Good morning, everyone. This is Campbell McCrary from Amvest Capital in New York City. Welcome to the U.S. Gold Corp live webinar. Today's Thursday, July 27th. The U.S. Gold trades on NASDAQ as USAU. Hope you'll enjoy today's program. An on-demand replay will be available following this live webcast. The link that you originally used to register, a few hours after the event, it will be the same link that you can share, and you can also just access and it'll take you to the recording. You can actually, in watching the replay, ask questions as well, and we can get you answers. Important bit of the format is sending in questions. You can ask a live question of management right now.
Simply, find your way to that box, type it in, press the button, and we'll see it immediately. Only we see the questions, and they're always anonymous. Anything that's on your mind, please do send in. I have with us today, Luke Norman, Chairman of U.S. Gold, and Gary Lindsey, who heads up investor relations at the company. When we log out, please, share your feedback. That's important. You can either do it during the show once, at the end, or in a follow-up email. Very important, this call is most definitely for informational purposes only, and there's no way a solicitation to buy or sell this or any security for that matter. Read that carefully.
Of course, Amvest is a New York-based specialist investment management corporate finance firm based in the natural resource sector. Welcome to the program, Luke, Gary. Take us through 15, 20 minutes, whatever you need to say your piece, and then we'll circle back to Q&A. Thanks.
Yes, thank you, Campbell. Apologies to anyone I'm on a Wi-Fi network somewhere in northwestern U.S., if it's a bit scratchy, apologies again. U.S. Gold Corp. We started this company in 2017. I'm a co-founder of the company. I have a backdrop or background in precious metal space. My previous company was a company called Gold Standard Ventures. We enjoyed some great success there with exploration, pure exploration in Nevada. That was how U.S. Gold was kind of my approach to a spillover event or a, or a, a new attempt at exploring for gold in Nevada, that's on this opening slide, that's exactly what you're seeing. Keystone Drilling.
Fast forward to today, we're now at a pre-development/developer in the state of Wyoming, and I'll explain to you how we got to that point. Our CEO, which coming up on the slide here, gents, excuse me, ladies. First of all, of course, our forward-looking statements, we'll I'll leave those to your own discretion and allow you to look through them on our website. What we've managed to achieve in relatively short order is we have just shy of 1.5 million ounces of gold equivalents as a form of reserve, not a resource, a reserve. Which gives us about 100,000 ounces of annualized production forecast. A lot of upside to that project, but ultimately, we're basing this off an economic standpoint or case around that 1.5 million ounces right now.
A mine that, that's gonna produce gold at about $800 all-in sustaining cost, extremely low threat, just exposed at surface. Turns out our waste rock is being sold by Martin Marietta next door for about $20 a ton. That's not built in the economic case for this project, and I will discuss it at points during this presentation today. Ultimately, we're gonna talk about a couple of gold deposit today, if we end up with some additional value, so be it. First and foremost, as Campbell pointed out, we're Nasdaq-listed. Okay, that's a bit of a surprise to most people, including, I imagine, many people who are on this Zoom or this webinar today.
It was a choice that was made because with Gold Standard Ventures, we ended up with primarily a U.S. shareholder base, U.S. shareholder base. I thought very closely, discussed it with the team, and ultimately, we listed primarily in the U.S., because with U.S. assets, U.S. management, and again, a, a previous iteration of this company ended up having a very strong U.S. shareholder base. It's a unique structure, 9.2 million shares outstanding. In Canada and, and Australia or wherever else, you know, these precious metals companies tend to list, that is a, a bit of a rarity.
Tight share structure and by design, I think that's gonna be reflected very nicely to our investors moving forward, because when the value comes, when the events occur, that I'm gonna take you through today, that create the value around this company, you're gonna see a real pop in the stock, I think. Mindful, of course, to all the other variables that occur around stocks working. You can see there an old adit, the Project CK Gold Project, as we call it, very rich in copper also. ESG, it used to be a slide that we'd try and slip towards the end of a presentation. It's gonna become key around this company.
I mentioned to you that our waste rock looks like it's gonna be a highly salable commodity within not just the state of Wyoming, but into the Colorado Front Range. We also feel that this project has got a lot of potential to be impactful on a positive side with the environment. One point is, we are located very close to a state park in Wyoming, that would usually be a trigger for a negative response towards a gold mine.
In this matter, it, it, potentially our hole in the ground or our open pit, as I mentioned, low strip ratio, open pit project, and we'll get into the methodology of extraction in a moment, but our open pit looks like it could end up being a water reservoir tie-in to the state park and ultimately a big benefit to the local community and beyond. Right. I mentioned we have a, a, a, you know, an economic viewpoint, or a reserve that we've built this viewpoint around, and we'll get into it in greater detail in a moment, but ultimately, we've got, you know, an NPV on this thing at around $1,600 gold and, and the $3.25 copper range, of about $323 million.
In a more normalized market, we traditionally trade somewhere around 0.6-0.8 of that value in the stage where we are right now. If you look at the Lassonde Curve, for example, that's where we should be trading hypothetically. We have about a $40 million market cap, if you've reversed up to that previous slide. CK Gold Project. We've renamed it the CK Gold Project, and I will continue to call it that, but its historic name is Copper King. Sits on state-owned ground in the state of Wyoming. Wyoming, great place to do business. Our project is about 20 miles out, as you'll see on this next slide, about 20 miles outside of Cheyenne. Cheyenne is the, the forefront, the, the bearer of all the approaches we need... I'm sorry, the permitting aspects to this project.
Everyone we deal with, we're not dealing with federal agencies, we're dealing with local community people. People who are driven around the positives of trying to get the state moving forward, not people who are federally involved. Sorry, federals not being involved. Prime example of this is our ground. As you'll see, the pop-out in the top left corner, that's state ground, and our royalty within the project is set up to benefit the schools in the local district and the community through the state of Wyoming. We deal with the Department of Environmental Quality in the state. And just to ourself, just, just prove that they're not afraid of a, of a good old open pit type approach to production is Martin Marietta. You'll see the I-80 running through the center there of the, of this corridor.
Martin Marietta currently producing just pure aggregate, They're mining basically a similar granite to what our ore body is hosted in, and selling it as $20 a ton rock in the a-- in the form of aggregate. It's a, a mining-friendly state, we will say. We're just about an hour and a half south or north, excuse me, of Denver International Airport. Right. I mentioned we have a 1.5 million ounce reserve. That's encapsulated in what you see in the top left-hand corner of the slide, which is ultimately a pit shell. The deposit's exposed at surface. You'll see some red towards the top of that pit shell. That's our highest grade material. That's the top left corner of the, slide. Excuse me.
The mineralization extends well below the pit, and we see continuation, in, in, in a lateral sense of ongoing upside to, to this deposit. We, we needed... Again, I've used the terminology snapshot. We needed an economic snapshot at the time because we want to advance this as a copper gold mine, and that's what we've presented to the state, and continue. That's, that's exactly what we're going to do, but there is upside beyond it, potentially for the future. As further breakdown on our, PFS, but there was a pre-feasibility study that we put out in December of 2021. The world's at a bit of flux right now, and things are evolved, you know, changing around us constantly, so bit of an inflationary environment. We're still comfortable with that snapshot because that reserve has not changed.
The reserve sits set in stone. Quite literally. Cost of production are coming up slightly, but so are the prices of gold and copper, so at least reflective to this deposit. I mentioned it's a very simple form of method of extraction, and that's the truest statement I can think of. It is crush, grind, float, and sending a dry concentrate off-site. No cyanide or any other nefarious agents involved in the mineral extraction, ultimately, some of our waste rock and our tailings just get put into topographical lows. Topsoil goes back on top post-production, and we turn it back into pastureland for the state of Wyoming. We've done a lot of metallurgical work, and we don't see, you know, it's a sulfide deposit, but we're not seeing any.
Well, there will not be any bad agents coming out of this rock. It just sits there, and ultimately, we'll have topsoil on top of it post-production. Crush, grind, float. So far, we've had a great alliance with the state of Wyoming. In this particular slide, that's George Bee, our President CEO, whom I'll get into conversation on in a moment. That's him talking amongst some of the community leaders about the post-production aspects of the project, potential for it to be a part of their water reservoir network, et cetera. We've had a really great response locally, and it's exciting. I've actually just left Wyoming, and I apologize to everyone, we got caught in a weather cell yesterday and ended up in Spokane somehow through this travel and not quite enough sleep.
Yes, we just spent the last three days in Wyoming meeting more interesting and, well, just business-oriented people there. I, I keep harboring on this conversation about our proximity to a park, ultimately, we're looking at this thing as being potentially a add-on to this reservoir network that is located within Curt Gowdy State Park. What you see here are two man-made lakes that neighbor us in, in a very similar granite host to what we're gonna be open-pit mining, and their plan is to increase that capacity within that reservoir network. In doing so, it's gonna have a really big effect on the usability of that park. It's they have to flood out the lake, and they're gonna lose a lot of access points and different things with these 2 man-made lakes.
You know, it's a make work project to help solve a water storage issue. Well, we're gonna have a very big open hole in the ground in granite that could be used to supplement and offset all the costs that they're staring down right now to add to that reservoir network. Here's a perfect snapshot of this PFS, this pre-feasibility study that we've put out. 1.4 million, or 1.44 million ounces gold equivalents. Our economics run around 70% on the gold side and 30% on the copper side. There's 300 million pounds of copper tied up within that resource. No consideration for the aggregates whatsoever. A 10-year life of mine is how we've kind of approached it. 108,000 ounces and CapEx at $222 million.
Again, that was December of 2021. We are in a somewhat inflationary environment, we expect that CapEx has come up a little, probably pushing up towards $250 million, for argument's sake. If you wanna compare us to any of the peer group, you know, larger producers, it's still a very manageable amount. How does a $40 million company go about building a $250 million mine? It's a very common question for us. You know, this is designed around building a kind of a Cadillac production facility. When you go and buy new, just like going to a car dealership tomorrow, a Ford or Chev or Toyota, they'll give you debt. The same thing happens with the OEM producers of mining equipment.
They'll supply form of capital. There's access to capital through state funding. Ultimately, year one of production, I showed you in the previous slide, our highest grade is at surface. There's potential for us to forward sell some of the gold as well. You know, we're not afraid of that $200 million raise, but ultimately, it's kind of a show-me situation. We're gonna show you that, first and foremost, we're gonna get permitted. I'll skip the reserve estimate here. Right. These are the catalysts of the company, this permit. Permitting within the state of Wyoming, again, we're dealing with zero federal involvement. There's no impact on the waterways of America. There is no impact or no involvement whatsoever with forestry or Bureau of Land Management.
We deal with the good people of Cheyenne, Wyoming, who are 20 miles away from us. We're working closely with state regulators and continue to, and have had very little pushback so far. In fact, we've been fortunate enough to be, a press release last week, announced our industrial siting permit. We feel that we should be getting close to or hoping to see, an approval for our permits in the early stages of next year. The engineering, a good man, George Bee, that's our CEO of the company. George has built some of the biggest gold mines on the planet. He was the head of production for Barrick. He moved into South America, and is-his latter part of his tenure with Barrick, and that whole El Indio Veladero belt, he's worked in extensively.
He knows how to build really big holes in the ground, and, and produce gold. We're extremely fortunate to have him. You know, when I say the slide point is advanced engineering, I like to quip or joke that it's over-engineered. He would, of course, argue otherwise, yeah, the right man to build a gold mine for sure. I mentioned point number three, waste rock is a, a salable commodity within the marketplace. We're right on the border of, of Colorado, pretty much. That front range is just huge industry going on around us, right down to the fact that they're rebuilding 150 nuclear silos, the state of Wyoming and into Montana. Our waste rock is valuable.
You know, the financing options to get this mine up and built, point number four. I mentioned between OEM contractors, state of Wyoming, other federal Grants or opportunities, and just standard debt financing, forward sales of gold. We feel like we're not gonna have to blow apart this capital structure that we currently have. Yeah, there's a potential for this pit to be a pit lake. Ultimately, we're heading towards what we feel will be construction and production. That decision will be made early next year, but it's looking good. Now, we're not just a standalone, you know, pre-developer, developer. This company was originally built around this opportunity we have in Nevada, which is called Keystone. Sits just across the valley from the whole Barrick Cortez complex. It's a big district-scale opportunity.
I won't get into too much detail on it, but Nevada is definitely somewhere you want to find gold. Project, like I said, district scale, sits just across the valley from Cortez Hills. Cortez Hills is... That complex is somewhere around 50 million ounces of gold and growing. We feel like we've got an analog to that, or analogy to that. The reason why we have that, or make such a brash statement or assumption is we've drilled it and we've got the same rocks. Alteration, very similar, same kind of backdrop and system. You can see a Cortez Hills there, posted in that wind band, up in the top portion of the slide. The bottom portion of the slide, that's our wind band and access to it. We're just gonna find the right plumbing, and we...
Yeah, we'll be in the picture. Stratigraphically, the deposit looks very, very similar to Cortez, same with its alteration. Challis in Idaho, I won't mention any more other than the fact that it's got about 300,000 ounces of historical resource. We think it's a, it's a big game changer as well, but right now we're focused on developing a future mine in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Just a final slide here, just to wrap things up, but a really well-accomplished team from our executive team, down to our board directors. George, as I said, has built some of the biggest gold mines on the planet. It's the reason why we all came together, was turning this from a pure explorer in Nevada into a development company.
Again, I don't think you'll find a much better gold miner on the planet. Back to you, Campbell, and thank you for this.
Thank you very much. Thank you for sending in the questions, audience. Again, you can just type it in to ask a question of management and send it, send it in. Here's a macro question. Seems like the market may be overlooking the strategic importance of copper production in the United States. Can you touch on the anticipated revenue split between copper and gold at CK?
Yes.
Any opportunities that might arise should copper be placed on the strategic minerals list?
Right. Right now, the economics stand... Very, very good question, by the way, because our economics stand around 70/30 split, so 70% in gold, 30% in copper. We also all know that both sides of the federal government, the U.S., have large aspirations for electrifying the automotive industry. I don't know how copper is somehow being left out of that critical mineral list. I know that there's a lot of smarter minds than I, working very feverishly in the background trying to rectify that. In the short term, copper is one of the hottest commodities on the planet, and will continue to be so for a very long time, and not just as electrification, but everything that, that, that occurs around it.
I think, I feel, I think collectively as a team, we think and feel that copper is going to be a real driver behind this project moving forward. We did keenly adjust the name of the project from the Copper King to the CK Gold Project a couple of years back. Heck, it's a quiver that we wouldn't... Sorry, an arrow we wouldn't shy away from pulling back out of the quiver. The name.
Can you- Yeah, for sure. Can you, jumping around, can you, discuss a little bit the Indigenous, Native American, Indian situation in Wyoming? Every state is different. How are- how do they handle their treaties, and whose land are you on, sort of on, and how does all that fit into ESG?
We are on state ground. Again, the K through grade twelve school board will be the beneficiaries of our royalty system. A royalty system that we've worked closely with the state to construct. We'll be the first hard rock mine in 100 years in Wyoming, because traditionally it's been coal and oil production. So we... I, I was about to say, unfortunately, and truly, almost unfortunately, we, we don't have to deal with any of anyone outside of the state. We're on state ground, and it previously has been leased out as pasture land. So there's been a farmer who we work very closely with as well. We have some state and some private ground. That's all held and owned by local farmers.
Okay. How many other companies are pursuing hard rock mining-
in any stage in Wyoming?
Yes.
Are you the only one in the state?
No, there's two or three now. We, we, we were fortunate to have a very well-recognized porphyry expert come and come to the project a year or so ago. In doing so, he, he mentioned that, "Hey, look, you found this wonderful porphyry deposit exposed at surface, but there's gonna be a lot more. These things don't tend to hang out on their own. They tend to hang out in clusters." You know, that, that's 3.0. If, if I call U.S. Gold Corp. 2.0, from Gold Standard Ventures, that'll be 3.0. All jokes aside, Campbell, it, it's probably strewn with porphyries around this part of Wyoming, but we are the only ones we know that are, are filing for permits to produce right now.
Your industrial siting permit or ISP, issued in just-
Yeah
... a few quarters. Is this timeline typical in Wyoming? Should we take this as a sign of strong support for the project and the remainder of the permitting process? Then I'll add to that, you know, how you, you career, Luke, in many, many jurisdictions, how, what, what's, what feeling are you getting about Wyoming in, timeline-wise?
We were fortunate enough on Tuesday, George and I, and team, were at the Governor's lunch, which is part of this, Frontier Days that are going on right now. It's a massive rodeo.
Cool.
We deal with the state, and the state again, are the people who awarded us the ISP. We're very, very confident. I mean, it's, it's a professionally well run state. They, they recognize the fact that there are potential issues around the mine. Once everyone recognizes that we're not using cyanide... Well, as we go through the process, we're not using cyanide or any other, I, I use the word nefarious agents. I think that's fair enough, a fair statement. You know, we just crush, grind, float, and selling a highly concentrated sand out of the project. And 3 miles to our south, a Martin Marietta, a, a $20+ billion market cap company, doing exactly that form of mining just to sell the rock.
Not, not, a copper gold porphyry, but just literally selling that rock as, as aggregate and rail ballast and, and a line of items. Yeah, we're, we're really confident that, they're a fast-moving state, but that they're being mindful and making sure that, that, we're gonna do our operation, properly and look after the environment as we go.
Just randomly googling, the CK, the mine, you know, from the interstate, how, you know, how far are you? You know, I, I don't actually know the road.
The I-80. As the crow flies, it's about three, three miles away, from the I-80.
The dirt road from two-ten?
Well, we have, right now, our access is Happy Jack Road. There is a, a road that goes between Cheyenne, sorry, yeah, between Cheyenne and the reservoir network. It's a well-maintained gravel road, and then we just come up and through some ranch land, agreement that's already in hand, with one of the local ranchers, and that's our access point. You know, Campbell, you've known me for a very long time. Our projects in Nevada, for example, I'd fly people into Salt Lake City, we would drive three hours to Elko, spend a night in a hotel, and then drive another three hours to our project. It would take about, two and a half hours to get up to where we got to our exploration portions of the project.
This is an hour and a half north of Denver International Airport. You can drive it in a car, not a pickup truck. It's pasture land that our deposit's hosted upon, so you're really just going into a field.
Eh-
What, what looks like a farmer's field. Yeah.
For talent and, and, consultants, and, all that.
Sorry for the noise. That's part of Cheyenne comes with it.
Talent, you're so close to Denver and Fort Collins and Cheyenne, you know, you're just 30 minutes to 2.5 hours, you can, you know, It's a big mining hub, Denver, for skilled talent and money.
That's what makes this project so sensible.
Yeah.
You know, we've had people question grade, for example. It's, it's, it's certainly not what one would consider a high-grade deposit, but people are gonna go home at night. You know, we don't have to build man camps, people, employees, up to 200 at the, at the peak of our development, will be coming and going by bus. As I told you, it's a, it's a dry concentrate. We'll be sending out, you know, six or seven trucks a day of dry concentrate. All that aggregate is just getting stockpiled by, by way of the plan of operation anyway, our plan of how we're gonna develop this mine. So that stuff's all sitting on surface for free. I mean, this, the legacy of money creation from this project will unfortunately far outlive us all as management.
To that note, you know, you have your plan, 10, 10-year life of mine. What, you think you can double that?
I love, I love those kind of questions, but ultimately, yes, but it's a management of also resource and time. We could continue. We see the resources well below that, that, you know, that pit shell shape that, that we've put an economic value to. At some juncture, I think if we can work our way through with the state and, and, and recognize that this is going to, by proxy, be a not just a reservoir, but essentially save the park from having to be flooded, we will at some point, cap the production. Where that point is, who knows? Right now, as a 1.44 million ounce reserve, it has great economic impact to us as a company.
Okay.
Hey, Campbell, let me just jump in.
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, this is Gary. You know, I started with U.S. Gold about a month ago, so I'm relatively new, and I have a great perspective of what I've seen so far from the management team. Fantastic. You know, every week, in their management meetings, things are moving forward, even though it's July, and everyone is very engaged, very skilled, and very, very impressed with who they are. You know, Luke's talked a little bit about George Bee and how amazing he is. He is, but Luke is also very amazing and has brought a lot of minds, financially, into production and has spent and knows a lot of the industry.
If there were, you know, as an, as an investor, if there's something that I would want to know, it's probably along the lines of what the three analysts have written, and the three analysts are from Alliance Global Partners, Red Cloud, and H.C. Wainwright & Co. They have valued the properties from $12 an ounce to up to $25 per... not per ounce, per share. So, when you look at those valuations, it's three to eight times what our valuation is. You know, this morning, we were at $4.31 when I looked. Big, big opportunity for growth here.
U.S. Gold Corp., the equity has been around a long time, many years. How is the company different, had different focus? What was, you know, say, let's go back?
Yes, yes.
- to the last 10 years.
Yes.
You know.
Yeah, we consolidated back the company, in, I, I believe, and excuse me if I'm wrong, I think it was 2020 is when we did our rollback. No one likes to consolidate a stock, especially when you're the founder of the company and not probably the largest personal or private investor in the company from a dollar perspective. I think a tight share structure on Nasdaq is key, and we brought in a whole new approach. Just a background story. I, I touched on it briefly at the beginning of the presentation, but, you know, as a, primarily an explorer, primarily, I've always enjoyed Nevada as a place of exploration. This company was built around Keystone, which is a Nevada asset. Nevada, excuse me.
George, I brought in, he and I were down looking at another opportunity in South Africa, and I asked him to take a look at the CK Gold Project, where at the time it was called Copper King. I asked him to take a look because I thought maybe we'll monetize it for spend, you know, saving us any further dilution and, and using it as exploration dollars. That's when he, George turned around after an in-depth look, he did a full scoping study on it, brought in some of his expert cohorts to do so. He said, "We'd be crazy to sell this project. We should develop it.
It's a little cash cow." That evolution, I felt, was reflective of a major shift within our company, so worthy of that consolidation that we went through, and today we're 9.2 million shares out.
All right. Strip ratio?
Just around 0.9 to one. Less than one to one on the strip ratio, our highest grade ore exposed at surface. Our year 1 production will be 130,000 ounces of gold.
In situ grades of gold and copper?
A combination of about, comes in around 0.72 or 0.73 grams a ton. It might actually be higher than that, 'cause there is silver as a by-product as well. Keep in mind, that's higher grade than what we had at Railroad in Gold Standard, and that was sitting at, you know, 130 feet below surface. This is exposed at surface, so, grade is certainly not any kind of marginality to it, this project. You'll see on a much previous slide, an all-in sustaining cost of around $800 an ounce. Yes, that's gonna shift upwards because we're in an invasi-- inflationary spike right now, but, with that goes the price of the metals, so we're, we're, we're comfortable.
Looks like you've monetized some assets like Maggie Creek.
Yeah.
you've got three others that look good. Do you think... I guess, what did you get from Maggie Creek? Do you plan to monetize some of the other assets?
Maggie Creek was such an interesting project. Campbell, I know you've heard my rhetoric back in the Gold Standard days. We, you know, we had Railroad, which was a third window on the Carlin Trend. Well, Maggie Creek sat abutted to one of the most historic, famous mines in the entire Carlin Trend, Gold Quarry. Originally, when we stepped into that acquisition, the plan was we had a papered up agreement. We were gonna deal with a local rancher and add thousands of acres of exploration ground to it. Ultimately, we ended up with just Maggie Creek, which was three square miles of tenure, attached at the hip to Barrick's Gold Quarry.
Barrick didn't seem very interested in it, and it turned out their model, their model had assumed that the mineralization just quite literally fell off a cliff at Maggie. We drilled a hole and a half, not cheap drilling down that part of Nevada, by the way. We drilled a hole in half, and lo and behold, we found Popovich, which is the formation that holds the biggest gold mines on the planet, or at least Nevada-wise. Well altered, all the right key signatures of, of a deposit there. Barrick came to us and said, "Look, we're the only people who are gonna be able to develop this." They gave us back more than what we paid for it. We monetized it and held on to a, a net smelter royalty.
We, we broke their model, I think is the terminology George likes to, to use. Keep in mind, George managed Gold Strike previous in his, you know, younger years. He was one of the first big mine managers in Nevada, so he knows what the right rocks look like, and so do, Barrick.
You talked a little bit about ownership of U.S. Gold, percent institutional. Who are some of the names we might recognize? When did they get in?
Very few. Ironically, not too many big institutional shareholders, but stand by on that front. Our, our landscape has changed remarkably in the last six months. I can't talk to some of the people who are chatting with us that, that feel that they should become shareholders. We were a little bit orphaned with the decision to list on Nasdaq, and I'm sure you can appreciate that, Campbell. You know, traditionally, a company like this would be listed in Canada, earn its stripes and then maybe dual list in the U.S., you know, NYSE marketplace or a, or a similar exchange. I got a little bit, I... Sorry, we, the company, we got a little bit-...
I guess, ahead of ourselves, over our skis a little bit in terms of just purely listing on Nasdaq, but lo and behold, every company I've had that's operated in the States ends up being predominantly U.S. shareholder bound. Nasdaq was-
Our friends at Dakota Gold did the same thing, so.
Yes, yes, yes, Jonathan Awde. Yes, my very good friend and business partner from Gold Standard Ventures. Exactly. I think what's happened is we're starting to see now recognition for what we've done, what we're achieving. You know, we have a $40 million approximate market cap right now. I would argue it's probably somewhere around a quarter of a fifth of where it should be right now. These arbitrage opportunities don't last forever. You know, the marketplace, as I said, there, there are people out there already starting to recognize the inherent value in this company. If we want to look at it gross metal values or any of that kind of, you know, crazier, I guess, aspect of, of, of looking at these deposits of these projects, there's a lot of upside to this company.
When you, when you stop piling waste rock, that's worth $20 a ton, and you've, you've already paid for it, coming out of the ground, for example, you know, $700 million worth of waste rock sitting on the sidelines. Yeah, the story's gonna get the exposure...
Yeah
... it, it earns.
Hey, let me, let me jump in here too, Campbell, and weigh in on this. Management owns what? About 20%, is that correct?
Oh, yes. Sorry. Thank you.
Yeah.
Yes, the root of the question, I apologize. I wasn't trying to be a politician there on you, Campbell, I just got, got lost.
The other important thing is, the company has put a big focus right now on doing a big push, marketing-wise right now. We're close enough to getting the mining permit. Our expectation is that this will be the next gold and copper mine in the U.S. or in Canada.
Yeah.
So because of that, the valuation will go up, should go up significantly. We're, we're doing a pretty big marketing push, and you're just at the very beginning of this, so, our expectation is things will move up very nicely.
You use phrases like near-term production potential or, you know, emerging near-term producer. What, what kind of timeline?
Cool.
Does that mean?
Yeah. How long of a piece of rope? No. Again, dealing with the state as opposed to dealing with a federal bureaucracy is night and day. What a shift! Like, we meet these people. Again, I just left Cheyenne, Wyoming, yesterday. We're in lunch meetings with the governor, we're meeting everyone that's involved in the steps in the process to permit this mine firsthand, not send off a file and wait three years and see what the Bureau of Land Management come back with. These people understand that this is an economic boom for them, and likewise for us as a company. It is a, an expectation of us, as a company, that we will have permit to mine in the first quarter of next year. Expectation is a bit of a grandiose word.
I would say that's what we kind of designed and built our expectations around, would be Q1 of next year, and then it's crush, grind, float. We don't have any kind of real specialty equipment that doesn't already exist, probably sitting on a shelf somewhere. It is a pretty quick build. We could be in production as soon as the end of next year, but certainly into 2025.
Great! Very good. Thank you for everyone for tuning in, for your great questions. Pass it back to Luke and Gary. Maybe take us through in summary, upcoming catalysts.
Well, catalyst number one, of course, would be that permit to mine. I think that's the big value add. What our marketplace did not pick up on was our industrial siting permit. It's the same, it's the DEQ, the Department of Environmental Quality, out of Cheyenne, Wyoming, that issues that permit. Very same group who are working on our permit to mine. You know, we're not using any cyanides or any of the leaching processes to extract gold or copper. We're selling a copper concentrate, a dry sand, and there's an operating just rock quarry to our south, doing the exact same form of mining. We're confident that we will make it through this process, and that is our biggest catalyst, because if you're on federal ground anywhere in Canada or the U.S., good luck to you getting permits right now.
We've built this company around a team of guys who have built gold mines. That's what they do. George is not a market person. He's not been out there, you know, as a, as a reinvented broker and things such as myself. He builds gold mines. The Copper King, well, the Copper King or the CK Gold Project, it just represents a whole bunch of value. I mean, it's just sitting there at surface, the richest gold part of it, sitting at surface. You know, so you're, you're day one, you're into ore. Very hard to find a project like that, that's not been developed. What we offer is obviously great leverage, not just within the copper...
Sorry, that gold cycle, which I think gold is going to get very, very inflated in the, in the future and will continue to be successful, you know, as it hovers around $2,000 an ounce, I think look out in, in, in the aspect of gold. We have a very safe hedge with a big copper component associated with this deposit. Then finally, Cortez Hills, well, sorry, excuse me, Keystone, which is located near Cortez Hills, will probably be the biggest game changer for all of us as investors in this company in the future.
If I just add 2 little things, one is the all-in sustaining cost of $800 an ounce of gold equivalent is pretty fantastic.
Yeah
in comparison to gold companies. The simplicity of the mine is a very big factor in getting this up and running very quickly and eliminating a lot of the risk. Last, if anybody's interested in the analyst reports, reach out to me or to Campbell, and he can reach out to me, and I'll be happy to send them to you.
Great.
Thanks for joining.
All right. Thank you, everyone.
Yeah. Thank you.