Fireside Chat: David D'Onofrio, CEO of White Gold Corp

0:07 So today I have the pleasure of being joined by White Gold Corp's CEO, David D'Onofrio. This will be a chat for people to get a better understanding of Dave, learn about the company's roots, and hear some highlights from 2073, and also learn what to look forward to in 2024 for Whitegold.

0:27 So to kick things off, David, for those unfamiliar with Whitegold, Can you provide the audience with some background on the formation and founding of the company and what drew your involvement with the company? For sure, great to be here. Happy to tell the White Gold story. It's a pretty amazing story actually and quite different from a lot of stories you probably can hear out there. So White Gold Corp was founded in 2016. We are focused in the Yukon's Klondike District. The Klondike District, for those who may not know, was the epicenter of the major gold rush in that area called the Klondike gold rush around just around the turn of the century, so about 125 years ago. From that time until today, there has been over 20 million ounces of gold that have been discovered right on surface and have been mined with plaster techniques going right back 125 years ago with the prospector with the pen up to more modern day operations like you see today on a few different TV shows. So that's the allure, right?

1:33 You have this incredibly rich environment. However, there has been next to no modern day exploration to find the source of that gold. Until about 15 years ago, when Sean Ryan, the infamous and world-renowned prospector, went there himself saying like, you know, with the theory that this gold didn't come from the sky, it had to come from somewhere. And Sean, to his credit, was able to basically crack the code and start to find some of the hard rock occurrences of this Gold. Now, what made that to be a particular challenge and probably why there had been no real sort of modern exploration is that this area of the Yukon was actually not glaciated, which means there's no outcrop. Outcrop is typically the first

2:21 analytical sort of piece of step to looking for mineralization in any type of formation. And without the outcrop, how do you find it? So Sean, being this scientific database analyzer that he is, he went to do a lot of research and found some other techniques that might work. What he vectored in on initially was soil sampling.

2:42 And amazingly, within a few years of doing this, he was able to make 2 major multi-million ounce discoveries, one of which we have in white gold and we are continuing to grow. It's grown to over 2.1 million ounces now. It's a phenomenal deposit over 2 grams, basically open in all directions. And the other deposit is now owned by Newmont, the largest gold corporation in the world that is advancing that towards mining through the permitting process currently. So we got the team that knows how to find the gold. And what we've done is white gold is we've gone and tied up an enormous land package and we've continued to use these techniques to explore it and have been had a tremendous amount of success. So It's a pretty exciting company. We're in a phenomenal place.

3:34 We have a team that's been very successful. We think we've cracked the code and we're really just scratching the surface on what we believe is shaping up to be a premier gold district globally. And the fact that it's in such a great place like Canada, in the Yukon with the support that we're seeing, which we can talk about, it's almost like a dream come true.

4:00 Great. And you often mention Aconico and Ken Ross as strategic partners. What did they see in white gold that led them to become key and significant shareholders? I think that sort of lends further evidence to the fact of how unique of an opportunity this is. Right. These are big companies. These are amongst the best mining companies in the world. So they are looking for big prizes. And what they see is what we see is that this is basically the early, very early days of an entire district. And what our hope is and how we sort of think this can play out is imagine going to Timmins a hundred years ago, or Val D'Or a hundred and 20 years ago, or the Goldfields Nevada a hundred and 20 years ago, and being able to basically stake up 80% of the known targets.

4:48 Our property package is approximately a million acres. So if you were able to go back in time and do that, you know, what would the value of that be worth today? And we think that we have that opportunity today, And this is exactly what's attracted us or attracted those 2 partners to us. And it's also attracted many other majors to the UConn as well. And how are they involved today, your strategic partners? Well, they've been phenomenal partners on a number of different levels. Obviously, they provided us some capital, which is particularly well appreciated, especially in a tough market like we're in today. They've been great partners and they've also been very helpful on a technical perspective. And right when we did the deal several years back, they basically looked at White Gold as their Yukon exploration arm and opened up their technical team, which are amongst the best in the world respectively,

5:47 for us to leverage to help us in our endeavors. And we've done that. We're in regular contact with them. It's been a phenomenal working relationship. And for us as a junior to be able to have access to some of the best and brightest minds in the world, you know, we're really, really appreciative of that. And speaking of major players,

6:08 the Yukon has recently attracted the investment of other major gold companies in the recent years, at least Rio Tinto, B2, Hecla, the Lendin Group, among others. So why have majors identified UConn as such a key area of focus? Yeah, it's for all those reasons I was discussing before. When you're evaluating an opportunity, And I've been in this business now for 20 years, primarily from the, actually from the investment side. So I've had the benefit of seeing a number of different ventures. I sort of see which ones work, see which ones don't work out. I've been fortunate to be involved with a number of major success stories, which have seen grassroots projects go right through to production. I don't know if you see over my shoulder here, there's a couple of them.

6:54 Continental Gold in Colombia is one of them. That was a 10Moz plus discovery, now mining in Colombia. B2 Gold is another one. We were the initial creators of OREX Gold in Namibia. That's now a modern mine and one of the largest tax producers and payers in that country.

7:13 So we sort of see what it takes to be able to get there. And this, the Yukon, these types of projects, it really checks all those boxes. Some of these other names you mentioned, Rio Tinto, Mitsubishi, They're also in our district. They're a partner with Western Copper and Gold. That's another 20Moz of Gold. I talked about the placer. You have one of the largest Copper Gold porphyries in the world, which is also in our backyard, which we are contiguous to with one of our new discoveries, also

7:46 contiguous to a new one. In this area, it's literally elephant country and these big guys, this is what they wanna look for and this is what's bringing them. You saw B2 Gold coming to Snowline. That's a phenomenal discovery. One of the best out there in recent years. And jurisdictional risk is always topical. I don't think it's ever been more topical than it is today with everything you see in the world, countries nationalizing assets. And the Yukon has a very supportive government. The federal government has been working in combination with them and when I say supportive I don't just mean from a policy standpoint, I mean from a financial standpoint.

8:32 Those 2 governments have put up literally hundreds of millions of dollars to finance infrastructure specifically to support mining activities in the territory. That is incredibly unique worldwide. So we have that, there is support of First Nations groups in the Yukon, listen, obviously every stakeholder needs to be treated fairly, that's important, just because it's the right thing to do.

9:02 But this is a place where, although there's been not much modern day exploration, especially in our area, there has been placer mining for over 100 years. So it is part of the culture. Everyone is wanting to work together and we're seeing projects advance. We're seeing these roads get started to get put in. And now there's advances in communication about power. The Yukon government is meeting with the B.C. Government to advance those initiatives. And these things were really right at the precipice, I think, of this potential camp really coming into reality and being led by new minds permitting their coffee deposit for production. Excellent. And you mentioned First Nations groups. So with ESG continuing to grow in prevalence, how is White Gold considering such aspects in your exploration efforts, in particular, your relations with First Nations and with local residents?

9:56 Yeah, you know, that's a paramount important to us at all times. And what we like to do is ensure that there's open communication amongst all stakeholder groups. You know, everyone should be aware we are working in other people's traditional territories, right? We're going to be very respectful and mindful of that. And we ensure to have good regular communication and this lay of platform where we can work as partners for everyone's best interest, right? And that's, you know, we're fortunate to have people like the Sean Ryan's and a lot of our exploration team that are from the Yukon, from the Dawson area, and they have relationships there, they understand that we're not just some foreign group showing up to do a bunch of things. So we have a lot of contacts, we be respectful one way or the other, but it really sort of helps to have that history, to help build a lot of the trust.

10:44 You know, from the environmental perspective, we have some amazingly unique and proprietary technology that has really gone low footprint in terms of disturbances. One particular example, which is something that Sean developed is called the GeoProbe. This effectively replaces trenching. So you imagine instead of when you're onto something, you're onto some mineralization, instead of having to necessarily scar up the entire side of a ridge, you have this probe, it gets into the bedrock and it'll give you a lot of the same information. So that's there. We have a program called Drones to Drills. We do a lot of superficial

11:21 analysis of what the countryside looks like. Again, very low footprint. Our RAB drill is a very environmentally friendly track mounted drill, which can actually move through the trees and not have to create any more disturbance is absolutely necessary. This is also, in addition to being very environmentally friendly, it's very cost effective. And that's a tool we've developed to allow us, listen, don't forget, we are surface exploring, right? A lot of places

11:52 in the world now are going 500, 1000m deep. We are looking for everything from surface to this for about a third of the cost of the diamond drill, it will give us a very good picture of what that first 100 or 200 years looks like. So we're looking to embrace technology and know-how as much as possible for all these different reasons. That sounds great. So earlier you mentioned the massive scale of the property that that White Gold holds in the Klondike grist. So what's your vision for this company? And do you expect to sell off some of the projects to increase shareholder value? Like what's your plan with this massive land package? So When the company was put together, it was based on that type of a premise.

12:37 We wanted to be a project generator. Our team, our expertise is early stage exploration. The goal, and things will change along the way would be to make the discoveries, prove up the prospectivity and then look to work with a partner in some capacity to help advance those to the next level, which requires skill sets that our team aren't experts at. Right. And whether that's selling assets outright, JVing, spinning them out, you know, could be any of the above or other structures, But that is what we'd like to do and then be able to use proceeds from those types of transactions to continue to finance our exploration activities.

13:26 I think this would also help to manage dilution of the company, which is very important to us because after our partners, Unico and Kinross,

13:35 ourselves, the Power 1 group, Sean Ryan, we're the largest shareholder. So we are very, very aligned with shareholders. And at the end of the day, we're in this to create shareholder value. Well said.

13:48 On that note, in terms of investors, can you give like a bit of an elevator pitch? It's a very competitive landscape out there, obviously, with a lot of junior gold explorers. So just talk a little bit about what distinguishes White Gold Corp. Listen, it's an interesting market. It's not an easy market, but we're at a time where I think there's a unique opportunity. We are at the point where there's never been such a divergence between the price of the underlying commodity and the price of the equities. So that's scary, but that could also be the opportunity here. And White Gold is in that situation, like many other great companies. So as an investor, if I were to look to value an opportunity, I would look to what's the hardest thing to make a company successful? In my view, that's technical success. Actually making the discovery, making the discovery and taking it to a resource.

14:43 I think that, you know, the stats that I've heard are something like 1 in a thousand or 1 in 10,000. So White Gold at a minimum have already done that. We have a multi-million ounce discovery. So we beat those odds. This has been based on over a decade of work between ourselves and prior operators and north of a hundred million dollars of investment spent to get to that point, which in today's dollars is probably $200 million.

15:09 So that is in the bank. That's real value. It's 2 grand from the preliminary metallurgy that's done. It is very strong recoveries. So that's phenomenal. That's part of it. That's sort of like where you can pin a value as an analyst of what that should be worth. But the other side of the company, which I think gets a lot of the people in this industry excited, got us excited and why we really want to become a partner in this as the Power 1 Group is that we have this incredibly exciting

15:41 grassroots blue sky portfolio. And we saw the work that was done that has led to these 2 discoveries. We are now seeing the results of the work that we've been doing over the last several years and we are more optimistic than we have ever been on the probability or the prospectivity of making more of these discoveries. And in fact, we've made a couple of very significant discoveries in the last couple of years.

16:06 Just to touch on one of them, it's on our Betty property. This on the Southern end of our portfolio is contiguous to Newmont's Coffee Project, which we talked about that's being moved through the permitting process as we speak. It's contiguous to Casino, Western Copper and Gold, big porphyry project. And there we have drilled over multi hundred meter strike lengths, 3 and a half grams over 50 meters from surface, 5 grams over 25 meters from surface, again, 3 grams over 50 plus meters from surface, 5 grams. So there has been incredibly high grades of hit in an oxide right from surface. That is an extremely exciting new discovery that could be a company on its own. The fact that it's right where I said it was, along this Crockett Creek fault, near these other 2 behemoths is such an added bonus because as the infrastructure comes in for those projects, that's just going to make the economics for that type of discovery even better than it already looks like it could be.

17:10 And then there's that, and we have this pipeline, right? And we're seeing stuff based on our soil sampling, new drill targets coming up all day. And it's such a big property. And Yukon is so rich in its mineral endowment that I think there's going to be opportunities now. We're a Gold company, but I'm looking, we have 2 massive Copper and Gold porphyry targets also very close to the casino. These porphyries, they happen in clusters. We're seeing a lot of similarities. We're looking at the age of the rocks, we're seeing a lot of similarities. So that type of prospectivity is there. And then there's other properties where the work still needs to be done. We don't know. We know there are soil anomalies, but now let's put them through the protocol of what led to the success that we've been having in other places. That leads me to a great point I wanted to talk about here.

18:01 Can you tell a little bit about what's been accomplished in 2023 by White Gold and then maybe what you plan on in 2024? Just very quickly, like I mentioned, we've now delineated a 2.1Moz resource to grants. Assets of that tenor are few and far between, especially in a great place like Canada, and not many are in the hands of junior still. So we have that. That is open in all directions. We've done a fair bit of work on that to upgrade the resource. What we've also done in the last couple of years is made other new discoveries within a very close proximity, 1 on a 6km long Ryan's trend, we call it. That has seen very limited drilling. The drilling that we've found has made new discovered zones of mineralization which have gone into the resource.

18:47 That trend looks like it carries further north to where we have another zone mineralization called the BG deposit. We've done some work there this year. We're pretty excited by what we're seeing up there. So that deposit itself and everything around the deposit we think has an opportunity to continue to grow its global resources significantly. And then we've made these other new discoveries. I talked about the Betty. That's 1 of 6 targets on that property. So there's a lot of work to be done there. We've made 2 or 3 other bonafide new discovery, high-grade right from surface. These things will all need work. And from our perspective, it's just a juggling act, a matter of where we want to allocate our resources, hiring at the best bang for our buck for the shareholders. There's a couple of new porphyries that we think we may be able to tag into. So with all that being said, 2024 is coming up quickly here in our season. We're currently right in the process now of putting together a plan, working with our partners for that. I think based on the success of that Betty discovery, the ultra high grades, how close it is to surface, where it is beside Newmont and Western Copper and Gold, that property will definitely warrant a significant amount of work this year.

20:01 We have those proferies that are very interesting and we have those other targets up by the Gold and Silver deposit itself. There will likely be some combination of that. I don't know exactly, but stay tuned. Hopefully we'll be able to announce that in the next month or so. Excellent. That's a great recap of that. Thanks a lot for going through these questions and these topics with me. I appreciate that. Can you just give a little bit of a closing thought on what investors should be taking away from this? This is, I think, a pretty interesting time, right? Most investors, I think you want to be a little bit ahead of the trend. We've seen a few different trends come, you know, in the battery metals, you know, uranium right now, which I personally think all commodities will have a lift here in the coming year or so. If interest rates peak and start to come down, I think the consensus is now that that looks like it's going to happen, which will hopefully allow for more risk on appetite in the general market sentiment, which should help all junior type companies, companies with advanced assets, who maintain their activity and continue to invest and build value like White Gold has, I think hopefully should start to get attention first.

21:17 The attention and the investment we have by some of the best miners in the world, I think hopefully validates to some degree our thesis, or at least there's other very sophisticated people that have the same vision as we do. So I think these are the types of opportunities you want to be looking for. And theoretically, as rates pull back, the Gold prices historically have performed very well. So maybe that'll be what brings interest back into the sector. And we could have a couple or a few very exciting years ahead of us, which should hopefully then lead to more M&A. There has been very little investment in growth by a lot of these large producers. They're going to need to continue to fill their pipeline. That's typically done by M&A. So you want to be positioned in companies that can build value through the draw bit and also potentially be able to build value through corporate transactions.

22:10 Yeah, well said. Yeah. So thanks for taking us through this fireside chat. And I'm looking forward to hearing about the 2024 program. Yeah, stay tuned. I think there's very exciting times ahead for White Gold and a lot of these high-quality companies in the junior capital markets. Perfect. Thank you everyone for joining us and we hope you have a great day. Take care. Thanks Max.