White Gold CEO on PEA with C$1.9 Billion After-Tax NPV, 38% IRR and 1.7 Year Payback Period

0:00Thank you.

0:30at$3 ,600 an ounce gold. The company is a Yukon-based gold exploration development company controlling over 40 % of the prolific white gold district. White gold is up 376 % in the past year, hitting a market cap of$488 million. Agnico Eagle is a 19 % strategic shareholder of white gold. CEO of white gold is David D 'Onofrio. David, welcome to Mining Stock Daily. Hi, great to be here. Thanks for having me. David, highlight the PA for us. Yeah, tremendous milestone for white gold. As you know, and people have been following us, we created white gold 10 years ago in partnership with Sean Ryan, the notorious prospector who's now found millions and millions of ounces of gold in the white gold district, including our three million ounce deposit.

1:25And we've, you know, it's just so gratifying to be at a point today where we can deliver this report demonstrating to the markets that this is a extremely robust project. Tremendous results, very strong numbers at consensus base case, extremely high leverage to gold. You know, we can touch on some of those details later, but, you know, see the MPV going to$3 billion at just$4 ,500 gold. But really what's most exciting to me is the future growth potential we have here. This is a start. It doesn't include a lot of the historical work yet. We are in the midst of our most active drill season ever.

2:13So very optimistic about the plans and the potential here. And, you know, really, I do believe there are very few projects out there that offer this type of scale, economic return and upside. So just tremendously happy with the results. Thankful to all of our partners and supporters along the way and the great team members that have worked on this since the very beginning. David, let's talk about those details. Can you talk a little bit about grades and sequencing? Your golden saddle main zone has had a high-grade core. I see in your deck you have 1.1 million ounces indicated at 2.84. Your PA mine plan blends that down to 1.54.

3:04Can you talk a little bit about sequencing and getting the high-grade in the earlier stages of the project? Yeah, absolutely. And you're right to point that out. That is one of the very unique features of this project is these high grades and these ultra high grade components. It's the highest grade deposit in the Yukon, and that's what's driving a lot of these strong economics. In terms of sequencing, the high grade component of the Golden Saddle deposit is what gets mined first. And that's what drives these very, very quick payback period of 1.7 years. The project overall on average for its nine-year mine life is 108 ,000 ounces per year.

3:50But in the first five years, it's 233 ounces per year. And the reason why that's so much more is not that there's more feed being milled. It's just that this ultra high grade component is being milled first. and that's what's going to have the most amount of gold. So that's what goes first. And then from there, we'll move to the other deposits, which are also high grade, you know, relative to most other open pit projects in Canada. It's just, you know, it's not this ultra high grade, three grand type stuff we have in the Golden Sattle. So blended at 1.54, that's one of the higher grade operations that I'm aware of.

4:30So still very, very high. and I think that's what again was driving a lot of these compelling economics. Could we talk about metallurgy? You were estimating a material at 92 % recovery. However, you had Oreck and Ryan's surprise at 72%, which is about one-third of the material. Any chances to improve recovery on those parts of the planned mine? Yeah, definitely. So there's two types of mineralization we see. The Golden Saddle and the VG Deposit are very similar. That's what has this 92 % recovery, just excellent type four. And those two pits make up actually 80 % of the total resource. The Ryan Surprise and the Arc, those are the balance, and that's what has this lower 72 % recovery.

5:26We, along with our consultants and engineers, believe that there is the opportunity to continue to optimize that. For this, you know, first level PEA study, and considering it was such a small component of the overall resource, you know, we didn't, you know, want to take the time to just sort of run that to ground. It would just further delay the PEA. So we did enough work to show that it can get to at least that level. It's economic at that level, but we will continue to work. And they do believe there's opportunity to continue to improve that, which is great to hear because the arc, you know, on its own is actually the largest footprint of any of our deposits.

6:08It's a kilometer and a half long. It's just historically, it hasn't seen as much drilling as the others because, you know, knowing that the grade was a little bit lower and the metallurgy wasn't, you know, so pristine. it made more sense to be drilling in these other areas where we had higher grade and better metallurgy. But now that we know that this metallurgy works, we'll definitely be drilling that. And, you know, it's only been traced down to a hundred meters because that's the deepest drill hole that's been there. But a kilometer and a half strike length, open in all directions. We're pretty optimistic about the ability of that pit to grow substantially.

6:43Can you talk about, you were talking about in your PA, or I should say rather the PA news release, you had some bullet points just regarding the work that you have to do next. And can you talk about the next permits? You said that you were commencing baseline work for the Yukon Environmental and Socioeconomic Assessment Act. Are you estimating on a timeline on that and what are you seeing from other resource companies that have gone through the same? So what's really nice is that we're in a jurisdiction that's very supportive of mining. So these are processes that are receptive. And even an added bonus is that in our district, the neighboring project to the south, the coffee project, which is now being advanced by a company called Talamore, which is a back entity from Pierre Lassonde and Trini Capital in partnership with Newmont and NICO.

7:44They have just recently gone through the permitting process. They're very close to receiving their final permits. So a lot of the heavy lifting and educating of the different bodies with respect to this area and work with the First Nations has been done by that. So we will, in effect, be building off a lot of that. Obviously, the studies will be applicable to our specific deposits, but we've seen what they've done. We've seen the process. In terms of exact timelines, it's a little bit hard to put an exact timeline on it. And I'm only hesitant to do that because I do believe, and I mentioned this at the beginning, this project, what excites me the most is its continued upside from here.

8:31So with the drilling that we've done in the last year, with the drilling that we're doing now, I anticipate potentially updating this study, you know, early next year once we have all those results in hand and with a potentially, you know, bigger and even more profitable project looking to go through the process on that basis. Because, you know, when you're doing the permitting, they want to know what's the mine going to look like. Now, for the environmental baseline studies, there's actually been a significant amount of work that's already been done. So we're building off that and we'll continue to move those forward.

9:05And then, you know, with this other, you know, with the projects you have, we are going to get the process started. You know, I think you could say just if you wanted to put a ballpark, it's a couple of your process, plus or minus. but the more work he can do earlier obviously that's going to be better and help fast track things. So let's talk about that other work that you're excited about David. I see that you've got about 15 to 20 ,000 meters of drilling currently underway in 2026. You're talking about you have underground higher grade zones. I guess there's the potential for some type of sequencing, maybe some type of underground.

9:50Can you talk about that? What would be exciting? What would be some potential other spins at the ball in terms of advancing this? For sure. So as you go through these studies, you're looking at the different combinations of work that will drive the highest returns for a project, for investors, for everyone. This first phase, we only included open pit mining. What we did see, and we do believe will also be phenomenally robust, is the opportunity to continue underground at the Golden Saddle once we get to the bottom of the pit, as this high-grade zone continues on. Again, in the efforts of getting this first phase out and just demonstrating the base case that we have such a strong project, we left that.

10:43But that is an immediate opportunity to further enhance this project. The total ounces of gold mine in this initial study is about 60 % of our entire resource. About 1.8 million ounces of our 3 million ounces. So all that other gold is there, which can, you know, be worked into processing going forward. So going underground, that's where we're focusing a portion of our drilling this year. We actually have, you know, drills turning on it right now. This was what Dylan Langell identified as probably one of the most prospective near-term opportunities to continue to grow the deposit. He's been a tremendous addition to our team joining last year.

11:28He was part of the discovery team at Grape Bear Resources, which is such a huge, successful project. Stayed on with Kinross after it was acquired and drilled that project to 7 million ounces. I think he sees the same type of potential here. And based on that thesis, he drilled a few holes last year and was incredibly successful delivering some of the best drill holes in the country. 50 meters of 6.9 grams, 55 meters of three and a half grams, demonstrating that this high grade zone does extend laterally and at that. So that validated the thesis and we're therefore investing more of this drilling this year.

12:11In terms of the amount of drilling, this is something else that has been very exciting. This 15 to 20 ,000 meters, that is orders of magnitude more than we've been able to do or thought made the most sense to do in any of the past few years. And then the other thing that I do want to mention, and we've talked about this before, is this project has seen relatively very little meterage of drilling compared to other projects of the size and scale in Canada and elsewhere in the world. In total, it's only had drilled 90 ,000 meters. If you look at even just the projects in the Yukon that are of similar size or larger in significantly more amounts of drilling.

12:50So we do believe that this project on its own with the four zones open in every direction are, you know, have the potential for meaningful growth. You know, so this program alone is, you know, 20 % of all the meters drilled and the majority of the drilling will be focused long expanding the known zone. So that's your highest probability of success. And then in addition to that, we have identified several new targets, which we think look very prospective that we will be drilling as well. So we have, you know, we're going to continue to pursue this grassroots type greenfield opportunities. You know, that I believe is the blue sky potential of this project, you know, where exploration is.

13:32So that's very, very exciting. And what's, you know, Just even more exciting is that even in addition to that, within this one property, and now again, the thing about Mike Whitewood, as you touched at the beginning, we own 21 properties, 300 ,000 hectares, 40 % of the district, but really 80 % of the known targets in the district. So we're just talking about two of our 21 projects. Within that area, there's another 25 new targets, which we believe can be perspective that could potentially add to the future growth of the resource itself. So a lot going on. We're well into the season here. We're very pleased with how it's going, what we're seeing.

14:15I'm eagerly looking forward to ASHE results, which should start coming soon, and then continuously throughout the rest of the year. I think as investors in this sector, it's nice to know that we have a very substantial project that's now demonstrated that we have highly robust economics. And looking forward to the potential upside from all this exciting drilling that's going on right now. David? Congratulations on the milestone. I know that you're up in Yukon right now. So thanks for making time for Mining Stock Daily. Yeah, anytime. Thank you for all your interest and support. Stay tuned. There's a lot going on and hopefully we can chat soon once some more of those results come out.

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