The more than 45,000m of drilling planned this year at the Whitehorse copper and gold project is off to an incredible start, with Gladiator Metals (TSX: GLAD) discovering a major new extension at its Cub East prospect – subsequently trading as high as C$3.66/share – 195% above our entry price of C$1.24 just 4 months after initiation. The latest intercepts grew drill confirmed mineralisation continuity to over 350m along strike and 300m down dip, with standout results from the initial 6 assays including 24m at 3.03% Cu, 1.08g/t Au and 28.91g/t Ag from 190m in May, followed by 35.9m at 2.68% Cu, 1.35g/t Au & 19.55g/t Ag from 172.1m including 21.9m at 4.24% Cu, 2.16g/t Au and 31.04g/t Ag in June. Six assays have been received so far from the 9 hole, 2,589m initial campaign at the prospect, leaving 3 to come before the next round commences, where GLAD will be working its way through the 900m stretch of gravity and IP geophysical anomalies that are guiding this highly precise and aggressive drilling campaign. In its journey towards potentially building a globally significant 100Mt resource, GLAD is also about to drill what could be the holy grail of discoveries at Whitehorse – the Great Southern prospect – which is at least 3 times the size of Cowley and has much stronger geophysical signatures. GLAD just ruled off a C$35 million raise led by BlackRock, and the company will now double the active drill rigs from 3 to 6 before the end of the summer.
Cub East is only 2.5km west of Cowley, the most advanced prospect at Whitehorse where most of GLAD’s 50,000m of drilling took place last year – and it is potentially shaping up to be at least a 20Mt resource with consistent average grades of 1.5-2% Cu beginning from surface. GLAD’s recently issued Class 3 permit allowed the targeting of high priority, outcropping targets at the Northern and Southern limbs which were hit with resource definition drilling – the first results of which were released this week and intersected 47m at 1.23% Cu, 0.11g/t Au, 7.03g/t Ag and 560ppm Mo from 3m, including 8.30m at 4.99% Cu, 0.23g/t Au, 26.66g/t Ag and 1,902ppm Mo from 12.6m, as well as 47.2m at 1.78% Cu, 0.12g/t Au, 10.06g/t Ag and 680ppm Mo from 30m, including 19.80m 3.28% Cu, 0.14g/t Au, 17.04g/t Ag and 510ppm Mo from 47.2m.
The original discovery zone at Cub East in 2025 came through with equally impressively assays of 44.2m at 1.69% Cu, 0.93g/t Au and 15.39g/t Ag from 173.8m, including 27m at 2.56% Cu, 1.44g/t Au and 23.85g/t Ag from 183m, and was the first prospect at Whitehorse outside of Cowley where GLAD was able to correlate mineralisation to geophysics with modern drilling. Having added an additional 80m of strike with high-grade mineralisation through these 6 assays, GLAD has an opportunity to trace the open directions very closely with step-out holes that have a relatively high chance of hitting similar grades. The mineralised system being explored at Cub East sits near an intrusive margin which is flanked by the previously mined Black Cub South pit, and suggests that mineralisation may be contact related – which is a typical setting for a skarn model and reinforces the confidence in tracing it the full 900m.
Currently trading at US$13,000/t, copper weathered the US/Iran war relatively well after a moderate dip, snapping back up to US$14,000/t this month – just shy of its US$14,500 all time high – after briefly dipping below US$12,000/t in mid-March, which was actually fresh high that was first hit in December. Goldman Sachs sees US$13,735 being maintained at the end of 2026 and Citi sees it hitting US$15,000/t within a year. Whitehorse had total historical production of 10.5Mt at 1.5% Cu and 0.75g/t Au between 1967 and 1982, and only ceased mining due to a severe downturn in the copper market and overall economy, with prices in that final year being US$1,447/t – equivalent to US$5,112/t today when adjusting for inflation. The amounts of molybdenum that GLAD continues to intersect are becoming more material to the project’s economics with the commodity recently ticking over US$70k/t – up from the already elevated US$55-60k/t when we initiated on GLAD. Gold and silver are also still trading around relatively attractive prices at US$4,030/oz and US$65/oz, respectively, despite pulling back over the past couple of weeks.
GLAD is currently trading at C$3.66/share – which equates to a C$423 million market cap and a C$373 million enterprise value with C$50 million in cash after accounting for the recent raise. While this is a significant move up from our initiation valuation of CAD$103 million enterprise value, it is a move warranted by an extreme level of exploration success that both provides a high degree of validity and confidence in GLAD’s geophysical targeting approach, but also drastically increases the scale of Whitehorse. We previously highlighted the 79.7Mt at 2.18% CuEq Canadian deposit belonging to AUD$1.11 billion enterprise value Firefly Metals (ASX: FFM) as an ideal peer comp, as well as Foran Mining Corporation (TSX: FOM) and its 38.6Mt at 2.02% CuEq Canadian project that is almost finished construction – and was recently taken over for CAD$3.8 billion by Eldorado Gold Corp (NYSE: EGO). You can read all of our GLAD coverage here.
The Bear Cub trend spans 1.5km and is emerging into a robust precinct in its own right, with GLAD’s recent stellar results at Cub East being flanked by numerous other exciting prospects. On the other side of the intrusion that hosts Cub East is the Black Cub South pit, which previously produced 2,400t of copper a very shallow depth and contains assays such as 34.75m at 1.65% Cu from 8.84m and 17.83m at 2.27% Cu from 9.48m, along with a historical reserve of 24,000t contained copper just below the pit that GLAD will eventually drill out. There is also the Keewenaw prospect, which hosts 74.98m at 1.51% Cu from surface, 23.47m at 2.91% Cu from 41.76m and 39.62m at 1.56% Cu from 40.54m, and the Gem prospect, which has previous hits of 16.61m at 2.59% Cu from 76.05m and 24.99m at 1.4% Cu from 23.93m.
The plan map with aeromagnetics below shows key sections of the Bear Cub trend, with the latest June assays in yellow and the May assays in blue – all from Cub East:
Source: GLAD
The cross section below from Cub East shows the new zones of mineralisation hit in the latest round of assays during the 40m northern step out drilling, which intersected multiple high-grade copper, gold and silver magnetite-skarn intervals that are open in numerous directions and will imminently be tested:
Source: GLAD
The cross-section below shows the central Cub East discovery zone, with the 2025 holes faded in the background and the recent drilling shown accentuated, demonstrating how GLAD’s latest assays have followed up and extended high-grade mineralisation around the original discovery area:
Source: GLAD
The plan map of Cowley below depicts the latest assays in yellow along with the remaining phase 1 resource drilling holes marked in white, as well as the LiDAR hill shade:
Source: GLAD
This chart of money manager copper positions on the CME shows how rapidly funds ditched their shorts after the initial panic of the US/Iran war took hold of markets and oil prices, and flocked back into long copper positions – which put further upwards pressure on copper prices:
Source: Reuters
GLAD has moved into a chapter of high impact and widespread exploration, backed by a solid foundation of data that is based on targeting tools which have proven to be very accurate across numerous prospects at Whitehorse that contain skarn mineralisation. With this year’s 45,000m of drilling fully funded and moving at pace, GLAD has an excellent roadmap to closing the gap with its significantly higher valued peers that have only moderately more scale – and at a time when copper is at record prices while facing structural undersupply and strong investor interest.
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Disclaimer: This article is for informational and marketing purposes only, and does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation to invest. All opinions expressed are our own. We may receive fees or other forms of compensation in connection with the publication of this content, and may own shares in any of the mentioned companies. Please do your own research and seek professional advice before making any investment decisions.