The Golden Summit project in Alaska
(Source: Freegold Ventures)

Investors interested in fortifying their portfolios with gold’s value-preservation and inflation-hedging properties, while pursuing returns leveraged beyond owning the physical metal alone, need to give junior gold stocks thorough consideration.

According to Mining.com, for the first time since 2016, there is “a gaping mismatch between the fundamental strength of the resource sector versus equity valuations,” allowing investors to build positions in explorers with high-quality assets showing signs of market recognition amidst gold’s recent ascent to an all-time-high.

Freegold Ventures (TSX:FVL; OTCQX:FGOVF), market capitalization C$399.09 million, is one of the few junior gold stocks to have broken through this equity-commodity mismatch, outperforming gold over one-year and five-year periods, measured below as of January 22, 2025, according to data from Stockhouse and Goldprice.org:

  • Year-over-year return: Freegold stock’s 83.33 per cent vs. gold’s 35 per cent.
  • Five-year return: Freegold stock’s 1,366.67 per cent vs. gold’s 69 per cent.

The junior miner’s outperformance is driven by consistent advancement at its highly prospective Alaskan-based Golden Summit project, where drilling has delineated a major gold resource that holds the potential for billions in revenue.

In January 2025, Freegold was named to the 2025 OTCQX Best 50, a ranking of top-performing companies traded on the OTCQX Best Market last year.

Freegold’s Golden Summit gold project

Freegold’s flagship Golden Summit project, located only a 30-minute drive from Fairbanks, is one of North America’s largest undeveloped gold resources. The project’s September 2024 resource update details 12 million ounces of gold indicated at 1.08 grams per ton (g/t) gold and 10.3 million ounces inferred at 1.04 g/t gold, combining for approximately US$61.7 billion in the ground at the gold price as of January 22, 2025.

The resource estimate covers an area of only 1.5 kilometres by 800 metres on the extensive land package (slide 6), representing consolidated growth of 7.5 times since 2016 (slide 10). Kinross’s Fort Knox mine, only 6 kilometres to the south, shares similarly aged geology and has produced over 9 million ounces to date.

Freegold is keen on expanding the Golden Summit resource and demonstrating the potential of the project area – historical placer production exceeds 6.75 million ounces from project area streams to date (slide 7). With over 80 documented gold occurrences and one of the industry’s lowest discovery costs at approximately US$4 per ounce, there remains lots of room for further expansion.

Largely unexplored outside of the main Dolphin Cleary resource, Golden Summit has seen over 100,000 metres of drilling since 2020, including 25,708 metres across 41 holes in 2024 and 26,000 metres in 2023, with recent assays successfully expanding mineralization to the west. In addition, further metallurgical testing is underway with results expected in the coming months. The results from this testing will help to optimize flowsheet design and better prepare Golden Summit to enter the pre-feasibility stage.

2024 drilling yields a wealth of targets

Freegold’s drilling in 2024 targeted multiple geochemical anomalies extending for a combined 1.5 kilometres west of the resource area, making it a larger prospect than the 2024 resource estimate. Numerous geochemical trends within the anomaly align directly with the historic Newsboy mine, which yielded 40,000 ounces at 1 ounce of gold per ton, supporting the area’s substantial expansion potential. Highlights include:

GS2426

  • 1.93 g/t gold over 105 metres, including 1.2 metres grading 44.1 g/t gold and 1.4 metres of 65.9 g/t gold.

GS2425

  • 2.72 g/t gold over 139.9 metres from 401.4 metres, including 3 metres of 44.7 g/t gold and 2.7 metres grading 59.5 g/t gold.

GS2422

  • 157 g/t gold over 3 metres.
  • 1.88 g/t gold over 54.2 metres.
  • 1.58 g/t gold over 60 metres.

GS2417

  • 1.25 g/t gold over 56.5 metres from 24 metres, a near-surface hit with potentially significant impact on project economics.
  • 196.5 g/t gold over 1.7 metres.

Results – released on January 21 and January 14 – indicate significant potential for expansion to the south, west and at depth, with several intercepts exceeding the resource grade and only 29 of 41 drillhole assays in hand, suggesting we are only in the early days of Golden Summit’s resource delineation.

Ongoing and planned exploration will continue focusing on grade improvements and resource expansion to maximize shareholder value creation:

  • Drilling in 2025 will test the depth-extent of the higher-grade zones discovered in 2024 and further explore the westward anomaly. Among a wealth of targets, the Saddle zone stands out for its extensive narrow high-grade veins, which were tested with limited drilling in 2023.
  • Investors can also expect an updated 2025 mineral resource estimate based on the results of the 2024 drill program once Freegold receives all of the pending assays.

In addition to drilling and metallurgy, the company is also conducting ongoing baseline environmental, cultural resource and wetland studies, ensuring a well-rounded picture of Golden Summit’s value proposition.

Looking further ahead, numerous gold-in-soil samples surpassing 100 parts per billion over a 13-kilometre stretch remain to be drill tested on the project.

Freegold’s Shorty Creek copper and gold project

Freegold’s exploration upside draws additional leverage from the Shorty Creek project, 125 kilometres northwest of Fairbanks, which it leased in 2014 subject to a 2 per cent net smelter return royalty.

The project is highlighted by Hill 1835, a magnetic high measuring 1,000 metres by 1,500 metres yielding an initial discovery of 91 metres grading 0.55 per cent copper, 0.14 g/t gold and 7.02 g/t silver in drillhole SC1503.

Flotation and gravity test work at Hill 1835 achieved a 90 per cent recovery rate to a copper concentrate grading 24 per cent copper, 1.65 g/t gold and 486 g/t silver. Metallurgical testing also shows potentially economical tungsten recoveries by gravity with numerous broad zones of mineralization worth follow-up drilling, including a highlight of 93.5 metres grading 0.065 per cent tungsten trioxide (WO3) in drillhole SC16-02.

Shorty Creek houses additional untested magnetic anomalies over a 100-square-kilometre area, affording Freegold a long-term data-driven path to future development.

Supported by a vastly untapped land package and a management team that has served the mining industry for over 40 years on average – with an emphasis on gold – across every continent except Antarctica, Freegold is positioned to close the considerable gap between its market capitalization and the US$61.7 billion in estimated resources under its control in the ground.

A junior gold stock de-risked for value creation

While Freegold stock’s almost 1,400 per cent return since 2020 makes it seem like the ship has sailed, should gold hold its strength, as Wall Street expects it to, the company’s track record of efficient resource improvement deserves high conviction in terms of continuing to provide leverage above the price of the yellow metal.

With years of exploration upside ahead backed by drilling and geochemical data, and the portfolio’s proven ability to attract financing – including mining luminary Eric Sprott – investors find themselves on a lower floor when it comes to Freegold’s development story, with gold setting a firm foundation after market volatility and geopolitical risk to fiat currency pushed it to its best return in 14 years in 2024.

Look for the 2025 resource estimate and results from ongoing studies at Golden Summit to enhance project economics, encourage further share-price appreciation and pique the interest of major players looking for exploration upside as pre-feasibility work gets underway.

Join the discussion: Find out what everybody’s saying about this junior gold stock on the Freegold Ventures Limited Bullboard and check out Stockhouse’s stock forums and message boards.

This is sponsored content issued on behalf of Freegold Ventures Limited, please see full disclaimer here.

(Top photo of the Golden Summit project in Alaska: Freegold Ventures)


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