Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: Gold Stocks

Trident Resources (TSX-V: ROCK)(OTCQB: TRDTF) CEO Jon Wiesblatt on Fully Funded Drilling at Contact Lake & Preview Southwest High-Grade Gold Projects, Saskatchewan, Canada

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Trident Resources (TSX-V: ROCK)(OTC: TRDTF) — someone that's familiar to our audience but someone we haven't spoken to publicly in a while — Mr. Jon Wiesblatt. 

Jon, it's great to have you back on. We talked off-air for just a bit. I think the timing for an attractive blue sky potential — current resource; copper and gold — is absolutely brilliant. So, welcome back. How have you been?

Jon Wiesblatt: Gerardo, I've been great. Very busy of late trying to put this Trident Resources company together and offer an incredibly attractive opportunity for our existing shareholders and potentially new investors as well. So, I'm doing great and it's great to be back on your program. Thank you so much for having us.

Gerardo Del Real: I love that you're on, and, like I said, I think the timing is perfect. It's perfect for high-grade gold. It's perfect for high-grade copper. It's perfect for being in a great jurisdiction, and it's perfect for resource expansion. 

All of those boxes get checked immediately, and I want to get to all of that. But I’d like to start with your background because it's going to be really important in this cycle. When you and I first met about three or four years ago, we were closer to $1,000 gold than $3,000 gold. And we were closer to $3.00 to $3.50 copper than $4.50 to $5.00 copper. 

That is no longer the case. And I think your skillset and your background is designed for this part of the cycle. Can you touch on your background a bit, please?

Jon Wiesblatt: Yes, absolutely, Gerardo. I've spent most of my career as an institutional investor here in Toronto, Canada. I ran a number of funds for many years. They were top-down and then bottom-up. I started off my career, really, as a generalist. 

Yet, in Canada, when you are running capital, you really need to focus on metals and mines and resources in general just given the makeup and the weightings that it has in the TSX and the overall market. So I’ve had a chance to work with some really brilliant people throughout my career and have become really confident and comfortable investing in the commodity markets.

I would suggest to you that I have not always been a big believer in all commodities. We go through periods where an investor becomes more bullish and other times where they become more bearish. I would suggest to you that over the last five years, I've re-engineered my career and my own personal and professional portfolios to be more exposed to commodities, specifically gold and copper. 

I've taken a very constructive view on the US dollar. And we all know that when you have a constructive view on the US dollar and on the bearish side of things, you want to own commodities.

So gold and copper are specifically, for their own independent reasons, two specific resources, which I'm very, very comfortable having greater exposure to. And the predecessor company, excuse me, Rockridge, which was focused on copper, that business was highly focused on consolidating high quality assets in very good jurisdictions for scale. 

And I think that Rockridge — previously through the acquisition and transaction with Trident — has done an incredible job finding high quality assets in a very compatible jurisdiction, which is Saskatchewan, Canada, and being exposed and exposing our shareholders to gold prices. 

And, that's the resulting issuer in Trident. So I started off as a portfolio manager and have moved my way onto the issuer side as a builder and an executive officer.

Gerardo Del Real: Love it. I pride myself on being a simple guy with simple ideas and try to see those through. Let's talk about this story as one story but with two very distinct components to it. I want to start with the gold. Can you talk about the gold exposure that Trident provides?

Jon Wiesblatt: Yes, through the merger with MAS Gold and Eros Resources, Trident and Rockridge, Trident is a company now with two highly focused gold projects both in Saskatchewan. 

The first project is the Contact Lake Gold Project. It's made up of four deposits. We have the Contact Lake deposit. I'm going to talk about that and isolate that in just a second. We have the Preview deposit, the North Lake deposit. And then, we have the Point Lake target.

These four projects, in addition to the Greywacke Lake Gold project, were all assembled over the last several decades by a brilliant geologist here in Canada. His name is Ron Netolitzky. Ron is very close to our company. He built these companies with the view that there are four very significant geologic domains that all intersect at a certain point, and at that point of intersection is where these gold deposits are located.

This is a very large regional and scalable gold company with two definable gold projects. Within those two projects, there currently exists 1.2 million ounces of historical resource at very good grades. And within the Contact Lake Gold project, one of those projects is a former Cameco producing mine called the Contact Lake Mine. 

That particular project, Gerardo, was mined in the early through the late '90s. It produced upwards of 200,000 ounces of gold at a 6 to 7 gram per tonne head grade at 95% recoveries. And it was mined down to 300 meters.

We think that there is significant opportunity for us to go back into that mine, which was closed in 1998 given low gold prices and Cameco's focus on the uranium market. We think there is an extraordinary opportunity for Trident to go back into that project and make new discoveries and expand upon the work that was done by Cameco back in the day. 

Just to recap; two projects, 1.2 million ounces of gold, all located in the La Ronge Gold Belt, which is in central to northeastern Saskatchewan, all within excellent infrastructure, road accessible, and, most importantly, high-grade gold.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Now let's talk copper because if all we were talking about was the gold, we could justify the market cap, which is where right now?

Jon Wiesblatt: The market cap today is somewhere between C$15 and C$18 million.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. And now, we get a bunch of copper. Let's talk about copper and what's there and the upside there, which is pretty substantial.

Jon Wiesblatt: Yes, in this company comes a project called the Knife Lake Copper Project. It's VMS copper. It's located just to the northeast of the La Ronge gold projects that we just spoke about. There's approximately 200 million pounds of copper at the project at surface with grades ranging anywhere between 0.7% and 1% copper.

This project is well-defined on the maiden resource. In addition to that, there are 11 highly prospective targets in and around the maiden deposit, which requires some work over the next several years. So an excellent copper project, and, like I said, 1.2 million ounces of gold in the Saskatchewan gold projects.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. And this is the beautiful thing about VMS deposits, folks, for those of you all not familiar; they never or very rarely happen in isolation. When you have one, you tend to have two, three, four, five, correct?

Jon Wiesblatt: Yes, absolutely correct. That's the view up at Knife Lake. We think that we're just scratching the surface with the maiden deposit, the 200 million pounds. And like I said, there are 11 identifiable targets for us to go and explore in the coming years.

Gerardo Del Real: Beautiful. What comes next?

Jon Wiesblatt: We have tons of catalysts coming up. We've just initiated a new mineral resource estimate, which we're expecting to get in the months ahead. The gold projects haven't had an update to the MRE since the early 2020s.

We think there's a good opportunity for us to get back and do some desktop work. And we'll see what the results are. We think they're going to be positive. The last time anybody looked or modeled these projects, gold prices were well below $2K per ounce.

We think there’s a great opportunity to see some good leverage of our resources on our balance sheet. That's the first major catalyst. The second and, really, the most significant catalyst is going to be a summer drilling program at the Contact Lake project and at the Preview Southwest deposit. 

We think that those two things are going to be the key catalysts going forward. And, again, our drilling is fully funded and begins in July of this year.

Gerardo Del Real: It should be a heck of a rest of 2025. I think that's going to extend into 2026, likely 2027. Congratulations on putting together some phenomenal exposure to both gold and copper and what I think is going to be a historic run. Anything to add to that, Jon?

Jon Wiesblatt: Yes, there's one really important attribute. As part of our merger with MAS Gold and Eros, we were able to secure a very strong balance sheet. Trident Resources, the current issuer, the resulting issuer, has C$8 million of working capital, which is made up of cash and liquid securities. 

And so we are fully funded for the next several years, and I think that's very important to investors given the volatility in these commodity markets. 

Gerardo Del Real: So roughly 50% of your market cap is underpinned by cash?

Jon Wiesblatt: Yes, it is. And given that we just closed this three-way merger of three public companies in January, given the fact that we've rebranded the company, we've renamed the company to Trident, we've consolidated the shares 10 for 1. 

We've raised a little bit of capital to some strategic investors. Given the fact that we are ready to go and start exploring a fully funded program of 4,000 to 5,000 meters at both Contact Lake and Preview Southwest this summer, we are very encouraged and very excited about the potential for the company and for the ability to generate significant value for our shareholders going forward.

Gerardo Del Real: Good stuff. Looking forward to having you back on, sir. Thank you so much.

Jon Wiesblatt: Thank you, Gerardo.

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