US Gold Corp (NASDAQ:USAU) - Advances CK Gold Build and Keystone Spin-Out

Luke Norman (0:00)

Hi, I'm Luke Norman. I'm the Executive Chairman at US Gold Corp. We're a NASDAQ listed gold copper developer with the project CK, just outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Matt (0:11)

Luke, good to see you here. Thank you for having me. Busy?

Luke Norman (0:14)

It's been a whirlwind. Yeah.

Matt (0:16)

It's relentless.

Luke Norman (0:17)

Yes.

Matt (0:18)

It's relentless. So yeah, I think I was talking to one of your team members. It's sort of eight in the morning till eight at night. So let's go.

Luke Norman (0:25)

Yeah. Look, a project is two hours from here.

Gold market, copper environment. We're obviously a hot commodity.

Matt (0:35)

Yeah. For sure, the timing is good.

The only goal I want to hit this with is, because how do you build this thing? This thing's got to get built, right?

Luke Norman (0:45)

Yeah.

Matt (0:45)

You've got it. Maybe let's start with, remind people where you are.

Let's remind people what you've got and where you are. Two things I want to talk to you about is M&A seems obvious to most, or if you've got the stomach to build this thing.

Luke Norman (0:58)

Right.

Matt (0:58)

Okay. What have you got?

Luke Norman (1:01)

Right. Our project, the CK project, costs predominantly Gold, 70% Gold, 30% Copper. It's a porphyry, exposed at surface. Like I said, a two-hour drive from the conference you and I sat at, but it's in Cheyenne, Wyoming, so very short distance from Denver, Colorado. And what we managed to do, of course, in a very short period of time, five years, is take it from a science test to a fully permitted shovel-ready project. So I think we're one of, if not the only junior I know of, with a fully shovel-ready project like this in a bull market. So, you know, your next point or question was, well, M&A must be the obvious outcome for it.

Every time myself and our CEO, George B., who you know, of course, has built a lot of gold mines in his life, we look at the kind of the valuation on the company right now, we look at the valuation metrics around our definitive feasibility study, and then we look at the actual finished product. What would it look like in two years' time? It's a two-year build, $400M to build it, and it's worth a heck of a lot more than the sum of the parts.

Matt (2:05)

I know, but you got to finance it.

Luke Norman (2:07)

Yeah.

Matt (2:08)

Do you want to build it, seriously?

Luke Norman (2:10)

We're going to build this project. Unless somebody comes over the top with something that's egregiously beneficial to an investor, a shareholder, we are building this project. There's too much value on the table. Okay.

Matt (2:21)

So, I'll come back to that. So, in terms of the types of people who may come over the top, to use your phrase, what is it that you think that you've got that they're looking for? It's not a case of proximity to build. It's got to be more than that, either if it's into their portfolio or it's of the scale.

What's going to make…

Luke Norman (2:37)

Well, the irony is the scale within our definitive feasibility actually negatively impacts, I think, the project a little bit. People look at it, oh, it's a 10-year mine life. So they immediately are drawn to the fact that you're going to go and build this $400 million project and in 10 years time, you're shutting it down. Reality is far from the case. We had a very limited amount of capital and resources when we started this endeavor. So in 2020, when we brought in George, we needed to establish an economic framework from which we could permit. So the minimum impact we thought was a minimum 10-year mine life.

So we continually get the confusion that this is just a 10-year deposit. The project, the deposit itself extends to depth and it has lateral extent. So ultimately, you're really looking at a project that will be a 15, 18, 20-year mine life. So you don't get any benefit or credit for that in the marketplace. So built, we will.

You establish, obviously, a lot more credit for that.

Matt (3:45)

Okay. So where are we at today? I mean, how much more work needs to be done? How much more money needs to be spent? Because I think we're lucky enough to go and see it, right? And it's kind of well located, and all those other kind of infrastructure benefits. But the work on the ground in terms of met work, for instance, is this amenable?