U.S. Gold Corp. (NASDAQ: USAU): Three Exciting Projects, Wyoming- Copper King: Au, Cu, Ag, Zn Deposit; and Two Exploration Projects in Nevada on the Cortez and Carlin Trends; Interview with Edward Karr, President, CEO and Director

By Dr. Allen Alper, PhD Economic Geology and Petrology, Columbia University, NYC, USA
on 11/21/2019
U.S. Gold Corp. (NASDAQ: USAU) is a U.S. focused, junior gold exploration and development company, with two flagship assets: The Copper King gold-copper-silver-zinc project, located in Southeast Wyoming, with a robust PEA showing $178 million NPV, and IRR of approximately 33%; and Keystone and Maggie Creek - early stage exploration properties on the Cortez and Carlin Trends in Nevada. We learned from Edward Karr, President, CEO and Director of U.S. Gold Corp., that an option on the Maggie Creek project is their recent acquisition, located on the world-famous Carlin trend in Nevada right next to Newmont's 25-million-ounce Gold Quarry mine. Mr. Karr believes multiple world-class deposits potentially exist in the Keystone district, where the Company has been drilling in 2019, with high-grade results over large areas. We learned from Mr. Karr that they will use this winter to go over all the new data and to put together targets for their 2020 Keystone drilling program. Other plans for 2020 include exploration drilling at Maggie Creek and moving Copper King all the way to Pre-Feasibility Study.

U.S. Gold Corp.

Dr. Allen Alper: This is Dr. Allen Alper, Editor-in-Chief of Metals News, interviewing Edward Karr, President, CEO and Director of US Gold Corp. Ed, Could you give our readers/investors an overview of your Company and also, what differentiates your Company from others?

Edward Karr: Sure, Al, I'd be more than happy to. And thanks for having us back, we appreciate your interest, interviewing us again for Metals News.

US Gold Corp is a publicly traded gold exploration and development company. We're listed on the NASDAQ, one of the major stock exchanges, with the symbol USAU. We currently have three exciting projects in the Company. Our flagship project is called Copper King, located in the state of Wyoming. Copper King has a deposit, at surface - a gold, copper, silver multi-metallic deposit. We have a PEA (preliminary economic assessment) that shows a Net Present Value (NPV) on that project of $178.5 million, using a 5% discount rate, and $1275 gold and $2.80 copper. The Internal Rate of Return (IRR) over the life of the mine is a robust 33% per year, so this is a very viable project. We also have two exploration projects in Nevada. One is called Keystone, on the Cortez trend, just South of Barrick Gold's Cortez Hills Complex. And we just picked up a second acquisition, we announced this in September, 2019. We have acquired an option on a project called Maggie Creek that is on the world-famous Carlin Trend in Nevada. The property is located right next door to Newmont's 25 million ounce Gold Quarry Mine.

Dr. Allen Alper: That's great, it's been a great year for U.S. Gold Corp. Could you update our readers/investors on your recent drill data in Nevada?

Edward Karr: Sure, be happy to, Al.

We just put out a press release, announcing our drill results at our Keystone project on the Cortez trend. We released the results on the 12th of November. Keystone is a big, district scale exploration opportunity of 20 square miles, 12,000 acres and 650 mining claims. We have been hard at work there over the last several years, trying to prove up a world-class discovery. We believe multiple world-class deposits potentially exist in the Keystone district. We've done a lot of work: from mapping, to soil samples, geochemistry, geophysics, remote sensing and drilling. This year, our drilling focused on some very specific target areas. First, our Sophia target zone down in the Southern section of the Keystone property. Second, a target area in the North of Keystone called Tip Top. And third, we have a brand-new target area we drilled called Nina Skarn.

Our Project Geologist, Ken Coleman, in conjunction with all of our geological and geophysical consultants, put together our 2019 drill program. We put out previous press releases on the planned programs with all the reasons why we went where we did. We just announced the results of our 2019 Keystone drilling. We were very pleased with one hole specifically, that was Keystone 19-05rc. That hole was drilled in the new Nina Skarn target area. This target area had never been drilled before. That hole, for us, was very perspective. It is not what we would yet classify as a discovery hole, but we did encounter significant gold mineralization, from surface, down to about 415 meters. So, a nice, thick, long intercept, with some interesting grades.

If you remember our prior drilling and our prior press releases, all of our historic drill holes at Keystone, drilled by U.S. Gold Corp. have had anomalous gold. We are talking about 10,000 PPB. It shows us there is gold in the rock, there is gold in the system. We have seen great brecciation and alteration and very strong pathfinders in our prior drilling. But this Nina Skarn drill hole, this KEY19-05rc, is a real game changer for us because we had more gold in this one drill hole than we have had in all of our prior drill holes at Keystone combined. We believe this shows us that we are right on the edge of something potentially very, very significant. These big massive world-class deposits in Nevada, these Carlin type deposits can be quite compact. When you look just north of us, at Cortez Hills, the Cortez Hills deposit is a breccia pipe. It's a 15-million-ounce monster, with an average grade of about 4.8 grams per ton and comes right down, from surface to several thousand feet.

KEY19-05rc Nina Skarn hole

The deposit was initially mined as an open pit, but, like the root of a tooth, it extends deeper, and Barrick has gone underground. The horizon of that high-grade zone is only about 100 meters across. These are very compact, very tight deposits, so you really have to be precise to stick one with an exploration drill hole. Keystone is a big area, with very complex geology. Gold exploration, in a new virgin district, is like a big three-dimensional puzzle. With Key 19-05rc, our Nina Skarn hole, we are on the edge of what we call a halo. With these big world-class deposits, you will have the narrow deposit itself, but maybe a kilometer around that deposit, you can get good drill intercepts and get into the halo of these world-class discoveries.

It's very exciting for us, Al. We believe we are close to major exploration success. We have a lot of work to do now. It is winter, currently, at Keystone and the project is snowed over. Over the winter months of December, January and February, we will look at all of our historic drilling. We will look at the prior geochemistry, we'll go back in and look at the soil sample data, the geophysics, and really start to put together our 2020 drill exploration program, synthesizing all our information to vector into what we believe is there, potentially a world-class discovery.

Dr. Allen Alper: Sounds exciting! Sounds like 2020 will be another excellent discovery year for U.S. Gold Corp.

Could you tell our readers/investors more about your plans for 2020?

Edward Karr: 2020 is going to be a busy year for us at U.S. Gold Corp. At Keystone, we want to follow up on this Nina Skarn hole as fast as we can. We will put together our future exploration plan, we will design the next program and we will make sure the permits are all in order. Probably by May or June of 2020, we can be back out on the Keystone project, drilling to follow up on this very significant hole for us. That is the Keystone update.

We are going to be talking a lot more in the future about our new project that we just acquired, called Maggie Creek. We have an option on Maggie Creek. We think it's extremely perspective. We believe the mineralization from Newmont's 25 million ounce Gold Quarry Mine, potentially extends right onto the Maggie Creek claims. We are putting together an initial exploration and drill program. We will most likely be able to get out to Maggie Creek even before we get to Keystone, potentially in early 2020.

In Wyoming, we are moving our Copper King project forward right now. We plan to have that completed in the first half of 2020. We are going to take the project from its Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) to a Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS) level. This Pre-Feasibility Study at Copper King is going to be very robust. We are going to look at a lot of mine engineering, a lot of mine planning, environmental studies, baseline studies, water studies, hydrology, and very importantly, metallurgy. By the time this Pre-Feasibility Study is done, we are confident we will have a good idea of the updated economics on our deposit. And also, what a very specific mine plan is going to look like to go forward. At that point, we will be in a position to file the actual mine plan permit and get to work raising the capital to build the facility.

Dr. Allen Alper: Oh, that sounds excellent!

Could you refresh the memories of our readers/investors about your background and your Team?

Edward Karr: I'm a capital markets professional in the asset management and investment banking business. I have raised a lot of capital for the natural resource industry. I have tremendous corporate governance experience and have been on the boards of multiple different companies. I founded U.S. Gold Corp back in 2014 and have been leading the charge since. We have a great, fantastic team. Ken Coleman is our Project Geologist. He's based out of our Elko, Nevada office and has deep experience in Nevada.

We have a number of consultants that we work with at the Company, everyone from geological consultants to drill contractors, mappers and digital specialists. We are using some leading consultants to help us bring Copper King from the PEA to the Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS) level. We have some very notable people on our Board of Directors. One is Secretary Ryan Zinke, the former Secretary of the Interior under the Trump Administration. Secretary Zinke is a geologist from Montana. He knows the permitting process extremely well and has been very helpful with helping us advance our Copper King project. We just added a new board member named Douglas Newby. Douglas was the former Chief Financial Officer of PolyMet Mining. He was responsible for permitting their project in Northern Minnesota all the way to production, so he knows the permitting process very well. We have a solid, experienced team.

Dr. Allen Alper: That's excellent, a well-balanced and experienced team and very knowledgeable! So that's great. Could you tell our readers/investors about your share structure?

Edward Karr: We are pretty proud of our share structure. USAU is a pretty tight share structure. We are traded on the NASDAQ, a major exchange. Today, we have 23 and a half million shares of common outstanding. There's no debt in the Company and we still have cash on the balance sheet. We've been very judicious in all of our prior capital raises trying not to issue too many shares. We have raised about $38 million in capital since we founded the Company back in 2014 and we believe we still have a very tight share structure.

The other important thing to point out is of those 23 and a half million shares, Management, insiders and a few key shareholders of the Company own approximately 30%. I myself own somewhere just over 1.2 million shares. I have, I think, almost $1 million dollars of my own money in the Company. I buy stock in the open market quite often. I participate in the private placements. I take 50% of my compensation in stock. So we try and align ourselves, with the shareholders as much as we can. And for us, it's all about making a return on our investment for the U.S. Gold Corp. shareholders.

Dr. Allen Alper: That's great to see men on the team having skin in the game and having the same objectives as investors to increase the value of the Company.

Could you tell our readers/investors the primary reasons they should consider investing in U.S. Gold Corp?

Edward Karr: Sure. I think this industry, the junior gold exploration industry, is potentially just starting to take off. We are in the first inning of a nine-inning ballgame, a new bull market could be just over the horizon. So that is the first reason. Reason number two, we are a U.S. company with U.S. assets on a major U.S. exchange. You don't have any geopolitical risk - like projects in Africa or South America. Number three, U.S. Gold Corp today has a project with Copper King that I believe is worth more than our entire market cap. Copper King alone justifies our valuation. Then you have cash, a NASDAQ listing, a Management team, Keystone and Maggie Creek, projects which could give us real incredible exploration upside if we can deliver the results there. So it is a very compelling value proposition at the current share price. And we are out trying to do our best every day to make this a big win for everyone involved

Dr. Allen Alper: All those sounds like very strong reasons to consider investing in U.S. Gold Corp. Is there anything you'd like to add, Ed?

Edward Karr: Al, I would like to invite you and your readers/investors to come to our website, www.usgoldcorp.gold. You can sign up for news releases. We have a lot of information on our website on all of the projects. Continue to watch the Company and our news flow going forward. We really appreciate your interest and interviewing us for Metals News, thank you Al.

Dr. Allen Alper: I’ve enjoyed talking with you and hearing about all of your plans. They sound really excellent! We’ll publish your press releases as they come out so our readers/investors can follow your progress.

https://www.usgoldcorp.gold/

Investor Contact:
U.S. Gold Corp. Investor Relations:
+1-800-557-4550
ir@usgoldcorp.gold