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to build something and find that you have challenges. We don’t have those issues. We’ve been very blessed in that our local partners, Calista and TKC, are our most vocal supporters. And of course the Native Corporations will all share in the benefits of Donlin Gold. All of the Native Corporations in Alaska – that’s the way the system works. So, a certain percentage goes to those who are most immediately related to the project, and the rest is spread around the state. We have that kind of buy-in.
As far as governance is concerned, we are a paradigm of an independent board. I’ve always believed that shareholders should have a significant say even at the board level. I think
that we’ve made to shareholders, we’ve kept. Soon after we came on board, we did a capital raise at the beginning of 2012. We raised over $330 million dollars because of the enthusiasm of the combination of both of us and our relative skillsets. What endeared the investors to us was that we laid out very specifically what our plans were.
We were going to spin off the company’s copper assets. We did. The company is now called Trilogy Metals. It’s a very successful developer in partnership with South 32 in Alaska. We would sell our share of Galore Creek, not for the $40 or
$50 million that people assumed, but for $200-275 million.
We would therefore position Donlin Gold as a pure play on the next Nevada through our vehicle, NOVAGOLD.
So we felt we didn’t have headwinds. And in fact we moved right through permitting all the way through to a Record of Decision. So, essentially what you have is a company that articulates its strategy. It’s not trying to be all things to all people. We’ve never gone out of our way to say when we’re going to go into production, for the simple reason that we’ve always said that the whole idea is to make money and that required higher gold prices because our job is not to be producing high-grade, open-pit gold to subsidize Chinese and Indian consumption. When share prices are higher, we minimize dilution. And to our mind, certainly now, the shares are more valuable than the metal itself. So, for all of these reasons, I think that we have an exceptionally educated shareholder base, which is one of the reasons why they’ve been very loyal to us. Obviously, as they say in Russia, a fish rots from the head down. So they at least see that in our case, the owners live above the store and are completely investor-friendly because we’re in fact the largest shareholders. We’ve got skin in the game.
Now that you’re positioned, you’ve sold Galore, you’ve spun out Trilogy, you’re permitted, and you’ve got the Record of Decision, what would you say are the next key events from an investor’s point of view in 2022 – and maybe beyond?
Well, I think that we just had a press release, which was issued in December, that lays out the joint strategy by Barrick and NOVAGOLD for taking Donlin Gold up the value chain.
We have a drill program coming up. It’s very exciting for us, especially for me, because my fortunes have been made through the drill bit and I’ve always been a very strong believer
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that the transparency with which NOVAGOLD has conveyed its message in the media, in our annual reports, to our shareholders, is at least as good if not actually the best of any company that I’ve encountered. I remember in my first mining story, when we went public, I waived rights to be able to have more board seats because I felt having more independent directors means that you’re going to get more independent points of view.
The more independent points of view you get, especially if you’re just coming into the space and you’re in your thirties, the less likelihood you have of problems. That certainly pertains to the NOVAGOLD board, but more than that, we have gone out of our way strenuously to leave no room in terms of explaining to our shareholders what our strategy is. And I’m very proud of the fact that since the 10 years that Greg Lang and I have been functioning as CEO and chairman, respectively, every promise
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