Modern-day gold prospectors in Stillwater are eying Wyoming, with plenty of investors backing them

Stillwater's modern-day gold prospectors have now gone public.

Geologists Rob Bergmann and Brian Lentz, who have several mining-related companies, needed next-level investment to fund their gamble that there are significant gold deposits in the Wyoming hills.

The two believe that the Abitibi gold belt in Canada, one of the world's richest gold-producing regions, has a geologic extension in Wyoming.

In 2022, the partners listed their company Relevant Gold on the Canadian stock exchange and have since attracted several prominent high net worth individual investors including William Bollinger, the retired co-founder of the London-based investment management firm Egerton Capital Limited.

Junior mining companies like Relevant Gold tend to be speculative investments with a high failure rate. The company's shares are trading around 25 cents a share.

But Bollinger said he sees long-term potential and in January increased his investment.

"It is my belief that the issuer, led by Rob Bergmann and Brian Lentz, is on the cusp of opening up district-scale gold projects in Wyoming," Bollinger said in a news release announcing a secondary stock purchase. "This substantial common share purchase is a mark of my confidence in this talented team and the highly prospective potential of this underexplored and untapped resource."

The company started with a direct listing on the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE) in 2022 and a year later moved up to the Toronto Stock Exchange Venture Exchange and added a U.S. listing on the OTCQB market.

The Canadian exchanges have more favorable listing requirements for extraction companies and an investor base familiar with the high-risk ventures that understand the rules and regulations the exchanges have developed for the industry.

Bergmann's and Lentz's deep connections with others in the industry helped them target investors who understand geology and the risks and rewards of investing in mining companies.

Among their investors is Kinross Gold Corp., a large Canadian gold and silver mining company that now owns a third of Relevant shares.

By the rules of the exchanges, Relevant Gold must have its legal headquarters in Canada, in this case Vancouver. However, the company's operational offices overlook the St. Croix River in downtown Stillwater.

It also has a field office in Riverton, Wyo., close to the properties they are exploring.

The duo raised $5.6 million in Canadian dollars in the August 2022 direct listing. In all, they've raised $23.6 million before the initial offering or through strategic investments and other nonbrokered private placements after the initial listing.

The traditional initial public offering market has been in a several-year slump, and the last big traditional IPO from a Minnesota-based company was Life Time Group Holdings which went public in October 2021 and raised more than $700 million.

The Eagan-based medtech firm, Anteris Technologies Global Corp., did raise $88 million from an IPO in December, but its shares had previously traded on an Australian stock exchange.

Bergmann and Lentz, who met at Winona State University, are using the capital they've raised to fund test drillings, advanced geological mapping, scientific data analysis and to cover the holding costs of the land and claims management.

Through the duo's "new eyes on old rocks" approach, they believe a section of the Abitibi gold belt, which runs north and east of the Great Lakes through Ontario and Quebec, split off 2.7 billion years ago when plate tectonics essentially moved it to what is present-day Wyoming.

Now Relevant Gold has secured over 50,000 acres in five locations in west-central Wyoming. Bergmann and Lenz believe sites in Wyoming could produce similar near surface gold deposits that are common in the Abitibi in Canada.

Bergmann and Lentz are geologists, not miners. If test drilling this summer proves that there are deposits of gold that can be economically mined, they will likely sell to a large mining operation.

The geologist entrepreneurs' motto for their cadre of successful companies is "minerals are the future."

Their consulting company, Big Rock Exploration, has helped some of the largest mining companies in the world find new deposits of gold and other precious and critical metals, and has recently signed 20 new consulting contracts.

Exsolve Recycling Technologies company "mines" industrial waste to recapture battery-grade cobalt, nickel and copper. Exsolve recently moved from development stage to commercial stage.

With the proof of concept fully achieved, Bergmann and Lentz are exploring the next stages for that company.

But Relevant Gold is taking up most of their attention at the moment between seeking investors, raising capital and starting work on proving their theories.

With more and more constituencies recognizing the U.S. needs to secure its own source of critical minerals, Bergmann's and Lenz's companies stand to benefit.

"The pump is primed, the market is primed," Bergmann said. "We see ourselves entering a very exciting potential bull-cycle in precious metals."