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Kingfisher Metals owns the HWY 37 project in BC’s Golden Triangle. Since we last spoke in June, they’ve drilled 13,551 m, mostly at the Hank porphyry target, and brought in Barrick as a 9.9% shareholder. In this interview, Dustin gave me an update on the recent dirlling. I asked him why the stock has slipped, where the assays are and whether the delays could be hiding bad news, and what hole 28 actually shows. I also asked how the Barrick deal works, plus money, catalysts and risks heading into next year.

TL;DR

Kingfisher has about $35 million in the bank and Dustin says next year’s 20,000 m program is fully paid for. The catch is that almost none of this year’s assays are back, so right now the story rests on visual core descriptions. Dustin’s highest conviction is hole 28 at Hank. It was a 100 m step-out to the north that hit a dense stockwork body with more even chalcopyrite than anything they’ve seen on the project so far. He expects hole 28 assays around AME Roundup in January. Until then, it’s visuals, not numbers.

What have they done for shareholders lately?

They drilled 13,551 m against a 15,000 m target. He said they fell short because of inexperienced drill crews, not money. Alongside the drilling they ran:

• IP across Hank-Mary, including a vector IP survey of roughly 6 by 8 km
• reconnaissance IP at the RDN target on Forrest Kerr
• LiDAR plus an airborne MMT and magnetics survey over Forrest Kerr
• ground MT at Hank
• about 2,500 soil samples
• baseline environmental work

In late September they bought the 40-acre former sawmill site off Highway 37 that they had been leasing as a camp. He sees it as a permanent base and long-term core storage. Barrick bought 9.9% for just under $21 million at $1.35, which he described as a 32 to 33% premium. The two companies formed a technical committee that gives Kingfisher access to Barrick’s geoscience team. Jasper Bertisen, who spent most of his career at Resource Capital Funds, also joined the board.

How much money do they have and what are they spending it on?

He said they hold about $35 million today, with some bills from this season still to pay, and expects a little over $30 million going into 2027. That money covers the 20,000 m program. Most of it is split between the Hank porphyry and the epithermal targets, with roughly 2,500 m going to Mary. This year’s costs came in close to budget. Fuel went up, though, and drilling fewer metres pushed the cost per metre up a bit. He said he won’t cut corners on safety, archaeology, environmental work or the Tahltan relationship. They chose not to pay to speed up assays across all the core: the 27 m they did rush cost about two and a half times the normal rate. If the stock runs on hole 28 and more money comes in, he’d take the program up to around 30,000 m. He stressed that they don’t need to raise money now.

Upcoming catalysts

Hole 28 assays are the main event. He plans to move them up in the lab queue so they’re out around Roundup in January, because Kingfisher was accepted into the Roundup core shack and wants to show that core. Barrick’s technical team is also planning a session with them at the same time. After that, he expects assays to come out in batches, grouped as porphyry holes and gold holes, with geophysics and groundwork results filling the gaps. He thinks numbered results will keep flowing up to PDAC. A new, more interactive website is targeted for January and should give more attention to other targets like Mess Creek. Mobilization should be announced in May, with four rigs drilling from June. Planned holes include a steeper hole under hole 28, a steeper follow-up on hole 31, and directional drilling to chase the high-grade vein hit in hole 15. He expects holes 19, 28 and 31 to be the ones that matter most from this year.

Risks

The biggest near-term risk is lack of data. Only 27 m of this year’s drilling has been assayed. When I asked how investors can know slow assays aren’t hiding bad news, Dustin said plainly that you don’t, and that it comes down to trusting the team’s track record. Visuals aren’t assays, and when they calibrated their own core scanner on older core, it read about 40% below the actual assays. Hole 28 is a single hole through the stockwork and showed no bornite. The mineralization is also deep: The main stockwork starts around 634 m and the main porphyry hit in hole 31 was at 738 m, both core length. He acknowledged that an underground operation would need overall grades above 1% copper equivalent. Holes 12, 16 and 17 were weaker or headed away from the system, so the geometry isn’t worked out. Next year is funded, but he said getting to a resource will take more money. The stock is down about 20% since Beaver Creek, roughly a month earlier, and he thinks a fund may have been selling. On Barrick, he said they agreed not to option or joint-venture the project for a couple of years, but Barrick has no right of first refusal. Barrick also sits under a 9.9% standstill, and can go to 19.9% (including warrants) if another shareholder goes above 10%.

Kingfisher Metals CEO Interview

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