Westhaven Gold – Ongoing 50,000m Drill Program At The Shovelnose Gold-Silver Project In British Columbia

0:00Hello and welcome into the K.E. report. Shad and Corey here is your host. And today we're really reintroducing West Haven Gold. West Haven Gold is traded on the TSX-V under the ticker WHN, on the OTCQB, under the ticker WTHVF, and on the Frankfurt Exchange, under the ticker 1W5. And we are joined today with the president and CEO of West Haven Gold, Ken Armstrong, and Ken is great to have you on the show. And it's really great to reintroduce West Haven Gold to our audience. Now we've had the company on literally over a decade ago, and most recently back in 2021, the center of gravity was really the shovel nose property. Now this is all part of the Spence's Bridge Gold Belt where you have four properties. You have shovel nose, prospect valley, skunk and north, and skunk and main. But we're going to be spending most of the time talking about shovel nose. And I think it'd be nice to pick it up where back in 2024 and 2025, from the chair level and from the board level and the management team, kind of a change of the guard as far as the team.

1:00And you came in in May of 2025, Ken. So maybe let's pick it up there with the change over the team and the approach and the refresh. But also we should probably mention at the onset, there's a transformative transaction that happened in December of last year in December of 2025. And that is the Dundee partnership where Dundee Corp is coming in and they're going to be earning into the project that changed the visibility, that changed the finances, that changed the plan forward. So with that setup, Ken, walk us through the transition here over the last couple of years for the company. Thanks, Dad. Yeah, it's a real pleasure to be here. Thanks to you for the chance to provide this update on the plus table, because you lay all that out. That's a lot going on. But yeah, so I stepped into the CEO role in May of last year, 2025, which is probably in some ways the final piece of a management refresh that had occurred over the preceding eight months or so. Ira Thomas, our chair, had come in to that role to replace her father, Grant Thomas, who was a founder of West Haven. As he was retiring from his board positions

2:01and the Thomas family is the biggest shareholder of West Haven. Gareth Thomas was the CEO, and so I took over for him. And part of the reason for the change in this position was really the company had issued a PEA on Shovel Knows and on the deposits that have been discovered there by Gareth and his team over the preceding 10 years. It was really compelling. It was put out in March of 2025, solid economics, a $450 million NPV and Canadian dollars at a 6% discount rate and a 40% internal rate return, low cap ex under $200 million, like a lot of really good stuff. And it was clear that the next phase was going to be the figure out, how are we going to fund this? How do you, it's always that challenge for a junior company when you have that initial economic study that has sort of, you know, often flashy numbers or nice numbers and a cap ex, but there's a path to getting there. Before you start spending that initial capital, you need to do the pre feasibility, feasibility work and the related studies for environmental baseline work

3:03and environmental assessment and so on. So that, and there's always a price tag. It's associated with that. And it's, and that's dilutive. So I, or Anne Gareth called me an asked if I would be willing to step in and help sort of guide the company through that. I've been some other changes on the executive side on the expiration piece and then, and then also on our first nation engagement side. So the company was really well set up. I was familiar with the belt. I'd actually ran a company called Stronger Exploration that a 2005 drove what I'd call the discovery hole in the, in the Spencer's Gold belt on the Skunk of Property at West Haven now owns. So it's familiar from it from that perspective and then Shubblenose it ultimately sold the claims to two, two Gareth and, and Sean and West Haven. And they went forward and sort of did the, the work to come up with the discovery at Shubblenose. So we had this compelling study and, and I were nice spent the bulk of last year just working through how do we, you know, how do we do this? We had the team in place. We were fully prepared to advance it on our own and could do that by tapping the market. Well, we were also though at that same time,

4:03we were sitting at just around 200 million shares out or so I think it was. And then we, we did a financing after which we were just under 260 million shares outstanding. And so going the market at some point becomes dilutive. And, and so we were prepared to do that. But we were also open to the concept of earning and joint venture type scenarios. And we had really good meetings with, I would call more sophisticated investors who looked at the project and the deposit. Like it's, it's, it's a million ounce resource right now. Gold equivalent across three deposits. And the bulk of those ounces are in the South Zone deposit, which I'm sure we'll talk about more here. So I'll go 80% of the ounces are there. And we have in our minds that you need to, you need to have a production profile that's, that's sort of bigger than, than what a million ounces can provide. You want to, you know, typically investors want to see a hundred thousand ounces a year production or so. Which means you need a couple of million ounces or three million ounces or so. And, and we absolutely can see getting there on the expiration side. There's tons of expiration potential and upside to make more discoveries here.

5:04But importantly, on the PA, the margin that we're seeing because these deposits are high grade, we're producing sort of 56,000 ounces of gold a year plus another 300,000 ounces silver a year in our PA. And we're clearing between 80 and a hundred million Canadian dollars after tax every year over the, over the, on average, over the mind life in the PA. And there's, we have lots of developer peers that are producing 150,000 ounces a year that don't meet that threshold in terms of after tax cash flow. Like the margins are high. And we had really good meetings with, like you said, more sophisticated investors, producers, and, you know, ultimately groups like Dundee Corporation. And the interest there is the fact that these margins are great, these deposits can, can make money. And then that, the expiration upside that we could see. And so we landed on an earn in arrangement that we announced in December of last year. So just the 22nd, so three days before Christmas, where Dundee can earn a 60% interest in all of West Havens, properties in the Spencer's Bridge,

6:05Gold Belt, so Shalveville was plus the three expiration properties by finding the next $85 million of expenditures. And that includes a $30 million from commitment for them to, they were locked in to spend the next $30 million. And we started work on the properties with focus on Shalveville knows in February of this year. And yeah, I think the important thing to note is when we announced that deal, our market cap was $40 million. So I think he used the term transformative. And it really was and has been for us. So we've been able to launch on, so the pre-feasibility work, resource drilling, exploration drilling that we can advance the property at a pace that the company has just been unable to do previously, and to really give the project and the properties, the kind of investment and look that's really deserved for the last number of years. And we're able to, and we are executing on that right now. All right, Ken, let's just have one more note on this Dundee partnership or JV, that $85 million number. How quickly are they moving towards that number?

7:07What's the budget this year and how is that going to be allocated? Yeah, quickly. I think we've been using the term at sort of at pace. So we've 50,000 meters of drilling that we're completing this year. That's 35,000 meters of in-fill, resource in-fill on the south zone. And we've been putting out news on that over the summer and have a lot more to go. We're just going to be winding that down and we'll be completing that 35,000 meter program this month and ramping up our exploration drilling, which is 15,000 meters of drilling. We have one drill on exploration right now. The resource drills were kind of transition to exploration through this month as the resource drilling winds down. That's a $20 million Canadian program. And then on top of that, on the order of another $10 million, we'll be spent this year on pre-feasibility level studies and work, so metallurgical work. We're doing hydrogeology work, rather geotech work on facility locations. The kind of trade-offs that you'd expect to be part of a pre-feasibility study are underway as well as environmental baseline work and community engagement, first nation engagement type work,

8:09all of the, again, those pieces that are required for the project to enter the EA process. So let's call it a $30 million budget for this year. Importantly, in the deal that we announced, Dundee had three years to spend the $30 million and will be there by the end of this calendar year. And for that, we'll invest the 25% interest. And that's a really, that pace is super important because the $85 million under the agreement, they got seven years to spend that. But at the pace we're going, I would expect that they will have spent the $85 million on the order of, you'll call it, two and a half or three years into the deal, it could be. And yes, their stage gates through that, where there's decision points for Dundee, but I think it's fair to say that in their communications of the market is their intent, all things being equal is to spend the $85 million, but we'll be making those decisions, at those decision points, as they should properly do. Well, it's nice to see the pace, it's nice to see things moving at a faster clip than we see on some different earn-in and JV agreements. And it's also probably symptomatic of a bull market

9:11and the higher prices and people want to make hay while the sun is shining. Well, Ken, let's break into some of these different aspects, just individually. So the 35,000 meters is the resource infill. The 15,000 meters, could you break down the difference between those two drill programs? Yeah, so the 35,000 meters is focused entirely on the south zone. And again, the south zone is the biggest of the three deposits that West Haven has discovered, is about 80% of the global million ounce resource that was the subject of the PFS in 2025. And the purpose of that is genuinely infill, it's kind of picking the edges. These are low-sulfidation epithermal deposits. So very high-grade, gold and silver numbers. We are focused on just showing the continuity. Our current resource is drilled off at approximately 50 meter centers. And with the infill drilling, we're gonna increase that to 25 meter centers. So we've basically amapted out. So there's gonna be a drill hole through every stope, which is the mined area in our preliminary

10:11economic assessment. And the idea of that with that is it should increase the bulk of the ounces in the south zone to the measured category as part of the pre-feasibility study. We have put out some results that we had a hole just a week ago, this hole 117 that returns 12 grams over just over 12 grams over just over 10 meters. And that was actually about 40 meters below the deepest mining stokes in our PEA mine plant. I mean, it's kind of interesting. It does show that there is the opportunity to expand ounces here. That's an area where we will do some follow-up as part of the exploration drilling, the 15,000 meters that we have allocated for exploration. So we are looking to allocate a few of those meters then to expanding on the size of the deposit at south zone. But the real focus is going to be to test other ideas in close to where the three deposits have been found. We have a fellow by the name of Fraser McCorkadale, who's helping us with our targeting, he's helping Robin Hopkins, our VP exploration, come up with the targets for the exploration side. And Fraser was the head of global exploration

11:12with new crest mining. New crest was taken over by Newmont, I think a little over a year or a half ago or so. But new crest before that happened was really interested in Shalvalnos in West Haven. And when the takeover happened, Fraser circled back to Ira and to Garret and said, I'm interested. I think this is one of the top three undeveloped low-sauflatation epithermal systems in the world. And I'd like to be involved. And we said absolutely, Fraser, you can be involved. And he's really helping provide guidance. Because his view is this is exactly how these systems start. You start with about a million ounces or so. You get into production, but then you figure it out. You figure out what the plumbing system looks like that feeds these deposits. Because it's all about structures and fluids. And where the fluids boil, that's where you get gold. And so for that, you need sort of all of the right ingredients. We've identified a number of structural areas and corridors that are in close. So call it within sort of a kilometer and a half or two kilometers of where the cell zone is

12:13that we're testing kind of right now. And we will be testing through the fall. But also, we see evidence for an epithermal system along the entirety of the trend, which is about 15 kilometers long on Shablenose. We will be drilling some of those areas that we've identified along that trend as well as part of our fall drill program and the 15,000 meters. And then kind of looking forward, which I'm sure we'll get to, we see opportunity on all of the exploration properties, the other three exploration properties as well, to make discoveries that are similar. We think this is a big system. And there's tons of opportunity to find more. And so kind of that balance between the resource infill, feeding the pre feasibility is super important. But the ability for us now to be conducting so much exploration drilling and doing both things, that was a big attraction to entering this agreement with Dundee is knowing that we'd be able to do both things and at a pace again, that really gets things moving along properly. So Ken, that's what has me interested here. In all fairness, I started talking to the West Haven team

13:15over a decade ago, I think. And it took years to make the discovery. And now it's taken years to build up this about million ounce resource. And I understand you're going down that more development road and de-risking those ounces. And now you do have some capital to truly spend on exploration. But let's hope the timeline gets compressed a little bit here because that seems to be the big growth aspect that I'm seeing is that the answers you have right now are economic, but you need to add more ounces. So can you give us more information on some of these targets, what the team has learned over this decade? And especially you being in this role for now a little bit over a year, how you can speed up this discovery and then pass discovery get to resource stage on new ounces. Yeah, I mean, big part of that is having sort of the funding piece taken care of. And the $85 million is anywhere on any of the properties. And again, the way the partnership is structured,

14:16we've got the flexibility that we can make a discovery. We can absolutely reallocate or allocate additional resources out of that or reallocate drilling resources to make sure we drill off a new discovery. So that kind of takes that pressure because it is, it's absolutely a fair comment, right? Like you in the junior space, you have a fixed funding, which is whatever your last raise was, and you're left with making decisions often on the fly in the field about where to drill. And there's a focus once you've made a discovery to get a resource and to get it out and get some economics wrapped around it. On the exploration side, I can take very little credit for this because it really stems from work that that Gareth and the team have done over the years. Like the discovery, as you mentioned, the initial discovery at Sousa was made in 2018 and then found FMN and found France. But one of the really critical things that we're going to be seeing the benefit of now is the fact that every drill hole that the company has drilled has been assayed from the caller to the end. And every one of those assays has included the full suite of elements that you can get

15:18from a typical lab now like you call it ICP analysis. But you get all of the elements. There's been heavy prospecting and mapping done on the shovel nose property. There's over 6,000 rock samples that have been collected from surface and all of those have been fully assayed with the full suite. And that's really important and trying not to get into the aspect or the geology part of it. But these deposits are hosted in a volcanic tropical rye late, which visually is very difficult to distinguish even for geologists. I will joke and say if you have a piece of rye late, like a grab sample and you have six geologists, they'll get six different rock names. What we've been able to do with that geochemical data set and Robin Hopkins has taken the lead on doing this really over the last two years. But with real focus over the last 18 months is to recode all of the lethologies that have been mapped over the property and in all of the drilling. And that's allowed us to identify over six different rye late units on the property. Some of them are young, post-minorized, and so are not prospective for mineralization but came afterwards.

16:18Some of them are early and are pre-minorized. And then there's a couple that are right in the sweet spot that host the mineralization that we see at the three deposits. We're able to fingerprint those now. We know areas outside of the main trend that South Zone, FMA and France lie along that are sort of subparalleled to that trend that host those rye lights. And in some of those areas, we have the right structures that we see. It's the right orientation of structures that we see along the main trend. Those are some of the targets that we're going to be drilling and it feeds really well into Fraser's model and what he's seen on the deposits that he's been involved with. He uses an example of what was at Weson, a new crest mine called Gossowom in Indonesia where they went into production on a million ounces. And then it took them 10 years after they went into production. They added more ounces incrementally. And then 10 years later, less than a kilometer away, they found four million ounces in a blind deposit who's long sort of the right structure, the right orientation. We're trying to circumvent that 10 years right now by looking at some of those at the areas

17:20that we've identified that have the right structures, the right pathfinder elements, sweet, so pathfinders are just elements that you see in those geochemical data sets that are associated with this style of mineralization. Where you see them elevated, it gives you an idea that you're part of a system and you get sort of a broader cloud or halo or target area that's bigger than the vein system you're looking for. And then the structures, we're putting all of those pieces together. And like I said, on Shovel Knows itself, we've got like a 15 kilometer trend where we can do that and we have the funding in place to drill holes knowing we're gonna be back. And that just kind of right back to the beginning is I think as juniors, we often get stuck in this in the field, you'll have a plan to drill, call it a dozen targets, you get in the field and you like what you see in the first two or three targets you drill and then you got it aside, well do we follow up right now based on what we're seeing or do we stick to the plan and drill all the targets? And often you end up following up on what you see because of that drive to make a discovery and to get answers quickly. We will be able to have an element of patience

18:22knowing that if we see something that's interesting, we will be back. And that just ties to the whole point of being funded in a way to really be able to explore this with a more structured or rigorous approach. One can that kind of brings us back to where we started with how it was transformational to bring Dundee in as a partner and how it does give you that patience to be able to choose your spots and not be worried about the next capital raise every five minutes. So it gives you some flexibility because this is more of an introduction, we'll save some of the other properties for a later date and we'll do this again and we'll get more granular. But I think it would be nice since it's the first time on the show to maybe share your background briefly in the industry, but also maybe one or two other key people on the team or board you on a highlight. We don't have time to go through the whole team, but you've mentioned a couple names as we've been discussing. Just anybody else you want to highlight is the team behind West Haven. Thank you. I mean, my own background, I'm a geologist and I actually worked with Irot Thomas R. Chair for over 30 years. We initially met at the Dietic Diamond Mine in the mid 90s in the Northwest Territories.

19:24I was hired by Kennecott, which was the Joint Venture Partner of Aber Resources. And it was, I think I mentioned part of what, the key for us, so when we were looking at the structure of a JV, it was largely modeled on the Aber Experience where they had a 40% interest in Dietic after Kennecott had earned in and the Aber became a proper mining company with that interest. So Iron, I've worked together the entire team have all worked together at different times at different points in our career. Zara Bolt, our CFO was my CFO with strongbow exploration that discovered that it would drill that discovery hole at the Skooka property in 2005 in the belt. She was also Irot CFO at Kamenak Gold, which was taken over by Gold Corp on the coffee gold project in the Yukon. And also was Irot CFO at the Kara Gold. Robin Hopkins, I worked with, there's our VP exploration. I mentioned him, I worked with him at Aber. And then really importantly, on the permitting and the business engagement side, we have Pamela O'Hara and Allison Ripon Armstrong who are taking on the engagement

20:24and the whole permitting process. And they are super experienced at taking projects through EA process permitting an engagement in Canada. And they're super strength. And the whole team, I think, was a really big part of the attraction for Dundee. It was the biggest part of their due diligence that they did. And when they came up last fall to do their due diligence and Jonathan and his team were there, it really became apparent very quickly that the two teams think similarly on how you advance a project. And that collaborative approach has absolutely carried on like we thought it would. But it definitely has, as both teams are working really closely together to advance things now, as we're one of six rate months into this and are just wrapping up a really significant role program. It's a very collaborative approach and the experience that our team has, we know we can execute on this. Okay, Ken, let's wrap it up real quick here with a quick comment on what kind of cash you have available at West Haven Gold. I understand that you're going to be spending the Dundee money moving forward

21:25and then the key catalyst, just a quick summary of what news is coming. Sure, so we've got probably about 2.3 million bucks of our own and we have about $6 million of warrants that are in the money. So that's over 30 million warrants that will come due over the next 11 months. So we're good for funding. We just need to cover our GNA and our marketing costs. Catalyst will be continued assets from the resource in fill drilling, finishing the resource in fill drilling and doing a new resource or getting a new resource out sort of early next year. Exploration is going to be super important as we really ramp that up as we allocate the drills through this fall. Like I mentioned, we'll be drilling, I think I mentioned, we'll be drilling with these four drills till December 15th. And again, that's a function of where the project's located. And then the pre-feasibility study should be done in the last year or now. We're targeting next summer, but that will roll straight into feasibility. We'll carry on with EA environmental work and permitting. And really, I think you can just look for us to articulate a little bit more certainty what the overall schedule timeline is through production

22:27and then layering on top of that exploration and discovery. All right, well, we'll wrap it up there for today folks, but that's a big reintroduction to West Haven Gold. There's obviously a lot of work on tap, a lot of news on tap. So we'll definitely keep following along with it here at the KE report. For those of you listening in, if you want to follow along with the news, definitely click on the link below down in the show notes. It takes you right over the West Haven Gold website, straight to their news section. You can sign up for updates that hit your email inbox or just follow along with the assays as they start coming back in. Can, let's do this again when you get more assays in and we'll do an expiration update. And now that we've really introduced the bigger picture, there's still a lot of areas we haven't even gotten into yet. We didn't even get to the three other properties you have, the district scale potential, but we can do that in a future discussion. And it was great having you on the KE report and looking forward to our next conversation. Likewise, look forward to that. Thank you.