Ali Haji, CEO of American Tungsten Corp. (CSE:TUNG) (OTCQB:DEMRF) (FSE:RK9), joins me to introduce the exploration and development company focused on bringing onshore tungsten mining and production capabilities to the United States through its derisked past-producing IMA Mine in Idaho.

We start off discussing the dynamics around this strategic defense metal, where the majority of tungsten supply is controlled by China, and is a necessary component in a wide array of defense applications, including but not limited to the production of ammunition, armored equipment, artillery, and space exploration. Today, tungsten is a classified critical metal by the U.S Department of Defense due to its strategic military importance, lack of domestic production capabilities, and growing tensions with China; in November 2024, China announced a global ban on all of its tungsten exports

Next we shifted over to the tungsten, molybdenum, and silver resources in place and the infrastructure advantages of the IMA Mine as an advanced, past producing brownfields site, located on patented mining claims in Idaho. There has been a substantial amount of capital has spent over many years to advance and build the project by various mining companies, including the Bradley Mining Company, Inspiration Development Co. (subsidiary of Anglo American PLC), and American Metal Climax. There is solid infrastructure including roads, tier-1 low-cost power supply, water rights, and a mining-oriented labor force nearby, which can help fast-track this project back into production, with a low capex anticipated to be ~$20 Million.

There is planned 6,000 foot drilling program for this summer, to expand the  tungsten, molybdenum, and silver mineral resources, and this will be utilized for an updated Resource Estimate, and the upcoming Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) due out later this year. The company will also be conducting a trial mining and bulk sample exercise where mineralized material will be shipped to 2 different smelters for processing, and will also bring in non-dilutive capital to the company.  Ali highlights that all these factors demonstrate the potential for a readily permittable short-term, small scale tungsten production operation of around 500 tonnes-per-day to start with as soon as 12 months out.

Wrapping up, we focused on Ali’s professional background, and the experience of members of the management team and board, as well as the financial health of the company. The company has a financing in place to fund the immediate financial needs for this year’s exploration and derisking work, and is pursuing the debt package for the capex needed to rehabilitate the mine and move it back into production.  Additionally, there is the opportunity to secure key strategic partnerships and non-dilutive financing with the U.S. Department of Defense,  Department of Energy, and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and those discussions have begun and applications are being filed.

If you have any questions for Ali regarding American Tungsten, then please email those in to me at [email protected].

Click here to follow the latest news from American Tungsten

In this company update, Charles Funk, President and CEO of Heliostar Metals (TSX.V:HSTR - OTCQX:HSTXF - FRA: RGG1), joins me to break down the latest drill results from the Truckshop stockpile at the La Colorada Project, and how these low-capex sources of gold could fund the next stage of development.

Charles also previews an upcoming technical report on pit expansions and hints at longer-term growth through untapped exploration potential at La Colorada.

Send in your questions for Charles Funk to be answered in future interviews. My email address is [email protected].

Click here to visit the Heliostar Metals website to learn more about the Company. 

In this company update, we welcome back Brett Heath, CEO of Metalla Royalty & Streaming (TSX.V:MTA & NYSE:MTA), for a comprehensive discussion on the company’s growth trajectory, asset updates, and strategic financing moves.

Brett also emphasizes what sets Metalla apart from other royalty companies:

Erik Wetterling, Founder and Editor of The Hedgeless Horseman website, joins me for a bigger-picture and candid conversation around investor sentiment, disconnects in valuations that we are seeing  across the sector in most of the gold and silver stocks, but especially in the junior PM stocks. 

We dive into how price assumptions used in economic studies and their associated Net Present Values (NPV) are so low and conservative that it is likely doing the industry overall a disservice and not reflecting anywhere close to the modern day reality in the metals prices or current project values. As a result most companies are trading at tiny fractional metrics of where they should be, and much of this stems from a shell-shocked sector trying to use very low 3-year trailing averages in underlying precious metals price assumptions, but it is almost to the point of absurdity when compared to today’s spot prices.

On many corporate presentations, when looking at stale-dated economic studies, or even newer ones that have sensitivities tables, they have base cases still using $1,800 gold and $22 silver, and upside cases that only go up to $2,400 or $2,600 gold… or $24 -$28 silver.  If one is lucky enough to find sensitivity tables that go up to $3,000 gold or $30+ silver, it still doesn’t even present investors with numbers on where the actual spot prices are in either metal at much higher prices. Erik makes the point that most of these presentations “upside cases” should really be their “downside cases.”  

Metals prices have been at $3,200-$3,500 gold and solidly above $30 silver in the $32-$35+ range for many months now, but there are hardly any economic studies that even incorporate prices where they have been for some time, much less legitimate upside cases from here.   We point out that the mining industry doesn’t really need to be optimistic, we just need companies to start being more realistic in where their intrinsic values are at present.  There is no other sector of the market that so deeply discounts its present value, or is stuck looking backwards at prices from 3 years ago, and the mining sector is not playing to it’s strengths today.   If the sector wants to attract generalist investors, then it needs to at least show valuations of projects at the current metals prices in its sensitivity tables and use metals assumptions values that are not so far divorced from todays prices.

When you combine the recovering sector sentiment that is still not believing current metals prices are going stick, with ounces in the ground valuations still often in the $20-$60 range, and takeover premiums that barely move those metrics to over $100 per ounce, when the current producers margins are $1,500-$2,000 per ounce of gold, then it is an environment where we could still see big reratings higher if the metals prices just channeled sideways.  Erik highlighted that even if gold went down to $2,800, the good gold junior developers should probably still go higher just to catch up to valuations that even factor in those prices.

Click here to follow Erik’s analysis over at The Hedgeless Horseman website

John Rubino, [Substack https://rubino.substack.com/ ], joins us for a wide-ranging discussion on the macroeconomic factors driving the larger commodities sector higher, but then we vector in specifically on opportunities in the gold, silver, and royalties stocks.

We start off discussing how the higher underlying metals environment is not just limited to golds bull run higher, but now has widened out into silver, platinum, copper, and uranium.  This wider breadth of the metals and their related resource stocks is pulling in a larger audience of investors including generalists and momentum traders.  While different commodities have different fundamental factors at work, John points out that in the past when we’ve seen these broader commodities bull markets they’ve tended to last many years and be longer lasting and more durable rallies.

These higher sustained prices like gold above $3,000, or silver above $35, or copper above $5 leading to more investor confidence in the producers maintaining healthy margins and valuations, which then in turn attracts even more generalist investor capital flows in as sentiment slowly changes and turns into momentum.  Shifting over to precious metals stocks specifically, these higher underlying metals prices  still leave many producers and  development projects with economics that are better at current spot prices than is actually being factored into their current valuations.  As a result, John believes we’ll see the mining stocks improve their businesses with their growing revenues and cash flows by paying down more debt, buying back shares of their stock, increasing dividends, or making accretive acquisitions.

This leads into a larger discussion on the coming Q2 earnings, which are anticipated to be a record levels, and the optionality it gives these producers as potentially being another catalyst to bring a larger audience of investors into the gold and silver stocks. Specifically with silver stocks, after seeing one of the higher average silver prices in Q2 John outlines how this really could get more investors moving down the risk curve of silver stocks from the highest quality companies down to companies that just have silver in their names.  We also separate the signal from the noise as it relates to the political statements out of the largest silver producing country, Mexico.

Wrapping up we pivot over to the advantages in risk mitigation and margin expansion found in the precious metals royalty companies in this current environment.   John highlights why it is very likely that we’ll continue to see more consolidation in the royalties space, and disconnect in valuations seen in the junior and mid-tier companies, when contrasted against the senior royalty and streaming companies.

Click here to follow John’s analysis and articles over at Substack

Craig Hemke, founder and editor of TFMetalsReport.com, joins us for a timely macro and metals discussion on this shortened holiday trading week. With Canadian and U.S. markets seeing light volume due to national holidays, Craig outlines why this week could still bring significant volatility driven by data releases and algorithmic trading.

Key Themes Discussed:

Vizsla Silver (TSX:VZLA - NYSE:VZLA) continues to deliver key milestones at its flagship Panuco Project in Mexico. In this company update, Mike Konnert, President and CEO, joins me to discuss two major developments: the progress at the Copala Test Mine and the recent $100 million bought-deal financing.

Key topics discussed:

If you have any follow up questions for Mike please email me at [email protected]. 

Click here to visit the Vizsla website to learn more about the Company.

Fred Bell, CEO of Elemental Altus Royalties (TSX.V:ELE) (OTCQX:ELEMF), joins me to unpack the transformative news announced on June 12th, where Tether Investments has just positioned as their largest strategic shareholder and cornerstone investor.  We discuss what this deal means for the precious metals and royalty sector where a crypto company can deploy such large sums of capital, and more importantly what it means for future deal flow and acquisitions for Elemental Altus Royalties.

Tether completed the acquisition of 78,421,780 common shares of Elemental Altus from La Mancha Investments S.a.r.l. at a price of C$1.55 per share, representing approximately 31.9% of the issued and outstanding common shares. When combined with the 4,360,511 shares already owned by Tether, Tether will now own an aggregate of 82,782,291 common shares, representing approximately 33.7% of the issued and outstanding shares in the Company.

Tether has further announced that it has entered into an option agreement with AlphaStream Limited and its wholly-owned subsidiary Alpha 1 SPV Limited pursuant to which Alpha 1 granted Tether the option to acquire, subject to certain conditions, an aggregate of 34,444,580 common shares owned by Alpha 1. On exercise of this option, Tether would own 117,226,871 common shares, representing approximately 47.7% of the issued and outstanding common shares.

We also touched on the news out on June 24th where Gleason & Sons LLC announced it had acquired nearly one million common shares of Elemental Altus Royalties via ongoing open market purchases. The rationale from Stefan Gleason was that the Company has paid off all debt, booked its most profitable quarter ever in Q1, and streamlined its governance structure.

Fred and I discussed the rationale behind Tether positioning both dollars and gold in their 2 stablecoins, and that Elemental Altus was them positioning using their Teather Investments vehicle for longer-term appreciation, and that they were very keen on the lower risks and high revenue per employee ratio of royalty companies for acquiring more exposure to future gold equivalent ounces of production.  The mandate that they reiterated to the management team of Element Altus Royalties was to keep growing the business in a responsible and efficient manner.

We spent the balance of the discussion talking about what this means for future deal flow and acquisitions.  Fred highlighted the size and scale of potential future deals with their already strong balance sheet, cash on hand and free cashflow generation on tap for this year, and their revolving credit facility, giving them upwards of $80 million in funding for deals moving forward; before Tether even got involved.

If you have any follow up questions for Fred regarding Elemental Altus Royalties, then please email them to me at [email protected].

Click here to view recent news on the Elemental Altus Royalties website

The commodity bull market is alive across multiple fronts—from explosive moves in silver and platinum to broad-based strength in equities. Dana Lyons shares what his trading models are flashing now, while Brien Lundin makes the case that we’re still early in this precious metals bull market.

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Trey Wasser, CEO and Director of Dryden Gold Corp (TSX.V: DRY) (OTCQB: DRYGF), joins me for a special video overview of the 4 key focus areas for this year’s exploration program, across their Dryden Gold District land package in Northwestern Ontario.  We start off with a big-picture geological framework for the property, then vector in on the 3 key deformation events in the Gold Rock Camp, but then also discuss the different geological settings found in the Sherridon and Hyndman areas.

After outlining the D1, D2, and D3 structural trends in the Gold Rock Camp, Trey takes us through what has been learned from combining this new understanding with a number of past and more recent drill holes along both the Big Master and Elora Gold trends.  Some of the most recent drill core has been seen carrying visible gold and returned high-grade assays from around the Elora-Jubilee target, as well as news announced earlier this month from the historical Laurentian Mine Target and the Pearl Target (formerly known as the Intersection Target). This drilling all along the Elora Gold System has shown an improving understanding of the multiple stacked shear zones and veins structures along this trend, and is part of the on-going 15,000 meter drill program underway, but there are other regional targets that will be tested

Next we shifted up to the Mud Lake target area, and how these same 3 geological deformation faults and folds are present here as well, further along the Gold Rock Camp trend.  Trey goes on to highlight that there is a periodicity to this system where there are even more targets to the Northeast and Southwest along this 20km strike length that demonstrate similar geological properties that are being mapped, sampled, and advanced towards targeting for future drill programs.

Wrapping up we discuss the 3rd area of focus at Sherridon; where detailed mapping from 2024 has exposed multiple drill ready targets and it’s unique geological setting that is different than the Gold rock Camp.  Then we pivoted over to the 4th area of focus at the Hyndman regional target, and how its geological setting is different than the other areas, but also presents compelling drill targets from all the early field exploration campaigns.  These areas will all see more exploration testing through the balance of this year.

If you have any questions for Trey regarding Dryden Gold, then please email me at [email protected].

Click here to follow the latest news from Dryden Gold