U.S. GoldMining Advances Strategic Alaska Asset | Tim Smith

U.S. GoldMining Inc. (NASDAQ: USGO) has released a preliminary economic assessment for its Whistler project in Alaska, outlining average production of approximately 250,000 gold equivalent ounces per year over a 15-year mine life, including roughly 345,000 gold equivalent ounces annually in the first three years. Speaking with Kitco Mining at PDAC 2026, CEO Tim Smith said the study returned a 33% after-tax internal rate of return using base case assumptions of $3,200 gold and $4.50 copper.

Whistler contains more than 1 billion pounds of copper and nearly 20 million ounces of silver, with roughly 75% of project value derived from gold. “We are on state of Alaska mining claims, so we're just dealing with a single regulator,” Smith said, citing permitting advantages. Metallurgical testing achieved 89% gold recoveries, and higher-grade mineralization comes to surface, supporting stronger early production. At higher pricing assumptions, Smith said, “We go from 33 to 62%, after tax,” as the company advances toward pre-feasibility and prepares for additional district-scale drilling in 2026.

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00:54 - Critical Minerals Tailwinds
03:06 - Alaska Permitting Advantage
04:12 - District Scale Exploration Upside
06:36 - 2026 Drilling Game Plan
07:32 - Whistler PEA Key Drivers
09:46 - Metal Price Sensitivity
10:53 - Access Road and Infrastructure
13:40 - Next Six Months Inflection
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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

KitCo Mining's on-site coverage of PDAC is presented by Gold Mining, U.S. Gold Mining, Uranium Energy Corp. and Uranium Royalty Corp. Hey everyone, welcome back.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

I'm Jeremy Stafford for PDAC 2026, where Kitco is on the ground, and it's a massive morning for the Alaskan mining scene. U.S. gold mining has just dropped the preliminary economic assessment for its Whistler project. And the numbers, they appear pretty eye-popping. I mean, we're talking about a multi-billion dollar evaluation, a 33% internal rate of return, and a production profile of nearly 350,000 ounces of gold equivalent per year in just the initial stages. But perhaps the most important uh aspect for this, the American first resource story. I mean, this project is now formally de-risked as a major domestic source of copper and silver. Joining us to break down the results and uh to talk about this macro situation, which is quite positive on the tailwinds front, of course, is the CEO of U.S. Gold Mining, Tim Smith. Good to see you, Tim. Good morning, Jeremy. Uh nice Monday morning for you here at PDAC. Good start to the week, isn't it? Yeah, it is. Uh and I want to get into the PEA results, uh, because obviously huge news coming up. But before we do that, let's just set it up for the audience here. I mean, you know, the the big picture here in late two 2025, you know, as well as well as the audience, the USGS has officially added copper and silver is a strategic uh mineral in terms of that U.S. critical minerals list. I mean, your Whistler project has over a billion pounds of copper and no nearly 20 million ounces of silver. I mean, the US government's got to be looking here.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Absolutely, it's a significant copper play in its own right, but of course, primarily it's a gold play. Um, you know, my first email this morning was to the governor of Alaska because he's been an amazing supporter. One of his key policies was was a major catalyst for us to set the company up and IPO it three years ago. And that was the announcement of the uh uh the plan to build the West Su Sitna Access Road, which will effectively connect the Whistler project with all of that transportation, grid power infrastructure in the Anchorage District, located just 100 miles from us. So we've been delighted with the political tailwinds at the state level. Add to that the borough level level as well. The Matsu Bar has been a fantastic partner to work with, and of course, over the last year the Trump administration just keeps bringing out policy after policy aimed at uh uh maximizing uh resource extraction for those critical minerals uh and and gold, of course.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Yeah, total de-risk of this project. I mean, you know, we uh does this change the story as well? I mean, it does obviously with the US government, but those are tailwinds. Does it change the story for the institutions seeing this as a safer play now, too?

SPEAKER_00 2:40

Oh, it absolutely should. Uh, you know, Alaska is has some of the best geologic endowment of anywhere in the world. Yes, it's had its issues over previous years, but we're starting to see that turn around now. We think we're we are in a great place uh with uh uh a project that's 100% on state of Alaska mining claims, so we're just dealing with a single regulator to really benefit from these fast tracking policies that are going to help us get through permitting ultimately, and that's why a year ago today uh we basically sat down and said, okay, it's time to do this PEA. We've drilled it, we've got a good resource base, let's put some economics to it and see where it leads us.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Yeah, Alaska's obviously uh, you know, a friendly mining jurisdiction. What just say talk to the audience about those tailwinds in terms of you know getting your licenses, you know, getting uh all of this exploration out of the ground. I mean, it it feels like they're moving quicker than time before.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

I think so. I mean, they've always moved quite quickly for us. I emphasize that that we're on state land. So our journey started in 2022 and we got our permit to explore within 90 days of submitting our application. I can't do that in Canada. That's amazing, you know, uh in Alaska. So I thought, okay, well, this is great, this is easy. Very clear set of regulations as well. And you know, fast forward to uh the beginning of last year when on day one the Trump administration won a President Trump's first executive orders on day one was literally called unleashing Alaska's resource potential. You know, uh how can you ask for for better support in terms of developing uh you know big resources close to population centers where the state wants to build a road to you uh when you've got that sort of macro uh political uh policy coming over the top.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Yeah, just been wild to watch, you know, this this pop on on not only that, but some of the mining equities. Uh and we got to talk about MA, but before we do that, I mean Whistler Orbit. I mean, uh, you know, you just re released those results from your 2025 program. You identified four new prior high priority targets. You described these as kind of Whistler look-alikes. I mean, for for the retail investor, help us understand the scale here. Is is Whistler turning into a district scale cluster rather than you know just one or two deposits?

SPEAKER_00 4:50

We think so, yeah. Uh absolutely look at my background, I'm an explorationalist, I'm a geologist, so uh I love working on the PEA, I love building the mines, I love to see, you know, uh the whole progression of the mining um study, and looking forward to talking about that in a minute. But we've always thought that we have a dual track here, you know, we have the development track for future potential mine, but it's still a lot of unlocked geologic potential here, and that's you know, as I say, that's really my go-to. So when I look at the district, uh and we've talked about this in our news releases, we've got the Whistler mineral system, and that's the vernacular that I learned when I was working at Newmont because they're not looking for a mine that has 15 years mine life, they're looking for something that can grow to 50 years or beyond. So they're looking for a big geological center that has potential to keep delivering discovery after discovery and building out that pipeline of resources and reserves. We actually have three mineral systems, two porphyry clusters at the Whistler Orbit, as you mentioned, and also further to the south at Island Mountain. And then we have an intrusion-related gold center as well. So this is all within our 100% owned land package. We had some exciting exploration results last year. You know, we have some really, I think, compelling geophysical uh anomalies, and we were able to model those in three dimensions, and this is all on our website. You can actually see the porphyry intrusive bodies that host the mineralization, and use utilizing the Whistler deposit to calibrate how we visualize the rest of them. We could count at least two dozen more targets. Now, we don't expect to make two dozen discoveries, so I I want to make that clear. You know, the odds are that some of those are going to be dry, some are going to be weakly mineralized, but I think the odds are pretty good that one or two could be uh mineralized to economic grades, and that's what we want to go find. So that's what we're fast tracking, and that's why we added some geochemistry to that in 2025 to figure out which are the hotter, uh, higher priority targets that we're gonna go drill this coming summer in 2026.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

That's what I was gonna ask you about because I mean you you you got those 25 potential porphyry bodies identified beneath the cover. I mean, how aggressive is it gonna be with drilling into the summer to kind of prove that?

SPEAKER_00 6:59

Well, we're gonna be announcing plans shortly, but I can tell you that the technical team have been working diligently over the winter with the results in hand. We've put together a big program, we've got fantastic board support. Uh we are talking to contractors, we're getting lined up now. Uh we want to mobilize in May and have a really good summer. Potentially a couple of drills, uh, drilling right through the summer, hitting uh at least the top sort of 10 to 12 targets that came out of that whistle orbit work from 2025. Wow, wow, so exciting. And with the objective, we we set we set a lofty objective for our team here. We said, we're not mucking around, we're not we're not gonna go make scientific discoveries or have technical successes. Your objective this year, guys, make a discovery. Get some core in the ground and and get some intercepts of gold and copper.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

So they got to work. Well, this brings to the big catalyst, I mean the PEA. I mean, your preliminary economic assessment, which you stated is aimed for I mean, you're gonna you've already released it, but let's just talk about these key economic drivers now, are a little bit different here within this study. I mean, you know, differentiating Whistler from other large-scale projects in, you know, higher jurisdiction areas. So just talk to me about this PEA.

SPEAKER_00 8:05

Sure. So what what makes Whistler a little bit different right from the get-go is that it is a porphyry, but it is a gold-rich porphyry. It's a diorite hosted porphyry's, you know, come in different shapes and sizes and and and ratios of metal. Ours is the gold-rich. So by value, uh uh about 75% of the value is in the gold, and most of the remainder 25% is in copper. There is a little bit of silver here, there's about six million ounces produced out of this PA. Uh, but overall we will be producing about three and a half, uh, 3.6 million gold equivalent ounces, uh, and that is about 2.6 million ounces gold and uh about 600 million pounds of copper. Uh so right away, you know, it's it's a gold-rich um deposit, and you know, I think one of the key de-risk de-risking features or elements of the PEA study last year was the metallurgy. And we were able to get our gold recoveries right up to 89%, which I think is some of the best in class for a porphyry style. I know it's not, you know, in the 90s like an orogenic system and a Canadian shield, but 89% from a porphyry system is very, very good. Uh so we're delighted with that. And you know, I think another key distinguishing feature for Whistler is that it comes right to surface. And in the middle, in the heart of this porphyry, where the potassium alteration and the and the frequency, the density of A and B veins, this is where all the money happens basically, that higher grade core comes right to surface. So, what that allows us to do, uh, over the life of mine, we will produce uh uh an average of just around about 250,000 gold equivalent ounces per annum over that 15 years. But the first three years, uh we produce uh 345,000 ounces per annum, and that's because of this high grade core right at surface, and of course you mine from the top down. So in those first two or three years, it's predominantly mineralized resource going through the mill, lower strip ratio, and it's high grade material too, because you're obviously optimizing right at the right at the core of that higher grade uh part of the system.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

Right, right. And I mean, you know, to how much has this changed the company? I mean, and just in terms of internal rate of return, I mean, think about what that looks like with five thousand dollar gold and six dollar copper.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Well, it doubles. We go from 33 to 62 percent um uh after tax. And our NPV is is just shy of$5 billion at that point. I think it's 4.9. Wow. Uh so yeah, you know, uh obviously we we we we want to be in the pack, so with our consensus base case pricing, we chose$3,200 gold and and uh$4.50 copper. I think that's pretty pretty average with what we're seeing amongst our peers right now. Uh and we looked at uh uh spot price, which of course fluctuates wildly on a daily basis. So, you know, we looked at the last month, uh the sort of um the average over the last month. 5,000 was was a good price. And uh uh let me see, five eighty-five I think we chose for it for copper, which seemed pretty reasonable just given you know the rapid increase in uh uh uh bullion and uh and and copper and silver for that matter that we've seen in the last six months or so.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Not to mention the macro situation where it could get a little bit higher at this point.

SPEAKER_00 11:03

Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

Um okay, well we've got to just ask you quickly, I mean, you you brought up the fact uh Alaska was often that challenging frontier. Now that's changed. And you brought up that you recently hosted U.S. Congress Congressman Nick uh Bajic. Uh you got the support of the governor. I mean, how close are we in this road, this Western uh Sistina Road?

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Yeah, so um we're working, you know, hand in glove with with those folks. Uh we have been since year um year zero, basically. Certainly great to have uh Nick Begage, uh Congressman Begage, Senator Mikowski. Uh we keep uh Governor Dunlevy briefed uh uh you know three or four times a year. He was the first person I emailed this morning. I think I mentioned that already to say thank you for your support. And thank you, by the way, for the quote and our news release that really you know shows where we're gonna go. Yeah. Yes, I will. I will. Uh look, he's a great supporter of responsible resource development in the state of Alaska. His three daughters work at Red Dog Mine for Tech. This is how connected he is. He knows that Alaska is a resource state, that's where their income comes from. So he's been a fantastic supporter. Yeah. Uh and with the road, so we're working with there's there's two entities, we work with them uh frequently. Uh you've got the Department of Transportation, they've put the first 25 miles in their state transportation infrastructure plan. My belief is that they are eminently uh ready to submit that project for EA for environmental assessment. The next 75 miles of road is already in EA. It's already been in Primitive for some six months now. That's run by a different entity, uh a state infrastructure bank called called ADA, it's an acronym. They build roads and railways and ports and bridges and so on. Uh between these two entities, they've they've designed, uh they've done all the detailed engineering design, geotechnical work, environmental baseline, they've done everything to develop a road that comes right to what will in future be our Mind Gate. We couldn't have designed it better ourselves. Um it's an amazing opportunity. It's it's a huge leg up, it removes the burden of upfront capital for us in that road build. You know, uh, it puts it into essentially uh the operating cost uh in the financial model because they use a model and they did this with Tech at Red Dog when the ADA built that road connecting uh Red Dog to Tiredwater. Uh it was paid back via a toll over the first 10 or so years of mine life. And that's the model that we're uh working towards with ADA. So and we will be sharing that cost, by the way, with a number of other resource development opportunities in our neighborhood. So it's a fantastic uh um opportunity to to really, I think, you know, contribute in some small way to the to the nation building of of Alaska and ultimately uh you know to the to the economic well-being and future growth of South and Central Alaska.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Yeah, and your project as well. I mean, obviously, you know, Tim, U.S. gold mining is a spin out of gold mining, and uh you got a really tight uh capital structure, which is which is positive. I mean, if you're a retail investor looking at the junior space right now, I mean, why is this next six months so critical for the company?

SPEAKER_00 14:09

Well, look, every six months is critical. We're always doing something to to try to advance your project, right? But but certainly look, this is a major inflection point having this initial PEA out today. We're super excited about that. It it takes us that that you know, I mentioned that that dual path that we have, it takes us into the next realm, past that first critical stage gate, into starting to think about pre-feasibility study. So that's track one and track two. As I mentioned, summer's coming up. We've got some great exploration targets, uh, we've got a good exploration methodology. We're really excited about getting drills uh on the ground this coming summer and starting to test some of those targets. So not only uh you know will we be planning to move the future potential Whistler copper gold mine forward, uh, but we're gonna try and make that bigger by developing this pipeline of future discoveries, resources, and reserves that will only make that mining opportunity uh you're excited. I I I can tell you're excited, you've been waiting for this. It's been a it's been a busy 12 months getting to this point, and uh I was saying to my colleague, it's nice to be here finally at this point where the news is out. We can talk about it, we can share all those metrics. How excited we are. You know, we've put we've put framed this uh uh this uh mining opportunity, I think, in a really um really neat way. I think the the economics are very compelling. Uh and yeah, as as I say, with my explorationist hat on, we still have all that opportunity in front of us on that exploration track as well.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Standing times, mate. I wish you the luck. Tim Smith. Thank you very much, Jeremy. Yeah. U.S. gold mining. Uh just impressive, and not to mention that jurisdiction, uh, a lot of eyeballs in those safe jurisdictions right now. All right, Kitco Mining will be here at PDAC 2026 all week long. We've got some fantastic guests. Be sure to hit subscribe, and we'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_02 15:53

Kitco Mining's on-site coverage of PDAC is presented by Gold Mining, U.S. Gold Mining, Uranium Energy Corp. and Uranium Royalty Corp.