White Gold Lines Up a Record Drill Program, a First PEA, and a Critical-Minerals Spin-Out

White Gold (WGO) is entering the busiest stretch in its history, and president Donovan Pollitt used a recent CEO.CA interview to lay out how the company plans to create value: a record-setting drill program, a first Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA), and a spin-out of its critical-minerals assets. His core argument is that this setup offers three independent paths to value rather than a single make-or-break event.

## Three levers, one company

Pollitt joined White Gold this year after a career on the buy side. He says the asset won him over because it combines the right geology, the right jurisdiction and the right people. He frames the opportunity around three levers:

1. **A record drill program.** A November financing funds 15,000 to 20,000 metres of drilling this year — the largest program in company history. 2. **A coming PEA.** An engineering-firm study that attaches first-order economics to the existing deposit. 3. **A discounted multiple.** In his view, White Gold trades cheaper on EV (enterprise value — the company's total value including debt, less cash) per resource ounce than several peers in the same jurisdiction.

None of the three depends on the others, which he sees as a cushion: multiple paths to value reduce reliance on any one of them landing.

## What the PEA will and will not answer

A PEA (Preliminary Economic Assessment — an early engineering study sketching how a deposit might perform as a mine) is a coarse tool. Pollitt expects parameters accurate to roughly plus or minus 30%, which he says is exactly what institutional shareholders have asked for: enough definition on daily throughput, initial capital and sustaining capital — and, most importantly, NPV (net present value) and IRR (internal rate of return) — to refine their own models without over-committing.

The deposit in question holds, per Pollitt, 3 million ounces at 1.38 g/t (grams of gold per tonne), which he calls the highest grade in the Yukon, in an open-pit scenario over roughly a 10-year mine life. He expects the study to use conservative gold prices rather than spot, and argues investors still anchored to USD $2,700–$3,500 gold are underestimating the economics of a deposit at this grade.

Two boundaries matter. First, none of this summer's drilling feeds the PEA, so any resource growth lands entirely on top of the study's economics. Second, Pollitt calls the PEA a starting point, not an ending point — it is not a production decision.

## The barbell: 75% expansion, 25% discovery

White Gold's land package — assembled over time by Sean Ryan — spans more than 300,000 hectares in the Yukon district that carries the company's name, where it is the dominant landholder. Allocating capital across that much ground is the central planning problem, and Pollitt's answer is a barbell: mostly safe ideas, plus a few high-potential swings.

- **75% of the budget** goes to expanding known deposits — step-out holes along strike, at depth and down plunge. He likens the method to Battleship: a hit on B2 leads to a follow-up on B3 or B4. - **25%** funds first-pass drilling on targets that already have geochemistry, geophysics, trenching or surface sampling but have never been drilled. The odds of success are lower on fresh ground, but he notes a discovery there carries far more impact.

The per-share math is where he sees discipline. Even a 10% resource increase, to 3.3 million ounces, would be accretive on an ounces-per-share basis, he says, because the company issues less than 10% of its equity annually to fund drilling. His stated goal is to grow ounces per share as fast as possible, not headline ounces alone.

## A district gaining momentum

The Yukon's standing with institutional investors, shaky after 2024, has recovered in Pollitt's telling. He credits Fuerte buying the Coffee deposit from Newmont, followed by Agnico Eagle taking a 10% stake in Fuerte, with restoring confidence in the district. White Gold sits along the same structural belt, and a road being built to the Coffee site crosses part of its property package — infrastructure he describes as a benefit to everyone in the jurisdiction. Nearby, Western Copper and Gold is pushing its Casino deposit toward production. Pollitt acknowledges infrastructure gaps remain, but argues interests are aligned across companies and the territory in opening the district.

## The W2 spin-out

The final lever is structural. White Gold is spinning its critical-minerals properties — showings of copper, molybdenum and tungsten — into a new company, W2. Shareholders receive one W2 share for every five White Gold shares held ahead of a record date. Pollitt says the move protects White Gold's capital structure by shifting future dilution to W2, which will raise its own financing and is targeting a listing in the first half of Q3.

W2's first target is the Bridgett property, just north of the Casino deposit. It carries geochemistry, geophysics, airborne magnetic surveys, ground IP and shallow RAB (rotary air blast — shallow drilling) results indicating copper and molybdenum near surface. The aim is deeper drilling to test for a porphyry-style copper system — the large, intrusion-hosted deposit type that can support major mines.

## What to watch

Every claim in the interview comes from the company's own president, and the economics he describes are yet to be published. Still, the discussion is specific about deliverables: PEA parameters, 15,000–20,000 metres of drilling split 75/25 between expansion and discovery, and a W2 listing targeted for the first half of Q3. Each is checkable on its own timeline.