Contango's self-funded build-out: Khunkhun says Manh Choh cash flow takes the company to 200,000 oz of gold and 5 million oz of silver without dilution

At a Rule Symposium 2026 preview interview, Contango Silver & Gold president Shawn Khunkhun laid out a plan that, if delivered, takes the company from about 60,000 ounces of annual gold production today to roughly 200,000 ounces of gold plus 5 million ounces of silver a year by 2030 — without raising equity, by his account. The engine is Manh Choh, a high-grade open-pit gold mine in Alaska that he says generated $122 million of free cash flow (cash left after running and sustaining the mine) for Contango in 2025, with about $250 million expected next year at what he calls a conservative gold price.

## How the company is put together

Khunkhun came to the role through Dolly Varden, where he was CEO. Rick Rule's introduction credits him with growing Dolly Varden from a $30 million market cap to the point of a merger that created the current company, now named Contango Silver & Gold. Khunkhun describes two decades backing geologists and mining engineers through the Fiore Group, and says he has raised about $3 billion while transacting M&A deals.

The merged company positions itself as an emerging mid-tier silver and gold producer focused on high-grade projects in Canada and the United States that fit a direct shipping ore (DSO) model — ore that is high grade, close to existing infrastructure and simple to permit, so it can be trucked straight to someone else's processing plant rather than requiring a new one. "We're looking to put rocks in a box and get them off to a processing facility," Khunkhun said.

## The producing asset: Manh Choh

Contango already produces gold. Manh Choh, in Alaska, produces about 200,000 ounces of gold a year in total, with Kinross taking 70 percent as Contango's partner and Contango's 30 percent share amounting to about 60,000 ounces. Khunkhun says that share generates about $100 million of free cash flow on a life-of-mine average, and delivered $122 million in 2025. Rule noted that the mine has, "at least at present," a fairly short mine life — which is precisely why the cash is being redeployed.

## Where the cash goes

**Lucky Shot (Alaska).** A permitted, past-producing high-grade gold mine. Khunkhun says a $50 million investment over two years returns it to production by 2028, adding about $100 million of annual free cash flow and lifting the company's gold profile from 60,000 to 100,000 ounces. A feasibility study — the detailed engineering and economics work that tests whether a mine can be built and run profitably — follows two more rounds of drilling.

**Johnson Tract (Alaska).** Contango acquired this project through its purchase of High Gold, in a deal Khunkhun put at about C$50 million (roughly US$37 million) against a $7 million spend. He cites an economic study showing a $615 million net present value (NPV — what a project's future cash flows are worth in today's dollars) for a deposit of roughly 1.1 million ounces of gold at about 10 grams per tonne. He describes it as low-capex, with roughly a seven-month payback and production of about 100,000 ounces a year for at least a decade.

**Dolly Varden (British Columbia).** The high-grade primary silver asset Khunkhun brought to the merger, located in the Golden Triangle. A new mineral resource estimate is scheduled for June, incorporating 200,000 meters of drilling. Khunkhun expects Dolly Varden to come online in 2030 and add about 5 million ounces of silver a year. Kitsault Valley is the other project he named in the self-funded sequence.

## Balance sheet and the valuation gap

Khunkhun puts the market cap at roughly US$700 million, with about $100 million in the bank and only 33 million shares issued and outstanding. His core claim is self-funding: the Lucky Shot, Johnson Tract and Dolly Varden build-outs are sequenced, he says, in a way where "we don't need to go back to market." His second claim is a re-rating case: Contango trades at about 0.3 times NAV (net asset value — the multiple of the estimated value of a company's assets that the market is paying), while peers with high-grade projects in safe jurisdictions trade around 0.7 times and the outliers above 1.0. His stated goal is to reach the peer average this year.

## What to watch

The near-term milestones are checkable: the Dolly Varden resource update due in June, the Lucky Shot feasibility study after two drilling campaigns, and whether the projected $250 million year shows up in reported results. The caveats are equally concrete. Every figure above is management's own, delivered in a promotional interview for a symposium whose host says he vets exhibitors and owns their shares — Rule states he has held Khunkhun's companies for a decade. The 2026 projection depends on gold prices, Manh Choh's mine life is acknowledged to be short, and the 2030 silver target rests on a project still years from production. Investors should read this as a management roadmap to verify against filings, not as established fact.