I came into this story. The beginning the first week in January, actually December 31, 2008, when Electrum effectively took control as the dominant shareholder of NovaGold. NovaGold had been a company that had gone through $0.50 per share to $20, and we had not participated in it nor did we participate in shorting the stock. It’s not something that we do when it went from ’20 back to about $1, $0.50 actually. The asset was that the company had multiple issues, lineation lawsuits, environmental issues on assets not relating to Donlin. It had several different assets. So there was a — as it were a diversified aspect to the story, the management was discredited, there was no following. The balance sheet was terrible, institutions wouldn’t budge.
Elektron was able to do that because we’re a family business in essence, our family plus several large Arab southern wealth funds and employee capital. And so we could catch the falling knife, and we turned that story around. We dealt with the environmental issues with the EPA by selling off a project. We spun off the lore to Newmont realizing great value for the shareholders, making NovaGold a pure play on what we call the new Carlin or the new Nevada. We settled the class action lawsuits. We changed the entire management team, culminating in being able to get the President of Barrick North America who knew the asset better than anyone else because we’ve been on the other side of the table when Barrick made a failed hostile takeover here. We’ve brought in Richard Williams, who had built the the largest investment ever made by Barrick and something that Barrick talks about even expanding now in the Dominion Republic.
And the stock went back to $15 within the space of a couple of years. Obviously, the last decade has been very, very tough for the gold mining shares. We haven’t been immune to that. We are not unusual in that respect. The ratio of gold to gold mining is pretty much as low as it’s ever been. So what I would say is this. several things. Number one, we’re in a bull market in do. Number two, it’s going to last for a very long time, well over it. Number three, we will see a revaluation of gold assets. Number four, I’ve been in the story for 14 years. And contrary to suffering from any form of , I’m more excited about Donlin than ever before. And I’d like to explain why because it ties into a bow some of the other 4 aspects, which I just mentioned.
We’re in a very, very different world. My friends, shareholders and my colleagues, those who follow NovaGold let me be very, very blunt. The era of the frontier mentality. The era where geology Trump’s geopolitics is older — over. The assets that will achieve the premium valuations, which will be valued like they were before the frontier spirits to hold when Newmont and Yanacocha and the go where the gold is and how the to become prevalent. At that time, people forget U.S. assets were valued using the 0% discount rate because they were the hype of political safety. They were arbitraged with the less politically safe jurisdictions, Canada, Australia and South Africa. The world is very, very different now. I happen to believe that in almost everywhere other than in North America, Australia, in a few jurisdictions the gold mines will be nationalized gold is money.
