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Triumph Gold Corp (TSX-V: TIG): Advancing the District Scale Freegold Mountain Project in Yukon with Support from Goldcorp; Interview with John Anderson, Chairman

on 4/24/2017
Triumph Gold Corp. (formerly Northern Freegold Resources Ltd.) (TSX-V: TIG) is a growth-oriented, Canadian-based, precious metals exploration and development company, currently advancing the district scale Freegold Mountain project in Yukon. We learned from John Anderson, chairman of Triumph Gold, the key features of this 200 square kilometers large property are the three near-surface deposits identified by 43-101 reports. They are over three million ounces and another three million ounces in gold equivalent on one of the deposits. It is the only Yukon property that is right off the Alaskan Highway, with a government-maintained road going right through it. With Goldcorp as a 20% partner, committed to help grow the resource on the Freegold Mountain project, Mr. Anderson believes Triumph Gold has the best leverage in the marketplace.


Freegold Mountain Project, Yukon

Dr. Allen Alper: This is Dr. Allen Alper, Editor-in-Chief of Metals News, interviewing John Anderson, Chairman of Triumph Gold. Could you give our readers/investors an overview of your company, John?

John Anderson: The Company was founded in 2006 by a second-generation prospector, Bill Harrison, and his partner, Sue Craig, who put together the property package in 2005 in the Yukon. Not much exploration had been done in the Yukon from 1990 up until 2003, primarily because of politics, as opposed to the market. Back in the early 1990’s, the New Democratic Party (NDP) in British Columbia and the Yukon were in power during the big exploration rush back in the 90s. Very little was done up in the Yukon and BC because of the (NDP) government at that time.

In 2003, the government of the Yukon (which is not a province, it's a territory) got control to administer its natural resources from the Federal Government. So it was really fortuitous that Bill had put this property package together with over 200 square kilometers. The project had over 80 different property owners over almost 100 years but had never been put together as one package. Bill, putting all that together, was able to take decades of data from countless cycles and put it all together. That was the impetus for the company. It went public under the name Northern Freegold in 2006 and up until 2011, they had expended over $35 million directly on the property, raising over 40 million during its short time.



At the moment, the key features of the property are three deposits, identified by 43-101 reports, which contain over three million ounces of gold, and another 280 million pounds of copper. Everything around the deposit on the surface is wide open, as well as at depth and along strike. Also, It's one of the only properties in the Yukon, with infrastructure going right through it. The property is 200 kilometers north-west of White Horse, but it's 20 miles off the Alaskan Highway and has a government-maintained road that goes right through the whole property, which is the length of Manhattan. So it's fairly substantial, with its infrastructure and it's the only property of this size that really enjoys that up in the Yukon.



In 2015 a couple of investors and I took over the company, dealt with the payables, all the debt in the company and reorganized it, including changing the name to Triumph Gold Corp. As part of this exercise, we hired some technical people to look at the data. One of our shareholders, an institution out of Europe, called Gold 2000, assisted me in finding people to look at the property with a different view from the data that had been published and the old preliminary economic assessment that had been done in 2013.



So the goal was to Data mine the $35 million of information without biased opinions. We had three people, two porphyry experts and someone who specialized in identifying the high-grade aspects of the deposits and how they relate to the porphyry deposits, They spent the summer of 2016 on the property analyzing the drill core, looking at everything again from a big picture point of view and then analyzing the relationship onsite with the data directly. I think that's what created a lot of excitement in Triumph. Subsequently we hired one of those people, Dr Tony Barresi, as our Vice-President of Exploration.



Dr. Allen Alper: That sounds really exciting. Sounds like you have a great property and you have a relationship with Goldcorp, is that right? John Anderson: Yes. Rather than go out and hire a full team and do what the company had done before, we literally looked around. I looked around and thought, "You know, we can either rebuild the team or talk to some of the other groups that are in the area and leverage their knowledge and balance sheets". We talked to a number of them. A few of the companies have invested in other juniors up in that area, looking at the new model. We went with Goldcorp, who were so good to deal with. They had just paid $520 million for a company called Kaminak for its Coffee deposit just north of us. Goldcorp is obviously committed to the area. If you look at the map of where our property is and their property, you have very favorable geography for sure. That goes back to the infrastructure and the location relative to roads and power, let alone the geology which is the exciting part.

Goldcorp has been fantastic. They acted fast. They wanted to see our technical team, led by Tony and Paul Reynolds, our President. It's been a fantastic relationship. Right now we're working with them, planning our drill and other exploration efforts for the coming summer. They bought 19.9% of the company at a premium at the time, and committed to help us grow the resources and test these new discovery ideas that we will talk about in the next month.



Dr. Allen Alper: Well, that's first-class. It's really great. By the way, we interviewed Goldcorp at PDAC and wrote a featured article on them and posted it on our website MetalsNews.com. Could you elaborate on your background, your team a bit more?

John Anderson: I've been involved in financing mineral exploration development companies since 1995. My first foray into it was as an investor, with a company called Canuc Resources. I helped finance that with a group out of Toronto. My background was working with a financial institution, Manulife. Then I worked with a company, called Bema Gold, in investor relations from 95 to 99 and was there when they had the exciting discovery at Cerro Casale in Chile and their growth into Russia. After that I ended up working with two of the major shareholders, of a junior company called Arizona Star, which is very much a good parallel for what Triumph is. They had a very large resource in a geopolitically safe area. That was worth a lot more than the market capital of the company. So that's why we got behind it.

We see a very similar situation here with Triumph Gold where you have a large resource barely explored. We will work on it. We will do exploration on it and there will be an end game here because this is a very, very large project.

After that, I worked with Steve Kay and International Minerals. A lot of people don't know that company, but it raised close to $200 million, traded on the Swiss Performance Exchange and it was eventually bought out by Hochschild Mining. Since then, I was an investor in Northern Freegold in 2006 in the IPO and got more active in 2009 as a director, and took it over in 2015. We brought in Paul Reynolds who's very solid and trustworthy and was instrumental in helping us pick up all the pieces in the company that had been dormant on site since 2013. He has a good geological mind, and we share a belief that gold was coming back and he knew the value we could unleash from the project if we staged this properly after we re-organized the company. Then last year, we brought in Tony Barresi. Tony is our VP of exploration, a PhD in Economic Geology, specializing in projects in BC and the Yukon.



It's worked out phenomenally well. We're a very lean team, changed the board and now have a very active board. This just happened last month. We brought in Jo Campbell, the CEO of TerraX, owner of GeoVector that did a lot of work on the property back in 2009, 2011 in the good times. He has a really good understanding of the north. It's been good. It's been really good. We also brought in Greg Sparks, an American geologist, who lives in Denver. He's passionate about the high grade zones within the property, as well as the Tinta Zone, which is the polymetallic deposit that has been ignored for years. So he brought great new ideas to the company, in a short, official couple of weeks. He's been involved as a fan and now directly involved in the project.

Dr. Allen Alper: Well, it sounds like you have an excellent background. You have a very strong team and board. Goldcorp is a nice partner to have too. Sounds like your property is a fantastic property.

John Anderson: You know, it really is. We are cheap on a market cap per ounce basis. Probably one of the cheapest in the marketplace. We're trading about $4 an ounce in the ground. We know the market's going to pay up for it eventually. We've done the rebranding and we haven't marketed this company at all. We didn’t want to market it until we had all the pieces lined up. Now, with Goldcorp, Paul and Tony armed with exploration funds and a new board, we're ready to go.

Dr. Allen Alper: That's excellent. Could you elaborate a bit more on your share structure and where you're listed?

John Anderson: We trade on the TSX Venture Exchange. We've always been there. We're a tier two company. We trade in the US on the Bulletin Board under the old symbol, NFRGF. Right now we have 59 million shares outstanding. Goldcorp is our largest shareholder at 19.9%. We have Palisades Capital, which has about 16%. Gold 2000, which has approximately 8%. They were diluted down last financing. We also have significant investors that were involved in helping clean this up. They've added their position. They are US and foreign investors that have added to their positions after our financings.

Essentially, we have a very good structure and people that are buying into the same vision that I have when we started the re-organization. At $1,500 gold, this company starts showing incredible leveraged value to shareholders. We have $7.25 million in the bank right now. So for the first time in a long time, this company is in a really strong position as well as going back and working on the ground.



Dr. Allen Alper: That sounds excellent. Sounds like you're positioning the company to do very well. What are the primary reasons our high-net-worth readers/investors should consider investing in Triumph Gold?

John Anderson: Leverage. I think we have the best leverage, bar none, in the marketplace. On our market capital per ounce, we're extremely cheap. Beyond that, we have a world-class sized project. It is 200 square kilometers. It's larger than Manhattan. We have three 43-101 deposits. We have eight other discoveries we will follow up on. But, we're going to be very prudent in how we spend our money. We've been around these cycles before. We're not going to spend more money until we start getting value in the market for those drill holes. We have a great leverage story, probably more than anything in Canada. We don't have property payments. We are not beholden to anyone. Most of our claims are in good standing until the year 2030, which, of course, we can extend by doing more work at that time.

We have incredible infrastructure. We don't have the problem of doing mineral exploration in remote areas of the Yukon, where you require helicopter-assistance, etc. We're probably going to be 2/3rds the cost of almost all the other competitors in the Yukon and the BC region. Primarily because we have that government-maintained road going right through our property and we have roads going right through every one of our deposits and targets.

But the most exciting thing is Tony and Paul, as well as our exploration team, have come up with new discoveries based on that old data. We had $35 million of data. We've been spending the last year data-mining that, and we've come up with some very, very interesting things. I think that's what also attracted the other majors and why Goldcorp jumped in so quickly. That's why a lot of the other majors are watching what we're doing, and I believe why the stock has performed without any marketing.



Dr. Allen Alper: That sounds excellent. Is there anything else you'd like to add, John?

John Anderson: Yes, I'd like to thank everyone that's helped me in the last two years with this company. They buy into the same vision I have and we haven't been going out and arm-waving, telling the story. Mainly because we wanted to tie everything up and any questions or any problems anyone may have about the project or the story, I think we've been able to mitigate all of those right now by reorganizing the company, bringing in the proper people, bringing in a major to add credibility to the story, fairly non-diluted financing and, we're really excited. We're not necessarily gold bulls, but I've been in this industry for a very long time and I think we're a couple of months away from a re-evaluation of the gold market. And I think, we have the best leverage story out there.

Dr. Allen Alper: That sounds excellent.

http://www.triumphgoldcorp.com/

John Anderson, Chairman
Triumph Gold Corp.
(604) 218-7400
janderson@triumphgoldcorp.com




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