Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: Gold Stocks

Headwater Gold (CSE: HWG)(OTC: HWAUF) CEO Caleb Stroup on a Transformational 2025 and Drilling for Gold in 2026

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president and CEO of Headwater Gold (CSE: HWG)(OTC: HWAUF), Mr. Caleb Stroup. Caleb, it was a heck of a 2025. I couldn't be more excited for 2026. We once again have record high gold and silver prices today. How the heck are you doing, sir?

Caleb Stroup: I'm doing really great. As you said, we're coming off a great year and we're still on what seems to be a wild ride with new all time highs, it seems pretty much every day in gold, and certainly a growing appreciation globally for commodities and metals and the companies that work in that space. I agree with your sentiment that it's shaping up to be a very interesting year and we're putting all the pieces together to continue to succeed.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, listen, I just had a really interesting conversation with a gentleman that was in New York and was talking to me about meeting one of the wealthiest people he's ever met. And he was talking to a gentleman that's worth $100 billion. And why that's relevant to this conversation is he mentioned to me that this gentleman is taking a billion dollars of his own money and starting a mining fund just for himself and his family office. And I think we're going to see a lot more capital from non-traditional sources as it relates to the mining and exploration space. And so there's going to be a lot of new eyeballs on this space when you have record high gold prices and silver prices nearly, if not every day, at least every week. For those that may be new to the space, I would love for you to recap why 2025 was such a pivotal year for Headwater Gold and frankly positions you really, really well for 2026.

Caleb Stroup: We really did have a bit of a transformative year with Headwater, both in terms of execution and the market response and the performance. We were up, I think about 300% last year, outperformed gold itself and all the gold indices. But the key thing is that outperformance was based on continued execution of our business model that we've been putting the pieces together for the last several years. And it all culminated with a whole series of catalysts really over the last 12 months, but especially over the last say six, seven months where we put a bunch of different pieces together across the board on our portfolio projects. Just as a reminder, we've got about a dozen projects in the Western US focused on gold exploration. And as we stand right now, six of them are in big partnerships with producing gold companies who are funding the exploration to advance these.

Several of these were a result of deals that we struck in that last six, seven month period starting with, I guess it was last August, we announced a deal with OceanaGold on three projects in Northern Nevada where they're funding exploration. And we've already started drilling on one of those and two more are getting teed up for drilling hopefully this year. Following that by, I suppose, a month and a half or so, we also announced the financing with Rick Rule and Jeff Phillips, who obviously recognized the value of what we were putting together and came in to finance a company to continue to execute that business model. And that added, I think, a fair bit of visibility to the story and credibility to the team and the business model in general. And those guys have been great supporters and great shareholders. We're super appreciative of that.

And hopefully we've since rewarded them and people who came in around that time by a whole sequence of news items that really materially moved the project forward just in a few months. Our flagship project Spring Peak has elected to proceed to stage two, which includes a US$40 million spend over the next three years. As a bit of context, that US$40 million is more than our current market cap. Over the next three years behind that, we finalized the acceptance of Spring Peak and FAST-41 permit program, which gave a tremendous amount of clarity and certainty on the permitting future of that. Those two things together effectively solve the financing problem around continuing exploration and solve the permitting uncertainty, so that one really is teed up for a tremendous amount of exciting activity in the next year or two as we see how big that gold system that we have discovered there is.

Nearby, we also got a permit that we've been waiting for over a year at the Lodestar project, which joined Spring Peak and started drilling in late 2025 and that's still continuing. We're still out there drilling and should be wrapping that up shortly. And then I guess on top of that, where am I here? We drove one of the Oceana projects, the TJ project that we brought in that deal in August, September, and pretty much hit the ground running in Q4 and drilled a sort of proof of concept core program out there that we're still awaiting on numbers from there. That was a lot, but it was a very busy six month period there. And that should explain to an extent the performance of the stock. Although as I said, I think we're still relatively cheap in the context of all of the activity and money that's being spent on our projects.

Gerardo Del Real: No, well, listen, clearly you executed well and a lot of that execution was behind the scenes work from late 2024 and early 2025 that really was able to be consummated in the second half of 2025. Obviously, a lot of the deals that you struck are going to provide for abundant news flow in 2026. Paint a picture for me here with record high gold and silver prices in 2026, what do the next six to 12 months look like for Headwater Gold shareholders?

Caleb Stroup: First and foremost, I guess we had those two drill programs at Lodestar and TJ. We're still awaiting the results on those and expecting those to start coming in, I think, in the next month or month and a half or so, so that will in part shape the trajectory of the plans for those specific projects in 2026. But then across the broader portfolio, there are four other projects funded by majors that are at various stages, many of them expecting a drill test or a large drill program in the case of Spring Peak commencing this year. We're still working with our partners to put together the final shape and size and timing of all of these things and sequencing everything together.

But in general, we're certainly looking to track at or above our average of drilling three to five projects a year and somewhere between five and 15,000 meters a year is what we typically do. And I think we're trending in that direction, if not beyond, but the specific details are still kind of up in the air. I'm heading to Vancouver tomorrow actually to participate in the VRIC and Roundup events and meeting several of those partners in person with the goal to flesh out in a bit more detail exactly where and when and what quantum of capital will be allocated to these projects and what sequence.

Gerardo Del Real: No, look, exciting times in this space, exciting times for Headwater. I encourage anyone that is at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference to stop by and say hi to the fine folks over at Headwater. I will be up there as well. Looking forward to catching up in person as always, Caleb. It should be a heck of a start to 2026. Anything to add to that?

Caleb Stroup: Yeah, no, please swing by. Maybe we can sneak off and I'll grab you a coffee or possibly a beer.

Gerardo Del Real: There you go. Imagine that. Appreciate the time, Caleb. Thank you.

Caleb Stroup: All right.

Gerardo Del Real: Cheers.

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