WA Gold Limited (WAU) Earnings Call Transcript

Hello, and welcome to the BMG Resources Investor Webinar. Today, we're joined by BMG's newly appointed Chief Executive Officer, Ben Pollard; and Non-Executive Chairman, John Prineas. We'll be discussing recent developments across the company's Western Australian gold projects and outlining key milestones targeted over the next 12 months. I'll now hand you over to John.

Thank you very much, Kristen. This is a very exciting time at BMG. It's effectively a relaunch of the company. We've probably spent the past 12 months talking to third parties that have come to us with expressions of interest to work with us, to develop Abercromby and take it further. We've realized with the high gold price environment, the best thing for our shareholders is actually to take a [ bite ] by the teeth ourselves and take things forward. We're very lucky to have Ben Pollard join us as Chief Executive Officer. Ben has very deep experience in gold projects in the gold fields, has taken projects from discovery to production and everything in between. So he's the right man to take this project forward, Abercromby, and also the exploration at Bullabulling. So we're lucky also to have just raised some money. We've got about $5.4 million in the bank. So fully funded for our drill programs, exploration programs and a great team on board now to take things forward. So none more from me. I'll hand you over to Ben, and you're going to hear direct from him, how we're going to move things forward from here. Thank you.

Yes. Thanks, John. So again, quite an esteemed sort of role to be put into. We've got a lot going on. The potential of the project is really, really high. We're looking forward to basically turning this thing on and making the most of this high gold price that we see currently. We've got 0.5 million ounces as a fantastic springboard and monetizing this project with the team that we've got and the resources behind us should be reasonably doable, I would have thought. So I'm looking forward to the challenge and certainly looking forward to producing gold bars. So BMG sort of sitting at around a market cap of $37 million, $38 million at the moment. It's incredibly cheap for the inventory that we have. Obviously, an opportunity for astute investors. As we knock down some milestones, we'll certainly be growing, looking to grow the value of the company commensurately. Board and management, I'm sure everybody knows, there we've got, like I said, good resources behind us, and we've got that $5.4 million in the bank, which is very handy and fully funds us through to -- well, certainly multiple drill programs, but -- and hopefully delivery of an investment decision on at least one of our mainstay projects. So to the nuts and bolts, the Abercromby project is a -- well, it's a gold project situated in the prolific Yilgarn Craton, 0.5 million -- just over 0.5 million ounces sitting in indicated and inferred, very close to all the conduits for infrastructure and services. Great place to be, great place to do business. Bullabulling Project is the second tier, sitting there next to Coolgardie. We're right next to some of the big boys with some big resources, and we're looking to, I suppose, grow our potential off the back of known mineralization in the area. The Invincible Project is a little sleeper sitting up there in the Pilbara, characterized by extremely high grade, although maybe small tonnes, that thing can certainly add ounces of high margin. And then our South Boddington Project, which is a bit of a sleeper as well, high prospective and really just waiting for the right, I suppose, commercial deal or condition to come through so that we can get on that and hopefully find the next Boddington. Abercromby, so established gold mining region, as we all know. Everyone knows the general lay of the land between the Northern and Wiluna Greenstone Belt. We are surrounded by good infrastructure, as I said, serviced well in the Goldfields there, through the Goldfields Highway. It's 100% owned by BMG. And so we're really -- we're highly leveraged to the success there. Favorable geology. It's a standard Goldfield's morphology, I suppose, in terms of gold deposits, well known and not refractory importantly. Our Maiden JORC was a couple of years ago, JORC-compliant Resources a couple of years ago, 0.5 million ounces, as I mentioned, 3 million gold, and we're currently embarked in a scoping study to work out the best way to monetize this project. We're focused on margin. We're not just interested in small -- or sorry, the largest ounce profile we can find, but we're really looking towards monetizing this and making value for shareholders. We have a really good potential at the project, given that we don't have to spend a lot of money on capital for building a mill, for example. So there's $150 million that we don't have to spend. If we get things right and we do the right things with our stakeholders, we've got a really good opportunity to just [ infiltrate that ] with our neighbors and pass on that value creation to our shareholders. We have an MOU existing with the guys at Wiluna, and we're very keen and eager to grow that relationship. So the Abercromby deposit itself sits in the Northeast -- sorry, Northwestern corner, the Northern portion of our 2 granted mining leases. It really is a small portion of the overall strike and prospective strike at the project. It's open to the north, it's open to the south and it's open down dip. There are many high-grade intercepts in the project, and it's characterized by these high-grade intercepts. Some of these are historic and many of them are from BMG's work over the last circa 4 years. 2026, we have a plan to drill circa 10,000 meters, certainly leveraging into that by starting off with around 3,000 meters, assessing results and then dipping our toes back in for more, depending on the results. We're targeting strike and dip extensions of high-grade loads and looking to increase the confidence of our dual resources, which will ultimately feed into value for the mine plan. Capital South. Capital South is, as you may have guessed, the southern extension of Capital, and it has been drilled so far using primarily air-core. The hits are surficial in nature, reasonably surficial, quite close to surface. And a lack of funding probably to date has sort of stopped us from going further there. Now that we're well funded, the gates are open, we're ready to go. Capital North is to the north, obviously, and that is characterized by probably lower grade, but certainly quite broad intersections. We haven't drilled at depth at that project either, and we're expecting if it's anything like it's capital counterpart for it to deliver the goods at depth. [indiscernible] Bullabulling, so Bullabulling is a -- it started off as an interesting little segue into lithium with a bit of gold, [ hinge ] of gold. It's probably evolved for us into a reasonable gold project in its own right. We're right next to the big boys there with circa or nearly 5 million ounces next door at Bullabulling, at the historic gold mine there. Coolgardie is obviously very well established as a mining hub and the prospectivity of the place is very well known. The Bullabulling West and East blocks are interpreted to host Greenstones with the same stratigraphy or continuity of the stratigraphy at depth as the main Bullabulling mine. Mi6's announcements indicate gold mineralization could plunge or dip, more importantly dip to the BMG ground. While at depth, this could turn into something quite exciting for BMG as these ore bodies are quite large and at scale, that depth sort of is not really much to overcome. We have -- across the package there, we have strong indications in geophysics and geochem, which give us good reason to think that prospectivity is fantastic. The Invincible Project, that's our little sleeper up in the Pilbara. It's on the Warrawoona Shear Zone, which is a host to some pretty profitable mining going on up the road at Klondyke, typified by very high grades and everything is in place now, including heritage clearance to drill that when we get a chance. We have known gold mineralization found by prospectors, which shows the affinity of the gold with -- nugget gold with quartz reefs, some quite spectacular pieces of gold found over the journey that have been reported back to BMG as the owner. And so these become the targets for us when we hit the field. The drill program is pending finalization. A final piece of heritage survey to be done and we're good to go. All right, South Boddington. It's pretty much in [ elephant ] country in terms of large -- for the discovery of large ore bodies. We are just along strike in the Saddleback Greenstone belt from the Boddington mine, which is, I think, one of Australia's, if not the biggest gold producer at the moment. And our stratigraphy is just a repeat of that mine sequence, tied up in tenure, some tenure issues with legacy tenure to do with state agreements, but pegged prospective and not far off, we believe, [ access ]. So the value proposition. We've got 4 WA gold projects. We are hell bent on monetizing this thing and turning it into WA's newest gold producer. Our expansion drilling and the work that we're doing for Abercromby shows what -- we will provide good news flow. We're not far, we're not a grass or greenfield grassroots explorer. So we're along the value curve. Our EV is attractive at this stage. They're quite undervalued, I believe, for what we have. And we're in the game in 4 different areas of the state. Therefore, our M&A potential is quite strong. John, did you have anything to add to that? Or do you [indiscernible].

That would be great. Thank you, Ben. We might go for the questions now. I think we've got a few questions on board. So if you want to go to one of the other slides, Ben, that's a bit boring that way.

Thanks, everyone. Thanks, John and Ben, for that overview. As just said, we will now move to some questions that we -- that have come through from investors. The first question received, when you look at the broader picture, what do you think is currently the most underappreciated aspect of the BMG story?

I'll jump on that. I think the most underappreciated asset -- aspect is probably the -- is the size of the resource at Abercromby. Given the gold project or the gold price at this stage, we don't need to have millions and millions of ounces. We have the ability to make a really strong business around a high-quality resource. And I think people will see soon the value coming to light at Abercromby with the work that we're doing on the mine planning.

Thank you. Looking ahead, investors are obviously focused on what comes next. If you could look 12 to 18 months ahead, what milestones are you most looking forward to?