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Tim Coughlin, CEO of Royal Road Minerals | Rule Symposium 2026: Rick Rule interviews

Rule Investment Media May 28, 2026

Summary

Royal Road Minerals turned about $5 million of Nicaraguan exploration into $22.5 million through asset sales, showing how a project generator model can self-fund.

The company holds what CEO Tim Coughlin calls Colombia's largest land package, including targets acquired from AngloGold Ashanti that carry 5-million-ounce potential.

GAM, a cluster of three porphyries (large mineralized intrusive systems), is delivering drill intersections above 300 meters at roughly 1.1 gold-equivalent grams.

The next 12 to 18 months focus on defining a resource at GAM; other high-grade Colombian assets wait on political will after the election.

The host argues Colombia carries an unusually large political risk premium relative to its geology, calling it a target-rich environment.

Key points on Anglogold Ashanti

  • Royal Road acquired part of AngloGold Ashanti's Colombian ground in 2019 - targets the guest says Anglo curated over many years and spent roughly $34 million on.
  • Tim Coughlin, a former AngloGold chief geologist for South America and one of its first employees in Colombia around 2000-2001, says Anglo only pursued intrusion-related porphyry systems above 5 million ounces, so the acquired targets carry that potential by definition.
  • Coughlin argues the acquisition was not a major's cast-offs: Royal Road deliberately took two or three of Anglo's most advanced Colombian projects.

Key points on Mineros S.A

  • Royal Road's Karibe grassroots discovery in Nicaragua was made under a 50/50 JV with Mineros and was left drilling roughly 200-meter holes at 1.2-1.3 g/t gold before Royal Road sold its interests and exited the JV.
  • Coughlin describes Mineros as a Colombian company that listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange a couple of years before this May 2026 interview.

Rick Rule's takeaways

  • Top takeaway Rule argues Colombia is a target-rich environment that suffers an unusually large political-risk premium relative to his own interpretation of the country's political risk.
  • Rule says he has known and invested alongside Tim Coughlin for the better part of two decades, and notes every conference exhibitor, including Royal Road, is vetted by him and held in the sponsors' accounts.
  • Rule points out AngloGold never evidenced interest in small targets and says he likes that Coughlin pursues very large epithermal and porphyry systems in Colombia.
  • Rule frames Royal Road's Nicaragua exit - roughly $5 million in and $22.5 million out - as the instructive proof that Coughlin's project-generator approach can pay shareholders.

Tim Coughlin's takeaways

  • Top takeaway Coughlin's top stated priority for the next 12-18 months is drilling a resource at the GAM porphyry cluster, saying detailed modelling has finally shown where to park the rigs after earlier holes probed a large alteration halo the team did not fully understand.
  • He reports GAM drilling intersecting well over 300 meters at about 1.1-1.2 g/t gold equivalent, and says the focus now is outlining the other two porphyries in the cluster alongside the one he has been drilling for several years.
  • He contends Royal Road's roughly 1,840 square kilometer Colombian package is curated rather than a major's cast-offs, anchored by ground bought from AngloGold Ashanti in 2019 that Anglo spent about $34 million refining, with 5-million-ounce-plus potential by definition.
  • He argues Colombia is rife with exceptional deposits and the real constraint is political will rather than geology, so he will gently push again to unlock the harder-to-access assets after the outcome of Colombia's upcoming election.
  • He points to the Nicaragua 50/50 JV with Mineros - about $5 million in and $22.5 million out on the sales - as the evidence that his project-generator model works for shareholders.