i-80 Gold Books Its First Reserves at Granite Creek and Points $1 Billion at Lone Tree

i-80 Gold used its slot at the Beaver Creek Precious Metal Summit to mark a milestone: the company's first feasibility study, at Granite Creek, is complete and its first reserves are on the books. Speaking with The Deep Dive, Ryan Snow framed the study as the anchor for a year in which the company also closed a recapitalization of more than $1 billion and nearly doubled year-to-date revenue.

## Granite Creek: first reserves on the books

A feasibility study is the most advanced stage of technical study, and the point at which a project's resource converts into reserves — the portion that is economic to mine. Snow said Granite Creek now carries 556,000 ounces of reserves, with a net present value (NPV — the value of a project's future cash flows expressed in today's dollars) of just under $120 million at reserve gold pricing. At $4,500 gold, close to where he described the market today, he put the NPV at about $600 million.

The study also raised the operating plan. Steady-state production is set at 75,000 ounces per year, up from about 60,000 in the earlier preliminary economic assessment (PEA — a first-pass, lower-confidence study). Grade came down slightly from the PEA, Snow said, but tonnage rose, and total resource ounces grew by roughly 60,000.

He was direct about what stands between the study and that production rate: water. Granite Creek carries significant groundwater, and over the past 12 months the company has installed two additional dewatering wells — wells that pump groundwater out of the mine area — and expanded its water treatment plant capacity. All three are in commissioning. Once they ramp up, he expects the water level to fall, allowing more development and a path to the higher production rate. Dewatering is the operational item to watch at this asset.

## Mineral Point: targets under the heap leach pad

i-80 also released assay results at Mineral Point, where the PEA resource stands at 5.5 million ounces of gold and 195 million ounces of silver. Most of the new holes are step-out holes — drilled outside the known resource envelope to test for expansion — and they sit beneath an existing heap leach pad, where crushed ore is stacked and treated with solution to recover metal.

Snow credited VP of geology Tyler Hill with pushing the target after reviewing Homestake's condemnation drilling — drilling done to confirm ground is barren before infrastructure is built on it — from the early 1990s. Those holes, about 1,000 feet deep, all ended in mineralization but were not economic at the time, so the pad was built on top of them. The new program drilled under the pad, and Snow highlighted an intercept of 225 meters of strike length at just over a gram per tonne of gold and about 39 grams per tonne of silver. He presented the results as early evidence the resource base could expand, with a pre-feasibility study on the Mineral Point open pit planned for mid-2027.

## Lone Tree: where the billion dollars goes

A year ago, Snow said, the question he heard most often was where the money would come from. The company raised more than $1 billion over the past year, and the majority is earmarked for Lone Tree, the processing facility at the center of i-80's hub-and-spoke model — one plant fed by several underground mines. The capital project there is about $430 million, with roughly half of that committed.

Snow said the project remains on time and on schedule, targeting commissioning at the end of 2027 and a first gold pour at the end of 2027 or very early 2028. The work centers on refurbishing Lone Tree's autoclave, the pressure vessel used to process ore that standard methods cannot treat efficiently, and he committed to construction updates as the build advances.

## Q2: revenue up sharply, still loss-making

i-80 remains in what Snow called the growth phase, still investing heavily and still in a loss position, which he described as natural for this stage. The operating numbers moved noticeably. Year-to-date revenue through Q2 2026 was just under $77 million, against just under $42 million a year earlier. Gross profit came in at just under $25 million versus just under $4 million in the comparable period. He attributed the improvement to both a higher gold price and higher production.

## The gold backdrop and the calendar ahead

On gold near $4,300, Snow said the company remains bullish and treats roughly $4,000 to $4,300 as a floor for the foreseeable future. He suggested $6,000 per ounce is feasible within two years, driven by central bank buying, while noting that i-80 models nothing at that level.

The company's own checklist for the next year, as Snow gave it: a feasibility study on the Cove project in Q4 2026, a pre-feasibility study on the Mineral Point open pit and a feasibility study on the Archimedes Underground at Ruby Hills by mid-2027, and regular updates as Lone Tree construction proceeds.

Taken together, the interview describes a producer that has converted one asset into reserves, funded its central processing build, and set dated milestones for its next studies — with water management at Granite Creek and the Lone Tree timeline as the execution points the speaker himself flagged.