Gold to $12,000? Silver facing a global supply crisis? In this exclusive highlight reel from the 2025 Rick Rule Symposium, five top gold and silver mining CEOs (Robert Quartermain, Sean Roosen, Rudi Fronk, Benoit La Salle, Richard Young) reveal what’s really happening on the ground, and why they believe a massive move in precious metals is already underway.
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Rudi Fronk 0:00
Within a year, gold should be at 5000 but over the next three to five years, we expect gold to be at $12,000 an ounce or higher.
Mario Rodríguez 0:13
Hi everyone, and welcome to wealthion. This is Mario Rodriguez, and I’m the channel’s executive producer. Me and the wealthium team were at this year’s recent Rick Roll symposium, where we recorded 15 exclusive interviews with some of the smartest minds in the natural resource sector. In this special highlight reel, we’re sharing powerful insights from five standard conversations that Trey Reich had with top mining executives and mining entrepreneurs at the symposium, you will hear from Robert Quartermain, Sean roussin, Rudy Franck, Benoit Lasalle and Richard Young. These are some of the people building the present and future of gold and silver mining and in some cases, making bold predictions that could reshape how you think about precious metals altogether. We begin our video with one of the boldest gold prices predictions we’ve ever heard, sea breach gold. CEO Rudy Frank explains why global central banks are quietly reshaping the global financial system and why gold could hit $12,000 an ounce within just a few years.
Trey Reik 1:21
So there was an interesting part yesterday where each of the panelists were asked, you know, where do you think the gold price is going? And I thought Grant Williams, you know, did the best when he said, Look, if central banks are buying gold, everyone in this room should be. But in terms of the next, you know, year, five years, what’s your outlook on the gold price and why we
Rudi Fronk 1:43
publicly go on record with price predictions from time to time. And last year, I remember our annual meeting, the co founder of Secretary, Jim Anthony, stood up, and he and I agreed that we’ll be seeing gold above $3,000 in less than a year, which we obviously have. We just had our annual meeting last week in Toronto. Jim made another presentation, and you know, he Our view is that within the year, within a year, gold should be at 5000 but over the next three to five years, we expect gold to be at $12,000 an ounce or higher, because of gold now entering in the global financial system in a meaningful way, central banks buying it and the West not yet into the gold space.
Trey Reik 2:19
12,000 is a big number. What are the components of your bullishness? It’s
Rudi Fronk 2:26
gold’s role in the global financial system. You know, after we shut the gold window in 1971 if you look at the amount of debt that’s been created, the money supply growth, there’s just a lot of crap out there that’s not supported by anything. And if you look at the value of gold today, it’s worth maybe 20 billion, $20 trillion that’s dwarfs what’s out there in terms of global credit money supply and all that. So just to come back in to support the global financial system, gold price has to go higher. It’s math,
Trey Reik 2:55
and you don’t think Bitcoin is going to displace gold anytime soon, say, in central bank vaults, or I
Rudi Fronk 3:03
don’t think so. I mean, you know, central banks have had a chance to sell treasuries and buy bitcoin. I don’t see any one of them doing it to me. You know, it’s interesting. There’s, there’s some smart guys I know that recommends both gold and Bitcoin. I think they are completely different investment opportunities. One is a risk on asset, one is a risk off asset. So I at the margin, they probably compete with each other, but gold, gold, gold is different,
Trey Reik 3:26
yep, and it’s the central banks certainly own a lot of it, and they don’t own a lot of silver either, right? I mean, silver is not really a monetary metal, wouldn’t you agree? Or
Rudi Fronk 3:38
Yeah. So I was when I was younger in my career, I was actually working at Phillip brothers when the hunt brothers tried to corner the silver market. And, you know, back then, Silver was a monetary metal, at least they believed it was. Silver has too many industrial applications now to really make it a monetary metal. And that’s why, I think people that are focusing on the Gold Silver ratio just don’t understand that it’s it’s not the same as it was 20, 3040, years
Mario Rodríguez 4:01
ago, silver may be on the verge of a major breakout, and in this clip, Benoit LaSalle, CEO of Aya gold and silver, explains why he shares, why silver demand is surging, but physical supply is tightening, and how his company offers one of the purest silver plays on the planet.
Trey Reik 4:21
So at this conference, I’ve actually noted, I’ve never heard people more bullish about gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold. Nobody’s talking about copper. Very few people are really talking about silver. It’s, you know, everyone thinks gold’s going to 5000 now it’s a layup, which has me a bit worried, but nonetheless, this is an exciting interview for us, because Aya gold and silver is basically a silver company and very high percentage. So tell us about sort of your mission and your project and what i represents, because I think it’s one of the purest silver plays out there. It’s the
Benoit La Salle 4:57
purest silver play out there, for sure. We are 100 Silver. So there’s no byproduct. There’s no copper or no which is, in itself, very rare. It’s in Morocco. I’ve only seen this in Morocco. I’m told that there are other mines like that in Russia or China. I’ve never seen it. It’s there’s nothing like this in Mexico. It’s pure, pure native silver like we have. You know, when we open up some faces sometimes, like, there is like a curtain of silver. Like, it’s unbelievable. We get 1000s of grams per ton. So we are a pure silver company. 100% of our revenue for the coming four years is going to be silver, pure, pure silver. And I think that what you mentioned that here is a gold conference, but it’s a silver gold conference. People are looking at the gold space right now, and they’re enthusiastic, because gold has done extremely well and but when you look at why it’s done well, it’s the central banks have been buying right but the enhanced the ratio of gold silver has gone out of whack, right? Because the central banks are up to 105 That’s right, the peak
Trey Reik 6:06
the Gold Silver ratio, which has averaged about 85 for the last 10 years or so. And the further you go back, the number goes down. Because gold or silver used to be a monetary metals I’m just explaining for those who are watching, so now that silver is not a monetary metal, it’s unlikely to go back to numbers like 60 and that type of thing, but 105 was pretty out of whack.
Benoit La Salle 6:30
It was totally out of whack. And now silver is an energy metal for solar. It’s a military metal for armament, for computers, for trackers, for I mean, it’s the best metal that they put into electronics. So the demand for silver is industrial. It’s extremely strong. It’s not financial. Now, maybe it will come back, but it’s not at the moment. So yes, so the ratio was a little bit out of whack, but I believe that sure silver will gold will go from 3400 to five, but silver will go from 36 to 80, and the leverage on the change is a lot greater. So the silver companies like us are going to do extremely well on the appreciation of the silver price. We’ll do well on the gold price. But look, everybody’s doing well, let’s be honest. If you look at the cash flow generated by the majors the intermediate producers, the cash flows are unbelievable, and because the costs are where they should be, but the selling price is fantastic. So we are a pure silver company right now, but our second project, which is always on that same belt, but closer to the heat source. So closer to the mouth of the volcano, has got gold, silver, lead and zinc, whereas the first project is further away, so it’s at the end of the sequence, and at the end of the sequence, it’s a pure silver place. So it’s just a matter of where you are in the sequence of the metal. So we have, you know, very unique silver mine. But the second project, which is going to be about four times bigger than the first project,
Trey Reik 8:09
and what’s the timing of development,
Benoit La Salle 8:11
we’ll be in construction, and I would say, two and a half years. And then add another the
Trey Reik 8:16
construction decision has been made with the PE a
Benoit La Salle 8:19
slash pre fees is being completed back of the envelope. Of course, it’s being made because with the with the metal price, everything works. And so it’s, it’s, we will make an official publication in October of what it is, and then we’re going to get into feasibility study and finalizing the the fine print. But look, you’ll need a partner. No, we do not need a partner. We have the strength and the financial strength to do it ourselves. It’s going to be a five, $600 million capex. The bank is already there for 60% our current banker, EBRD, is our financial partner. They’re very happy with their first facility on sogunder, our first mine. They’ll give us 60% on the second mine. The government of Morocco, they have their investment program where they fund you, they give you a grant. So we’ll qualify for 20% grant. They’ll give us 100 million, wow. And then we have to put up 100 or 100 50 million, which we will have in the bank, plus use you see the off takers we saw this morning, Ivanhoe announcing an off take agreement with trafi, and they put 200 million just to sign the off take agreement. So we will be in a position to have a beautiful off take agreement on gold, silver, lead and zinc. So the funding is, kind of, the structuring is, is kind of done. It’s not completed because we don’t have the feasibility together. But kind of the what it’s going to look like is done. We already have the permit. It’s a mining permit already, because it was an historical mine, so we have the mining permit. So now. For us to execute on the PA feasibility, beginning of construction and get ready for production in three and a half, four years time. And then we’re going to shift, because then our, you know, we won’t be just silver, we’re going to be mainly silver, but we’ll have some gold, and we’ll have lead in many
Mario Rodríguez 10:20
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Trey Reik 10:42
So I’m sure, you know, Andy schectman at Miles Franklin. He’s sort of a gold Chartist, et cetera. And he has, you know, this whip theory, horse whip theory, that silver, you know, when the whip goes with a rising price, gold goes first, and then silver is the back of the whip. And when it starts to move it, it moves faster. And I think Silver’s 36 today, and that’s right on the cusp of that type, like a pretty serious breakout, isn’t it? It is,
Benoit La Salle 11:11
it is. And we see it because we sell the metal. And every day in the silver market, we trade one year of production every day. The leverage is 360, to one every day in paper silver. You’ve got one year of production that trades completely, one year of the entire of the entire industry production every day, every day, every day. When we put the metal for sale us, we sell metal, we don’t sell paper, right? It’s like a little Pac Man. The bid climbs up and grabs it so we can sell about $1 a bit more higher than the spot price. Oh, that’s interesting, because we sell the metal. But
Trey Reik 11:52
it hasn’t always been that way. It’s no the past. Now it’s four months, or
Benoit La Salle 11:55
maybe a year. You can see it. It’s very interesting. So at one point it’s going to break, like a your theory of the it’s going to break. And as you know, when it breaks, it accelerates, right? So you remember gold in 2008 to 2011 we did the funding of semifinal of mana at $600 gold, and we thought that was crazy, because we did the others at $300 gold. And then it went 66789, went 66789, 10, 1001 1009 Yes, it went very, very quick, and it will be the same again for silver. I don’t know when it starts, but when it goes, it’s going to go. And then people, also, I believe, at that time, are going to come in for the financial value of the metal, which they’re not doing right now. But a lot of people we’re seeing at the Rick Rule conference are telling me that they’re buying silver right our buyer of silver is in Geneva, and the spot price was 34 and he was bidding us 42 Wow. So there was no inventory coming, and the hockey stick had started, and they were they were calling that morning. Said, We need silver. We’re short. We need silver. When was this again, about two years ago, when there was a with the big the first move right to 34 and and last year, in November, before the American election, there was also another move to 34 and a very quick move to 34 and the market got very, very excited. And look, I did not see supply coming back in, inventory coming back in, so maybe it wasn’t enough, and people are waiting for 4041 42 to do exactly what they’ve done. But we haven’t seen that yet. And we get called every week from India, the Middle East, China, can we buy your silver? Can we buy your unsolicited last year, we got a call from the Middle East, and he said, I’d like to buy all your silver, and I’m willing to sign a 10 year contract and and I said, Sure, but we’re selling it at spot. Says, Oh no, I don’t. I don’t want to negotiate price. It’ll be spot, but I just want to have a commitment. You’re going to sell it to us. And I said, okay, but what’s in it for us? He says, I’ll buy 10% of your company in the market if you want to commit that 10 year contract. I said no, because look, you know, people are gonna see that like we’re committing, and people will, you know, the interpretation will be, why did they do this? You don’t need so we didn’t do it. And we don’t have a contract. We’re selling spot every every week. We sell 100,000 ounces every week, approximately every week spot.
Trey Reik 14:43
it sounds like a good market,
Benoit La Salle 14:45
it’s a good market. So, so I don’t know about the point on inventory, but we have not seen it coming back in and we know that production in around the world is coming down. Production is coming down slowly. In South America, production. Is coming down around the world, so people are seeing this. And the solar panel company need the silver. They needed bad. They tried to replace it. It didn’t work. So it’s not true that they’re not going to be using that anymore. And if, if the Japanese come through with their battery made of silver, which they’ve been announcing. Though there’s a slowdown in the EV market at the moment. It’s not worldwide. I mean, in Europe, it’s continuing. In Asia, it’s continuing. If you’ve seen the recent cars made in China that are all electric, they are unbelievable. And if it’s true that they have now progressed the technology on a silver battery. There you go. So it’s to be seen. But look at 36 extremely profitable right now. So anything marginal is even better. And there’s no new silver mines. They’re very rare, you know, if you look even here, what’s to be built, very little, very little, and not, you know anyway, for me, not interesting if it’s in Mexico.
Mario Rodríguez 16:14
Up next, legendary mining entrepreneur Robert quartomain explains why he believes gold is heading much higher. And his answer goes far beyond the usual talking points. He dives into Central Bank demand gold’s critical role in AI and technology and the growing scarcity of major new discoveries. He reasons he’s fully committed to his new venture, Dakota gold in South Dakota.
Trey Reik 16:41
You’ve always, you know, I’ve always looked at you as excellent input on silver and fundamentals. But now that you’re in the gold world, do you spend much time on sort of the macro and the factors driving gold up here to 3300 and whether that’s likely to continue?
Robert Quartermain 17:00
I believe so for certain. I started my career in 1977 in the gold space. It was $140 an ounce. We’re up 20 times more. So gold has been able to really reward me by staying consistent. And I continue to continue to, you know, move forward. I mean, one of the drivers we know right now for price is central banks, right? The central banks are buying it. And the other component that people sometimes forget about is gold’s industrial use. We always talk about silver having its major industrial uses because it’s the best electrical conductor. It’s used in a wide variety of applications in that regard. But when you look last year, almost 10% of gold consumed was in electronics because it can be used in those really small capacitors, whether they’re in your cell phones or your iPads, they’re going to be what’s helped generating AI. When you think about the server farms all over the world, there’s gold within those connections, because they allow those capacitors to move the signal without oxidizing, right? And so we’re going to continue to have gold utilized in that regard. And I think this aspect of safe haven, as we continue to see governments around the world adding on debt, we know that ultimately that has to be looked at. And I think gold is a great hedge personally against it. So I own not only equity, but I have for many years, owned physical gold, and continue to have it an enzymes will translate into either coins or bars in that regard. So from a macro perspective, that I think it’s safe for everyone to have at least exposure to gold. And we look at it from invested capital right now, from many large funds around the world, they don’t have the exposure to gold that they probably should. So we only need a small incremental movement of some of these major funds, as you’d be more familiar than I am, into the gold space, which would be both good for equities, but more importantly, for the gold price itself
Trey Reik 18:50
and flipping this on its head. Do you have any views on the dollar, and you know how that’s going to shake out over the next couple of years?
Robert Quartermain 19:01
I think there could be challenges with the, you know, with the strength of the dollar, because it has been this reserve currency that everyone will go to because of its pricing and oil. I’m not a macro individual. I’m the geologist. And so, you know, often what I say will be things that I would hear, but when you look again at Central Banks buying gold and perhaps moving and translating some of their holdings in the US dollar into gold, or what we’re seeing with the BRIC countries, you know, there’s this conversation around other groups of countries trying to get back to a gold standard so that there’s, you know, value underpinning fiat currencies. You know, it’s a reason why I continue to hold gold is a large part of my portfolio, for all of these reasons that I, you know, get from you by reading your data and others, right? And I get your newsletter. I’m a subscriber, yeah? And so, you know, you’re the thoughtful ones in the room. And therefore I just look and say, I like that thesis, and for that reason, I’ll do it. Because the one thing that’s rare, it’s very difficult to find new gold mines. I found that, you know, Bruce Jack was a great mine. Were able to find this project. We found in South Dakota. We are finding them, but finding the large gold mines to replace the reserves that the miners need, and particularly the demand for gold, is going to be challenging. And so that means a higher price, because unit operating costs go up. If you look at gold mines right now, the producers their average ASCII cost all in sustaining costs. Isn’t that 15 to $1,600 range, which is why our project at 1050 is very attractive. But, you know, 20 years ago, when we’d be talking, you know, ASCII costs, again, would have been down at, you know, 200 bucks. So we’ve seen those increase six and seven fold over the last, kind of 10 to 15 years. And so inflation is going to continue to drive those up, put the price up. And the one thing we have seen with miners is good discipline coming in to make sure that their costs are down. And so as a result of that, inflation will have an impact and jurisdiction. You know, people are going further afield to be able to find projects. And as governments in foreign jurisdictions look for raising capital, one of the easiest way to do it the mine is there. You can’t move the geology. And so we often see that right wherever governments may put on additional taxation in order to be able to benefit from mining projects. So having a project in South Dakota, rule of law know what your tax structures are is certainly beneficial for our shareholders, and a reason why I’m going to continue to be involved in this investment.
Mario Rodríguez 21:31
You’ll now hear from Sean roussin, one of the most successful mine builders in the world, on what could be his biggest project yet. He explains why osisco development’s caribou Gold Project is fully permitted, de risked and potentially as large as Canadian mold Arctic. Let’s watch.
Trey Reik 21:50
Which brings us to the present day of Cisco development. So can you tell us a little bit about
Sean Roosen 21:55
Cisco development? Was my, my focus. I stepped out of the royalty company after 10 years to run on Cisco development, to go back to my roots, which is so you know, basically project in my development. We started this project back in 2015 we got involved right now. We just published an updated feasibility study. Phase one of this project is going to produce about 200,000
Trey Reik 22:15
ounces. Is it a one project company or two two?
Sean Roosen 22:19
But the project in Caribou in British Columbia is quite large. The property size is about 50 miles in this trend. So we think this thing’s going to end up with five or six mines on the trend, and it’s the same size as the entire valdora mining camp. This thing started out in 1858 as a discovery. We got control of it, and we re drilled it. And we redrilled it. We put 750,000 meters of new drilling. And then, since we got there, so we put 2 million ounces in
Trey Reik 22:46
reserve. Did you buy it? You bought it from
Sean Roosen 22:49
another company, from Eric Sprott. Eric brought me in there, in 2015 after he took it over, because he owned the debt on it, and the guys that were running it. So he owned it personally. He owned it personally. Interesting. He brought me in to try and try and figure it out. And after about a year of drilling it, I said, Erica, this is an expert level project. I’m going to need to take over 100% and, you know, we’re gonna need to figure out this thing out. We’re gonna have to do some real science on it. So I brought in my PhD geologists, and we spent about two years just working on the geological model. When did you acquire it from Eric? 2015 I got involved in ERIC left in 2019 interesting. So I gave him a check for 85 million. He went off to Australia to do, to do a little project down there. But
Trey Reik 23:36
like so many other mines, when people hear about it, it’s always like, you know, recent success, but you’ve been doing this for a decade there?
Sean Roosen 23:43
Yeah, I’m 10 years into this one. We cracked the code on the geology 2019 we had the aha moment. Then we drilled. We would, we put 18 drills on it, doing what a Cisco does, which we call the suds program, which stands for Shut up and drill stupid. Mm hmm. Drill first, ask for ask for his directions later. So we figured it out, and we wanted to get the permitting cycle underway. So we applied for the a certificate in 2019 we got the EA in 2023 and I got the full mining permit in 2019 so that’s the big catalyst I’d like to focus on today, is that we are one of the two fully permitted mines in Canada right now, and one of 10, maybe in the world that are shovel ready and permitted. And the the other one in Canada is Seabridge, which is a $6.4 billion capex, so a very different style project. This is 650 million us to build a 200,000 ounce a year mine that we think is quite scalable onto four or 500 600,000 ounces a year. So the reason I’m not on my cottage driving my boat around in circles, because I do think this one could be as big as Canadian millaric. We’ve got the tools move to figure it out. We’ve got the geology. We understand the deposit now, and it’s not our drilling. We wanted to get going, so we got a permit for 4950 On today, which kept us out of the Canadian federal permitting process. So in four years, 10 months, we achieved full permitting. So that’s pretty important in this sector. Now I’m just in the process of finishing up our project financing, which I hope is done in weeks, not months. And we’re actually under construction as we speak. I have about 4000 almost 4000 feet of underground development, 1200
Trey Reik 25:23
meters. So we’re past the production decision, and we’re in well destruction.
Sean Roosen 25:28
In theory, we haven’t gotten the final investment decision, but we’re opening up the ore body by getting underground as a confidence builder, so that 1200 meters will be usable in the actual production but the final investment decision will be in the fall of 2025 so we’re, we’re in motion.
Trey Reik 25:47
We all need to partner. Are you going to do it yourself?
Sean Roosen 25:49
I’ll read this one ourselves. We’ve looked at partnerships and, you know, I tried to claim lardic, and ended up building it myself, and it went quite well. You know, we, we started that project back in 2003 four. I bought at the deposit for 80,000 we sold it for 4.1 billion in 2014 we raised the money all ourselves. We found it, we built it, and we operated it. Then we got into a bit of a dust up with our friends from gold Corp, and we got white knighted by Yamada and Agnico. And that mine is now, you know, the detour and Canadian large now make up more than half the value of Agnico. So we’re pretty proud of that legacy as we go forward. You know, that’s it’s a pretty, pretty neat place to start from. We think that this project, caribou gold and BC can be similar. First step, get the 200,000 ounces. We have another three and a half million ounces in the vision indicated category, that would basically be the second mind. And I think that that sets the stage for us to go from 5000 tons a day to 70 511,000 and that would be four to 500,000 ounces a year, because we were able to achieve that. So it’s, you know, that’s looking into the future, but that resource is already defined. And then we’ve got, we’ve averaged about 1.5 million ounces for every 100 meters we went down. So about 330 feet, we’ve generated another another million and a half ounces. We’ve drill tested it down to 1000 meters or 3000 feet. We get the same results all the way down, but we didn’t do enough drilling to be able to qualify the resource. But you know, if we if the ounces per vertical meter stays the same, we’ve got a significant resource that’s about three times what we see right now. In the mean 4.4 kilometers. We’ve got another 10 kilometers of strike length beside us that we’ve done enough drilling to know that it looks very similar to the deposit we’re in now. And it continues, and we’ve averaged 1.2 million ounces for every kilometer that we’ve gone along the trend down to 350 so this is a very big system. We’re at the very beginning of it. The geology is a little bit complicated for some people. It’s a sediment hosted vein corridor system. So we’re basically in the show me part of the story. We need to get underground. We need to show it to everybody. That’s where we are now. So I think we have a lot of catalysts here in the next, sort of two to seven weeks, as we get the underground opened up, we complete the project financing, and we continue to do the infill drilling and underground to really validate the great assumptions that we have in the feasibility study. The other thing we’ve done, and we’ve de risked the project quite a bit. We bought our own Millie equipment about five years ago, it was a used equipment, new used equipment that was supposed to go to lay lower for hunt Bay. They never built the mill, so we brought all the new equipment from that for nine cents on the dollar and sitting on site now. So that saved us about $100 million Canadian, and we’re in process. We have an 18 month to 19 month construction for the mill now. We have 24 months of construction for the underground so we’ll see first gold production in 2027 and full full year would be 2028 at about 200,000 ounce a year for the first five years, based on only the reserves, not counting the much larger resource that we’ve drilled. This project is located on grid power in BC. So we get grid power from BC Hydro at about 6.7 tenths of kilowatt hour, and that power contract is signed ol so we have permit power First Nations agreements, milling equipment on hand, and an updated feasibility
Trey Reik 29:12
study. And the milestones for the next year are mostly drilling, and then after that, underground
Sean Roosen 29:17
development is the number one milestone. We got 30 kilometers of underground development. We’ve got the mill construction project financing. Hopefully we’ll finish that over the course of the summer, and we should be actively giving you updates. We want to start drilling the rest of the extension and the at depth stuff as well. So hopefully we’ll be adding ounces, and we’ll also be doing some infill drilling to convert the measurement indicated inferred ounces that are near the the existing resort reserves would be converting those ounces as well.
Mario Rodríguez 29:48
Last but not least, Richard Young, CEO of i 80 gold and how he’s leading one of the most disciplined and high potential gold plates in Nevada, and how they’re building toward producing 700,000 ounces. Ounces of gold a year. Richard doesn’t just talk to talk. He has 100% of his family wealth in gold stocks.
Trey Reik 30:09
And you seem, as I was talking to you earlier, to have identified yourself as a fixer of problems. And in your most recent endeavor, you’re at i 80 gold, can you tell us a little bit about what’s going on there and the alligators you’re wrestling and how you’re proceeding?
Richard Young 30:29
Yeah, you know what attracted me to I 80 was, first of all, I worked at Barrick. I was an operations controller gold strike through the build and operations. And love Nevada. It’s just a great place to mine. So we’ve got a company with 14 million ounces in MI and I measured, indicated, Inferred, another 200 million ounces of silver on brownfields, projects that have been previously permitted. There’s infrastructure in place, and there’s really not a lot of capital required to move the majority of these projects back into production. And so it’s an incredible opportunity, an incredible time with coal prices where they are now. The challenge was that the company had about $200 million in debt that they had taken on to complete drill programs. And And again, there’s a there’s a huge basement opportunity. But when our group joined, and there’s a group of us that we’re talking earlier about that we’ve worked together, some of us, it’s four companies over the last 20 years, some three, some two, but it’s a really great group of people. And so as we stepped in and we looked at it. We Well, the base metals provide potentially some wonderful opportunities. From a financial standpoint, there wasn’t really a way that we could recommend to the board to put at risk capital and what return would be, whereas on the gold side, there was a clear path. And so we announced a new development plan that focused on the gold in November, committed to completing pas on the five gold projects that make up that development plan. We did that through the end of the first quarter, and that $2,900 goal, you’ve got a four and a half billion dollar nap. And I think two things that surprised me coming in. First of all, I I didn’t think the cash flows would be as strong as they would. Number one. Number two, they were designed as an owner operator, not to sell it. So again, we’re looking to recapitalize the balance sheet, so we’re very prudent, conservative with those pas the cash flows. But I think what surprised me is really the upside with each of these projects. None of them are drilled off. And so internally, we’re putting a target of a $6 billion nav as we complete the feasibility studies through the balance of the decade. We think there’s significant value. Now, I think everyone who has previously invested in i 80 saw the inherent value in the assets. Now, the problem has been the balance sheet and so
Trey Reik 33:12
and you also have an embarrassment of riches, right? There’s certainly a line of thought that you have too many projects.
Richard Young 33:20
That’s correct, that’s correct, and they’re all interlinked. So it’s not like you can really sell one of them, or really, you almost need to develop everything to be able to maximize the value and recapitalize the balance sheet. And so, you know, in terms of recapitalizing the balance sheet, we’ve got $200 million of debt on the balance sheet. So we needed to show investors a pathway forward and a value proposition, which we did over the course of the last six months, and we’ve begun that process to recapitalize the balance sheet. We did an equity raise in May, combined with the warrants they’re attached here, that’s about 300 million of what we think is 800 million, and we’re talking all US dollars that we need through the balance of the decade. And what that 800 million will give us allow us to refurbish our lone tree autoclave facility, one of three in the state, as well as ramp up and develop four of the five projects. By the end of the decade, we should exit the decade with production of 350, to 4000 ounces of gold per year, and have permitted our flagship asset that potentially, by the time we complete the feasibility study, will be an asset capable of producing between 353, and 350,000 ounces of annual production for potentially a 20 year period. So that will be a fantastic asset for us, but all told, we’re building a platform that could produce between six and 700,000 ounces per year, potentially for 20. Years which there are very few companies in this space with that kind of organic growth pipeline. And the fact is, it’s in Nevada. So we think that it’s a terrific value proposition. And in terms of recapitalizing the balance sheet, as we’re talking, talking before we got started, there’s a group of us that have worked together for 20 years that we’ve never been blessed with, with a great balance sheet. So, you know, we’ve, we’ve done probably 12 different, you know, facilities of some sort, some that got finalized, others that didn’t. So it’s a group that have great values, great experience, and there’s a lot of respect on the street by the various lending groups to work with all of us. So I think the balance sheet will take care of itself. It’ll take another year to do that as we complete the feasibility studies that will will underpin that financing. And
Trey Reik 36:07
a part of the financing, as I recall, was an off take agreement for the base metals, which you mentioned earlier. I must admit, I don’t know where that stands. Has Has the partner decided to move forward with the off take, or is that up in the air
Richard Young 36:26
again? Yeah, that’s a great question. So there is a tremendous base level opportunity, and the previous management group had worked with with a partner to bring that forward, and that was caught, that contract was ready to sign when we join. But you know, essentially, when you look at the value of the gold, and you’re giving up 25% of the gold, which you know, based on $3,000 gold, is probably worth close to $3 billion for pennies on the dollar, to focus on the base metal, which, while exciting and encouraging, we don’t know what the pathway is to, you know, cash flow. And so we didn’t sign that. And so that’s been placed on
Trey Reik 37:20
hold. And so that’s where the base metal stands. We work on the gold first. That’s right. Figure that
Richard Young 37:26
out later. Yeah. And when it comes back to the base metals, ultimately, we won’t bring a joint venture partner in, because that that rupee Hill property will be host to, you know, most of our value, and you know, we’ve got to be able to determine how we, you know, continue to maximize value on the gold side, but same time develop the base metal side. Got it. So that’ll be something that the company will internally focus on.
Trey Reik 37:55
I think it’s fair to assume, from the way you talk about your business and your career that you don’t spend a lot of time with your board speculating on where the gold price is going. It doesn’t sound like it’s in i 80s DNA to spend a lot of time on that, but we are at a gold conference, and I was just wondering how you guys look at the current gold price. You know, is it ahead of itself, or do you spend a lot of time on the macro side of things as to why the gold price should stay here or go higher?
Richard Young 38:28
I’m an economist by training, and so when I’m not working, I do like to read Dave Rosenberg, a noted Canadian economist who was the chief economist for Merrill Lynch. Look, gold has now superseded the euro and again reserves, reserves and and when you I think it was the World Gold Council surveyed central bankers. 96% of them indicate that they’ll continue to buy gold. Maybe half of them are looking to buy dollars. I believe that we’re moving to a point where gold will play a bigger role in central bank reserves and, by extension, in investor portfolios. And for full transparency, all of our family wealth is invested in gold stocks. We have not diversified. And as we talked about beforehand, periodically I have to send sign a letter with my advisor that I understand the risks I’m taking. So personally, I am bullish on gold. From a corporate standpoint, it’s a bit of a struggle for us in terms of, you know, what gold price do we pick to run reserves at?
Mario Rodríguez 39:46
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