Dakota Gold's two-step Homestake plan: build Richmond Hill first, let its cash flow fund the Maitland underground

## A two-step plan for one district

Dakota Gold's story, as Robert Quartermain tells it, is a sequence rather than a single bet. Bring the Richmond Hill open-pit project into production first, then use its cash flow to advance the high-grade Maitland underground project — all within a 4-to-5-mile radius of the company's South Dakota head office. Quartermain, the company's co-chair and acting CEO for the past year, made the case in an interview with Rick Rule ahead of the 2026 Rule Symposium. He brings a track record to the job: he built Silver Standard from a roughly $2 million market cap to more than $2 billion, and his team's Brucejack discovery at Pretium now sits with Newmont.

The setting is the historic Homestake district. The old Homestake mine, a banded iron formation (ancient layered iron-rich rock, a classic gold host) about 2 billion years old, produced more than 40 million ounces over roughly 120 years before shutting down more than 25 years ago. Most of that mining ran from surface down and to the south, Quartermain says. The ground to the north, staked in the 1870s, stayed largely underexplored, and he sees little real exploration in the district since about 1996 — roughly 30 years before his group arrived, five years before this interview.

His thesis echoes his Silver Standard playbook: take positions in districts when nobody else wants them, then let a higher gold price reset the economics. Old mines were designed around $250 gold; with gold near $4,500 an ounce, as he cites it, rock once left behind becomes worth testing. "The best place we know to look for mineralization is in historic districts," he says, "in the shadows of old head frames."

## Richmond Hill: the project meant to pay the bills

The current focus is Richmond Hill, about two miles north of the operating Wharf mine, which Quartermain credits with producing 90,000 to 100,000 ounces a year for four decades. Last year's S-K 1300 resource statement (the SEC's reporting standard for mineral projects) held about 3.5 million ounces of gold across measured, indicated, and inferred categories — inferred being the least certain class. About 2.6 million ounces sit in the measured and indicated categories, plus a silver credit. A follow-up S-K 1300 with cash flow modeling, published around July of last year, outlined what he calls a robust profile: roughly a 17-year mine life at about 150,000 ounces per year.

The physical setup matters as much as the tonnage. Most mineralization sits at surface with a strip ratio below 1:1 — less than one tonne of waste moved per tonne of ore — which he says allows mining to start in higher-grade panels and reach cash payback sooner. This year's infill drilling, "many tens of thousands of meters," aims to convert inferred ounces into measured and indicated, and then into reserves through a pre-feasibility study, the engineering and economics check that a project can actually be built. That study is planned for the second half of this year, with a feasibility study to follow next year. Expansion targets sit north at Chisholm Golds and west at Coal Creek. Rule adds a market note: the ground previously sat with another owner that "didn't do anything with it until it came to you."

## Maitland: the underground second act

Maitland, along strike north of the old workings, is the district's longer-term option. Dakota Gold reports 47 drill intersections averaging around 11 grams per tonne (g/t — grams of gold per tonne of rock) over roughly 4 meters, in line with the 8–10 g/t grades the district's underground mines historically ran. Based on that early work, Quartermain calls Maitland "perhaps a significant million-ounce deposit."

The next step is drilling the Unionville zone, where near-surface oxide material (soft, weathered rock that is typically easier to process) similar to Richmond Hill's may run slightly higher grade. If so, it could feed the Richmond Hill operation while also testing the Homestake formation beside the JB high-grade target. The funding loop is explicit: Richmond Hill cash flow pays to advance Maitland, so the district develops on self-generated cash rather than repeated raises.

## Permitting, people, and money

About 13,000 of the company's 48,000 acres are private land, so permitting runs through Lawrence County and the state of South Dakota. Regulators two miles away already oversee the Wharf mine, and conversations about the permitting schedule have begun, per Quartermain. The company has held open houses, employs staff who live locally, and plans to use the pre-feasibility study to show neighbors both the operating mine and its closure plan.

On funding: a February raise of about $75 million, in syndicates led by BMO and Scotiabank, plus roughly $30 million already on hand, left about $105 million in cash at the March financial statements. Spending ran near $28 million last year, mostly exploration, and should decline. Management says it is funded through a production decision targeted for 2028, with first production possible in late 2029 on the current schedule — deferring the next major raise to project financing after the feasibility study.

## How to read this interview

Every number here is the speaker's claim, delivered in a conference promotion whose host discloses that he owns the exhibitors' shares, so it is advocacy as much as analysis, and the auto-generated transcript garbles several names. What comes through clearly is the plan's shape and timeline: pre-feasibility this year, feasibility next, a production decision in 2028, and 48,000 acres with more than one way to add ounces.