The playbook — gold · September 4, 2026
Getchell files a billion-dollar PEA at Fondaway Canyon
A first economic study pins a $905M post-tax NPV on a Nevada gold project — built on a $3,200 gold price and a lot of Inferred rock.
On September 3, 2026, Getchell Gold filed a Preliminary Economic Assessment — the first real math homework — on its Fondaway Canyon project in Nevada. The headline number is a post-tax net present value of $905 million, which the company rounds up in its own title to “$1 Billion NPV.” A PEA is an early sketch of whether a deposit could make money, not a construction blueprint. There are no new drill holes here. The study pours an existing resource — 999,000 ounces classed Indicated at 1.40 grams per tonne, plus 1,812,000 ounces of less-certain Inferred at 1.24 grams per tonne — through a mill running 42.8 million tonnes at 1.38 grams per tonne, or a bit under a twentieth of an ounce of gold per tonne of rock.
Why the big number? Leverage to the gold price. The base case assumes $3,200 per ounce. Drop that to the study’s own Low Case of $2,400 and the post-tax NPV falls from $905 million to $251 million — same rock, very different story. The grade is moderate and the digging is heavy: the plan strips 6.9 tonnes of waste for every tonne of ore fed to the mill, at a 0.41 gram-per-tonne cut-off. The resource sits on 546 holes and 20,460 metres of drilling across a 7-kilometre corridor that stays open at depth, so the district is real. The resource estimate was signed by an independent Qualified Person, Kevin Hon of APEX Geoscience. Over the past three months the stock rose about 11% while gold was flat — but junior peers in the GDXJ index climbed 15.5%, so the tide lifted Getchell too, just not as high.
Now the honest part. This is a PEA press release, not a drill result, so there are no true widths to check. The mine plan leans materially on Inferred material, which by definition is too speculative to become reserves — the study says so. Metallurgy still needs work: 84% recovery to a concentrate that gets shipped to a third-party facility for final processing is an assumption, not a proven flowsheet. Sustaining capital was left out of the cost estimate, a modeling choice tied to contract mining that understates the true bill. Next up the company points to a Pre-Feasibility Study, more metallurgical testing, and a Plan of Operations permit filing to the BLM and Nevada regulators during the 2026 field season. Worth noting against the $265 million capex: financings so far have been small, non-brokered rounds under $5 million.