Vancouver, BC – TheNewswire - May 8, 2025 – Sponsored content disseminated on behalf of Dolly Varden Silver. On May 5, 2025 Dolly Varden Silver (TSXV:DV) (OTC:DOLLF) (FSE: DVQ1) announced that is has signed a definitive agreement to acquire 100% of Hecla Mining Company's Kinskuch property in northwest BC's Golden Triangle.

The acquisition of the Kinskuch property will increase Dolly Varden’s tenure area by 400% to consolidate a district scale, contiguous claim package that includes the Kitsault Valley, Big Bulk and Kinskuch projects.

The consolidated land package will be about 77,000 hectares, which is 225 X bigger than New York City’s Central park.

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The Kinskuch acquisition allows Dolly Varden Silver (an explorer) and Hecla Mining (a producer) to focus on their respective core strengths.

Hecla has a market cap of USD $3.03 billion.  According to Hecla’s SEC Year-end Financial Filings, in 2024 it delivered 16.2 million ounces of silver, 141,923 ounces of gold, generating record sales of $929 million.

Hecla’s 2024 Capital Expenditures on existing mines (Greens Creek, Lucky Friday, Casa Berardi, Keno Hill) totaled $214.5 million.

Hecla has ten exploration projects on the books in the USA, Canada and Mexico.  The company’s total 2024 exploration and pre-development spend was $27.3 million, less than 1% of its market cap.

Dolly Varden has a market cap of CND of $291 million. The company does not have an operating mine, therefore does not generate metal sales.

According to DV’s 2024 consolidated financial statements, DV spent $9.8 million on drilling, $1.6 million on geoscience and $1.1 million on sample analytics.

Its total 2024 exploration spend was $17.8 million, about 6% of its market cap.

HL is a producer first.  DV is an explorer first.

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"Consolidating Dolly Varden's Kitsault Valley Project with our major shareholder Hecla's large and underexplored claims covering prospective Hazelton Group rocks will allow for more efficient exploration and enable us to unlock value on our path to be a premier precious metals company.” stated Shawn Khunkhun, President and CEO of Dolly Varden.

“Additionally, we welcome Hecla's increased share ownership in our Company,” added Khunkhun.

Kinskuch Acquisition Deal Highlights:

• DV to issue Hecla 1,351,963 shares of DV worth $5 million. 

• Hecla retains 2% net smelter return royalty (NSR) on the Kinskuch property. 

• NSR will include a 50% buyback right, for $5 million, allowing DV to reduce the royalty to 1% at any time. 

• Hecla maintains a designated position on DV's Technical Committee. 

• DV and Hecla will collaborate to unlock the potential of the underexplored areas. 

"We will be using our structural and lithological framework model developed at the Kitsault Valley Trend that has led our team to significant discoveries such as the Wolf Vein and applying them to exploration of the Illiance Trend,” states Rob van Egmond, VP Exploration for Dolly Varden.

“Hecla was successful in identifying a subparallel trend of silver-rich mineralization, located to the east of our significant silver and gold deposits," added van Egmond.

The acquisition of the Kinskuch property from Hecla will triple the total strike length of favorable Jurassic-age Hazelton-group volcanic rocks and associated "Red Line" by adding the Illiance trend to the Kitsault Valley trend.

In the May 7, 2025 “Explainer Video” below, van Egmond outlines the exploration history and potential of the new land package.

“Hecla is giving us the rights to explore that land,” stated van Egmond in the video. “We are now the owners, but they still maintain ownership because it is an equity deal.”

“They've increased their percentage ownership in Dolly Varden. Indirectly, they still are part owners of that land. They trust us to do the exploration work and unlock the value.”

Both the Kitsault Valley and the Illiance trends are interpreted to be part of a district scale, sub-basin of the Eskay Rift period. The Illiance trend has seen little modern exploration work, limited to localized diamond drilling by Hecla on the three kilometer long, north-south trending Illy epithermal system.

Also included within the acquisition area is the past-producing Esperanza Mine (1910), interpreted as quartz-carbonate veins with similar silver grades to the historic Dolly Varden Mine (1920) hosted in Upper Hazelton sedimentary rocks.

According to a BC government database of historical deposits, “The Esperanza mine produced high-grade, hand-sorted silver ore sporadically between 1911 and 1948. In total, 4662 tonnes of ore with an average grade of 1.77 grams per tonne gold, 983.9 grams per tonne silver were mined”.

The southwestern portion of the acquired claims covers Hazelton Group rocks that trend to within seven kilometers of Goliath Resources' recently discovered Surebet Zone gold mineralization.

The area south of Big Bulk has the potential to host additional gold-copper porphyry systems along the south trend towards the Kitsault molybdenum porphyry deposit, which is being actively advanced by Newmoly llc.

The Kinskuch property is covered by a recently renewed five-year Exploration Permit on both Nisga'a and Gitanyow Traditional Lands.

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“Hecla didn’t walk away from Kinskuch—you could say they traded up, by handing over the property to Dolly Varden in exchange for shares, a royalty, and retaining a board seat,” wrote Jeff Valks, Senior Analyst at The Gold Advisor on May 5, 2025.

“Hecla keeps a stake in any upside without spending a dime on drills—it’s not a core property for them and they want Dolly Varden to drill it.”

The Kinskuch property acquisition is subject to TSX Venture Exchange and NYSE America approvals. It is expected to close in mid-May.

On May 7, 2025, Dolly Varden announced plans for the fully funded 2025 exploration drilling program at its 100% owned Kitsault Valley Project. A minimum planned 35,000 meters of diamond drilling will build on the success of the 2024 program.

Rob van Egmond, P.Geo., Vice-President Exploration for Dolly Varden Silver, the “Qualified Person” as defined by NI43-101 has reviewed, validated and approved the scientific and technical information contained in this GSN release.

Disclaimer: Dolly Varden Silver paid GSN $1,750 for the research, creation and dissemination of this content.

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