’s another thing that you could own a percentage of and spit it off. But this is a junior miner we’re talking about. Right, you don’t usually have this. It’s usually maybe one project, maybe two projects and you have all these projects. I feel like the optionality is there to do so many different things and that value is not being extracted here.

0:28:19 – Alastair Still

Well, exactly, and even if we look at the map of the region here, those major discoveries by the lakes of NextGen and Fission, uranium and Patterson Lake area, which is 60 kilometers away from us those have all occurred since 2013, since we’ve had this project sitting there, so it’s not like we came in after the fact and picked up the remnants of ground. We had one of the earlier portfolios in the basin and yet it sat idle now for over 10 years. So we’ve seen the new discoveries. We’ve seen some new advances in exploration. All the stars are lining up to move this one forward and you’re absolutely right, frank.

We’ve done this now twice. By taking underappreciated assets within our portfolio, we’ve spun them out. We created Gold Royalty Corporation, we created US GoldMining Inc. And does this create a third opportunity for another spin out? Or, at the same time too, now that we’ve brought this to bigger attention, we’ve started to do some permitting work on it. It’s attracting other companies who are saying well, wait a minute, what’s happening with this project? How can this be sitting there, such a large land area and one of the hottest uranium districts on the planet?

0:29:28 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, this is pretty amazing. If you go over NextGen I’m going to try to bring this up because NextGen and even when you look at Dennis and mine, so let’s see if I can bring this up really quick. I like doing this stuff live, okay, so if you look at NextGen, they own the Arrow deposit, which is pretty close to you, right? Yeah?

0:29:47 – Alastair Still

it’s about 60 kilometers to the east.

0:29:49 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, and I’m trying to get the market cap of that. So I mean this is a major project and this is I mean, nextgen is kind of amazing. So I’m curious to see what the market cap is now, because I could never believe it. It’s $6.5 billion Canadian. This is an undeveloped project. Well, I mean.

0:30:08 – Alastair Still

NextGen is pretty diversified too. I mean they have a number of projects so we can’t say that’s a direct comparison, but I think it helps illustrate the fact of where these projects can lead into much bigger companies. Big exploration spends huge development effort going on in the area. This is exactly where this project would have been in their shoes 10 or 20 years ago.

0:30:31 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, and this stock, to fair, it’s not the apples to apples comparison, but most of the value. The whole story is really Arrow that’s what they talk about which is a project that, from my analysis I’m speaking from me, where I looked at this and also Denison, which has a lot of you know, mines that are undeveloped. They’re not producing. You’re still four years, three, four years minimum, away from this and the valuation it just shows you how much value can get extracted from this. Again, it’s not going to be $6 billion, but there’s a lot of value in it, considering it’s in the same vicinity. It’s also you have a great joint venture right, which is Arriva. Right, people remember Arriva. They don’t know what the you know. Everyone knows they changed their name in the mining industry. But again, just seeing the value of all these projects is pretty amazing to see what your stock is. What are the next steps here? What are the next steps where and when?

I talk to CEOs all the time, mining companies are like companies are like, oh, we’re coming out with drilling results. I’m like, okay, well, you haven’t really had anything going on. Not you, but you haven’t had anything going on. People have been holding your stock forever. There’s probably not a lot of liquidity when you have these results. You’re going to have a liquidity event, stock’s going to go higher, people are probably going to sell. So you know just finally, to get out a little bit of that position at least what’s next Like, what’s in the timeframe over the next six, 12 months? Because I think when I talk to CEOs, especially in the mining industry, even biotech, it’s like all right, we’re doing a phase two study in biotech and we’re going to have results 18 months from now. Well, everyone’s going to sell your stock and probably go back in it a few months before those results are going to be released. So what’s the plan for you in terms of where are you drilling, where are you focused on?

0:32:08 – Alastair Still

what are some of the steps that people are going to see in the next six months and 12 months? Well, that’s a great question. There are a number of key catalysts, but maybe I’ll first lead into that discussion with saying that our single biggest shareholder remains Amir Adnani. Amir’s been in this from day one. Hasn’t sold a single share. Amir’s been in the market buying. You can look at that on CEDAW. You can see where he’s been buying. I’ve been in the market buying in the last couple of months as well.

We believe in this story and we believe in the long-term vision of it. On top of that, when you see the number of catalysts we have coming up, it keeps us very excited. That’s why we’re in this business. We believe in the story. We’ve talked about US gold mining. We own 80% of that stock. We’ve seen that stock more than double in the last couple of months on drill results, and yet half of the drilling from the 2024 drill program has not yet been released. So there could be results coming on that in the coming weeks or coming months for US gold mining. That’s one piece.

One project we haven’t talked about today is our San Jorge project in Paris State, Brazil, one I’m very excited about. In fact, we drilled that project earlier in 2024. First time the project’s been drilled in over 10 years. We’re very excited by what we see there. We think there is this legitimate multi-million ounce potential in a known district that has now seen the construction of a major project by G-Mining Tocantinsino some 70 kilometers away. They’ve built that on time and on budget and where do you hear about that in the mining industry these days?

So there’s a good district being proven here. There’s good production coming out of the district and what we’re seeing now is multi-kilometer scale anomalies on San George, to go with a decent resource, that’s a good, solid resource. That’s a gram per ton resource. It’s at surface. On top of that, it’s sitting right beside the highway. Within three kilometers of a major paved highway. Camps in place with great drill success earlier in 2024 to demonstrate where that resource is today and where we see the potential. So stay tuned for San George as we advance exploration further on this project. We think this is not just a project about the existing resource. Today we see several kilometers of known strike length, which has us very excited how we explore and advance on the San George project.

0:34:21 – Frank Curzio

That’s really great stuff. And do you have any plans for Raya? I know it’s very early, but any plans for that? Because I would think when I look and I cover the industry when it comes to data centers, and when I see Microsoft and I see Amazon, I see Google putting billions, literally billions, into projects within uranium that will not be developed for at least four to five years from now, and especially the small modular nuclear reactors, which there’s three, there’s only three, right. So if this is the greatest technology, you’d see more than that. But the fact that they got to go to the approval local, state, federal safety, I mean and the time they really get this ramping is five, six years they’re paying billions for it it makes me think like they’re really in the market for uranium right now or anything. So is there anything that you’re doing with that project, or trying to enhance it or drill or anything that we’ll see sometime in the future?

0:35:12 – Alastair Still

Well, what I can say about Rhea is we have begun the engagement process with the First Nations and we’ve had positive engagement there with the First Nations in Alberta and again, this is Alberta, home of oil country, well known to mining. So it’s not an untested jurisdiction, very positive jurisdiction for overall mining. We have made permit applications to begin a drill program. We’d like to see news coming out on that. Probably it would be in the first quarter of 2025. So we’re just around the corner from news on our potential exploration program for 2025, which should coincide with our permitting applications, and that’s where I think this project really starts to get exciting.

Again, we talked about tangible being able to demonstrate it. We’ve got known uranium occurrences. We have Orano’s Dragon Lake Maybel River Zone, which we have identified the trend striking directly onto our property for several kilometers of open untested strike length. So we have known drill targets with known uranium occurrences on a project that we’re going through permitting on. I think there’s going to be some exciting news as we advance that permitting and plans for exploring uh RIA in 2025.

0:36:27 – Frank Curzio

Okay, so I’m going to recap here for everyone. So when I look at us gold mining okay, this is your spinoff, so you have us gold mining here. Uh, so this is USGO, which you own 12% of you got that right 12% 80% of us, of us gold mining, it’s 80%.

Okay, so us gold mining is 80%. So you own 80% of this of this number. I mean, you know, you’re looking at the numbers behind this and then you go into, I’m telling you guys. What I’m going to tell you to do, too, if I give you advice, is they all sound like the same name of these companies. That’s why I’m flipping through this. So gold royalty, us gold gold mining, but gold royalty corp. So this is the one that you have. What 12% of this? Is that right?

0:37:08 – Alastair Still

Just under 13. Yep, that’s right.

0:37:14 – Frank Curzio

Just under 13% of this. Okay, so I mean, when you’re tracking the value of this and you’re looking at how much this, I mean those numbers are adding up to more than what your market cap is for the underlying stock, which is gold mining. Okay, so what that means is what. It means that 164 million those two projects that you actually have stakes in this isn’t like something that’s, you know, a forecast or not tangible. You have stakes in these companies that you could, you know, maybe not sell 80% of it, but that’s huge value there. So you’re getting a Raya project absolutely for free, which could be worth more than the entire company by itself in market cap, absolutely for free, which could be worth more than the entire company by itself in market cap. I mean, just if you do a slight comparison to some of the undeveloped mines in that area that aren’t going to be developed for a long term. You’re talking about and I’m going to bring this up as well is the rest of these projects. So, san George, you’re talking about all these projects really most of these for free which you’ve done a great job in having your experience of being able to spin some of this stuff off, like even with Ray, or maybe that happens later on, I don’t know, but just the optionality here and the amount of ounces that you guys have and you could say measure and indicate it.

Okay, fine, so it’s 10 million in gold alone. I mean the value here it seems like an absolute no brainer, and I don’t say that often because there’s always risk to everything. But just to see the value, I feel like nobody knows this story, nobody has been telling this story, and just to see where you guys are and insiders are buying, I just think it’s an incredible opportunity, especially if you think gold’s going to 3,000. I said it with Bitcoin, bitcoin’s going to 100,000. A lot of cryptos will do as gold goes higher. I just feel with your company, this is going to significantly outperform because of the optionality. I’m just surprised your stock is trading at these levels.

0:38:54 – Alastair Still

That’s why I really wanted to get you on today because I’m like, wow, this is a pretty amazing way you guys are trading. Well, I think you’re right. I mean a rising gold price. As they say, a rising tide lifts all boats. That’s going to be good for us. It has been in the past. We’ve outperformed the gold price in selective periods in the past. When the gold price has risen, that’s great. That will happen. We think that’s a no-brainer, and you can hear predictions for the gold price much higher than they are today.

However, on top of that, we have all these other factors which you’ve discussed today these underlying equities in not penny stock juniors. These are NASDAQ-listed, nyse-listed companies we have major stakes in. We’ve got a healthy cash balance. We’ve got seven projects, each with a million ounces or more in the Americas, so there’s optionalities on each of those. And then we have the uranium property. There’s such fundamental value here. It has me excited. That’s why I left 25 years’ work for the majors to come join a company like this. That’s why I’m putting my own money into this company. It’s why I’ve been buying the stock. This is really something that I’m pretty excited about, and I can’t wait for the market to catch up to this. And you know, a correction has to be coming to recognize the value that we’re demonstrating here.

0:40:02 – Frank Curzio

The value is absolutely unbelievable. So for me, when I look at this company, this is what I look for with companies I want to work with. This is what I look for when I’m getting my investors in, because you want to invest and everyone’s always going to talk about positive, my job is to say, okay, what are the risks? And you want to try to gain the highest returns while taking on a low amount of risk. I mean for this, as a junior miner, it doesn’t get more de-risked than this, with the potential upside that you’re going to get from almost every other junior miner, except that there’s a lot less risk here, just for the assets, which is really cool.

So I’m excited for the future. I’m excited. I know you’ve been patient on this, but I like the fact that the experience you have and the fact that you I mean all the M&A that you’ve done and you chose to come to this company this is really exciting times. I think it’s going to be a nice, but I could see the frustration with a lot of people I talk to in the mining industry. But this is when you want to invest in these things, right?

0:40:51 – Alastair Still

Sometimes it’s the best opportunity to get good investors here, exactly, and that opportunity we have now really illustrates the long-term view we’ve had on this. This is the time to really go for the big results now, the big wins and we think we’re on the cusp of that. The de-risked nature of it, as you say, we’re backed by marketable securities, backed by cash, backed by multiple projects. On top of that, a uranium asset that helps de-risk it and also create the optionality, the opportunity in the vast number of different venues. We can go on to create value, and each one doesn’t have to succeed. That’s the idea of de-risking it. Uh, we’ve got so many options to pursue there now.

0:41:32 – Frank Curzio

This is great stuff, well, wow. So I want to say thank you so much for coming on and telling this story. Uh, I think a lot of people are going to be watching this and I’m like holy cow, you know, because, uh, I like finding stocks like this. This is a great name, that’s a. You know what he’s really talking about and just when you really go over the numbers and sometimes it gets lost and everyone’s like gold’s going to go higher. But there’s so much more going on. There’s so much more about you, I think, in terms of the story and your history behind this and being at this company where you can really work anywhere if you wanted to. I think people are going to get really excited about this, and I hope they do, because I do think it’s a great value and people can make a lot of money on it. My pleasure to be here, happy to come on and update your followers in the near future as we continue to unlock value from this exciting portfolio.

0:42:13 – Alastair Still

That sounds great. Sounds great. Thanks, thank you.

0:42:19 – Frank Curzio

Alice is such a great guy and he’s a really great interviewer. Also talked to him after the interview was over. This is one of the select few companies we’re working with within our marketing consulting division, right, and we’re very careful with that. So I just came back from New Orleans and it was to meet one specific company that also has a fascinating story to tell. And same with Alistair. When I speak to him I’m like do your thing, operate. You’re brilliant. Let me help you out with the marketing. Let me help you out with the consulting. Let me help you tell the story. Let me help you out with the marketing. Let me help you out with the consulting. Let me help you tell the story, because there’s so many companies I’ve covered in small caps that are like this that people really don’t understand. And when you break it down the way we broke it down, saying I mean just the value of their investments are worth the stock price and you’re getting the Raya project for free, you’re getting all these other projects for free, and they’re drilling and they’re going crazy, right, just it offers a tremendous opportunity. So much so Raya. I was familiar with with Amir because I know him such a long time, when he first got this project, that could be worth two to three X the market cap or the size of this company by itself, and that’s simply based.

I mean I cover the hyperscalers, as you guys know, listen to this podcast. They are dying for energy and I’m talking about energy right now. I mean we’re talking about massive. I don’t want to get into the numbers right now. I’ve gotten to the numbers in other podcasts. It’s unbelievable. We’re talking about 60, 70 gigs of electricity, gigawatts I mean unheard of by 2030. And they have no clue how they’re going to get it. That’s why they’re signing all these contracts all the way out.

It’s the reason why you’re looking at Denison Mines. You’re looking at next-gen energy. They’re trading at insane, insane levels and these are projects that aren’t going to get developed for another three, four years and the valuation of that has gone up incredibly ever since this AI trend has taken off. And this AI trend, they need to fuel these energy needs, not for the next two, three, four years, yes, but the next 10, 20 years. And just developing this a little bit, drilling a little bit where it is, this project is unbelievable and it can provide incredible value. It’s being valued at zero, absolutely zero, as well as all the other projects on the balance sheet, right.

So when you have a guy like this, where he didn’t sit on his hands and say, ah, you know the mining industry sucks right now no, they were busting their ass. I know them personally, I know Amir personally and just sucks right now. No, they were busting their ass. I know them personally. I know Amir personally, and just see where their stock is and the valuation of the stock. That’s why I’m going to be going in the market tomorrow and buying in the afternoon. In the afternoon, I’m going to give you guys a chance to buy it early, so I’m probably going to be buying much higher than you.

But these are the exact kind of companies we want to work with to tell their story: Good people, experienced management teams, people who are like geologists. Another guy comes from France and he’s running an incredible technology company and he’s changing the business model, which is all over his website, but nobody even knows. The company exists and what they’re changing to is right in the middle of what every hyperscaler wants. And we’re going to be working with them. And when I went to New Orleans, I’ll be honest with you, people pay I’m not kidding you $300,000 to a million dollars to get newsletters to talk about their stock or whatever. I could have accepted a check easily because of the reputation that we have and built 30 years from 15 companies, and I said no to every one of them Because it’s not about the money, it’s about you, it’s about getting you into ideas that nobody’s really talking about, and that’s why we’re only working with a few select companies, and this is one of them. So I’m really happy to be working with these guys. I love where the price is because at the end of the day, my name’s on the door. So if you’re investing in this and you don’t make money, it’s going to be like oh well, you’re working with them marketing.

I understand that we’re very careful. There’s a stock. It’s going to go like this and then it’s going to come down and who makes out? Nobody makes out, especially the company. For us. We want to work with companies, we want to tell their story. We want to get investors in there long-term, like we get in there and we don’t with bullshit. So didn’t mean to get into the fundamentals too much in that stock. I know sometimes it gets a little boring, but you need to understand the value, where the value of this and just the two entities that it’s owned, that it’s spun out with the cash on a balance sheet, is worth the current market cap of the stock, where you’re getting everything else absolutely for free and they’re not sitting on the stuff, they’re drilling it. They could spin off Raya. They could spin off some of these other projects like San George.

This is a stock, that and just a company. I mean seeing this and seeing the CEO and working with Alistair, you can see how he’s a great guy. He’s not promotional at all and I don’t want the CEOs to be promotional, okay, because when they’re promotional, if they’re promotional at the wrong time, they’re trying to market it and they’re wrong and you know the stock goes down. Investors aren’t going to trust them anymore. I said do your job, just do what you’re great at. Let me get the story out.

And these are the companies that we’re working with and that’s why we’re seeing a really, really strong demand for this. A lot of companies are coming to us, but it requires a lot of research, but these are the companies that we’re dealing with, which we have a lot, a lot of fun with and work with them. So, Alistair, you have to see that promotion. He’s a really, really good guy and I’m glad we’re working with him and I really think that stock’s a buy. I’m not kidding, I’m going to be in there buying the market. Buying the stock aggressively at these levels I mean where it’s trading at right now is absolute joke. It’s almost, I feel like, for me personally okay, I’m not supposed to say this, but I feel like there’s almost no risk and 3X to 5X upside over the next two to three years. So this is something I holding it. But again, you make that choice yourself if you want. For me, the value is there.

And wait till you see a couple of other companies that we’re working with. We’re really digging in, we’re helping them. They’re going to be spinning off certain parts of the division, so it’s not just a marketing aspect and getting the word out there. It’s really helping them manage their companies, which I’m humbled by because they want the service from us and we know this because of how many these services. What you’ve done for us is a million times better and we’re looking at a $15 billion addressable market, which is incredible. This is business to business. All these companies need this service. It’s just a matter of picking the right companies and really meeting with them. So I’m going to Miami next week again to meet with this person, again at his house, who’s wealthy and a great guy, but again, it’s a fascinating story that they’re not telling, right that I think there’s tremendous, tremendous value in it and those are the companies that we’re working with. So if you guys have questions or comments about that, let me know.

Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate all the support. I’ve been on the road a lot. I’m going to be on the road next week as well, which is a lot of fun. But, yeah, really good opportunity here. I really like it. Again, I’ll be in the market buying the stock, but hopefully you enjoyed the interview. Again, I want to focus on getting a lot more interviews on Wednesdays.

Our podcast is growing, which is great. Really, before the Trump, you know, and everyone’s like, podcasts are great. Now we kind of knew that We’ve been doing it for 15 years. Right, we like to be innovative. Our security token right, we’ve done four years. Take off the consulting part of this. I feel like we want to get ahead of the market and we are, because everyone I research almost everyone in this industry they’re not doing the right things. They’re not analysts, they’re marketers. We’re analysts, we’re looking at the stock trying to make money, but also just the growth in the podcast as well. It’s just leading to a lot of more opportunities to get great, great people in front of you. So more interviews definitely expect that, and questions or comments. Feel free to email me at frankkirzorresearchcom. And other than that, be sure to listen to Morrow, which is our Wall Street Unplugged premium podcast.

Dan and I are going to come up with a new trade for you tomorrow in that portfolio. It’s called Doll Stock Club Portfolio, which has been absolutely fucking on fire, which I love. Okay. Same with crypto. We tell everyone if Bitcoin goes 100,000, the last six months Bitcoin goes 100,000,. A lot of other names are going to follow and I think we only have one name.

That’s down in our crypto portfolio, where we had maybe over 20 names in our portfolio and they were down over the past few months. We said be patient. We added to these positions and now everyone’s really kicking ass and that’s what I get paid for, right? I want to make you be right, which is really cool. So just happy to see all the portfolios really rocking and rolling right now, and especially the trading portfolio.

So if you want access or learn more, you want to learn more about Wall Street Unplugged Premium, just go to www.curzioresearch.com. You can learn more there. But that trading portfolio is awesome and we have a really good name a restaurant name that’s been beaten up, but they just really came out with some good news and I think the turnaround is there. It’s well, well off its highs. I think this stock’s really going to take off. But we have a lot of winners in that portfolio, which is really exciting. And to get access to that, you can go to wwwcurzioresearchcom. So that’s it for me and I’ll see you guys tomorrow. Take care, love this episode of Wall Street Unplugged. I think you’ll really love Wall Street Unplugged Premium. The Wall Street Unplugged Premium is my members-only podcast where I dive even deeper into this week’s events. Well, I’ll do even more than tell you what’s moving these markets. I’ll tell you specifically what moves you can make today. So this is going to be about trading. Put big money in your pocket right away due to inconsistencies I see daily in the market.

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